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Dress Success!

For those of you who don’t know, I have a side job as a custom seamstress and I recently did a project for Jessie Gilmor, who is a high school senior and aspiring future fashion designer.

Jessie has recently received some amazing news which she was so kind to share with me. With her permission, today I’m doing a blog post on her dress.

My initial contact call from Jessie was a conversation as to the extent of my capability to do a custom dress for a scholarship contest she wanted to enter for the Art Institute at Ft. Lauderdale, FL. In the official rules it states that the garment must be Jessie’s original design, but that the finished product could be manufactured by an outside source (this is where I come in.)

This is the pitch from Art Institute:

 Passion for Fashion Competition

Graduating high school students interested in either fashion design or fashion merchandising are eligible to compete for scholarships ranging from $3,000 to full tuition. Winners are selected on the basis of a garment design, product or plan, as well as an essay. One local winner from each Art Institutes location offering fashion programs advances to the national competition. 

Working closely with Jessie, I took her original sketch and sent her various sketches of my own until we were on the same page of what she actually wanted the final dress to look like. (It’s not always easy to draw what you mean, especially if you’re not an artist.) 

Just last week, Jessie emailed me with the results:  Her dress won the local scholarship and is moving onto the National Competition! 

 

I asked Jessie if she would mind answering a few questions that will reveal a little bit about her as a designer. My questions are in bold:

When did you realize you wanted to become a designer? And what other careers have you considered?

        - I have always loved clothing but it wasn't until 9th grade when I started mixing Halloween stuff into my everyday style. I have also considered going into Graphic Design before I got into Fashion Design.

 

What are the three staples of your wardrobe?

        - Accessories, neon, and boots

 What is the one fashion trend you wish would just go away?

        - wearing your pants around your ankles or wearing denim jeans with a denim jacket or even worse.... with a denim shirt too X.X

 Is there a fashion trend you wish would come back in style?

        - 80's neon, or 90's-00's pop fashion like the spice girls or A*teens etc, etc.

 Tell me a little about the creative process that goes into your designs. Where do you get your inspiration? And how did you settle on this particular design?

        - I don't really have a "process". I just draw my inspiration from anything and everything that interests me. I got the idea for the layers of fabric from a skirt I have. My mom bought it for me years ago and I never wore it until I decided to wear a hot pink petticoat between the outer lace and the lining. I liked it and got allot of complements in school and in public. I was originally going to use lace on the outer layer but then around Halloween I found the rainbow foil material and fell in love with it, lol.

 Is there a celebrity whose style you admire?

            -I am deeply inpired by Lady GaGa and Nicki Minaj.

 If you had to be buried in an outfit from your closet today, which outfit would it be and why?

        - Oh geez...... Please don't make me choose! I would want to be buried with my ENTIRE wardrobe if I could, lol.

Jessie Gilmor

Congrats Jessie and good luck at nationals!

Winner!

We have a Winner!

I will be emailing Susan to ask which book she'd like. To everyone who didn't win, I plan on having more giveaways (stuff that guys would enjoy too) so thanks for commenting and keep checking back!

Origins Blogfest

http://dlcruisingaltitude.blogspot.com/2012/01/origins-blogfest.html

On Monday, February 13^th, you should post your own origin story.  Tell us all where your writing dreams began.

This is a modified version of my very first blog post "Do You Believe in Fairies?" It's shorter and has more pictures so hopefully no one gets bored. 

I have always enjoyed making up stories, but my serious interest in writing novels began as a homework assignment to write an eight page short story with a focus on visual and descriptive sensory imagery. Eight pages, because I was in the eighth grade. 

Comment wise, I am declaring "open season" on both the first page and the drawing.
EX: Better at inducing vomiting than ipecac.

Look familiar?

 Around page 6, I realized at the rate I was stringing my pulchritudinous purple prose together, it would be another hundred pages before I got around to the ending.

One year and about 60,000 words later, my “children’s book” was finished. Now all it needed was illustrations!

The next Sunday, I brought my colored pencils to church with me and began sketching. After the meeting, a woman wearing a purple cloak came and sat next to me, curious to see what I'd been drawing. I showed her my chicken-scratch-sketch of my main character, a fairy in a purple dress.

God certainly does work in mysterious ways, because the  woman in the purple cloak happened to love the color purple, fairies, and was a published author.

Jillian 2.0

She became my mentor and her encouragement is the reason I never stopped writing or trying to learn how to draw.

*BONUS*
Comments are "Open Season." Leave one and I'll do a drawing at midnight on the 19th where I will mail the winner my hardcover copy of either THE FAERIE PATH or if you like your fairy stories a bit darker WICKED LOVELY.

