My new addiction.....

These are my first four Polyvore set's on my new account, I forgot just how addictive it can be. The last time I used it I was still in high school wasting time with my friend Jessie doing "Research" for sewing class. So after my afternoon of Polyvore addiction I've decided on a new "mini-column" which feature's on the side of my blog that will showcase my most recently made set's, however I will also upload them to Facebook and you can also see them on my Polyvore page.

This new little mini-column is also my way of trying to incorporate more fashion into Lace Knickers as it is my life's passion, without taking away my ability to continue writing a random array of articles. Oh and if you have your own Polyvore or are just starting one email me the link? I'd be so interested to see your own style and take on presentation!

Lot's of Love

             Audrey Megan

Hoover in heels

(Source)

Like many female's I have a fantastic obsession with shoe's, more particularly high heels. my only problem is that I don't wear them half as much as I should, yet somehow I can alway's justify buying them, don't ask me how I just can. So before Christmas I found a bright turquoise pair that were the perfect fit and within my price range. Perfect! They would look so great with my... "Do you need another pair? How often do you think you're going to wear them?" Ahhhh my darling voice of reason, Jake.

As much as I didn't want to admit it he was right and it was time to have a clear out, so coating my heart with steel I delved into my wardrobe and weeded out my heels collection halving it, cringe! Now with fewer heel's I could afford a new pair! However there was still the will you be confident enough to wear them all the time issue, and so like any good girl who need's to gain confidence in her heel's I decided that all day everyday I shall wear my heel's at home, while writing, reading, vacuuming and washing the dishes. However if this does slow down my desire to rush out and just buy them anyway we shall have to see.

Anyway, must dash lot's of vacuuming to do.

Lot's of Love

             Audrey Megan

And the winner is...

(Source)

Thank-you to everyone that entered! It was way more than I thought considering this blog is still quite new and because I'm so bad at selection's I had to leave this one to the luck of the draw, so a big Merry Christmas and congratulations to Jessica Moore who's said that her favorite thing about Christmas is: 

My all time favourite this about xmas is getting together with all of my family in one place for the first time in a year, as a lot of my family live overseas. We always have secret santa rather then gifts for the adults, and we spend the after noon getting fat, being jolly and playing games as a family.

So congrat's Jess it'll be on it's way soon.

Oh and a huge Happy Christmas to all my reader's!

Lot's of Love

              Audrey Megan

Summer Christmas must have: How to reline a picnic basket

Tonight Jake and I are packing up a picnic basket, grabbing a blanket and making our way down to Carols By Candlelight, part of the reason iI'm so excited for this is the six dollar picnic basket that we found at thrift store. My project today was to reline the inside because the original blue checked lining is quite stained, so here's my little tutorial on relining a picnic basket:

You will need:

I'm reusing the foam padding and clear nylon to secure the fabric but if you want everything spic and span I suggest you get these also. You will also need a sewing machine with all the appropriate bits and bobs, or you can tediously hand stitch.

Step one:

Unpick the pre-exsisting lining on both sides of the basket, If your's is like mine then it'll be long strands of Nylon which are very easy to pull through. 

Step 2: 

Remove and replace or just re-adjust the existing foam padding, If you are replacing measure the length and width of the base and sides separately and record before cutting. Do this on both baskets if you are planning to reline the top smaller basket also.

Step 3:

Using the needle and nylon sew the foam to the basket using big looping stitches inside where they'll be hidden and small discreet stiches to attach it to the basket as they'll be seen from the outside if there too large.

Step 4:

Measure the length and width of the base and sides separately, recording the measurements for the material covering. Add two centimeters onto each side to allow for room. Once again for both baskets.

Step 5:

if your using lined, checkered or patterned fabrics before cutting try to ensure that everything will match up after it has been sewn.

Step 6:

Sew the fabric sides to the fabric base leaving a two centimeter gap between the stitching and the fabric edge. Iron the two centimeters left around the top down so that when the fabric is placed in the basket it is touching the basket and is not visible. This hidden part will be sewn with nylon to the basket just as the foam was, by sewing this and having is steam pressed with the iron it means that the nylon stitching will be hidden inside.

