Saturday 29 December 2012

Style experiments

Since I began this blog, the amount of time I have spent looking at pretty pictures of clothes on tumblr and reading about people's style inspirations on their blogs has increased hugely. My obsession with clothes and the size of my wardrobe have increased in direct proportion to the amount of new styles or fashion details I've fallen in love with! I've not fallen out of love with any of my old clothes, just wanted to add new things into my collection to compliment them.

I've always been inspired by Goth, especially Victorian, Romantic and trad goth styles, I also have a long-term love affair for steampunk and lolita (although I doubt I'll ever be able to buy a real lolita brand dress, even Bodyline is a bit out of my price range with the shipping costs!). Looking for more eye candy images of these styles led me to discover others which delighted me.

Fairy Kei
I'll forgive the 80's nostalia (I'm a child of the 90's =P) because I adore the big jumpers and cardigans, fluffy tutus and bloomers, the layering, the use of accessories and the innocence of Fairy Kei, and although the colours would put me completely outside of my comfort zone, I love it on other people! It makes me oddly nostalgic for the days when I pinned badges to everything, wore half my jewellery box at once, stuck stars on my face and was unafraid of wearing shorts and tiny skirts, usually with a massive hoody and converse! I'm wearing badges and occasionally over-doing the accessories again, we'll see about the leg exposure when the summer come around again =P
For those not familiar with Fair-Kei, this guide from ParfaitDoll is a great place to start.

Although the idea of wearing a full outfit of pastels still appalls me, I did remember that I own a pale pink jumper (originally brought with the intention of dyeing it, but it turns out you can't dye acrylic, oopsies) so I have plans to customise that and add it to an outfit or two. Watch this space, if you think you can withstand the horror =P

Creepy Cute
A mixture of gothy style and cute imagery, seen in lolita and various other styles. I'm not sure if it's a sub-genre or just a trend at the moment, I don't know much about it at all, other than that I think it can be really adorable! I especially love the creepy cute co-ordinates that Pastelbat wears, you can see some here, along with other styles like fairy-kei, gyaru, lolita, even pastel-goth- she has great taste in clothes!

This may be the reason for my over use of bat motifs lately, seen here and here!

Dolly Kei
Another Japanese street style I've fallen for, because of it's use of vintage, combination of fabrics, layers and whimsical vibe. This page has a great collection of dolly kei images. Another style inspiration for me is Marie Dauphine who wears a delightful dark version of this style along with gothy and lolita ensembles, usually with beautiful bone jewellery she makes; check out her tumblr here.

I really love the use of vintage dresses like Gunne Sax; I may be inspired to get this dress out again and co-ordinate it in a dolly-kei style! I also may have sort-of accidently brought this dress on Etsy yesterday =P Isn't it beautiful? It was 24 GBP including postage =S so it's a Christmas present to myself! It was from PetticoatsPlus.



Mori Kei
Another Japanese style I love, it translates as Forest Style. The 'getting back to nature' aspect of this style appeals to the hippy in me; I was raised by hippy parents and lived in Glastonbury (a wonderful Somerset town, with more crystal shops, tie-dye clothing and leylines than anything else, 9 miles from where the music festival is actually held =P) for 3 years; aged 10-13, so hippy clothing is dear to my heart. I wish I still had those purple patchwork trousers... Mori Kei is a wonderfully tattered look, with lots of layering, natural fabrics and old-world charm. This page has some great mori kei images. The colour palette of mori kei is mainly natural colours, often with lots of white and cream, once again out of my comfort zone! Then Amy of Bohemian Bloomers, wrote a post which mentioned Black Forest Mori Girl aka Dark Mori, which seemed much more me! Here's a link to her guide to the style, the original post on it by Shady Oaks and a lovely inspirational tumblr, Strega's Forest (sadly doesn't seem to be updated any more). Pretty prefect style for a goth like me whose clothes get caught on everything and torn and who often forgets to brush her hair =P

This was my outfit for meeting old school friend's at the pub last night. I'm sorry for the crap photos, the lighting was less than ideal and I still don't have decent editing software. It's my take on Black Forest Mori, limited to clothing I happen to have at Ash's at the moment! Needs more layers...






