Follow Me With Bloglovin

So it seems that, as of Monday, google reader will no longer be available. If you want to keep following this blog and are a google reader user, I would suggest following via Bloglovin. Recently, I've been using Bloglovin as a way of keeping up with the blogs that I follow and I've found it very reliable so far.

Anyway, here's a direct link to the page for following this blog. For some reason, it's registered as alisonlisahorn.blogspot.de rather than any other country's extension, but I'm half German anyway so I think it's well cool. Yay!

And now, a pastel-coloured photo montage for no reason other than to make this post a bit prettier:

Reds: ♥ felt mermaid doll I'm working on at the moment ♥ Tried making some velvet cake with cream cheese icing ♥ Yellows: ♥ Spicy hot chocolate on a stick ♥ Black and white washi tape I ordered from modes4u.com ♥ Blues: ♥ Fancy nails with silver rings ♥ Galaxy style cake bites ♥ Pinks: ♥ Lavender flavoured cupcakes I made for my mum's birthday ♥ Awesome sheep skull my cousin gave to me

@alisonlisahorn on instagram

Making a Spiked Black Metal Lamp

For a long time now, I've been very inspired by the idea of a black lamp with metal spikes. 

My 'home decor' board on pinterest has, for a while, been home to both this image of a piece by artist Rebecca Johnson from Bughouse and this piece by Andrea Maestri. Unfortunately though, lamps like this are pieces of art rather than house products so, as a result, are either not for sale or waaaay out of my price range. 

For that reason, I had a go at making a spiky lamp myself, diy-style. Hopefully it's different enough from any existing pieces so as not to be copying them (I've not seen any others with a plain black shade and spikes on a matte black base yet. Besides, I'm not selling it - it's just for me!).

The finished lamp

I used an old yellow second-hand lamp. First I scrubbed it to death with some sandpaper (very important), wrapped masking tape over the bulb and cord and then painted it outside with a matte black spray-paint. I ordered the spikes online from a shop on ebay. I think they're meant for decorating mobile phones, haha.

Then I set up a ridiculous contraption to keep the lamp horizontal while I glues the spikes on, abandoned that when it didn't work and drove myself half mad trying to hold it like a club and stick them on without the glue slipping off before it dried. Yay.

I guess it worked though: here's the finished cactusy looking lamp. There are a few faults and you can see some of the scuff marks where I sanded it, but I think it came out ok.

And here it is with the light plugged in and switched. The shade's a bit thin and cheap so I'll probably get a better one to replace it, but it'll do for now.

Pvc Collars

Although I'm loving the collars necklaces that in the shops these days, I haven't managed to find exactly what I want in a collar. That's why I decided to make some myself!

It took a few attempts to get the right thickness and size, but, in the end, I think I worked out a way of making them that works well so I'm making up some more. I might sell them online if people are interested, although right now I'm making them with the view to selling a bunch of things at upcoming craft fairs. These black and pink ones are made of pvc, hand-sewn with a chain and metal fastenings.

You can see me wearing my own little black one here.

Zombies In Glasgow

Last weekend, we went out for dinner and then to the cinema to see World War Z and, as you can see, we had some time before tea so we did the mature thing and pulled silly faces in a photobooth.

The film itself was better than I thought it was going to be! I actually kind of liked it. I haven't read the book, although my husband has and he said it they included some of the more interesting parts of the book in the film. We mainly wanted to go, however, because some of the movie was filmed here in Glasgow in 2011. I figured we'd maybe catch a glimpse of some locations that looked a bit familiar, but I didn't expect to see the whole first scene take place in what was very obviously Glasgow (made up to look Philadelphia with American street signs and post boxes) as well as a really clear aerial shot of George Square overrun by passengers fleeing from zombies! How cool?

As you can see, I wore one of the pvc collars I've been working on lately. I've been tweaking the pattern and I think I've got the right size and flexibility finally. So far, I've made a few black and pink ones with the hope of maybe selling them at a craft fair or on etsy. And if people aren't interested in buying them, I'll just take them all for myself because I love wearing collars! I don't know why, but I just think they're so cute (especially when you make them yourself so you can choose exactly what you want them to be like!).

Glittery Jeans & New Polyvore Account

Although I have been in severe need of some more pairs of trousers for a while now, I've always had a lot of problems with finding ones that fit and feel comfortable so I've been putting off the search as long as I could.