Before

After

Have fun!

Lot's of Love

                    Audrey Megan

Create your own Christmas countdown

When you get to a certain age I think you do perhaps get a little too old for the Christmas calendar, and I think at 19 I have possibly reached that age. However this did not stop the longing for a christmas treat countdown.

One of the things I really look forward to each christmas is my mum's gift of three Ferrero Rocher's that she give me every christmas in my stocking when I was younger and no matter how much I begged I would never get a bigger packet, so this year Jake and I decided to create, well not really create but rather buy a box of 30 Ferrero Rocher's and each have one a day from the tenth as our official christmas countdown. The only thing that makes it hard is that the chocolate and hazelnut combo is absolutely delish and very more-ish unlike the cardboard chocolate used in traditional calendars!

In unrelated news I have just joined Nuji, what is Nuji? Well for those who don't know it's a very addictive "social wish list" where you favorite items from thousands of shops and follow people and stores whose own favorites and items you love. Plus you are able to earn points which give you discounts up to 20% off on any of their participating retailers, see: Urban Outfitters, Good as Gold, Opening ceremony!!! Need I go on? Just a warning though it's very easy for time pass rapidly while enjoying the delicacies on the site, mmmm so add me and we can be addicted to it together!

Lots of Love

               Audrey Megan

Show you care with a card

Keeping up with our advent activities today we wrote all our Christmas cards and wrapped up all our Christmas gifts while listening to these unconventionally re-mastered christmas carols.

If you haven't already you'd better get on to sending out your Christmas cards too! I don't know of anyone that doesn't enjoy receiving mail especially around this time of the year sending out Christmas card's is a lot more personal than texting or Face-booking to send your seasons greetings and if you want to show the love even more why don't you make your own? Each year I mean to hand make my Christmas cards but every year I forget, terrible I know. However if your in the mood to cut, stick and get crafty these sweet little handmade card's with printable templates might give you some ideas, and If you get really into the handcrafted look this season this is a tutorial on making your own gift wrap.

Remember to enter the Christmas competition here!

Lot's of Love

              Audrey Megan

Christmas Giveaway

Christmas has got me feeling a little generous and a little grateful to all my readers so as it's christmas I thought I'd do a little giveaway to show my gratitude, so today when I was shopping for christmas presents inspired by my meeting with the Wax Warhol in New York I picked up this "I design Pop Art Badges" kit, I think it's quite cute and if not for you why don't you enter for your little brother or sister, cousin or best friend? 

It's super simple all you need to do is email at: laceknickers@gmail.com and tell me what your favorite thing about christmas is, I'll chose the winner on the 24th of december, oh and the best bit? I'll send it to you anywhere in the world so don't worry this is not a New Zealand only giveaway.

Lot's of Love

                   Audrey Megan

It's Christmas time in the city

The idea of a Christmas advent activity each day is not exactly a new idea, the first time I tried do it was when one year I was able to be home everyday in December rather than off at boarding school. My little brother had just turned five and to keep him entertained each day I planned a Christmas activity with him, weather it be making reindeer out of pot's and storing Christmas sweets in them or making giant chocolate Christmas trees as hard as I tried I just wasn't able to pull it off for the whole 25 day's. So three year's later when I found myself reading this article by Gala Darling I was convinced I'd try again this year with Jake once we had moved into our new apartment. So instead of the traditional twenty-four day countdown we had a nineteen-day countdown starting last night after we had finished unpacking all our things. 

When were in New York we had gone to urban outfitters and picked up this tree, it's also the tree at the top of this post. The design comes from the Snoopy cartoon series and although it comes with a single red bauble we couldn’t help but also get this super cute Jeff Koons inspired metal balloon dog to hang on our tree too. Because of the small amount of needles on this tree putting our fairy lights on wasn't really an option so instead we have them slinking up the wall behind and with the fairy lights on at night with all the other lights off it's quite magical.

We were both really in the Christmas mood last night as it was freezing outside with rain pelting down, somewhat reminiscent of my childhood in England, which is also the reason I possibly still don't like having hot Christmas’s it just feels wrong to not be wrapped up with the heating on. But nevertheless we took advantage of this Christmas spirit and hung candy canes and baubles around our wee flat, however with what we did later I don't see the candy canes lasting long!

