Betty's Blog

What with all the excitement with Folk East Betty's monthly blog has been slightly delayed this month, but we are proud to bring it to you now!  Make sure you have liked her Facebook page and followed her on Twitter too.

Well It's that time of the month again, where does the time go? Life always seems to be busy in the world of Betty's which is always good. Last month we talked about perfecting that perfect brow shape so let's now have a look at Three tried and tested products for colouring your brows....

Benefit Brow Zing-

This compact contains all you need to shape and preen your brows, available in 3 shades. It contains mini tweezers, a creme colour to colour in your brows and a powder to set the colour a great all round lasting product, a little expensive maybe at £24.50 but great if your needing to shape your brows with the tweezers first! I would say to achieve the correct look could take a little practice with the brushes provided, Available from www.debenhams.com

Mac Brow pencil-

This neat little brow pencil is the perfect diameter to be able to draw your shape onto your brow, great for an outside line and great for the infill too. It's retractable so no need to Sharpen, easy to use, comes in 6 colours at £13.00, I feel its worth the money. Available fromwww.maccosmetics.co.uk

Rimmel professional Eyebrow Pencil

I think for the price of £ 2.99, these Rimmel brow pencils are great, they come in 3 colours, easy to apply and also have have a brow brush on the other end to help with the shaping of your brows before you apply, the pencil can be easily sharpened to create your outside line then filled in available at all good Boots stores or online at www.boots.com

I shall look forward to speaking to you next month, For your vintage hair & makeup bookings please visit Betty at www.bettysrockandrollers.co.uk 

Love 

Betty's Blog: Achieving Your Vintage Brow Shape

Welcome back Betty for this month's installment of your vintage beauty blog... we're excited about getting those perfect eyebrows and can't wait to see how...

Well what a currant trend brows have become over the last couple of years! They are making such a statement at the moment, but when we look back brows have always made a statement throughout the decades, they truly are just as important as our other facial features and should therefore be looked after, enhanced and premed as part of our daily routine. We can enhance our own natural brow by gently darkening the natural brow shape with a brow pencil or eyeshadow but to create a defined new vintage brow shape we have to appreciate that unless your happy to shave your eyebrows off and pencil them on it's not going to happen overnight! We firstly we need to find a picture of the vintage brow shape we would like to aim for, then we need to patiently work with our tweezers or ask your beautician to work towards this certain brow shape, plucking threading or waxing approximately every 2-3 weeks to start creating this shape, some of us will need to grow the hair in some areas, some of us will need to have them removed.

Once that brow shape is achieved we can then look at suitable products and colours that define that brow shape even further to give us our perfect vintage brow, again depending on the look you want you may want to use a colour close to your natural brow colour or you may want to go darker for a more dramatic look, bare in mind using an eyeshadow type product will have a softer edge on your shape and a pencil will give you a more defined stronger look. Good luck with those brow shapes!

Look out for Betty's Blog next month to see the best vintage eyebrow product reviews . . .

We're nominated for Best Vintage Fair in National Awards!

The Secret Vintage Fair nominated for National Awards!!

East Anglian residents are being called on to vote for The Secret Vintage Fair, who are up for Best Vintage Fair in this year’s National Vintage Awards. The fairs have been successfully operating in Essex and Suffolk for over the past year, and are soon to expand into bordering Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire too.

Voting opens on 1st May- we'll let you know more details soon!

The event location is always kept strictly under wraps, until a few days before the event, being released first to those on the Secret Vintage mailing list. Founder of the Secret Vintage Fair Lucy Craymer, who began the event in Colchester said: “Our secret events are by no means your average pop up vintage fair; shrouding the event in mystery seems to work incredibly well as everyone is always dying to know where it’s going to be, it keeps people guessing and talking about the event! We also go to town with creating the right atmosphere at our events, and we certainly only choose the finest vintage purveyors to trade with us, so as a customer you can be sure of finding only quality vintage, pre-loved, handmade and up-cycled goods at our fairs. Stay tuned for more details coming soon as to our next fair in this area!”

