Inspiration

So how is everyone doing with their New Year's intentions?  I find intent has less pressure then resolute.  Resolution.  Resolute has a vaguely defeated air about it, don't you think?  Like you know it is going to be a battle that you are likely to lose.

I had intended to start off the year with a brand new blog design since I had two weeks off from work where I could just fiddle around with it.  But then I got into this lovely routine of waking up late and leisurely drinking my morning tea while catching up with everyone else's blogs and getting totally lost in Etsy.  Some days I would glance up at the clock and realize it was mid-afternoon and I was still in my nightgown.

Now that is a vacation. 

I could get used to being a lady of leisure. 

I may or may not have ordered a couple of vintage slips off of Etsy purely because the pleated hems were so sweet. 

You know what caused it?  This picture here:

It's Betsey Johnson's New York apartment as detailed in Elle Decor sometime in the early 2000's.  You can see a scan of the entire article here(click on all sizes to see the original size).

She says the dresses are vintage ones that she has copied or tried to copy for her line.  I love that she is surrounding herself in inspiration.

So I bought the slips, not because I intend to actually wear them but because I am inspired by the detail.  I can see a pillow with a sheer pleated inset.  Or napkins with the teeniest pleated ruffle. 

On New Year's Eve I spent the day going through stacks and stacks of magazines and was saddened by so many defunct publications.  That's were I used to get my inspiration.  I would tear out pictures in decorating magazines or fashion magazines and put them in file, little germs of ideas for future projects. 

Now I find images on blogs, Flickr, Etsy or various other on-line venues and I think to myself oh, how lovely then click to another page.  Never being able to remember where it was I saw something.  I'm trying to get better about book-marking pages but the internet can be so transient.  A blog can be taken down, an item sold, a link broken. 

So instead I buy slips.
 

 

Comments

[The Curious Cat]

They are rather beautiful! Happy New Year by the way...I've been a bit lax on the blogging front but you're not forgotten! xxx

[pam]

If you have Windows OneNote, it's great for saving pages from the internet. I just discovered it recently, and I love it. Everytime I find a recipe or a photo or anything, I save it to OneNote.

[Thelma]

Happy New Year Andrea! Your vacation sounded perfect to me! I'm still putting the finished touches on my 2010 goals but intentions does sound better, like something I would want to do, not have to do.

Did you see the fabric on the ceiling of that picture! What a wonderful idea. I have a room with cathedral ceilings and nothing but windows. I wonder if my quilts would look good on the ceiling? Something to ponder, how to get them up there without damaging the quilt and ceiling.....hmmmm,

Thanks for sharing the lovely slips, be sure to blog about them when you get them!

[Brenda Kula]

Slips. The very word evokes images from my childhood, when women were prone to wear slips. You never hear that word much anymore. Or I don't. I think of the fifties and sixties and how women wore things with such frivolous but defining detail: negligees, slips, hats. I will forever and always be attracted to magazines and buy them. I've begun tearing out the pages and putting them into binders to keep so I can find them. My way of clinging to the ones we've lost.
Brenda

[Janelle]

I like "intention" much better than "resolution." "Resolution" always sounds so dreary and grim.

I tear out magazine pages and then run out of room in the binders, so I just stick them in and then they all slide out when I pick up the binder, and then I run out of room on my shelf for the binders, so I just start stacking magazines in nooks and crannies...yeah. I need to purge some magazines and some magazine clippings!

I agree, though, Internet pictures are great, but they're not the same as sitting and flipping through a real magazine or a real idea binder. I never remember to bookmark, and even if I did, I'd have a million bookmarks.

[The Chef In My Head]

Slips, gosh,that brings back a lot of childhood memories of little dresses with hat, gloves and matching shoes and purses. Thank you for that brief moment away from the daily stress!

[Mary]

I like your new look here...Do you like Typepad? I'm thinking of switching to it. I remember the slip days...wow, that dates me. I love the mix of all those hanging garments in Betsy's apartment...I'll have to check her clothes out...
Cheers,
Mary