144: L.O.L.

Have you had enough of the Clothing Show talk yet? SORRY! IT CONSUMES MY LIFE.

But when really cute & awesome blogger girls write about you & call you their "sartorial soul mates"... how could I not share?!

LaurenOutLoud.com (or LOL for short) came & visited us & grabbed a skull cut-out tee & skeleton hand barrettes. Clearly she loves creepy skeletons as much as we do! Check out her blogposts about the clothing show on the CosmoTV blog & on LaurenOutLoud.com

& here's her adorable video at the show! She's somehow convinced me that the show is even more awesome than I already thought it was!


We make an appearance at 2:30 & our new friend Juliet is wearing the skull tee at 2:47! hooray :)

xoxo

141: the clothing show - day three

I should have posted this yesterday or the day before, but man, I was pooped from the show!

We didn't intend to do the show at first because the fall show went ooookay for us but we signed up & took a chance. We were strapped for time too because we had moved our studio only 2 weeks prior to the show & didn't have time to make a lot of new stock... but this edition of the Clothing Show was our most successful exhibit that we've ever done with L&B!

We usually have a lot of time to socialize with other vendors and get a lot of downtime, but I think because we had a good booth spot (right by the runway), we were constantly busy with chatting up customers & talking with anyone visiting us. But we managed to remember to snap some pics with some friends...


We met this guy, Stevie Gee when he came by our booth to chat. He was a total sweetheart & was helping out another vendor, so he told us to come by to check out their stuff!


So here's Sam with Georgie of Retro G Couture, which we previously called the "Mad Hatter booth"! Georgie's a brit who makes these amazing over-the-top coats & hats & has dressed the likes of Stevie Nicks, Steven Tyler & Margaret Trudeau. WHAT THE!
Sam is (obviously) modeling some of her wares in the above two photos :)


Our friend Vanessa from Reconstructed came to visit! We met her at the Fall show.


Here's Margot from Scarf Party & Vanessa from Reconstructed at their own booth!


This is Elizabeth from Compass Jewelry, wearing our signature handcuff halter!
We were laughing so hard at this photo because she was pushing along a grocery cart & there's a giant garbage bin in front of her! I had meant to go to her cute booth & take a better pic but we ran out of time :(


Our model Aleks & photographer Carrie Jade herself!
I love these princesses so much. Come over & we'll braid your hair & have little parties, okay?


Like I was saying, we were running out of time so I just ran over to my new friend Le Grana Clothing's booth to snap this quick pic with Elizabeth & Grana. hahaha
I only bought one thing at the show (look at me, showing self control!) and it was this dress from Le Grana. I shall model it later ;)


& lastly, Katrina from The Demure Muse came & visited us! She was soooo sweet to come by after returning from her long vacation in Asia (check out that tan dude!) & she even brought us cute Betsey Johnson knee socks! WHY U SO NICE?!?! We shall model those soon too :)

I just wanted to take a second & say thank you to all the people who showed their support over the weekend! We were thrilled when people asked us about items that we mentioned on our blog (PEOPLE READ OUR BLOG?) and we were so happy to tell our new customers what we do!

Lastly:
- Check out this blogpost our new friend Amanda of Featherband wrote that features us :) Thanks Amanda!
- Take a look at this post on Toronto Street Fashion about some cool picks at the show featuring our heart cut-out sweater :)
- Peep this slideshow of pics on Bohemia Magazine featuring a pic of our Saturday outfits & a pic of Sam's shoes!

I'm still recovering from the fatigue of standing & intensely socializing for 3 straight days... and now we're working on the cleanup but I'm hoping to get back to regular posting in the blog soon!

xoxo

140: the clothing show - day two

So yesterday, I was completely burned out & tired from a long night at the show. But today I was totally re-energized & was feeding off the awesome energy from our customers & friends who came to visit!

We had a really awesome day in terms of sales & we also had tons of awesome visitors. Our parents & sister came by to visit with snacks for us & we met some readers!


This photo was taken by Raymond Chow of CanadaWears.ca!
We learned about his site exactly a year ago when he took photos of our stuff on the Clothing Show Runway-- we later found out that one of his cousins married one of our cousins (cause he had a photo of us at that wedding! whaaaat.) What does that make us? Cousins by marriage? I dunno. He's a cool dude though & takes amazing runway shots.