Taking place in Central Birmingham on Thursday 19th June, the national awards ceremony has been created to celebrate the independent businesses who keep the vintage scene alive.

“We’re delighted to be up for this award" says co-owner of The Secret Vintage Fair, Janine Rudkins. "We’ve worked so hard to build up our business and to have national recognition would be amazing. I’d love for everyone who's ever been to one of our fairs, and those who haven't yet gotten around to it, to vote and show their support for the vintage scene! Remember how we took over Colchester Castle last March? Over 2200 people queued for over an hour, in the snow, to come in and experience our event; that was a pretty special occasion! We’ve also to date helped raise over £3800 for local charities, that’s a really great feeling.”

You can keep you to date with The Secret Vintage Fair’s latest events over on our events page, or on our Facebook page.

Voting takes place online at www.thenationalvintageawards.co.uk throughout May and to vote for The Secret Vintage Fair you should go to the Best Vintage Fair category page. We'll update you as soon as voting goes live! Ciao for now!

xx

Chattanooga shoe shine boy...

...Our resident shoeshine expert Ken Ralph gives the low down on how it's done properly...

With Easter coming up this weekend, you’re bound to be prepping for a family get together, and you’ll want to dress in your Sunday best of course! So what better time to give your shoes a good spring clean?! And you know the old adage if a job's worth doing....

Here’s our handy guide to giving your shoes a jolly good once over, by our resident shoe shining expert and vintage enthusiast, Ken Ralph, who some of you may remember from an exclusive interview with our Lullabelle, over on the VandOak Website…! Yes, he dances, he cycles everywhere on a vintage Pashley Guvnor, and he even knits! This is a man of exquisite taste so read on chaps and chappesses…you just might learn a thing or too!

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Ken Ralph knows how to shine his shoes!

Welcome to my occasional blogspot, here on The Secret Vintage Fair I've been asked to write a piece and this first one is about impressions.

First Impressions, if you will.  Shower, Shave, Shoeshine...

Shoeshine? a bit of kiwi, a quick brush over, what else is there?Well there's a bit more to it than just that. And that is what I'm going to show you.

Of course, my shoes are always bright, so here are my cycling shoes that are just a bit worse for wear. On the right, how they were, on the left, the waxed one.

First you need to remove the laces, put them to one side, away from the kitten. Better still take the kitten out of the room. Next ensure you have the correct colour wax. Very often new tan shoes need a clear shoe polish, brown shoe polish will result in a shoe several shades darker than they are now.

Next, put down some newspaper, really, there is nothing worse than small spots of wax falling into your carpet.

Get a nice bristle brush full of wax, and brush it into the welt of your shoe, the part where the sole is stitched into the sole, go all around, including the heel, and include the edge of the upper, do this on both shoes. It keeps your shoes waterproof.

Go put the kettle on.

Next, take the brush, and with less wax, brush it all over the upper of the shoe.

This is important. Go make your tea, go on, go now let that wax soak into the leather. At least ten minutes. Have a biscuit with your tea, Write a letter to your favourite aunty.

Tea finished? Good. Now you need a lint free cloth, nope not another brush, you need a cloth, wrap it around your index and middle finger, really tight, that wax is going to grip hold of the cloth and in small circles bring the shoes to a nice bright shine. Both of them.

There, so much better..

But wait, there's a little bit more. You need to put a drop or two of water on the shoes, and use the water to push the wax in further and bring out that shine.

If your aglets are in the same state as mine, it's time for some new laces.

Rethread your laces brush the edges of the soles and heels and walk out ten feet tall! 

What are you giving up? Lent2014

So yesterday was Shrove Tuesday, and that makes today Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent...leading us nicely up to Easter 2014 (already...blimey where is this year going to!?)

Now far be it for us to put you in the path of temptation- but what we really want to know is - have you given up anything for the next 40 days and 40 nights? Just a little something perhaps?

If not, here's a selection of wonderful vintage ad filled treats for you to ponder over...and if you decide to give any of these up..let us know!