behind the scenes

Yesterday, I did a photoshoot with a very talented photographer and some very nice models. The whole team was great. The weather wasn't too cooperative, but luckily the rain held off for just long enough.
We went way up to St. John's Cathedral and I took a lot of candid shots with my iphone. Here are a couple. More are here on my Flickr. I'll post some of the final images from the photographer soon, too.

???

My 30th birthday happens to fall on the date 10-10-10. (It equals 30!) .
Being the bad, indecisive, procrastinating Libra that I am, I have no plans for it other than knowing I'm going to go to Portland, where most of my friends are. I have realized it would fall on this date for about 7 years now. I have no excuses for being such a last-minute planner.

My question is: What the heck should I do on this magical day?! Maybe I'll make a poll. Any suggestions?

The bad thing about such a numerically significant date is that, yes, everyone in the world is planning on getting married on this day. Therefore, it'll be hard to book venue rentals. And it is now less than 5 months away. Oh my!

betty white

Another pic from my shoot on Friday:

even better

Well, as much fun as it was to try on my clothes and snap pictures, I have to say I much rather leave it to a professional model and take my place behind the camera instead. Here are a couple of shots from a shoot that I just did on Friday. My good friend, Nathan, did the makeup. I did the hair, and was our photographer. Most of the credit can go to our model, though. She was fantastic!


I'm really loving playing the role of photographer lately. It motivates me to make more things, simply for the enjoyment of later shooting them on a model. Perhaps the most enjoyable part of the creative process because I can step back admire the finished product. I've always had the tendency to think about how something will be photographed while I'm creating it, so it's sort of fun for me to be the one to do it sometimes.

More pictures to come!

meet the girls

Two, actually three, new dresses are up on my Etsy page, but these two I made last week and am really loving right now. They are part of my Spring '11 Bridal mini-collection, but the samples are for sale up there now.

The Betty White, (because the skirt reminds me of her hair!) Is entirely eco-friendly, made up of organic cotton and small, salvaged scraps.

And the Bea Arthur, because well, she looks like a Golden Girl, too, sorta.
The one bad thing about really nice weather on the weekends is that models tend to cancel. Argh! Hence, the pictures with mostly my head chopped off here. Whenever the headless model makes an appearance, that's usually the case. She works for free at a moment's notice!

part two

Here are some shots of the bridesmaids dresses that I also did. Unfortunately, I didn't really get any good shots of them on the girls because I used up all my memory card space on shots of the bride and her dress at the wedding.

This is probably the only exception to my "I don't do bridesmaids, too" rule. And it got reinforced after this time, because though even with the best of intentions to have this dress done by a place I've used before for production, too many things went wrong and they got very delayed, so that I pretty much ended up making six of these myself. That beautiful Italian satin-faced silk organza and I were not the best of friends in the beginning, but in the end I won the fight and was pretty happy with them.

I ended up ordering more of this material because I fell in love with it, so be on the lookout for some things out of it in the future. (my Etsy, later today) ;)

a labor of love

Well, it should be known by now that whenever I disappear for awhile without posting so much as a peep, I'm either working on a collection and it's close to fashion week or I'm working around the clock to finish a wedding dress, and trying to out-do myself.

I recently finished the wedding gown of a friend that I have known since childhood. I have known Erica since I was probably about 10 or 11 years old. We were in all the same dance classes and pretty much inseparable during and out of class, sometimes having to be separated by our teacher for giggling too much.

Erica was a dream client to make a dress for. She trusted me completely, and let me have total freedom with just a couple of guidelines: She wanted a low back, and no rhinestones or sparkles. Imagine that! After all those years of dance where costumes could never have enough sparkle or glitter, we've both decided we've had enough rhinestones for a lifetime. Ha!

The dress that we ended up with, is my favorite wedding gown of all, I think. I'm glad it went to a good friend. I was lucky enough to come out to California and attend the wedding up in wine country on one of the most beautiful days. Such a lovely couple and a beautiful wedding!
This was the first time, that I have actually been able to see one of my wedding dresses walk down the aisle. Well, any of my dresses walk down any aisle, actually. I never have gotten to sit in the audience during one of my fashion shows either. It was so nice to be able to enjoy this rare occasion.

I also did the bridesmaid dresses as well, and will talk about those in a following post. I took tons of pictures! Enjoy!