As long as I won’t loose my Glass Slippers…

Yes, it’s only two more days to go – better say one and two half days, ’cause today’s proceeded quite far and on Wednesday I’ll have to be at school at half past one PM for setting up – until our graduation party. My dress is so not finished and I’m pretty nervous and afraid that I won’t look good in any way…

I don’t even know what to do concerning my make-up.

Aaargh.

Now for something completely different, I’m taking part in a swap on my handicrafts bulletin board again and guess the subject? – It’s Discworld! I already had some ideas and will start working as soon as the party’s over which means Thursday.

I really don’t want to sew that dratted waistband.

My weekend by the way was spent by digging a hole – a workout I can just recommend, my muscles are still aching. Not very princess-like, but even royalty should know hard work and the feeling of getting really clean after being covered in mud for a day.

Still, I’ll have to draw and write a birthday card for a friend of mine who’s going to be abroad for about a year, in Norway for her Scandinavian studies to be precise. And her birthday was yesterday (I’m messy at the moment, I know, but Bambi – who is that particular friend’s brother – told me it wouldn’t be that calamitous as she’s got a lot going on at the moment as well).

Oh well, up for the waistband.

Good-bye, then!

Bonnie

Adventures in Little Sweden and a Diet on Toffee

Yesterday Jules and I took a trip to little Sweden – better known as “IKEA”. As mentioned before he needed some fabric for the Dance of the Vampires-project he’s working at (they’ll play it in July and I’m going to watch it for Jules’ sake). So he got about three yards on a quite bargain price for his Spanish baroque costume and some even cheaper fabric for the caps of the peasant girls.

The getting-to was a little bit adventurous for the bus just didn’t show up and we had to wait about a hour (apparently there had been an accident on that particular bus route) but finally arrived there.

That’s what I got me: It’s bright poppy red silk from the leftover box, about 1 x 1.6 yards of it. I really don’t know what to do with it, but I’ll surely find a purpose (I don’t worry about those things, you know?).

I also got me some candy lace, once toffee and twice strawberry flavoured and they’ve really got some addiction potential…

I also got some tea on Wednesday – Gentleman’s Toffee flavour -, and guess what? It fits perfectly with the candy lace.

And here’s a work in progress picture of my graduation dress (it lasted hours to get the right shade for the stripes):

Admittedly Jules did the sewing so far, but I’ll do it for the skirt as I’ve got a quite special pattern in mind for it. The stains at the stripes are by-the-by on purpose (well, at least they’re now) as I like the a-little-bit-creepy look of them. I really tinker with the idea of stencilling some Alice in Wonderland motives on to the skirt’s lower hem or some other children’s book figures… I still have to make the headdress, I think I can do this over the weekend that’s pretty booked out anyway: Today I’ll have a nice evening with my crew including one or two games of Munchkin (a role player’s insider card game that’s quite hilarious) after spending the late morning in the bookbinding workshop at school where I still have some projects to finish before I finally leave. On Saturday I’ll have to raise at 5 AM for the car boot sale (to get our dungeons cleaned up, and it’s better that to just throw the things away), at noon I’ll go to help my goblin on the land we’re having our LARP on, the same on Sunday morning and finally I’ll go visiting a renaissance/ village fair with my mother after which she’s driving me back to Frankfurt. Phew!

So I’ve got to go now to ask the time for my colloquium next week – I hope my Cheshire Cat friend didn’t forget it as she moved recently and I couldn’t get her to answer the phone…

Good-bye for now,

Bonnie

A little handicraft update

Just to show the finished blanks and the new things I made yesterday.

The mad man's hat, now with price ^^

Lollipop, lollipop, ohh lolli-lolli... *sing*

Matching the hat: A little tea party with the queen of hearts

My second steampunk character's family crest

And last but not least Alice and Winnie-the-Pooh on pendants

My foot’s quite well again by the way and to-morrow I’m going to accompany Jules on his adventure journey to IKEA where he wants to buy some fabric for a sewing project of his. Today I’ll have a meeting with the imp, my band’s pianist for a little probation, so good-bye for now,

Bonnie

P.S.: I also did a little stitching on one of my handkerchiefs. I’s not perfect but it fits the style of the fabric:

A rose, a sting and a mad man’s hat

Oh well. It didn’t come to elderflower pancakes and, to be honest, not to much else, either, ’cause I accidentally stepped on a bee yesterday and – logical consequence – got a bee-sting. I’m quite sorry for the bee. :(

That’s my foot at the moment, all swollen and hurting. But it could be worse, at least I don’t have any allergic reactions to bee venom and the impact will be gone in about a week. It’s just a little bit meddlesome ’cause I can’t really put weight on this foot and therefore can’t walk properly. And that’s bad for I’ve got a huge to-do list for this week which contains several things that can’t be done to good without moving my feet…

But enough of the moaning!

