Sorry, for not posting for such a long time, to quote Mark Twain, “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated!”. I got accepted at the University this summer and has been very busy studying ever since. But fear not, I promise to return with more updates in the new year.

Until then, you can enjoy this time lapse video of me making a pair of latex gauntlets with a cute ruffled latex fringe and a little bow for a girlfriend of mine. I used 92 minutes to make the latex gauntlets, but you can watch it in 5 minutes!

For more time lapse latex fun, check out Matt’s (Kink Engineering) 5 min. video of making a latex bathrobe with a little help from his feline assistants.

Pleats are one of the most sweetest finishes for a latex garment and sometimes you just cant go without it. You can create a lot of different looks and styles with it and give your outfit that little extra finish what you might been missing. The possibilities where to use them is endless and totally up to our own imagination/creativity.

As good as it sounds, as simple it is! So I’m happy to introduce you to the two most common pleat techniques used for making latex clothing.

What you need:

• One latex strip (at least three times the length of the seam you are going to trim)
• Rubber cement
• Cleaner and a piece of cloth
• (Cling film)

Knife pleats

The simple pleating is used for a lot of small things, e.g. the finish on my latex gauntlets or to gather latex to create a puff sleeve on a blouse, or where ever you would like to use them.

What you do is simply clean your latex strip, apply glue to the front and backside of the seam on your strip and allow the solvents in the glue to evaporate for a moment.

Then start folding the strip to one site. The width of the fold is completely up to you and depends on the look you want to create. The closer you fold the pleats the fuller they get. The folds on my gauntlets have a width of about 1cm, of course after they have been folded.

Press everything good together, use your seam roller to apply pressure on it.

Remember that the ratio is 1:3, that means your strip should have three times the length of the seam you are planning to trim. If you are unsecured about the lenght of your strip, just add a little more so you wont run out.

For a closer look on how it is done check out the drawing or download the PDF of the drawing here.

Box pleats

Here you prepare the strip just the same way like you did with the other one.

The only difference here is how you fold it. It is not easy to explain in words, therefore I recommend you to have a look at the drawing or download the PDF of the drawing here.

Box pleating is used for a lot of things, trimming a skirt or sleeves, creating a school girl skirt for the next Cosplay event, giving some old style bloomers a great finish.

Tip: If you need to apply glue on both sides of one seam, then it would be an advantage to have some cling film around!

After you clean one side, applied glue to it and gave it a moment to settle, then put some cling film on it. That will protect the already prepared seam side from getting dirty and useless. It will also make it easier for you to handle a long latex strip, since you will be more free in your “movements”.

Cheers,

Kitty

For the Torture Garden Valentines Ball in London and the FetishEvolution Party in Essen, Germany, I created a few new outfits for myself and my husband, here are my favourites.

Vintage Latex

I am a huge fan of Dita von Teese fan, I love the vintage look and style! So I decided to design a classic vintage style latex dress for myself.

The latex colour, I chosen for the dress, where Radical Rubber’s metallic black, it is gorgeous and classy. The cut for the dress is really tight and hugging, it gives me a nice figure. The sleeves are short and very cute with a great big puff and finished off with a white trim.

The collar has the typical round vintage cut and is complimented by two round pearls sitting right beneath it, which gives the dress the sweet classic look, that I love so much. The hemline of the dress is finished with nice latex pleats, which are trimmed with a white strip to match the overall look.

In the back there is a short zipper, which will make it easy to put it on and off. The zipper blends very nicely together with the colour of the dress and is almost invisible.

I am so happy how this design turned out and proud that I can realize my own ideas, since I have never seen this style of dress anywhere else.

Latex Queen of Spades
I am also a big fan of burlesque! So for the Torture Garden Valentines Ball, I made a burlesque outfit for me and matching t-shirt my husband.

The Queen of Spades outfit consist of eight different items, all made from latex – Blouse, corset, bustle, garter belt, panties, stockings, gauntlets and a hairpiece.

The blouse has a great rounded cut out around the bust and gives me a very nice cleavage. The sleeves, which are really puffy with two small pearls on each side, compliment the feminine look.

To close the blouse, I decided to glue in a front zipper instead of buttons, since they would take too much attention away from the details.

The garter belt is trimmed with a black lining, and has a black queen of spades application on it, the same applies for the headpiece.

The bustle is a very important part of the outfit, but is very simple in design. It has no applications or trimmings and is only made from four pieces of latex.

All in all, a very elegant and sexy burlesque latex outfit, that really stood out at the party!

My husband was wearing a t-shirt with the Ace of Spades on it.

The big Ace of Spades in the middle of the T-shirt had a edgy look with the cut out of a skull in it. Further applications on the shirt where the white trimmings around the arms, neck and the bottom of it.