Have you ever tried the peppermint hot chocolates Starbucks releases each Christmas? Well if you haven’t they are super yummy and you definitely should however it's in nine at night and pouring with rain And you don't live in a city that's open late then you should try this it's really just as good if not better because you can just keep making them. The cups are really huge so we used two heaped teaspoons of Cadbury Drinking Chocolate with brown sugar and added a candy cane to give it that delicious peppermint infused taste. Then cuddle up in you jammie's and snuggle down to watch a good movie, ah bliss.

Lot's of Love

              Audrey Megan

New York, I miss you....(Part 5)

Art, culture, shopping, sex and food New York was amazing and I do truly miss it I can guarantee a return trip and I can only hope that it'll be sooner rather than later. So many friends and acquaintances have asked me what my all-time favorite part of NY was and at first so many thing's spring to mind, the view from the Empire State, The duck that I guiltily ate at Niles Restaurant, managing to find the perfect dress as well as getting snapped by one of my favorite blogs. But in the end I think it has to be the famous, grand and dazzlingly beautiful Central Park we spent a lot of time there walking through the orange and yellow leaves, climbing rocky hills and watching the many dogs being walked. It is such an amazing place very quite and serene in most places and so different from the fast-paced surrounding city. 

The colour of the leaves were so beautiful to walk through.

The lake.

Parts of the park look as if they're out of a fairytale.

Oh and I almost forgot (and how could I!) while we were over there we managed to to see a friend who ten years ago had been a home stay student staying at my house, I was nine and she was seventeen and seeing her again was amazing something I could not have dreamed of happening. So next time we see each other will definitely be a lot sooner than ten years time.

So now this five part series has come to an end and Jake and I now face a day of moving everything into our new apartment by three eeeek!!! It's going to be a long day.

Lots of Love

                     Audrey Megan

New York, I miss you....(Part 4)

Phew up to part four, soon I'll be able to tell you about all the exciting things that have been happening to be recently but I'll never forgive myself If I skip over New York there was just so much that happened in the 19 days we were there and tomorrow it'll have been a month since we left. So as a Fashion Student I was soooo excited to be able to go to New York which I heard had excellent fashion sense and I was looking forward to the shopping especially. But I had to say I was somewhat disappointed in Manhattan especially, Don't get me wrong Barney's and Chanel probably had wonderful clothes but I'm not really in the right economic situation for that. I actually found most of my clothes in Brooklyn and Soho, possibly not a surprise to New Yorker's but the myths that come out of New York had me believing different. Majority of the fast-fashion store over there like New Zealand sold... crap with the exception of Urban Outfitter's but that could be debated whether they really are fast-fashion as they bring in clothes from many different brands and so it's not them pumping out hundreds of the same designs. However in Williamsburg in Brooklyn we found the best shop ever it's called In God We Trust and all there clothing is made in America plus everything is just soo nice and great quality. I got such a gorgeous dress from there in black with a open back and mustard green silk for the collar and the sleeves. No doubt it'll end up on a Sunday Best post soon!

We also went to the Doc Marten's store in Soho we I experienced possibly some of the best customer service I've ever had. The first week we went there and I finally got around to replacing my tired old pair of Chuck Taylor's with a pair of made in England Vintage 1461's and this very cool guy who had mad hair served me and then the next week we went back to the same store where Jake got a pair of made in England burgundy 3989's which are actually pretty spectacular and anyway this guy remembered me down to the pair of shoes I'd brought, impressed much.

Soho is also home to the Taschen shop which publishes many, many amazing books on art, fashion, photography, Design etc, etc. And Yay! It was their 25th Anniversary which meant that they were having a huge sale and I manage to pick up 100 Contemporary Fashion Designers for a mint and it is absolutely amazing although so far I haven’t had too much time to actually sit down and read it because Jake and I are in the middle of moving out of our current apartment and into a new one!

Oh and I also forgot while we were in Soho on one of our many shopping and exploration trips both Jake and I were spotted by Fashionista and put up on their website Jake's is here and mine's here!

