Tramps like us, baby we were born to run.

Hello! I thought I would do a little round up of what I've been doing lately, and also to kind of prove that I do wear what I wear on here in real life!

 

My hair is SO BAD here, hahaha, oh. Imogen, Jess & me (with Miranda taking the photo!) on our textile-twats-on-tour night out. At a drag bar, obviously. And me & Miranda saw our drag queen alter egos.

Tshirt - VV Brown concert, necklace - car boot sale, shorts - vintage, coat - H&M.

Cathryn, Alix & me at The Swung Eight, a swing dancing/1920s-50s night. It was so much fun! Even though I felt really lame because I have no idea how to swing dance, but I think we are actually going to start going to swing dancing lessons, which would be so amazing! Also I felt like the Queen of Pastels in this outfit, and I actually wore heels for once!

Dress - charity shop, necklace - gift, flower crown - DIY.

I went for a picnic with the Textiles gals in a fields near Imogen's house. This was honestly the funniest day ever! Me, Lianne & Miranda had to get the bus to her house and we couldn't work out where to get off so we just sat there for ages having a collective panic attack. Then when we got to the house we hid from Jess, which included running into Imogen's kitchen with a kidnapped ornamental wooden swan. Yeah, I'm 20 next year, and what?

We literally got chased out of the fields by these cows! We were sitting quite innocently in the corner of the field, just by the stream and then we started playing some music (There Is A Light That Never Goes Out by The Smiths) and about twenty cows started slowly walking, then running down towards us! We all went a bit  crazy & threw things in the picnic basket, put our shoes on the wrong feet & fell over jumping the gate. Very, very eventful!

Story time with Real Life magazine (which was not mine, I hasten to add!). I am going to do an outfit post at some point with these shorts because they are really cool, my mum bought me them for getting a Distinction in my FMP & they are made from 1960s furnishing fabric.

Top - ebay, shorts - vintage, necklace - Tynemouth market.

I went to see Bruce Springsteen last night with my friend Kate! It was incredible. He played for three hours street! It was like some kind of religious experience, truly, truly amazing.

Also, I started getting Graze boxes recently! I found a free code in a magazine, and ever since then I've become kind of addicted to them. I am trying to be a bit more healthy, and they're little snacks seem much better than my usual afternoon packet (or three) of crisps. Anyway, if you would like to try one for free you can with the code RDQ9HTCD. You have to put your details in, but you can cancel them any time. I think they are definitely worth a try, and I get far too excited when it's Tuesday night and I know mine is arriving in the morning!

I just wanted to see I have recently noticed that this little blog has reached 140 followers! That is just the most amazing, slightly bizarre thing ever and I am so, so grateful to everyone who reads what I have to say in my little corner of the internet! If/when I get to 150 I will definitely be doing another little giveaway, so I will start pondering on what to do.

quirky, quirkier, quirkiest.

oops, can't believe i haven't posted in nearly two weeks, sorry about that! i've had a pretty bad infection for about a week and a half now, which has been really painful, so i've not really been in the mood for posting. the doctor prescribed me some antibiotics which made me unbelievably nauseous, but i've been given some different ones & am now feeling much bette, thank god.

last friday was my school's leavers' ball, which was a really lovely night (despite the fact i was majorly drugged up on nurofen painkillers). the meal we had was really funny, & i actually ended up getting an award, totally unexpected! i didn't take many pictures, but to be honest it was really nice to just be there & enjoy the night. there were a few professional photos taken, i especially can't wait to see the awkwardness of me standing alone on the stairs!

charlotte, birkbeck, kate, me, beth & cathryn. my posture is kind of awful in this picture.

i didn't really get any proper ~outfit pictures~ but i did post some detail photos of my dress when i first bought it here.

i didn't like the main course we were given (fussy eater alert), so i made it into a face. cue troll face expression & obnoxious pose. maturity, this is what it looks like.

my friend also joined in my display of arty maturity & made the world's easiest maze out of mange tout.

my face!!1! any resemblance to that green-haired batman villain is completely unintentional.

me, birkbeck & harriet. shiny face alert under all the flashing lights.

alix, kate, me & cathryn. awkward leaning & me becoming a meerkat.

