Packing in progress

Thank you to everyone who visited our Etsy shop on the day of our big release last Friday! :) I apologize for not being able to post a thank you note earlier because I caught a bad bug Thursday night.

My family members had fallen ill one by one, and I thought I would be the last one standing... Lol. It was a fever and a flu, and the fever didn't go away until Sunday morning (but it returned in the evening). The flu gives me a blocked nose that makes it hard to sleep at night. *grumbles*

I could only safely begin packing work today when I'm finally recovering (working a little makes me tired very quickly, but at least my fever went away, I hope). Mother has also started preparing the made-to-order items. There are some packages with ready-made items that can be mailed tomorrow. ^^

Can't wait to start preparing the next collection!

Excite, excite! Can you feel my excitement?

Hee hee, I'm just barely keeping myself from bubbling over with great excitement. <3

I've prepared 32 draft listings of all the items we'll be selling and the date and time are out (Do note it down on your calendar)!

Etsy store here!

Previews available on Facebook.

The packages I've been eagerly waiting for have finally arrived today, too!

(I'm still waiting for another two :p I've been a bad girl, shopping online so much.

If I may hint, one of the packages will hopefully rekindle my try at making smaller modern clothes again)

So here're the goodies that reached me~

The adorable macaron charms were made by Jocelyn of AiClay. I just tried to figure out a necklace for msds with a 1:12 sized charm, and I must say, it didn't work. The chain just wasn't dainty enough. Maybe I should try a ball chain, however, the clasps I have are solid brass and heavy, they kind of pull at the back and the necklace will flop up. :( Back to the thinking room on what kind of necklace I can make (other ideas that came up were suede/lace/ribbon replacing chains)

In addition to the macarons, I got pretty lace for more projects! I am so lucky to have so many materials that inspire me every day. There is never nothing I can make. XD I guess I can keep designing things to make and bother my mother to help me realise these ideas for a long, long time.

Lastly, my Unoa heeled sandals arrived from eBay! They're meant for 22" American Models. I was so crushed that I lost three other auctions for awesome black shoes. ;_ ; I hope to get more realistic and affordable heels for my girls in future! Alas, my wallet cries in pain, so now I'm doing my best to save money once more. There is still the need to get a new Mac because my 5-year-old MBP is getting old and slow. ;o;

Here's another shot of my Narae in her hot heels:

On our way~

We've been making gradual progress on the upcoming collection. I know, I've been talking about it for two plus weeks now, but our progress has been pretty speedy. My mother caught a cough recently, but she has been nice enough to help me with a few more designs. ;_; She's resting right now, and she needs to spend time revising for an English exam this Friday. She is such a hardworking woman!

Here's a look at one of our not-so-limited (meaning not just 2 pieces ;) blouse:

This is the slim msd version, awaiting buttons/beads to be sewn onto the front. The SD version is also done, just waiting for me to pick out the matching button details. :) The use of eyelet fabric and lace for this blouse was inspired by Mercury Duo's Spring/Summer 2012 collection, which was also part of this season's lace trends. I love lace, and I love spring. There's always beautiful lace come spring time!

And here's a very bad photo of a possible coordination of the eyelet blouse with the polkadot skirt (and an older piece: candy floss vest).

I have been preparing our Etsy listings with the completed pieces. Right now we have 6 items in the 2 sizes we offer. A one-of-a-kind dress and shorts, limited edition shorts, blouse and cardigan. Then for non-limited items, we have a cute lavender polka dotted pleat skirt and the above eyelet lace blouse. I still want to make more knit cardigans/sweaters with lace details, tank/spaghetti-strapped tops, hopefully some lace socks, tote bags and macaron necklaces!

Not to forget some pretty dusty mauve collars with rhinestone accents! These can be worn under the peterpan collars of the above eyelet blouse too:

It feels great to have time to create things. Oh boy, I was also hoping to draw some accompanying artworks to release with this collection. I wonder if I can get over the barriers within me to make that happen. ;_;

Narae open-eyed (Itzel) is here!

Yaay! What a wonderful surprise! My open-eyed (N404) Narae faceplate with headback arrived today! So fast, just 6 business days from ordering, D-Storic sent her to me so quickly. Now I am sooo tempted to get another body when they're having a sale for them. ;o;

They packed these two items in a cute little gift box. <3 Now I need to scramble and find a suitable faceup look for this new girl and come up with a name! XDD

*add on: 7:30pm

I gave her a quick faceup. She looks unlike any of the open-eyed girls I've seen. :c Lol, but it's a good thing. And I finally applied lashes onto an msd-sized doll! Not very well done, but at least there are lashes (though, not very firm ones).

Here some evening mobile photos!

She looks Russian princess-ish in the blond mohair. I love her with short hair! Now I need to go look for more short hair styles. @_@

I've named her Itzel, meaning Star of the Aurora Sky. To match with Mitzi, who's Star of the Sea. <3

Inspiration

Just today, I was matching up the clothes that were completed, namely the contrast collar blouse and mesh lace shorts. I found that the shorts would look nice with a cute little ribbon bow belt and some pearl accents.