Only one more part to go, and then I'll stop rabbiting on about New York I promise.

Lot's of Love

                   Audrey Megan

New York, I Miss You.... (Part 3)

So as well as all these fabulous art museums and artists we also did plenty of other very tourist-y things, we managed to make it up to the top of The Empire State building just as sunset was finishing making for a terrifically brilliant view and we stayed long after it was dark as the city looks extraordinary at night. Luckily Jake managed to get a lot of pictures on this trip (11 rolls of film, and 4 cameras + he brought a polaroid camera when we were there) because I'm terrible at remembering to take them and of my own two rolls of film I still haven’t gotten round to getting either of them developed.

On one of our first nights in New York we went to Madame Tussauds, which I was looking forward to immensely. I have to say the wax figures are amazing as long as you don't look at that hands which were a bit worn and too shiny to constitute as real. Majority of the wax figures looked like who they’re meant to be however I actually struggled a bit with the Miley Cyrus one. Our all time favorite was Andy Warhol and we both took a picture with him that could pass for real except for the sign in the back showing his name. Also the 4D movie was so cool, I really hope this catches on because if there's anyone out there who doesn’t like me know what a 4D movie is it's when as well as everything kind-of popping out the screen you feel the wind and snow fall's on you and hail stones rush past your feet. I thought it was pretty extraordinary.

Another museum that I actually really enjoyed (minus the hoards of school children running about) was The Museum of Natural History. Obviously we didn’t manage the whole museum in one day but what we did manage was pretty extraordinary. As childish as it is, we were both so excited to see the dinosaur skeletons as they have a whopping collection of them and before this I can't remember the last time I saw one. They had pretty much every dinosaur that come's directly to mind one of my favorites was the Geochelone Tortoise skeleton it was HUGE and had a smiling face. However the museum does hold other exhibits and so time to move on. It had exhibits that we saw on both African and Asian mammals, which are stuffed and put into dioramas of their natural habitat. We ventured into the underwater creature exhibit where we very quickly went around, as there were about three separate school groups, which I suspect is just a daily thing there. This museum is pretty spectacular, we just paid for the cheapest pass each but they had on some really interesting paid exhibits that we both would have liked to have seen. One where they had over 200 live and different coloured frogs so if you ever go to New York then this is I'd say an absolute must even if your not really into the whole tourist-y thing.

The Museum of Sex. What can I say? Saw the name, had to go. It didn’t disappoint. The front room is the shop that is very brightly lit with upbeat music playing and (very) large selection of sex toy's, book's and games with of course a never ending amount of flavored condoms, then there's a downstairs entrance to the bar where I'm told (as I'm under their state drinking age) they serve cocktails that get your up and running, ready for some.... Fun. The entrance to the museum is on the shop floor and once you've paid your admission your submerged into porn and it's history starting with the earliest silent film era porn where the most action a guy get's is seeing a ladies ankles up to the rough and sweaty much more explicit porn of today. You then go through to the next room that looks at sex in film and T.V. such as Kids and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Oh and through both the film sections a not particularly lovely man with his *cough* mail order bride *cough* *cough* loudly exclaimed how "Oh! haha I know this one, hehe not like I've seen it (winking)" hmmmmm  no-one wanted to know. His poor wife must have been mortified. I mean of course I didn’t expect the place to be empty of people like this, but honestly Fuck off no one is actually interested in all the movies you've wacked off to! However we waited until he was a few rooms in front before we moved forward and thank god because we walked into the S&M section that (thank-god, because it's not my thing) they didn’t have any porn playing and it was just the photographs of people dressed in kinky latex suits and gas masks. They also had some Real Dolls on display which I've always wanted to see in real life because the idea is so fascinating and I've always wanted to know just how human they feel, luckily for us they had a Real Doll penis and vagina that we could touch! To be honest they’re a bit cold and kind of clammy and weak feeling I think to ever make me want to go in the doll direction. You then walk into the cartoon section that once again starts off with the earliest forms of cartoon porn where the cartoon is in black and white and a simple outline of a guy pushing his large penis around in a wheelbarrow. Then slowly moves forward to porn in comics and reworking of Disney character’s before looking at anime porn which is a little bit too disproportioned to me and it's the frame transitioning’s aren’t very smooth but then again I'm probably full of nothing but criticism as anime is not very exciting normally for me.