I'm a funny shape at the best of times: I have long, skinny feet, wee short legs, a super long body and neck and extraordinarily wide hips for the rest of my size. It's these short legs and wide hips that make it almost impossible to get nice trousers so you can imagine how happy I was to find two new pairs in h&m the other day. They're a bit loose at the waist so I'll maybe need that fixed, but, for now, it gives me an excuse to wear all these nice belts I have floating about.

I got one pair of black jeans covered with flecks of purple glitter (shown below) and another black pair with silver studs down the outside seams. Cool. And now I now what size I am in h&m jeans it means I know what to look for in the future.

02 by alisonlisahorn

As you can see, I had a go at making the outfit into a polyvore set (well... why not!). The clothes are just an approximation, but I managed to find the exact nail varnishes and lipstick I was wearing. My old polyvore account was getting kind of stagnant and full so I made a new one. This time I'm going to at least try to fill it with outfits I might actually wear!

Illamasqua Lipgloss in 'Violate'

First of all, I want to say that this post and this entire look was pinched copied stolen inspired by the beautiful Aoife whose blog Vicious Beauty (why do I keep trying to type 'viscous beauty'? It's probably because my mind's on lipgloss) you're no doubt aware of. If you're not already aware of it, it's a really great blog. Please check it out!

Having recently bought Illamasqua's sheer lipsgloss in 'violate', I was thinking of ideas for how to wear it when it I remembered this post by Aoife where she layered it over mac's satin finish lipstick in 'cyber' and wore it with very dark green, sparkly eyes. Anyway, I fancied having a go at the look myself when I was getting ready to go to my cousin's wedding last Saturday.

'Violate' is a sheer lipgloss full of flecks of deep green and it's pretty awesome. I imagine you can, of course, layer it on like tar if you want it to look really super green, but I took a leaf out of Aoife's book and have been layering it very lightly over other colours for a subtle green sparkle that only shows up when it catches the light.

I wore the slightly altered Restyle necklace that I wore to our own wedding. I still just love it.

Again, inspired by the Queen of the Night look on Vicious Beauty, I used a thick black pencil to prime my eye and patted a shimmery deep green eyeshadow on top to bring out the green in my lips (now there's something I've never said before. Is that like when you wear something to bring out the red in your eyes?) 

My uncle snapped a photo of my at the wedding

And a photo of my husband showing some leg. Phwoar.

Illamasqua Lipstick in Kontrol

Last week, I was very excited to have a parcel from Illamasqua waiting from me when I got home from Edinburgh. I had decided to make use of their special offer on lipstick and lipgloss if you order them as a pair. The lipstick I chose was kontrol, an awesome purple lipstick that's tones in with my hair, and the lipgloss I went for was violate which I'll be going into detail on in another post.

My family came over for my birthday the other night so I decided to try out kontrol, knowing that family are the only people you can really rely on to be brutally honest and tell you if you look like a freak because you're too old to be wearing purple lipstick. Anyway, at the end of it, I think I passed the sister test and the even the brother-in-law test and my little 3 year old niece seemed to love it!

I did my eyes in blue and green and decided to go full-on dolly-mode with pigtails and my new lace collar from New Look (£2.50 in the sale, reduced to £1.25 since it had a fault in it I had to sew. I'm turning into a bargain hunter like my dad). Hope you like the look!

Old Calton Burial Ground

It was my birthday this Friday so my husband took me to Edinburgh for four days. Edinburgh isn't very far from where we live, but it's perfect for a nice trip away without the hassle of a long journey. Although we didn't get around to doing all the things we planned, we still managed to go around all the main art galleries including the current exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art which was a bit hit and miss for us, except the work they had from Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle which was awesome. I've never had the chance to see any of his sculptures up close before and they were playing videos from the cycle (although the segments were too long to stand and watch the whole way through) so that was a bit of a treat.  The most fascinating stuff though was at the annual RSA exhibition, which we were both bewitched by. I even bought the exhibition poster to sput up in our bedroom.

As well as being overly critical about art and eating lots of cake, we also found time to go on some walks at night. Here are some photos from the Old Calton Burial Ground where we went for a walk on the first night. You can read up on it on the wikipedia page here. The parts that stood out for me were the monument commemorating Scottish soldiers who had fought in the American Civil war and also the David Hume Mausoleum.