Cranberry Photoshoot!

So yay!! we finally have the pictures!....

First of all,we would like to give major props to our gorgeous models, Monica, Verlyncia, Juli Anka, Latonya, Meaghan, Natasha, Ajay, Will & Marcus.....*cough*..the boys were so delicious...lol had to squeeze them in somehow...the perks of being a designer..lol..

Props to our photographer, Bryan Jones (he is soo sweet...despite the million & one demands, he just shrugged and said,"okay") He is extremely talented and i know he is going to go places & our Makeup Artists, Tomara Watkins & Dominique ( who immediately knew wat type of makeup we wanted without our own suggestions, holla at barbie by mac lol) They are also so awesome, i've had my face damaged by many A makeup artist and i am here to tell you that this makeup artists have the golden touch, dang, they are very very very talented and CREATIVE...love them, cant do without them!
We WILL be working together again( By God's Grace) for our summer collection. This is Cranberry's team.

I honestly cant even begin to describe how gorgeous everything went, the vibe was awesome!...Even the male models were flipping through fashion magazines looking for poses for the female models lol, it was ridiculous!!!....We personally think the shoot went great DESPITE how quickly we planned it, despite the effing stress & depression that burnt our souls when everything seemed to be going wrong, dang to think we ALMOST cancelled ....sigh**....
Soooo we honestly are just happy that we actually like these pictures....excuse me, love them!......anyhoo bigups to my backyard as well lol, we took some of the pictures outside of my house and i am telling you, i never knew my backyard was that cute...go cranberry!....

The pictures can be played below for the lazy...AND i also included a link leading to a photoalbum for those hardworking people who will rather MANUALLY flip through the pixels!...ENJOY!




http://cranberryglitz.myphotoalbum.com/

ANNNNND SCENE...

Soooooo we kept it a liddle secret from y'all that we were planning a cranberry photoshoot....We decided that it was time to finally create a look book for clients, both online and also in print, because lawd knows i am sick of directing people to the blog & my space lol....

So last week we decided on April 21st and contacted the photographer of our choice, Bryan Jones (love him) and our makeup artists, Tomara Watkins & Dominique( AWESOME LADIES!!). The hardest part was picking the models we wanted to use, we were looking for girls with different looks to convey the essence of the cranberry girl. We wanted them to not only be beautiful but to also have very interesting features....to be able to look mod, glamorous, sexy, and sooo cool at the drop of the hat...in general, we wanted girls who automatically hold your attention...and we were looking for all that in one week...ha ha....since we wanted to shoot a lot of dresses we wanted about 8 or 9 girls.....which we got in a day......yes we got it like that lol.....we wanted to work with girls we had previously worked with (some of them can be seen in the blog about the Cranberry Spunky Girl)....of course we chose Naima and Monica, my favourite pair of models....lol....we also decided to shoot in a studio because we wanted the best lighting in our pictures....BUT as you know you cannot be a perfectionist with only one week at your convenience....lol...i cant even tell you how many things went WRONG.....first of all we lost the idea of the studio, they were all booked..wedding season...hisss...lol im just kidding....so we decided to do it at my house and rent the photography lights from penn camera....that went horribly wrong when we realised that the holding deposit was about 1500 dollars, thats like a frigging gamble yo....and i dont have liver to play around with my credit card like that ....lol....and of course on friday, like 2 girls suddenly decided to let us know that they had to work..and one of them contacted pink eye aka APOLLO...lol...we were like ???????....so there went our original assignment of clothes...we had to re-organize, re- strategize(if thats a word)...re-EVERYTHING!..... so the scramble began to replace them immediately, THANKFULLY we were able to....unfortunately one of the ladies who had to cancel was Naima, who i had envisioned the photoshoot around..:(..well its all good anyway...so the saturday came around....it was bright and sunny....we cleared out my living room and prepared for the shoot....and it happened!....

Models!Models!Models!...our original picks

but three of these gorgeous ladies dropped out.

We have SOOOO much plans for these pictures....it is going EVERYWHERE....it is our first ever planned photoshoot...hopefully the next one will definitely be planned over a longer period of time...dang i dont know why we are so damn spontanous!.......sigh*...i dont care, i loved it....the makeup artists and photographer and models are all students like us, and we were all trying to help each other.... so.....although we all had very little experience with everything, we had great ideas and loads of enthusiam....and we wanted it to rock the house cranberry style...and when cranberry says its going to be hot...It is always hot....so thats why i am so PSYCHED!...nothing can bring me down!....lol wouldnt you like to see them?????...I DO TOO!!! its with the photographer now BAH****:(...we get to see em tommorow tho....yay!!!....i will also tell you how it went ....soon...I promise!

