Oh my, I am so happy and excited to show you this!
Look at my new amazing etsy banner! Look at my new fantastic photos!

I have been wanting to do this for such a long time. Forever, it feels like. It's been a dilemma for me over the years; how to photograph my jewelry. I love to do it and I have been striving to find a personal style for this but everytime I thought I had found THE way, after a few weeks I've always been forced to admit that I STILL hadn't yet found it. Because I have very colourful jewelry and all colours do not look good in front of white. Or black. And I wanted something that looked clean but still special. Oh, I've been searching and searching and one day I just got it.
I needed a large stone...

So I went and bought one large piece of slate and went home and tried it out and YES YES YES it looked really promising!
I wanted natural light instead of using my lightbox and I made sure to test the light during different times of the day. BEAUTIFUL ALL THE TIME!
And the colours, they look so good and you can see the silver against it and oh, YEAH it's still fun to take the photos.
*okay, breathe now, Lotta*

Okay, I think we need a break from my rambling to have a look at these photos. So let's do that.

Okay, I'm back again.
The tricky thing when I started this whole Slate Photography thing was that I knew I needed to change EVERY SINGLE PHOTO in my shop for me to be completely satisfied so I started the Clearance Sale and then I went ahead to take photos of all my jewelry.
I am not finished by far, but I wanted to do this big re-vamp of the shop today so that's what I'm doing.
I've got myself a new fancy banner, I've changed a lot in the listing texts and the shop is stocked with about 35 pieces of jewelry and more is coming. A lot more.
Pop over to the shop and have a look.

And tell me, what do you think?

Hello hello!

Yes Yes Yes, I know I promised you this AGES AGO but now it's FINALLY time to show you the last of the pictures from my photoshoot with Hanna in the old Papyrus factory (You can see part one here).
Since it's actually Hannas birthday today I thought it would be the perfect time to unleash the haunting beauty that is my friend Hanna. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HANNA!

We had a great time taking these photos and I am so happy with the result. Dark, sometimes colourful, dramatic and beautiful if I may say so myself.

Sadly my camera was "singing on it's last verse" (crudely translated from the swedish phrase "Att sjunga på sista versen" which is a too good saying not to use in english as well, so go ahead english speaking people- take it, and use it!) and now when I look through the photos I can really see how hard it was to handle the camera that day. It was the camera focus that eventually broke down completely a few weeks later and lot's of photos from this day that could have turned out AMAZING were too unsharp to use. I am glad I got these really nice photos though and I'm sure I will use Hanna as a model a lot more in the future!

I am planning a huge re-vamp of my shop in the days to come and you will see a few of these photos (and some more that didn't get blogged) in there. This is the biggest change I've ever done in my shop and I really look forward to showing you. Only a few days left now...
Pop over to my shop already though because the Clearance SALE will be over in two days time so hurry, HURRY!

I hope your weekend was all you wanted it to be, wether it being cozy sofa chill or wild and crazy nights out. I have been working most of the weekend, both at home and at my other work, but I had some time for wine and popcorn, an evening run and some reading. This evening will be spent infront of the computer because if I'm going to be showing you the fancy makeover of my shop in a few days I've got my work cut out for me.

So I hope you enjoyed seeing more from the spooky Papyrus factory. Do you have a favourite of the photos? I think mine might be the third from the bottom, I just love the smile in Hannas face and all the colours surrounding her.
Have a nice sunday evening and start of the new week, everybody.

Bye for now!
/Lotta

Hello hello hello!
This is so exciting!
I have been wanting to show you how I made my wedding shoes for so long and FINALLY I've had the time to go through the photos.
I got the idea a long time ago, I wanted to upcycle a pair of converse style shoes for fun and to match my dress and, frankly, to get out of wearing uncomfortable heels that I just can't walk in. I don't wear high heels and since our wedding was going to be held on top of a hill among (pooping) sheep I needed my shoes to be comfy!
I decided early on to take photographs as I worked on the shoes so that if they turned out as good as I hoped they would I could show you all how I did it.
So, lets do that!

