Happy Valentine's Day!!

Hope you got a card equally as fab as these babies - enjoying the strange food related fascination of these vintage Valentine card designs.

A belated Happy New Year!

Hi everybody, and how is 2011 treating you? I hope everyone managed to have a good break over Christmas and New Year. We managed to take a whole week off - yes, one whole week! Which is quite a feat when you are self employed. We had a lovely time visting family, catching up with friends and catching our breath to be refreshed for another year of vintage adventures.

We've been a bit quiet this month but worry not, we are busy working away in the background to bring you lots of exciting new developments for the new year. Of course there are the usual dull chores like getting the accounts done, putting some new shelves and generally sorting stuff out after the madness that was the Christmas shopping season, but we have also been scouting down the finest vintage pieces, working on some new products and filling our diary with some lovely vintage events over the coming months, so, keep those peepers on our Facebook page for all the news. In the meantime, if you fancy seeing us in the real world for a bit of vintage retail therapy, here are some dates for your diary...

Bristol Vintage Fair, 29th January
Sheffield Vintage Fair, 19th February
Macclesfield Make Do And Mend Vintage Fair, 26th February
Birmingham Vintage Fair, 5th March
Sutton Vintage & Arts Fair, 13th March
Leicester Vintage Fair, 19th March

We're chomping at the bit to get back on the road, and have some lovely new stock for y'all, so hopefully see you around!

Aside from our day to day vintage selling activities, we've been getting busy doing some styling for photoshoots recently, working with the cream of the creative crop in the West Midlands. It's a fun way to meet talented people and indulge our passion for vintage fashion! Here are a few fruits of our labours...

We had great fun shooting with the fabulous Tom Hart on the 2nd Jan, with the gorgeous Kayleigh and stunning make up from Misfit Makeup. I love this Edie Sedgwick type look!

Jemma Dodd is a fantastic photographer who we have worked with a few times before, so we were happy to assist on her dark fairytale themed shoot, and the results were superb! Make up was by the fabulous Lush By Sharon Ann.

And we were involved in another Tom Hart shoot with one of our favourite models, Alexandra Lanchester, who created a beautiful femme fatale look.

 

Hope you like them! Have a great weekend guys!

Festive Vintage Fairs

We've finally come to the end of our Christmas run of fairs, and went out with a bang at London and Nottingham, two of our favourite fairs. London, at Bloomsbury Lanes, was a bit different to usual as the heavy snow meant that some of our fellow stallholders couldn't make it, but thankfully the shoppers were still there getting some Christmassy treats. It turned out to be a busy day but lots of fun, well worth battling through the rubbish weather for!

Then it was on to Nottingham at the lovely Spanky Van Dykes. The atmosphere is always great at this fair as the venue is a huge pub, so everyone can enjoy a tipple while perusing the rails. There was a DJ playing some kitschy Christmas faves and special festive cupcakes to scoff on. All good!

We're going to be taking a well earned break from the vintage fair circuit until the end of January, when we will be back with a bang in Bristol. Which will give us plenty of time to restock with more gorgeous vintage goodies for your spring wardrobe!

The Swinging Sixties!

 

So, I finally started on my mission to document the decades in the form of vintage clothing! That's right, I plan to get a set of photos for each decade that we sell clothes from - the 1940's to the 1980's. It's partly a labour of love and partly part of my grand plans for improving and developing the Minimum Mouse website. I'd love for you to be able to shop by decade and have some beautiful images to document the key looks of that particular decade to give the shopper a bit of inspiration. So, when I was contacted by photographer Adam Fraise about the possibility of working together on something we got chatting about the clothes we sell. He said he'd quite like to do a Twiggy style 1960's shoot, and I was over the moon! I think the sixties is such a rich source of amazing fashion, and sixties stuff is one of our best selling categories. So I collected together all of my favourite 1960's pieces from our stock and popped over to his studio in Edgbaston. Adam is a great photographer to work with, he is very experienced and efficient. And you can see the quality of his work right here...

 

The model was the super talented Caroline Halford, who could not have been more perfect for the look. Sharon Ann Jarvis provided the make up and hair, creating amazing big eyes with fabulous lashes. Much fun was had by all, and I was so happy with the finished results I could not wait to share them with you! Expect to see them on our new look website in the new year. 

Birmingham Vintage Fair, 27th November 2010

Yesterday we were back at the Custard Factory for another fabulous vintage fair. We always like doing a fair on our home turf, and as it was the last one before Christmas it wasw extra special, with mince pies, Christmas jumpers and gift ideas galore. Here are some pictures from the day.

We also had our lovely assistant Elise on hand, and she spent a bit of time tracking down some of the stylish shoppers enjoying the fair. Here they are-

Next Saturday we'll be in London for the Bloomsbury Vintage Fair. Maybe see you there?