So I went ahead to sew on some pearls and will be getting my mother's help to sew on the striped red canvas ribbon with bow centre onto the shorts. <3

It has been a while since we released non-limited runs of clothes. I hope we can make some basics that are priced inexpensively so more people can afford our clothes. :) Most of our releases have been limited due to the limited amount of material we have. For instance this lace we used for the mesh shorts, it was only enough for three pairs for each size. I seldom buy materials in bulk, but when we do, we get to make basics! Hee.

Oh, earlier this afternoon I was searching up Unoa on Yahoo!Auctions and found this amazing Japanese unoa owner who sews modern clothing. She is called Atri, and she is such a diligent designer. Quite a few of the designs I have wanted to make for dollies (and have yet to touch on), she has already created them. *-* My new dolly fashion idol!

She makes beautiful lingerie sets too, with pleasant combinations of various prints.

Her clothes are presented in a neat, professional way. I can't wait to make peter-pan collared sweaters! I have also been researching on various collar types to try making dolly-sized detachable collars. I myself have collected three collars for my own wardrobe, sequined, pearls and velvet. I was still wondering what sort of fabric we may use so the collars will not pop out too much due to the small size. We shall see! :D

Progress!

My current favourite album to listen to is Ellie Goulding's Lights. It's been my crafting mood power on album, plus Sunday Girl's random numbers. ^^ Music paints the world a different 'filter'. Hahaha.

Yay, one more new item to share with all of you (it's not completed yet without snaps at the back collar). Contrast collar sleeveless blouses! Two for SD and MSDs. One of my favourite blouse trends these months is the contrast black collar on milk white fabric. These close with a zipper at the back.

A picture of my mother using our trusty serger. It has been with us for so many years, possibly a vintage model already. The modern machines are usually white and have plastic coverings. The older machines use metal and are so heavy to move around. x_x

The pieces before the new collars were added. Mother tried sewing on the collar a certain way in the beginning, but they didn't work out, so she had to unpick and redo these.

She spent so much time on these four pieces because the fabric was tough to manage.

I have been spending bombs collecting materials to fulfill my ideas of dolly sweets deco necklaces and hair accessories! I've just ordered beautiful hand-made 1:6 and 1:12 sized macarons from AiClay in three pastel shades, and various findings and ribbon connectors online. I've also finished designing our label and am looking for a clear stamp maker online. It'll be 1" long and I can stamp our label onto the inside back of our light-coloured clothes! About time, I'd say. ^^;

I really can't wait for everything I've ordered to arrive! That would probably take another two weeks. It would be nice if I can release many things at once, so I guess I can't release the three new clothing pieces this weekend. I get so excited sometimes and want to release new things whenever they're completed. It would be better for customers if they get a wider selection of items to buy together.

So mother is off from work for the day and once I finish sewing on the snaps on all the cardigans and tops, I can try to make some cute tank tops! It's been so long since I last touched the sewing machine, and I do miss it. :)

Picking the right typeface

So I had the plan of rebranding the dolly label near the end of last year. After reading various books on branding, I realized that Angel.Candy-Rock wasn't consistent in its brand design. I did not know anything about brand concept, my target audience etc. as well as logo design. It was created at the beginning as a casual 'for fun' thing.

Now that I know what is lacking, I have sat down to properly write out what I want this doll fashion label to be. The new name 'lovesprung' was born, and I opened a sub label under it called 'piccola fenice' (which means Little Phoenix in Italian. My mother gave herself this alias in Mandarin: 小鳳 :) to house my mother's designs.

The last logo concept I tried to do for Angel.Candy-Rock was this:

I'm a big fan of shabby chic, or furls, folds, elegance. It was a cute logo, but I felt the name itself no longer matched the style of clothes we are making. I did try a Bodoni style of lovesprung initially, for lack of time in finding a typeface that matches the feel of the brand as closely as possible. After a while, I didn't like it anymore. I am worried that my fickleness will prevent me from ever settling on any set typeface for the brand. :(

Currently, I am using a very modern and straight typeface for lovesprung (with the love sprouting out literally). It was a cool concept, but I'm afraid it still felt cold to me. So I started looking again for a proper typeface today, and I found a free font called Derivia by Ekloff fonts on dafont.com. I'm not a professional typography artist so I do not know how to make pleasant and healthy typefaces. I can only use ready-made free fonts and alter them a bit. So sadly, there is no 'blueprint' pictures of how the font was formed (like on behance). Lol.

In progress using nifty Adobe Illustrator (I didn't like the shortness in its arm/ear?, so I extended it longer and overlayed a bigger spur? Haha... Now you know I didn't have any basic foundation in typography to properly identify the different parts of a typeface):

Not-so-final version (I think I might want to close up the g) with the original typeface with wider tracking (space between letters) above. I thickened the overall weight of the typeface:

The maker of the font says of this typeface:

"An expressive serif font with a small x-height. It has a serious, yet quirky disposition. Capital letters based off of "Livia," a free public domain font by S.G. Moye." (I didn't use any capital letters so... hee)

I was considering another typeface that looked a little handwritten, but it came off too casual. The maker of Derivia saying it is 'serious, yet quirky' helped me solve my problem. It's fascinating how typefaces give off different personalities. I will have to start applying this logo onto new packaging (I'll be ordering a custom stamp to stamp the brand on clothes soon!) and update banners and such. It is a time-consuming task to undergo rebranding, when one requires consistency in all materials. @_@