this is me collecting my reward, tearing up slightly. i'm actually not too sure what the award was even for, although i'm pretty sure the phrase "unique sense of style" was mentioned! i was so, so surprised to be given an award, & i got a little bit emotional walking to collect it, it's just so weird/nice to think that people (especially real life people who i never thought cared) like the way i dress and want to tell me so in award form! also, they mentioned the fact that i have a blog in the speech, it was so unbelievably weird to hear it said by someone else, especially as i didn't even think anyone knew i had one!

okay, so that paragraph was a complete mess, sorry if that was ridiculously difficult to understand/follow/read.

my award! i think this means i am officially the quirkiest person in my year, yay!

i'm going to paris on monday with my mum (can't believe it's arrived so fast!), so i'll probably post before i go & maybe schedule one for while i'm away (:

day by day, old joy comes back to me.

sorry that it's been a bit of a slow week blogwise, there really just hasn't been anything interesting enough to post about!

this saturday was my friend matthew's birthday, so we had a night out to the local pub (despite the ridiculous amount of rain that there was!).

matthew & i.

we all clubbed together & bought him some tshirts from topman, we were going to buy him the blondie one he's wearing in these photos, but thankfully we found out he already had it before we bought it.

matthew & i doing ridiculous faces.

joanna & me, my face is unbelievably pale here!

charlotte, kate, me, matthew, gemma & rhiannon.

i look like a total plank leaning over the table like that, paha.

charlotte, kate & me. interestingly enough, charlotte's doing that same face on our yearbook photograph.

just cannot wait for my exams to be over now, feels like this period of revision will never end. this time thursday will be such a huge relief.

kitty daisy & lewis.

hello again! i'm taking a very short break from my oodles of revision to show you some of the pictures i took on sunday of my friend kate, who i'd asked to dress up as a land army girl for my art project. (i'm getting a slight deja vu writing about this, so i think i must have mentioned it in my last post.)

so, without further ado, here they are. i'm actually pretty proud of them (:

i think this is the picture that i am going to draw, i quite like the lighting in it. (also, kate looks pretty good.)

the lighting looks a little different on some of these pictures as i was messing around with the settings a little bit. i really like the sepia-ish effect i got, although i haven't the faintest clue how i managed to achieve it! back to the drawing board for that one.

all of the pictures in this post are unedited, except for the one above. it's always worth doing a bit of photoshop just for something extra to write about in the sketchbook, & i found a filter called "bloom" which gives this interesting, soft focus/saturated look.

*insert technical photographer babble here*

hope you like looking at these! (:

also, regarding the post title, i have been listening to this album on repeat for quite a while, pretty excited for their next one coming out!

goodbye for now!

i'm a fool to want you

on monday night, i went to the 18th birthday party of one of my best friends who i've known since i was about nine years old! she's very interested in eras gone by, much as i am, so she had a 1940s themed party. a group of us clubbed together to buy her some vintage records we thought she'd like as a present, & i've just received a text saying she's just been listening to them & she loves them!

it was such a lovely night (even though a couple of annoying, inconsiderate people ruined it for me at the end, but we'll say no more about that) & i can honestly say cathryn - that's her name, by the way - is one of the cutest people i know. unfortunately, there really aren't any pictures of me from the night, but i have a few i took before i went.

this was my attempt at pin-curling my hair, although you can't really see as my hair is so dark in photographs! i was pretty pleased with how my hair turned out, as i have next to no experience in styling hair. in fact, i may have to try it again some time!

as the 1940s aren't really a decade i know a lot about, i didn't have much in my wardrobe that i could wear for such an occasion. thankfully my mother, amazing woman that she is, has forgotten more about decades of fashion than i could ever know so she was the perfect person to guide me.

i love this dress so much, the style isn't 40s in the slightest but the print is so i think i got away with it.

forgive the disaffected youth pose, my camera has a lot of trouble focusing in low light & this was the only shot that came out alright. this is pretty much the same outfit i wore in this post, so i didn't do any full length shots as it seemed slightly gratuitous to me. the only thing i'm slightly annoyed about is that i forgot to take a picture of the tights i wore as they were the most 1940s-ish thing about the outfit!

i'm wearing pearls in these photographs, but i decided to change my necklace at the last minute to this typewriter one i got for christmas from my cousin (the very same cousin who features in the post below!). i thought it was very appropriate, & of course it meant i could spend the night pretending i was one of those wonderfully mysterious women who spent the war working as a code-breaker. or something like that, ahem.

