Enough about “The Hive” – this week after Pentecost we finally turn to our new issue (which is not so new anymore). Have you noticed we haven’t told you too much about it until now? Well, we thought you can have a look at it first and now we want to pinpoint you to different articles, introduce our contributors and share some Behind-the-scenes. We hope you are up for it and will have continuing fun with our second issue. There will be a fun give-away in a few weeks time, so be sure to know issue 2 – you’ll need the knowledge ;)

The issue’s theme – Blossoming New Beginnings

N°2 – as you may know – was themed “Blossoming New Beginnings”. I absolutely loved this idea, because it did not only give aus a wide variety of topics to talk about with start-ups, founders, a passionate soon-to-be pastry chef or even in the fitness section (Start a new life by using online tools to do sports and fitness). It was also a lot of fun searching for visual inspiration. You quickly realize how many designs, pictures or DIYs are inspired by “florals”. This is why I started a Pinterest Board called “Florals” as well as my so-far favourite board ever: “Fake Flowers”. Do have a look and get inspired!

Our idea for the cover & inspiration for the roses

Our first “Behind-the-Scenes” starts with the beginning of our magazine: the cover! Just like in issue 1 we went for an all handmade dress! Early on in the conceptional phase my mother and I had agreed on the “pastel-coloured flower” theme, but the actual shape and form was only decided on the day of making (Easter Sunday and Monday by the way: our holidays have turned into work assignment days ;). We were inspired by this Dolce & Gabbana Collection of 2009, which has remained one of my favourite fashion shows ever. We then sourced different tutorials for roses and ended up figuring it out for ourselves, very much inspired by the one published on “Oh Joy – Paper Flower Cones”. The weirdest thing: I finally met Brittany of “The House That Lars Built” last week at “The Hive” and had no idea that she was behind the tutorial. Only today when I wanted to source the website I realized!! Blogging world is much smaller than you think. You must (!) head over to her blog for some paper flower goodness. She is such an amazing artist and an even lovelier person to spend time with!

We however changed the roses a bit – tucked them, creased the paper and couldn’t leave a hole at the bottom, because we ended up gluing them onto the dress. This was made by “the DIY expert” (as you’ve got to know her now): our mom. She constructed a very simple white top with a pale green skirt bottom. Organza was draped over this and the roses glued onto the organza. If you want to make such roses yourself (it needs a little practise but they turn out beautifully), click here to read the instructions. You can also watch a video of me making the roses:

The model

Quite untypical for a fashion setting: the model herself helped us crafting the dress. Anna has been such a big help since the beginning of sisterMAG and we’ve known each other since high school. She is the one responsible for the little macro-typographic details (what this means: most of our articles and pages end up being on one line at the bottom – that’s all her doing!!). She has spent hours and days in my appartment few days before publishing. She does not only provide me with food during that time (I’m not joking) but we’re also having a blast working overly tired and goofy. It was however the “designer’s” decision to ask her to model for our cover and we were really thrilled with the results. In real life our model works on her dissertation about XML workflows and pins like a maniac. (Check out her Pinterest here).

The Styling

When we were crafting the dress the pretty light blue collier was still dangling from my mom’s neck, because she had bought it a few days earlier via “nurstrass”-eBay-Shop (what a wonderful ressource for brooches, necklaces and earrings with rhinestones). It was such a lucky coincidence you sometimes run in. And we ended up with the perfect accessories for this pastel dress. The shoes (also to be seen with the yellow dress on page 208) were purchased in Italy a few years ago. They are so elegant and ladylike although having a huge platform and therefore quite a comfy bedding.

The Shooting

This time I wasn’t afraid at all before shooting the cover. Why? The reason is a lovely new friend I only met through sisterMAG. Katharina Rose – photographer from Leipzig – had sent me an email after our first issue. We met up at “Café Cantona” and it clicked. We ended up talking for several hours and she was thrilled when I asked her to shoot our cover. We were allowed to work in the photo studio she works in (Schoko-Auge) and she also introduced us to our stylist for this look: Denise Fickert. Denise transformed Anna’s hair into the perfect Prada-50s-hairdo and fulfilled all our wishes for the look make-up-wise. It all went really smoothly and we ended up with so many great shots, the decision for the final images was terribly hard.

A little surprise – get your tablet ready!!

If you want to see even more pictures of our shooting and you have a smartphone or tablet: get our sisterMAG app for free (iOS or Android). On the cover you’ll find a little button which brings you to a gallery of “Behind-the-Scene”-pictures of the shooting! (Yes, you can even read our issue on your iPhone during that horribly long metro ride – once downloaded it is stored locally, try it!)

Thanks again to everyone who helped making this cover – Eva, Toni, Anna, Katharina & Denise – and the many ressources online which helped shaping the idea!

P.S. The dress was the best visual inspiration. I had hung it onto my clothes rack. While layouting I always looked at it for colour inspirations and happy thoughts!