Bean Up to... Fashionary, a new kind of sketchbook

Sketches of outfits I've worn, including my wedding dress

One of my favorite things to do as a young girl was draw outfits in sketchpads my Mom stapled together from scratch paper. A friend of mine taught me how to draw a human figure during theater camp (yes, I was a drama geek). It involved a horizontal oval, inverted triangle, another horizontal oval, six circles and some lines. It worked, but each drawing took a relatively long time. I recently began sketching again and thought about making some sort of template so I wouldn't have to keep making the same figure over and over again. And then I discovered Fashionary via What I Wore. I was so taken with the idea that I ordered one right away (well, I waited a week, but you get my point).

The first part of the book, which was created by Hong Kong designer Penter Yip, includes useful information for fashion designers, such as technical drawings of different pieces of clothing, pattern templates, a schedule of major fashion events in different countries and samples of presentation boards. Most of Fashionary consists of pages with "blending figures," however, or female figures in very faint, dotted outlines. You can sketch an outfit over them and it saves you a lot of time and hassle. If you want to work on your fashion illustration skills, as I do, Fashionary lets you skip the irksome process of drawing a body and skip directly to sketching the outfit itself.

The dress on the far left is a practice sketch I copied from a drawing on Fashionary.org. The others are all sketches of clothing I own. It's like seeing myself stretched out!

My drawings aren't perfect by any means, but I'm looking forward to improving them, especially in terms of being able to capture fabric textures more realistically. I'm not a designer, but sketching is a great form of stress release and Fashionary makes it even more fun. I highly recommend it. The sketchbook is US$16 and you can order it online from Etsy. If you don't feel like buying it right away, you can download sample blending figure templates from the Web site.

Also, if any of you have tips on good online resources for fashion illustration techniques, please let me know!

A treasure box of plastic dreams

Treasure chest from Toy Connection

Do you remember the little treasure boxes that dentists keep for children to paw through after an appointment? They were always my favorite part of each trip to the dental clinic (that, and getting out of there!). My dentist's treasure box was in a room full of file cabinets in the back. There was a mixture of things in there, ranging from bouncing balls to little tubes of toothpaste. What I loved best, however, were the cheap little plastic toys -- miniature comb and brush sets all molded out of the same pink plastic, little rings with candy-colored "gems," and tiny animals with a little hole in top to use as a pendant (though I never strung them onto anything).

Recently, I went searching on Etsy for toys that reminded me of my treats from the treasure box. A lot of these were made in the 1960s or 1970s, but they are close to the things I found in the late 1980s and early 1990s (after that, I was too old for toys... at least according to the dentist!). Click on each seller's name to go to their Etsy store.

Vintage gumball machine charms from vintagecharmsupplier

Puzzles and bird whistles from HeyYoYo

Plastic Scotties and yellow toys by Blood of Bee (coolest shop name ever!)

Vintage plastic charms from McCharmpants

Vintage skeleton hands by ManyHappyReturns

Plastic animals from Jlovesupreme

Camera-shaped water gun, combs, slot machines and ring from CovetableCuriosities

Sailboats, plastic pen knives and ice cream carton pendants from bolla74

Martha Stewart... foxy lady!?!?!?

Don't get me wrong-I know Martha Stewart has always had those patrician good looks and I've heard before that she was a model. But I didn't know that she was downright foxy... as in Bond lady, swimsuit model, I'm going to tempt Don Draper in an alternate universe foxy:


For more, check out Apartment Therapy Los Angeles.

Blogger of the week on Lulu Letty!

A big thanks to the very lovely and talented Maria for featuring me! I'm very flattered!

Mad Men Yourself

If you are a fan of "Mad Men," then you'll have fun with Mad Men Yourself, an interactive dress-up game featuring illustrations by the fabulous Dyna Moe.

After punching a few buttons, this was my result:

I have to say, the results are uncannily accurate. I, too, am freakishly pale, part my hair on the left, have side-swept bangs, wear a lot of dark blue, am in love with my 1928 pen necklace, and would totally stroll into a picnic wearing pearl earrings and carrying a martini.

I was just thinking today of who my favorite "Mad Men" character is. I know a lot of people dislike her, but I really liked Betty Draper at first. The whole "still waters run deep (and crazy)" thing attracted me to her -- I always like that in fictional characters. Plus, I work from home and there are definitely times when I can sympathize with her cabin fever. Betty is no longer my favorite character (which is probably a good thing...), but I'm not sure who to root for. Joan is too retrograde, though I really love her style and looks. I'm not a big fan of any of the male characters. A few years ago, I probably would have sympathized the most with Peggy because I was a young woman trying to climb the rungs in New York City (though I work in journalism, not advertising). That speech that she made in the season two finale really got to me, because I also know on some level what it feels like to suppress or ignore a part of yourself in order to get by in a competitive industry -- and then suddenly realize one day that it's gone forever. But I think Peggy suppresses things a little to well for me to really understand her on a personal level. (And, in my case, suppressing stuff sometimes worked out for the better. For example, I take criticism a lot less personally now!)

Then again, "Mad Men" is an ensemble drama, so it's not like I need to pick and chose. I really love the show and I can't wait for it to return next month!