this will be my last post of 2010 (gasp), so i shall see you all in the new year! (:

generic post title mentioning snow.

sorry it's been a while since we last talked, i've been feeling a bit ill & uninspired and, not wanting to burden you all with my dullness, i stayed silent.

this week, as i'm sure my british readers will confirm, has been fairly chaotic due to everybody freaking out over the large amount of snow we have received recently. we've missed three days of school this week, which is good in some respects as i had a chance to meet up with some friends & enjoy a spot of well-deserved rest, but bad in others as it means sadly my fellow a-level students & i have no excuse for not doing work.

anyway, a couple of my friends & i had a walk in our local park for the day. it was lovely, and it really reminded me how absolutely beautiful the natural world can be sometimes. i mean, nothing manmade even comes close.

the park has a river running through it, and the oxbow lake beside it was pretty much frozen over! we decided to take a walk down to the bird-watching shelter which is in a completely isolated part of the park where the snow was completely undisturbed, & as we got there it started snowing heavily again.

i quite like this picture, even though i have a complete moonface. my hair & skin are completely wrecked thanks to central heating, stinging cold weather & being mashed under hats. that last one only applies to my hair, obviously, which resembles a bad wig at the moment.

my giveaway ends at midnight tonight, so you still have a good 9 hours to enter!

now i must return to my english coursework, or find yet more inventive ways to avoid it.

ps. both photographs stolen from my friend kate.

while my guitar gently weeps

last saturday my awesome friend joanna (who has quite the booty rave obsession) had an end of exams type celebration party. it's taken me a while to post about this, & i won't bore you again with my excuses but i assure you they exist! anyways, it was actually a truly amazing night - which was proclaimed on facebook many a time by my rather more inebriated friends, which caused us sober ones much amusement.

beatles vest - h&m, anchors vest (underneath) - primark, tights - dorothy perkins, shorts - zara kids department (they're a bit of a squeeze!), hat - primark, lace bow - the grainger market.

so, yeah, this is what i wore. sorry for the total camera-face block out thing, but this was just a photo taken to help me decide what to wear when i was changing outfits & all. i think i may just be in love with this oversized beatles vest, i bought it the same day & changed my outfit plans around it, ha! it's from h&m & was about £13, i think i'll be able to switch it round with leggings & wear it as a dress tooooooo (:

straw hat wearers unite.

i think we took about 600 photos? that's not even exaggerating - there's like 6 albums on the aforementioned social networking site & one called on the floor? has to be my favourite. it's just a series of photos of us, well, on the floor. it runs a bit like a stop motion film if you flick through them fast enough, i might even be tempted to make one if i knew how (*hint* help would be appreciated, if anbody knows).

having a bit rave on t'floor.

i love this, which is weird 'cause normally i hate posed photos of me as i neverrrr look acceptable.

this is also quite cool as in our "group" we kind of have a family tree of marriages & things, & we're standing in that order! so my "wife" is the bottom right, lovely girl that she is.

never let it be said that i don't know how to party.

imagine

today was a bit of a blast, i only really had one lesson (english, the teacher's rather mean) & did arrrrrrt all day which was actually awesome! i managed to finish my chalk drawing of a girl looking out a car window, which, if i do say so myself, looks quite good. i really love art at the moment, i wish i had more time to concentrate on it. but, oh yes, i have 3 mock exams next week which are clearly not going to let me do that, sigh.

in my last lesson of the day, my friend made me a groovy little woodblock etching laser cut thing which i think i may add a bead or some form of ribbony business to make a necklace.

isn't it sweet? imagine by john lennon has to be one of my favourite songs ever, the lyrics just mean so much to me.

after schoolio, we went to racquet club, which was quite humourous. i actually didn't even play badminton at all, i just ran around taking pictures, spun around in circles & took pictures.

what a facial expression.

skirt swishing time!

you can kind of see the hearts on my tights in this picture, the new ones i bought at the weekend.

see, just look at the way i am masterfully clutching that racquet.

yeah, i could totally be a badminton genius if i wanted to be.

obviously, we felt the need to do some carlton-from-the-fresh-prince-of-belair dancing.

