Posts from ‘Spirituality’
I love the Virgin of Guadalupe and I don’t really understand why. I guess it is because she is such a stylish goddess. She is always portrayed surrounded by glitter and pretty things and lots of colour. She is the brown skinned Virgin and she is a Mother.
So I tried to make Virgin cookies…..not the best tasting cookies I ever made, but still kinda fun.
I also used the top of an old perfume bottle to emboss roses into the cookie dough.
And now, for a peek at a recent release of the new Fall collection: the Guadalupe skirt! Isn’t she just fabulous!
Are you feeling the pastels yet? Are there easter eggs on the countertop at the depanneur? If you are not into the commercial hype of Western holidays, maybe you can find solace in the natural rhythm of the earth. It’s really just about Spring. It’s about sprouting, budding, beginning, hatching…it is that moment on the cusp of growth. It’s about birth. Or shall we say re-birth, since Winter will come again and then another Spring will kindle re-birth again.
These images are for you to savour. Taste them as if you are eating a meringue. Let them melt on your tongue. As much as they are about high-fashion, they are absolutely not about the clothes. They are a feeling, a mood, a moment. The crumbling broken statues and columns evoke a feeling of walking among the ruins of an old temple. The light and the colours are fresh. It is the morning. The day is new.
I see a still moment. A moment to breathe. A time out. A little gift of time alone with yourself. Just look out the window and stay there for a few minutes. Your nervous system will adjust to the slower rhythm, the lack of stimulation. Try. See how hard it is to do that.
And here is a little facial tip from Michelle Phan. She is my make-up teacher. I came to make-up late in life (like, last year) and have been really enjoying playing with colours and powders thanks to her.
Kat
This is an excerpt from a movie that I love called Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. I love this scene. It is the only fight scene I have ever seen that I wanted to watch again and again. I do believe we can find a way in our humanness to understand in all of our being that we are connected to all things and part of everything and that that understanding is the key to knowing gravity in a different way. I believe children can be taught to be more connected to all things than adults cemented in their convictions that separation is more powerful than connection can ever be. This little clip is fantasy of a reality that I actually think is possible. I also think you can teach yourself to step beyond expected parameters and still be a person who is conflicted. This is a complicated scene that talks to me about striving to understand the power of the self and the infinite. I do think we can fly!
Fly away with a feather print dress from Katrin Leblond.
Your life is your most powerful art. See you at the boutique.
erin
They say you can’t throw a stone in Montreal without hitting a church. Well, in Austin Texas, where I just spent a week’s vacation, you can’t throw a stone without hitting an image of the Guadalupe Virgin or the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
I wasn’t raised with any Catholic education, so I was unfamiliar with the Sacred Heart. On this trip, as I began to see so many beautiful hearts all over town, in boutiques, on murals, and even just on keychains, I noticed I was really drawn to them.
We LOVE hearts at Boutique Katrin Leblond. Just look at our logo.
The heart’s bursting over with flowers, just like many sacred hearts burst with flames.
They say that, in Catholicism, the Sacred Heart of Jesus represents Jesus’ divine love for humanity. I like to think that when people enter the boutique, they are nurtured and inspired to show divine love towards themselves. We want every woman to feel they are entering a temple that worships the beauty that exists in all of us, inside and out.
this hand embroidered pillow is available at the boutique
I left Texas with a little hand-made Sacred Heart made out of tin that I bought from a Mexican artist. I’ve hung it over my work desk, so that the radiance of that divine self-love may carry me through my work days, and inspire me to be my best self.
Like a new dress or scarf, this little Heart of mine is a simple gift to myself that makes me feel special and loved. Come on by the Boutique and you’re bound to find something that does the same for you!
Express your beauty as you are. Dance in your kitchen, and sing to the stars.
Sarah Pearson
Are you tired of Ernst Haeckel yet? I’m not. I think his are some of the best illustrations from Nature I have ever seen. I love the attention to layout on the page…how he created shading and shapes that stand on their own as a work of art.
The first image is of moths. They are soft and fluffy and every hair is delicately rendered. Imagine the time it took to illustrate all of these.
