I am so proud to have another of our designers be featured by Vogue. Eclectic Shock's divine one-off pieces of re-worked vintage jewellery are a joy to behold. You are always complimented when wearing one of her bracelets or necklaces. I have just updated the site with a new range of delightful items from her treasure trove...

To ease the pain on your purse this party season, Mark Conlin has just reduced his prices and with the new VB Members only offer of a further 20% Off (until 25th Nov) his fabulous dresses are now a steal!

What's New on VB!

I see it's been quite a while since my last post - I have been neglectful! This year is just shooting by! After the challenge of dealing with breast cancer last year, this summer was all about just spending some quality time with family, particularly my kids. I am happy to report that my energy levels have finally started improving, so I can now pour more hours into VB - yey! I think I really turned a corner this Summer and I am starting the process of putting the cancer behind me and being able to welcome the future rather than fear it. It's quite liberating!

So, I must now introduce some wonderful new fashion and accessory designers I am honoured to have on VB...

First up Iona Crawford. Iona is quickly becoming a rising star on the international fashion scene. Quoted on Vogue.com as "One of the most avant-garde young designers emerging today", Iona Crawford manipulates contrasting weights and textures of fabric, exploring structure and silhouette. Immaculate tailoring and impeccable garment construction marry with the finest cashmeres, wools, linens and tweeds, complimented by handknitted pieces and laser-cut Scottish leather. Iona is highly acclaimed as winner of the Betty Davies award and she was shortlisted for the Scottish Fashion Awards for the past two years running.

Pure by Catriona Garforth is a bespoke fashion label offering hand made, unique dresses featuring beautiful draping to flatter our feminine curves. Made from hand-dyed soft cottons and featuring boned and structured bodies with subtle detailing giving the collection its edge. Prices start at £145. We say: "Stylish, sexy and superb shades!"

Mark Conlin's glamorous collection, hailed by fashion icon Vivenne Westwood as "exciting" and "avant garde" is inspired by the opulence of Bollywood whilst incorporating an element of distress. Accentuate your curvy assets in luxurious silks, satins and leather feature with sparkly hand embellishments of Swarovski crystals, distressed sequins, precious stones and pearls. Along with Iona, Mark showcased his collection at Dressed To Kilt in NYC earlier this year. Mark has just told me he is showing at the Scottish Style Awards!

As seen on Vogue.com, Kingdom of Style blog and in LOOK Magazine

Shortlisted for 'Accessory Designer of the Year' at the Scottish Fashion Awards 2009

Hilary Laing designs are cheerful, fun and will brighten up even the darkest day. All her designs are quirky, originating from a personal experience and response to children and their creative outlook on life. Laing's delightful screen prints appear on a wide range of clothing and accessories, including colourful printed dresses, cravats, bangles, ties, scarves, headbands and underwear. I have always been a fan of bright and bold tights - I just love her scribble tights!

We've got lost more new collections coming in the next couple of weeks and great new VB member's promotions... so watch this space!

Renew, rebirth, replenish

It's been a busy few months since my last post. What have I been doing? Well my daughter's dance school (which also runs professional dance courses) asked me to design their website as they loved the rebranding work I did for them last year. Dance For All kept me pretty busy, but I have also been immersed in the murky soup of advertising while preparing new designers collections for VB.


I also felt it was high time I took stock of my Jeda Pearl range, so I took a few precious hours out of VB to replenish my soul by renew my own collection. I have added four new colours to the Aeshna dragonfly range, bestowing the title “Debutant” upon them: Amber, Emerald, Chrysolite and Black Diamond. For the first time I have also dabbled in semi-precious gemstone necklaces. I love the sparkle of the Swarovski beads, but gemstones have this extra depth and subtlety to them - what do you think? (Click on images to link to collections)

New jewellery and accessories...

New funky, quirky and stylish home decor...

I've just started teaching my seven year old daughter to sew and she loves it! When she's not hand sewing, she's using my old faithful "New Home" [now Janome] machine which was my Mum's old faithful. I'm now lusting after a Bernina Artista 730E Embroidery Machine, but while I'm saving up the £4,000, I think we could have fun making Barbie ballgowns with this mini-sewing machine from John Lewis. I'm a sucker for pillar-box-red home accessories, so much so there's now a ban on red kitchen accessories in our house! It's so cute in retro red. Will Santa deliver?

Back-up your back-ups!

I am so relieved to have completed the website re-build! When my old computer died on me and I discovered that my website back-ups had not saved to the portable hard-drive where I thought they were automatically saving, I really thought I couldn't take much more. I was so pleased to be throwing myself back into Velvet Boutique after having to take most of the year off to deal with and recover from breast cancer, that I started to think that maybe I was cursed! Well, it's definitely a lesson to always have two back-ups and double check that they are where you think they are. Luckily we didn't lose our extensive family photo archives, which could have been the straw that broke this old camel! Well, tonight I am triumphant and undefeated. Yey!

Have a browse, there are so many lovely items for all budgets...

http://www.velvetboutique.co.uk/acatalog/index2.htm

Happy Halloween Memories

I miss art college! I miss the infamous Halloween parties. I can’t decide which was my favourite year? The one we all went as Batman characters or the Austin Powers themed one…? I will never forget a fellow student who would spend months on his costumes and would inevitably win the “best costume” every year. One year he was Jabba the Hut – brilliant! And the next year he really out-did himself: a “Borg” from Star Trek – it was so realistic, I was scared that “resistance was futile” and I would be assimilated into the Borg’s single consciousness to wreak havoc across the universe!

How was your Halloween? I have spent the last three years living Halloween through my children :-( Daddy is pretty good with the scary face paints wouldn’t you agree?! This year I really wanted to dress up too, so I painted a pretty big bat flying across a moon on my cheek and then realized I’d have to walk to the office on my own after dropping the kids at school and nursery! Let me just say that most of the people I passed that morning seemed to have forgotten it was Halloween.

Just to prove our two are adorable under all that freaky face paint!

Bounding Back

This year I’ve been forced to keep Velvet Boutique on a low profile, which was so frustrating. Since my breast cancer diagnosis in January, I felt that 2008 was getting sucked into a black hole, but it turns out that I am one of the lucky ones – early detection ladies – be breast aware! Now that I’ve been expertly patched back up, I am in a constant state of optimism. I am [metaphorically] bounding back this Autumn in a design fever and with a new accolade:

REGIONAL SHORT-LIST IN THE O2 X AWARDS
- FASHION BUSINESS CATEGORY, SPONSORED BY GRAZIA

Yey! How utterly fabulous! I’ve posted the show stopping neckpiece I wore on the day of the panel interview – everyone loved it. I must confess that Lorraine Linton is one of my favourite designers. Her tactile label “Into” is one I drool over. We are now discussing an exclusive capsule collection (picture secretive whispers over a bottle of Shiraz). If you cannot wait, then check out her knitted accessories in the boutique.

Talking of neck adornment… I am loving that new-vintage look just now. Eclectic Shock is really a trend-setter in this genre. What’s not to love when you are getting a one-off piece of jewellery which has been created from antique curios which the designer, Louise, has painstakingly collected from antique markets up and down the country? And they sparkle!