Diary: Babycham & Space Raiders

This is the last post of the year and it's all about my lovely Christmas and watching tea rise through water and having great socks! You can see all the sentiment that lead to the Paula Abdul post I made yesterday, and it's clear from the fact that I drew it twice that I really love my fuzzy reindeer. I look forward to all the omelettes I will enjoy in 2015 (the year of ultimate egg).

Style Icon: Paula Abdul

Forever Your Girl

Quite often I find myself watching some musical angel or other on YouTube for like, 3 hours. The most recent focus of my beam of internet attention was Paula Abdul. I like that whole 'wholesome American girl' vibe that she sometimes has (particularly in the video for Rush Rush, which is like Rebel Without A Cause except Keanu Reeves (who stands in for James Dean) is all like "have u ever been in love, dude?" and then she snogs him. I love that video and I love the way she wears a hair scrunchie. This is probably a good time to mention that two cartoon girls who were style inspirations to me as a kid were Jenny from Oliver & Company and Jeanette the chipmunk - a couple of hair scrunchie cuties who actually have very similar character designs. I guess hair scrunchies have been slowly calling to me since childhood. So that's a look. This is also present in the Opposites Attract video where she's wearing a stripy shirt and I think leggings and her hair has the cute scrunchie look going on, but it's less of an 'I'm an innocent girl encouraging boys to drive over cliffs' look and more of an 'I love to basically wear pyjamas all the time' look, which is a look I'm very familiar with. It's very cute.

Paula also has this great blazer/pressed slacks look as seen in lots of places in many variations. Of particular note is the cool high waisted trouser suit thing going on in Knocked Out and the red blazer and black tights combo in this awesome 1990 awards show performance.

Basically, I love her and she gives me life with all her dance moves and her puffy trousers and stuff.. Check out this video of her talking about how Straight Up became a hit, and go collect the biggest hair scrunchie you can find!

Knocked Out

Opposites Attract

Christmas Outfit & Chocolate Sprouts

I got this beautiful reindeer for Christmas and I love it because it's so big and cuddly and amazing! I received quite a few festive accessories as well, so I thought I'd better make use of them on Christmas day. I felt like not wearing red would have been unthinkable, so I wore my red skater skirt and a spotty top for a nice bit of simple pattern.

This bracelet was the perfect noisy Christmas accessory. I was jingling and jangling at all times and it was great. There's a little green ribbon on the side as well, which I think is very cute.

I wore these glittery gingerbread men in my ears, and some clip on Santas, because what better time than Christmas to wear as many earrings as possible, right? Well, I had to remove the Santas after a while because they were hurting my ears, so that plan backfired. I love the gingerbread men though!

I also got a Babycham gift set as a present, which included this adorable necklace. I put it on straight away and it hasn't been off yet!

This is the delicious omelette I had for Christmas day breakfast. I don't how or why, but it tasted incredible. Omelette heaven. I mean I love omelettes at an already quite extreme level, but this one was even better than usual.

My mum alerted me to these chocolate sprouts from M&S and I thought they were the best idea ever! This is the only way I will agree to eat a significant amount of sprouts.

I didn't get a full shot of my outfit, but you get the general idea here. Next year I'm gonna go all out and get myself into an incredible Christmas jumper. Maybe I'll increase my bell quota as well.

Inventory

Once again I'll pay tribute to my lovely pint-sized polar bear. He's so soft and he reminds me of both the warmth of a loved jumper and the wonder and surprise of fresh snow. There's something expressive and imbued with secret imagination about his small and simple eyes and nose. He is the ultimate bag companion.

I have an old scanner series called 'Scans Of My Life Right Now' which involves making a scan collage of various objects near to me at a specific moment in time. The scans I made for this post reminded me of it and how oddly dense it felt to just scan some stuff near me. Because it's really personal to show you that I've got this little strip of stamps and this raspberry cream lip balm and a tiny painting I put inside a tiny picture frame that came out of a cracker. They're so filled with life and they remind me of typing 'i' into text/interactive fiction games and seeing your player character's objects listed (much like this list inside a game I made and no longer have the file for).

>inventory
You are carrying:
   polar bear guardian
   250ml creative zest
   freckle
   glossy photograph of an excellent tweet you made
   key to the underworld

CUTE BRIGHT

I've used so many bright colours lately! I've been using all my pens together and all the beautiful paints. Everything has become a great big garden of colour. I'm using a bundle of printer paper sewn together as a journal and drawing straight into it, but I think I'm gonna do a lot more drawings on scrap paper and then stick things into a journal because I'm missing flipping through messy, full pages and seeing things all jumbled together and with little mementos. I'm using a lot of post-its and they're so fun to draw on. I love drawing in a really small space (and I love incorporating small drawings into a bigger composition). I also really like drawing lots of belongings. It feels intricate and personal and calming, so I draw my bag and my polar bear and my socks a lot.

M Is For Mountain

My grandad sent me a beautiful Christmas card (below, and drawn over above) featuring Glen Coe, by David Robertson/the National Trust for Scotland. Nothing more Christmassy than a snowy Scottish mountain! At this point I am fully submerged in a pile of inexplicably festive Jaffa Cakes and will not be emerging any time soon. Please enjoy these drawn over scans and a small collage of pieces of landscape and letters whilst I hibernate inside a fortress of baked goods.

Bonus: Someone sent me a link to this beautiful song mix and it's so good for a relaxing, delicate vibe. Lots of shadowy, pitched up vocals and waterfall rhythms. Nice and ethereal magic. ♡

The Sun Loves Me And I Am Pure

I have been looking through lots of old drawings lately and they have been giving me life with all their messy, scribbly, wobbliness. Lots of my favourites are things I made in Paint (or my new favourite Windows 8 programme: Snipping Tool) or things on tiny post-its with lots of weird marks and mistakes. There are things I make with something (particular or vague) in mind, and then there are things I make that just flow from me. These are the latter, and they're super special.

This collection features a phone picture that I doodled over (plus the original) and a beautiful tribute to Animal Crossing's Pompom.

Diary: Super Art Mode

I keep swinging between super tired and super excited, which seems seasonally appropriate. I suppose that's pretty normal for me though. I always want to do more art stuff and I always try to come up with new ideas or experiment with slight variations of methods to make myself the most creative little elf I can possibly be, and I've been concentrating a lot on figuring out the best way to make drawings! This means I've gotten really excited and decided to vigilantly cut and paste various painted thingies and sweetie wrappers into my tiniest notebook so that I might one day present it to Barack Obama and be rewarded with a high five and cupcake. Cool.

Pilot Santa & Other Decorations

There are approximately a million decorations on my Christmas tree, but I wanted to pick out some favourites to show you, like this one featuring Santa in a plane. I'm not sure when he got his pilot's licence, but I don't think he's practising proper safety protocol. He looks great though, perfect rosy cheeks and all.

The hedgehog and the squirrel are new this year, from Monsoon's collection of cute enamel decorations. They looks really smart and I love the delicate little ribbons on them.

Another new addition this year is a set of Paperchase mini glass baubles. These are so delicate and pretty. My favourites are the slightly translucent or opalescent ones.

This little hedgehog Santa is so adorable! And again with the rosy cheeks, only these are more like bonbon cheeks.

Finally, here's another Santa. This Santa must be pretty strong to be carrying all those presents at once. I'll be looking out for Santa during the weightlifting at the next Olympics.