Coca Cola Girls

I checked a book out of the library last week called Coca-Cola Girls- An Advertising Art History.  It's stuffed full of beautiful photos of vintage Coca-Cola advertisements with the 'Coca-Cola girls'.  I haven't had a chance to read the book yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

In the meantime I wanted to share some of the vintage ads.  Here's several made for overseas advertising.

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Coca-Cola has done some ad campaigns lately mixing vintage with modern.  Here's an example of a Cola-Cola ad with Taylor Swift dressed to look like a Coca-Cola girl.

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Another thing they have done is using the actual vintage ads to digitally create a 're-mix'. 

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I think this is a fun way to integrate history with modern advertising techniques.  I can't wait to see what else they come out with!

Never Give Up

I've been reading the biography of Pearl Carter Scott (the Chickasaw aviator I mentioned last week) non-stop for the past two days.  I've already seen the movie about her life...so I know about Pearl.  However this is just another reminder to myself of why I love [auto]biographies so much.  They contain little nuggets of extra info that not even a mini-series worth of movies could cover.

For example- the movie told about Pearl's father, George, going blind as a teen.  While harvesting broom corn (used to make broom bristles until synthetic brooms came about) the dust got in his and his two brother's eyes.  However the movie didn't mention that it wasn't the dust that cause George and one brother to become permanently blind...it was the eye drops the doctor put in.  The drops caused their eyes to bleed and lose sight.  The other brother hid while the doctor was at the house and his eyesight recovered.

This could seem unimportant to most, but if this event had not occurred Pearl would never have become an aviator.  Let alone the first licensed Chickasaw pilot or the youngest. 

Pearl was 12 years old when famous aviator Wiley Post landed in the field next to her house.  A quick connection was made between Wiley and George because of Wiley's blindness in one eye and George's in both.  George became Wiley's first passenger and Pearl his second after her expressed interest in flying.  It was that very moment Pearl realized flying was for her!

If things had been different when George was young and he hadn't lost his sight, that day in 1927 would have gone much differently for Wiley, George, and Pearl.

Another thing Pearl learned from her father's blindness is the phrase Never Give Up (the title of the biography).  George was a firm believer that anyone could do anything they wanted if they would never give up and put in some hard work.  Pearl went on to live her life by that motto.

That was a rambling road of thoughts...but I learn a long time ago to just keep running with my thoughts when they take off.  It's just crazy how one seemingly tragic event can become a positive thing in so many lives!  Well I'm headed back to my reading :)

[photo source]

One-of-a-Kind Wedding

Just came across a really interesting post about a wedding dress made in 1947.  Sounds pretty run of the mill until you find out the dress was made using the parachute that saved the groom's life during WWII.

Here's the story-

This wedding dress was made from a nylon parachute that saved Maj. Claude Hensinger during World War II. In August 1944, Hensinger, a B-29 pilot, and his crew were returning from a bombing raid over Yowata, Japan, when their engine caught fire. The crew was forced to bail out. Suffering from only minor injuries, Hensinger used the parachute as a pillow and blanket as he waited to be rescued. He kept the parachute that had saved his life. He later proposed to his girlfriend Ruth in 1947, offering her the material for a gown.
Ruth wanted to create a dress similar to one in the movie Gone with the Wind. She hired a local seamstress, Hilda Buck, to make the bodice and veil. Ruth made the skirt herself; she pulled up the strings on the parachute so that the dress would be shorter in the front and have a train in the back. The couple married July 19, 1947.  The dress was also worn by the their daughter and by their son's bride before being gifted to the Smithsonian.

Talk about a dress a mother would want to pass down!

Source

Vintage Sewing Ephemera

Pearl Carter Scott

I just finished watching a movie on OETA called Pearl.  It's about an Oklahoma native Chickasaw woman who became the youngest licensed pilot in the United States of America in 1928. 

Pearl's father went blind as a young man so at the young age of eleven Pearl learned to drive and would drive her father around for business.  Pearl and her family met Wiley Post in the late '20s (Wiley is a one-eyed pilot who immediately took a liking to Pearl and her father).  After a couple of flights with Wiley, Pearl was determined that the sky is where she wanted and needed to be. 

The film was produced by the Chickasaw nation (their first full length film...and a really good one at that!).  It was released at festivals and short theatre runs in 2010.  Tonight was it's television premier.  You should definitely watch Pearl if you get the chance.  If you live in Oklahoma you can tune in on June 17th at 11:30 p.m. to see the film.

I just reserved a copy of the book Never Give Up: The Life of Pearl Carter Scott from the library.  So I'm sure I'll be writing more about Mrs. Scott in the future.

Fascinating Fascinators

In case you don't already know...I create sewing tutorials for youTube.  One of my most popular tutorials is for a fascinator made using only items you can find around the house and your craft room.

This comment was left on one of my videos about the fascinator- 'You were making them, before they were well know here in North America.'

*Sigh*  It sounds as though the commenter doesn't know the long history of the fascinator.  I decided to do a little research and share some fascinating fascinator history today :)


The first fascinators can be dated back to about the time of King Henry VIII (which is fun since he is an ancestor of mine).  They were made mostly of feathers but were often adorned with jewels or precious stones.  Fascinators were purely decorative in nature unlike normal hats.  In the late 1700s the trend traveled to the U.S. and became a hit among higher society colonists. Although styles continued to change fascinators managed to evolve enough to stay 'trendy' until the 1960s when their popularity started to decline.  However recent events such as royal weddings have helped bring a legacy of elegance back to life!

Walt Disney's Multi Place Camera

My husband just came across this video on one of his 'nerd' websites.  We are both heavily into photography and videography so we found it fascinating.

The video shows Walt Disney explaining how a traditional cartoon was filmed and how the MultiPlane Camera works.  It transforms a 2-D background into one that appears almost 3-D.  Pretty incredible for it's time.  If you've ever watch Bambi then you've seen it in action (BTW I've never seen Bambi).

Anyway, here is Disney himself...