India-A-Go-Go! Vamps, Vintage & 1960s Bollywood

Yesterday, when G&T offered me this silver Sixties trouser suit they'd recently found in a charity shop I couldn't take it off their hands fast enough. At first I thought it was a bit Jane Fonda in Barbarella but once I tried it on, H-Bomb Helen, the legendary vamp who appeared in of hundreds of Bollywood films in the 1960s & 1970s, sprung to mind. HERE's a post I dedicated to her seven years ago.

So I put up my hair, applied lashings of matt blue eye shadow (Revlon's Venetian Blue, bought in 2008, now discontinued but you can find it on eBay) and, using a felt pen eyeliner, drew a thick black line both beneath and above my eyes, flicking them out parallel to one another. I used an original 1960s matt lipstick, Max Factor's Teasing Pink (great colour but like all vintage lippie, stinks to high heaven) then added my usual Sleek creme blusher and a pair of cheapo false eyelashes from a discount chemist.

Sadly I haven't got Helen's exotic ancestry (half Burmese, half French) so no doe-like brown eyes, just bog standard British blue ones.

So what's with today's Bollywood love? I'm celebrating! I've only gone and booked our flights to India 'cos there's nothing like distracting yourself with an intense internet search when you've got a full-on weekend of vintage fairs to pack for. Wanna know the best thing? Two Birmingham to Mumbai return tickets with Air France are half the price of the Manchester to Goa cattle class flight we used in January. In fact, at just over £300 each I think they're one of the cheapest deals we've found in 20 years of visiting India (Kayak, I love you). Three months and counting...... 

WEARING: Vintage Carnegie of London, silver Lurex embellished trouser suit (charity shop find by our friends) worn with a pair of early 1970s silver platform sandals by Ravel (Charity shop, 2010)

Talking of India (sorry if I'm alienating non-Brits) but I have to say that last night's new BBC series, Ganges With Sue Perkins, bored the silver lurex pants off me. She seems like a nice enough woman (not that I've ever watched that cake baking programme people seem obsessed by) but haven't celebrity India travelogues been done to death? There's only so many banal comments about cows in unexpected places, interviews with middle class Westerners who've jacked in a corporate life to do something worthwhile and pulling an "ooh, that must hurt" face at bendy yogis. Yes, Sue's on a quest to achieve inner peace after the death of her father six months ago but having to endure her chucking up due to altitude sickness, moaning about her bones aching and being a bit sarky about the standard of her backpacker hostel don't exactly endear her to me. While the climate change & environmental issues Sue touches on are important I'm inclined to think that if our TV channels didn't show so many celebrity travel documentaries they'd be a lot fewer tourists buggering up far flung places.

And just when you thought I couldn't find anything crazier in a charity shop this week than a pair of suede Lederhosen.....ta-dah! A vintage showgirl costume found yesterday for the princely sum of two quid!

Just what every 50 year old needs in her wardrobe (well, this 50 year old does, I can't speak for the rest of you!) Perfect for dancing around the bedroom to Piya Tu Ab To Aaja.

We're doing the double this weekend and trading back-to-back with Judy's Affordable Vintage Fairs at two gorgeous English Spa towns - Leamington Spa on Saturday (details HERE) and Bath on Sunday (details HERE). It would be fab to see you (and I promise not to dress like middle-aged Bollywood showgirl!)

A Twentieth Century Makeover - Victoriana Meets The 1960s

Torrential rain, gale force wind, thunder and lightning, glorious sunshine and a couple of inches of snow, our Great British Easter weekend weather was typically schizophrenic but it did us a favour. Rather than fritter away our spare cash on stuff we didn't need at a Bank Holiday car boot sale we decided to crack on with a project I'd been procrastinating over for at least twelve months.

