Guest Post | Mermaid Dress DIY from Kate

I asked Kate Gabrielle from Scathingly Brilliant, one of my absolute favorite bloggers, if she could do a DIY post whilst I'm busy moving - and this is what she came up with!

For my DIY post, I was inspired by Kailey's love of mermaids! I decided to create something that mimicked the pretty scaled pattern on a mermaid's fins, and came up with this easy peasy stamped dress project!

You'll need: a white cotton dress (or shirt, or skirt), two bottles of fabric paint (your main color and white), a wooden block (I stole one from my little brother's old block set), scissors, a compass, a piece of craft foam, a paintbrush and some free time.

1. With the compass, draw a half-circle onto your foam. You want it to be about the same width as the wooden block.

2. Using the half-circle as your guide, sketch in the rest of your scallop with pencil, and then cut it out.

3. Glue the piece of foam to the wooden block, making sure that the ends of the scallop are even with the top. (It's okay if the bottom of the scallop doesn't quite reach the bottom of the block :)

4. Make sure you have cardboard or something under your dress so the paint won't seep through to the back side! Then put a thin layer of fabric paint on your stamp using a paintbrush.

5. Starting at the top of the dress, stamp your first scallop. Then repeat the pattern underneath, with the next two scallops meeting in the middle of the one above.

6. For each new row, mix a little bit of white fabric paint with your other color to achieve the gradient look. This was an important part of my project because I knew that I didn't want to stamp the skirt (the gathering at the waist would have just been way too tricky to maneuver!) so I wanted it to fade to white before it hit the skirt.

7. Let your dress dry for a few hours (I let mine dry for 24 hours before I wore it, although it felt dry much sooner) and voila! You now have a brand new dress that would make any mermaid proud! :)

            You can find Kate Gabrielle sharing her love
            of pastels, cats, hayley mills, and DIY
            projects at Scathingly Brilliant, and don't
            forget to check out her etsy shop!
            Thank you again Kate ♡!

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Interview: Kate Gabrielle from Scathingly Brilliant

When thinking of blogs I love to visit daily, immediately the pink-haired Kate Gabrielle's blog comes to mind. Scathingly Brilliant is filled to the brim featuring helpful DIY's, her gorgeous art, and pastel-hued outfit posts - one could get lost there for hours! I asked Kate if she would do a interview with me, and much to my delight, she accepted! ^^

Why did you decide to get a blog?
I first started blogging in 2009 after one of my friends thought it would be a good outlet for writing about classic movies, since at the time I was filling up the descriptions on my flickr photos with paragraphs on classic film ... so I started Silents and Talkies, my first blog, in January 2009. Last year I decided I wanted to blog about more than just movies, and that's when I started Scathingly Brilliant! I've ended up devoting much more time and effort to my newer blog, but I still love posting on Silents and Talkies too :)

I love your style icon series - who would you say has had the most impact on your style?
Thank you! My biggest influence is probably Clarissa Darling (Melissa Joan Hart's character in Clarissa Explains It All) not for her specific wardrobe choices, but for her general attitude towards fashion and conformity. I think my current style draws mostly from my favorite 60's actresses like Julie Christie, Monica Vitti and Jeanne Moreau. I have to put my own spin on sixties-ness because I don't have the narrow frame to pull it off, but I like to incorporate as much big hair, bell sleeves, velvet, cool collars and lace as is humanly possible ;)

Describe the average day in your life.
Eek this is going to be so so boring! I wake up whenever my cat Hypatia wakes up --usually around 12pm-- she meows at me until I get out of bed and show her her food bowl (she likes to cover it up with a sock or tissue before we go to sleep, then she can't find it again until I show her where it is!) Then I mosy over to my computer and check my emails and blog comments, and tend to my etsy shop. Then I get dressed (probably the most important thing about being self-employed and maintaining some semblance of reality, lol) and have breakfast. The rest of the day depends on the activity in my shop, pretty much. If I didn't have any orders, I'll play with the cats.. watch movies.. read.. spend way too much time on twitter, etc. If I did have some orders, I'll spend a good deal of time printing them and packing them and making sure I get to the post office before they close. Every once in a while I draw, or come up with new products for the shop. I usually blog at night before I go to sleep, and schedule the post for 9am the next morning. I end the day with a cup of hot chocolate and an episode of The Office or The X-Files.

Scathingly Brilliant has a definite (and absolutely gorgeous!) design aesthetic - do you visit any blogs in particular to get inspired?
Thank you so much! My favorite blogs for design inspiration are probably Little Chief Honeybee, Fancy Fine and Goodnight Spoon, but there are really so many blogs that inspire me it's hard to not just say "all of them!".

What was your inspiration behind coloring your hair pink?
Ever since I saw Shirley MacLaine sporting pink hair in What a Way to Go! (Style Idol - Shirley MacLaine) I wanted pink hair! I'm back to brown right now, but I already miss it so much! It was just so fun! :)

You list Barbara Stanwyck as your favorite actress - a woman who I think it incredibly underrated. What makes her special to you, and what films are your favorite?
She was so underrated, yes!! She was a master of light comedy, yet she makes me cry in her melodramas like nobody else can. She seemed to carry herself with such ease, and acted as though everything came naturally.. yet you know that underneath the facade she was working really hard to project that image. Also, she seemed to really love her craft, not just the idea of being a star, and I love that about her! I think my favorites would be Meet John Doe, My Reputation, Ever in My Heart, Remember the Night and The Miracle Woman but honestly I love every single one of them!

And lastly, what is your favorite episode (or episodes!) of The X-Files? ;D
First of all, there are the mythology episodes. I LOVE the alien conspiracy plot, so those are definitely my favorites (including the 1998 movie.. I watch that more often than I'd care to admit!) I really geek out over the conspiracy. Did you know that the date Samantha Mulder was abducted is the same day that 18 minutes are missing from the Nixon tapes? I love that they snuck that in there, it's such a tiny detail but makes the series seem so real. I remember when I read that on an X-Files fan site thinking to myself "hmm.. that's suspicious!," as if Nixon *really* had something to do with a fictional tv character's abduction, lol!

As far as the other episodes go, basically every episode in Season 6 is my favorite. I love Arcadia (S6E13) where Mulder and Scully pose as married suburbanites Rob and Laura Petrie (like the dish.) and Season 6 also has the Dreamland plot arch, where Mulder and Michael McKean switch bodies. Another great episode in Season 6 is Monday (S6E15), a deja vu style psychological thriller that I could watch a million times over (and do!) Season 6 is just so creative.. there are so many episodes that play out like feature-length films instead of hour-long tv dramas. Triangle (S6E3) takes Mulder back in time to the WWII era when he drifts into the Bermuda Triangle. That one is really clever, and they captured the 40's era perfectly! SR819 (S6E10) is another favorite, and one that I can remember scaring the wits out of me when I watched it in middle school! (I've been an X-phile for a long long time, haha!) Finally one of my all-time favorites is How the Ghosts Stole Christmas (S6E8) which guest stars Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin as ghosts who haunt a mansion every Christmas Eve. It's sweet in a way that only the X-Files can be! Besides Season 6, Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man (S4E7) is another all-time favorite. Really great for anyone (like me!) who really loved the CSM character!

Want to see more? Visit these links!
Scathingly Brilliant
Flapper Doodle
Silents and Talkies
Etsy Shop

♥, Kailey

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