Skinnydip Shell Bag & Candy Rain Jumper

♥ Jumper - Candy Rain from Cutesy Kink ♥ Skirt - H&M ♥ Necklace - Q-Pot ♥ Bag - Skinnydip from Topshop ♥ Hair bobble - Cutesy Kink

Recent Make-Up Looks

I think a lot of people have a "staple" look, the one you go to when you want to look fancy, but don't have any time to experiment with colour or new products. This one's mine: Mac 'Ruby-Woo' on the lips, Sugar Pill 'Love+' under the eyes and the cut-crease is a red pencil rubbed in my pinky and blended over with a black eyeshadow. Dead easy! I wore it to an art auction the other night.

I've been having fun with my Too Faced Sugar Pop eyeshadow palette lately. This look is 'Blue Raspberry' (weirdly named because it's actually a nearly-matte turquoise) from the palette on the lids, blended out with some browns and bronzes.

Wearing White

I've always loved this Australian opal I got years ago from my aunt and uncle in Australia

Wearing white

'Layrinth Constellation' by Artificial Brain

Weekend treats

Christmas 2015

Christmas went by so quickly this year, despite the fact I felt like I'd been preparing for it for ages. 

Before and after. It was nice to get my hair done in time for Christmas for once (pre-booking is a tricky habit to master) so my hair is looking nice and sharp and pink (and matching my lippie, of course).

I still love our little black tree with its pastel lights. Folk who say white lights are classier can get lost! And... er, I've decided that 'pink and turquoise' is the new 'red and green'. Way more cute as Christmas colours!

Oh yeah, and this is the handbag I made my mum for her Christmas present! I did it using this pattern. I've never made a handbag before... or probably will again... or have ever followed a pattern before, but I got matched with my mum in our family's Christmas present syndicate and wanted to make her something special. It's made of yellow wool with a silk lining and has a magnetic fastener. 

Lastly (and tastiestly) here are the two cakes a made for our family Christmas dinner. A red velvet cake and a dark chocolate and pistachio cake. I have to confess the icing on the RV one is shop bought as, after two batches of failed gloopy, liquidy cream cheese icing, I gave in and turned to Asda for some help. I must ask my mother in law how she makes hers...

Anyway, I hope you guys had a lovely Christmas this year. Did you get any cool presents?? I'm still spending my Christmas money! Although I did get an extra cool present I'll be posting about very soon.

Recent Instagram Pics

♥ I tried experimenting with silver eyeliner, using it as a second 'flick'. I think white would maybe work better ... Also a weirdo came and tried to kiss me while I was taking photos.

♥ My attempt at beetroot pizza with feta and cavelo nero cabbage. It tasted incredible! Even if it was a bit like having jam on a pizza.

♥ Cleaning my marimo. I freshen his water once a week and give him a gentle squeeze evenly all over to get rid of any dirt particles. 

♥ And here's a recent (and very colourful) drawing of mine that I uploaded to instagram. You can see a proper picture of it here.

♥ Doing some research drawing for a new piece (an underwater one) with an amaretto coffee. Yum.

♥ Another make-up experiment: green on the top lid with pink glitter underneath. I don't think it really worked, but it was fun to do! Also I'm loving this lipstick which is Nyx's matte lipstick in the colour 'butter'. It's not really a genuine 'matte' effect, but it is a lovely greyish taupe colour.

Christmas 2014

I hope everyone had a good Christmas this year! We had a fairly low-key Christmas. Very few presents and we didn't even remember to put the tree up. Still, that's not really what Christmas is about and it's not as though anyone's really going to be mad if you don't decorate the house enough. For me anyway, the most important thing about Christmas is remembering the amazing gift of salvation we've been given in Jesus Christ, even if I find it hard to focus on that sometimes, amid all the rushing around to get things ready for Christmas. When I do stop to think and pray about it though, it blows my mind every time. Can't believe God gives us this love and forgiveness we don't deserve at all. Amazing! Anyway, I'm rambling...

Hey look it's the dark, thick-rimmed specs convention. On Christmas day I wore a black knitted mini-dress from Mango with my plastic harness from restyle. Bit of an odd-looking contraption to get into, but I love it! I also wore Illamasqua lipstick in the colour 'Kontrol' and did my eyes all glittery. Aww.

And I've already written about what my husband gave me for Christmas but, for him, I bought these t-shirts from Rotten Cotton. They're based on the films Braindead and Xtro, two of our favourite movies. When they arrived, I almost wished I'd got them in a size extra small and worn them myself instead, but Tim looks cracking in them, I've got to admit.

Queen of Darkness Grey Skull Dress

My roots are horrific, but I don't even mind. I wanted to show off this dress I got from Queen of Darkness. It's got a grey skulls and roses design and feel soft and fuzzy like velour. I love it!

Dress Up

Last Sunday, had a day out in town then went to visit my parents at night.

I wore this retro dress I got from T. K. Maxx. It's a bit big for me, but I tied a scarf round the collar and threw a cardigan on and I think I got away with it. 

Lunch at our favourite coffee bar. I had a posh-looking broccoli pastie (a poshtie?) and we shared a pistachio brownie and some billionaire shortbread. I can't even describe to you how phenomenally tasting this home baking is. 

Then, at night, when we visited my parents, we had the surprise of seeing my little niece and nephew. I spent a good while before dinner making dress-up dolls with my niece. She's so cute.

