Super macaron review

Om Nom Nom. I tried lots of tasty treats on my trip to the capital, luckily I also did tonnes of walking so I've managed not to put on two stone in the process.

So on to the macarons. I visited four different places and as a 'control' I always chose chocolate as the first flavour and caramel as the second. And I mostly chose the small macarons where I could. I went to Laduree, Pierre Herme, Maison du Chocolat and PAUL.

Laduree Burlington Arcade and Harrods:
£1.50 each 

I found the staff at Laudree quite rude. Maybe they treat you better if you buy more?

I found their macarons to be the most delicate and had a beautiful shape. They have a thicker filling and the texture was slightly lumpy.




Laduree paper bag from Burlington Arcade.

Very uniform and smooth looking.








Pierre Herme Selfridges:
£1.85 each

The staff were helpful at Pierre Herme and talked with me about the different flavours. The macarons where slightly thicker than Laudree and very smooth. They were less cakey and the salted caramel was delicious. They had a stronger flavour.

Packaging from Pierre Herme in Selfridges.









Chocolate macaron with cocoa dusting.










Maison du Chocolat Piccadilly and Harrods:
2 for £3.50

The staff here were very nice, the shop is elegant, well spaced out and air conditioned to keep everything cool.








They like to package things up so they are a real treat.












The macarons were delicate and had a very smooth filling. They are slightly smaller than the Laduree offering, but it's more of an experience buying them.

PAUL many locations:
Large macaron £2.80

I went to the one at Covent Garden - the people are generally nice though the cafe is quite upmarket. Everything is more expensive if you eat in.

I had the large chocolate macaron, not entirley fair since it was a bigger size, but it tasted like the most divine brownie in the world. Very fudgey, but still light.


Paper bag from PAUL.










Tasty giant macaron.







My personal favourite was the PAUL macaron. It wasn't quite as delicate some of the others but it tasted great. Laduree and Pierre Herme had some very pretty packaging if you were buying larger quantities but I prefered Maison du Chocolat as a shopping experience.

I might have another go at baking my own now I know how they are supposed to taste.

Review: StyleShake.com

Remember the other day when I was taking about playing around with StyleShake? Well I decided to give them a go and see what the dress would actually come out like. So I ordered something very similar to the image in that post. It’s a basic black cotton dress with a flared knee length skirt, puffed sleeves and a round collar.

I ordered it on the Tuesday and it arrived the following Wednesday. The website said you would have it in 10 working days so that was pretty good. The quality of the sewing is what you would expect from a shop, it’s not ‘homemade’ looking at all. The fabric is cotton – kind of like a good cotton but not that thick stuff that the brands mostly use. More like everyday clothes. It’s all lined which is nice and it actually fits really well.

I set the measurements to the closest to mine it would allow. You can only get it to your exact measurements if you are in proportion like the average sizes. I'm not quite, but there was enough ease in the dress so that it fits (yay).

The only problem I’ve had is that the dress came without the collar as you can see in the picture. It looks kinda weird without it and I paid extra for it so I wrote an email to their customer services. They didn’t answer my first email so I re-sent it a couple of days later. I asked if they could add the collar for me, but I got an email saying my money was being refunded to paypal. They refunded the £2 extra I paid for the collar and made no attempt to fix the dress.

I was not very impressed with this. What if the skirt part had been missing? Would they have refunded me half the money and left me with half a useless dress?

I can add the collar myself if I want to, but not everyone has the skills or the tools to do that. Also this dress is very plain. I don’t think I’d want to wear it ‘as is’. I’ll probably have to add at the very least a ruffle around the bottom. This all seems like a lot of work for a ‘ready to wear’ dress.

All in all I think they’re product is pretty good but their custom service is lacking somewhat.

UPDATE: I've had another email from Styleshake asking if I got their previous message about fixing my dress (which I didn't). So now it looks like they are going to fix it. My estimations of their customer service is going up!

Shabby Fabrics: Review

Yesterday my order from Shabby Fabrics arrived. It was neatly packaged in a resealable bag and priority mail envelope. This is the same way Repo-Depot sent my fabric. Both orders were around 3 yards - so I don't know how they would sent larger quantities. It was very quick, my order arrived in 8 days. (International Shipping)

The only problem I can see is the colour difference. If you look at the colour on their website (previous post) and compare it to my photo, in real life its a lot more peachy than pink. I am thinking about ordering a set of fat quaters (small pieces mostly used by quilters) to see the other colours properly.

Reprodepot review

Since I have improved somewhat in my sewing skills I decided it was time to start looking for some nicer fabrics. Recently I have been using basic solid colour cotton to try out patterns and shapes without spending a lot of money.

I found a pretty print on the reprodepot site. I think it might be a bit winter-y as it really looks like snowflakes... but its a beautiful colour and has a nice edge that will be great for the bottom of hte skirt.

So, shopping at reprodepot. This was surprisingly easy. A lot of these places seem to sell fabric by the half yard so you have to remember that 3 1/2 yards is a quantity of 7. The shipping costs were reasonable and the fabric came out at around £5 a yard. It took about 10 days to arrive (in a flat rate envelope with a resealable platic bag inside).

They also had no problems sending it to a different address to the billing address.

Good news all round. I am thinking about making a JSK from it - after I have tried out the new pattern I am working on.