maine – AmeliasMagazine

Amelia’s Magazine | Beautifully Green – a round up of ethical beauty brands for Christmas!

Andrea Garland, capsule illustrated by Cat Palairet

If you’re struggling for Christmas gift ideas, sales or just sick of giving and receiving those dreaded ‘smellies’ gift sets produced by high street chains (which are then consigned to live out their days in the ‘present drawer’) then check out several green beauty brands that are lovingly made with natural ingredients, are adept at soothing parched winter skin and – most importantly – care for the planet.

Andrea Garland
Handmade in her Hackney home, aromatherapist Andrea Garland’s organic beauty balms are presented in gorgeous vintage tins and compacts which she sources from all over the world (and are cleaned and sterilised before the balm is poured in.) Her Rosy Beauty Balm for the face contains shea butter, sweet almond oil, vitamin E and rose geranium – making it perfect to slap on during the winter months (expect many ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ when the pretty compact emerges from your handbag!) All ingredients are ethically sourced and Garland even offers to re-fill the vintage compacts once they are emptied at a fraction of the price, resulting in no excess packaging and a pretty keepsake.
Rosy Beauty Balm is £32 for a medium-sized compact (refill £12) available from AndreaGarland.co.uk

Moa – The Green Balm

Illustration by Karolina Burdon

This gorgeous green gloop was created by Icelandic herbalist Thury Gudmundsdóttir from a recipe handed down by her grandmother, who used to concoct her beauty remedies by boiling herbs in a pan over her stove. Made with 100% natural and organic ingredients which include tea tree oil, beeswax, coconut and sweet almond oil, not only does it keep skin on both the face and body renewed and radiant but it can also be used as an aftershave balm, a baby massage and a barrier to protect the skin in extreme cold weather. A very little of this balm (which melts instantly on contact) goes a very long way, making it an essential winter handbag staple.
Available at £5 for 20ml at Lovelula.com

Balm Balm

Illustration by Darren Fletcher

With numerous endorsements from celebrities to The Soil Association, Balm Balm has gained somewhat of a cult following since its creation five years ago. Founded by aromatherapist and perfumer Glenda Taylor, the 100% organic balms come in recyclable packaging and target sensitive and irritated skin types. The shining star of the range has to be their much-hyped lip balm – which contains jojoba oil, beeswax and shea butter for super soft lips, and can be used on other dry areas too. They come in rose geranium, tea tree and fragrance free flavours (the last of which won a Green Beauty Bible award) and make perfect little stocking fillers.
Lip Balm is £2.99 for 7ml from Bath and Unwind

Burt’s Bees

Illustration by Leeay Aikawa

One of the more well-known brands, Burt’s Bees haven’t abandoned their environmental commitments despite their global success – their products contain on average 99% natural ingredients and all use recyclable packaging. Starting out in 1984 selling honey from his beehive and wondering what to do with the leftover wax, Burt Shavitz teamed up with Roxanne Quimby and began selling it in the form of candles at local craft fairs in Maine, USA. Through word of mouth, the brand grew and the now famous beauty range was born after Roxanne stumbled across a 19th century book on homemade beauty remedies. An ideal hand treat is their 100% natural Lemon Butter Cuticle Creme packed with lemon oil perfect for nourishing brittle fingernails, and with its kitsch little tin how could anyone resist?
Lemon Butter Cuticle Crème is £5.99 from burtsbees.co.uk

RMS Beauty

Illustration by Joana Faria

Created by celebrity make-up artist Rose- Marie Swift, this is the first make-up range made from natural raw ingredients that interact and ‘create a dialogue’ with the skin. Her reasoning behind the range is that unlike other ingredients contained in many ‘natural’ cosmetic brands, hers aren’t heated to high temperatures and therefore retain their beneficial nutrients which are so great for the skin. The Mineral Cream Eye Shadows contain natural mineral pigments and also double up as an eye-cream to nourish the delicate skin around the eyes. These cute little pots come in a variety of warm, earthy colours, and use recyclable glass and metal packaging. A perfect way to revamp your make-up bag for the New Year and treat your skin at the same time.
RMS Beauty Mineral Cream Eyeshadows are £18 each, available from CultBeauty.co.uk

Written by Viola Levy on Monday December 6th, 2010 10:13 am

Categories ,andrea garland, ,balm, ,balm balm, ,burt’s bees, ,Christmas, ,compacts, ,Cream, ,Darren Fletcher, ,Gift, ,hackney, ,High Street, ,Karolina Burdon, ,maine, ,miss ballantyne, ,moa green balm, ,Natural, ,organic, ,rose-marie swift, ,Skin, ,Soap, ,stocking, ,tins, ,usa, ,vintage

Amelia’s Magazine | Beautifully Green – a round up of ethical beauty brands for Christmas!

