New Hair! Adventures in pastels...

I've wanted pastel hair for ages. Lauren over at Bobby Pin Blog did a very helpful series on pastel hair colouring, including the shampoo cap method which I had not tried before. Pastel Hair was very de rigeur in both the 30s and 50s, although as with all high-fashion, high-maintenance looks, it was only worn by the very daring.

1935 Image via The Vintage Baroness

Here are a few of my hair inspirations ;)

I've been using purple toner to get my hair platinum blonde for ages, so I did have some idea about how long to leave things on and what could go wrong. In the past I've found that if I used a purple-hued conditioner on my blonde I ended up with grey or blue streaks where parts of my hair were more absorbent, whereas using a shampoo cap with purple in it worked really well. My favourite thing for this is Touch of Silver shampoo, just leave it on for a couple of minutes to get platinum blonde on bleached hair, or ten minutes if you want a violet rinse effect like ol' Dame Edna up there.

I decided to go for a mint green shade, primarily because nobody does it and because it's the best colour ever!

This was the first attempt...

I'd cut a couple of tiny samples out of my hair after bleaching it, and done a strand test using Directions Apple Green dye mixed with shampoo for one strand and conditioner for another. The test using conditioner looked best, but I was afraid of it looking a little too yellow, like washed out lime, so I ended up using approximately 100ml of conditioner, 1/2tsp. Directions Violet dye (to tone the yellow out) and 1tsp. Directions Apple Green, applied to damp hair after shampooing and combed through for ten minutes. I didn't mind the result but altogether thought it was too pale, and too blue rather than green.

Here's attempt 2. I was less cautious this time, and decided to apply the mixture to hair that had been shampooed then dried to leave it more absorbent. I used about 150ml of conditioner, about 1/3tsp. Directions Violet, and 1.5tsp. Directions Apple Green. This was the colour of the mixture:

And here it is slapped onto my head. I used a tinting brush and applied it in small sections from front to back, then worked it through with a wide tooth comb.

Whoops! Try not to splatter it everywhere when combing through. I got it on the wall, carpet, a plant, and all over the back of the sink.

Here's how it came out! I looked crazed or blurry in every single one of these photos. This shade matches my eyebrow pencil a lot better, which in these pictures is Barry M no.20, available online but I *think* it may have been discontinued as it is no longer stocked in the shops. They do a proper mint green but it's very white-based. I'll probaby use it in the corners of my eyes to pick up the hair colour, but as an eyebrow pencil it was too pale and made me look really pink.

Then, feeling suitably green, I went round to my lovely wife Sera's, and cooked her some delicious vegan burritos! We also got some fancy desserts from M&S, I had a peach Melba jelly (It's vegan!) Yay!

Vote for me and my fat bits!

Hello my darlings. I've entered a little competition on facebook and would love it if some of you voted for me! It's a contest to win a free photoshoot with the very talented Ebony Holden Photography. I'm currently in third place, but some of the other girls are proper models with fan pages so I need all the votes I can get! CLICK HERE then 'like' the picture to vote! Thank you!

There was a massive furore around the picture earlier this week - some random man felt the need to make derogatory comments about the size of my body, personally I wasn't bothered at all but lots of lovely ladies leapt to my defence - it's nice to know people are willing to stand up to prejudiced idiots.

Photo by Alt. Studio.

Reasons to be cheerful...

One...

This gig is happening on Saturday, and I can't wait. I'll get to see lots of friends, my ticket and travel are already booked for me and my beautiful wifelet Sera, and it's going to be great.

Two...

This is the dress I'm going to be wearing... it's not quite finished yet, I've got to appliqué the hearts onto the back and add a halter strap and maybe some sort of giant butt bow. This is the most tailored garment I've made in latex, it's from sheet rubber I already had in my stash and has a boned bodice and a zip.

Three...

 

 

Friendtimes! Some of my friends are putting on the gig, this picture is from the October Halloween special where we saw The Caravans, and was taken just before we got a slightly inappropriate cuddle from Ed Tudor Pole.

Goodbye little Scamp... why I haven't blogged in a while.

I don't know if anyone will have really noticed my absence, and some of you are connected to me via facebook and instagram so will already know, but the reason I haven't blogged in so long is because my beautiful Scamp got very poorly toward the end of last year, and died on November 12th.

I really had no  motivation and nothing to write for a long time - first I had a really eventful Summer and just didn't have the time, then as the warmth started to fade away, so did my little chap. We found out that he had very advanced liver disease, he'd been keeping his pain well hidden from us. He went through a couple of months of scans, antibiotic and steroid treatments, and was placed on a special diet food, but he continued to lose weight and become more listless and uncomfortable, until in the end it would have been unkind to prolong his suffering any more.

