The moment you’ve been waiting for! The winner is… *drumroll*

Congratulations, Kirsty! I’ll be emailing you shortly about the prize. Thank you to everyone who entered–I really love holding these fun giveaways. Stay tuned for the Circle Skirt Sew-Along official announcement tomorrow; I’ve been getting a lot of messages about this sew-along, and I hope it’s worth the wait!

wearing: green snood and orchid courtesy Belle Blossoms.

This post has a bit of a humorous beginning, rooted in the occasional instability of modern technology. Long story short: an erratic internet connection on my part and a flurry of emails resulted in my striking up a conversation with the lovely gal who runs the site and designs the beautiful pieces for Belle Blossoms. Heather generously sent me a little box of goodies; some to review myself and others to give to one lucky reader! One of the questions I get asked often is where I get my hair flowers. In the past I’ve made most of mine, and have never been able to recommend a specific maker or online shop. I’m happy to say though that I think I’ve found one of the best places to buy your pin-up style flowers (and I may never go back to making my own again!).

wearing: orange lilies clip courtesy Belle Blossoms.

Belle Blossoms is a popular site that sells handmade hair flowers in a variety of styles perfect for weddings or the retro gal, as well as the famous “Blossom of the Month Club” (on my Christmas wishlist!), and various other hair bits and bobs for vintage gals like snoods and the Grip Tuth combs. Which is how this whole thing started. A few readers have emailed me to recommend Grip Tuth, and I was so excited that Belle Blossoms had started to stock this line of “super combs”. If you’re like me and have struggled to master wearing combs in your hair (most often used to sweep the sides up, secure Victory rolls, or a French roll)—mostly because the cheaper ones from the drugstore don’t stay in—then lament no longer! I’ve road tested these the past month and they’re amazing. I don’t normally gush over a product like this, but I honestly have never met a hair accessory that I’m so excited about and pleased with! In fact, I tossed all the old, annoying ones I had—I’d rather have ones that stay in my thick, heavy hair all day! (Hopefully I’ll have some hair videos soon showing how I use them.)

Aside from the combs, I fell quite in love with the Belle Blossom flowers as well. They’re expertly constructed and like none I’ve ever seen before. Heather has somehow managed to not only make this flower clips in such a way so that they’re quite sturdy, but also engineered them so they lay just so against the head. Which has always been a problem when I make my own! Surprisingly, the bright orange lilies proved to be my favorite out of the bunch—I’ve been sporting this glamorous clip quite often.

enter to win these goodies!

As I promised at the beginning of this post, I’m going to be giving away a few goodies that Heather sent to me! It’s a little prize package of fun accessories that a lucky gal will receive: a set of Grip Tuth side combs (in tortoise brown), a set of two mini orchid hair pins, and these adorable owl earrings. Are you excited? Read below for the rules to enter:

THE CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED. Thank you so much to everyone who entered!

Edit: Heather wanted me to let Elegant Musings readers know that you can get 15% off your Belle Blossoms order when you enter the code “ElegantMusings” at checkout!

Note: The items shown in this post were sent to me courtesy Belle Blossoms for review and giveaway purposes.

Firstly I want to thank you for entering the vintage Dritz buttonhole tool giveaway!!! I was really excited to see so many interested in this amazing little notion; I wasn’t sure if it would appeal to anyone at all when I initially posted about it. (Silly me!) Suffice to say, I do wish I had enough to give to each and every one who entered!

Now for the winner of the buttonhole tool giveaway!

Congratulations, Vicki Kate! I’ll be emailing you shortly.

I do have another giveaway in the works, so keep your eyes open for that in the next couple weeks…

This past weekend proved to be extremely fruitful on the thrifting front—which was surprising and has got me a bit giddy because the thrift stores have been very picked over of late. I found a few treasures of various sorts, but really lucked out on vintage sewing notions—my sewing room is now freshly restocked! (A good thing, because I’ve actually been running low on some notions I use regularly.) I stopped by both a new-to-me thrift shop and an estate sale, and came away with a myriad of little bits and bobs: zippers, seam binding (including what looks like a barely used roll of 100 yards!), an unused Sulky transfer pen for my new embroidery obsession, buttons, bits and pieces of fabric… I’m really quite tickled by the finds!

This particular notion intrigued me the minute I picked it up at the thrift shop. Things were more than a little crazy at this particular store (there was barely any room to move around and it was crowded), so I didn’t get to thoroughly examine it until I got home. The gist of this is that you can use it to pleat a skirt (or various home décor items—but I like the skirt idea). Simply measure a length of the pre-pleated tape according to your waist measure, remove the stay-basting along the pleats, cut a length of fabric equal to the stretched-out tape, baste, and reform the pleats. Pretty ingenious, no? I’m thinking a nice, lightweight wool skirt would be lovely! (Or something that doesn’t wrinkle a lot; I rather dislike wrinkly pleated skirts…)

But probably my favorite find of all is this Dritz Bound Buttonhole tool. Now you may have heard me sing it’s praises before, but it’s really a beautiful little piece of equipment that makes fashioning bound buttonholes a breeze. They’re also highly sought-after and like many vintage notions tend to be a bit pricy on Ebay and Etsy. Because I found two of these over the weekend, I wanted to pass this one on to someone else! It unfortunately doesn’t have it’s original packaging and instructions, but considering Sarai has written excellent directions on how to use this tool, don’t let that stop you. If you’d like a chance to win this, continue reading…

I do hope perhaps this will be of interest to a few of you reading! Best of luck! (P.S. Sewing not quite your thing? Don’t worry—I have a completely non-sewing related giveaway planned for later this month!)