We also met some readers (hi Amanda from featherband! & other girls), some future interviewers (hi iris & phoenix!) & some people that previously featured us on their site (hi cute girl that works at trendhunter!). ANNDDD we met Care Failure from the band Die Mannequin! We had made her some reconstructed tees before & had done the transaction through a mutual friend & we just met her today!
I just wish that we had the presence of mind to take photos with our new friends :( It's tough trying to keep track of selling and sales & be really social too. ah well! maybe tomorrow. ♥
NOTE TO SELF: MORE PICS WITH BUDDIES TOMORROW.

On the drive down to the show, we also saw a DELOREAN on the road. it had the license plate "OUTATIME". SERIOUSLYYYYYY. It's cause it's the anime north comic con this weekend in Toronto, I think?

& check out this blogpost on BlogThatShoes about Sam's shoesies. :)

Okay, I'm so tired that my brain is starting to blank out & I'm not even sure what I just wrote. haha. Thanks so much for all the sweet comments & support lately! We've been terrible at responding to comments but hope to be back in the swing of things in a week or so.

xoxo

139: clothing show - day one

Today was day one of The Clothing Show!
Man, I have been so burned out lately & while leaving the show I was complaining that I was feeling like I was coming down with a cold... not only that but I was also slightly dehydrated, my back was hurting from my heels, something hit my big toe & my toenail broke off really deep, and I'm generally a wreck. :(

All complaints of my poor physical health aside, it was a GREAT start to the weekend :) We definitely noticed that it was WAY busier than the Fall show, as we had no time at all to talk to our neighbouring booths tonight! We have our booth right by the runway, so we get a good view of the show & lots of customers coming over after the shows end! (and lots of people gawking at Sam's shoes! haha)

I'm super tired now & we still have a short to-do list of things to bring to improve the efficiency of our booth, so I should end this here. ♥ more pics of our booth and set-up tomorrow!
Looking forward to all the other visits that I've been promised ;)

xoxo

138: marry the night

the diy jewelry display works well as a hairband display eh?

Tomorrow is finally the clothing show! It's nearly 2:30am-- Sam & I are only JUST wrapping up with prep for the show tomorrow. The studio move 2 weekends ago has left us a bit disorganized and forced us to really throw together everything last minute, but I think we've managed!

I'm too exhausted to write much but let me finish this post with a photo that Sam described as... "We look like clowns". I think what she means is that she's used to seeing us both dressed entirely in black. hmph.



Both skirts & both clowns will be at the show this weekend.
So come visit us if you're in Toronto! We've got some new things & show-exclusive sales. We will also be giving out free stickers. and free smiles... if you're not a creep.

xoxo

128: clothing show ticket winners

Thanks to all you ladies who entered our Clothing Show Ticket giveaway! The weekend of the show is quickly approaching now & we're getting so excited about it! Here are the winners:



Coming in with comment #9 was Carrie Jade, who is going to be receiving a pair of tickets to the Spring 2011 Clothing Show happening on May 27-29 at the Queen E Building, Exhibition Place!
(we promisepromisepromise, this was not rigged!)

And we also decided to pick a runner-up, who will be receiving two coupons for $2 off admission at the door! Congrats Connie!

To everyone else who entered, regular priced tickets are $10 for the whole weekend & if you buy advance tickets online, you can get them for less! Check out more details on the ticket purchase page on the Clothing Show website. We hope to see you there!

xoxo

121: giveaway - the clothing show tickets (CLOSED)

It's super-official now! We're gonna be exhibiting at the clothing show in less than a month from now! We just received our promo package of posters & flyers! Check it out:


L&B will be at BOOTH 167! Right across from the runway :)
The show is an amazing place to discover local designers & find awesome vintage pieces too. We'll be taking a ton of new pieces that we've been working on that are not listed on our website yet & we'll be clearing out some stock too!

and check out who got on the poster!

photo on the flyer is from our shoot with Carrie Jade (with the lovely models Rachel, Yana & Aleks & makeup&hair by Katie Pike)

SO LET'S CELEBRATE! Who wants to come to the show for free? We've got one pair of tickets to giveaway & we want to give them to one of our readers! Check out the full details below:

THE PRIZE:
♥ a PAIR of tickets to the Toronto Clothing Show!