On other news, i have been going out every weekend like i am getting payed, reason is i know my ass is going to be screwed to the reading desk once i start dental school in the fall....this is very random but i find it very funny how many people think my sister, friends & I are very ditzy and not book smart because we like to play dress up and we are into fashion.....the makeup artist, Tomara was in my physics lab group and she was telling me how she felt about us when she first met us, that we would walk into class with huge scarves and sunglasses LOL...and be messing around with the bunsen burner, that she was like, "how the hell are these girls messing around with fire when they are wearing wool scarves around their necks".....had i known she had these thots, i would have burnt her hand...by mistake of course....psych naw im just kidding...lol...but really i get insulted at times shaz...pls respect the Magna cum laude bio/ chem degrees hung up on the Caven's wall, we do it like that.....ANyway back to my point... so even on Friday(the day before the photoshoot) when i got my hot girl friday night, wanna go out call, which i usually SCREEN, i made sure i picked up the phone and said yes!...we had about a million and one things to do but like die hard's we still went out...and after we staggered home from the club (at 3 AM)...we got em done....we eventually went to bed at 9am....and woke up at 9 30am because the makeup artist had arrived :(.....IMAGINE.....lol who asked me to go out?....anywayz today(sunday) is/was my 3 yr anniversary with my boyfriend and i am MAD i was so sleepy that i passed out at his house until it was time for church(evening mass) and chose to go home and sleep instead of celebrating it..lol till next yr!!...HAPPY ANNIVERSARY BOO!!!.....the things i do for cranberry:(

Rocking new Cranberry minidresses aka freakum dresses @ a party.

Meanwhile, i must speak of my new obsession with old hollywood actress, Rita Hayworth, i have spent many a nights the last month watching ALL ..well specifically ALL of her romantic comedic movies, my top pick is Cover girl...(its on your free movies if you have comcast)....love it!...she is glamourous, funny, gorgeous and a great dancer...i wish i had her poise sigh*...women these days are like men yo...wanna see a real lady? watch Rita Hayworth in motion...she glides...

CIAO!!

$$MILLION DOLLAR FANCY$$

April 5th 2006
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The setup was very different from any show i have been to at Howard University, they were having it on the yard ala Nyc fashion week at bryant park....could they pull it off? ....for the very FIRST time in my life i was going to watch a show that i was involved in.....my whole life as a dancer and now as a designer.. has been spent running around backstage so i woke up Excited as hell knowing i was going to watch the show! i loveeee watching shows.!....on the downside the weather was a tad bit chilly but i figured that the tents were going to be heated....ah ah...do they want us to catch pneumonia?....hiss lol....anywayz we got to school an hr before the show started to make our rounds backstage making sure all the clothes fit properly on the models..and making sure we knew were all the clothes were hung to avoid backstage trauma after the show....after that was done...we took our seats in the reserved area...which i must mention were very great seats as compared to the ASA show which had reserved the front seats usually given to designers as VIP seats for **special guests students* while the long suffering designers were left craning their necks to watch their clothes coming down the runway...hiss...Nigerians and their damn lust for exclusivity...anywayz before i totally digress and lose myself in my topic of disdain these days....the stage was set up very with two pink checkered Barbie boxes which were sooooo cute....the runway was covered with pink & purple glitter....i loved it!....the tent idea was also really cool ...i could feel the students eating it up like candy...everybody was really hype and the models did a great job...i didnt think they would pull it off like that...but they really really did...my friend abby's lil sister was around for the show....and it was actually her first EVER fashion show...and i was just thrilled that she had a greaaaaat time watching it....yay!! go lauren!!!!....there literally was no way for anyone to distinguish what clothes were cranberry so we just screamed Cranberrry!!!!! as loud as we could whenever one of our dresses came out on stage lol....people prolly thot we were pyschopath's lol...but who cares lol....

I do have a vid of the show which i will put out later when i have more time...but for now, enjoy some pixels of the event!

Tents

Backstage

stage setup.

Lenny forte

*I just love the dolls in the box idea*....

Cranberry mini dresses( new stuff you haven't seen)

...

Some pictures i took at the event of Other designers outfits i thot were cute....oh and i really love fawn in that white bikini...fab*

CIAO!!

Fitting at the Million Dollar Fancy

>The show fell on a April 5th, a Thursday, so Ozzy m'dear couldnt make it down since she had class on Friday bah*.....I previously mentioned that i started sewing a bit later than i planned due to focusing on getting a temp J.O.B for the summer...thankfully it still all worked out and by the fitting date *last week Monday* we had all our ish together...