Alcest, Opeth, Beastmilk & In Solitude

There are so many good gigs on here at the moment, I'm having to choose between them. I've still got Solstafir and Bast to look forward to and, already this month, I've seen Opeth, supported by Alcest and Beastmilk supporting In Solitude another night.

My friend is a big Alcest fan which is what lead us to going to this gig in the first place. However, I especially enjoyed Opeth who I'd not heard much of prior, I hate to admit. Alcest were very good too. The tracks I liked the most were apparently from their older albums so I'll need to check those out. 

Two days later I donned my new Restyle harness (love it!) to go and see Beastmilk. I hope you folks are appreciating all these tiny, blurry pictures of bands...

Beastmilk put on a fantastic show as we'd hoped and In Solitude were great too. Good stuff!

First Saturday Off In A Year

My day job rota has changed so instead of working Fridays and Saturdays, I am now working Mondays and Fridays. I'm so happy. Every craft fair and art exhibition in my local area seems to be on a Saturday and, as terrifying as it is to think of exhibiting/selling my stuff in public again, I know it's something I really need to push myself to do. Having Saturdays off could really open up so many opportunities for me.

For my first Saturday off (other than annual leave) in a year, however, I decided not to do any work whatsoever and take the day off to celebrate! 

Top: Restyle.pl

Jacket: h&m (+ Vastum patch)

Shoes: Primark

We had lunch at one of our favourite places. It's closed on Sundays so Tim and I haven't actually been there for about a year. We're usually the only people there who aren't pensioners (pensioners have good taste in food and coffee. What can I say?), but I think there were a couple of other "young" people there on Saturday too, haha.

I finally had a chance to have a proper listen to the metal mix tape my friend made me. Really digging the Agalloch tracks and Chelsea Wolfe who I've never really listened to before. We've got so many metal gigs coming up (including two next week we've already got tickets for) we both want to go to our wallets will probably be suffering by the end of the year.

At night, Tim and I made veggie sushi based on this recipe. It's the first time I've made anything like it and the first time I've ever ventured into a Chinese supermarket either. It was definitely worthwhile though. The rolls were delicious and the sauce totally made the meal.

I'm not actually a vegan though so next on the agenda is probably to look up some recipes for sushi involving (cooked!) fish.

Pink & Yellow

Why is it that life always seems to fall into patterns of colour. For instance, all my recent photos seem to be pink and yellow. Anyway, here's a wee rundown of recent fun:

Oi look, I've a beetle in my ear! ... It's a beetle earring I got from New Look last halloween. 

Hawkwind's 'Electric Tepee' has been in my CD player a lot recently.

Outfit shots in the mirror. Why do I do this when my clothes are all black and look the same? I don't know...

A new recipe I tried out. Pizza with sweet potato sauce, topped with cavolo nero cabbage, goats cheese, walnuts and parmesan. A really strange combination, but it tasted totally amazing. Check out the recipe I used here.

Tim and me, trying to take a nice photo outside to send to his grandma in Australia. You can't really see it, but he's wearing the black shirt with rainbow skulls I bought him (I love that shirt!)

Pink Things

Had my hair re-pinked the other day. Went a bit brighter/darker this time.

And, sticking with the pink theme, I got this awesome fabric too. I can't wait to make something out of it. I imagine it'll be purses, but I got a whole metre of it so that will last me for ages. 

May 2014 Edinburgh Holiday

It's my birthday today so this week we decided to take a trip away to Edinburgh (we never go far on holiday!). Disappointingly there was naff-all on when it came to art exhibitions and we had just missed the Royal Scottish Academy's annual exhibition by a few days. We did manage, however, to see a cool film by Camille Henrot at the City Observatory on Calton Hill which was really worthwhile. As usual there's always new things to discover and we did a lot of wandering about to find new places.

The obligatory hotel bathroom picture. I swear I'm looking more like that painting I did of myself, everyday.

Camille Henrot's art film 'Gross Fatigue'.

Miss Katie Cupcake's shop on Cockburn Street. It had some really beautiful stuff. A little bit different from the ordinary which was nice too.

Our favourite discovery this time was definitely The Coffee Mill near Grassmarket (and next to an amazing second hand bookshopwith tonnes of science fiction). The place was so good that, after having coffee and cake there, we went back the next day for brunch.

Cake at The Coffee Mill. The picture doesn't really do the place justice. The food is all made up fresh and the staff were so nice and friendly. We'll definitely be doing back there next time we're through in edinburgh.

I didn't get much time to draw, but I can't go a whole week without the odd daft sketch in my notepad.

And we treated ourselves to ice cream from Patisserie Valerie on the last night. I had pistachio ice cream in a waffle cone and Tim had the same with a scoop of double chocolate on top. It's the best ice cream I've ever had. So now I've had pistachio hot chocolate and pistachio ice cream. I think it's time I tried some actual wee pistachios (I've never had them. It's shameful, I know)!

Louche Vona Dress

I had a little trying-on session the other day at the Barnardos charity shop down the road and ended up buying this dress for five pounds. The label said it was by 'Louche' and I already thought it was a bargain before I got home and looked it up to see that the price for it online was £79! (Or £30, second hand from ebay) Not bad! It even fits really well too which is something I find difficult with tailored dresses.

I wore it to a joint birthday dinner for my Dad and nephew with some little heels (not something I wear very often). I got my Dad a book on Blackadder and my nephew a big book on stones and fossils. Charity shops rule, man. Seriously.