The Bohemian Belle: Europe and Dress U

This past month has passed in a busy blur of constant activity, lot's of travel and all of those little calamities life likes to throw in to keep things interesting!
First my trip to Germany and Prague was a whirlwind of activity with it's own little disasters. To mention a few of them, on the second day in Germany my daughter Charlotte fell and needed stitches on her chin, then my dad got pneumonia while visiting my mothers relatives in Bavaria and worst of all for this blog my camera was stolen in Prague! So no pictures!
It's a tragedy really, since Prague is an amazing city, and this Bohemian Belle is totally in love with Bohemia! It is full beautiful architecture, and lot's of history on every corner....

Prague old town square at dawn, photo courtesy of google!

Art Nouveau town hall

.....amazing food,
( so many different kinds of sausage!!!!)

Everything tastes better with dumplings and kraut!

and yummy beer that's cheaper than water, what's not to love!

Budvar The original Budweiser!

So since there is a distinct lack of pictures there will be no separate blog post on my Euro trip.
All I have to show are some pictures of some of my new treasures that I got on German ebay and had shipped to my sisters house, so I could pick them up when I came to visit!
I got these 3 lovely vintage combs.

Ebay steal!

And I got a dozen of these adorable hand painted Spanish wood fans , intended for sale at dress u and Jane fest. (though I did keep 2 for myself)

Pretty pretty fans!

Which brings me to Dress U!
When I got back from Europe I had 10 days to get ready for Dress U. So please excuse the lack of blogging during that time as I had a million things to do, including making an entire Edwardian gown . I worked like crazy for 10 days to get it all got done, and it did, even if it got done at 5 am the morning of Dress U.

My Edwardian gown 12 hours before Dress U

So I drove down to Philly on one and a half hours of sleep, realizing an hour down the road I had forgotten the suitcase with my regular clothes, of course i had packed the one with the costumes! But I decided to just go to wal mart and buy some underwear later since I was already running late. Got there in the nick of time to set up my shop in the vendor room ,and then waited and waited and waited... for customers.

Please Buy something!

Business was slow at Dress U, I think it was a combination of having too many vendors for the numbers of attendees and the fact that the merchant room was somewhat hidden in a basement area away from many of the events going on at Dress U. I overheard someone say they didn't even know there where vendors!!!! I guess the thing was not thought out very well, I sure hope this improves next year, otherwise it won't really be worth it for me to vend there again, and I much rather would have been out there enjoying the classes and mingling with people than being stuck in a windowless room from 10 to 7. Oh well you live you learn.
I did however enjoy dressing up 3 days in a row and getting to try out a whole new period for me (Edwardian).

My Edwardian evening gown, I was very happy with it!

I had lots of fun at the evening events and met many wonderful costumers who's costumes where just so stunning and beautiful! And I was so flattered that people who's blogs I have been following for years and who I really admire complimented my costumes!
So Yay for Dress U even if I just barely broke even as a vendor. It was worth the trip and I hope the event grows and improves with the years. Because considering it was planned and organized by just one person and this was her first time doing anything like this it was pretty impressive.
So now on to Jane fest sewing I have 6 weeks to make something like 10 dresses and a whole host of other pretty things!
I leave you with some Dress U pictures, enjoy!