Polka Dots & Loom Bands

Sometimes a monochrome outfit makes me feel like all smart and put together. This is a great shortcut for when I'm feeling like a big sentient pair of pyjamas. Although most of the time I will very happily accept "big sentient pair of pyjamas" as my natural and ideal style.

There are patterns everywhere on this outfit but they are not overwhelming because they are fairly understated and are complimentary to the mostly monochrome tone. As you may well know, I am a great fan of both flowers and polka dots, so I found it very pleasing to bring them together upon my person. My mum made me a loom band bracelet, which adds a nice pop of colour and is great to fiddle with (I'm a known fiddler). I'm surprised to discover that I kinda love loom bands.

top: Primark
leggings: eBay
socks & shoes: H&M

Misc

Here is a collection of miscellaneous things I've made recently. These pictures have been hanging around on my computer for a while, so I figured I'd post them together in all their disjointed glory.

These blue and yellow painting are pretty straightforward. I've been enjoying these colours and the landscape format lately.

This is a scan composite I made when I was constructing this post. I left this one out because it was much more overworked than the others.

This lonely panel was supposed to be the start of a comic, but I liked it on its own and left it. Every time I look at it I wish I had polka dot shorts.

This disco ball magazine collage would usually have been included in a post full of similar collages, but on this occasion it was the only one I made, so here it is on its own.

These are two little cut outs from a drawing that were put in my scrap box to be collage fodder for my 360 book, but I wanted to scan them on their own first, so here they are.

This was an early experimental drawing I made to test out the vector programme Inkscape. I had never tried vectoring before so I just made a lot of shapes and lines and had fun.

Finally, here's a casual mspaint drawing I made just as a quick, fun exercise.

Totoro Strawberry

This post is all about two of my cutest possessions: my Totoro bag (from eBay) and my strawberry tee (from TK Maxx). Both of them I saw (online and in store respectively) and immediately had to have. The Totoro bag is just about the most useless size ever (it's very thin and not very flexible), but it's so uplifting and nice to be able to carry my favourite forest guardian around with me that I don't mind so much. 

The strawberry tee has the perfect colours and design. It makes me feel very pleasant and fruity. As comfort and cheerfulness are so important to me, including in the way I dress, I am very happy with my strawberry shirt because it is one of the most comfortable and cheerful things it is possible to wear! The strawberry has so much personality with its one quizzical little eyebrow.

As I was writing this I began to imagine Totoro as a strawberry, so I have included an illustration of what this might look like at the bottom of the post. Here's to Totoro strawberry!

Dream

Here are some more collages and bits and pieces continuing from this post. My favourite pages are the one with the muted warm tones of the ABBA video juxtaposed with bright pink and purple paint, and the one immediately preceding it with the water damaged photo and the small and simple pen drawing and carefully torn black and white photo. These pages in particular have a gentleness to them which I find comforting.

Diary: Doctor Who, Scrabble, & Sausages

This post's diary entries end at Sunday 24th August because that was the day I used up the last page! I can't believe I've finished it already, but it's true, so next Wednesday's diary post will be a bumper edition - an introduction to the next diary!

This week (so far) has been all about me remembering how important notebooks are and how much I love them, as well as snuggling up under duvets and blankets now that it's not so sweltering hot any more. I think colder weather is more my style, but every season and type of weather has its own special beauty. That's an important thing to remember when you're shivering or melting into a puddle.

Fitting Room Focus: Denim & Lilith

For this week's Fitting Room Focus I went to River Island to find they had a lot of pastel blue and clothes with ribbed detailing (makes me feel a little bit like I'm wearing a very comfortable armchair - armchair chic 2014).

coat - £40, top - £15, shorts - £30

The first thing I saw was this coat. It has such a perfect, delicately bright pastel colour which takes it from plain smart to "smart and very cool office lady doing uncle at a wedding style dancing in a nightclub and still looking cool". The denim shorts are Bart Simpson cute, and at that nice flattering length between short-short and knee length that gives most of your thighs a chance to relax underneath and have a secret thigh meeting.

dress - £28

This little black dress is very simple and sophisticated in silhouette but has that lovely mini turtleneck (a nice extension of the overall coverage of the dress) and, like the crop top, a ribbed texture. It reminds me of Lilith Sternin, a character whose grown-up style I admire.

The thing I'm so fond of about dresses like this is that they're so comfortable and easy to wear (you just slip them on - I can't abide dresses that are so tight you have to struggle to get them on and off like they're finger traps for your whole body), yet so effortlessly smart and sophisticated. I am ready to pull my hair into a tight bun and insult Frasier.

Grilled

For this week's scans I lifted my face away from the glass rapidly to create a grilled burger look. It's a pretty fun movement and the effect serves to segment my face into a sequence of vertical stripes. This references and emphasises my focus on tiny parts of my face - the holistic observation of every minuscule section.

ABBA & Ice Pops

This is my photo diary from the previous week or so. Naturally, I've done plenty of collaging involving ABBA. What's most prominent in this collection of photos, however, is that I've been very much noticing and appreciating small things about my surroundings - like the paint on the roads, flowers and street signs, and the slowly shifting colours of the night sky. These things are so important to me, because it's all those tiny things about life that remind me that there are endless amazing things about being alive. When I get sad this is often the number one thing for cheering me up. The world is dynamic, huge, and full of kinda weird and cool things. Not to mention Simpsons ice pops, which are the perfect antidote to hot days and the terrible affliction that is not thinking about Lisa Simpson 24/7.