Category: Items for Sale

Items for sale in the Malvena Pearl Emporium

Big Do-in’s

A client came by Casa Roo for a fitting/hemming of a pre-bought 1850s-style, cotton dress that she has asked me to embellish. Yay! She came by during the rainstorm, so that’s motivation for you.

Ms. Sahrye Cohen expertly helped us put together an entry for inclusion  in the exhibit at the Nova Albion Steampunk Exhibition in Emeryville  March 12 – March 14, 2010.

On March 20, 2010, Malvena Pearl will have a table and display set up at the Greater Bay Area Costumer’s Guild Costume Academy. img_0141

I’m also working on the White Queen outfit, the Red Queen outfit and Queen Alice’s outfit for the  9th Annual Blind Babies Foundation Annual Beeper Egg Hunt in San Francisco.  I’m organizing the first-annual Tea and Raffle with the theme of Alice through the Looking Glass. Come join us! Here is Zasu helping me complete the White Queen dress:

 

Beaded Victorian cape for sale

The cape is sold!

The current owner bought it in London at a jumble sale in the 1980s. It has been in her closet since then. She was told it was created during the Victorian period. The bead work is almost completely intact and just needs a tiny bit of loving care to restore it to near-perfect glory. The owner of Black Swan Books, Bonnie, is the gal to contact about this lovely piece.

Here are the snapshots:

img_0039img_0047img_0036

Books on vintage fashion

It’s been busy around the Emporium these last few weeks. With help from Mr. Acorn, I’m listing all the books that I got from Vintage Victorian.  I have done a lot of work in the sewing room, organizing and culling goodies to sell on the etsy.com web site. What films and books have inspired me, lately? “Persuasion,” based on the Jane Austen novel; the series “Jeeves and Wooster” with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry; and I’ve been reading “David Copperfield” by Charles Dickens. I’ve also been perusing an interesting collection of works by 21st century artists called “1000 Ideas for Creative ReUse”  by Garth Johnson. I had to special order that book from my local bookseller, as it was sold out.

The books I’ve posted on etsy.com  are reprints of an amazing collection of catalogs, magazine articles and graphics with “how-to” instructions and inspirational drawings galore – material to inspire Victorian and Edwardian enthusiasts alike, not to mention those folks who are getting ready to make an outfit for a masquerade:

img_0019img_0025img_0720img_0715

Costumers Bazaar this Saturday, August 29, 2009

This Saturday, my friend Jean of Bibliomania book shop and I will join the ladies of the Costumer’s Guild at the Albany Public Library for their First Annual Costumers’ Bazaar. We will also have some beautiful books on fashion from Bonnie at Black Swan Books.

Jean has lovely vintage books and ephemera on textile techniques = crochet, sewing, knitting as well as fashion plate prints from the 1880s – 1930s, and biographies of designers and the British Royal families.

I am bringing handmade/beaded jewelry, vintage garments (silk and linen tops that I’ve been turning into stage costumes), shoes, trim, fabric, accessories- VINTAGE HATS, silk and wool shawls, a hand-embellished hatbox, and The Tailor’s Tarot. I also have some childrens books from the 1920s and an extra copy of 9/09 THREADS magazine with the article on custom-covering shoes;

Greater Bay Area Costumers Guild Costumers Bazaar

Saturday, August 29th, 2009 — 1:00pm – 5:00pm
Albany Community Center, Albany, CA

Come Join us!!
moth-butterfly-side-with-hat

tiny chairs added to Emporium

I’ve always liked making miniatures. Here are the latest items I’ll be selling on the Etsy. com web site: tiny chairs that I made from the wires and tops of champagne bottles. Why tiny? I like tiny. I’ve been making tiny things since I was, well, small. I had a doll house but the fun part was making things for it and decorating it, not actually playing with it. Tiny, a bit fragile, and complex. A little world unto itself. I have some small wire-back cafe chairs and the tops to champagne bottles just lend themselves to this shape.

tiny chair one point two
tiny chair one point two

Costume Academy in Berkeley

March 7 was the annual Greater Bay Area Costumer’s Guild Academy, held in Berkeley. The Greater Bat Area Costumer’s Guild offered three class sessions at the spacious Judas Magnes Museum. Costume enthusiasts joined up to take classes on 18th century shoe recovery; makeup and hair techniques for both the Victorian era and the 18th century; sewing tips and tricks; ribbon embroidery; advanced crochet techniques; and several hat embellishment classes. One class offered students a chance to make a reticule out of an ostrich egg and fabric.

