Style & Substance Interviews

I’m thrilled this week to be sharing a Style & Substance interview with Kate Byrne, the creative entrepreneurial force behind Betty Means Business. Kate is a roller derby-loving, green-juice-drinking, yoga-junkie, business strategist, coach, and blogger. One part entrepreneurial maven, one part irresistible super nerd, Kate has an insatiable appetite for life, art, nature, creative endeavour, women in business for themselves, making a difference and laughing out loud. Kate is a Betty on a mission to quench your thirst for bullshit free creative inspiration & business advice.

Thanks to a debilitating spinal injury, Kate was forced to take time out from her grown-up life as co-founder of a successful management consultancy and think about what she really wanted to do when she grew up. That inward journey spawned an online space dedicated to helping women with business yearnings become the kickass creative entrepreneurial trailblazers they’re meant to be. This year Kate set herself a big personal creative challenge: To set up and grow a successful business in only 2 hours or less a day. Can it be done?  You’ll have to visit Betty Means Business to find out. I also recommend checking out Kate’s free eBook Kill Overwhelm + Make Shit Happen for practical advice on moving forward toward your vision when you’re not sure which step to take first.

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This is Christina, but since at last count 11,907,709 of you have visited her site Hair Romance, I’m guessing you’ve already made her (and her beautiful curls’) acquaintance. If not, you’re in for a treat because Christina is one of the loveliest Australian blogging superstars you could ever hope to meet. We used to live in the same neighbourhood and hanging out with this girl over a glass of wine and/or cup of gelato is one of the things I miss most about Sydney. Thank goodness for blogger conferences and living vicariously through instagram!

Hair Romance is all about loving and having fun with your best accessory: your hair. Christina maintains that the secret to good hair is a great haircut, so there’s a lot of information about getting the best from your stylist in her posts. She also blogs heaps of quick tutorials which she creates and photographs on her own hair, proving we call can master awesome braids, twists, and styles ourselves.

Hair Romance gained a huge following when Christina set herself the challenge of creating 30 different braided hairstyles in one month. The series went viral, an ebook followed, and now Christina has a second ebook of up-dos under her belt, launched two new blogs (here & here), and has established herself as a Pinterest pro who writes and speaks on the business of how to use Pinterest to drive web traffic. It’s an impressive resume, and an inspirational tale of a blogging-preneur from our own community living the freelance dream! So without any more gushing introduction from me, let’s hear from Christina in her own words:

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This week on Style and Substance I’m thrilled to bring you an interview with the lovely Kim who writes about finding clarity, balance, and creativity in every aspect of life at Dream Delight Inspire. She’s a bubbly Sagittarius who blogs to inspire and is currently living out her dream of self employment as she grows her vocal coaching empire. Kim loves socialising, going out for breakfast, beach walks in the sunshine, green smoothies, kinesiology sessions and teetering about in high heels. Her crazy “so-big-it’s-hard-to-believe-it-could-actually-happen” aspiration is to live three  months of every year in Europe to escape the Melbourne winter.

//STYLE

Q: How would you describe your personal style?

Whenever I go shopping, I always try to nab classic well-fitting pieces that will last me a long time. I don’t tend to go for the trendy pieces as they don’t always work with my shape but I love to accessorise with the colours and textures of the season to keep my wardrobe fresh and modern. I love my classic cuts but I also favour dresses with volume, different textures and metallic splashes. So I’d probably say my style is elegant with a hint of quirkiness.
Q: What’s your biggest style challenge & how do you deal with it?

My style challenge is that I have a true hourglass shape – a small waist with child-bearing hips which can be tricky to dress sometimes. I tend to wear fitted tops and keep the bottom half in an A-line shape or voluminous to balance it out. The 50s silhouette works for me.

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Ingrid Weir’s blog and instagram were two of my most favourite online discoveries of 2012… if you’re not acquainted with her creative corner of the interweb at The Old School Master’s House yet, get ready for your next major bloggy crush! Ingrid is a set and costume designer living in Sydney and her site catalogues her incredible hobby and passion – renovating an old schoolmaster’s house in a nineteenth century Gold Rush town in New South Wales’ Central West. Owing to her naturalist’s eye and lyrical sensibility, Ingrid’s photography and prose is unique, curious, warm, and winsome. What I love most is seeing the things I love about Australian country life through her lens.

//Style

Q: WHAT ITEM IN YOUR CLOSET ARE YOU LOVING MOST THIS SEASON?

A Sonia Rykiel knit dress-  very sassy & very French.

