May
13

sisterMAG N°7 – A lemony yellow cover dress

You have now spent the first weekend with our new issue and we are very excited to hear and see what you think of it, what features you liked best and what recipes you want to try! We first took a little weekend break, drank lemonade, put Italian sunglasses on and ate pasta ;). Now we are starting the new week full of energy and first want to let you look behind the scenes of our cover shooting.

The Theme and our cover dress
After the theme “Do you know the land where lemon trees bloom” was clear, Evi had the idea of the lemon dress. First of all: it is of course an exaggeration. Paola was even wearing hip pads under her skirt to make this over-the-top wonderful Sophia-Loren-silhouette. A little bit we got inspired by the Chanel Resort 2013 Collection (look 17 or 18 for example).

The production of the dress was a time-consuming affair, actually the hardest design yet! The lemons we sawed by hand on a scroll saw, the edges were sanded, then a hole was drilled and finally sewn onto the dress. The skirt is incredibly heavy and definitely not for everyday use :). As sisterMAG readers probably know: With our cover dresses we intentionally go a different path than usual women’s or fashion magazines. We don’t want to show the latest trend, the newest collection or the most beautiful pore-free face but rather show the ideas, colours and topics of the issue. We want to create dresses made out of interesting materials you would never see in real life.

Shooting day

We were particularly pleased to be working with a talented and really great stylist from Berlin. Hair and makeup was done by Lena Schleweis, and we hope that we can do many more projects together in the future. Definitely take the time to look at her site lenaschleweis.com .

The shoot took place at the Botanical Garden in Berlin Dahlem. Ashley and I had looked around the whole area before (you can read her blogpost full of wonderful pictures of their cacti here ). That was really good because on the actual shooting day, we only had 1 hour to photograph three different locations. So I became the slave driver, shooing my two photographers Ashley and Cris (who made the video) and model Paola through the jungle.

Paola I know for quite a while, because she had been a loyal Neu4bauer-reader for a long time. Eventually we met for coffee at the airport in Bari, when I was there on vacation and we have kept in touch ever since. Hence she did not only take Cris and me on a tour through her city (Bari – see the whole feature on pages xx following in sisterMAG N°7), but also came to Berlin this April and modeled for our cover. We are very excited and a little proud to show our true-Italian friend on the cover of our Italy Edition ;). By the way: Paola has her own blog where she shows her vintage finds and what she sells on her Etsy shop etc. Click through to “Paola’s Vintage”

The images that didn’t make it
Always hard to choose only TWO images from more than 500! See some of my favourite shots, which just didn’t make the cut to be the cover ;). Click through to our Pinterest Cover Board to save the image for yourself or use in a blogpost (click on any image):

And now there is only one last thing to show: the Behind-the-scenes video, which Cris shot from our day of shooting day and which came out really really wonderfully! Definitely have a look and see how Ashley and I work together!

Cover photos: Ashley Ludäscher Photography
Video: Cristopher Santos
Hair & Makeup: Lena Schleweis
Model: Paola Pierno

Apr
26

The year of books in sisterMAG

If you wouldn’t label yourself a collector of any kind (stamps, little figurines, sand from the beaches you have visited, beer mats or anything of the like) we can assure you that there is some corner in your flat dedicated to your secret passion for collecting.
This corner may have different appearances. Maybe you pile your collection, but you might just as well have chosen the window sill as a perfect place or the ‘classic’ way of arranging it neatly on a shelf. Some pieces of your collection may be scattered in your flat and occupy quite prominent places such as the drawer beside your bed or the side table in your living room.

Even though all the pieces of your collection have something in common, they all have a different content – and by chance might even contain some grains of sand from a beach you have visited, a stamp or even a beer mat. That’s because books are something which is often connected to memories. Something we collect quite unconsciously but which we like to look at again after some time. Especially in times of new technologies which are constantly changing and keep coming into our lives before leaving us again, books are something that stays in our lives from the very first time a book has been read to us as children. We develop a preference for certain kinds of books: novels, cook books, love stories, or special interest books, … this list could go on and on, and on.

This variety of stories in combination with the experiences and memories connected with it made us decide to put the year 2013 under the guiding theme “Year of Books”.
In this year’s issues you will not only find articles on reading books, writing books and making books (digital or print) but we have also dedicated each issue to a certain book which by its title sets the topic and the tone of each issue.
And there is of course you and your very own collection of books. We would like to invite you to share your best picks, your page turners and constant companions.
Follow sisterMAG on Facebook and/ or Twitter (#yearofbooks13), post your favourite book titles, explore the favourite books of others and if you are lucky you and your recommendation might end up in one of our upcoming issues!
Have a look at our Facebook-account where we have started to collect some quotes and book titles already. Share a quote from the book you are reading below this article or on Facebook and join the sharing

Apr
04

Post from my Kitchen – Part II

After Toni described what we got in our package the other day, it is my (Thea’s) part to tell you a little bit about our childhood memories and the content of our boxes. When Toni heard the theme of this swap, she instantly turned to me and said: “We must do a cellar cake”. A cellar cake (in older times also named Lukullus after the great Latin gourmet and commander Lucullus) is a chocolate cake made of cacao, coconut fat and layers of shortbread cookies.

