Planet Alpha Male

I mentioned a few posts ago that Helen was going to partner up with a marketing professional to sell her kanzashi men's lapel flowers. Well, it has happened! The webstore is up. A few more things are going to happen to complete it, but you can now get a look at some of the flower pins Helen has made especially for the shop at Planet Alpha Male. Here are a few of my favorites:

This first one is vintage kimono silk with a coin pearl center....note all the different textures.....

.....Here's something unusual; cotton replica African kente cloth with a red coral center.....

.....and here's a fall colors Japanese maple leaf of vintage kimono silk with a mineral bead of uncertain parentage and brass wire.......

.....and here's a brown-ish maroon and grey vintage kimono silk with another mineral bead.....

......a wonderful manly silk sent by Helen's Kanzashi Fairy Godmother in Japan, with a coin pearl....

....and a rich brown plaid vintage kimono silk one with a mineral bead......

And here's our favorite modeled picture, so far! He's wearing a chirimen silk flower with a coral bead......

This look has gotten big time kudos on the Instagrams......what do you guys think?

War and Remembrance

Veteran's Day/Armistice Day/Remembrance Day is a little over a month away. Helen never gave it a second thought until one of her cousins, who spent some childhood years in Europe and visited there as an adult, suggested that she make a remembrance poppy lapel flower. These are a frequent accessory in the UK and a few other places, it turns out, at this time of year. A little Internet research revealed that this bright red poppy, Papaver rhoeas or the Flanders poppy, grows readily on disturbed earth, and the battlefields of Europe during World War I provided plenty of that.

So, here is Helen's kanzashi version of the remembrance poppy....

Silk charmeuse flower, dupioni silk leaves, Swarovski crystal center anchored by a glass seed bead. Buy it here .