SAY CHEESE! / THE PIN-UP FINLAND FINALISTS' PHOTO SHOOT

Last week we organised the official photo shoot for the twelve Pin-Up Finland finalists!
As you  may remember from earlier, I am part of producing and hosting the competition this year,

The day started at our studio for hair and make up. The contestants arrived from all corners of the country for their big day. On big shoots like this, there is always a lot of waiting.

We are very proud to have Béseame Cosmetics as one of our sponsors for the finals!

Make up artists Mercy and Mia in full action.

Me rolling some hair. (Photo by @ruskarieban)

We had one shoot on location in our studio. But for our main calendar pictures we headed elsewhere!

Here are our fabulous  outfits for the ladies, put together by our clothing sponsor Vintag'Eijas! Vintag'Eijas is a vintage store as well a seamstress (that I am sure many of you have heard of in blogs and such, even if you may not be Finnish) and she had done an amazing job making outfits for the girls!

And then we headed over to our actual location; the old lighthouse ship Relandersgrund! It serves as a café nowadays. Worth a stop if you are in town; it's details and the  surroundings are very nice.

 And then it started raining...

 Waiting out the rain on board.

So on to plan B, taking the rest of the pictures inside the ship.

 Hannes at work.

At the end of the* (very long) day it was time for us to get out of the comfy wear and into the little shorts and do one last round of posing ourselves. Here's an instagram shot of that, the real pictures are to be revealed later.

(...And we've seen them already and they are just great! Meep meep!)

*) well, almost at the end of. We still had to dig out staples (from posters) from and paint one wall back at our old studio. Phew!

LONDON CALLED

I came home from London a couple of weeks ago already, but time goes so fast and I've had my hands full I thought it was just the other day (most things I post nowadays on social media feels like it already was two weeks ago, and it most often is. There are not enough hours per day to get everything I want done it seems). But yes we had a good few days in London with great shows. I didn't ge to move around that much though, we mostly just were around Camden, where our venues were and were we'd thus rented a flat.

London was the place we all wanted to move to int our late teen years in the late nineties. Influenced by all the brit pop bands and films like London Kills Me that was pretty much everybody's dream and mission. Well, other things happened, but visiting London (and Camden in particular) now I can tell that the 1998 little hippie me really would have loved it. Haha oh my.

I decided not to take my camera with me as I knew I really would not have the time for photos and would just be stressing about the fact that I did not get the camera out enough if I'd brought it along so here are some shots I snapped with my phone instead -

Picture of Tink and me by @veradevil

Breakfast in our flat.

Backstage and waiting at Fiddler's Elbow. (Not always so glamorous as you see.)

(Pics is by @ruskarieban)

Showtime!


But I did manage to go to some other part of town as well!
Vivien of Holloway is one of my favourite brands so I wanted to visit the shop in person.


Backstage at Dingwalls. More glamour.


Before we go on stage.


Back stage post-show posing.


And yes the snake was indeed real.

The last lunch in London was also the first park lunch of the year. 

One of many Amy stenctils, this one around the corner of where we stayed.

And then I arrived back home with the red double decker bus I'd promised Dag and that mandatory phone booth jar! (This one with cookies, but I think I remember one with toffees from when I was a little girl.)

IT'S ALMOST MID-MARCH ALREADY

...which means summer will soon be over. Because that's the way it goes you know. Fast.

Oh well hello there! Yes I am still very much alive, although it may seem a little too quiet over here. With all the work, hanging out with Dag, puzzling babysitting around for my work as Eddi is abroad because of his work all the time and when at home out on the farm because the older boys go to school there now and I'm kind of living part-time in my car due to all the going back-and-forth between homes and jobs and gigs and rehearsals plus the pilates training I am studying I have a pile of posts stacked up that will soon be too old to post anyway.

Well that was a long sentence. But it pretty much describes how things are for the moment, in the way it was structured. A highly energetic mess. But, here are some thing's I've been up to the past week as my phone and Instagram saw it:

We have started our own recurring club at Mascot -

The first of Rubies Klubit was last Friday under the theme 'Abstinence'. It was a really good night!

(The last shot is from the curtain call at the end of the night that I took from our golden gogo-boy's Instagram, orginally taken by JBM.)

Go ahead and like our page to find out the dates for the following ones as we set them!

Then I head over to Turku to perform at a Women's Day celebration event. Here's a shot from out small backstage as well as one of dragqueen Miss Divet performing before us and our huge mirror in our hotel room.



Then I came back home and by yesterday spring had arrived for real! I'm tempted to say the classic "finally" but to be honest it's pretty early and apart from that magical Christmas week winter was not that long or cold or white but seemed to pass rather quickly this time. We took a walk outside and it was warm. I feel all my shoes starting to wake up from their winter sleep and making small sounds in the closet already.

Also yes, that is how my son keeps putting his glasses on, constantly.

Later then showed up to the dinner table dressed as a sailor.

4 x RANDOMS

I had big hair.

These cherries defied winter and are still hanging in there.

Dag on one of the wood horses in Tapiola. I rode them too as a kid, but back when there were many of them in different colours. Many were also rather high. Not safe enough for today's standards I think.

And then I wore a little animal print.

WORK AND PLAY

Work. I've been re-rehearsing (and re-blinging, phew!) a couple of my old acts, one is this winter themed one. A number that you'd think be suitable for this time of the year but it's plus something and raining. Well, I'll be a dream of a white Christmas then.

Lots of white and lots of sparkle. There's been a lot of beading and rhinestone applying, but with the headdress I have spared myself and had it made.

Dag was eager to try it out too. And the rest, and mimic what I do.

Because he had been such a patient boy watching cartoons during my practice, I then took him to the indoor fun park to play afterwards. Altough this is from ikea where I picked up some things (and had dinner. Quick and easy!).

Came home to watch me talk about - surprise- burlesque for a few minutes on TV (at Efter Nio).

Then worked on preparations for our upcoming event tomorrow - or today, actually, my days tend to linger way into the next one -Under the Mistle Tease; the Showgirl Edition. It's a Christmas party-club-show we organise for our students, to showcase what we have been doing with them this fall.

Our new and biggest coached troupe The Shangrilettes will perform their debut, for which the sneak peak above is. There are a few tickets left at the door so head over to Wäiski at 20hrs to have some fun!