However, something that has shaped our whole life is a saying my mom used to tell us all the time: “Everything must change in order to stay good”. Living after this aphorism, our childhood was never full of traditions and the same meals, food or even Christmas Trees but rather experiments and new stuff. That’s why we decided to spice up the good old Lukullus and try it in different versions. In the end we made four different versions of the chocolaty treat:

A White cellar cake with cranberries and whole wheat cookies
A more traditional Lukullus in mini square format with a hint of amaretto
Squared mini cellar cakes with a surprise of red jam inside
Finally Mini Cellar Cakes in muffin shape with meringues and pieces of whole wheat cookies

Then (very much like in our childhood) Toni ceded me to do the packaging :). I’ve always been a buff for paper, boxes and everything around Packaging. Thus I rummaged through my “Structural Design” books (by Rabbit Press) and made up these square and rectangular boxes made out of sturdy cardboard paper in Yellow, Blue and White. Each recipe got another audiobook series, which we really loved in the past. Toni and I both collected ridiculous amounts of tapes –never CDs and we also do not believe in CDs for children today, because there is this certain atmosphere about cassettes! CDs take away the joy of arguing about who is responsible for pulling the magnetic band ;). Toni used to make homemade cassette covers for the ones we had copied *ehem* (back in the days we were not as indulged in copyright laws as we are now ;) and I knew my “Bibi Blocksbergs” so well, that they would stop the cassette after 5 seconds and I had to guess which episode it was.

Just on the morning of sending the package, I baked MY childhood memory cake: the simple sugar yeast cake made by mom and cut into little rectangles. Simply heaven, especially when still warm!

You will find our recipes later this week on the Foodboard, which our lovely organizers of “Post from my kitchen” have created.
We hope you like what we came up with. We definitely love all the ideas we saw around the web! Thanks so much, Silke, for being an awesome swap partner!

Yours, Toni & Thea

Jan
24

Meet The Blogger 2013 in Stockholm

Everyone loves to meeting friends. However when your friends are spread around the world because you have met them digitally through blogging, Facebook or their wonderful Pinterest findings it is much harder to meet up.

This coming week we have another chance to catch up with some of our friends from the blogging world. We will go to Stockholm to attend and speak at “Meet The Blogger Stockholm 2013″. We are really excited about this bunch of lifestyle and living bloggers we already know and value

Liselore, who is the organizer of the MeetTheBlogger events
Chi from OneZeroSixKids, who was here last year for The Hive Berlin and is one of our valued proof readers for English
Mary-Ellen from HOPinteriors, who we’ve shared a lovely coffee in London with and who is the official blogger of MeetTheBlogger and will again do the challenging task of live-blogging
Lovely Jeanette from Byfryd, who we started loving at The Hive and who is one of the most talented lifestylists (= Thea’s neologism for people who just make their live beautiful)
Frida Ramstedt from the popular blog and iPad magazine Trendenser, who did the last keynote in Amsterdam – a very inspiring woman
Emma from Emma’s Design Blog – Thea had the pleasure of getting to know her during the Blog’nhagen tour in Copenhagen last year
Judith from Joelix, who will be contributing to sisterMAG in the next issue and who is a dear friend we always love meeting (Hive, Hello Etsy Eindhoven …)
Of course Elodie Love from Hamburg with one of the rare flower blogs out there (Madame Love) and who Thea had the most fabulous tour at Blogst conference
More TheHive friends from Berlin: Caroline from Trend Daily and Toni from Skandivis
Our good friends from Germany Ricarda (23qmstil) and Clara (Tastesheriff), as well as Kathrin from Happy Home Blog
You might remember her project from our past issue: Steffi from I Love Eco – a really great Dutch blog about eco-friendly prodcucts
Deborah from Kickcan and Conkers, who always has the best stuff she shares on Facebook :)
vtwonen author Laura who has been incredibly nice and generous about our magazine

And as always there are some names you have seen around in the World Wide Web and you finally get to meet in person. We are especially looking forward to getting to know:

Nina Holst from stylizimo
Desiree from Vosges Paris, who I’ve had lovely email conversations with, but we have never really met and talked
Of course Will from Bright Bazaar, we definitely are looking forward to hearing his speech and finally meeting him in person!!

We are also really honoured to be able to speak at the conference. Our topic will be “Our creative process”, which is a very exciting topic to talk about. However if you cannot attend, don’t be sad! You can follow all the activities and speeches through the Social Media channels of Meet The Blogger: their live blog over at meetthebloggerstockholm.com, their Twitter feed @meettheblogger or you can follow them on Facebook.

Now we only have to still put together our presentation!! But it wouldn’t be fun without the last-minute pressure, would it?

All pictures: Meet The Blogger Amsterdam 2012

Jan
17

Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Berlin – Lena Hoschek Runway Show

Sometimes the best things happen when you don’t expect them. On a bus ride back from the rewardStyle Party (see post about that here) the lovely Andrea from Ginger Vintage and Jasmin from madametamtaam offered to give me their spare ticket to the Lena Hoschek Fashion Show on Tuesday.

Lena Hoschek is an Austrian designer from Graz. After school she graduated in Fashion Design in Vienna, afterwards worked as an intern for Vivienne Westwood which inspired her to open her own atelier in Graz. Today she has shops in Vienna and Berlin Mitte. She is one of the set designers of Berlin Fashion Week. Her collection could be described as “Punk and Folklore” with many Russian influences mixed with hardcore biker boots. Her dresses are known to be very retro, inspired by the fifties with wide skirts, small waistlines and you could also find these ingredients in the most recent collection. This time embroideries, puffy sleeves and Russian inspired hairstyles dominated the looks.

It definitely was an exciting atmosphere in the Mercedes Benz tent with such a big show to start. Many celebrities or wanna-bes gallivanting next to the runway.

Take as an inspiration:

Large shoulder scarves with bold patterns
Mix and match biker boots with dresses (not sure you will see me doing that but as you can see it is legitimate)
Braided hair (definite yes)

All in all the collection reminded me a little bit of Ulyana Sergeenko with a rougher edge.

I also saw the next fashion show from Rebekka Ruétz, but I’ll tell you more about that tomorrow ;).

Yours, Thea