Happy Hallowe'en!

Happy Hallowe'en Everyone!I don't really know why we celebrate Hallowe'en, but this year it's been a good excuse for making cakes and generally having fun! First we baked cakes in orange cases and iced them in green with chocolate sprinkles and sour worms on top:They do look a bit strange! Then we also had some caramel shortbread squares from Tesco which had cute little Hallowe'en pictures on them in white:

And then just for decoration we had a large cake stand on the table covered in little gourds:

Next weekend i'm going to a belated Hallowe'en party at my friend's house, which I can't wait for as we haven't all been together for ages. I'm not dressing up, but I shall wear the Nightmare Before Christmas ankle socks which I bought from Disneyland Paris!

Bonjour Mes Amis!

Oh my gosh I didn't realise it has been a whole thirteen days since my last post, so major apologies! I have been away for five days though, on a sixth form art trip to Paris with my school, so I thought I would share a few photos from the trip. They are a bit of a mish mash of various thingslike buildings, landmarks, and sneaky street fashion. We went to loads of places on the trip, mainly art galleries like the Louvre, Rodin, D'Orsay, L'Orangerie and Montmarte, but then also a few other places like the Eiffel Tower and Cite Europe (at Calais). We didn't get to do that much shopping other than buying postcards to go in our sketchbooks, but there was a Zara at Cite Europe which I think almost every girl on the trip bought something from!
I'm hoping that i'll get time to do some more outfit posts soon, I really miss them, but a- levels are so much work! Especially art and textiles, they are crazy. I have a six and a half hour shift at work tomorrow because I took on extra for half term, so I am gonna be so tired. But I really hope that I'll get some more stuff on here soon! Oooh and also I got some heels today for the sixth form ball (not until February but I need my dress altering in the next few weeks before the lady goes on holiday)- they're black wedges and I love them! The upper is suede and the heel is patent, and they only cost £20 from Dorothy Perkins, literally the first and only pair I tried on. I may take some photos of those to show you soon!

I love how my new lens gets my good focus like this. The shutters on french windows are so cute!
Candid photo of a girl in year 13 outside a small gallery on the first day.

I got my friend to take a photo of me outside the Louvre- this was one of my favourite oufits from the trip, unfortunately I didn't get a photo of the other one I liked. Candid one of my friend taking a photo, I love symmetry!

From the left: Holly, me (Gemma- I don't think I actually have my name on here?!), Celia. Outside the Louvre.

The pyramids outside the Louvre. Proud of myself for getting this shot so quickly, I do love the colours though.

These birds just seemed to be everywhere!

One of my favourite photos, candid of a woman looking at the paintings in L'Orangerie. I just love all of the tones in it. Disneyland!!!

Yes, we did go on the Dumbo ride to start with, because we are definitely children.

Just on the way out of the 'It's a Small World' ride, which was totally cute with lots of puppets and singing. We went on this ride too, it took us about an hour to queue but there were eight of us at this point so we could just chat. It was pretty awesome though, and a decent length for a rollercoaster I think (I don't exactly have much experience though!). The things you sit in (carriages?...) looked like trucks behind a train so it was really cool. We found a Starbucks in Disneyland, obviously everyone who went on the trip ended up in there drinking various types of coffees, hot chocolates and frappuccinos. All these cute little birds were on a bush outside the Notre Dame, this was probably the best photo I got but one of my friends got one which was 1000000000x better!

This was inside the Notre Dame, I didn't realise that she knew I was taking a photo focused on her until I saw her smiling through the viewfinder. So lovely :)

All photos are completely unedited

TV Loving

Hold it right there! This is my first post about a high street collection, and I reckon they will be very rare on this blog so it must be pretty amazing (in my opinion at least)! I don't often check the Topshop website when I don't have money because it's too tempting, but I decided today that I would, and boy am I glad I did. I've not heard of TV before but it's one of the emerging designer brands for Topshop, and it is right up my street.

I'll admit the red dress is not so great, at least I don't like it much; looks kind of like your belly buttons has affected the dress, so that the dress actually has a giant belly button?! I don't know if that even made sense! But I love, love, love those trousers! They're brocade and the print looks just like a William Morris design, both of which are things which I adore. Seriously, it's like these trousers were designed just for me, I've been looking for some patterned trousers for months and these are the best I've found so far. The only drawback- they cost £185. I obviously can't justify that, but I can still dream! I also really like the cyber print leggings, especially the colours as they're sort of dull so they'd be easier to wear. I'm not sure about that skirt at the top; even though the pattern and shape are both things which I like, it looks too simple. Like I could make it myself over a weekend, why would I spend £250 on it?

If I had the money, I would definitely be investing in at least one of these pieces!

The Secret Life Of Blogging

Today I found out that a few people at school had found my blog by searching something in google (not looking for my blog, but the words were mentioned in a post). My first thought was 'oh great, now i'm going to have to delete that too', but then I really thought about it. When I created my blog I wanted it to be something completely separate from everything else in my life, something which could help me to meet new people and share my style. I have a flickr too and a while back lots of people found it, as well as my friend's, and she got a lot of stick for some of the photos she had on there. My blog was something which was solely mine, a place where I could be completely open without having to worry at all about what people would say.
Now that people at school know about it, it could turn into a big thing where people are just laughing at me. But do I really care? I mean, I'm pretty sure that I want to work in fashion, which is super competitive and fierce, so shouldn't I just 'man up' a bit? Sure, I could just delete my blog and start a new one, but that isn't what I actually want. This blog helps me to develop my style and see what does and doesn't work, and along the way I can share it with other people. It's not a very old blog (yet), but i've still spent time on it, and I don't want that to go to waste just because of a couple of people at school seeing it.
So i'm keeping my blog, just as I have been all along. If people start talking then i'll just have to ignore it, or actually stick up for myself. I've now told two friends about my blog, so at least I can talk to them about it; although I didn't give them the URL and they didn't ask. What about you guys- have you told people about your blogs? If so, how many? Have any people accidentally found your blog who you didn't want to, and if so what did you do?