And now for some Mothy jewelry. We just got these in the store. We have moth necklaces and octopus pins…oh and there is a Jellyfish necklace that is oh-so Ernst Haeckel.
The second image of the shells made me think of the experimental fashion by Swedish fashion designer Julia Krantz. These shell garments are made of translucent fabrics draped over metal frames. This was done as aschool project at HDK School of Design and Crafts in Gothenburg, Sweden.
We’ve all seen trilobite fossils as kids. They must have been numerous back in the day (millions of years ago) for there to be such an abundance of fossils around being found. and sold for a few dollars. Below Haeckel’s trilobite drawings, I have attached the image of a dress that to me looks like it was inspired by arthropods. The layers are like the sections of a hard shelled creature. The beauty of it lies in the perfect cusp between soft and hard. The dress holds it’s form, but doesn’t look too stiff. I think it is really gorgeous.
Trilobite Dress by: Wesley Nault+Daniel Feld
Hope you enjoyed another viewing of art, crafts and nature. Where does one begin and the other end? Is it all the same? Sometimes I believe that what we (humans) craft is not separate from, but a part, of the big organism we call Earth. We often assign value to what we craft: good or bad, expensive or cheap, destructive or ecological. What really matters though, is do you feel joyful? Is there a happy moment in every day that you live? If you need to find a happy moment outside of yourself, you can always come to the store for a little drop in, a hug or a cup of tea.
4647 blvd. St-Laurent, Montreal, Quebec, H2T1R2, 514-678-9616
Katrin Leblond
This is the second post of a new thread on this blog called The Goddess Series, profiling goddesses from all different cultures and finding a little place for them at our Boutique.
This week’s Goddess: Diana the Huntress.
Diana, Goddess of the Hunt
Diana: Who is she?
Diana is the Roman Goddess of the Hunt. Clothed in animal skins and dwelling deep in forests of oak, she represents creation, motherhood, and all earthly survival instincts. Diana is a huntress, which means she is ever-moving. She elusive and evading, keeping company with the sacred forests, and evading the grasp of those who might want to claim her for their own.
Her solitary, mysterious nature has led her also to be associated with chastity and virginity. She is also a lunar goddess in many cultures.
Introverted and elusive, Diana prefers the deep forests to the company of others
What Does Diana teach us?
Diana is the wild-woman spirit within each of us. She is present when we feel intuitive connections to land, or when we feel deep survival instincts towards ourselves or our kin. She is the power behind pregnancy and women’s physical mysteries. Diana teaches us to trust our wild side, follow our instincts, and delve into the shadows of our psychic lives.
Where Diana Lives at Boutique Katrin Leblond
Diana can be found in the earth tones of Katrin Leblond’s new spring collection, wearing prints that celebrate the health of our planet. She can be found in the knitted shawls, scarves and ponchos that envelop women in warmth and give us a touch of mystery. She can be found in the hearts of every woman that leaves the dressing room, feeling like they’ve just unleashed a hidden side of themselves with the new garments they’ve found.
A print from our new spring collection, celebrating native women
Earth tones abound in our new spring collection
Knitwear evokes feelings of both earthiness and mystery
Express your beauty as you are. Dance in your kitchen and sing to the stars.
Sarah Pearson
It’s not about doing it all. It is about doing what you can.
The world is vulnerable and we can protect it by being conscious of our choices each day. Plastic for everything all the time is not a right. It is a luxury, and a choice, that costs us all dearly. Excessive packaging is really easy to give up. Giving it up is an immediate improvement in our quality of life.
If the bag is really important to you buy one that you can use again.
Below are a few quotes I cut and pasted from the net.
Message in a Bottle
Seabirds are starving with bellies full of trash. Fur seals in New Zealand poop shards of yellow and blue. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is twice the size of Texas. Now the bad news: Plastic never goes away, and scientists are finding that it absorbs toxins with spongelike efficiency. The fix? Cut it off at the source.
By David Ferris
” the Garbage Patch as two to three times the size of Texas, but in fact it might be far larger–as much as 5 million square miles, or one and a half times the size of the United States. Sailors encounter it within 500 miles of the California coast and 200 miles off Japan.”