Q: WHAT DECOR ITEMS ARE YOU MOST COVETING RIGHT NOW?

Handmade textiles, vintage industrial lockers & concrete kangaroos.

Q: WHAT ARE YOUR GO-TO BEAUTY PRODUCTS?

Clarins Beauty Flash Balm, Klorane Dry Shampoo, and Chanel lipsticks.

Q: WHAT ARE YOUR FAVOURITE LOCAL HAUNTS?

Gnome Espresso Surry Hills,  3 Blue Ducks Bronte,  Paddington Library & Bondi Beach.

//& Substance

Photos on Instagram, DIY projects on Remodelista, and the new interiors book ‘The Natural Home’  by Hans Blomquist.

Q: WHAT HAVE YOU MADE RECENTLY?

An embroidered heart shaped wall hanging. 

Just finished the inspiring new biography ‘I’m Your Man; the life of  Leonard Cohen’ by Sylvie Simmons. 

Q: WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT BLOGGING?

Connecting with people around the world,  a sense of progress with my writing and photography.

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I love blogging, and a huge part why I love it so much is all the super amazing, lovely, generous, cool girls it’s brought into my life. I’m talking about the women of the Aussie blogosphere. They really are a fabulous bunch! Almost two years ago now, when I was all new to Australia and The Spring was just starting out, I began a series of interviews called Style & Substance featuring some of my favourite local bloggers. It was my way of reaching out, making friends, and finding a place in the online community. And it worked, so well in fact that I got lazy and let the series fall away.

Now that I’ve discovered so many more incredible Aussie blogs I feel it’s time to bring Style & Substance on back – only in a slightly updated form. That’s where you come in! Instead of asking the same 7 questions to everyone I’ve expanded the list so each interviewee can chose the questions from each section they’d like to answer. But before I start sending out the Q’s for our best bloggers to A, I want to find out two things from you first: Who would you love to see featured on The Spring? And what are you most curious to hear them talk about?

Here’re the probing questions I’ve got down on the list so far…

// Style

Q: How would you describe your personal style?
Q: What item in your closet are you loving most this season?
Q: What fashion/beauty/decor items are you coveting right now?
Q: Do you have a signature scent?
Q: What are your go-to beauty products?
Q: What’s in your handbag?
Q: What would be your ideal meal?
Q: What are your favourite local haunts?

// & Substance

Q: What inspires you lately?
Q: What’s the most recent thing you’ve made?
Q: What are you reading?
Q: What’s your favourite song/book/movie?
Q: What do you love about blogging?
Q: If you could jet off anywhere in the world, where would you go?
Q: What or who (so far) is the greatest love of your life?
Q: What’s the worst thing anyone’s ever said to you?
Q: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Q: Tell us a joke!

If you have suggestions for more questions, bloggers I should interview, or you want you and your blog to be featured in a Style & Substance post… please let me know in the comments below! Have a great day & thanks for your ideas!

x Catherine

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I first met Madeline Veenstra at a Brisbane fashion bloggers meetup that she organised, and to be perfectly honest I had no idea that night that the sweet, young woman sitting across from me was one of the fastest rising bright young things of the online style world. Maddy, pictured below with her co-creator Coen Hyde, is the visionary behind Wikifashion. The site is the central resource for fashion on the web – a forum for user-generated content cataloguing brands, designers, shows, blogs, and everything else related to fashion. Maddy was a University of Queensland student in 2009 when she and Coen first launched the site. It’s grown so successfully that she’s now taken the full plunge, leaving her  job as an economist behind to devote herself to developing Wikifashion full-time. For now, Wikifashion and Maddy are still based here in Brisbane, but with the industry and blogosphere sitting up and taking notice, plans to relocate to New York are afoot for 2012. How exciting!

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These lovely ladies are Claire and Jas, who burst onto the Brisbane blogging scene with Sweet Lime & Spiced Tea a short six months ago. Since then they’ve already attracted a very loyal following. Their growing success isn’t at all surprising; the blog is impeccably designed and perfectly reflects the modern moodiness and simple sophistication of the featured fashions, interiors, travel destinations, and favourite local haunts. Although by day Jas works as a lawyer and Claire juggles a corporate marketing job with graphic design freelancing and writing her Phd, both these women are dedicated to tirelessly beating their own paths to the creative lives of their dreams. They’re stylish, fun, adventurous, energetic and they know where all the best cocktails are served in this town; they’re the girls everyone wants to be friends with, most especially me!

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