Ashley is our wonderful new bespoke designer in store, designing and making amazing crafted headpieces and veils for all you lovely brides…

After a wonderful, inspirational chat with Catarina of Mrs.Crafting today, it’s a little post about our original inspiration point for E&W!

Having just started researching and guest posting for Something Kinda Cute’s new wedding blog (here) I loved the idea of Catarina giving us a helping hand with ours too! Seeing as I constantly complain about the lack of time and inspiration!

After our little chat about what we’d like the blog to revolve around - ethical fashion seemed to be the biggest presence. After all, that is what we’re all about! It got us thinking about a recent project that was done to discover people’s emotional attachments to their garments. Don’t pretend like you don’t have one - whether it’s a lucky pair of socks or your mum’s cardy, we’ve all got a special item of clothing that we just can’t seem to shake off.

The great thing about making clothes from old items (be it curtains or garments) is that they all come with a story…

When we first started E&W, piecing together bits and bobs to create our dresses we gave them their own identities. It started as a bit of a fun, but as it turned out people really loved reading about where their dresses story!

So, a throwback to the old it is! We’re heading back to our roots, letting you all know the stories behind your dresses, where they’ve come from so that hopefully you can add to it!

We’d love to hear about all your stories and attachments to your clothes!

We’re loving the Christmassy feel around Cardiff and with the temperatures dropping it’s time everyone else started feeling the Christmas spirit too! Alongside our Handmade Christmas Campaign, we’ve obviously made our Christmas a very Handmade one indeed. We’ve been busy making lots of little bits for the shop and we decided every shop needs an advent calendar!

Rolling with our very ‘natural’ Christmas theme, we’ve stuck to hessian, lace, cinnamon and flowers. The natural brown and cream colors aren’t necessarily associated with Christmas, but I think that’s what makes it look so special!

We covered a board with hessian, popped it in a vintage frame and strung some lovely vintage lace across. Each tag has been pegged onto the lace, individually done with numbers on the back ready to turn around each day!

Hope you like it! Would love to see your advent calendars this Christmas, who opts for something a little different (and less sugary!)?

In our little store, we can’t do anything but go all out and I’ve been SUPER excited about getting it all ready for the holiday season!

We have been running our ‘Handmade Christmas Campaign’ for about 2 weeks now, getting everyone involved and supporting the handmade scene in Cardiff as well as the wonderful charity Ty Hafan! So we decided to handmake our windows and pretty much all of our amazing decorations (except the lights - not sure I’d trust myself making the fairy lights!)

So here it is, our beautiful little store in all it’s Christmas glory!

Our windows are full of handmade snowflake decorations cut from your standard A4 white paper and some music paper mixed in! Also our pinwheels decoration add an amazing background to the display, I will be submitting my tutorial for them to the handmade Christmas campaign very soon! We have also made some super cute mini ones for the tree to sell in aid of Ty Hafan.

As well as these, we’ve adorned some re-cycled glass jars (anything from the fridge will do!) with hessian and lace to put in the front of the window with flickering (not real) tea lights!

I’m also in love with our vintage doily bunting and twig decoration over the counter! It looks amazing suspended with some beautiful decorations hanging from it.

I can’t wait for Amy Davies of ‘The Cardiff Arcade’s project’ to come back in and take some amazing photo’s.. Mine don’t quite do it justice!

As what we do is such a niche market, we have a lot of interest in our lovely wedding collection. I make all my dresses bespoke to each person, designing and making around them and their vision for their big day!

With such a large interest, I decided to design a small collection of dresses - customizable to suit your style and made to measure! Check out the prototype on the wonderful Lauren

Each dress can be made individual to you, you can choose your sleeve length or have no sleeves what so ever! Choose whether you want polka dot tulle, lace or an all over satin, if you want the sleeves and top see-through or covering you up, choose your length and sash style, all from as little as £650. 

Each dress is made from a true vintage pattern, adapted to your style meaning you get the fit and quality of a true vintage dress with the whole process being easy and suited to you!