Showing posts with label collars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label collars. Show all posts

Monday, April 17, 2023

TARDIS Tuesday- Ang's Handiwork- Clara from The Magician's Apprentice

Hello there!

I am back from holidays and have had a really great time off. This holiday, I really have been busy the entire holiday. I only had 3 full days at home-one of those spent packing, one doing housework and recovering from horrid late night plane delay and one doing school work- today in fact- it's not enough, now having a bit of a panic about school work! I started writing my Pennine Way post but it's an epic and taking ages so I thought I'd post the TARDIS Tuesday I forgot to post last week.

It is a special one because it features one of the wonderful Ang Almond's fantastic adaptations and it's been quite a while since I last wore it. In fact,since June 2019 worn here (worn without jacket)! I am totally shocked!

Here's the outfit:

https://wornontv.net/51844/ 
It features a green satin pearl-print dress (with collar) from &Other Stories.  She pairs it curiously with a grey merino wool jumper from J Crew, a black leather jacket from &Other Stories also, purple/navy tights, black socks and black lace up boots from Topshop.  It's apparently a school outfit though I'm mystified why you'd wear a satin dress for school!!

Here's my latest version with some side-by-sides with Clara!


The main star of the outfit is, of course, the aforementioned satin dress.  &Other stories also made a version of this dress that was shorter and without a collar with longer sleeves. I bought the alt version of the dress and Ang adapted it for me by adding a collar made from the sleeves and with backing from another piece she had adapted for me.
The dress rarely gets seen without the jumper and jacket so I actually thought I'd share it here in its various forms so you can admire her work. In fact, I wore it without the jumper for church on Easter Sunday with a belt to give it a less sack-like shape (not flattering on me). I really like it on its own belted as did CBC who admired it (and didn't realise it was a Clara piece). 
I do not own the correct leather jacket and to be honest, I won't do- I don't have use for more than one jacket of this type. Instead, I wore her All Saints Axelle black denim jacket which is close enough for Jazz.
I added an alternative grey Clara jumper (she has 3!) which was a cropped marled one from Topshop and it looks quite nice I think, better than the J Crew one.

I added some very old but nice Oasis purple tights (purchased at least 10 years ago and to my dismay, laddered them!) and either the same or similar Topshop boots.
You'll notice the hair cut I presume? I had it cut for the Pennine Way as could not be faffing with long hair!
You may notice that I am wearing a different sweater in this photo! It is the J Crew sweater but in a biscuit colour. Bought in error but I think the short grey looks better!


I really liked this iteration of this outfit, it's my favorite so far and it made me keen to give the dress a show again soon! Probably not for school though...however, I could try it and see what reaction I get!?


Hope you are well and stay tuned for Pennine Way updates soon!

xx

Tuesday, December 03, 2019

TARDIS Tuesday- Clara in Face the Raven

Hello there,

Today's TARDIS Tuesday is a bit of a last minute one- one I haven't worn for ages and one that is really comfortable!! I need to wear it more.

The inspiration is from Clara's Swan song (or, rather, Raven song?) episode, Face the Raven. She also wears it for Hell Bent and in Twice upon a time (er- smelly?).

She wears a grey jumper from Topshop that has a built in lace shirt.  She wears it with tight black jeans and some black suede wedged trainers from Ash.

Image result for face the raven clara oswald
Image borrowed from BlogtorWho

And here's me:

I have the same sweater but mine's a bit big for me.  That makes it more comfy! I wore it with my ubiquitous black trousers that make it into every Clara cosplay requring black jeans.  My trainers are also from Ash as well but I didn't wear them for school- a) because we can't wear trainers and b) because I am worried it might rain!! And I look very haggard. Sleep needed methinks!

What do you think? Would this be your type of outfit?
xx

Monday, May 13, 2019

TARDIS Tuesday- Sleep No More Clara...with a cameo from Ang Almond!

Today, I am excited to share a completely updated cosplay with you!
It is a particular favourite outfit of mine worn by my favourite Clara Oswald! It's a combination of things I love: a Peter Pan collar, navy blue, turquoise blue, a cute skirt and a pretty necklace! It is worn in a very weird and scary episode entitled, Sleep No More.

My photo from the Doctor Who Experience

You can see I have attempted this outfit twice before:
Here, I only showed the top half.
Here, I did the whole outfit.
It's quite an expensive outfit were one to have bought the elements new.  The collared top underneath and the skirt are from a French designer called Claudie Pierlot and they are quite pricey. The Merino wool jumper is from Gap and is fairly expensive. The shoes, not pictured, are from Other Stories which is, again, expensive and finally the necklace is the only relatively cheap part which is from various high-street shops including River Island, H&M, Topshop etc.


