furry fashion

At Lucille's we take cuteness very seriously.  We spend a lot of time diligently scouring the internet, researching cute photos and videos of cats, dogs, sloths, and whatever other creature is doing something adorable.  Whenever that happens to intersect with vintage, or fashion in general, we are doubly delighted and feel like we've won at the internet (remember menswear dog?)

Well... imagine our delight when we came across this beauty:

TOMMY THE SQUIRREL!

Apparently, according to Life.com, in the early 1940s, a housewife in Washington D.C. adopted an orphaned baby squirrel and raised him as a pet.  A pet who wears costumes.

look at his maniacal little face! he's all "awww yisss I'm planning your demise"

His keeper, Mrs. Bullis, made a series of 30 costumes for him, for a whole slew of occasions.  Because a squirrel needs to be prepared for all sorts of situations, you see!

Like launching a career in nursing, of course!  And looking fantastic while doing so.

And here he is, sans costume, getting a little scrub.  Isn't he the best?  I love him.  Him and his blatant defiance of gender specific clothing... you go Tommy! Or was it Mrs. Bullis who was defying convention?  Hmmm. Regardless, he was a perfect little fluffy ball of fashion and I'm excited to have seen these photos.  

Hope you were too :)

xoxo,

Jess & Caiti

PS.  Have you seen the novelty twitter account @common_squirrel ?  For some reason, it never fails to make me laugh!

furniture redo: the Mermaid Side Table

This side table wasn't something we would normally buy, but we got a good deal, so we brainstormed quite a bit about what we could do to make it less... blech.  The table was that ubiquitous 1970s/80s table that everyone's parents seemed to have in their TV room.  Next to their big recliners... usually covered in various remotes to control the VHS, the TV & the satellite dish.  What I'm saying is, I don't find them to be a beautiful example of furniture design.  

We decided to shabby-chic it up a little bit with a pretty light blue paint.  We thought that the bottom of the table could use a little pizzazz, so we used an image transfer medium from Mod Podge to transfer a vintage mermaid graphic.  (Sidenote: we'll for sure do a DIY Post about that transfer medium later... it's really handy!).   I love how the mermaid graphic makes the blue paint seem very ocean-like... they compliment each other very well, if I do say so myself!

We put it out with some pretty Jadeite Fire King Mugs and I'm pretty in love with it.  

It's for sale in the shop if you're local and would like to check it out! 

Isn't it fun to think about how kind of crappy old furniture can turn into something pretty rad with a few ideas and some elbow grease?  It makes me feel inspired every day to open my mind up a bit and use my imagination as much as I can... as cheesy as that sounds, it's true :)

Cheesily yours,

Jess

corset x-rays!

We stumbled across these photos on Retronaut and thought we'd share because they were just too peculiar to keep to ourselves!  It's a series of x-rays of women wearing corsets from 1908.

So strange, isn't it?  Can you imagine mushing your insides all up just to fit into a dress?  Well... not like people don't do that nowadays, but usually not to this extent!

Squishedly yours,

Jess & Caiti

Button Necklace DIY

It seems like one of the things most crafters and vintage collectors all have is a surplus of is buttons.  You never know what sort of thing you'll come across that needs a neat button, so you save those suckers up!  And sometimes you end up with a ton of them and it gets a little outta hand.  And by "You" I mean "us".  We have a lot of buttons.  One day when I had a surplus of time on my hand I decided to come up with a way to use a few buttons for something a little different...

A button statement necklace!  

What you'll need for this project is: a piece of felt in a color of your choice, buttons, a needle & thread, and some ribbon.  I used an exacto knife for one portion of the process as well, but there are ways to MacGyver around that if you don't have one available. Side note: sleepy expression not required for this project, but I was clearly rocking it just as a bonus.  You're welcome.

Start off by sorting through your button stash.  I know you've got one!  If I'm wrong, and you don't, you can usually find tons of neat buttons at any craft store, or for super cheap at places like yard sales and markets.