Andrea Garland, capsule illustrated by Cat Palairet

Moa – The Green Balm

Illustration by Karolina Burdon

Balm Balm

Illustration by Darren Fletcher

Burt’s Bees

Illustration by Leeay Aikawa

RMS Beauty

Illustration by Joana Faria

Written by Viola Levy on Monday December 6th, 2010 10:13 am

Amelia’s Magazine | What to do in Margate and Broadstairs (whilst wearing Chatham Marine Deck Shoes)

sparkle boat margate photography by Amelia Gregory
This weekend we went down to the seaside in Kent: my partner’s dad lives in Ramsgate and when we go down to Thanet we always go for a pootle around Margate and Broadstairs.

sparkle boat margate photography by Amelia Gregory
Maria Nepomuceno margate photography by Amelia Gregory
In Margate American artist Alex Katz is showing Give Me Tomorrow at the Turner Contemporary, which has just the right amount of space to put on the perfectly sized exhibition for a sociable stroll with the family. He’s not a painter I’ve heard of but I really enjoyed his work: particularly rolling abstract waves and epic seascapes inspired by his home in Maine. That and his work from the 70s and 80s, often featuring his friends and family but put together to imitate glamourous magazine shoots and stills from films. Also on show was a massive interactive beaded installation – Tempo para Respirar (Breathing Time) – by Brazilian artist Maria Nepomuceno.

margate photography by Amelia Gregory

Margate has become a haven for artists and there are some great places to discover in the old town: piles of old boxes, a random collection of knitted dolls in a tree… there are plenty of junk shops and second hand book stores to peruse.

victoria browne pushing print margate photography by Amelia Gregory
Victoria Browne

pushing print margate nikki davidson-bowman photography by Amelia Gregory
Nikki Davidson-Bowman

And then we came across some really fabulous work as part of Pushing Print Festival at the Margate Gallery (on now until 27th October) Here are just two of the artists on show: beautiful screenprinted monoliths by Victoria Browne and Nikki Davidson-Bowman‘s sculptural laser print wall hanging.

oscars broadstairs photography by Amelia Gregory
oscars festival cafe broadstairs photography by Amelia Gregory
Broadstairs is great for little eateries: we like visiting the old fashioned Morelli’s Gelato seaside ice-creamery if only for the amazing intact 50s decor, but this time we opted for Oscar’s Festival Cafe… a beautifully appointed shack that is manned by someone called Graham (not Oscar).

snarfle festival cafe oscars festival cafe broadstairs photography by Amelia Gregory
The impeccable decor did not disappoint: we had the best ever scrambled egg and bacon, on top of a Kentish delicacy known as a Huffkin: part muffin, part bagel. Visit it if you are ever down that way.

Chatham Marine deck shoes beach broadstairs photography by Amelia Gregory
Then we took Snarfle down for a windy jaunt along the beach. I wore my new pink Chatham Marine Alcyone deck shoes, which were a recent gift: they are the first pair of deck shoes I’ve owned and I must say I rather like them! Particularly worn with a pair of natty socks (always).

Chatham Marine deck shoes beach broadstairs photography by Amelia Gregory
A bit about Chatham Marine:
Chatham Marine are a British family run business who are specialists in boating wear, and their shoes and boots are available in over 500 independent stores and chandleries across the UK, as well as John Lewis, Jones the Bootmaker, and Debenhams stores. They sell in over 200 stockists across Europe.

Chatham Marine deck shoes beach broadstairs photography by Amelia Gregory
Chatham Marine‘s mocacassin constructed boat shoes involve hand stitching the leather uppers through the grippy rubber sole with rot proof waxed cable thread so that the leather will wrap around the shape of the foot. The shoes are unlined for the utmost comfort, and they can be worn sockless without worrying about breathability. In a boating situation water is able to permeate between the spaces created by the waxed cable: in effect the shoes are designed to let the water in and out.

Handy that: even if I didn’t go any further than the old concrete tidal pool on Broadstairs beach.

All photography by Amelia Gregory.