 I will ship international if the winner is outside the US. 

If you don't have your email posted on your blog's profile, please include it in your post.

SWEPT way into a court of magic and beauty, she discovers she is Tania, the lost princess of Faerie. Since Tania's mysterious disappearance five hundred years before, Faerie has been sunk in darkness and gloom. With her return, Faerie comes alive again as a land of winged children, glittering balls, and fantastic delights. But Tania can't forget Anita's world, or the boy she loved there.

Torn between two loves and between two worlds, Tania slowly remembers why she disappeared, and realizes that she is the only one who can stop a sinister plan that threatens the entire world of Faerie.

THE CLASH of ancient rules and modern expectations swirl together in this cool, urban 21st century faery tale. Rule #3: Don't stare at invisible faeries. Aislinn has always seen faeries. Powerful and dangerous, they walk hidden in the mortal world, and would blind her if they knew of her Sight. Rule #2: Don't speak to invisible faeries. Now faeries are stalking her. One of them, Keenan, who is equal parts terrifying and alluring, is trying to talk to her, asking questions Aislinn is afraid to answer. Rule #1: Don't ever attract their attention. But it's too late. Keenan is the Summer King and has sought his queen for nine centuries. Without her, summer itself will perish. He is determined that Aislinn will become the Summer Queen at any cost! Suddenly none of the rules that have kept Aislinn safe are working any more, and everything is on the line: her freedom; her best friend, Seth; her life; everything.

Chronicle

My husband has been buzzing in my ear for the last few weeks that he wanted to see this.

Here’s the synopsis:

Three high school students make an incredible discovery, leading to their developing uncanny powers beyond their understanding. As they learn to control their abilities and use them to their advantage, their lives start to spin out of control, and their darker sides begin to take over.


I’ll do my best to leave out any major spoilers, but I almost think revealing the ending would be justifiable if it prevented even one person from spending money to go see this.

(I tend to exaggerate, but let’s just say that it’s never a good sign when you find yourself wanting the hero to fail and you haven’t even eaten past the butter drenched, top layer of popcorn.)  And to be fair, my husband did say he liked it. It's not bad enough to merit a one star review, but I can't get over how bored I felt while watching it.

The teaser you’ve just read is about all that you get plot-wise. I think the director was trying to do some sort of a inner conflict type character-journey-story, but it’s one of those things where if I had to write an essay about it for an English class, there’d be more B.S. than toner.

Walking out of the theater I was in a stupor, sort of like when I walked out of “Suckerpunch”. Except quality wise, Chronicle felt  like an amateur film festival project whereas Suckerpunch at least had visual appeal to make up for its plot deficiencies.

I turned to my husband and asked, “What was the point of watching that?” He has yet to provide me with any form of detailed answer regarding plot, characterization, graphics, or audio track to justify why he likes it. His reluctance to defend his opinion is something I don’t mind publicly calling “odd”.  Usually when he knows he’s right about something, he’ll be incredibly stubborn or insistent on proving his point.

And now, a bit of sarcasm: 

Three high school students make an incredible discovery,

'Incredible'? More like low-budget. Oooh, a dark scary hole in the ground. And everything is being shot in first person POV so there's more screen shots of the wall and ceiling than anything super-cool.

For the record: I think films shot through the first person POV are obnoxious. It’s like the director is just looking for an easy excuse to use cheap film and lousy camera angles. 

By the time the director got done setting up the back story for the hero's character journey, I was  hoping the discovery would be a bunch of aliens that would kill them instantly. When the screen went dark, I wouldn't have felt cheated if that had been the end of the movie.


leading to their developing uncanny powers beyond their understanding.

The most uncanny thing about this was why it never occurred to them to seek a medical review after the incident, or why they waited three weeks to return to the site of the “artifact” after they discovered they could do awesome things like levitate Legos.  Well, what do you know, the hole in the ground caved in. Guess that’s the end of that adventure.

As they learn to control their abilities and use them to their advantage,

Yes, telekinetically powering on a leaf blower to flip up girls’ skirts, and showing off in the school talent show, is exactly the sort of thing extra-terrestrial magic powers should be used for.  I did laugh a few times, but this wasn’t supposed to be a comedy.

their lives start to spin out of control, and their darker sides begin to take over.

In all fairness, only one of the characters had their life spin out of control, and that same character was the only one to have his dark side take over. If anyone can explain what drove the MC to go all Meyer Wolfsheim without a transition phase, I'd love to hear your interpretation.

Until then, I'm calling it weak script writing, and if I ever meet the producer, I'm taking his Phoenix University degree and beating him over the head with it.