Image result for clara oswald sleep no more
Image borrowed from Worn on TV

A lot of DIY has gone into my updated version of this outfit and I am grateful to another Cosplay, Katie, who bought the same skirt and did a DIY project on it which gave me the idea, other cosplayers who IDed items and then the wonderful Ang Almond who has customised two items from this outfit for me!


I am super proud of this outfit!  
Let's talk about the 'boring' elements of it first.
I've worn the same Screen-accurate necklace both times I have featured this outfit and I was fortunate to buy this one for £3 plus postage from someone second-hand.
The jumper is also Screen-accurate which I didn't have last time I did this. I happened to find it on eBay brand new in my size and I paid about £20 for it. It's a lovely warm jumper.
I don't have her shoes but I am wearing another pair of screen accurate shoes of Clara's in the picture.
Now onto the exciting bits which Ang helped with:

Both the top and the skirt are very hard to come by.
The top is distinctive for its pleated collar.
I found 2 M&S navy blue crew-neck t-shirts in the charity shop that were brand new with tags at least a year ago and I also found a Neck navy blue pleated vest top in the charity shop which was in a really similar pleated material so I bought it intending to try and fashion a collar out of it at some point. I mentioned in my sort of "Things I want to do this year post" and Ang, who had volunteered to embroider Question marks on my shirt for a previous cosplay offered to do this for me. I was so grateful!  I think that the top wasn't being as helpful as it could be, she told me in the card she sent along with the finished article.  She made me 2 of the t-shirts as I had bought 2 of them and it seemed a shame to cut the top up for just one collar so I have a spare.  Alas, I can't seem to get it to lie properly when I put it over the top of the jumper!

The second item which Ang helped with was the skirt. Trying to find a match for Clara's skirt is quite difficult. I wore a plain blue scallop skirt from ASOS but then I discovered a white skirt with black patterning by Missguided.  I managed to find a girl selling the skirt AND a matching jacket (donated to charity) for £4 and then I bought a Posca paint pen and then proceeded to colour the skirt in with it!  It was one of those tasks that you start and think, "WHY on earth did I think this would be a good idea?" but since I'd started, I had to finish! I made sure I was doing it at times that were otherwise dead times like when I was waiting for CBC at Snozone in Milton Keynes and on a journey in the car to Oxford and so that made it all more bearable. It was extremely irritating though as the nib kept catching on what was quite fibrous, fluffy material!  Eventually it was done though though, it took so long and I did have to keep going over it to try and make it less blotchy. It actually looks worse in pictures than it does in real life luckily. If I wanted to spend any more time and money on it, I could get another pen and touch it up but I don't really want to! My friend used 3 pens on hers and it looks the perfect colour!!
Ang, then amazingly, managed to add navy material to the bottom in slightly larger scallops to mimic the skirt of Clara. I'm not sure how she did it so neatly. My friend did her own one and it doesn't look nearly so neat!


You can see Ang's post, her own TARDIS Tuesday, where she writes about how she did it!
Thank you SO much Ang for being such a huge part of this cosplay!  The kindness of blog friends never ceases to astound me.

What do you think?

x

Monday, September 24, 2018

Style Imitating Art- The County court house ceiling and The 50's dress of dreams

Hi there,
Hope you are enjoying your Monday.
It's been a few weeks since I have taken part in Style Imitating Art.  This week, our host is the wonderful Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks and wonderfully, the art work we are inspired by this week is by her!

She took the photo of the ceiling during a family trip to St Louis, Missouri and had to really crane her neck to get the whole ceiling in. It is part of the building designed by Lavielle and Morton.

What an amazing ceiling and the way Daenel captured it is brilliant!  The photo is hers and I am only borrowing it here to show her amazing work in comparison to my outfits!

Old County Courthouse in St Louis, Missouri. Image by Daenel. A. Vaughn-Tucker
I was actually a little stuck with this at first until I realised on Friday that I was putting on a top which had a variety of colours including the right shade of pink together with some of the other colours and little intricate details including lace which nodded to some of the details.
 I then thought about that central circle in the image, perhaps a skylight and then thought of several items of jewellery I own that would work for that- the necklace is made up of slightly different sized circles in white including some that are intricate.  The white circle bracelet was an Eid present from a lovely girl at school and the earrings I bought in France tied with both of those.
 Finally, I added these Geometric Toms shoes - with their black and white circles and patterns, it reminded me of those outside black and white circular bits on the picture (sorry, I'm really going on a downer for descriptive language today!)
My loose blue jeans completed the look.