My Mum bought this Victorian chaise from a junk shop in Walsall in the early 1970s. Back then Victorian furniture was hideously unfashionable and she managed to haggle the proprietor down to £15. She had it reupholstered in brown Dralon as it "went with everything" but always regretted not following her heart and going for leopard print. Forty years on, sitting in the empty parental home, it was in a sorry state, sad, drab & faded and ragged to buggery by a succession of family cats.

 Twenty four hours later and at cost of absolutely nothing it looked like this. Why on earth did it take me over a year to get around to it?! Apologies for the image-heavy post or if you've already seen the before and after photos on Facebook, this chaise has been part of my life for over 40 years, I still can't believe the difference.

Whoops, that chandelier could do with dusting! 

The wood came up a treat with a buff up with some good old fashioned Lord Sheraton Caretaker wood polish and now smells wonderful. Hopefully the pine fragrance will deter Stephen Squirrel and Polly Piglet from climbing up it and sharpening their claws on the patchwork.

The top panel of fabric Marrakesh by Grace Sullivan (take a chill pill pedants, I know it should have a "C"  and not an "S" in it but that's what's printed on the selvage) and produced by Moygashel in the 1960s has actually been in my stash for over 20 years!

The orange rectangle of fabric, Awning designed by Jill Sutton for Heal's, is another screen print I've had for years, it still had the original price tag attached written in shillings. I also used a piece of groovy Scandi fabric left over from a sewing project, some blue 1950s barkcloth, some vintage raw silk in peacock green and a couple of cheery off-cuts from vintage St Michael curtains.

The patchwork took me over eight hours but with rum and coke supplied on demand I hardly noticed.

 We didn't stay in all weekend, managing an ace day trip down South with some friends on Saturday (blog post to follow). On our travels we visited an incredible interiors shop I could happily have moved into until I realised that the reason I loved it was that it combined Victoriana with 1960s kitsch, vintage Bollywood filmi memorabilia, industrial salvage and antique curiosities ....exactly the way we've furnished our house.

Glass bottles we dug up in the garden of our last house, a mid-Victorian terrace.

Vintage art glass and wooden antelopes, all bought from charity shops, car boot sales or given to us by friends over the last quarter of a century.

Another weekend makeover, a movie still bought from a flea market in India & featuring my idol Helen from the 1967 Bollywood spy hit, Jewel Thief, is now housed in a Victorian ebony frame which was salvaged from the parental home. It held a still-life advertisement for Pears Soap for as long as I've been alive!

Moving furniture means lots of dusting and scrubbing down of woodwork, the subsequent cleaning took longer than the makeover. I think I've earned myself a cheeky Tuesday rum.

See you soon.

Cat Fight

When it comes to wearing animal print I don't hold with any of that toning it down nonsense.

Its highly camp, over-the-top & ridiculous and it turns heads so, if you've already got everyone's attention, why not make staring worth their while?

 Last week Hey Homewrecker! Linda sent me a marvellous parcel of joy, each item worthy of a post in its own right. Friday's post featured the nightie and today this '70s tiger print C&A frock gets an outing. Buoyed up by last night's British Sewing Bee I hacked 6 inches off the hem before I left the house this morning, midi length makes me look like a midget.

Pony print bangle (Ilaria), Fruit wrapper (Senora Allnut) and the rest from charity shops

Several of my blogging friends have recently discussed essentials they can't live without - from grey tee shirts and pencil skirts to skinny jeans & blazers. Nothing as grown-up for me, just a shed load of cheap bangles.

I didn't realise how far my addiction had spiralled out of control until I emptied out my bangle chest and managed to fill an entire bucket with the bastard things.

This is where they usually reside, in the larger of the two chests. These used to sit on Mum's dressing table we were children and I vividly remember my brother and I rummaging through them and discovering our baby teeth in an envelope, forever ruining tales of the tooth fairy. 

Look how organised I am - three drawers - one for plastic, one for silver and the other for wood and brass.

