Style Imitating Art: Greetings from Sonoma

First things first, I apologise profusely for my absence here and on your blogs. I was away at my orchestral camp from Friday to Sunday and then the week has been horrendously busy with late meetings, much prep to do and then taking 23 children to Birmingham yesterday to perform in a concert- we were one of 4 winners of the Shakespeare week music composition competition and we were invited to perform up there. It was a wonderful day but I was at school for 7.10pm yesterday and we got the children back to school at 8.45 last night and by the time we got back to my Mum's house, it was gone 9.20! I've tried to do a little commenting on the train but the connection is notoriously bad in places!

Anyway, onto the art.

Erin was this week's Curator of Style Imitating Art.  If you don't know the premise of this, there are three curators, Salazar, Jen and Erin who each choose a piece of art every two weeks (rotating between the 3 ladies). They post it on their blogs and you, me and anyone who wishes to participate creates an outfit or a flatlay based on the inspiration which we send to the curator who then posts a round-up. It is one of my favourite blog challenges and one of the longest running which I have participated in.  Interpretations can be as loose or precise as you wish. I would LOVE for one of my blog friends to join in one day!

So, Erin chose this mural in Sonoma as she was visiting there.

Details that particularly caught my eye were the beautiful summer skies within the letters, the red and blue lettering and the corrugated metal sheeting.

I'll talk you through my outfit choices.
You can probably guess that I chose the dress because it is a bit like a mural with blue skies, nature, flowers and scenes from the country. It is from Cath Kidston but I bought it from a blog friend.
The Tatty Devine bird necklace consists of blue and red with black outlining which reminded me of the lettering.
Finally, the shoes are rubber ones from Melissa via TK Maxx and I chose them because they are a silvery metallic with a sort of utilitarian appearance to them with the texture. The glittery bow makes them that little more feminine!

How would you have interpreted this?

I hope to try and get round to your blogs as soon as possible. Thank you for your continued support and lovely comments!

xx

Windmill dinosaurs

This is for my Mother-in-law who bought me this lovely Cath Kidston dinosaur dress for my birthday! I love it and wore it on Saturday as we went to view some houses.  We put in an offer on one but then withdrew it as we were a bit worried about the non-standard construction of the building

The house we saw afterwards was a wonderful location but was too dark and was a chalet which had low ceilings and slanted walls upstairs which didn't work for us.  Look to the side of these decorations

And then see what they make when you look through them.

Inside the arts centre, we saw these beautiful mosaics.

I rather liked the inclusion of old, broken, tiny violins.

The keys and money were a beautiful touch.

There is something quite magical about a windmill. A harking back to technology in the past.

Yes, I had my hair cut! It was time.

Maybe overdid it in the decorative stakes- my bubble necklace from last year's birthday and a rather abrupt badge.

Plus fake pocket brooch!

I hope your day was enjoyable and apologise for the disjunct nature of this blogpost.

x

5 brooches #46

Evening!!

Christmas has started for me already.  I've been playing and singing Christmas songs for a week already and tommorrow (almost today), the lovely Flute quartet/trio I sometimes play in is playing at  Christmas Shopping event at our local brand new John Lewis.  An hour and half of Christmas flutes.  All evening, I've been doing an additional arrangement of In the Bleak Midwinter and In Dulci Jubilo.  It's fun!

Anyway, I digress as per usual. Shall we return to the brooches?

Having just uploaded the photos, I realise I cannot count! There appear to be more than 5. Oh well!

 Here's one from an outfit post a few weeks ago.  Dorothy brooch from Goodnight Boutique accompanied by my Tatty Devine lolly.

 This  charity-shopped Autumnal dress was jazzed up with this rosette from Accessorize a few years ago and this foxy chap from Bad Design Studio.

 Here's the glittery Topshop bear again.

Last but not least, more Topshop brooches with this star and rocket which came as a set with the Saturn brooch from a few weeks ago.

Have you worn any brooches this week or recently?  Do share if so!

xxx

5 brooches #45

Hello there,

Back to school today. I do love my job but that doesn't stop me feeling absolutely gutted when the holidays are over!

I will try to wear a jolly range of brooches over the following weeks- I do find it cheers me up knowing I'm wearing something a bit ridiculous!

This is a rather outdated set of photos- but I am behind...

Close encounters in the skies with this cute Erstwilder alien...

Any tourist in London photographs the buses with a big ol' camera! This one is purely ornamental- also Erstwilder...