My business and personal life have also suffered, hence I'm skint so I've not had any fun purchases to share with you all, and have been under a lot of stress with finances. I'm also currently in the process of finding a new place to live with Paul, in a different city and a better house where I can have a home studio to welcome dressmaking and millinery clients. I'm rebuilding the Kalandra Jane Designs website from scratch (literally - I'm going to be teaching myself to code from the ground up), it's going to be a difficult journey but hopefully things will be progressing soon!

I'll ease back into blogging gently and hopefully soon it'll once more be a productive creative outlet for me, and a source of interest and entertainment for you. Anyway, I've got a couple of fun things to look forward to in the next couple of weeks and it's my birthday on the 31st, so I promise more cheerful blogging to come!

Winning! Manchester Vintage Awards 2012.

I won!!! Thanks so much to all of you who nominated and voted for me. I'm now officially Manchester's Best Vintage-Inspired Designer, for this year anyway! I was also nominated in the Best Vintage Blogger category, but that honour went to the very deserving Dormouse and the Teapot, who blog in a far more professional manner than I, about lovely vintage events, recipes and other delightful things, rather than the filthy self-indulgent claptrap you'll find on here.

Here's what I wore: Tiki sarong dress and fascinator by Kalandra Jane Designs, Pleather Jacket by Motel, red hair lily by Dolly Cool, my favourite vintage necklace from Paul, badge by Graveyard Johnnys because we are the Poon Club, vintage bakelite bangles from etsy, and pinstriped bangle by Kool Kat Art.

Organised by the lovely Susie from Vintage Manchester, the glamourous awards ceremony took place on Wednesday 17th October at Matt & Phred's Jazz Club in Manchester's Northern Quarter. We were greeted by the rather delicious Pin-Ups in Pinnies and their equally delicious mini boozy cupcakes, including some amazing tiny vegan mint chocolate ones with glitter, squee!

Here I am with fellow nominee (and, as far as I'm concerned, the designer with whom I should be sharing the award) Maria from Kitty O'Hara's Corsetry, about to devour what was probably my fourth or fifth mini cake of the night!

The awards were hosted by my darling friend and singing coach Kiki DeVille, who treated us to some songs, including an amazingly operatic rendition of 'The Girl in 14G' - look it up! She's the gorgeous femme fatale in front of me in this photo of some of the winners by Jenny Martin Photography, I have no idea why I'm pouting like that! Excessive intake of rum and cake, possibly.

I was so shocked to win, especially seeing as I was up against Limb, who while based locally, are a large, nationally distributed dress company, whereas Maria and I are both sole traders working from our homes.

After gracelessly flailing my way onto the stage and nervously mumbling through the world's most garbled and incomprehensible impromptu thank-you speech, I decided it was time to get even more garbled and incomprehensible by partaking of the official tipple of the evening, Old J Spiced Rum. Blended in Manchester, this stuff tastes exactly like Sailor Jerry did before they messed with the recipe and ruined it - so if you miss your old sailor buddy, this newly-launched rum is the booze for you!

Following the presentations, a gorgeous performance by Suzie Sequin as Marilyn Monroe, and some schmoozing, myself and fellow award-winners Bethany Davies (Best Vintage Beauty), Matt & Annabel AKA Vintage 78 DJs (Best Vintage DJs), Fiona of Rose & Lee Vintage Living (Best Vintage Homeware), and a few others all headed off to the local tiki bar for celebratory cocktails! As you can see from the picture above, we probably didn't need them, but there was much celebrating to be done!

Annabel is wearing a dress, bolero and hat all made by me. Keep an eye out for more details on the launch of the Kalandra Jane Designs made-to-measure clothing range, coming soon!

Here's me in my natural inebriated state, knockers askew, posing in front of the mirror with my glorious little glass trophy at 4am. I had a fabulous night out and am so proud to have been given an award for my work. I never expected such recognition from customers, friends, fans, and blog readers when I started my little millinery venture.

So, thank you to every single one of you, I sincerely appreciate every single word of support I've ever been given, all the models, photographers, promoters and businesses that have generously helped me along with cross-promotion, and every person who has ever bought a hat from me, facilitating my dream of being an impoverished yet decadent artiste rather than getting a real job. (That's a hell of a lot more coherent than my acceptance speech was, and this time I'm not turning bright red, or knocking over the award and almost breaking it because I'm shaking from shock!)

I dyed my hair a ridiculous colour!

I did this a few weeks ago, and some of you may already have seen it if you follow me on Instagram or facebook, but here it is; I dyed my hair yellow! I'd been blonde for five years and fancied a change, and wanted something a bit unusual colour-wise.

