I felt like it.

I´ve been reading this great blog called Land Girl 1980. The writer calls herself a retro dresser and a history lover who is obsessed by the 1940's and history in general. The reason why I mentioned this blog is this post:

 Picture from her blog.

I got so excited by her post I went and bought a hair rat of my own! Now I´ve made a back roll almost every day this week. I usually accessorise it with some store bought flowers, but today I wanted to make an alternative for them. 

First I dug through my crafts box to find pieces of felt and some hair combs (bought from here). Felt is such an easy material to work with and I like the naive look of felt flowers, so I decided to try them as a hair accessory. Here are the felts (minus a brown one I also desided to use) and the patterns I used:

Then I cut out 3 big flowers and 3 small ones in different colors. Next step was to make them look more natural and real:

I stitched through every petal using straight stitch and made sure the thread ran freely. It should do so as you should be able to tighten the thread by pulling it after the last petal. The yellow and peach ones are in the making and the white one is ready.

I also cut some leafs as you can see.

 

After stitching every flower I attached them to the hair comb with Epoxy glue. I advice not to get glue on your fingers as well (like I did) as the glue is pretty strong. You can also attach the flowers with thread or string or maybe even with wire.

And here´s the finished product:

The leafs and flowers would also look nice with some yarn or bead details and decorations.

With your own two hands!

For your inspiration and mine: a picture heavy post of some magazines I just received! They both are printed in 1945. I´ve started to collect these Finnish Omin käsin (With own hands) mags as they provide great and easy tips for enhancing ones wardrobe. What is also great is that the tips are cheap as well! Especially the ones that are printed in the wartime. The magazines are full of instructions how to make something old into something new and fashionable. 

Those instructions lift my spirits as I see a big problem in current consuming. Nowadays you can wear highstreet clothing only a few times as they either go out of fashion or fall apart. People seem to have the idea that it is embarrassing to wear something twice and this way of thinking can be seen in the flea markets: they are filling with last season (read: couple months old) clothing with tags still hanging from some of them.

I must admit, before I started to dress myself in the 40's way, I used to buy lots more clothing than I do today. And some of them never made their way out of my closet. At the back of my mind I felt bad and so did my wallet in the long run. Vintage clothing have taught me style as well as ideology: durability, good materilas and comfortable wear. I'm not saying everybody should wear vintage, but maybe there is something to be learned from the vintage ideology?

Now, before I start preaching more, below are the pictures. I´ll try to translate the headlines into english.

 

How vivid are these covers!

Every woman´s light suitcase. The suitcase pictured above is made out of paper used to replace real fabrics.

Well cared socks last twice as much. The article tells you how you can give your socks a longer life by washing and mending.

Summer days spent in plaid.

 

Wooden shoes clack, when your feet go fast. This is how anyone can make their shoes themselves. Just wow. The soles are carved wood and leather parts have once been a pair of leather gloves. Did I say wow already..?

Summer and shoes.