Tuesday 26 February 2013


Hello all,

Just thought I'd do a little post showing the dress that I customized the other night. The pictures were taken in my back garden, I thought the dull greys of the decrepit shed and stone made an interesting contrast and helped bring out the sugary colours of the dress - everything I want for Spring! Even the the flowers were quite a simple addition, I thought they worked quite well and definitely made me want to be a bit more ambitious when it comes to customizing and even designing new things.






I also realised that I don't think I've ever posted any of my art work...considering it's whats consuming most of my time at the moment, I thought I'd share a pic! You can find more of my artwork here.


Friday 22 February 2013


I always find that bedrooms can say a lot about a person - so I thought I'd share a couple of pics of mine with you. Mine is often messy, always colourful, and I like to think pretty arty!
enjoy x
(please excuse the terrible quality pics, my lightbulb blew so I am working with veeery little lampshade light aha)





Wednesday 20 February 2013

Evening Project

I was feeling ever so slightly creative, so decided to customize a plain tshirt dress I'd been toying with getting rid off. As you know, I am loving florals and pastels for Spring, so decided to decorate the pink dress with some pretty light coloured flowers.

It is pretty simple really - simply position the flowers where you want them, pin them to the dress, then sew them on like buttons! Just stitch from inside the dress and go straight through the fabric underneath each flower, fastening off after each individual flower. Any questions feel free to ask, here is the photo step by step :)












Will post proper outfit pics when I wear it x

Curl Gurl...

Having incredibly hard hair to manage (lucky me), I thought I'd do a review of the products I've been using lately to help anyone else who has the problem of curly/dry/damaged/dyed/tangly hair. Although I haven't dyed my hair in a long time, over a year now, it's still suffering from dry and damaged ends, and I've also lost my curl!! Still incredibly gutted about this, over the last two years I've gone from having extremely bouncy curly hair to dull wavy locks. This might be because of the length, but good products seem to be a necessity at the moment.

So today I'll be focusing on Curl Cream because anyone who uses it knows that they are all compleeeetely different and it's so difficult to find one that suits your hair type. Normally I'm dubious when hair products cost such a ridiculous amount, but in the case of Label M it's completely one hundred percent, no doubt about it, worth it. I think I'm probably quite easily duped by advertising - which is shameful to admit - but this worked!

Label M Curl Cream



At £12 a bottle the Label M Curl Cream seems extortionate but it does the job and MORE. I used to use Tony N Guy Curl Cream and that was so perfect costing only about £7, but sadly for some unknown reason they discontinued it. Since then I've been searching far and wide for a curl cream that smooths curls, makes them bouncier, less frizzy, and basically, just curlier. It's been a long hard ride... However, the Label M Curl Cream is amazing. It smells beautiful (coconut!) and manages to have a very light, non-sticky texture while still being quite a thick cream. It's not so thick that it sits in your hair and makes it feel heavy or sticky, but thick enough that you can feel it really taking hold of the curls and defining them. It's also full of lovely ingredients to help protect your curls, including Jojoba, Bran and Sunflower extract. Perhaps more importantly as the Summer is coming up, it contains an ingredient exclusive to Label M which actually shields your locks from UV rays. The only down side is that you only get 150 mls, and it is expensive but I really do think it's worth it.


L'oreal Kerastase Oleo Curl 



L'oreal Kerastase Oleo Curl - also expensive costing again about £12, so for some reason I must have thought that this meant it would work. And to be honest, it does...sort of. It's gorgeous smelling and does do the job but is just lacking that extra push. When using it, it does feel nice and light in the hair but this also makes it feel like its not even doing anything because it is so light. I'd recommend it for those of you with thinner hair as mine is quite thick and needs something slightly heavier to tame it, but there is no doubt that this is an effective product. This is possibly something I'd use everyday (if I could afford it) just for a light de-frizzing and curl smoothing, but doesn't quite push the curls as much as Label M does. You get about the same amount in the bottle, so I think in this case it's probably very dependant on hair type.


Boots Essentials Curl Creme.


The third curling cream I'll be reviewing is the Boots Essentials Curl Creme. For a cheap everyday alternative, this stuff is great. Compared to the other two it is in a bit of an annoying twist-lid tub, but hey it only costs about £3! It smells AMAZING I could stick my nose in it all day, but more importantly it also works. Its thick but not too thick, and does the job of making curls bouncier and more defined. My one problem would be that it is quite sticky and you do feel this stickiness in your hair until its completely dried, and even then it does leave it slightly crispy... however, if you only use a small amount it definitely does the trick and is very much worth a try at such a cheap price.


Umberto Giannini Silky Curls Smoothing Balm.