MANDATORY ENTRY:
♥ go to theclothingshow.com to learn more about the show
♥ comment ONCE in this post telling us what YOU would do at the Clothing Show! Shop for vintage or local designer? Visit a particular booth? Check out the runway? Blog about it?
♥ & make sure to leave your email address (so we can contact you if you win)

DETAILS:
♥ open to contestants IN ONTARIO ONLY! we will ship anywhere in the province :)
♥ entries will be accepted until 11:59PM EST on Monday May 9, 2011
♥ the winner will be selected using a random number generator and contacted on May 10th via email.
♥ prize is not redeemable for cash value and cannot be returned or exchanged for store credit.

GOOD LUCK!

xoxo

111: diy jewelry display frames

So I've been trying my best to amp up a bit of our "presentation' at The Clothing Show because we've got a full 10x10 booth to fill this year. Other than a standard clothing rack & a 6 foot long banner, we've got NOTHING else. So I decided to throw together some frames to hang & display some of our jewelry at the show & hopefully we can also use these pieces in the future by hanging them as decor in our studio.

I'll show you how I threw together these frames from some ornate thrifted frames.


so I picked up this uglay piece of art from the thrift store


I pulled out the "art" part & extracted two gold frames!


Here's what I used:
Chicken wire, wire cutters, a staple gun & some plum spraypaint


Then I took the frames outside & sprayed them with a couple of coats of paint. (sorry grass)


ta-da!


then I cut down some of the chicken wire to the size of the frames. You can use a finer chicken wire if you're using smaller frames too, but this is what we had lying around in the garage.


& then I staple-gunned it into place, making sure to use some pliers to twist the wire ends towards the frame (so it doesn't cut us or catch onto our clothes during transport.)


DONE!


I sprayed a couple more small frames in matching purple...


and here's how the frames look laid out & holding a few pieces of merch :) We're hoping to add a few more frames to this for our display, but we'll see what we can find! (yeah, the hanging wire is showing at the left side of the large frame... I just set this up to show you our vision, haha)

These are super easy to make and an awesome way to display your own jewelry too!


Pretty right? Now to figure out how to hang these up on some pipe&drape at the clothing show ;)



& check out these gorgeous blue hydrangeas! Hope everyone has a good Easter weekend!

xoxo

103: it's official...

We submitted our application to The Clothing Show! So to that person that asked us if we were doing the show this spring & we answered no to-- we take it back. We're working on new stuff & this year we're getting a FULL 10x10 booth next to the runway :)

Quick-- someone teach us some visual merchandising so we can learn how to fill dat space up. frig.

088: best booth ...?

Lucky post number 88 this year!

Yesterday we received an email from The Clothing Show announcing the winners of the best booth contest. It was the strangest thing reading that email because it said that we had won second place for best booth at the Fall 2010 show. WHAT THE HECK. When Sam read the email out loud to me, we were both just so confused as to how we could have been in the top three! Look at our booth!


it was a rack, a sign & some tv dinner tables with fabric draped on them. ahahah

We didn't even force any of our friends to vote because we didn't even think we had a chance! I mean, check out the first place winner, Crywolf :



And the third place winner, Freedom Clothing Collective:




(the three photos above are stolen from Karen Carillo of Freedom Clothing Collective)

Like, Freedom brought FURNITURE! There were booths with such cool thingzzzz. Henkaa brought Ikea furniture that they actually built there! AND A TV. A REAL TELEVISIONNNN.



There is even a company that makes amazing shortbread cookies in flavours like raspberry or rosemary! And they give out free samples all day... There is a man there every year that just gives out FUDGE. Creamy, sweet, delicious fudge. And you guys voted for us?!?! Why?!? Because we decorated our booth like this?



hahah, we are sooooo grateful for the unexpected support! And now we've come to a dilemma because we were NOT going to set up a booth for the show this year... But the prize for 2nd best booth is a half priced booth. GAH. The show is a couple months away so we've gotta decide soon!