Red Plastic Factory!

Meet Nickie. She’s the creator-girl of www.redplasticfactory.co.uk

For those of you who dig on the accoutrement, RPF is a totes must-visit…It has everything a girl like me needs to feed my love of all things rockabilly, 50s and pin-up, as well as super-cute gift ideas too! Check out this paint palette necklace - the perfect-o pressie for any aspiring art-girl, with real-life actual paints and everything!

Describe Nickie, Miss RDF herself, in 5 words…
Creative, Eclectic, Organised, Nice and Cheeky!

For those who haven’t visited www.redplasticfactory.co.uk, what is it exactly? What’s it all about? When and why did you start it?
I started Red Plastic Factory (RPF Boutique) in summer 2005, a year or so after finishing a degree in Art. I started RPF because I was fed-up working a ‘regular job’ and really felt that I needed to work for myself instead. I have a passion for design and for making things, so setting up RPF just seemed like the most natural thing for me to do!

Via RPF Boutique I sell my own range of unique reconstructed horror t-shirts, my own range of jewellery and accessories and I also sell quirky designs by brands such as NookArt, Kreepsville 666 and Electrafrench. I like the idea of the customer being able to have a part in the design process too, so a lot of my pieces are custom-made with design ideas coming directly from the customer.

Where do you get your inspir-o to produce sparkly items of gorgeousness?
Inspiration comes from everywhere I think, from everything you see and absorb from the world around you, I make sure my eyes and ears are always open….there is no real way of explaining it….I find I can be just walking down the street and then an idea seems to pop into my head as if from nowhere, and then more and more ideas come rushing in when I start to work on developing the original idea – the creative process is very exciting!

What 5 tracks would be essential to a RPF soundtrack to life?
My top five tracks are always changing, I have no set faves as I love so much music! Ha! I guess I’m fickle….but currently the top five tracks being listened to at Red Plastic Factory would probably be (in no particular order!):

Boards of Canada – Dayvan Cowboy
Joanna Newsom – Cosmia
Little Feat – Texas Rose Cafe
Animal Collective – The Purple Bottle
Cocorosie – Hairnet Paradise

Who are your style icons?
I don’t really have any one particular style icon, but instead I take inspiration from people who catch my eye on the street. I also like to flick through the pages of Fruits magazine to check out the most original street styles happening in Tokyo, Japan.

Personally, I like to dress casual-but-quirky, with lots of layering and unusual accessories. I like to have fun mixing and matching colours, textures and patterns.

And I am incapable of leaving the house without a bag stuffed full of all kinds of bits and pieces!

What era would you like to go back and visit and why?
The late 1950s to the early 1970s, so that I could witness first-hand the social and political upheaval that occurred during this era in the West.

What item from your shop is a total-must have for us this summer?
A big laser-cut acrylic diamond necklace, they are great fun and really striking pieces! I have them in a rainbow of colours and they are extremely popular right now! I like to involve my customers in the design process as much as possible and these acrylic necklaces are an example whereby the customer is able to choose the colour, length and thickness of the necklace chain which the acrylic charm hangs from.

We love to visit new places - can you introduce us to your city? what would be your perfect way to spend a day there? what would you do? Where would you go?
I live in Lancaster, UK. Lancaster is an ancient city and is probably best known for Lancaster Castle, the Pendle witch trials of 1612, and of course its modern day markets!

My perfect day in Lancaster would begin with a walk around Williamson Park, which is simply a beautiful place. Next on my agenda would be a visit to the Assembly Rooms Market. The Assembly Rooms Market is home to a truly amazing collection of stalls selling a wide selection of collectables, from music and antiques to jewellery and period clothing. There are so many beautiful objects in the Assembly Rooms that making your final choices on what to buy can be really difficult! I’d no doubt be feeling quite pooped after all that walking and shopping so it would be time to pop to the Juicafe for a glass of freshly squeezed juice and a slice of carrot cake. My perfect day would be topped off by meeting up with all my close friends for drinks and maybe to watch a gig at ‘The Gregson ‘, and then talking and laughing together until the birds started singing…..

Tell us who inspires you/who you admire and why?
I am inspired by the amazing people I see and meet all around me who are busily creating, producing, and building things with such infectious energy. People who are creating their own worlds and inviting others to share in those worlds. People who are constructing online communities and allowing like-minded people to connect all over the globe. People who are embracing their own originality and are contributing positively. People who are unashamedly true to themselves!

What do you wish you could have known as a teen girl in the world?
That all the weird and sometimes horrible feelings that I had at the time would not last forever and that one day I would feel so differently about so many important things.

What makes you jump-in-the-air happy?
It is the simplest things in life that fill me with the most happiness. Like watching the late afternoon light turn golden and dance on leaves, hearing the birds singing in the morning, or feeling the warmth of the sun on my skin and the wind in my hair. Those are just unbeatable feelings.

What’s your life motto?
Always be true to yourself and how you feel in the moment.

Quick fire round: What’s your favourite…
Shop: Ikea.
Book: Kafka On The Shore by Haruki Murakami.
Website/blog: lastfm.com
Hang-out: Internet cafes.
City: Prague, Czech Republic.
Band: That’s a tough question as there are so many amazing bands that I heart, I don’t have a particular favourite. At the moment I am listening to a lot of The Band, Animal Collective and Cocorosie– I have quite eclectic taste in music!
TV prog: South Park.
Food: Malaysian Chicken Biryani with cherries, bananas, pineapples and lychees.

The colour pink, discuss.
Oh! I think pink is a very interesting colour to discuss as it has such strong associations (in the Western world at least!) with gender and sexuality. In the West we naturally think of pink as a very ‘girly’ colour, but it is interesting to note that the practice of assigning pink to an individual gender only began in the 1920s. From the 1920s until the 1940s, pink was actually considered to be the most suitable colour for boys as it was believed to be a masculine colour. And blue was considered to be the most appropriate colour for girls at this time as it was considered to be a delicate and dainty colour! Then, since the 1940s the societal norm inverted so that pink became more appropriate for girls and blue became more appropriate for boys!
It’s a funny old world, isn’t it?

Go check Nickie’s site o’ fabulousness out now: www.redplasticfactory.co.uk