Ladies, as a little girl did you ever dream of your wedding dress?
Beane & Company Clara
My dream wedding dress was updated with every trend. I wanted a fur collar. Make that a 25-foot train like Princess Diana’s. Maybe fingerless lace gloves. White granny boots. A tiara.
My actual wedding was 17 years ago, and I find myself in an odd place now. As a MOB (mother of boy), it’s unlikely I’ll have a say in wedding dresses, much less fingerless lace gloves. There will be no trips with the bride to say yes to the dress, just a tinge of pain knowing I’ll never get to plan, er, help plan a wedding again.
Enter Pinterest. I’m like a sweet tooth set loose in a candy store with no money to buy the goods. So I started a board called “My Imaginary Pinterest Wedding Even Though I’m Already Married.” It eases my craving the same way my “Short Cuts” board consoles the occasional impulse for a pixie haircut.
It may look odd (the board, not the haircut). When a friend saw me pinning wedding dresses, she quipped, “Are you renewing your vows or something?”
Beane & Company Zelda and Leo
Laugh all you want, sister. Your beautiful daughter practically guarantees you a subscription to Brides.
Instead of assembling wedding accoutrements on Pinterest where friends question your sanity, what if you could make them your business? What if you could design bridal regalia to your heart’s desire and your clients’ satisfaction?
My friend Jenna Lang does exactly that. Beane & Company, her Los Angeles studio, has created custom special occasion clothing for children since 2007.
Imagine the most darling flower girls and ring bearers EVER.
Beane & Company Grace
“What makes us unique is that everything you purchase is made to order. Nothing is massed produced,” says Jenna.
“Our niche is that we can customize anything you see pictured in any color or fabric. It generally starts with an inquiry that goes something like this: ‘I love this dress. Can we do it in pink instead of white?’ Our answer is always ‘Yes!'”
Jenna credits her mother, a seamstress, with inspiring her appreciation for custom clothing. Jenna was a professional dancer and worked for many years designing theatre costumes. Her passion for design blossomed into a business with the births of her own children.
“I wanted my daughter to have a chest of beautiful keepsake clothing just like my mother had for me. The dresses I made began to pile up—way too many clothes for her to wear! So my business began as a natural progression of my love for all things theatrical married to my love for vintage children’s clothing. My daughter, and now my son, are still the inspiration for everything I do.”
Beane & Company Charlie
Custom is key in the wedding industry. “A bride can send us a swatch of the colors she’s using in her wedding and we can match it to make something that fits perfectly,” says Jenna. “The best part is there are no add-ons or upcharge for color or design changes. The price listed is the price you pay, regardless of the changes made.”
Beane & Company Ella
What does Jenna love most about her work? “The thing I love most about what I do is the creative process,” she says. “There’s nothing like seeing a piece of fabric or a sketch on paper and making it come to life. I’m always amazed at what and where I find things that spark an idea. If you can imagine it, or you want us to imagine it—we can make it!”
I like her passion. It’s what dresses and dreams are made of.
You have captured my heart,
my treasure, my bride.
You hold it hostage with one glance of your eyes,
with a single jewel of your necklace. Song of Solomon 4:9 NLT
Today I have a quick Halloween Pinterest success story to share.
Like our last triumphant Pinterest project, simplicity is the genius of this idea. You know, the “Why didn’t I think of that?” factor.
Besides finding the pumpkins and the pin, I can’t take any credit for this. My husband did all the work. He scooped out two large pumpkins and power-drilled holes in them. The results are warmly glowing, other-worldly jack-o-lanterns, polka-dotted with candlelight. These are the classiest pumpkins ever to grace our front porch!
The white dotted jack-o-lantern is especially magical, I think.
Today I’m honored Dear Mr. Zuckerberg is appearing on Project Underblog: a submission-based, collaborative writing project honoring the smaller voices in the blogger community. What a brilliant concept. Go see what we small and mighty have to say.
This is Monday, and I said I would be back around mid-week. Monday is not mid-week, but some things are too important to wait to share. Like this quick Pinterest success story. An idea so simple, so ingenious, so must-do.
Swim noodles cut to size and used to stand tall boots at attention!
Less than five minutes with a bread knife and two worn-out swim noodles resulted in four pairs of boots set upright and ready for winter weather. If only all things in life could be this easy and common sense. Reduce, reuse, recycle!
Pinterest success!
This idea came from a Boutique Narelle pin. The author measured the swim noodles, cut with a saw, and vacuumed the edges of her boot stuffers, none of which I had to do because of two magic words: bread knife.
Graphique de France creates the most deliciously charming stationery and gifts like the whale notecards featured in this post. Their tag “classic. chic. trendsetting.” is spot-on. Click to visit their Graphique Boutique.
Interior designers and wardrobe coaches are forever advising us commoners to create inspiration boards.
Pull magazine pictures, postcards, paint chips, bits of string, anything that inspires you. This, they say, this will produce the holy grail. Your guiding light of personal style.
Like sirens in the sea, crafters, chefs, and domestic divas have also lured us.
Clip their recipes. Buy their magazines. Watch their shows. Read their books. Then flail hopelessly about trying to replicate their perfection.
But now I have Pinterest.
I pin whatever I like. Collect it on one of my own boards. Move it to another. Even delete it.
I choose the content and contributors in my own virtual magazine. There is no paper to recycle. No subscription renewal. No ragged-edged article glaring at me every time I walk into my kitchen because I have yet to cook its blue crab and corn chowder or paint my walls tangerine.
I expand out beyond food, crafts, and home decorating to pin other interests. Books. Art. Photography. Gardening. Kate Spade.
Pinterest is an organizer. A bookmarker. A cyber bulletin board. An ideas exchange. A creative breathe-in-breathe-outlet with endless applications.
My pins are safely tucked away. Nice and neat in vivid pixels. Accessible when the mood strikes me. Their linked sources but a quick click away.
Pinterest is free. And Pinterest is freeing. Like all good social media, it is the great equalizer. There are no kings in the pinmarklet. Pinners are at liberty to share their own finds and ideas. To pin and be pinned.
Case in point, my latest creation. A bit of Beyoncé-inspired pintelligence:
Pinners, you know what to do. On your marks. Get set. Pin it.
A generous person will prosper;
whoever refreshes others will be refreshed. Proverbs 11:25 NIV