I’ve not been deedless during the last week and made some stuff from polymer clay. Most of them are not really blanks but will not really be finished until I’ve painted them.

A blueberry tartlet

Strawberry pin

The mad hatter's hat still lacks the numbers on the label

Blank pendants waiting for their silhouette paintings

I also made a blank playing card for an Alice in Wonderland necklace and luckily the painting is something that I can do without my feet. ^^

At last I want to show the rose I picked from our little garden (yes, where the strawberries grow). I decided to dry it when it’s almost withered.

Good-bye for today!

Bonnie

Elder Flower Fairy

Poem and Picture by Cicely Mary Barker

When the days have grown in length,
When the sun has greater power,
Shining in his noonday strength;
When the Elder Tree’s in flower;
When each shady kind of place
By the stream and up the lane,
Shows its mass of creamy lace -
Summer’s really come again!

One of my 101 daring deeds is to learn ten flower fairy poems by heart, so here’s the first one that fits perfectly into the season. I’ll try to make some elderflower in pancake dough this weekend, maybe I should get some syrup, too.

Wild Strawberries and other Desires

Yesterday I got the best present ever.

A new teapot! I’ve lurked about that special one for half a year I guess and as I passed the store on a walk with my aunt she went in and asked me if I wanted the money and buy it myself some day or the teapot. What a question!

I know that the picture has some kind of autumnal feeling about it, but just as Jules said as I showed him the options: I’m more of an autumn fairy.

Oh how I love the old-fashioned style it has! The silhouette of Mrs. Winterbottom, the rather senseless but neat and handsome writings! It’s really, really me. ^^

The strawberries that lie in front are from the little garden that hides behind our house. Backyards are a little bit rare here in the city and I really don’t know who planted the first woodland strawberry in ours, but it has a somewhat fairy tale or magical feeling about it, stepping trough the iron door and espying those little red spots between all the rich green that grows there, too.

And they’re really tasty as well. ^^

The last things I’ll show today are the eye masks I’ve sewn recently. I just wanted to try it for I don’t have curtains and can’t sleep in broad daylight which is starting at about five AM at the moment.

That’s the first one, scented with bergamot oil and a little bit steampunky. Matching my jacket I showed some time ago ^^.

And the second, with a painted wild rose that didn’t really turn out as I wanted but I like it anyway. It smells of sweet wild roses, too.

Snapshots I took on my walk last Saturday

Now that’s really it for today.

Good-bye for now,

Bonnie

p.s.: I’m totally balanced again and everything has blown over. ^^

Not-So-Nice Post on Responsibility

Well, this is not meant to be a princess lesson (like here), it’s more of a musing on a matter that’s up-to-date with me at the moment connected with my understanding of the princess lifestyle.

My duty as a fairly scary fairy godmother is to help my protégée where I can, even if he doesn’t want to be aided at all.

My duty as a student – may it be at school, university or life in general – is to give my best, to maintain my self-inflicted standards and stay curious about everything I really want to learn.

My duty as a princess is to make the – or even just my – world a little more beautiful and add a certain fairy tale/ children’s book  feeling to my and my beloved lives.

My duty as an artist (how I dislike declaring myself as one…) is to improve my skills and work with my imagination.

I guess it’s all about the promises. I promise I’ll be there with you, even if it rains, even in storm and even if I’m a little indisposed. I promise it. That is – sort of – what makes us stronger. The self-conquest. I’m not speaking of things that’ll hurt you, destroy your life or anything like that. I’m not saying that I never cancelled an appointment. But when it comes to things you should do – helping out on a voluntary event, getting something important for a person who can’t get it him- or herself, visiting your old grandmother in the woods  to bring her wine and cake – do them! It’s not very princess-like to leave the people trusting in you in the lurch, not even giving them a chance to get a replacement. If you really won’t keep your promise just let them know – soon enough.

