Off with her head!

So I haven't posted in practically forever. There's been plenty worth sharing, I just never had the motivation to sit down and share it.

Well it's a New Year and with it come new priorities. My goal in 2014 is to take more pictures, document more memories, and stop making excuses. Easy, right?!

Luckily, I'm back with a bang! This past weekend the Ella Dynae team and I pulled off a Valentine's Day photo shoot inspired by Alice in Wonderland. The shoot featured a fabulous tea party and a brand new Queen of Hearts costume.

The costumes are being featured in Party Style Magazine's February/March issue, so I'll hold off including those images (as incredible as they are!). Stay tuned to The Diary of Ella Dynae blog for those images soon!

What I can share is the tablescape that I designed for the tea party scene of the photo shoot! Check out the whimsical fête below!

Photography by Merlin Showalter

For the tea party table, I was feeling an eclectic vibe and wanted to create a cohesive hodgepodge of decadence (a contradiction, I know, but it makes sense in my head). I collected antique bone china teacups of various floral designs, filled old glass bottles with water tinted by food coloring, and used dusty gold lace for the tablecloth.

Photography by Merlin Showalter

In the theme of hodgepodge, I mixed metals by pairing the gold tablecloth with silver serving trays and serveware. I hand made the "drink me." and "eat me." signs by using a chalkboard paint pen on matte scrapbooking paper. Finally, I tied in elements from the costumes to the table by using the same checkerboard fabric from the Queen of Heart's dress for the napkins.

Photography by Merlin Showalter

Some of the teacups I chose to stack, evoking a tea party thrown by the Mad Hatter. I secured them using duct tape (there is seriously nothing that duct tape can't do!) and adorned them with garden variety flowers in the party's color palette. The rest I filled with sweet treats like red velvet cupcakes that I decorated with heart stickers stuck on toothpicks.

Photography by Merlin Showalter

Ok guys. This was seriously the hardest thing in the world not to take apart and eat. I am a sucker for any carb, but then you cover it with sugar? Oh. Dear. Me. Unfortunately, seeing as the donuts sat out for over 48 hours, their edibleness was greatly diminished.

And finally, here was the full finished product:

Photography by Merlin Showalter

In a perfect world, we would have held the photo shoot in an actual garden, but alas, we live in Oregon and are perpetually cursed by rain, wind, and fog in the month of January. Le sigh. So we tried our best to create an English garden atmosphere and I think we faired rather nicely, if I do say so myself! In fact I think the fake topiaries and oversized paper flowers added to the overall cartoonish Wonderland feeling. And props to the hubs for the idea of hanging the clock ;-)