Weekend New Additions

Really quick post today as it's a very busy day with lots of custom orders, so just a post to go over what was added over the weekend.

First up, our Woodland Fairy costume. I love this corset, but could only find enough fabric to make five of these corsets, I've hunted high and low and cannot get any more from anywhere. So this is it, all five sets are listed on Etsy and that's all there is. The fabric is a taffeta with a floral subtle pattern and spots of shimmery gold, and then banded into a plummy/mauve and gunmetal shades. 
The skirts are both elasticated waist (nice thin non-digging-in elastic, not that thick stuff that creates a really great muffin top over skirts and then a squidgy bit beneath), the underskirt being a purpley plain fabric and the top skirt is a soft light grey with a broken stripe pattern.
These are great little outfits as you get two skirts that instantly turn the corset and whole outfit into a quintessential fairy outfit, but when the corset  is worn by itself with other skirts and accessories it is instantly glam and the two main colours of the corset go with everything you can imagine.

Next up is the pumpkin princess.

This is a bit more of a fantasy outfit and does look like a pumpkin, no getting away from that when all the different components are worn together. But that's what you want from a Halloween costume right?

On the other hand, the corset colour isn't the typical bright orange tone, and the cool swirls and shapes in the fabric pattern means that if the corset was worn by itself, it doesn't instantly scream PUMPKIN! at the top of its lungs, so there is definite mileage in this costume as separate pieces.

On a side note, we're so enjoying releasing these limited edition outfits each day, or every other day, and are finding  it a lot of fun to make these great little Halloween costumes that are versatile enough to be worn after the day, or turned into other costumes for future events.

Walk The Plank

OK, you might not walk to walk the plank, but you will want to grab one of our pirate outfits for Halloween.
There are three variations now, as we couldn't decide on one.

High Seas..

Low Tides..

 And Privateer...

Just look at the fabric of the bustle tie skirt, I love this fabric so much, it's just fabulous, and features lion crests, and has the total air of a pirate commander, royalty, whatever, it's so regal.

Facebook

I've finally set up a Facebook page for the company. It's infinitely easier to be able to just update the page a few times a day with new corsets, sales and so on than writing a whole, drawn out blog post that takes forever. And it also means that the page can be updated whenever there's new outfits, sets, Halloween costumes, offers, and so forth.
At the moment it'll be used predominantly for Halloween related stuff, but as I can just update really simply every time we've got a new corset set ready, it means that you won't be missing out on anything new, and we're also going to have some wicked offers for any fans of the page, including some kick-ass limited edition Halloween corset sets that really are limited and never to be repeated.
And we're going to be adding all our offers onto our Facebook page, including some really great ready to send corset sets that will have 20% off, and other great offers.
So like our page, and once we get to 100 fans we'll be putting up details of an offer you won't want to miss.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Alice-and-Willow/182528901802725

Wanna Be A Hero?

Still on the subject of Halloween, I've been adding an outfit a day for the last few days, and I've now come to the one and only comic book/super hero inspired outfit-which so happens to be Rogue.
This is a first as we've stuck with fairytales and good old fashioned style Halloween themes before, so this is a slight departure from normal this year.
Rogue is made up of a skirt, corset and jacket combo. The corset is something new also, as it's the Freyja style but with detachable sleeves, which is new for this style. So the corset can be worn completely sleeveless or with full sleeves with turnover cuffs.
The jacket has mock lacing up the arms and laces up the front to tie in with the corset, and the skirt is made from the most insanely beautiful fabric-it's a gorgeous faux silk with a linen finish and feels amazing and has the most beautiful flowiness to it, I'm honestly in love with this fabric as it's a dream to both work with and wear as a skirt.
The outfit is listed in our Etsy store now (you can get there through http://www.aliceandwillow.co.uk/ also for a direct link) and as with all our other Halloween outfits this year, it'll be available as one complete outfit with all three items, or each individual outfit can be purchased if you only fancy part of the costume. As an added way of getting you to buy more, the combined price of the whole outfit purchased together is a fair bit less than purchasing the individual parts, so it's an almost guilt free purchase as well.

As an aside, in the run up to Halloween we'll be posting on our facebook page each day with links to awesome accessories for each Halloween outfit of this year-one day might be showing you where we bought an awesome prop for the Circus outfits (still to come), another day might be showing you how to recreate the make up looks for certain costumes.