This exactly is the case I’m a little angry about at the moment. My cousin asked me if I could help her with her tent camp last weekend by scaring some of the kids while they’re taking a walk at night combined with some riddles to solve.  There were already two of my acquaintances engaged and we – me and two more friends of mine – agreed to come, too. Well, just about two ours before going up to the woods one of the acquaintances contacted the other friends to tell them where to meet and one of them had in earnest the impertinence to tell us that he wouldn’t come – because he was so tired and it was wet outside and everything. This would have been totally tolerable if he’d said it of his own accord some hours earlier so we could have gotten somebody else.

But he didn’t, and that’s the point I don’t understand. To be a princess means to keep promises, to be not rude and fly-by-night, to be responsible enough and to be honest. And at least say sorry when one made a mistake.

Sure, I do have flaws myself. One of them is to be vengeful when I feel treated unfairly, one of them is that I’m often a little away, lost in my own thoughts. But I really try to be a responsible, trustworthy person: Is not that what being noble is about? Not name or heritage but behaviour and virtue? I don’t need to be a princess by birth if I really try to be one by heart. And this includes to be responsible and dutiful, not at most but surely not at least, too.

This is quite an austere, disagreeable and vengeful post and I never wanted to let something like this ever come to my princess blog, but it felt just so right.

Two cute Mice, Fireworks and some new Fabric

Last week my neighbour and her son (he’s about twelve years old and such a cute little boy – perfect for a “Little Lord Fauntleroy” or an Astrid Lindgren-Book) went to Spain for vacation and asked me to look after the boy’s mice, Pia and Pitt (both are girls, so don’t mind the names). Well, I couldn’t help but take some pictures and Jules wanted to see them anyway. ^^

Pitt

Pia

We also had a large gymnastics festival here in Frankfurt including fireworks. Every night at 11 PM it started, sprinkling the dark sky with new stars. Surprisingly the satyr came to visit me and stayed a little longer than expected (Tuesday to Thursday) and on Thursday the imp came and took him to his cave. I really don’t know where he is now but I hope he’s well.

Some weeks ago I bought some new fabric for my sailor-inspired Lolita dress. I’ve already drafted a pattern and am going to consult Jules about its realisability as soon as possible.

Rose, sand and cream coloured stripes - about 3 yards of them

It wasn’t that easy to find a nice design for the dress as I took my inspiration from my new Tilda book – where it is a bathing suit instead of a dress and only in doll size. But at last I’ve found something neat in my mind’s library:

And now I’m all up to hope that my pattern will work…

So much for the news of last week. ^^

The Princess’ Projects

Dear, I didn’t write for pretty a while… I just couldn’t get myself to do it.

Today, I want to tell something about the several creative-on-paper projects I’ve planned through the last years for I believe that if I post them “in public” on the aetherweb I kind of force myself to get on with them because some people could wait for results.

Yes, I’m best when working under pressure… ^^

Project 1: Corroded

A comic I’m drawing on since… 2003? The first pages got published in the school paper of my former school and got no bad feedback at all, but when I look on them today… brrr. Horrible.

Settled in an alternate reality’s Britain it tells the tale of some netherworldian juveniles that don’t try to save the world but the school’s hurling team captain’s face… kind of – and, of course, try to not have their covers blown. I really like the world and the story but had no time and inspiration to draw something when I was still in school… but now I’ve got the time and I’ve got the inspiration and just tomorrow I’ll go and get me some half-decent drawing paper.

And I’m searching for a more significant name, too.

Project 2: The Fridge Thing (Working title), comic

Working title indeed… Story is: Not-so-normal, vampire-fan-ish human girl gets into netherworld (the same one like in Corroded, the stories are sharing one universe, then), becomes “the chosen one” and gets into real trouble with some not-so-normal people while discovering that fantasy novels are not very reliable when it comes to dealing with highland-dancing werewolf-clans and beastly gangsters…

Project 3: Title still needed

A steampunk comic with quite supernatural influences as a base to do something more… spiritual? *grin*

I’ve even got stories for about a dozen episodes, featuring gone-bad invocations, dead relatives and badgers.

“Ghost busters without modern technology” sounds pretty boring, but I want to do this and if it’s just for the dresses!

Project 4: The Curse that lies beneath The Turf

My steampunk novel that I’ve mentioned before. I won’t give to much information right now for I’ll dedicate a whole entry to it when the right time has come.

These are my “writing and drawing”-projects at the moment and I’m thinking about something between novel and comic, half written, half drawn…

For today this is enough, I’ve got to clean my chamber and get the things in my head in the right order, too, so

Good Bye for now