Lay your buttons out on your felt in a configuration that looks good to you.  I like necklaces that look a bit abstract, so I chose a semi-weird configuration that was pleasing to my eyeballs.  Feel free to use whatever shape you'd like - stars, hearts, circles... whatever your heart & eyeballs desire.

Outline the shape of your buttons with a marker so you can cut it out.  It's also helpful at this point to take a picture of your buttons, just so you can remember how they're arranged.  Or maybe it would just be helpful to have a better memory than me, and in that case no camera is required.

After cutting your shape out, start sewing those buttons on!  

And ta-da!  You have a necklace!  Well, part of one at least.  You can attach jump rings through the felt and attach it to a chain to finish it, or you could just thread some ribbon through it like I did. 

If you choose to go the easy-peasy route like I did, here's where the Exacto knife comes in.  Cut two small slits close together on the bib, and make sure it's hidden behind a button so you won't see it in the front.  Thread the ribbon through one side and out the other, and knot it back onto itself so it's secure.  Repeat on the other side.  This method makes it so it just slips on over your head, so be sure to leave enough room for your noggin.  You can finagle the ribbon a bit before tying it off and cutting the excess to get it the length you'd like.

 

Ta-da!  You have a whole necklace now!  And you've put a dent in your button collection... so now you have an excuse to go out and buy more!  :)

playing dress up

One of the best things about owning a vintage store is that you basically have a giant walk in closet to play in.  Complete with props and all sorts of fun furniture and things!  The other day we decided to take photos of some outfits because... well... because it's fun.  Also, because we usually take photos on a mannequin or a hanger, and sometimes it just doesn't translate how awesome the garment is.  Also it was fun.

just imagine that there was something super interesting on the ground that we were looking at... because apparently we posed in the exact same way in all three of these photos. whoops!

These shorts are insane.  And actually pretty amazing.

70s housewife realness.

Men's shirt + striped shorts = awesomeness!  We're both really into the idea of tying shirts up like that over shorts this summer.  It's very... 1990s... but somehow we still like it?

There were more photos, but we ended up cutting our heads off in most of them to make this graphic... which is probably good because we both got crazy hair in no time flat after trying on clothing.  Oh, and if you're down with a sale, everything in our Etsy shop is super cheap right now.  Anything that's in these photos that isn't up yet will be in the next few days.  

We've been too busy playing in our dream closet to list everything :)

xoxo,

Jess & Caiti

rainy day books

It's kind of a dreadfully rainy day where we are.  It's cold and dreary.  And it's Memorial Day Weekend... which makes it feel sort of a super bummer. We had plans to have a yard sale but that got rained all over.  Basically all I want to do today is curl up with a book. There's not a whole lot that's better than the feeling I get when I'm all bundled up in a warm blanket, listening to the rain fall outside, and reading a book.  It doesn't matter that the weather isn't perfect... you can still make a perfectly lovely day out of it, I think.

With that in mind, I was browsing around the shop and looking at some of my favorite books we have, and I realized that not only do I have a love for imperfect days like today, but I absolutely am in love with slightly flawed books.  A lot of people seem to look for things, books especially, that are in mint condition.  But my favorite thing is books that have a bit of wear on them.  I feel like it's part of the story!

Like this beauty.  It's a zoology book from 1903 and we're in love.  I mean, I love it... I don't think the feeling is mutual.  But whatever, my heart will go on (Celine Dion style)

If I listed this book online I'd have to disclose it's "flaws", which would include this writing in the front cover.  But it made my heart flutter when I saw this! I love knowing it's from a high school..  I think about all the students learning from it.. or maybe rolling their eyes and hating the class the book was for...  and  also, as a local nerd thing, I love that it's spelled "Scarboro" instead of how it's actually spelled now, which is "Scarborough".