I then remembered a blog post I had as a draft which was never published with a dress I'd worn with the PERFECT colouring. Although the picture below is pretty dark, the pink of the dress is the exact shade in real life of those pink panels and the corresponding greyish edging is rather like the edging on my dress.  Appropriately, I had worn the same circle bracelet and a white pearl necklace plus some silvery grey sandals.

And you can read the rest of that draft post below!
In my 13 years of blogging, I have read the blogs of many stylish ladies who blog about their style.  Many of them were into Vintage clothing and many of those often found items when out in charity shops of thrift shops.  I am glad that many of them still blog such as Vix, Lauren, Ann although a few have fallen off the blogging wagon.

I was always envious and rather amazed at the beautiful collared 50's dresses that a few of my friends would find and always longed to find something similar.  Sadly, the only 50's dresses I ever really saw were in vintage shops and retailing at over £60 and invariably, never in my size!

When I was in Northumberland at Easter, my heart did a little skip when I saw this dress on a mannequin in the Corbridge Antiques centre.  The collar was gorgeous, the size looked good, it was cotton and the length looked alright.

I asked if they could take it off the mannequin and tried it on and happily, it being Northumberland, a slightly more reasonable £25 was what I managed to buy it for.
It IS very, very fitted at the waist, even for my small waist but the way the sleeves fit is lovely as it doesn't grip me at the shoulders and armpits in the way many modern sleeved dresses do.  It was very comfortable to wear to my Dad's Birthday back at the start of June.

Did you ever seek a particular style of dress and get very excited when you found it?


Now, head over to Daenel's blog on Wednesday to see how EVERYONE ELSE interpreted Daenel's beautiful photo!
AND if you think you've got an outfit that would work for this, email Daenel at livingoutsidethestacks@gmail.com and she will post a round-up of all the outfits!

x

Thursday, February 23, 2017

5 broooches #55

300 reports complete. 200 to go.... Ahrgh!

A quick post here- one that was already ready to go but I always feel it is nice to add a welcome to you, written on the actual day!  It's only 6 days since my last broochage post but I haven't got much time to do anything else but I wanted a wee distraction!

Hope there's something you like here!
You can just see Nessie on the right. He's from @fairytalecollars on Etsy!  He seemed to fit right in with the Orla Kiely pattern I felt.

And here are the teapot and teacup brooches I made a while back out of Shrinkplastic. I started making another brooch the other day, one that has been sitting waiting for ages. The subject of it is so cute so I will be dismayed if it goes wrong in the oven!


Two photos of this one.  I thought I'd wear my Glitterpunk pastel keyboard with my Miss Patina Aristocat blouse!
Last but not least, is an ensemble you will have seen a few weeks ago. My charity-shopped Robin jumper with Rosebud Casson Robbin necklace plus her Blackbird pin and a Primark bird pin plus a Christchurch welcome badge!

Any favourites here?
xx


Tuesday, February 07, 2017

5 brooches #53

Evenin' all! 
I hope all is shiny and bright and bushy-tailed in your home!

As I write, I am at my first orchestra rehearsal since November!  We are playing Hadyn's Surprise symphony which I am rather gleeful to play as I've never played the proper version, only a primary school version.  It's the one with a big surprise at the end of a phrase...




I adore playing music from the Classical era (1780-1820) as it has such sumptuous melodies and such a light buoyant feel!  Think Mozart and Hadyn!

Play it as you are reading! It will brighten any mood!

Anyway...onto the broochage.


Here's yesterday's book dress but with a different top and brooch.  Drink tea and read books. Yes please!
Double broochage here for the eagle-eyed.  A balloon and a tiny cactus on my favourite tank top.
My trusty old DIY Scrabble brooches giving a little inspiration!
Finally,a pair of pins for my lapels...both presents. The violin was a Christmas present from my penpal Lucy and the heart-shaped one from my Deputy Head teacher!  She buys great presents!!!

xx

Monday, January 16, 2017

Fantastic beasties


The benefits of a high-necked rounded collar dress or top are that you can change the appearance of them by the cunning addition of a collar or a collared top. I added a sleeveless white top underneath this dress to give it a different look.

 The weather was decidedly atrocious yesterday with rain, rain, rain but I got out with my wellies to photograph this wee outfit.