Katrin’s tote bags are available for you to take home your treasures. They are sold for $3. You are welcome and even encouraged to bring your own bags from home in anticipation of the beautiful fashion harvest you will fill them with.
Your life is your most powerful art. See you at the boutique.
erin
Come fall down the rabbit hole…
This is Wonderland…
Let your imagination soar…
Let me tell you a story.
I had been walking for days. Lost. Alone. Afraid…
My feet were screaming, begging for rest, but I could not stop. I was fearful of the emptiness. If I kept going, maybe nothing could get me. Tears would no longer flow, tapped out.
I had stopped screaming for help two moons ago. I knew no one could hear me. I was in a world unknown to me.
I climbed up. up. up. Finally, the top of the mountain. The sun shone so bright. So yellow. How could that be? It was the dead of night. I got closer. closer. closer. It wasn’t the sun. It was a horse. A great horse. Yellow. Wings. I stopped for the first time in a long time. That was it. I was what I feared the most. Crazy.
He was standing still. Behind him was a wall of rocks. Some of them as colorful and bright as he, others dull and lifeless as I felt.
I approached the horse. He looked at me and smiled. Sit, rest. He said. I have riddle for you.
I sat.
In the dark I am found, without being fetched. In the day I am lost, without being stolen. What am I?
I thought. I did not know the answer. I gave up.
The stars. he said.
Stars. I hadn’t looked up at the stars since I was lost. I did so now. Their bright twinkling bodies gave me comfort. I hadn’t been alone this whole time. Those little tricksters had been up there the whole time. Laughing. Joking. Watching out for me. I found the brightest one I could off in the distance. He was different. He was warmth. He wasn’t a star. He was a town. I started to run. run. run.
I awoke to the sun in my face. The real sun. I was lying on a street, people surrounding me. They took me to a pub. Someone bought me a drink and asked me for my tale. I spoke of my days wandering. I hesitated. I told them of the magnificent horse. I expected laughs. The people looked at me knowingly.
There is a story, about a great horse, yellow as the sun, with spectacular wings. Behind him stands a wall. For every lost soul he guides home, one rock on that wall…turns a wonderful color.
Tell me a story….
(Photo in this post is one Kat pulled from the internet.)
All posts in this post were found and pulled from the web by Kat
I am a spiritual person. I am a political person.
I believe that I am empowered to make ethical decisions that are beneficial for my community by the money I spend as an entrepreneur . I believe that as an artist, it is my duty to create beauty for my customers to enjoy. I believe that women deserve to be treated like goddesses entering a temple when they come in to my boutique. They are to be served, taken care of, draped in fabric and made to feel beautiful. I believe this from the bottom of my heart.
I have always been politically active and I have always been crafty. There were certain points in my life where I felt guilty and pained because “just making pretty things” was not saving the planet. Now that I am running an ecological and local manufacturing business that serves and adores women, I feel better. I have merged my environmental activist with my feminist and with my local economist in a way that allows me to keep being a creative human being.
And here is Linda Evangelista, our Montreal-born International Fashion Icon, merging her political views that something is wrong in the world and someone should be held accountable with her love of the Madonna. She got to play a living Madonna in a Religious procession. I have traveled to Antigua in Guatemala to see these processions. They walk the streets playing sad brass band music all the while carrying statues and crying for the death of Jesus. They walk for 12-13 hours. My main reason for traveling there was to see the “carpets” that the locals make from coloured saw dust and flowers. The carpets are made in the street prior to the passing of the procession. When the procession passes, the carpet gets trampled. It was incredibly beautiful. (This is reminding me that I should do a post about those carpets.)
I am unusually attracted the the iconography of the Madonna even though I was not raised in any form of Christianity. To me the Madonna is the “mother”, gaia, goddess … and those are all great things. It represents female divinity, something each woman carries within herself.
I love religious art. I love folk art. I love making pretty things.
It can take quite a while in life’s journey to settle into being who you truly are and not who you wish you were.
This post was written by Erin based on Katrin’s telling of the making of her embroidered travel belt.
Your life is your most powerful art. See you at the boutique.
erin
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While on my first road trip across Canada, with the man I later married, I wanted to record our travels. The problem was I get car sickness.