This was my first effort, I mixed Directions Bright Daffodil with half a tub of Manic Panic Electric Banana which I had lying around.

I underestimated the ultraviolet power of the Manic Panic! So it looked quite greenish and glowed under UV light. I'm not opposed to green, it's my favourite colour and I had green hair for years, hence my eyebrows, but it wasn't the colour I was going for really. 

The colour washed out as soon as I went swimming, meaning I'm going to have to dye it weekly, every time I swim! But this was the second attempt at the yellow, this time without the UV dye in it. I just used Directions Bright Daffodil and mixed in a tiny bit of orange to make it more of a sunshine yellow.

Also with giant pink glitter lips, fruity necklace, and huge hair flower, which made Paul say it was 'like going out with a drag queen'. Thanks for that, lover. Not that I care, I bloody love a good drag queen.

And again, wearing the aeroplanes dress I made, and my necklace from the estate of Lana Turner (to the wedding of the gorgeous lady who gave it to me!) In all these pictures I've also aded a tiny line of yellow to my eyebrows and the inner corners of my eyes, to make the hair colour tie in more with my face.

What I did on my Summer Holidays: Kustom Kulture Blastoff!

Brought to you via the lazy magic of Instagram pictures. I use Instagram pretty much every day now as my phone camera is a lot more reliable than my actual camera which eats batteries and doesn't like picking up bright colours. If you're on Instagram, follow me: @kalandrajane

A few weeks ago Clare, Bethany and I packed up our little stalls and headed off to the arse end of nowhere (a.k.a. Spalding, Lincolnshire) for the 3rd Kustom Kulture Blastoff.

I managed to put up my 'vintage' (ahem hem) bright orange boyscout tent in what was possibly record time before it started raining. We lived in our tents for the weekend, and I didn't always look this well put together! Thank you Clare for waking me up with a delicious brew each day and putting up with my terrible morning moods (ie. grumpy hangovers)!

I didn't sell that much, and it was all a bit quieter than expected really. I spent most of my profits on feeding myself over the weekend, and on a couple of treats. I got a new wallet from Hot Rockin' Belle (who will soon be stocking my hats!) to replace my decrepit Bettie Page one, and a very reasonably priced new bangle from Kool Kat pinstriping, I also got a super cool hip flask from him but I forgot to photograph it.

It was dark and freezing at night in our tents, and the organisers wanted to charge the traders extra to get into the evening entertainment, so we spent most of our time gossiping over jugs of sickly cocktails at Frankie and Benny's, which was the only eating establishment within walking distance.

We got free cocktails at the bar because the new barman didn't know what he was doing! Hurrahs!

Helium was sucked from balloons! (Especially hilarious when you are full of terrible gin cocktails).

Ice cream sundaes were eaten sexily!

Upon returning from the restaurant we snuggled down for girly wine time in my tent, but not before wandering into a Si Cranstoun performance which was full of dodgy old blokes who had just come for the evening gig, jiving to music so clean and sanitised it made me want to punch someone in the face then smear my body with their spurting nose blood just to dirty myself back up a bit.

The fantastic Vince Ray and the Boneshakers had been booked and would have saved our starving musical souls, but they sadly had to pull out at short notice. Needless to say, we were unimpressed by the "rockin'" Michael Bublé soundalike, and I think that considering it's supposed to be a Kustom Kulture event, they should look into booking some acts and having some DJs that play something with a bit of an edge. The daytime event was full of tattooed hot rodders, vintage lovers and psychobillies, all of whom ended up in the pub with us both nights because the evening entertainment was, shall we say, not their cup of tea.

Anyway! Beth and I wandered out on the Sunday for a bit of ridiculous car show posing, as is traditional at these events. I made the top and lime green leopard capris, unfortunately I was feeling pretty bloated and grim this day, hence my slouchy, rotund appearance.

Finally it was time to leave, so Clare and I trundled off through the cabbage fields and into the sunset. On our way home we stopped in at the OK Diner at Carlton on the A1, and were really glad we did!

O, shining beacon of delight!

Clare had a lovely veggie burrito with Mexican rice!

I had a spicy beanburger with curly fries and guacamole! Our waitress was an absolute star, running back and forth getting me ingredients lists and checking things were vegan for me. It was a lovely surprise to be able to actually get a decent vegan meal at a roadside restaurant, I just wish there was an OK Diner closer to where I live!

I also got an amazing pink double hair lily, which Paul says makes me look like Jodrell Bank. All in all I had a really good weekend, despite not having made huge profits and having been forced to listen to the Big Bopper over and over again until I wanted to stab myself in the ears, I loved spending time with two of my favourite ladies, making some new contacts and getting to gab over cocktails!