All the cracks in the walls remind you of things we've said...

I love swings!  It dates back all the way to my childhood.  I've spent a lot of time on the swing.  Even today, every time I need a break the swing is the first place I think of.   It’s just always reminds me of calm and safety.  When Daniel was still alive and going through psychosis the swing was a place for me to get away. 

During one of his early psychotic episodes he went through a phase where he'd organize these chaotic piles of everything that he owned.  He would put mounds of random things, but “organized art” in his mind.  Every pile had a system.  It took over a whole room in our house once.  One day my mom told him that he needed to put everything away.  Of course, he didn't agree and suddenly he started yelling and quickly became incoherent.  I went into my room to get away, but I kept hearing these muffled bangs – he was throwing objects against the walls.  That’s when I decided to go outside for a while.  I used to go to our backyard and swing for hours, because it was safely away from the chaos inside, and the rocking motion always soothed me.

I used to pretend that the ropes were arms and that someone was holding me in that moment - rocking me back and forth trying to calm my cries.  It always worked.  So whenever Daniel would go into his violent spurts I would go sit on the swing, and pretend that I was being held by someone.  Then in the safety of the rope's arms I would pump my legs as fast as I could, thinking that if I pumped hard enough I could fly and touch the clouds that I was trying so hard to reach.  To this day swinging is such a calming motion for me. 

^Photos taken last summer by my incredibly talented and cool sister Ruth over at Yaro Photography.  Missing her today, but I can’t wait to see her in August!  She’s coming home to visit for an entire week!  I’m sure we’ll have many new photo shoots to show after that week.

Summer Wanderlusting Vibes

Summer has always been my favorite time for reading.  Whenever I read a book it has to be at the right time when I don't have any other projects going on, otherwise I feel like I'm not fully focusing on the book.  Right now I'm in the middle of a book called Gypset Style by Julia Chaplin.  It talked about the intriguing style mixture of the carefree Gypsies, with the luxury of jet setters.  Gypsetters are usually creative people such as artist, writers, musicians, who travel to get away from their usual life in a busy city to refresh and regain inspiration.  They take boho style to the extreme in such an effortless looking way that's mesmerizing and enchanting.  After reading about them, I've noticed my own thought process about style starting to change.  I've started layering more and playing around by mixing colors.  The next book that's on my list is about the costumes design for Mad Men so I'm sure in a week my style will completely change to the big crinoline skirts of the 50s.  But that's what I find so great and fun about fashion; it doesn't have to stay the same, nor should it. 

Outfit: 

Chiffon lace blouse:  Thrifted

Embroidered little girl's vest:  Thrifted

Blue beaded suede belt:  Thrifted 

Burnt orange suede shorts:  Forever 21

Guess sunglasses:  Thrifted (they still have their prescription in them, so I can't really wear them. ha).

Bracelet:  Hammy down from my mom. 

Hat:  Thrifted and then fixed up. 

All photos taken myself

 My favorite part about thrifting is turning an item into something totally different than what it first started as.  This hat has had a bit of work done on it.  When I first found it while thrifting a couple of years ago, it was tan with embroidered, pastel flowers on it.  It looked like something I would've worn for Easter when I was 8-years-old.  I fixed it up by seam-ripping the embroidery stitches out and then dyeing it with watered down, acrylic paint (because it's cheaper than dye).  After that I added feathers and some of my own bead work and now it's completely new hat. 

Happy Monday and I hope the start of your summer is full of new adventurous hope!  

Gatsby's Prom: Part Two - The Attire

Austin is a good art friend of mine who invited me to his school's prom.  From the very beginning Austin and I had a specific image in our mind of what we wanted to create for our outfits.  The theme of the prom was Great Gatsby so we both knew from the start that we wanted to take inspiration from that era.  Every item that we're wearing was carefully added to coordinate with the other's outfit.  My navy blue gown went with his navy blue velvet, smoking jacket.  His gold tie clip and cuffs matched the gold specks in the fabric of my gown.  The angles of my seam placements matched the angles of the design in his cuff links and tie clip.  Each piece was created to fit together in order to create a whole image and story.