To accredit my husband and show you that everybody can do this, I have to tell you that he cut out the ace of spades applications by himself, he even glued them on! I have to say he did a good job there and did not need my help to often.

Please feel free to leave a comment if you like my Designs.

Thanks for reading!

Kitty

To finish a good look and give your outfit a little extra, you need accessories!
The one accessory I cant live without are gauntlets in different colours and styles.

Here is the “How to” on making your own latex gauntlets.

What you need:

• Pattern (Download PDF)
• Rubber cement, cleaner and piece of cloth
• Two small pieces latex (each about 15cm x 25cm), gauge 0.30mm – 0.40mm
• Two latex strips to reinforce the application
• Two long strips latex in a different colour

How to do it:

1. Prepare the latex

Print the pattern and adjust it to your size if needed. Then draw it up on the latex with a pen and cut it out with your rotary cutter. Afterwards clean off the pen marks on the latex, you can use your cleaner for that.

2.Prepare your gauntlet applications

The easiest way to glue in your applications is of course before you close the seams, so you will have to do those as one of the first steps. I have chosen to make some gauntlets which will compliment my new dress, therefore they will be in metallic black with a white trim on the hem lining pleats. You can of course chose any application you like, different colours, different pleats, small cut outs, bows and so on. Anything you like goes!

But watch it! If you make pleats, then make sure that the folding of the pleats goes in the right direction. What I want to say with that is, that the two pleated trims you make should be folded in the opposite way of the other one, so that they later on will show in the same direction when they are glued in. Either they both show towards the body or they both show away.

3. Glue your latex applications to the gauntlets

Clean the surface of the gauntlet hemline and apply the rubber cement. Do the same with your pleated strip.

After the glue is ready, attach the pleated trim to your gauntlet. Cut of all excess material.

4. Reinforce your application on the backside

Clean the extra latex strip apply rubber cement to it and make sure that the hemline of the gauntlet is cleaned and has a layer of glue to it as well. After the solvents of the glue had time to evaporate, glue the reinforcement strip to it. Cut of all excess latex.

5. Almost done!

Now you are almost done. There are only two seams to close left and your gauntlet should look like that now.

6. Close the two seams of your latex gauntlet!

Start out with the long straight seam, which is going towards your wrist.

Then take the smaller upper one. The hole in the middle stays of course free, its for your thumb.

And that’s about it, you are done!

Wash your gauntlets, shine them, be proud and wear them with style.

I would love to see your gauntlets, so feel free to send me some pictures of them.

Cheers,

Kitty

Surprising gifts from one latex crafter to another.

As a hostess of a dinner party I received a few sweet gifts, but the greatest one was a pot with flowers, latex flowers.

Usually if you think about latex flowers it’s roses, rolled up and attached to a hat, but not this time. Another dedicated latex crafter named Niels, has been very creative and created my favourite flowers out of black and pink latex, the perfect flower gift. They only require a weekly treatment with some silicone oil. I guess people already knew that I do not have green thumbs.

Everything is patiently cut by hand. A few metal pins, left over latex, some glue, flower foam, some brown paint for the soil look and a lot of patience.

There is no limit to creativity!
Thank you Nils for reminding me on that.

Cheers Kitty

I have to share this one with you guys and I am sure you will enjoy it!

One of my readers, Felix Katz, send me two links to his video tutorials on how to attach applications to latex clothing. It is a step by step tutorial video and easy to understand.

What could be done differently?

The only thing what I would advise you to do differently is the step where he applies the glue to the entire surface of the latex.

It is not necessary to apply the rubber cement on both latex surfaces if it is only for applications. It is enough if you apply it to the surface of the application.
The parts of the latex where you applied the glue to and don’t have any applications on will always be kind of dull. It will be sticky and dust and dirt will easily stick and show on it, especially if it is white latex.

How to do it.

What you need to do to make the application bond properly to the latex is to prepare everything right, that means a good wipe with your cleaner. And that should do the whole job for you.

The reason why that is enough, lays simply in the chemistry of rubber and rubber cement. To make it short: both consist of the same material, polymers and through natures small wonders they stick to each other through cohesion.

Thanks a lot for sharing that with us Felix. Keep up your work.

Cheers,

Kitty

There are two different ways to make beautiful ruffles or also called frills.
You can create them either by gathering the material or by giving it a circular shape.

Circle

The straightening of the round cut out will create the beautiful ruffles you are looking for. They are really easy to create and to control, but they are time consuming!

How the ruffles will look like depends on the outer and inner diameter of the round cut out. The smaller the inner diameter of the cut out is, the more ruffles it will create and the more dense they will be.

If you choose a big inner diameter it will create a very smooth look. The ruffles are more spread apart and more wavy.

