Courtney Love meets Grayson Perry

The title basically sums up how I think my outfit looks today! Courtney Love circa 1994 meets Grayson Perry, transvestite modern artist/ceramicist, with a little bit of pastel saturated teen witch thrown in for good measure.

I don't usually dress along a theme, and I did this kind of by accident, but I really do like getting dressed in that way. Something about creating a character or a mood or an emotion makes me feel better about myself, or an outfit. I didn't mean to do that today (it came to me when I saw the full outfit in the mirror), but I did intentionally dress in pastels this morning - it was the final deadline for my pastels themed Textiles project and I wanted to match my sketchbook. Totes lame, IKR.

This dress is actually a nightie I bought from a charity shop at the weekend for £2.50. Nighties as dresses is fast becoming my new favourite thing, the night before I bought this I was actually looking at vintage nightwear on ebay and grumbling over expensive postage prices so I feel really lucky now!

Grayson Perry in one of his more flamboyant outfits, and Courtney Love at Reading Festival in 1994 (I think).

Of course, the Meadham Kirchhoff Courtney doubles.

~*Teen (pastel) witch vibes*~

More teen witch vibes with this, one of my favourite necklaces that I definitely need to wear more. It's Glinda the Good Witch from the Wizard of Oz, but everyone always thinks it's Barbie. I only just noticed when I uploaded this pictures how perfectly this fits the theme of my outfit, I swear I didn't even realise until now!

The cute button detail on the back. I tried wearing it the other way round at first so this was at the front (mainly because the dress had no labels and I thought that was the front), but there's kind of a gaping hole just below the buttons so it didn't really hang right.

dress - charity shop, cardigan - charity shop, belt - vintage, pearl necklace - gift, good witch necklace - affleck's palace, tights & socks (not seen) - topshop.

Pastel Puke

This is a scheduled post as I am busy working away on my Textile final major project!

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I have been waiting for this pretty little piece of post for quite a long time, so when I saw this bright pink envelope on my doormat I knew exactly what it was! A little while ago, I did a little swap with one of my favourite bloggers - I sent her a necklace and in return she sent me a copy of her beautiful handmade zine about Meadham Kirchhoff! (Read her post about her zine here)

I took a few pictures of some pages from her zine, and I love them so much! I'm just going to leave the photos to speak for themselves.

Marlena is absolutely one of my favourite bloggers ever, and it was so amazing that she liked the necklace I sent to her! She has the most wonderful kitsch, sugary style and her thrifted pieces are incredible, and she also writes some fantastic DIYs for Rookie. I don't really have ~style icons~ as such, but the way she dresses is so inspiring to me. Anyway, it was really cool to do the swap with her! See you next time.

Paper dolls

My pretty paper parcels have finally arrived!

I bought these lovely Marie Antoinette and Alice in Wonderland paper doll books from Retro and Ruby's Paper Things last month, and I am so excited that they are finally in my little hands! The postage was a little delayed so she sent me the Red Queen book to make up for it!

Each book has the most beautiful illustrations of the character, and six lovely outfits. The books are so tiny too!

I found the shop when I was searching Etsy for all things to do with Marie Antoinette for my Textiles project, and I am so pleased I did! This little book is so pretty, and has lovely illustrations of significant costumes from the film. I am going to photocopy it (because the original is too precious to stick in!) and put it in my sketchbook as inspiration!

The Red Queen book is so beautiful too, I love that I kind of have the Alice in Wonderland set!

My next set of posts will probably be scheduled ones as I intend to work all the hours of the day (although, let's face it, I won't) until my Textiles deadline - which is Monday, eek! Anyway, these are three of my final pieces in mid-construction. I have made five brooches, three cuffs and these are the three necklace pieces! Everything is princess pleated and dyed by hand. I also have three collars to make, which are going to take so long as two of them involve an awful lot of embroidery! Wish me luck.

Hello world, I'm your wild girl.

Hello! It's been a little while since my last outfit post, so I thought I would show you what I wore to my friend's dinner party on Friday. (We had pizza and salad, not quite the sophisticated soiree you might be picturing!)

I've posted little sneak peeks of this dress in other posts, but I have been really looking forward to posting about it properly on here! I found it in my local charity shop for £1 and I have pretty much worn it ever since. Well, not literally, but it certainly feels that way!

This dress definitely brings out my inner pin up girl. I love the 1950s-esque shape and the raspberry bubblegum colour (I always remembered raspberry flavoured bubblegum being blue for some strange reason!) and the cutesy cherry print. The white buttons are very cute too, apart from the one on the bottom which I had to replace as I lost one while wearing the dress out and about!

(Can we all just pretend we don't see the tripod and me awkwardly holding the remote in the mirror? Which I didn't even see myself until now, oops.)