^photo credit:  Austin

^He spray painted his laces gold to go with my dress. 

The dress construction:  

I have answered this question at least 150 times ever since I first started sewing "are you going to make your own prom dress?"  The answer was always pretty much self explanatory if you knew how many hours of the day I spend in my room sewing.  

The dress was completely hand drafted.  Over 23 separate pattern pieces were drafted for this dress.  It felt so much like a jig saw puzzle while drafting and measuring everything out.  I used two different kinds of chiffon for the overlay.  One was a plain, navy chiffon, and the other was a navy chiffon with small, gold dotted, grid lines which I used in the detailing of the dress.  If you've ever worked with chiffon before you'll know that it's not the most user friendly of all the fabrics.  I had to be very thoughtful of the grainline, otherwise the pattern would distort itself when it was moved to the sewing machine and the fit would be off.  

The dress was sewn using all french seams to keep the overlay from unraveling and completely falling apart.  Also I've found french seams to look sleeker when working with see-through fabric.  The seam placements are actually details of the dress itself.  Everything was cut out to create a triangle shape.  The skirt seams were placed to create a triangle effect going down towards the skirt; this is also echoed in pleated seam around the v-shaped neckline in the front and back.

There are a total of 5 godets in the front, side and back using the gold speckled fabric so when I walked the gold would pop, but only very subtly.  There's a slight train in the back godet of the dress, but nothing too long.  I wanted to be sure that I could still dance without getting stepped on all night.  

The lining is a completely separate dress made from bright cobalt satin fabric.  At first I was going to use navy for the lining, but when I held the under the overlay, the detail of the french seams were lost.  With the cobalt it was still blue enough to look navy, but at the same time show off the detail of the seams. 

I was working on the dress far into the early morning (4am) of the day of the prom.  I finished sewing the last detail of my dress literally 30 minutes before I left to get ready with the other girls.  Overall I'd say around 90 hours went into the construction of this dress.

Instagram photo while working on the skirt seams. 

I went to the prom with not only an awesome friend, but also an incredible artist!  Austin has a knack for details and the ability to think from every side of a project; that's a wonderful aesthetic for an artist.  He is a Junior in high school right now and hopes to attend an art school to pursue his passion for design.  Keep a look out for his work in a few years, because he has the talent and dedication to pursue his dream and make it big time.  Here are just a couple of his design works from this year:

Overall this felt more like an art collaboration project than a dance, but I think that's what made it so much fun.  It got me really excited for college, because I know I'll have so many more collaborative projects with talented students in my field of study. 

I hope you'll all having a wonderful start of the weekend!  

Memorial Day - Remembering Mental Illness

A year ago today (Memorial Day 2012) my brother Daniel committed suicide and went to live in Heaven.

I know that Memorial Day is supposed to be about remembering the troops who have passed, but after going through everything with my brother, I want to use this day to remember the thousands of families who have children with mental illnesses.  It's something that's not talked about very often - usually to protect the privacy of the person with the mental illness.  Daniel was diagnosed with Schizophrenia at age 16.  Because Daniel is now in Heaven I'm able to freely talk about it, and I feel an urgency to share my story for the people who are living in similar situations right now who can't.

Death isn't just a physical passing.  I believe that loss can happen even when the person is still alive.  I remember the day that Daniel came home from the hospital after his first schizophrenic induced psychosis.  He was a completely different person.  It was like my brother had died and been replaced with a stranger.   He would become very violent when he was in a psychosis, and tried to hurt himself multiple times.  We were always on guard not just for his safety, but also our own.  He was placed on medication as a way to sedate his mind, because of the terrors that were always running through it.  The medication changed him into a hallowed ghost of who he used to be.