This is the larger of the two after Vixification - trimmed with pompom braid (bought at cost price from my number one fan on the market), decoupaged with Bollywood posters and with the missing drawer pull replaced with a brass button from a vintage blazer.

A Bollywood-inspired bangle bureau!

Tiger print dress worn with 1950s fake leopard coat (£5, Age UK), 1950s rose bag (20p, car boot sale, 2006), crochet corsage (handmade by Sarah Misfit), 1960s velvet & rhinestone choker (£2.50, vintage fair)

Today's been a whirlwind of chazzing, spring-cleaning Ebbie (she's the 1971 VW Type 4, 411LE Variant behind me) and running errands. Jon's got himself a vintage sewing machine in absolutely mint condition. If you're very lucky I might be able to capture him at work altering his trousers.

See you soon.  

I've Bin Busy - The Bollywood Makeover

I know, I know, in the grand scheme of things there's little in life less mundane than a waste paper bin but the one in our bedroom irks me each time I look at it, shabby 1950s roses just aren't my thing.

Undeniably useful and stupidly cheap (I bought a pair of them for 20p from a jumble sale), yesterday I decided it was high time the damned thing got a makeover.

Using my best ever find from Poundland - a £25 coffee table book of Bollywood movie posters ( I was hyperventilating when I bought this, I'd lusted after it at Mumbai airport for hours), 

I scanned, cropped and printed off some suitably groovy vintage images, including ultimate bikini-clad babe, Sharmila Tagore, in An Evening In Paris.

I glued the images to the outside of the bin, leaving them to dry overnight.

Then I sealed the outside with a coat of varnish.

Finally I glued some leftover Indian pom pom braid to the top and ta-dah!

A Bollywood-tastic bedroom bin fit to grace any retro-lovin' babe's boudoir at a total cost of absolutely nothing.

I blame the gorgeous Suzanne for this creative madness, earlier this week she'd commented: I've decided you are a vintage wizard. I could give you an old tin can, some bobby pins and a straw hat and a piece of frill from an old apron you'd make that work too. I couldn't oblige with the rest of the list but I reckon the old tin bin counts.

Vintage nylon nightie (courtesy of the lovely Linda in Belfast), 1970s neon orange mules (Cancer UK)

We're packed and raring to go selling at Moseley's Vintage & Retro Fair on Sunday (Birmingham's hippest suburb). Have a fab weekend and see you on the other side!

Take Me To The Hospital

I know, two blog posts in a single weekend! You'd be forgiven for thinking I don't have a social life. Truth is that I'll be hospital tomorrow for a steroid injection to my hip joint and I'm doing everything I can to avoid thinking about it.

Whilst it's infinitely preferable to having to undergo another hip replacement just yet, the very thought of an IV line makes my toes curl up in horror.

So, in between visiting the pub and catching up with friends, I've scrumped and foraged for apples, blackberries and redcurrants in gale force winds and lashing rain,

And I've cooked like a domestic goddess on speed.

Check out my blackberry and redcurrant pie and my apple and vanilla muffins.

I've packed my bag hoping that glamour in the face of adversity will see me through (although I can't imagine I'll be looking too pretty with a 7am appointment).

I'm getting accustomed to how I'll be living for the next few days, lying about dressed in vintage lounge wear and catching up on my stash of vintage Bollywood films and books. (I'm probably the only vintage lovin' woman who can't be arsed with Audrey Hepburn or Marilyn Monroe.)

Clockwise from top left: Zeenat Aman in Hare Rama Hare Krishna, Sharmila Tagore in An Evening In Paris, Dimple Kapadia in Bobby, Aruna Irani in Caravan, Helen in Jewel Thief and Bindu in Kati Patang

 Hopefully next time you see me I'll be able to tie my own shoelaces and get up from a chair without assistance.

Vintage hooded maxi (the sweetest Squirrel), 1960s shag pile rug & vintage swirly cushions (car boot sale), patchwork cushions and curtains made by me

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and see you on the other side.