What I'm wearing
Blouse: charity shop in Derby, I keep meaning to iron and stitch the ruffles down but I think the messy look is OK for this outfit.
Dress: Superdry, from Cult, it was a present from my Mum for Christmas =] can be seen on their website here, it saw it ages ago and fell in love but couldn't afford it. My mum is wonderful!
Skirt: A crochet skirt I found in a charity shop in Moseley; It's full length but I pinned it up for this. It's so heavy that is squashed my petticoat completely and wouldn't poof up as much as I wanted but I still like it.
Tights: New Look, also from Mum =]
Necklace: the pendant was made by my friend Kelly. She has more beautiful ones in her Etsy shop here. I put it on a piece of lace that matched the dress for the evening =].
Earrings: I wish the picture was better, they are tiny black roses, I made them myself.

I also wore my doc martens and lace edged boot covers and put the bow featured in this post in my hair because I wanted a flower but couldn't find my purple one!

Wednesday 26 December 2012

I return from the grave, but not unscathed...

Hello to all of my readers, I have a netbook again and I'm back to blogging! How I have missed it. I've been reading posts on my lunch breaks at work, but not being able to leave comments or reply to the ones I've had has been hard =[. Thank you all for sticking around and awaiting my return =]

Yesterday I got my lovely new netbook, but It's going to be a while before I return to full functionality; it came with Windows 7 - but it turns out to just be a starter edition which means I can't do a lot of things (including change my desktop wallpaper for some reason!), I'm going to try and invest in a full edition as soon as I can.

I also don't have any photo editing software at the moment, except Paint, which is a tiny bit too basic (even for someone that still uses a version of PaintShop Pro that was made for Windows 1998 =P). So you'll all have to bear with me a tiny bit!

After my long absence I thought the most appropriate post would be the pictures I took in Cathays Cemetery, which was really beautiful, very serene and well tended with some stunning memorials. I apologize for the poor lighting in these pictures; December light on a rainy day isn't the most interesting!

Main entrance gate

Anglican and Dissenter's Chapels (sadly the Catholic chapel has been totally lost)


Some of the memorials in the oldest part of the cemetery, notice how many obelisks and other kinds of pedestal tombs there are.

 Memorial to Frank Baselow, the statue is thought to represent his young wife and child.


Memorial to Sydney White which features 2 angels and a statue of Jesus as a shepherd.

I will be returning to Cathay's at some point in the spring to finish my recording, so I'll take more pictures then when I hope the weather will be a little better; we only managed 3 hours in the cemetery each day on this visit because after that our fingers were too numb to hold the tape measure or write anything down!

This week I'm hoping to post some pictures of my Christmas crafting projects and show you all some of the lovely gifts I received yesterday!

Thursday 6 December 2012

Computer says no...

This is just a quick post to let you all know that my beloved netbook, which has been a faithful friend to me for the last 4 and a half years, has departed this life. There is something wrong with the part that connects to the power supply, so it simply won't charge. I'm sure it could be repaired, but the last time I got it repaired (hinge replacement at the end of my 3rd year of uni) the repair cost more than the netbook was worth, and it's worth even less now! Also I know I'm getting a shiny new netbook for Christmas (thank you to my beautiful boyfriend!).

I'll try to post If I can borrow a computer but the number of posts between now and Christmas day might be very low so I'm apologising in advance! I'll still be able to read all your posts, and comments at work on my lunchbreaks, but I won't be able to reply (we only use internet explorer in the office, which isn't supported) so extra apologies for that!

So until I return I hope you are all well, keeping warm away from the bitter weather (or cool away from the sun, for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere!) and looking forward to the festive season!