Part 4 coming soon! Sorry for the long wait we're in the process of moving YAY! 

Lot's of Love

                Audrey Megan

New York, I miss you.... (Part 2)

So I love, love, love where art is going but I also love where it's been, and for this there's MoMA, The Met and the Guggenheim. One of my all time favorite art movement's is Futurism, and MoMA has quite a nice collection of Futurist pieces, one of which I was quite excited to see; Umberto Boccioni's 'Unique Forms of Continuity in Space', 1913. I'm not going to pretend that I know absolutely everything about this piece but it is such a beautiful work and I can never figure out how such beautiful flowing and smooth shapes can be created out of a metal and manipulated. I think I also prefer not to know as it adds a certain mystique to the sculpture for me.

Now although I have just gushed over futurism but for me the only piece of work that can move me beyond anything is Monet's "Bridge Over a Pool of Water Lilies". The Met has one from his extensive series on display and quite honestly I think I stood there for about fifteen minuets just looking in wonder at his dream-like perfection of the scene. Of course he had a lot of practice with this scene before but the power of the work is quite astonishing when your actually standing in the grand rooms of The Met in front of it. This painting was definitely a highlight of the New York trip for me.

Ahhh the Guggenheim! My favorite piece here is actually the building it's self designed by Frank Lloyd Wright is a continuous gentle spiral going upwards with small rooms off to the side as you go up that display the art, as walk around/ up you can see right down into the entrance hall and up the glass roof/ window at the very top. While we were visiting they had hanging in the void a collection of works or one whole work, I'm not too sure of Maurizio Cattelan hanging from the celling and the higher you got the more you saw as there was ton's of stuff all hanging at different heights. The Guggenheim is possibly the absolute perfect size as you don't get too exposed to too much stuff you can easily do it in 3 hours while The Met was just far too big to do in a day and you begin to become numb to it all after 4 hours of walking around, as much as I enjoyed it.

Also while we in New York we were fortunate enough to be able to visit the studio's of great artist's, one who stands out clearly to me is Nina Katchadourian who does fantastic photography and at the moment all of it is taken on her IPhone while she is on a plane the concept behind the work is pretty cool. It all about being constructive while your travelling instead of wishing it could all just be over. She uses the materials around her to create her costume and set's so quite a lot of it is toilet seat covers and plastic cups. She also uses images from magazines and mixes them with other material's to create new pictures. You can check out her work here.

Oh you can see pictures from our trip on Jake's Flickr.

Lot's  of Love

                         Audrey Megan

New York, I miss you.... (Part 1)

View from the Empire State

So as mentioned way, way back Jake and I were lucky enough to go to New York for a study trip that lasted around 19 days. The city is simply stunning and I feel like we definitely left far too soon. Because it was majority an Art's trip we spent ALOT of time visiting museums and artist's, amongst the list of many that we visited I think that the art museums that had the biggest impact on me were, PS1, The Met and The Guggenheim. 

If you haven’t heard of PS1 it's part of MoMA, which we also visited however I found the work at PS1 much more interesting as the artist's are less well known than those at MoMA. Also the work I found was generally more interesting. This is not to say that I dislike MoMA because they had some very good futurist pieces there. However that's beside the point. At PS1 the work is very diverse, socially challenging and epic. Diverse obviously as there were many different medium's and style's used, socially challenging as one artist's work who I will go on to talk about confronted the viewer with explicit sexual references and talked about male dominance. And epic, now don't take that as how the word is usually used i.e.: "last night was epic!" but actually so astounding as the work took over your senses and surrounded you, transporting you to somewhere else, this refers to an installation piece.