This is what you need for the dying of the fabric. I bought textile paint at the art and craft supply shop IN-EX here in Gothenburg. I found an old cotton fabric tote in my wardrobe and tested the colours on that before I started working on the shoes. The first time I had a synthetic sponge that was too sharp around the edges because you could see the exact shape of the sponge on the fabric. So I went back to the supply shop and bought these two natural sponges instead. They were perfect!
I definitely recommend that you "rehearse" on a piece of fabric and not get too daring.
I got the shoes really cheap at Primark in Glasgow when I was there in may. I thought that if I failed with these I was going back there agin in august and I could always find similar ones in Sweden too if everything went really bad.
I didn't have to worry though.

When it was time to get working on the shoes I cut up a garbage bag and spread it out on the kitchen floor. I started with taping the rubber parts of the shoes with electrical tape so that no paint would smudge the white edges.

Looking neat and ready to be coloured!

The first touch of colour was so scary to make!
In addition to two containers (jar lids) with paint I also had two bowls of water to blend the paint with. I wanted an irregular and splotchy look and the two green paints were just too rich and thick to use as they were. That was something I learned in the Great Tote Rehearsing Part of this.
I used the lighter colour first and just sponged all over the shoes but left white spots everywhere to blend in the darker green later.

And here's what I look like when I think really hard.

I shifted a lot in how much water I used to get an irregular colouring.

And then I started with the darker green straight away. I wanted the colours to blend together so it was important to not let it dry in between. The darker green paint had a metallic shimmer to it that looked so good over the brighter yellow green paint. I used one sponge for each colour to not mix them up to much from the start and have more control of where the colour ended up.

A break in my work to speak with my mother who chose this moment to call me.

Talking on the phone about my shoes and looking at them fondly at the same time.

Back to work!
I went back and forth with the paints in the end to make sure that they were covered completely.

First shoe finished!

This fabric paint is meant to be ironed for the colour to be permanent but the lady in the supply store said that I could use a hair dryer instead because the important thing was heat. So here I'm blow drying my shoes with my grandmothers old hair dryer that is extremely slow but it did it's job anyway.

When both of the shoes were ready and dried it was time to look at the studs. I bought lots of different studs on ebay. Square, triangular, spiky, small and large ones.
I didn't make my mind up until this moment and I actually started with the large triangular studs but realised after a while that they didn't look good on these shoes and they where very hard to attach because the spikes in the back was too short for the thick fabric.
I went with the smaller square rivets instead.

That was a good choice! I loved it straight away.

It took some time with all the studs...
When I was finished I realised that the inside of the shoes weren't smooth anymore and my socks were going to be ripped and my feet would bleed. NOT good. I wanted comfy shoes!
I solved that when we were in Glasgow with epoxy glue and felt. I simply glued pieces of white felt over the rivets on the inside of the shoes and they were soft and lovely again! When Jennie made my dress I got some help from her assistant to find the strongest glue the theatre had and I applied that to my shoes. I don't think it needs to be THAT strong but yeah, it was good working glue, alright.

Here's what they looked like when they were finished but with the wrong laces. These are the white ones that came with the shoes. I squeezed some paint in them but it was just to have something until I had my real laces.

Pieces of the same fabric my dress was made off! I wanted the laces to look rugged so I just made a knot in the ends of them and left them be.

I am so incredibly happy with how they turned out!
I'm going to change the laces for something more sturdy so that I can wear them a lot because I will use these until they fall to pieces!
I have already bought another pair of white cotton fabric shoes that I'm going to re-do soon. This might turn into an addiction!

So what do you think about my green, sparkly, studded wedding shoes?

Oh, and have you upcycled any shoes? Let me know in the comments, send a link if you've blogged about it, I want to see!

OH! And today we've been married a month exactly! Already!
Married life is good. I like it. :-)

This is the best season of the year. I've told you before; I LOVE autumn!
All the clothes I own are suited for autumn which means that I'm only suitably dressed for about three months a year. And that is right NOW, people!

I looked through my phone today and realised that lately I've been wearing a great variety of clothes and colours but still very typically me so lets take a look, shall we? YES!

I've been working a lot over the weekend but I hope to blog quite a bit this week. I also got this really great idea for my etsy shop the other day and I've got plenty of work to do with that before I can show you. But SOON hopefully!

And don't forget about my huge Clearance SALE! Pop over to my shop and snatch your favourites before someone else buys them! SUPER CHEAP! Only a week left now!

Tjingeling!
/Lotta