Shoes, Glorious Shoes

Welcome back!

As promised, the second post here is about shoes. One pair in fact. I am currently working very diligently on my costume for my first (complete) act. I have the lingerie part of the costume sorted, and most of the outer clothing layer, however all of those things are at home, and I am not. So I have been focusing on what I can work with: The shoes.

I am working on a very tight budget with this costume, and so I needed to find a very cheap pair of shoes to make my own. I planned on doing this in charity shops, spending hours and hours browsing them to find the absolute perfect plain black pair of size 5's, and then, by chance, my other half wanted to go into Primark. He NEVER wants to go in there because of the numbers of people (a point I agree on, it's like M&S on speed!), but I'm very glad he did. At a distance, staring me straight in the eye, was this beautiful pair of plain black shoes, reduced down to a meager  £2.

Of course I bought them immediately, and started planning my customisation.

My act, has a blue and black colour scheme, and a bit of a rain theme (no, it's not based on singing in the rain) so I decided to start with making and attaching blue netting bows with a little lace detail to the toe. I only have a photo of one of them though, because I was already part-way through the next stage before I realised I hadn't got a photo!

The next stage of course, was adding a lot of sparkle. Because of the rain theme, I wanted the rhinestones to simulate water droplets on the shoes. That meant using clear/silver and black. The clear ones represent the heavier drops and the black are the smaller droplets as they are falling away from the shoes.  Most of the clear ones are on the higher surface areas where as the black have been placed mostly 'underneath' the shoes and on the sides.

And they are complete! My very first attempt at shoe customisation. I'm quite chuffed with them.

What do you think? Any feedback/criticism is welcome.

Thank you for reading! Next step: the main prop.


Penny

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Let's Start at the Beginning

Hello and welcome to my blog!

I am Penny Sterling, and that of course is my stage name. My real name is Toria Pardoe. Why have I given my real name so freely? Because that is the name I use for my acting career, so it's not really something I'd want to hide from anyone.

I shall tell you a little about myself firstly, since we are only just acquainted, you and me.

As I just mentioned, my name is Penny (or Toria, but that's irrelevant to this blog in all honesty) and this is my blog. To be specific, my burlesque blog, or 'diary'. You have in fact caught me at the very beginning of my burlesque journey - well almost anyway. I have had an interest in burlesque for several years, and although I have come close to actually performing it, I've always pulled back out of the classic fear 'what will people think?' and you know what? I got over that little problem and I'm not worried anymore. You only live once right? (apologies for the cliched statement).

So, why am I starting a blog before I have anything to show for my ambition. It's simple really. I want to be able to tell the story of my burlesque journey right from the very start.

In my burlesque knowledge-hunting adventures, the thing I have wanted to find out the most of all from other performers, is how they started. How they got from A to B to C and to whatever letter they happen to be at now. What was their journey?

A few lovely ladies have given me some advice on how to start my own story. I asked Talulah Blue and Emerald Ace how to actually go about getting that very first booking, and they both gave me some very helpful tips! One said I needed one fully finished and polished act and the other said I needed to have two (I assume this is so the promoter can choose the one more suitable for their event) and they both said that I need the act to be completed in its entirety, and to then have promo photos, and get contacting events, set up a page or website, etc... both of them gave very very sound advice! Advice I am acting upon.

I found a wonderful fountain of knowledge recently in, Millie Dollar, who had set up a formspring.me account. The site allows people to ask questions either anonymously or by name, about whatever they feel like asking. In my shyness, I asked anonymously for a day or two, and then got over myself. I think it was the sheer number of things I asked her that made me feel silly about being a pestering nuisance, but better to be a nuisance with a face, right? I think in total I asked just over 20 questions, all of them about burlesque, and to be honest I'm surprised she answered them all, but she was very generous with her knowledge, and I am very grateful!

My questions varied from being performance-specific, to costume, to creative process, to advice for a newbie! All of her answers were very detailed, and if like me you're a newbie full of questions I highly recommend reading them.

I have also joined the Ministry of Burlesque forum http://www.ministryofburlesque.com/forum.php which is full of helpful people and all in all is a wonderful community! a verified fountain of knowledge.

On that note, I should stop typing before I begin to ramble incessantly.

I'm unsure exactly how often I will update this blog, because I'm not sure how often I'll have something new to say! but I shall aim for at least once a week. It might be more often, it might be less, but either way it will be updated regularly.

For now, I think I'll go and obsessively work on making a prop sparkly.

Bye for now! I'll be back later with pictures of shoes.


Penny

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