Vendors and instructors from as far off as Fort Bragg, Sacramento and Watsonville, California came to sell their wares and students exchanged fabric, shared books, findings, jewelry and patterns.

And at lunch my group had a little birthday celebration for Amy and Mia!

I took Lynn McMaster’s class, “Millinery: Flowers & Net”; Kendra Van Cleave and Bridgit Bradley-Scaife’s class on sewing tips and tricks; and Bridget’s class on Hair in the Crinoline era. The attendance was really good and the location was great. We had room for the many class offerings and the vendors lunch were held in an auditorium.

Greater Bay Area Costumer’s Guild

Emporium open once again for visitors

Hope is the Thing with Feathers — Emily Dickinson

Our proprietors have returned from their vacances with new energy, new project plans, new pen pals and plenty of inspiration from the old country!

We cleaned the Emporium shelves and opened the windows to make room for new creative energy. What inspired us? A number of things.

If you listen, you will know. Can you hear the birds? How about the pedestrians greeting one another, perhaps in another language that you may still find familiar? Can you hear the distant revving of a motor scooter or the closer ring of a bicycle’s bell? Can you smell the loaves of fresh bread from the boulangerie/patisserie, nearby? See the red geraniums in the window box?

Or you may take a walk and view the deep green leaves of very tall trees and an ornate iron gate to a park. If you listen now, you hear the water of a fountain and the calls of ducklings swimming just beyond the trees. There’s a cylindrical, red box near the gate at the end of the tree-lined street. It’s time to mail those letters! And on the same block, near an ancient church, is a time machine. (Well, it’s really a phone box, but it will always appear as a time machine to many of us.) Some of us may even think that if we get to the correct phone box and dial a certain number, we’ll be magically transported to other places.

The contrast of the rich reds and deep greens, the sunlight and the birdsongs have recharged our batteries. The proprietors highly recommend a train trip to you; we learned how to navigate four new train systems that were almost – but not quite – like the ones we have in the U.S. If you don’t have access to a train, read your favorite short story aloud to someone you care about and find out how relaxing it is to take a vacation, in your mind, heart and life.

Thanks for your patience as we assemble our new work, renewed and grateful for the respite.

Stay tuned for additional pieces on the Etsy site and for journal entries about the adventures of the Theme Song Committee.

Shop the Emporium

Malvena Pearl’s Emporium: Services and Products

We sell ephemera, jewelry, costume accessories and other fine goods on our esty.com web site:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/malvenapearl

And we offer these other custom services to you:

Beadwork and Garment Repair Service:
We repair beaded jewelry, beaded trim on garments and we do mending or repairs that require fine hand-work. Small or complex jobs are right up our alley. Drop us a note.

Custom Orders:

We work with you to design and produce custom orders for bonnets, cravats, fichus, capes, jackets, vests and other garments that you need. You may be attending a dance, a ball, an historical reenactment event, a retro-themed party, a fair or a convention. We’ve created and re-styled contemporary garments into the full range of costumes from the Victorian era through outfits inspired by science fiction, comic books, Japanese anime and fantasy literature.

We also make custom beaded jewelry designed to accent that costumes you already own.

Custom Made Hat Boxes:

Beth Woolbright creates hand-decorated hatboxes to suit all of your vintage hat storage needs, made to your specification. Have you got that special someone to shop for, who really needs a beautiful container, decorated by hand, to suit her fancy? Or if you need a dapper hat box, created in a vintage, gentlemanly fashion to store your beloved’s derby, fedora or pork-pie hat, then Please do send us your requests!

And remember to visit the Malvena Pearl etsy site to see our goods today!