Despite, the fact that I couldn’t write in my journal, I found embroidery to be something I could handle even with the rock and roll of the road. Embroidery became my traveling form of journaling.
I stitched the landscapes and the names of all the animals we saw along the way.
The coloured threads depict the story of our road trip together.
I would sit in the passenger seat of our non air-conditioned van and stitch away.
The finished belt wraps around my body twice.
The needle pulled the thread in and out of the fabric stitching the moments I wanted to capture. The van hit the road. My needle pulled the thread. The wind swept us away at the start of our journey. The stitches became pictures. The pictures began the story of our journey. I stitched the flower called Indian paint brush. Wild to Canada, this flower called out to be remembered. I stitched the orange and yellow of it’s petals. The lakes in Ontario were numerous swimming pleasures. There were so many lakes. I painted with the blue of my embroidery thread just one to remember them all. As we approached the prairies fields of Canola, also called Rape seed, danced yellow blooms that waved in the wind. Dots of yellow thread floated across the belt.
The car broke down and we had to spend three days waiting for a part in Edmonton. I stitched the part we needed called a U joint. We drove on to the Rockies. Nights under the crescent moon were beautiful.
We took the fairy to Salt Spring Island and went swimming with purple and blue dragon flies.
We watched boat racing on a Native reserve on Vancouver Island. We walked in the red wood forest under the full moon.
Then we left Canada. We hit Seattle and we went to the fish and flower market. Four hours from Seattle, we spent two days at mount Saint Helen the mountain that erupted years before.
LOVE…….LOVE LOVE WAS EVERYTHING. Our van was love parked in dry lands that had sage bushes all around. I stitched a heart floating over our van. I stitched my love. My heart.
We drove through the Craters of the Moon and finally got back to the rivers of Ontario. Eager to get home we drove and drove and drove…day and night. We took shifts.
The road took us home.
It is so good to have close friends who always have your back and want the best for you. It is so good to be living surrounded by the real truth that we are never alone, that we are strong in connection with others.
It is good to just know deep down to our toes that what we have that really has value is our friends, our family, the world around us that we love. Go ahead take away the car, the house, the long list of material possessions. Go ahead! What I want is to feel safe and loved and be able to share that with my daughter and the world.
Friends make us strong. They offer us the best embrace to fall into when life gets tough. There for you when things go wrong. They empower us to take more risks and listen to our selves more.
Thanks to all my good friends that I have had over the years that made me feel stronger about myself. It wasn’t always easy but I am who I am today in part because of you and you will always be with me in everything I do. And even if you’re far away you are still my heart.
There you are. You know me. I know you. I am me and you are you. You are part of me. When I grow more into myself you are happy for me. When you grow more into yourself I am happy for you. I love how you change and how you stay the same. I am lucky to know you. Thank you for sharing everything you do.
Thanks for all the fun we have together!
See you at the boutique.
Erin.
Sometimes we fall, we slip.
Sometimes things don’t all go as planned.
Sometimes a great idea turns out to need a lot of tweaking.
A sting.
A zing.
A bit of a sour thing.
Sometimes a bit of sour helps you appreciate the sweetness that comes along next.
all photos by erin except love sculpture is by tom brosnahan
I made these shirts because YES it is this simple and it has been said before: the law is LOVE! I have built my small business around this simple word. If we make it with love … women will love it… and it will sell. The surprise was how much men love it too. They love the store. They love the colours. They get it. They like to see their ladies dressing up and feeling pretty. The attraction is natural. The girlier I make the clothing, the more men love it. Hurray for LOVE!
This is the love sculpture by pop artist Robert Indiana
We have one in the old port now and there are many around the world. Everyone gets it.
A fashion designer telling you to take off your clothes? YES!
Loving our bodies has to stop being optional. Just buckle down and LOVE your BODY! Lie in the sun and feel the sun loving your naked body. Lie on a blanket in the grass and feel it…feel the earth beneath you. The earth loves your body. Swim in a river and just take a second to feel the cold water againts your skin. It is not judging you. It loves you and caresses you and cleanses you.
I love my cellulite!
I love my double hips!
I love my small breasts!
I love my ….
I invite you to claim love for those parts that have been hard to love in the comment section of this post.
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