And it has a huge ink stain that goes through about 5 pages... which I love maybe even more than the umlauts on the cover.   I keep picturing a teacher grading papers and dropping their pen on the book as they fell asleep.  The corners of the pages are probably folded from where their hand jerked them awake.

And ALL of those have their own dings and dents... but I love them all the more for it.  Give me a pretty book with old pages, and a rainy day any time and I'm down :)

How do you feel about old books?  Do you have any other old collections that are maybe a little beat up that you love dearly?  

Drearily yours,

Jess (and Caiti!)

PS.  If you're down with old books... the Junior Deluxe Editions are actually for sale in our Etsy shop... as long as you don't mind a few flaws ;) 

weekly wantsies!

It's been a while since we did a Weekly Wantsies post! As it turns out, owning a shop takes up a lot of time... who woulda thought?  So while most of our brain time is spent on things like pricing, inventory, and mostly how to balance everything without going crazy, we do have a bit of time to salivate over some goodies on the internet.  Here's what we're into this week:

Jess's Picks:

1.  I'm pretty in love with this dress.  I love the unusual color combination... I could definitely see myself wearing this all summer.  To the point where people would wonder if I had any other clothing.  

2.  THESE SUNGLASSES! Holy mamajamma!  Turquoise glitter cat eye sunglasses.  And they're legit vintage.  I mean, COME ON! I would never take these off. Even at night.  I'd be that person.

3.  I'm love the colors of these earrings!  And I happen to love Kate, the lady who runs Mad Meadow... so that doesn't hurt either.

4.  Green Wedges! swoon.

5.  I love these leggings!  I feel like wearing them would fulfill my desire to hang out in the woods all day during the summer. When you grow up in the country, it seems like you can never get rid of the urge to just hang out with trees.  Unless that's just me.  I'm fine with being the lonely weirdo who loves trees, whatever.


Caiti's Picks:

1.Mint (Yes!), Polka Dot (Yes!), Slight stretchiness (Yes!). These jeans are perfect in my opinion.
2.The Arctic Monkeys....always THE ARCTIC MONKEYS, to put out their 2013 album already.
3. It's a sloth necklace. They are pretty adorable creatures and this is a pretty adorable tribute.
4. I like a good drink, I'd like it better out of a rad glass.
5.Wedges are always a cute idea and I'm a sucker for anything nautical.

So what has you drooling?

Cheers
Caiti & Jess

one fine day

it was INCREDIBLY nice out yesterday! Like, 65 degrees nice.  The kind of nice that makes you want to lounge around outside instead of doing projects and cleaning.  All we managed to get done was one DIY that involved iron on transfers, and that was waaaaaay at the end of the day.  It was apparent we weren't doing much, and had the itch to be outside, so we decided to at least capitalize on the nice weather and take photos of our outfits. 

I feel that it should be noted that Caiti initially was wearing a cute pair of sandals, but broke them while trying to teach me how to do ballet. So.. she borrowed a pair of boots from the shop.  The casualties of ballet demonstrations!  It was totally worth it though.  Girl can still do a mean plié.  or whatever it was she was showing me at the time of the sandal destruction.

I feel like most bloggers do a breakdown of where they got their items from, and we usually try to... but... everything we're wearing was thrifted.  Ev-er-y-thing.  Except for the hair bow I'm wearing... Caiti made that.  I think it was made from thrifted fabric, so... sorry for the lack of list is basically what I'm trying to say.

although, now that I think of it, I don't know where either of us got our sunglasses? Nowhere noteworthy, I'm sure.  Worst. Bloggers. Ever.

 Wearing this shirt all day made me want a Guinness reaaaaaaaaaaal bad! I haven't had one in so long.  Or a Young's Double Chocolate Stout.  Do people normally drink heavy beers like that during the summer? Whatever, I do what I want.  And what I want is to drink a beer that's basically a meal.

What have you guys been doing to take advantage of the nice weather? Drinking some Guinness? 

Warmly (like the weather! get it? HA!),

Jess (and Caiti, in spirit)