BITS OF BERLIN

Rather small bits as my trip this time mainly consisted on the way between our Air Bn'B flat and the venues, stops by the closest falafel (four in four days!) stand and sewing for and reharsing another upcoming show at the apartment... Plus not bringing my camera with me either. Because of that and the late shows it was a rather tiring trip, which you notice when you are standing in confetti rain with people cheering and you don't really feel a thing except for that your make laysheavy and your feet feet aching. (And get a heay flu when you return home.)

Having that said, it was of course fun still - I do love Berlin!

I can't believe it's been five years since my last trip to Berlin. Went there a bit more often in the early 00's. Which is ten years ago. Ten years and beyond. (Scary, isn't it! Also, looking at old photos, damn one can age in five years.)

Rehearsal at Heimathafen.

Here's a shot of the number in question live, performed by Mama Ulita.

Backstage.

And onstage.

In between I had a little change to meet up with Frollein von Sofa for lunch in the sunshine!

An awesome lunch that is (here).

Wintergarten, the venue for the following nights, was just incredible. So pretty, with starts in the ceiling and old costumes and posters on the wall.

The backstage however not quite so for the moment. The inner yeard and containers.The glamour of showlife...

More rehersals/ soundchecking, which often is mainly just waiting. We did some chorus girl bathtubbing in those tubs on Saturday.

 This was beautiful. Sheila Wolf on Friday.

And this was totally fab. Tansy on Saturday.

And we came to realize that we actually celebrated seven years of performing on this very weekend!

Live photos by Tuomas Lairila.
Final shot of us taking a bow at the curtain call by IndieBerlin.

PIN-UPS AHOY!

Here are the official photos of our contestants for the Pin-Up Finland 2015 competition, which I am part of producing this year!

The pageant is a friendly contest looking to give girls interested in becoming a pin-up model a chace to get a foot in between the door and kick off a possible career.
You saw a little making-of earlier already. There is also an official making-of video which you can see here.

Cherry Star

Cherry La Teae

Carissa La Dame

Cherry Jo Candie

Honey de Rose

Ida von Dark

Inka La Vinda

Be Bop A Roosa

Sweet Honey Susan

Fanny White

Veda de Cadenza

Miss Candy Cat

Do you have a favourite?

Photos by Hannes Honkanen.
Concept and styling by me &Tinker.
Clothing by Vintag'Eijas / Eija Mannila (outfits sewn separately for each contenstant)
Make Up: VIP MakeUp Lounge Mia Sirén & Mercy Maybelle
Shot at Relandersgrund, Helsinki.

(Our clothes are mixed from out own wardrobes and not from Eija's.)

The winner will be chosen next weekend -October 3rd - by a panel of judges in Lahti at the American Car Show. The final is in three rounds featuring different (amazing!! - Eija is so talented to make repro and pick out vintage. Swoon.) outfits from Vintag'Eijas as well as accessories from Rockabilly Cherry and Sulokas. PinUp Helsinki will offer the winner a photoshoot.

There is also a separate social media vote going on on Facebook, which you can find here:
Pin-Up Finland finlaists, with styling by the contestants themselves and photos by Marika Kiviharju.

I am a bit sceptic of votes on social media as they usually just generate likes for the ones with the most active friends or followers... but everything should of course not be taken so seriously. So go ahead and give the photo and model you like the best your vote if you so like!

FOUR THINGS RIGHT NOW

I am changing my colours (and nails) into autumn mode. As usual there's an itch for darker colours and plaid patterns. And red wine. So wine red it is for me.

More colours! The last tomatoes from my garden pots. So cute you'd almost not want to eat th..munch munch nom! I like to mix them red and still green and fry them in a pan.

They got some feta cheese, garden herbs, salad and omelette to blend along with.

Now packing for Berlin; going there to perform in the weekend. There will be lots of pastel coloured things in the bag. Not for me, not for the trip nor the show, but for next week - we still have some work to finish off on the costumes for the Norma book release show; when we are performing the custom ordered numbers based on the themes of the book. Phew!

I heard it will be real warm in Berlin this weekend so might have to lighten up on my plaid-autumn-beret-and-kints mode then. Hmmm.

AT THE STUDIO

Late night at the studio with a cup of the after the classes.

We are very happy with how the space turned out and also proud that we did it by ourselves (if you don't count building two walls which we had a builder do), stage and all!

Here's how it looked before:

And now:

(Our landlord said he was surprised too see what we managed to do with the space.)

Here in action rehearsing with one of our performing troupes!

The dressing room. We also have another smaller mirrored rehearsal space with storage for our costumes but that space is still just filled with said costumes, suitcases and props everywhere waiting for some law and order...

One thins I still find hard to believe is that we managed to do this without any external funding.  That was never the plan though, but as we did not start a new business - we've been doing all of this on a smaller scale for years - but was going about things the normal way while setting the studio up, and as we stumbled across the space rather quickly (suitably in the same building we have been in for years) we just did not have the time to get any. We had worked hard the years before this that made it possible - now it's time work even harder -and hope- it will continue to be so!

I will confess that the start has been rather slow though. And that is just due to ourselves. Getting our website up and running would be rather (read:very) important (NO it is still not properly up in it's final form, I know!), and doing actual marketing as well, not just running everything trough Facebok as we've done (and done well) the past years, is next on our agenda. After Along with traveling to Berlin to perform next week, doing the once-in-a-lifetime custom ordered show for Sofi Oksanen's release of her new novel Norma and producing the Pin-Up Finland competition. Oh yeah and setting up Spectac-O-Rama for this year! The autumn of stress.

But. Yes. Our studio is in Lauttasaari and we have classes from Monday to Thursday with special courses those weekends we are not away performing! Buy your classes *here*  and schedule+book them **here**! Pilates on Tuesday mornings and Thursday nights, Seasonal Yoga the other way around and burlesque dance classes every night! It is also possible to book the studio for personal practice (daytime, evenings available in the smaller room) or for teaching during the weekends.

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!