Winter Blues

The only thing that's been going through my head the last couple of weeks is my portfolio for art foundation and my textiles final piece. I'm so excited to start making my final dress and show it to all of you (in hopefully a fantasy themed photoshoot) at the end of December. It's quite hard to believe that all of this work for the past 6 months or so has been leading up to just 12 hours of actual making work, but I hope it paid off! As for the portfolio, I've got to start putting all of my best work together for my application as soon as possible so I've been racking my brains for original ideas. What have you all been doing recently? 

Normally I don't show outfit posts that I've actually been wearing the day I post them but I genuinely did wear this today! The dress is from Topshop which I bought years ago. It's a great simple piece to layer with though the colour can be a bit tricky. I made the jumper last year and I showed it in this post when it snowed (Have you heard the rumours about the snow that's coming to the UK?). I find it quite stressful wearing tights and having to match the right pair to an outfit (other people must surely feel the same?) and I've ended up becoming a bit boring and have been lacking courage to go for anything over than a simple black/grey pair. I'm sure you are all fed up of seeing my studded boots by now...I've already started thinking about shoes for Spring though! I definitely feel like my styling has been pretty bad recently and I'm not very happy with my outfit posts (and as I'm trying to save my money for Christmas time I've not had the chance to buy anything new) so I'm hoping my current wardrobe boredom will cure itself soon and that I don't bore all of you in the meantime!

What do you think of my outfit?

dress - Topshop

jumper - homemade

boots - ebay

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Blue

I'm hopefully going to be showing you another textiles piece (like this one) soon if I get my act together and start making it! Besides that and a long list of coursework, I'm not doing much over the half term or for Halloween (I'm kind of annoyed at myself for not doing a Halloween themed outfit post though, I've seen some really cool ones around).

 Sorry this outfit's a bit scruffy but I hope you can ignore that and focus on this wonderful cardigan I managed to pick up at the charity shop last week. It reminded me of some of the pieces from this collection and paired with this skirt it would be the perfect designer duplicate outfit. It is so so comfy and is very good transitional piece into winter or summer as it's not too thin or thick. 

What do you think of my outfit? What are you doing this week?

dress - old (see here)

cardigan - charity shop

shoes - New Look

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Blue and White

I'm off to Kingston open day on Saturday which should be interesting. It's my first open day as I've only got 3 Unis to go and look around in total (... since I've decided to do an Art foundation course somewhere local) and am going to be visiting UCA soon as well. Is anyone looking at/have been to these unis? or have done an Art Foundation course? I'd love your opinions! All of this thinking about the future kind of makes me forget what I'm doing now though... (I should probably do some coursework after this bit of procrastination).

Onto my outfit, and I'm wearing a dress I bought on ebay over a year ago. I adjusted it a bit and decided to take the sleeves off in the end as I felt they looked a bit too baggy. It's quite a summery dress (obviously not the weather for it) but I wanted to show you something completely unseen.

What do you think?  How is school/uni/work going?

 dress - ebay

boots - New Look

belt - old

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Hair and Beauty

I am back to blogging (as in posting) but I still need to get around to catching up on everyone else's blogs. I've got quite a lot going on at the moment so I promise after next week I'll be right on it! I might start organising my time better and giving myself more time for blog reading as I really should/would like to do more of that. I might go on a bit of a blog hunt as well and find a few newbies to add to my collection! 

I haven't really talked much about hair and makeup on my blog as it's not really my 'thing' as it were, but I thought I'd step aside from the fashion slightly for this post. I'm in that phase at the moment where I really want to do something different with my hair, do you ever get that? Uh huh...well...every year or so this happens to me. I never end up changing anything drastic (...ever!) but I'll spend my time collecting images of how I wish my hair could be if I could do anything. So below are an assortment of hair and makeup ideas that I've collected recently....

All images from Pinterest

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Topshop and Prada

Good luck to everyone who's getting results this week! I've been trying not to think too much about it but results day seems to have suddenly crept up on me! I'm in a slight panic mode though at the moment (I've got lots of coursework to get through before I go away on holiday and I'm nowhere near finishing). Anyway, nothing like a bit of fashion to take your mind of things....

Have you seen these shoes?! They're from Prada and they're made of such a gorgeous blue velvet material. (I'm selling them in my shop if you want to have a look.). My top and skirt are both new and from Topshop. I bought them in the sale when postage was free so managed to bag them for a total of £11 - not bad, I thought. I've only had this top for a week or so but I've found it so useful and it goes with basically everything.  