Socially challenging: Clifford Owens

Clifford Owens spent his summer at PS1 working with video, photography and lives performance. When we got to PS1 his live performance pieces has stopped as it was November but they had video's of his performance's playing. In his work he played a lot with our idea's surrounding sex in one prominent piece I remember him using his hand's on vegetables, especially a halved artichoke as if it was a girl's clitoris as well as using a egg plant as a ghetto flesh light. Another one of his performance pieces that sticks out to me was one where he had a room lined with people and would slowly chose a person (male or female) and then go up to them and decide to kiss them or not. The experience of being in that room must have been bizarre the awkwardness of being both chosen and not would have been crazy. 

Epic: Janet Cardiff

I've heard that sometimes art can be so beautiful you cry, and until this trip I had no idea what it really meant, I mean who cry's for beauty? This trip took me to two pieces where I found exactly how true this statement can be. Ok I didn’t actually cry but I definitely got teary. One of these mentioned pieces is by Janet Cardiff and her sound installation 'Forty Part Montet'. The installation is in a huge, more hall, than room space in PS1 and features a huge circle of free standing speaker's all facing in, two benches sit in the middle and you can chose to sit on these to listen to what can only be described as epic. The sound that emits is 40 human voices all singing in close harmony, the piece is "Spem in Alium" a Latin Renaissance motet composed by Thomas Tallis. Composed in 1573 it was to be sung by 40 people split into five groups of eight arranged into a horseshoe across the floor and balconies in a cathedral so that the music bounced off the walls and windows, undulating around the worshipper's below. It has been thought to have been written for Queen Elizabeth's birthday and WOW it would have been the most amazing birthday present ever. Jake and I were very lucky arriving at PS1 on a very empty day and had the whole hall to ourselves when we got this piece we just sat in the middle, shut our eyes and let the music wash over us. It was the most amazing sound, it reaches every part of you and I felt like I was up in the clouds, angel's and all the experience is un-writeable you really have to experience it yourself. 

And now I've got a load of washing and cleaning to finish grrrrr! So wait for Part 2, perhaps tomorrow.

Lot's of Love

                    Audrey Megan

This is Ted

Or Teddy, he's an androgynous bear and he’s 19 years old. No, I am not ashamed that I still love my Teddy he’s been everywhere with me and has the hole count to prove it. Now the reason I'm introducing Ted is because tomorrow we leave for The Big Apple. Jake, Ted and I. And as Jake and I plan on having the time of our lives there won't be much time to blog, however Ted will be making regular appearances on my Tumblr of himself at various NY spaces and places so make sure you keep an eye out.

Also if you happen to be in Wellington, Auckland, Los Angeles, or New York airport or on any of the flights in between keep an eye out for the Lace Knickers Zine hanging around. There are only 11 made so finger's crossed they don't all get thrown out by airport employees. Oh and also a few will be scattered around Wellington and New York. So if you find one, comment! I'd love to know who picked them up!

Ok, I'm sorry it's such a short post but I’ve got a bag to pack, zine's to bind and a new skirt to hem.

Going to miss you all!

Lot's of Love

                 Audrey Megan

Happy Halloween! - Sunday Best

I love, love, love the holiday's and can't resist celebrating them to the fullest extent. So obviously I had to do Halloween! Yes, I know it's not actually Halloween yet but seeing as it falls on a Monday the majority of Halloween party's was last night (Saturday). Jake and I went to a party thrown by Good as Gold (fantastic shop) where the theme was dead rockstars. Easy, peasy theme for guy's but not quite so much for girls. So I decided to improvise and went as Andy Warhol's superstar instead, Edie Sedgwick. She was amazing and beautiful, with superb style but had an unfortunate taste for drugs.

I found a cute, but very, very large stripy shift dress at recycle boutique's vintage shop. Which I had to alter to fit, but it's so nice and silky and I’m certainly going to wear it again. Now Edie wore heaps and heaps of make-up, which I usually never do so I'm not very skilled at applying, I used this tutorial by pixiwoo to help me perfect the Edie look. 

Anyway, the night was fantastic and I got quite a few compliments on my look, and thank god because it took me agesssss to apply two set's of false lashes on my top eyelids.

Dress: Jerell of Texas, from Recycle Boutique (Vintage)

Earrings: Bling

Lot's of Love

                  Audrey Megan