Barring the wellies and leggings(Primark) and the two pin badges, everything came from a charity shop totalling about £5 in total- love my local everything is £1.99 Barnados!
 Speaking of the pins and collars, if you want something different in terms of collar clips, I recommend using old clip-on earrings like those below.  These birds made me think of exotic beasties and so I paired them with my Niffler pin (from Fantastic beasts and where to find them made by the lovely Hannah Hitchman on Etsy (check out her name on Etsy to find her) and my little robin brooch.
 Although the weekend weather was grim, it did mean I did rather get on with tidying and sorting and school work so it isn't all bad. It's much harder to do the chores when it's beautiful out.  On Saturday and Sunday, we both woke up late and then tidied up on Saturday as my Dad and family were popping round- was good to get it done.   On Saturday evening, we went to see Lala Land which was thoroughly up my street.  I've been playing Mia and Sebastian's theme on the piano!  Definitely old school musical with beautiful song and very much put me in mind of Les Demoiselles Rochfort- a fabulous French musical!

Hope your weekend was enjoyable!


x

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

5 brooches #47

Hello y'all!

Here's another instalment of broochery  for you!

 The superhero combination is a new one for me! The wonderful Luan at Green Tea and Cupcakes  sent me a 3 gorgeous little wooden pins including these 2! I loved the combination of Minion and Batman! How cute and how different to anything I had!
 Both these have featured before. The cloud pin comes from the lovely @fairytalecollars on Instagram and the mountain is part of a set of collar clips with detachable chain! I liked the high altitude combination of hot air balloons on this Miss Patina shirt with cloud, kite and mountain!
 Last but not least, I decided to taunt the bespectacled cat with a little acrylic mouse which I bought very reasonably from the Bad Design Studio!

Have you worn any brooches recently?

xx

Saturday, August 20, 2016

The bliss of solitude

Greetings,
I know some of you are keen to hear about my cruise adventures but I have failed to prepare my posts yet about this.   I always find holiday posts quite an onerous task, especially when there are countless photos to sift through!

I've been back since Monday morning and the week has, on the whole, been largely uneventful. This has been helped by the beautiful weather.
 But honestly, despite its lack of action, it has been a great week. Just being able to have a whole week doing nothing so much. With other holidays, there is always the pressure of limited time- feeling you need to do something meaningful with it; to having interesting tales to tell; to socialise.

Yet, a simple week is often what I yearn.
 Monday was spent putting away clothes, washing and hanging clothes, watering a 12day unwatered garden.. I felt a bit bizarre - like I was still on board a swaying ship and kept bumping into things and needed to gain my balance. To be honest, I do keep getting dizzy moments still, but it's fine.

Tuesday, with glorious sunshine, was a day of gardening with extensive mowing and clearing of weeds at the end of the garden. There was also reading in the garden and watching Ugly Betty DVDs. I also made a huge vat of chickpea and vegetable stew from all the way out of date vegetables festering in my fridge which still looked ok.

Wednesday, again waking to beautiful sun, my friend L from my flute trio came over early to bring me the two crocheted orders I had commissioned from her and she stayed for about an hour for a chat too. It was really nice to have her round, chatting in the garden.  (I frantically tidied up before she came).  I don't know about you, but I find it hard to make friends in my 30's and I really like L and really would like to get to know her and her husband more.  After that, I wrote letters to penpals, read a book and watched more Ugly Betty and weeded the front garden.

Thursday, with yet more sun, I spent the day with my sister and niece- after picking apples in my garden, we went out for lunch, went blackberrying and then came home to mine. I cherish any time spent with my sister. It is so fleeting these days so this was very special to me. After she went, I watched more Ugly Betty...
 Finally, today, I woke up and attempted to post on Instagram (which is being utterly bizarre and has posted the same cucumber picture 6 times), and then headed off to school. When I arrived, I had the most wonderful surprise.  I'd asked one of the caretakers to do a couple of things for me. When I went into my room, not only had he done those perfectly but he had built me a whole load of new shelving to house the instruments (and all the additional clutter from my old room). He'd obviously worked so hard at it, for days, thought it out so well. I was so touched at his hardwork and told him so emphatically when he came in later (cringing because the other caretaker had told him I was there, just in case I wasn't happy).  I spent about 4 hours sorting out and arranging the instruments in the order I was happy with.

After this, pleased with my room, I headed off to my friends from my old church. I had loaned their daughter some of my books when she was young and they were returning them to me. It was nice to catch up with them and hear their news.  Subsequently, I headed to my family friend's house (she of whom I have talked much) to visit her.  I ended up climbing to pick fresh figs from her fig tree which was lovely and quite funny trying to reach them.