After a while, stress would affect his body and that would send him into a new psychosis and the cycle would begin again.  His personality would change every time he went into psychosis.  Daniel went through psychosis 5 separate times and it was like my brother had died 5 deaths.  Even though Daniel looked fine on the outside, after going through all the years of mental trauma he had the mental maturity of a child and could not be trusted to live by himself.

Very few people knew about what was really going on so as a family we were mostly left on our own.  If someone would be diagnosed with a physical illness - like cancer - a community of friends would come around in support.  Because there's such a strong negative stigma with mental illness, families are left on their own.  Also, not very many people supported us, because we couldn't talk openly about his illness.

We weren't embarrassed by Daniel's illness, but he was ashamed of the actions that he would do when in psychosis.  Once his friends found out, they would treat him differently than before or completely reject him; therefore, he became very lonely.  He didn't choose to have his mental illness, and it was not his fault.  All he wanted was to be normal and healthy.  Last year he was in the middle of his 5th episode when he killed himself.  He just wanted to escape the torment that was going on in his mind.

The more I think about what my brother had to go through the more realistic Heaven is to me.  Daniel went through his hell while he was still on earth; a short time in comparison to eternity that we are going to live in heaven.  He has a new body, and most encouraging - a new mind.  He's no longer in pain or trying to hurt himself.

There are thousands of families right now going through the chaos that mental illness brings, and today I wanted to share just a small portion of my story to recognize them.

A year ago from today I started working on the idea for this film, and a couple days later I started filming it.  I spent over 200 hours of self-filming and editing it.  This entire piece was inspired by, and dedicated to Daniel, and what might have happen if he hadn't killed himself.

Where I don't Feel Alone from Esther Boller on Vimeo.

I got this tattoo today in memory of Daniel.

When I was two-years-old all of my siblings and I were playing in a woods by my house. All of the sudden my brother Caleb accidentally stepped on a bee hive and it start to swarm. Right away my siblings started to run out of the woods. I was too young to know any better so I stayed were I was - right beside the angry bee hive. Just as everyone was almost out of the woods my brother Daniel remembered me and came rushing back. He picked me up and carried me out to safety. Bees were swarming all around trying to sting his head; but his hair was so think that the bees were getting entangled in it, and the stingers couldn't reach him. Both of us made it out of the woods without one bee sting. He saved my life that day.  

Tattoo by Mike McNabb at Tip Top Tattoo And Body Piercings

Gatsby Prom: Part One - The Party

Here it is - the prom post!  The prom was last weekend and it was such an incredibly fun time.  The day after, Austin came over and we took our own prom photos.  So much time and work went into the creation of our outfits that we wanted to do a shoot that showed the details and told a creative story just as much as the garments themselves.  

For this shoot I had the idea of re-creating Gatsby's Party in my backyard.  After seeing Baz Lurman's take on Gatsby twice (yes, I saw it twice and I want to see it again) that film is the only inspiration that's been running through my head lately. So after 5 hours of set up Austin and I had a fun party of our own.

(click on image for correct size).

This was my first time experience going to a dance.  We went to prom with a whole group and I had such a fun time getting to meet and spend the night out with some really cool people.  I loved going over early to one of the girl's home and watching all of the excitement that's shared in getting ready for prom.  

Once we actually arrived it was fantastic being in a place where I could dance.  If anyone knows me well, they know that I love dancing!   I'm not very good at it, but I love it.  I'm that nerdy person who plays YouTube tutorials of "how to dance" in my room, at midnight, when everyone else in my house is asleep, and with my blinds tightly secured.  Overall is was a really fun and exciting time and I'm glad that I was able to be a part of it. 

^Our corsages are made with daises and myrtle flowers.  Get it...like the characters in the book.  It was Austin's clever idea!

I will be posting details of the dress's construction along with more photos of our outfits in a day or two. 

Here's a preview from instagram

In the mean time, tell me about your prom and what it was like!  Any special memories with friends?