Get Yourself Together

A couple of months ago my mum was reading Red magazine and there was a feature about making mood boards to find out more about yourself, or something along those lines. Basically the idea is to go through magazines and tear out any images which appeal to you, even if you aren't sure why. But you have to make sure it's not just a shopping list, because apparently that won't help you at all and will just put you down.
So, me and mum gave it a go, and it's much harder than it sounds! I could go through about three magazines in a row without seeing anything I liked the look of, which did get a bit annoying in the end and I did tear out a few photos which I didn't really love, just because I thought I was being too picky. The hardest part was trying not to just pick out pictures of clothes you like, because that's not what it's about- but clothes are the main thing I like! I think in the end I managed to limit myself pretty well, and i'm really pleased with how it looks in the end. Mum never finished hers, but mine now hangs on the wall in my room beneath my pinboard.
A major 'trend' on my board seems to be patterns, especially florals and William Morris/ Liberty ones. Obviously I had to include the Daisy Lowe image because she's just stunning, although i'm not sure why I liked the picture of the model in the yellow dress because I hate yellow clothes. I think it's the detail around the neck which appealed to me. The little image of the rabbit in the top right is really cute too; it was this person who bought various pocket watches and then put little illustrations in them. If I ever see a pretty pocket watch for a decent price then I think it would definitely be a fun thing to trySorry about the photo, I know it's hard to see much detail on it. I did take four close- ups but whenever I try and put them into this post it rotates them for some reason? They're the right way round in my pictures, weird! Hopefully you can see all of the smaller photos too though, like the stack of teacups and especially those shoes and socks at the bottom- that's my favourite image of the whole thing!

edit: if you click on the image you can see it bigger to get all the detail. If you're wondering about the chickens, it's because I have six pet chickens and those are my favourite breed. We don't have any of those ourselves though because they're huuuge!

Street My Style

Just some of the street shots I got in London on the art trip. I'll the the first to admit that almost all of them are blurry, but I think you can see the outfits ok. As it was a school trip I couldn't really go off and ask strangers if I could photograph them, so I just had to snap them as quickly as possible. Some of the time this was whilst I was walking, hence the really blurry one! I love the trousers of this first girl! I've been looking for a decent pair or trousers for well over six months now; ideally I want some floral ones but I think I may have to settle for a green or blue pair. I only have two pairs of jeans at the moment and I get sick of just wearing denim or tights! There are some amazing thick grey cable knit leggings in Topshop right now, but at £22 they really aren't much different from an £8 pair of tights I got ages ago from Gap? I do still love them though! So so cute! I loved her bobble hat and all of the navy.

This lady look so sophisticated. It's not really my style, but she stood out as being one classy lady.

I love the jacket, the fabric and colours are just what I like. Also, she's wearing trousers! I'd like darker ones for myself but they looked great on her. I also have massive love for ginger hair.I love the colour of the left jacket, and her whole outfit was actually really nice. But ew at her friend's Nike bag!

I was gutted that I didn't snap this one before she turned around, I don't remember the exact garments but I know that I really did like it!

This girl was amazing! Unbelievably tall, possibly because of those boots, but she just looked so cool. I think I need more grey and black in my wardrobe, it's not like I wear loads of bright colours but sometimes I feel I just want to put on basic pieces.

This person just had a really sweet floral jacket/mac.

I really like this girl's boots and lace top, but I'm not sure I would have gone for those tights. But then, I never really got into the whole dogtooth trend much, it seemed too much like office wear to me. She still looks great though! This was taken inside the Saatchi museum.

Oh, and I just noticed the two people on the far left- I'd wanted to photograph them all day but they kept walking off. I really really love the red trousers, they remind me of a pair which I think were by Isabel Marant for a/w '10?

Me with some of my art friends in Trafalgar Square- facing the wrong way so you can't actually tell! As you can (hopefully!) tell, i'm on the far right.

Inside the Saatchi Again, this room had really cool lighting and lots of metal chairs and all of this wire stuff along the walls.

This is just a drawing I did of a 40's oil painting from the National Portrait Gallery, only half done though; I used various black pens.

Going To Landaaan!

I am so excited right now, tomorrow i'm going to London for the day with school to go round art galleries and stuff! London is quite possibly my favourite city, mainly because everyone there seems to have the best sense of style (although that could just be my comparison after living in Peterborough all my life...). We're leaving school at 8am to walk to the train station so I had to sort everything out this evening ready for the morning, including my outfit! I sewed up the hem of this dress which I bought a few weeks ago from a charity shop, as I'd taken it up about a foot because it was mid calf length- not a good look if you're short like me. It also has no sleeves so I decided to wear it over a plain long sleeved top, as i'm expecting the weather tomorrow to be a bit cold and probably rainy. My plan is to layer! You can't really see my legs but i'm wearing dark green ribbed woolly tights with brown boots. I'm going for comfort mainly, but I still want to at least feel as though I look pretty decent. And I know for sure that nobody from school will be wearing the same as me! Although even if I made no effort whatsoever i'm sure people wouldn't have the same clothes on as me; at my school there aren't that many people who 'stand out' in terms of style. Don't get me wrong though, some look amazing!Next layer is a short sleeved thick navy cardigan along with a yellow and blue-ish striped scarf. I bought this scarf around a year and a half ago from a country fair because the two girls I was with got ones in other colours, and it was only £5. At the time I didn't even like it that much, but I seriously love it now!