>Now fitting was another long ass issue...I very clearly remember going for one of the earlier practices to pick our models....we specifically chose 12 females in total...the plan was to put about 12 - 15 clothes in the show...leaning more towards 12 really...we knew that the organizers were a bit antsy about putting a lot of clothes from the ASA show...so in order to make sure we didn't have to begin sewing a whole lotta new clothes from scratch we wanted to keep the numbers of clothes we put in very doable. The whole show was generally arranged into Scenes....cute scenes nonetheless....we were told we were going to feature in the socialite scene which basically featured bubbly, puffy, colorful, barbie like dresses....and also a scene called "sexy siren*...which featured sexy kelis like dresses.....THAT was the plan...like i just mentioned...we chose 6 girls for each scene....12 in total.

>Now at fitting we were presented with an extremely DIFFERENT plan...suddenly it seemed like were the only designers for the socialite scene...there were about 15 girls in that scene that NEEDED dresses and all eyes turned to cranberry to fit them...i am talking girls that had absolutely NOTHING to wear like 3 days before the show.....including plus size models who we had absolutely NOTHING for...and what i really did not like was the helplessness of the situation...i am telling these ladies in charge that there is NOTHING we can do to fit these ladies and they are telling you , "But, she starts the scene, can you guys make them something in 2 days?".....the funny thing is we had all this time the previous week to make clothes for these ladies...all we needed were their measurements and everything would have been done ASAP....We should have been informed that we were expected to fit everyone in this scene from the very beginning....all it could have taken was an email or a phone call.....but the acorn had to drop 3 days before the daggem show....so we ended up fitting the 12 clothes on different models...some we chose...and some we didn't (basically the organizers fitted the clothes themselves...which was kinda easier for us bcos it made the process a whole lot easier after all we were fitting models we didn't choose anyway).....and because we felt bad for the darling organizer who seemed so STRESSED out , we decided to try and see what we could do for the girls without clothes.....so we went home, brought back out our machines which we had gladly put away the night before BAH:( * and began remixing old clothes our first show and we also added clothes from the ASA show (but of cus) and we refitted the next day....one of the models who was a plus size was chosen to wear a blue satin dress which was clearly NOT her size...it couldn't zip past her waist...it did look good on her from the front...but the back was just not working out....and unfortunately for us she was opening the scene....again everyone's eyes turned to cranberry to help Fix the dress...suggestions were made of cus...to remove the zip and add more fabric blah* blah* blah* ...of cus that was not happening, why would we change a dress just for one model who was not going to buy the dress anyway.....so i calmly told them the dress was not going to be used on the model, we had plans to reuse the dress in another show and changing it would cost us and not them and most importantly we didn't have anything for her AFTER ALL we specifically never picked her and that was that!....i honestly believed the message was delivered very clearly...but apparently it wasn't bcos the model ended up wearing the dress with a red scarf abi shawl tied around it.....i didn't like it....

>I wont lie i do have some divalike tendencies but i tried my hardest to curb any such instincts in this show because i could see how hard these ladies were working to make their show a hit...unfort * i felt their expectations from cranberry was just too much....they wanted to fit everything we had BUT... didn't want it to be from ASA.....how much stuff do they honestly think we have?...it has not even been a year since we started ...dang....and we purposely designed for their scenes which is something i hated to do because we were making very cliche cranberry dresses over and over and over again...we felt restricted in our design because we knew it wouldn't fit the scene.....in fact i even felt some of the stuff we made was not bubbly enuff for wat they expected...i mean the organizer would ask if i could bubble some stuff more...im like...uhh ?????????....SHOW ME THE MONEY??!!!!....lol...AND lawd help me.....there was this turquoise dress which we brought to the first fitting which personally didnt look nice on the girl whom they chose to wear it...frankly, i made that dress at like 3am when i was half asleep so i didn't really like the dress that much so i informed them that i wasn't putting it into the show....i decided that since i didnt want them to be a dress short i would fit the girl with another dress ..which i did....but somehowwww at every fitting practice till even the DAY of the show...the organizers kept on calling and asking me in this accusatory tone lol about the dress...talking about how, they need the dress, that some pple dont have anything to wear, and how come the turquoise dress is not in the box???...im like dang!! .....pay me and then ask me these questions!......ALL IN ALL shows are Stressful for both designer and organizer and frankly despite all these my numerous complaints lol i reallllly enjoyed working with these ladies, they were very sweet and great to work with and they did a WONDERFUL JOB in total..i loved it!!....my next blog would feature stiffity stuff from the show.....but boy am i glad this is over!....oh and my last complaint*...i was quite a bit bummed that my fave model in the show "FAWN"(who personally came to complain to me the day of the show lol).... did not get to wear Cranberry...they switched her clothes with two other models who did not kill it as much as she would have....not to worry, she is my new cranberry model...love her!