Eventually, I came home, ate more vegetable stew and watched Ugly Betty.
It's been a simple week, but one I have enjoyed

About the outfit. This was the Henry Holland dress I charityshopped a few weeks ago. It is very comfortable. I wore it with the charity-shopped Christy's vintage panama hat I bought for CBC, my Punkypins Impossible Girl necklace and Goodnight boutique Adipose brooch. Hey, you can still dress cutely, even if you are just monging in the garden!

What have you been up to this week?

xx

Monday, June 13, 2016

Red and Blue


Greetings! Interrupting my long stream of German holiday reminiscences for some lurid pattern-mixing! Just a quick post as I am grappling with 3 part counterpoint.  I am doing something mad this Saturday and I know it is not going to end well because the thing I am doing, you don't do with only one week to try and teach yourself all the facets in order to pass this. But I am doing it anyway. And probably going to fail. But at least I am having a go and trying to be some of not-wasteful as it were. If I don't mention it again, you can assume I've failed it.  
Of course, I am procrastinating because when something is hard, you try to avoid it.
So, better get to it or at least back to it!

Going for some TARDIS-blue happiness here with Tiger beret, Primark cardie, Tesco-skirt and charity-shopped collared top. All very bright at least very cheery!

Wish me luck!

xx

Thursday, May 12, 2016

5 brooches #43

Hello there!

I hope you had a lovely day! I had a nice swim after school which always makes me feel better! Definitely a water baby!
The day was, on the whole, a successful one. Just finished eating a delicious ratatouille with Bulgar wheat and Quinoa!

But enough of that- onto the brooches!
 You actually should have seen these in last week's post- don't know how I didn't notice there were only 4 brooches, not 5! Hence this week, you get 6!  The Collar clips come from Kate Gabrielle and they rank amongst my favourite brooches! Worn with a Poppy England (now Bryony and Co) blouse!


Up next is another vintage scarf clip (charity-shopped a few years ago).  It is perfect for this silk daisy scarf as it is really too short to tie!

And here's a flatlay I did with it, my Punkypins daisy collection and my Matalan daisy dress (which incidentally, was the reason I first discovered Laura at A Daisychain dream as I was searching on the internet for this dress!

 This next one, the biscuit, is actually a me-made one. Well me-made in the sense that I found an object, got some glue and brooch back and married the three together! The rubber came from Mr Wolf and is far pretty to be used for its original purpose!
 I don't know how I failed to photograph this glittery Trophy brooch up close! but at least you can see it! You can also see the amazing Present bow earrings that Hazel sent me for Christmas!!
 Here's my Topshop glitter bear brooch.  This, surprisingly, causes consternation amongst the kids at school!


Lastly, here's my Deer Arrow Caravan and Car making their debut.  And I had to share the print of the skirt I was wearing with it!!!

Have you been wearing any brooches recently or spied any corkers?

Brooches elsewhere:

http://polyester-princess.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/tuesday-i-got-friday-on-my-mind.html#comment-form Polyester princess wore a cute elephant brooch. She also bought 3 gorgeous ones at the Fleamarket in her current post!

http://www.annasislandstyle.com/2016/05/a-tale-of-two-jackets.html  Anna's got a denim jacket filled with cute pins and brooches!

http://www.polkadot-pink.com/2016/05/neighbourhood-watch_8.html Not a brooch but Donna has the sweetest Fox necklace!

http://vintagevixon.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/finnished-my-marimekko-mini.html Vix has MADE the most cool Steampunk brooches out of old watches and their parts!!! So creative. She is a vintage, recycling marvel!!

Thursday, May 05, 2016

5 brooches and friends #28

Hi there!
Welcome to 5 brooches!  I LOVE polling days! It meant a day working from home so I could work in the sun, with a garden to sit in! What a perfect day for it.

On we go.
 The first brooch- simple silver glittery acrylic feather was the simplicity needed against the busy background of this closet dress.
 Here's the friends aspect of the post. I love my Punkypins Sloth necklace but I was wearing him to the swimming pool and I put him inside my shoe to stop it getting broken in my swim bag. Post swimming, I forgot, put my foot in shoe and trod heel-first on it and now it has this crack-line near it tail. It hasn't cracked but he looks less picturesque now! Terrible photo but just in case it cracks and breaks, at least it has had its blog debut (which considering how long I've had it, is seriously remiss of me!)
 The budgie hasn't been seen on here before- I bought him along with my tin canary and sheriff badge from Re, Corbridge. I'm really fond of him!

Last but not least, my Saxophone brooch lives on this olive corduroy blazer now so expect to see the two always combined!

Any favourites?  Have you enjoyed any brooch-wearing this week, either by you or another?
Polyester Princess had the perfect brooch to go with her floral outfit

xx