Helen Hobden

Writing again.

Posted on by Helen Hobden

There aren’t going to be many (if any) new items added to the shop this month because I have signed up to National November Writing Month (otherwise known as NaNoWriMo). If you haven’t heard of it, the idea is to write the first draft of a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.

Several years ago I had a teenage novel published by Andersen Press (a subsidiary of Random House) called Be In The Place. They also said they were going to publish my next 2 novels, but when they changed their mind, that’s when I decided to focus on Oshun. However I came up with a plot idea over the summer and have been thinking about spending more time writing again. (I write short stories and poems with my village writers’ group too.) NaNoWriMo was the impetus to get on with it. So as Summer was busy with festivals and Autumn busy with Halloween costumes, now is a quiet time for Oshun anyway. I have lots of ideas for wedding dresses and clothing I can’t wait to get started on though, but probably not until after Christmas now. In the mean-time, keep a look out on Oshun’s facebook page as I’m going to be offering discount codes for flash sales over the next couple of months!

Back to work

Posted on by Helen Hobden

After the frantic business of running summer festival stalls, it was really good to have a holiday last week visiting different beautiful places in Italy and Dubrovnik in Croatia. I had such a wonderful time, but now it’s back to work. I feel like I haven’t sat at my sewing machine for ages! I have 2 Khaleesi costumes to make (I actually visited some of the places Game of Thrones was filmed – so cool!) and 2 custom orders. It’s going to be busy busy busy now until Halloween, so if you’d like me to make something especially for you, please get in touch soon. Either e-mail me at helen@oshun.co.uk or through a ‘convo’ on Etsy at www.OshunCreations.etsy.com

Book barn fashion show update.

Posted on by Helen Hobden
Book dress at the fashion show
Book dress at the fashion show

Friday night was lots of fun and even though Rain was nervous, she did brilliantly on the catwalk and my dress of books had loads of attention. The staff at Bookbarn were lovely and she wants to work there now! Anyway, I’m very chuffed (do people still say ‘chuffed?) to say that I won a fabulous book about wearable art full of lots of inspiring ideas for costumes.

The paper dress is now for sale here.

The bookbarn out-of-print fashion show

Posted on by Helen Hobden

paperdress1 Rain&MaisieAn out-of-print fashion show has been organised by the Bookbarn, near Bristol in England and I decided to take part and made a paper dress inspired by fairytales. I was given a stack of old unwanted books and told to be as creative as possible. The dress incorporates lots of different papercraft techniques and I decorated the corset with lots of layered and twisted flowers, and the skirt has many folded pages making a bustle and train.

It is just a bit of fun combining my love of books and unique fashion. I usually upcycle luxury fabrics, but I thought I’d enjoy the challenge of paper instead. The photo on the right shows my daughter, Rain modelling the dress with Maisie Williams (Arya Stark in Game of Thrones) who will be judging the fashion show on Friday. There are more photos on Oshun’s facebook page and I have also written all about it on my alternative fashion blog. The dress is for sale in my shop in the ‘Fairytales’ section.

 

Welcome!

Posted on by Helen Hobden

Hello! Welcome to my fabulous new website! I’m so excited to have this live. I’ll update Oshun news regularly and from here you can get to all my social media places and have a good look around the handmade clothing for sale in my shop. I’m currently working on a princess gown made of old books for the Bookbarn International fashion show, and getting stock ready for summer festivals; but I’ll tell you more about all that later. Thank you for visiting 🙂