Written by Amelia Gregory on Tuesday October 16th, 2012 10:14 pm

Categories ,Alcyone, ,Alex Katz, ,Boating, ,british, ,Broadstairs, ,Chatham Marine, ,Debenhams, ,Deck Shoes, ,Give Me Tomorrow, ,Huffkin, ,John Lewis, ,Jones the Bootmaker, ,kent, ,maine, ,Margate, ,Margate Gallery, ,Maria Nepomuceno, ,Mocacassin, ,Morelli’s Gelato, ,Nikki Davidson-Bowman, ,Oscar’s Festival Cafe, ,pink, ,Pushing Print Festival, ,Ramsgate, ,Snarfle, ,Tempo para Respirar (Breathing Time), ,Thanet, ,Turner Contemporary, ,Victoria Browne

Amelia’s Magazine | What to do in Margate and Broadstairs (whilst wearing Chatham Marine Deck Shoes)

victoria browne pushing print margate photography by Amelia Gregory
Victoria Browne

pushing print margate nikki davidson-bowman photography by Amelia Gregory
Nikki Davidson-Bowman

Handy that: even if I didn’t go any further than the old concrete tidal pool on Broadstairs beach.

All photography by Amelia Gregory.

Written by Amelia Gregory on Tuesday October 16th, 2012 10:14 pm

Amelia’s Magazine | An interview with Peter Broderick and review of new album http://www.itstartshear.com

Peter Broderick by Gemma Cotterell.

http://www.itstartshear.com makes no grand entrance: I Am Piano is the softest of openers, with quiet keys gradually joined by the curling sighs of a looped violin. The vocals only makes an appearance at the end, sliding easily into the next tune. Melody, whether picked out on violin, piano or guitar is the most essential component of this album, which I think is best listened to as a whole. (As an aside, ever fancied learning the violin? Try this website for a range of affordable electric violins). Blue, written by Peter’s father, is deliciously light but it isn’t all airy fairy – the title track It Starts Hear references the website domain name of the album in the lyrics, complete with scratchy off beats and sampled trumpets. With Asleep things once again take a more secretive turn, female chorals creating a rolling lull in Colin. Peter then does a fair effort of singing in German for sparse Bad Words, despite confessing to a poor knowledge of the language (see below). With The Notes On Fire the album gathers speed again, with vocals entirely composed of la-las; who knew they could be so evocative? The album finishes on the beautifully sophorific Everything I Know, ending http://www.itstartshear.com with low key panache.

It Starts Hear

Where were you born and where did you grow up?
I was born in Searsmont, Maine (USA) and raised mostly in Carlton, Oregon.

How did you find your way into music; was it an easy and natural process or has it been a struggle to make it happen?
Both of my parents are musicians, and both my older brother and sister as well, so I grew up in a house full of music and it felt natural, almost essential, for me to take up an instrument. I started taking lessons on the violin at age 7, and also tried to play whatever other instruments I could get my hands on.

Peter Broderick camera
When was this album put together and what frame of mind were you in when you wrote it?
I started recording the first notes for the new album in January, 2009 . . . and from there it was a long and surprisingly complicated journey before I was able to call it finished. I think my frame of mind went through many phases and changes in those few years… everything from ecstatic happiness to complete depression and all that’s in between.

Peter-Broderick Image courtesy of Incubate
Peter-Broderick. Image courtesy of Incubate.

You decided to release it via your website – what was the thinking behind this?
Well, when I first started recording the songs for this album, I realized that most of them had a real story they were based around, and I was imagining the finished album coming with some kind of book in which people could read all these ideas I wanted to share about the music. but then I thought . . . wait a minute . . . most people don’t get physical copies of music these days! Most of them just download it, so they’ll never see this book which, to me, would be a big part of the album. So I developed the website idea to be a place online where all listeners, no matter which format that they obtain the album in, can have access to the same notes and visuals that are meant to accompany the music. That’s the basic idea.

Peter Broderick by JL Illustration.

One of the songs on the album was written by your father when he was 19, which sounds incredibly romantic! What kind of musician is he?
My father is a closet musician . . . he is very passionate about music, and perhaps at one point he had his own dreams of building a career in music, but he’s terrified of performing in front of other people. I’ve actually never heard him sing, except for on this one cassette tape my mother kept with a recording session from 1979, where he plays the guitar and sings this one song that he wrote, called blue. I fell in love with this song when my mother played it for me in 2008, and dreamed about sharing it with the world somehow. So I recorded a cover version for this new album, plus a lovely label from Berlin, called Sonic Pieces, released his original version on a 7″ vinyl in December, 2011.

