Hummingbird: August 2012

Tuesday 14 August 2012

Marilyn Monroe Lives On

She’s an icon of Hollywood and has one of the most recognised faces in the world: the platinum blonde hair, the red lips and curvaceous figure – known to all today yet Sunday August 5^th marked the 50^th anniversary of the death of Marilyn Monroe.

It wasn’t until about 6 months ago that I fell in love with Marilyn, I had always preferred Audrey Hepburn and felt that Marilyn was a wannabe blonde version. But, when revising for my second year Law exams I discovered a TV show called Smash and it completely changed my view of her.

Smash is a drama/musical show that follows the creation and production of a Broadway show telling the life of Marilyn.

Her story was one of rags to riches but also of romance and heartbreak and is captured brilliantly in Smash with many of the cast’s lives imitating Marilyn’s.

A few extracts from The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe by J Randy Taraborrelli were published on the Daily Mail website a few years ago and you can read them here and here – they’re so fascinating yet painful.

Watching Smash got me thinking about how Marilyn’s style and look has never really gone out of fashion, it’s timeless. She’s effortlessly sexy and beautiful and I would kill for her wardrobe!

Homages to her style can be seen everywhere…

Britney

Nikki Minaj

Scarlett Johansson

Christina Aguilera

Rachel McAdams

Serena Van Der Woodsen in Gossip Girl

Paris Hilton

Madonna

And of course the My Week With Marilyn movie starring Michelle Williams which looks amaaazing!

xxxBxxx

Follow @hummingbirdxxxB

Monday 13 August 2012

Pretty Storage Boxes

This is a bit of a different blog post to usual, today I'm going to show you how I turned some old Office shoe boxes into pretty boxes for storage!

I've been having a bit of a crafty phase at the moment - I'm moving into my new Uni flat soon and I need to make it girly and cosy, but at the moment it's all bare and cold. So first I made a padded fabric notice board which is just so easy to make (believe me, I have no creative skills to talk of) and it looks great, people couldn't actually believe I made it!

I'm hoping to give my room a shabby-chic/vintage/Cath Kidston vibe but don't have very much money to spend! But also I like my room to be tidy: mess stresses me out! That's why the ext thing I thought I would make were some pretty storage boxes!

I'd seen the type of thing I was after around the shops and online but didn't really fancy paying so much for something that ultimately is a box wrapped in pretty paper!

http://everydaybeautiful.typepad.com

http://shabbypinkandpretty.blogspot.co.uk

Laura Ashley

Elements that I really like are the little tabs on the side of the boxes and ribbon.

So here goes my first semi-tutorial but it hardly needs it as its so simple...

1. Gather your materials:
- pretty wrapping paper

-pretty ribbon (x2)

-scissors

-staplegun

-selotape

-boxes

Excuse the tum!

2. First I centred the box lid on the wrapping paper, cut to size and stapled the excess around the edges.

But, I had a problem:

The staples were sticking through the paper, for some reason they weren't folding like usual.

3. Padding! To stop the boxes from becoming a hazard I used padding/wadding to wrap around the lid so that it would be too thick for the staples to stick through.