The back view. I quite like this little cut out back detail!

Me being a dork trying to get my pastel shoes from a previous post in the photo. Classic pin up girl/Caitlin Moran face gone wrong.

I paired this dress with my pale blue cardigan (also from a charity shop) & pale pink tights. Pastels forever~

Ice cream colours

Hello! It has been a little while since my last post, and I am sorry! I'm a bit in over my head with my Textiles work at the moment and I'm still waiting for a couple of parcels to arrive that I can post about (starting to get rather impatient I must admit!) Anyway, this is just a little post about some of the work I have been doing.

My project title is Marie Antoinette, and I've been working on a few fashion illustrations to put alongside my design development work. I quite like drawings these stylised hairdos! I have also done another one (quite like this picture), and I left them all without faces, as my Textiles teacher said they looked better that way!

(Edit: the images are a little blurry because I had to reduce the file size so they could be uploaded on here, sorry!)

I've been doing a little amateur (and I mean very amateur) editing on Photoshop to change the hair colour, and this was one of the in between stages.

Sea blue & grass green

Candyfloss pink & lilac.

Turquoise & lemon.

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Sorry for such a short post today! I do have some quite exciting news though. My friend and I sent in application form for the TV show Pointless back in February as a bit of a laugh, and we got a phonecall the other day asking us to go for an audition next Friday! So excited it's slightly ridiculous.

I bring home the bacon.

Hello! I bought some wonderfully cute & funny feminist badges from Etsy last week, and they have both arrived! Feminism, while being incredibly close to my heart, isn't something I talk about that much on this little blog (although I like to think I weave it in occasionally) but these brooches are simply too lovely not to grace this blog with their presence!

This brooch by Sarah Julia Clark is so so amazing! I love bacon more than any other food in the world (bad Jew, bad, bad Jew), so it seems entirely fitting to have a humorous statement about bacon on a piece of felt bacon as my accessory of choice, does it not? Also, it totally relates to the working-girl-who-owns-her-own-business I have going on right now. *insert shameless plug about my ongoing sale here*

The brooch back. I love hand-stitching so much, it seems like such an immediate reminder that I own something completely individual and unique made by someone who loves and cares about what they do.

My bacon brooch next to my other little feminist purchase! This badge has been in my favourites for months, I thought it was so funny! Yay for uteruses guys! You can buy this brooch here, and I think you can also get it in a slightly bigger size too. I like it small though, as it means people really have to peer in to see what it says.

I also did something pretty cool (or at least I think it is!) with my hair today, so I thought I'd show you a picture or two. Predictably the best photos turned out to be the most blurry, so you can't see what I actually did with my hair too well here, but I think you get the general gist! Basically, I tied it up at the back, twisted my fringe slightly and pinned it back, then finished it with two victory(ish) rolls on either side. It's rather messy as I never bother with hairspray & I kept having to alter it throughout the day, but I'm still very pleased!

Also, small glimpse of My Favourite Dress Ever Version 2.0 (this is Version 1.0). I think I now live in a parallel world where it's summer indoors all the time and I just float around wearing summer dresses with no tights in a defiant manner, whimpering every time a window is opened or a door left ajar.

Tomorrow I have decided I am going to WORK ALL DAY and not stop for ANYTHING, not even snacks or How I Met Your Mother. I need to seriously catch up on my ~Fashion Illustrations (which, I don't know, would you like to see?) & feverishly scribbling Pro/Con lists about Sheffield vs Edinburgh and Accommodation vs Accommodation vs Accommodation which really I should have made in January before my brain melts completely. Which, it seems, looking back over what I have just typed, may have happened already.

Thank you very much if you have read this far, I will try to be less incoherent & silly next time.

Tassels

Sorry it's been such a while since my last post! I've been waiting for lots of little parcels to arrive so I can post about them, but they seem to be taking forever! I really hope they haven't got lost in the post. Anyway, two parcels arrived today & I am going to show you one of them! (The other one I'm going to do a post with some other pieces I'm waiting for as they go together quite well)

I don't really buy things from ASOS all that often, but I saw these shoes in this post and I thought they were so cute!

I really love the tassels and the pink and turquoise colour scheme! Pastels 4ever. The little heart detail at front is so sweet too.

I am so bad at buying shoes because I am really particular and fussy about what I like, I normally find it so difficult to find shoes I would be willing to wear. I did really need some new shoes (my poor Miss Selfridge shoes are looking rather worse for wear!), and I think these will be perfect for summer. They are made of canvas-y material too so they hopefully won't be ruined too quickly!

Sorry I haven't put these together with an outfit! I've been feeling really under the weather recently so outfit pictures are a bit of a no no at the minute. Hopefully I will be back to posting normally soon, thank you for sticking with me!