Strictly Chown Jewels Style

I have my stall at the Thornbury Carnival to look forward to, but before then I have a stall at the Strictly Style event in Bath.

It's on Saturday 27th March in the All Saints Centre, in Weston, Bath. It looks very exciting as there will be talks in the morning and then related stalls in the afternoon.

Jane Courtis is a personal shopper and stylist from Apthorp and she will be talking about how to revamp your wardrobe; Tessa Brand from The Dressing Room will discuss how to choose the 'right bra for the right occassion' and Amy Morris from A Brush with Beauty will be giving hints and tips to help you create fresh looks with the current contents of your makeup bag.

So I've been getting ready for Strictly Style and hopefully, I will find the time to photograph and post some of the items here, before the big day. In the meantime, you'll just have to wait...

My How Time Flies...

If you look at the date of this post and then look at the date of my previous post, you'll notice it's been a while since I've written anything...

It's not a lack of subject matter, it's purely a lack of time, but I'm hoping to squeeze in some more writing over the coming weeks.

So what have I been doing in my spare time? Well, largely working for the Thornbury Carnival where I had a stall last year (see the last blog post): I am volunteering as the Publicity Manager for the Carnival. Yes, it's a bit of a leap from 'running a stall' to 'running the publicity', but a series of events led to my current role and I couln't say no.

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So what does it involve?

Lots of Press Releases for a start, then there's the creation and maintenance of the new blog/website http://thornburycarnival.wordpress.com/. I've also been encouraging performers and theatre companies to get in touch, meaning lots of work trying to reach people who could be interested and finally I tweet as @ThornburyCarn, on Twitter.


The response has been great - we have received a steady stream of enquiries about all aspects of getting involved via the website, while local newspapers and magazines have been really supportive by including articles whenever they have the space.

However, this role doesn't mean that I won't be running a stall at the Carnival. This year we have a 'Meet the Makers' marquee (which is very exciting), so I will have a stall in there. I also made the decision to pay out for an advert in the programme this year:

I'm rather pleased with my effort and as you can see, I have made the decision to link it to my Coriandr boutique, instead of my store on Etsy. This is because of the age-old issue regarding currency: if Etsy had the option of selecting payment in pound sterling, it would be perfect, but it doesn't, so I'm linking it to my lovely UK boutique instead.

So, there we go, a brief update on what I've been doing over the last couple of months. It's all rather hectic, but it's also very exciting...

Carnival Chown

For many the Fourth of July is Independence Day. Apparently, in Bristol, it was Carnival Day. In the centre of town the annual spectre of St Pauls' Carnival was in full swing whilst on the outskirts, a rival attraction was bubbling into existence.

Once upon a time the Thornbury Carnival was a yearly attraction, but then one day it fell to the wayside and somehow seemingly fell into the annals of time. Until now, 2009, the year of The Return.



For those organising it, it was a massive project with everyone learning what was involved as they went along. It developed into a beast of a production with a fair, hundreds of stall holders, musicians, the Red Arrows (quick bit of credit - the pictures of them here were taken by my dad) and of course, the parade.

The morning parade gave way to the afternoon's activities on the Mundy Playing Fields. As musicians played and stallholders traded, kiddies paddled in the community paddling pool and screams of delight carried on the wind from the fairground. All whilst picnics took place on any available spot of grass.

It was a lovely day with gorgeous sunshine, the only thing was, I was in the windiest spot of the playing fields and as gusts of 30mph rushed through (no seriously, according to the weather report, that's how fast they were at times - and that explained a lot!), it did get a little bit scary in my gazeebo and all my beautiful displays had to be abandoned in favour of a display that was low to the table, as not even sellotape and 'Blu-Tak' could hold the display down at times! This is what it ended up looking like (not quite what I had planned):

Oh, and I forgot my tablecloth, so there was a mad dash to Tesco in the morning as well... Let's just say I learnt a lot from this stall!

Despite the wind, I am looking forward to next year's Thornbury Carnival and it looks set to be even bigger than this year's!