Blogmas Day 21: A Christmas meetup dress (and give away winner).

Happy Monday everyone and welcome to Blogmas Day 21!

As you may have noticed, I miserably failed at keeping my blog posted daily from last week.

Unfortunately, life has been running fast and keeping me busy for the last bunch of days, and blog posting had to be a bit neglected as a consequence of it. Now you can sum it up to my epic blog fails list... But anyway, I thought I could try double hard until Christmas Day at least and keep you tuned with life, so today I am coming back to show you my last handmade piece as well as announcing December give away winner (which I also failed to reveal last Saturday, oops, sorry about that!). 

First sewing project

As I mentioned last month, I bought a sewing machine.

It had been on my wish list for ages, but for one reason or another, I delayed it .

At the beginning of March, however, I decided it was time to invest some money on a little domestic machine which could help me to materialize all those projects on my forever-increasing sewing folder. I suppose the real reason to finally make a decision was the absurdly inexpensive fabric prices in Bucharest: I simply coudn´t stand the view of all those affordable materials within easy reach!

I could feel their sad looks at me.

“Take us home” they would say with their tiny voices. “We want to turn ouselves into pretty dresses!”

So how could I posibly refuse?

It was far too cruel...

Royal purple roses headpiece

I´ve never considered myself really crafty.

I mean, when you grow up on a family in which everybody seems to be gifted for manual works and you are clumsy, well... you start thinking you must be the clack sheep. I mean, there is not other black sheep around so... it has to be you.

My mum can sew a dress with one hand and knit a shawl with the other, one of my sisters used to design (AND make!) her own corsets, my dad can fix up any ruined supply, my youngest sister can make amazing pictures with eyes shut and I...  eerrrr... I am the smartie bookworm but, being honest, I never tried to use my hands the way they do.

First Anniversary Give Away

I cannot truly believe it´s been a year since I started updating this blog.
I began thinking I would probably get easily bored of it, but through these twelve months I met really charming and interesting people out there and this place eventually became one more facet of my life.
I have to confess that, for me, posting here is kind of relaxing. A therapy against stress. And do you know what? Besides it is cheaper than a psychoanalyst!

Now seriously, I want to thank everyone in the blogosphere by giving a little offering.
The give away consists on a handmade flower ring, a couple of polka dots vynil hair pins, a handmade key pendant and a beautiful black lace handband (that can be also used as a chocker).

All you have to do for having the chance to get the prize is being a follower of this blog (if you are not a follower yet, you can become one) and leave a comment below. The comment must contain a suggestion about what kind of contents you do like here or would you appreciate me to add to my blog.

You can get an extra participation (I´ll put your name twice in the raffle) if you leave a link to this give away in your own blog. 

The contest is internationally opened!

Good luck, everyone!

A Midsummer Night´s Dream

Greetings to you all, dears. 

I hope you are having the most wonderful of the summers. In my case, this period is being a very relaxing one after a good quantity of crazy months. At the beginning of the summer I began working in a new teaching assistant position, but now I got my vacational break and can really enjoy of some (well-deserved) spare time.

And what does free time mean to me? 

Oh, that´s a good question: First of all, means unlimited time for reading and writing; yes, just for the mere pleasure of doing it. I´ve told you too many times I am a bookworm and yes, I am even proud of it. So I am spending great and mad quantities of time with Lovecraft, Lumley, Prize etc. Of course, some of those reading will be handy in the future for my bibliography but right now I am just enjoying. 

I also found time enough to liberate some of my creative power beyond literature and study. I´ve been making some ornaments myself, such as necklances, brooches and ribbons. You can see a couple of examples above. The pendant was made using one of my spinal bone earrings, which were far too big and heavy for me. The ribbon is just a little piece of velvet, a cameo and one hair pin. Easy, isn´t it? I always enjoy by recycling old useless materials that I have at home.

I am spending some quality time with friends and The Gentle One.

In the last few weeks we went out for outdoors walk frequently. It´s nice to feel the fresh air on your skin, even if you are not a big fan of summer baking temperatures. I tend to develop a huge allergy because of the pollen but in the last times I just discovered many natural remedies against it, as the tea flowers in the picture. I have to thank my friend Morgan for that, she was the one to teach me how to use herbal remedies as a medicine instead of dozens of pills.

Oh, and of course we finally went to watch Prometheus together.

I have a couple of things to say about it: 

The visual level (photography and artistic conception) is great. Giger does its job masterfully. However, the film falls apart towards the second half. There are times of little or no credibility, and a total lack of connection and coherence. The first half is quite acceptable, with moments of genuine and classic science fiction, but the desenlace quite goes forced and "commercial" with moments taken from any action movie. As for the actors, the interpretation of "David" is wonderful and does not detract some of his predecessors in the original series. "Shaw" is admissible the most of the time, but falls frequently over-acting and compunction. Overall I give it a six and a half.

Anyway, darlings, I hope you do have a great summer break full of  special moments.