What do you think of my outfit? Which is your favourite piece?

 heels - Prada (buy them here)

crop top - Topshop

skirt - Topshop

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100th post!

I've been blogging now for about 10 months (how time flies!) and I've finally reached my 100th post. I'd never have thought a year ago that blogging would become one of my favourite things to do and I'd spend my spare time browsing through outfit posts and wish lists constantly! Saying this, I've actually been pretty rubbish at the moment (I use my time so inefficiently it's ridiculous) and still have lots to catch up on! On the bright side though, dress making has been going well and I'm looking forward to posting some items on my shop soon. 

So for this outfit, I brought out a shirt I actually haven't shown on my blog before. I've had it for ages (another from my Grandma's wardrobe) and it's one of my favourites. It's so easy to wear and can be easily paired with a skirt, such as the one below. The skirt is from Topshop and can also be seen in this post here. 

Please note: Any nail polish fanatics look away now!

What do you think of my outfit? 

 shirt - vintage

fishnet top - old

skirt - Topshop

boots - ebay

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Blue Knit

You may have noticed may incredibly boring post names during your time reading my blog. I'll often be non-stop writing during the creation of a post but as soon as I get to the title, I have a complete blank. Do you get that? Anyway, I've stuck to generic describing the outfit titles so as not to make a complete fool of myself! Not much has happened recently (I've been bored to death stuck at home) but my biggest news is that I've finally gone and joined instagram (a bit too late I feel). I'm a complete amateur but I have been getting into the swing of it recently so if you'd like to follow me, click here. I'm looking for people to follow as well so feel free to leave your usernames below and I will check them out. 

I had these photos spare from my shop so I decided I'd use them as an outfit post today. I do really really like this jumper. It's the perfect granny-style item I've been lusting after for ages. Don't you just love this colour? (It makes me think of toothpaste!). If I don't end up selling this jumper, I'll have absolutely no problem keeping it in my wardrobe! The velvet skirt can also be seen in this post. The truth is, I haven't worn it much since I first made it (probably because I see it more as a summer item than one to be worn in the cold) but that doesn't mean that I don't love it! You must be so so bored of seeing these shoes by now but they just go with everything and my shoe collection is still very limited - more reasons to buy some new heels!

How has your week been? What do you think of my outfit?

 jumper - vintage (buy it in my shop)

skirt - cut from the bottom of a vintage dress (see here)

shoes - New Look

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AS Textiles Final Exam

First of all, I'm sorry for my absence recently. The reason for my lack of blogging is my textiles and art exams that have been going on this week. I've had piles of coursework to get through and exams to prepare for. Luckily, today I finished my textiles exam (yay!) which feels like such a relief. It was an 8 hour exam (actually quite a short time when you have a whole garment to make) over 2 days. I thought I'd show you my final piece and see what you all thought. Originally, all the fabrics were seperate (so I dyed the blue fabric and layered the black pvc over the top, I then cut out all of the squares and sewed around the edges). Creating the fabric for the body of the dress probably took the longest since I had to sew around every single square and I had originally fitted my pattern pieces to a mannequin at home so it doesn't fit completely well, so I had to make a few time-costly alterations. It went fairly well (a few mistakes but I managed to sort them out) but what with me being a perfectionist, there are plenty of things I would like to improve on it. By the way, a bit of context for you, the theme of the whole project was 'Covert and Obscured' and my design is based on various observations and critical studies that I did in my sketchbook (Gareth Pugh and Fyodor Golan). Anyway, I hope you like it and wish me luck for my next two days of art exams starting tomorrow!

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Blue Sunset...

Happy Chinese New Year everyone! I'm off to celebrate the year of the snake tonight. It's a tradition in our family to go to the same Chinese restaurant in London every year to have a meal. This is what I'm going to be wearing (minus the heels). The dress is a vintage piece given to me by a family member. The only modification I made was to shorten it so that I could wear it during the day. The fabric is really great quality and has a lovely feel to it which you can't really tell from these photos. The top half is great and the frilly part definitely adds a bit of interest and uniqueness to the dress. The bottom half is pleated and looks great without the belt as well as with. The belt was given to me by my grandmother. I love how it completely changes the outfit here. What do you think of my dress?

By the way, sorry about the quality of the photos. I would have taken them outside but it was pouring with rain (what do you expect from England?!).

dress - vintage

belt - vintage

bag - charity shop (see here)

shoes - New Look

bracelet - see here

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