Peter Broderick face
Another song is dedicated to a bird whose life you stole whilst driving – what did this make you feel and do you feel that amends can be made by means of expressing gratitude in incidences such as this?
The day I ran over that bird I felt absolutely awful… I remember feeling ashamed to be human, thinking it was so stupid that we roll around in these big machines on our smooth roads that destroy parts of nature. I wrote a long piece of text that day about how terrible I felt, and also wrote the song trespassing, and I think doing those things definitely helped me to make amends with the situation. It was an accident after all, and since I wasn’t able to go back in time and undo it, I did the best I could to express my sorrow and to somehow turn something tragic into something beautiful and positive.

Peter Broderick by Gareth A Hopkins.

You’ve had a somewhat difficult year, what with a recurring knee injury that left you unable to walk. What happened, if you don’t mind me asking? And how did you learn to cope?
There has been a great paradox in my life the last few years . . . because, the week before I moved to europe toward the end of 2007 (which is when I feel like my career in music really started), I had a very stupid accident in which I tripped over my suitcase and destroyed my right knee… and it took me a long time to figure out what was really wrong with it, and in that time I was traveling the world and doing all these amazing new things, but always feeling restrained by this physical problem. And since I waited so long before having the right operation for my knee, I developed a lot of strange habits in my body to compensate for the bad knee, and which sort of threw off the balance in my body. But I also have so many things to be thankful for, and in many ways these last years have been a dream come true, so I try to focus on the good things and to be grateful for all that I have.

How would you describe http://www.itstartshear.com and do you think that the website as a name of an album will work? (it confused me a little bit)
I’m sorry if it’s confusing! But I really like the idea of the website as a title . . . and not because I’m obsessed with the internet or anything. Actually, sometimes I really hate the internet, but no matter what I think, I can’t deny that it’s become a huge part of our lives and has made so much possible for me. So in a way I see the title as some kind of tribute to the internet, or maybe even a statement of how our virtual lives are seemingly becoming more and more prominent and possibly even pushing reality aside… but I like the web address as a title because it brings people to the site, which I have built it as a place where people can listen to the music and read about it and see images and videos associated with the music. Any time the album is written about, it will automatically become a link to this virtual place… in my mind it makes perfect sense! Of course there is another side of me that thinks the whole idea is ridiculous . . . but it was just one of those ideas that I felt I had to try out. You’ll never know how it works until you try it… (brilliant answer!)

Peter Broderick by Adrian Bischoff.

What are your plans for 2012?
2012 is a slowing-down year for me. I’ll be taking a break from touring, spending more time at home in Berlin, releasing this project which I’ve been working on for quite a while and following the progress (or anti-progress) of this album and website… and I’m trying to pay more attention to my body, which needs some love after these years of sitting in cars and planes and trains, carrying heavy equipment in and out of buildings, and eating different foods all the time. One goal I have for this year is to finally learn how to speak German! fingers crossed.

http://www.itstartshear.com is due for release on Bella Union on 20th February 2012.

Written by Amelia Gregory on Wednesday January 25th, 2012 2:22 pm

Categories ,Adrian Bischoff, ,Asleep, ,Bella Union, ,berlin, ,Blue, ,Carlton, ,Colin, ,digital, ,Everything I Know, ,Gareth A Hopkins, ,Gemma Cotterell, ,http://www.itstartshear.com, ,I Am Piano, ,interview, ,It Starts Hear, ,Jason Lear, ,JL Illustration, ,maine, ,Oregon, ,peter broderick, ,review, ,Searsmont, ,Sonic Pieces, ,usa, ,With The Notes On Fire

Amelia’s Magazine | An interview with Peter Broderick and review of new album http://www.itstartshear.com

Peter Broderick by Gemma Cotterell.

It Starts Hear

Where were you born and where did you grow up?
I was born in Searsmont, Maine (USA) and raised mostly in Carlton, Oregon.

Peter-Broderick Image courtesy of Incubate
Peter-Broderick. Image courtesy of Incubate.

Peter Broderick by JL Illustration.

Peter Broderick by Gareth A Hopkins.

Peter Broderick by Adrian Bischoff.

http://www.itstartshear.com is due for release on Bella Union on 20th February 2012.

Written by Amelia Gregory on Wednesday January 25th, 2012 2:22 pm

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