New Year, new plans!

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all have a magical and fun-filled 2015. I’ve been busy getting the accounts done for the year (yawn) and also planning which festivals to bring Oshun’s traveling boutique to (yay). My plans for the year are to begin with making some accessories and jewellery for the fairs and festivals; and then I’ve been designing a collection which I hope to bring to a selection of shops across the country. If I have time on top of that I’ll continue my experiments with natural printing and dyeing and make some wedding gowns using some of the antique fabric I’ve been collecting. Exciting and busy times ahead!

Writing again.

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

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.

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.