ArtFire

We're relatively new to ArtFire, but are trying to separate out our stock into two types-current and new collection stock, and older styles/one-offs/end of collection pieces/discounted items.
From now on, all current and new collections will be available on Etsy, and all sale items/end of range items will be available on ArtFire (with the exception of our Black Friday sale, which will be split between the two sites). As ArtFire is a little cheaper than Etsy to use as a seller, we can offer even lower sale prices on ArtFire than we could on Etsy, so there's bigger savings, and maybe just enough money to buy that extra corset/skirt/jacket you fancied.
We're going to be separating out our Etsy store today, and you should see all the current Etsy sale items appear on ArtFire later today, at even greater reduced prices.
We've also got another announcement tonight, which I think will please a lot of you..  

Halloween 2011

Trying to learn something from last year, and remembering how tiring it all was, the prep for Halloween this year started at the beginning of July.

Usually this starts with a full evening of sitting around with various snacks (which this year consisted of pizza, crisps and a bottle of wine) and going over how last year can be improved on.

Early planning was key this year, as we had two events that were going to coincide-the release of the Halloween collection, and only two weeks earlier was to be the launch of our first major A/W collection. That's planning fail number one-not the best idea to have two such big events within such a small time frame, but with advanced planning we'd manage quite well.

So the evening of planning consists of making Halloween 2011 better than 2010, and this obviously includes the costumes we make.

I'd sketched over 20 outfits out with various annotations as several had really complicated details-these were the first to be scrapped just for sheer logistics, and because these designs would have taken four times longer than all the other, we either had to scrap them (which is what happened), cut out all the amazing details (wasn't going to happen), or charge several hundred dollars for a corset (again, not an option). The last option was to offer these designs at a loss and hope that our lovely customers would take pity on us and buy other things to go with the corsets, but that also wasn't going to work.

So 20 designs quickly became 16. We'd also decided to offer several of last years designs as they'd be so popular, and we'd already had enquiries about whether they would be offered this year-so we had to factor in all the time taken for those designs as well.

After a couple more hours of wrangling, and a bottle of wine later, the 16 remaining designs were cut to 11. The next task was to make sure that all of the designs were feasible, in terms of time taken, costs and what they would be sold for to still be reasonable for most people. Some of the designs were perfect from my first drafts, several changed in certain aspects, and some changed completely to be less labour intensive and more affordable.

These 11 new designs were added to the 9 carried over from last year, and here we stood with 20 Halloween designs.

The designs all get made up and then any little tweaks are done at this point. This process tends to be a little long winded as the designs all need to work as well on a size 20 as they do on a size 6. Once done, the next step is the photos-this is my favourite part as it's the culmination of all that hard work, and seeing the designs modelled and made up is such a great feeling, when all they've been before is a sketch on a page.

Anyway, now all the designs have been photographed and are ready for this Halloween.

We'll be releasing the first designs on Tuesday-the 6th of September-and will be releasing the designs on the space of a week. The designs will initially be made to order for the first three weeks whilst we make up stock of the ranges, and will then be available to purchase and shipped out immediately.

To make things run smoother, anyone who orders one of the Halloween outfits this year will receive upgraded shipping for free-so all Halloween outfits will be sent by 1-2 day courier for no extra charge.

We will also be offering the different parts of the outfit separately as well as together-you'll receive a discount for buying the whole outfit against the individual prices, but if you just want one aspect of an outfit, then this year you'll be able to just get it and go.  

And as a reward for getting this far, a sneak peek at two of the new designs for this year-our Ring Master and Clown designs.

Dotty for Dolly!

Here's a quick look at one of our newer styles-Dolly!
Dolly is so name after the lovely Dolly Parton who is teeny and petite, just like this corset. Ok, so it isn't exactly teeny, but it is made to fit more petite women (5'4" or under if you still want a lovely long line) or anyone who still wants a beautiful hourglass shape, but less hip coverage. The shape will still do all manner of things for you -shape and wittle away at that waist, create serious sexy curves, improve posture, flatten down that tummy, and give magnificent shaping under the bust (which also helps to create the illusion of a fuller, rounded, more buxom bustline).
This corset just laces up at the front, so you can lace yourself straight into it, and these corsets take us a fraction of the time of our other front busk and back lacing styles-they will still give you all the shaping and curves of our other styles, but save a lot of labour on our end, which means that we can offer them at a great price, and in tonnes of different, unique and just plain fantastic fabrics, which is something we can't do with the other styles.

We've listed a couple of the polka dot and several of the reds on Etsy for sale, but only have them listed in limited sizes at the moment so we can get examples of other fabrics made up, but can make these in any size, just like all our other styles.

New Fabrics

We're very excited as we've got some lovely new fabrics that have just arrived, and tonnes more on the way.
These are going to be made up into some seriously cute corsets over the next few weeks, and will also be available for custom orders.

Here are four of our currently in stock fabrics
Two plains...