And last, (and actually to be honest - definitely least) the Umberto Giannini Silky Curls Smoothing Balm. It's tiny and in a nice little bottle so would be good for holiday...but to be honest these are the only real positives I can think of for this product, personally. It's light (too light), smells good, de-frizzes and smooths to an extent but not really enough to warrant itself as a specific curl smoothing balm. Maybe get this if you have incredibly light/thin curly hair...if you dont, then just....dont!

Hope this helped any curly girls (or boys...) x

Tuesday 19 February 2013

Sunday's Pretty Icons



On Sunday Sam and I went on a little trip into town, to see galleries and more importantly the Natural History Museum (again). I saw the Man Ray exhibit which was great but I don't really want to write about as I already do enough of that sort of thing for my degree!! We just love dinosaurs though. And Science. Oh, museums... Anyway I was happy to wear my Cambridge Satchel Company engraved (with initials - M G) pink satchel which was last years birthday present - which for some reason I have only used twice! I'm not too sure why because I'm pretty much in love with it, but will definitely be using it more when its time for Spring pastels. Pastels eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Wearing my new topshop dress in the picture, its a shame my coat is covering up the rest of it but I absolutely love it too, I'll hopefully get a picture up of it soon. I'm starting to really like all these new prints that are coming out for Spring, I'm not a huge fan of the 'comic' flourescent spots and commanding statement stripes, but the floral (obviously) prints and more delicate patterns and colours really create more of a unique look for Spring when we're used to just seeing pastels and lace. (Not that I'm complaining about that). I actually think the whole 'Arthaus' thing looks quite good when coupled with some more delicate, simple pieces.

A few Spring wishes:










All by Topshop except Polka dot shirt, Miss Selfridge.

Floral Fancies

Although the weather may appear to be getting better, I haven't been duped and have still been in thick knits, heavy coats, and LAYERS upon layers. Last Saturday was an exception when I donned a slightly more Summery style, playing with Autumnal maroons and golds. It meant I was able to finally give my red roses hand made headband an outing, and I found it matched beautifully with the colours and prints. I love anything floral but am trying to wait till the weather gets a bit more Spring-time-ier to bust 'em out, but till then darker  florals will do.

My lookbook and blog photos have never been particularly wonderful as I don't know too much about photography or editing myself, but my boyfriend offered to be my two-day lookbook fashion photographer - you can find his wonderful portfolio here. We were just messing around in his room looking for props to play with for the photographs and things for me to wear with my outfit - there were a few images of me layering Aztec shirts and beanie hats, which will not be making an appearance on this blog!

For now, enjoy the few that made the cut...





Hope you like them, I'll hopefully be getting creative again soon and will have some more DIY things to share with you beautiful people.

Tuesday 12 February 2013

Winter Winds

Today's outfit is a little different... After spending hours last night browsing the internet, in particular fashion blogs, I came across some images that inspired me. I was amazed by Megan McMinn's (TheBriarRoseBlog) hairstyle shoot in Company magazine - having only seen her personal lookbook images, although I had no doubt she was a beautiful girl, I didn't quite realise the extent of her model potential. The striking colours and combinations of patterns in particular grabbed me, and has made me desperate to start wearing colourful summer clothes and being a little more outrageous with my wardrobe. Although her gorgeous hair colour definitely adds to this, I felt I'd give it a go and one image in particular (left) made me want to style something slightly different this morning. Noticing that I infact had the same cream lace top in the picture, from Kimchi & Blue at Urban Outfitters (at least I think it is), I decided to style something similar and experiment with overlaying different patterns and colours to create a slightly more unusual look.


Unfortunately I have no short sleeved collared tops (a fact which I plan to change soon!) but wore it over a simple polka dot dress that complimented the shape of the tshirt. The bright blue colour shone nicely through the lace and the polka dots were not lost, despite being a similar cream colour. Being inspired by the picture I decided to also accessorize with some bright, chunky costume jewelerry - however, I had to improvise. I don't own any hugely extravagant pieces of jewelerry but paired two very colourful necklaces together to make an illusion of sorts!




It's hard being an art student because everything I wear into uni gets covered in paint, so weekends tend to be my time to play and have some fun with what I'm wearing. Although SS13 will no doubt be full of pastel shades and lace (I love this time of year), I'm hoping to brighten things up a bit when I get the money...

That's all for now xo

Tuesday 5 February 2013

Today


Outfit of the day, was feeling Summery despite it being the beginning of February. Here's to wishful thinking...

Wearing handmade floral headband (see two previous posts), and a staggering amount of Topshop bits (feeling slightly shameful).

xo

Monday 4 February 2013

History Book



 Too tired for words, weekend project xo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBcXwRODjfw