Pretty Link Roundup {May 17th}

Greetings, lovely readers, I hope that you’re having a splendid weekend! It's a grey and drizzly one here, but I'm not letting that dampen my spirits. I’m still floating a good ten feet above the ground over my marvelous hair cut and the fact that darling hubby returned home this week.

My weekend kicked off on the loveliest note, when I received an email on Friday from Betsy of From Betsy With Love, letting me know that she’d honoured my blog with one of her delightful photo mosaics in her Weekend Links post this week. Thank you so, so much, Betsy dear!


{Isn’t Betsy’s collage of images from Chronically Vintage positively gorgeous? Thank you very much, sweet dear, for giving my blog so much love!}


* Hollywood mommy: Emme of songs I sing compiled a superb collection of vintage starlets such as Barbara Stanwyck, Lucille Ball and Gene Tierney with their lovely children. I enjoyed viewing these photos a lot, especially as an alternative to the endless stream of certain Hollywood wee ones you see in the glossy spreads these days.

* A classic Hollywood make-over in 8 steps: This week Mademoiselle Robot featured guest make-up artist Alexandra Collins, who shared a wonderfully useful series of steps/tips to help you achieve a picture perfect vintage Hollywood face.

* How to do rag curls: I love rag curls and remember with fondness how my grandmother would twirl my hair around scraps of fabric when I was younger. Even from an early age my hair was too fine to hold a curling iron curl and as I looked on longingly at curly haired people and dolls alike, she came to the rescue with the age old art of rag girls. Here Vintage Vixen takes you through the steps (complete with photos) of how to achieve perfect rag curls.

* Betsy McCall paper dolls: Over at what-i-found, Tina added a delightful vintage 1957 Betsy McCall paper doll sheet that anyone and everyone can download, print off and place with to their heart’s content.

*How to grade patterns: Sewing fans delight, The New Vintage Wardrobe has a post up this week – complete with step-by-step photos – all about the method needed to increase the size of patterns (whatever era they may hail from).

* Some thoughts on stockings – care and wear: From the delightful pages of a blog I just discovered today, comes a great article on keeping your stockings (be they nylons or otherwise) in tip-top condition as well as what to look for when selecting hosiery. (And should you be looking to add some superb vintage inspired legwear to your wardrobe, I can’t recommend What Katie Did highly enough.)

* An Ode to Department Stores: I definitely share the sentiments of this post by Past Perfect Vintage, in which the author reflects fondly on the once common mainstay of towns and cities everywhere: the department store.

* McCadrellisms: The title of this post doesn’t even begin to do justice to the fascinating look back at vintage fashion terms Glamoursplash has highlighted, each one taken from the 1956 book What Shall I Wear.

* It’s cookout time! How to have a vintage backyard BBQ: Fantastic tips, steps and scrumptious mixed drink recipes to help get you out into the yard in vintage style this weekend, from excellent retro lifestyle blog Atomic Radar.

* What’s one of the best things about the return of spring and summer? Yard sales! I recently stumbled about Yard Sale Bloodbath, a terrific site that’s jam packed with going ons of the Seattle garage sale scene.


{Four delightfully stylish, bathing suit clad ladies enjoy the warm weather in this charming 1949 photo, which comes by way of myvintagevogue’s Flickr stream.}


This week’s feature video while not strictly vintage related, can certainly be translated into helping your vintage wardrobe. Care of the cool folks over at Thread Bangers, this clip features a trip to the Simplicity sewing pattern company in which a talented Simplicity employee explains how to sketch fashion – even if you’re not the most artistically inclined person. After watching it, I definitely felt inspired to draw and am now thinking I should pick up some pencil crayons :)

{How to sketch fashion}


There we have it, some of the awesome vintage links that provide oodles of inspiration to me this week; I hope you enjoy them all too! If you have any of your own wonderful links or sources of inspiration that you’ve discovered, please don’t hesitate to share them in the comment section.

Wishing you each a joyful and sunny weekend, vintage dears!