And two patterns...

The black and white polka dot is my current fave and looks amazing as an underbust corset, with a white blouse under and a sweet little denim mini or black jeans.


More fabrics coming soon! We're going to be listing some ready to send corsets in these fabrics in our Etsy store soon, as well as offering them up as made to order styles.

Last Minute Valentines?

We are almost back to full steam-I'm still healing and can't sew yet, but I am able to go full speed with pattern cutting and the stitching and sewing is all being taken care of by my partner, so we're really getting through custom orders at the moment. 
We're working furiously on the new collection, and will be listing the prototype versions of the new collection for sale this week on Etsy-these designs were the very first versions of each piece in the new collection, which have since been reworked and in some cases completely scrapped and redone from scratch-an idea can look fabulous on paper, and even in a pattern, but when made up it can take so many hours to actually make that we would have to charge more for what is supposed to be a ready made piece than we would normally charge for a custom piece, and who wants to pay that much when you are buying a design that we've created and you've had no input in?
So, we'll have eleven pieces up for sale this week which really are going to be total one-offs, never to be made exactly the same again. Our new collection is going to be twelve new styles, including some blow-your-socks off awesome coats, Victoriana style pieces plus lots of cool Steampunk designs which we've been working on for an age. The new collection won't be ready for a good few weeks yet, so in the meantime these eleven pieces are going to be the only taster of what is to come, and will be totally unique. The new collection has taken a lot of work and many, many hours, so we really hope it's all worth it in the end.
Be looking out for the prototypes over the next few days, we're sure they'll soon be gone.

We'll also be listing the last of the sale stock this week, as while rummaging through what we thought were crates of scrap pieces of fabric left over from pattern cutting, we found a few dozen corsets from our S/S collection of 2010, which got shoved in the crates during our house move and forgotten about. We'll be listing these corsets at knock down prices to clear them quickly, as we will be taking on a second workshop in three weeks time and don't want to have to shift stock yet again-moving hundreds of corsets is a total pain and a job I don't look forward to, so I'd really rather have to do the minimal amount possible and will be listing these items on Etsy to clear them quickly.

Oh, before I forget, there is still time to get in your Valentines orders-there will be a $20 shipping upgrade applicable for all orders needed before Valentines, but we can ship up to and including Wednesday the 9th of Feb for delivery in time for Valentines-we not do us both a favour and treat your loved one to a beautiful piece of corsetry they can treasure (or which you can wow your other half with on the night), and help me clear my workshop all in one go!   

This is the reason I do not like stairs

So, in general I am not a clumsy person, no more than normal anyway.

I do seem to have an issue between myself and stairs though, specifically the ones in my house-me and my husband live in a Victorian house, which we love for all the period features, but Victorian houses also come complete with very steep stairs. I've had a few run-ins with these stairs in the past-minor slips normally, but two incidences have led to hospital visits, one when I fell from the very top of the stairs to the bottom, and I took large amounts of skin off my back, legs and arms, and another incident where I fell down the last four stairs, stumbled and hit the door which resulted in lots of X-rays and talk of serious head injuries.

Thinking that the stairs had well and truely put me in my place, I am now very careful whenever I come down these stairs. Though it seems that they haven't done with me, and yesterday I had the latest incident where I completely missed the bottom three stairs, and landed straight onto the ankle of my right foot, with the foot completely turned inwards at a rather sickening angle, and a large crack followed closely behind.

Huge amounts of pain followed and involuntary crying, and then a very painful ride to A&E and a several hour wait, without any painkillers,while sat in reception waiting to see a doctor. This is not my idea of a nice time, not even a mildly bearable time thanks to the massive amounts of pain that my foot and leg were sending out by then.

After a long, long wait I was told that I've ripped all the major and minor muscles and tendons in my foot and leg (when I do things, I like to do them right), and cannot put any weight on it at all for several months. And of course, I sew with my right foot, the one that is now out of action for the foreseeable future.

This also stops me from going to the post office, and I'm only good for answering emails and listing newly made items now. 

So what I'm basically saying is that, we still have one fabulous, creative, hardworking and dedicated machinists, designer and pattern cutter left, but I am out of action for the moment. So your order may just take a few days more, and it may take a few days more to get your orders sent to you. And as we mail all our parcels in bulk and then collect the tracking info later on, it may take just a touch longer to get the tracking info for you. But we are on top of things and doing our very best, and whatever I can do without having to move, I am doing. I am just asking for a little bit of patience (and perhaps a small amount of sympathy). This is also a warning for all of you people who live in Victorian houses-be very wary of those stairs, you never know when they're going to attack next.