Here's my Mockingjay pin (WOMOTM, see, it's just the same!) which was a lovely birthday present from Melanie at the FollyBird.  It actually lives on this navy velvet blazer as it suits it so much. Added my Tatty Devine birds necklace as well as that was too big an expanse of white skin with no necklace!

And the day before, I'd worn it for my orchestra concert with this delightful brooch (not shown in 5 Brooches to date but I bought it in February.) It shows a flautist, cellist and violinist which is a trio combination that CBC and I have played in!

You've seen Vix's old vintage shirt before in a previous post and here's the pea brooch I wore with it. This one was an Ebay 99p, free postage jobbie!

Any favourites here?  Have you worn any recently?

xxx

Mustard and olive vibes

Hello there,

I am sorry about 3 days of outfits and brooches in a row, but really I have more important things to write-about nobler causes and also my  Cruise writeups to finish and they take me so long so I habitually put them off. Terrible really.

I thought I'd share an outfit from Saturday when we were going for more house-viewings (We put in an offer for one- was rejected) and then headed up to London (the night of the hideous grid-lock) 

I do think this is a typically autumnal look. It reminds me somewhat of the lovely Donna at Polka Dot Pink who frequently pairs mustard with a navy pattern, often being polka dots!

This week so far, aside from Monday's awful day (all was fine until after school meeting) has been quite a positive one. I've been pleased with the lessons I've taught, including the three most notoriously difficult classes.  Pre this term, I DREADED teaching Tudor Dance to one class but on the whole, they have totally got on board with it and really enjoyed it. I applied for a music scholarship for one of my pupils last year and discovered she got it which is fabulous, my choir rehearsal was deficient in about 15 pupils who are away on Residential but the 13 I had made a brilliant sound so that was positive. CBC made me dinner tonight ('tis a rare occurrence nowadays which is a shame as he is a great cook), we had a String Quintet recital today which is always a delight, I managed to get all the Nativity scripts printed, annotated and highlighted for staff and pupils and meticulously broken down parts on a big grid so feeling rather smug and organised.   So lots of good things after a gloomy start to the week.

CBC has made me consent to going to watch Spamalot with his school tomorrow which I'm a little grumpy about as teenagers make me feel awkward but hopefully the show will be good. Apparently, his non-music colleagues keep wondering why I never come to anything (er- I play in the music concerts!!!!!!) so I'm being dragged along.  Hopefully should be fine...

Outfit:

Dress: Louche at Joy (was FREE with a purchase)

Mustard Cardigan: White Stuff (Christmas gift from J and WOMOTM)

Leggings: Primark.

Teal Boots: The Doc Marten store.

Beret:  Nottinghill

Necklace: Tatty Devine

Dorothy Brooch: Goodnight Boutique on Etsy

Right, I'm off to read some Terry Pratchett and NOT eat any more Fudge!

xx

5 brooches #31

Hello there!

I hope all is well with you this fine day.

I bring you a selection of brooches from the past few weeks. Hope there are some you like. There seems to have been a lot of stripage going on today too!

This pewtr cat and goldfish bowl is one I found in a charity shop recently. I wasn't going to buy anything but then I saw this and it was so cute (the fish dangles) that I gave in! For £3 to charity, it was worth it!

Here are some of my home-made Scrabble collar clips! I have 6 letters!

 This parrot brooch is one of my oldest ones and of course has a tale attached. When I was about 10 or 11, I read the .'..of Adventure' series by Enid Blyton and came across a parrot called Kiki. From then on, I was smitten with parrots, drawing them, writing about them, wanting one and relatives and friends bought me parrot items. The family friend who bought me this brooch was SO good at buying me presents of things I really loved or wanted. They tracked me down a parrot Swatch watch I had admired of a friend's and my Mum had failed to find me one (we went to the Swatch shop and everything!) and this brooch was an unexpected Christmas present. I treasured it and kept it in the China cabinet in its velvet box for many years.

 Tatty Devine released some of their Lucky dip boxes a few months back and I ordered one of the Men's ones because I have a few men who it is hard to buy for and I thought some novelty cufflinks would be a fun idea.  When the box turned up, it had in it, 3 brilliant sets of Cufflinks and this Volume brooch! I have set aside the cufflinks for the presents I wanted it for and decided that this was going to stay with me!!

The last set of stripes of the day. I felt a red heart went really well against the nautical look of the t-shirt!

Any favourites here AND have you worn any!?

xxx