The length of the ruffle is also very important for the look you want to create. If you choose to keep it short it will give a more young perky look and would f.x. go good with a mini skirt. The longer ones are more elegant and look fantastic on dresses or pencil skirts.

If you have some latex at the hand and a little spare time test it out for and check for yourself what you like best.

How to do it:

I used a latex gauge of 0.4 mm for this tutorial, since this is mostly used for latex clothing and gives the nicest ruffles.

After you have decided the size of your ruffles, you will have to cut out a couple of them to be able to cover a whole seam.

For me it was easier to join the circles one after each other while I am gluing them on, instead of creating at first one long curly strip out of all the small circles.

How many you will need depends of course on how long the seam is. Dividing the seam length by the circumference of the inner circle will tell you how many you will need.

Gathering latex

This is also a very easy method of creating ruffles and it is even faster. But it is not suitable for all types of clothing styles. The minus here is that it is not as easy to control and to keep the even look.

Like the header already describes it, you gather the latex. It will create a more or less crinkled look, which is f.x. nice for tops or baby-dolls which are gathered right under the breast or even in some cases to create  short puffy sleeves.

And its of course THE one thing to use for jogging suits or similar.

How to do it:

You glue a stretched strip of latex on to the area where you would like to have the material gathered.

The way it will look like depends here on the gauge of the latex as well on the stress you put on to the stretched strip.

If you choose latex in a thing gauge and stretch it a lot you will most likely have a lot of riffles and you will see that at the area where you applied the strip to. It  will have tiny riffles which are not always nice to look at. If you choose a thicker latex gauge the riffles will be more easy to handle and you avoid those riffles on the strip.

What I prefer is latex in gauge 0.3/0.4mm and a little thicker strip  of latex like 0.5/0.6mm to stretch. That will create some nice ruffles and you will most likely avoid the riffles on the strip itself.

On the picture you can see how different the latex looks depending on the thickness you use.

The easiest way to do these ruffles is with help of another person, to hold and control the latex while you apply the strip.

If you dont have anybody to help you with that, then use some clams which will do that for you.

Kitty

Latex is conquering the fashion world more than ever before!

If its Lady Gaga, Madonna, Victoria Beckam or a bunch of fashion designers, they all have been using Latex as a attention and sale boost in their carrier. Which brought the shiny piece of course closer to the catwalk and the mainstream fashion, e.g. in form of latex leggings or mainly lycra leggings.

But believe it or not the British fashion store TopShop started selling glued latex clothing in their stores!

At the London Fashion Week 2010 they presented their new collection for this season, a rough Denim look with a shiny twist, LATEX.

The wide range of latex clothing introduced to the mainstream consumers included pencil skirts, jackets, very tight and loose tops, leggings and rubber cycling shorts.

So if you always have been wondering how it would be and what it would look like if latex hits the mainstream take a look at the new TopShop collection here or check out the short video.

Unfortunately,  most of the items have already been taken down from the online store, so we cant take a closer look at it, but honestly its also not its money worth!

TopShop claims to be a outrageous high fashion store with “purse-friendly prices” , but if I take a look at their shiny rubber items, it makes me wonder if they had a moment of amnesia, since they forgot all about fashion, the good look and of course the affordable prices!

Seriously, who would give £ 80 for a simple top like that or worse £ 110 for those cycling shorts? To give you a better alternative take a look at Libidex or House of Harlot. They offer a good fitting fashionable range of latex clothing to a fair price. And if you hurry you will get the Valentines deal at Libidex with 25% off!

Or DIY! You can start with my latex leggings tutorial.
I think one of my next projects will be a tutorial on how to make the TopShop Latex Clothing yourself.

My husband, who is known as 3xL,  is going to give away a Blackstyle gift voucher worth EUR 150 on October 1st! It’s really simple to enter the contest, just check out what you need to do in his Latex Twitter Contest.

This is a great oppertunity for latex crafters there would like to win some free supplies for making latex clothing. With a Blackstyle gift voucher like that, you can buy latex sheeting, latex cement, liquid latex, latex strips and a lot of other good things at Blackstyle!

Nothing beats a real “hands on” when it comes to doing your own latex clothing! You really don’t have any idea of how it is, before you given it a try.
While most people go out and buy all the tools needed for making latex clothing themselves and learn it the hard way, some people take a shortcut and attend a latex class or workshop. It’s a great way to “test the water” and establish if it’s something for you or not.

Here is a list of people who offer latex classes around the world:

• Polly Pandemonium – World wide.
• Robert Anton – U.S.
• Ego-Assassin – Canada
• RubberAngel – Berlin
• Club RUB & Jim – London

If you know of other classes or Workshops, please drop me a mail, I would love to add them to the list.