Bowled Over By Thrift-ola!

A handful of years ago I came across the online shop Lady Luck Rules OK and became obsessed with the diary blog detailing their adventures selling their wares at amazing venues like the Victoria & Albert museum in London. As the business evolved LLROK became renowned for their personalised handmade jewellery depicting everything cute, kitsch and cult from tattoo artwork to Russian dolls, each printed with a name or word of your choice.

But with creativity comes many pitfalls which Leona and her team found when big businesses stole their intellectual property and started mass producing cheap copies of their made with love products.

On February 28th 2010 Leona shut down the LLROK shop saying that the business no longer reflected who she was or her passions and that she wanted to dedicate her time to a new solo project.

And finally, just over one year on, I am proud and excited to let you take a sneak peek at what Leona's been getting up to over the last 12 months!

Launching soon, Thrift-ola will be an online showcase of vintage goodies for you to buy...and the best part is they won't be over-inflated 'vintage' prices.

Let's pass over to Miss Leona Thrift-ola herself to tell you all about what you can expect:

"The Thrift-ola online shoppe is a super fun second hand store bursting full o' kooky kitchenalia, ace accessories, fun homewares, vintage books and oodles of insane bric-a-brac. It's like your favourite flea market except you don't have to get up at the crack of dawn and spend hours seeking out the ace stuff - I've done that for you".

Having seen pictures on the LLROK blog of Leona's Superette boutique store as well as images from her flat in the book Fashion Market II I know we share at least one love - vintage Babycham paraphernalia - so I'm super excited to check out Thrift-ola in a couple of weeks and I'm sure there'll be another post soon after detailing everything I loved (and hopefully purchased).

Leona will also be setting up a blog detailing her crafting adventures and showing her readers how she's bringing unloved found objects back to life.

To sign up for the Thrift-ola newsletter and make sure you're the first to know when the store opens head over to www.thrift-ola.com and check out more preview pics on the Thrift-ola flickr stream here.