'cause clearly, it's not unuuuuuuusual!

as it was sport relief day today, our school had a "sports themed" non-uniform day & basically i own nothing sports related as frankly i think the clothes are ugly & see no reason for them. so, as i compromise i wore my brother's old converse, because they are fairly sportsyish aren't they?

oh! i completely & utterly forgot to post a picture of this yesterday;

i bought this cute eiffel tower ornament in a charity shop yesterday (after my printing excursion) for just £1! i want to fill my room with little things like this, & this paris baby goes right next to my growing collection - this consists of my mini buddha statue & jimi hendrix snowglobe.

all you need is love

happy belated valentine's day!

i know many people dislike this holiday and, to be frank, so do i. it's really not very fun if you're single, but i actually had a very good day yesterday - thanks to helping out on my friend emily's jewellery stall at a vintage fair!

unfortunately, due to being rather busy, i didn't get any photos of the various other stalls, but the website is here if you want to have a look for yourself.

however, i did get a photo of our stall from behind.

i actually had an unbelievably awesome time, even though i was working for about 6 and a half hours straight!

it's a lovely community atmosphere at these fairs, & the whole crew were really nice.

this is basically what i want to do with my life (which is a fairly exciting yet daunting prospect!) so it was good to get some experience & a feel of how these things work. emily says she'll try & organise something where i can see how she makes her jewellery - and they are far more professional than my efforts - which i am really rather looking forward to.

i did get a little chance to skulk off & do some perusing of the stalls on my own when it had quietened down.

the cupcake emily bought me, so that we could have more change.

rather sweet isn't it? both in appearance & taste.

there was a fantastic stall where they had craft supplies and bits & bobs for next to nothing. i bought these pendants for 50p each, the pineapple because it actually made me laugh out loud at the stall (yes, i know. i am a very embarrassing child).

the same stall also had a pile of old (i'm presuming) family photos which were actually kind of amazing, & only 10p to 60p each.

the left one i thought was cool because i originally thought the woman was holding a monkey, but it turns out it's a fox fur stole! the other one i just thought was captivating, the smiles on the people's faces, the woman's flower brooch, the fact that they appear to be on a work outing of some kind on a boat - i'm guessing this because of the sea & the fact the man is clinging onto a handrail, and because they both have nametags & are wearing blazers.

i realise the photos are a bit tricky to see because they're so small, i do apologise.

it may seem a bit weird for me to have bought somebody's old photographs, but i do just find them fascinating, so much more so than GCSE history ever seemed.

i'm quite curious about this kind of photography too, they are beautifully done & i love the kind of soft-focus/faded feel black & white or sepia photographs have to them.

these ones are cute too, landscapes but with some lovely smiley people in the foreground.

this stall also had some old french fashion magazines which i really wanted to buy, but they were like £10 each and this just seemed a tad steep to me =/

these badges were £1.50 each, which at first seemed quite cheap to me but then i realised i had just spent £6 on badges!

they are pretty sweet though, i especially love the mmmmm one.

i'm not really a scarf-wearer, but these beauties were 2 for £5 which i thought was a fabulous bargain.

now i need some ideas for how to wear them, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated (:

the stall i bought these from gets all their vintage from europe, and this lovely blue scarf has the most wonderful drawings of french landmarks printed on to it - the eiffel tower, the louvre, notre dame, scare coeur, arc de triomphe, moulin rouge, opera & la madeleine. it also has the sweetest little fleur de lis pattern.

the second scarf has a more muted pattern, and for some reason makes me think it's from russia, or at least has that kind of inspiration. i think this is because of the drawings of opulent necklaces & perfume bottles it has.

the girl at the scarf stall gave me this pretty little bag to carry them in for free.

and i discovered when i got home that the bag had these badges hidden inside, i love little surprises like this!

i'm not sure if i'll keep these or not, i have a friend who plays the saxophone so i may give them to her as a mini present, who knows?

there was a record stall too where i bought hunky dory by david bowie - weirdly the exact one which emily's boyfriend had sold to the stall earlier! that led us to talk about music, which has to be one of my favourite things to do ever, and he gave me full moon fever by tom petty as a gift for helping out. i listened to both albums today, and they are so so good! i'd never heard any tom petty songs before, but i recognised free fallin' from a john mayer cover i've heard.

emily also gave me this cute locket necklace as a thank you for helping out, my friend kate also bought the same one earlier so we may look like twins!

now i need something to go inside it, best get the thinking cap on.

my apologies for the lengthy & rather photo-laden post today, but i felt i should put everything on!

i hope you've all had a nice valentines day weekend (or chinese new year) regardless of how you spent it.

love love (: