dream yourself awake

 

I am going to set aside my jealousy of all the people who were at Glastonbury festival this weekend, one of my besties was amongst them & I would very much have liked to have joined her running around a field covered in glitter and mud.
BUT here is something cool and sweet. Resident Glastonbury photographer Jason Bryant took these photos of before and after a couple of famous glasto sights.  Enjoy the rest from earlier in the year, here.

watch out cos he'll steal your girlfriend

loving: 
barry m lip paint in Baby Pink (until i can justify £22 for YSL rouge volupte!)

Made In Chelsea (trashy tv at its best. constantly tipsy posh people - it epitomises everything that I know I should hate, yet everything that i want to be. sad, but true!) 

Mumford&sons set at glasto (even if i did have to watch it on the tv rather than in the flesh)

hating:  summer solstice being over (means shorter days! feels a tad like we're giving up before summer has even started)

british weather! (2 days of sweltering heat followed by cool wind and rain. logical.)

but hey ho, on friday I am off on hols with the crew! Watch out Newquay, us midlanders are invading. Every so often Im reminded how good a bunch of friends I have. Although organising a holiday for eight people is crazy difficult, more of a military operation. I am thinking of putting it on my CV as managerial practice.

;)

 x

see I really like you, but I'm nothing like you

Topshop NAILS in Delusion
Models Own in Juicy Jules

x

and i never felt so alive, and so dead

hullo my lovelies, (sorry I've been a bit awol recently! been too busy catching up on everybody else's lovely blogs to write my own! haha the more I read the less I feel inspired with my own efforts, a bad habit I know, but I can't be the only one who thinks like this on occasion?)

anyway I would like to share my opinion on tattoos.
I don't have any, but really would like one. Although some people can carry off the arty sketchpad look, personally I think I'll only ever have one, maybe two. I also have quite specific ideas about what I think looks pretty (enough for me to have permanently inked onto me forever, anyway!) No coloured ink, and something small and delicate. It needs to be something I'd treasure, and never hate.
I don't think age would make you regret a tattoo of your youth. If it meant something to you at the time then it would be a momento of who you were, regardless of wether or not you are still them.
Despite being at the age when quite a few of my creatively minded peers are starting to get inked, I'm determined to hold out until my 21st birthday, because I have decided that I'd like a small outline, or maybe filled in, at the nape of my neck, of a key. This key, in fact!

It's the key to a sideboard/alcohol cabinet we have in our dining room in my familys house, I remember playing with it as a kid and unlocking all the different cupboards with it. It is ornate, but real. Also 21 is traditionally the 'key-to-the-door' age.. Call me sentimental, I know haha

Lord knows what my rents would say if I just strolled through the door with a fresh tat though, so I may have to broach the subject with them at some point over the next two years...
Do you have any tattoos? Or want any?

I spent today with a buddy from 6th form, we went back in to help out with 'Higher Education Day' for the lower sixth, giving our experiences of year 1 of uni, 'the things they don't tell you' that sort of thing. It was nice but exhausting. Got home to find these beauts in the post.

Naptime now ahah, hope youre all well!
BIG LOVE xx

endless, endless sky

 I went to this yesterday evening, at Cheltenham Racecourse. War and Peace at Giffords Circus.

Have been a good few years in a row now, it is always so so so breathtaking. If you can go, do! x

new moccasins
yummy, and summer-y

"If you throw money out of the window throw it out with joy. Don’t say 'one shouldn’t do that' - that is bourgeois" - Karl Lagerfeld.

aka the Biba purse post! (This post is wordy, and fashion-y. Just a little warning, I won't be offended if you don't read it!) 

My recently emptied and curtly trimmed wardrobe is built of understandably modest labels - H&M and New Look mainly - I don't own anything designer (not through choice you understand but through lack of funds!) And when you can get designer inspired high street clothes for reasonable prices, why would you? The most expensive things I own are rings, one of which I got for my eighteenth and the other two are heirlooms - generally I love lovely things and although I have been known to splurge at topshop I'm hardly the last of the big spenders. 

But for so long, ever since I saw this little beauty, I knew it might well be my first extravagant and entirely unnecessary luxury purchase. After some umming and aching, I saved my pennies up for it harder than I ever have before, kicked off by birthday money and then forcing myself to put pound coins into the silver teddy bear money box from my grandmas house instead of buying snacks or other useless little things I spend my change on. 

Besides the odd time I had to dip in to the fund for laundry money (and that was a very dark day) I did pretty well, and after all that time I feel like I've earned buying this! Amazingly 'look after the pennies and the pounds look after themselves' is true! Saving change soon added up. (Obviously I didn't pay in the shop with my raggletaggle collection of 50p's and 20p's, that would just be silly.) My new baby cost £45 (and even that was reduced from £65!) which looks like nothing when its written under a picture in Vogue but in real life for a student like me I'd never considered I would actually PAY so much for something so unnecessary. I mean, I had a purse from Next, old and threadbare but in perfect working order...

However I do think it is perfectly reasonable for my first designer purchase to be at the respectable age of 19, and an investment I will (hopefully!) love and use forever; I may well look back on this day as an adult and describe it with relish and zeal, the start of a (restrained) love affair with luxury merchandise! Haha. Actually that is my view on luxury fashion in general - I agree excessive amounts are self-indulgent and unnecessary but the odd good-quality investment is just that, an investment. And I won't deny there is a bit of truth to the idea that you're buying into the lifestyle as much of anything, the values of the brand you choose and the way of life / quality of life they represent. I'm not denying, there was a buzz when this baby landed on my doorstep.

The purse is large enough to use every day, in peach leather embossed with the famous Biba stamp. You need to feel this leather. I wish you could all touch it, I now understand what they mean by 'leather like butter'. It is so soft I would like a bed made out of it and I could sink into it and swim about in its silky smooth sumptuousness. And it's peach! 

Since Daisy Lowe relaunched iconic sixties brand Biba at House of Fraser in 2010 I have been in love with the dreamy looks harking back to my personal favourite fashion period, the sixties.

So, first classic purchase: DONE (and lengthily justified.)

PLEASE DON'T JUDGE ME! hahaha live and let live I say

BIG LOVE

x

close to the bone

I've been feeling so insanely inspired since reading Detox by Becky-May from The Flower Girl. She in turn was inspired by Dead Fleurette. It boils down to the idea that what sense is there in the false economy of constantly buying cheap clothes which I then either get tired of or they fall to pieces? Investing in classics you will love forever makes far more sense.

 I'm sure I've said that to myself before, but this time its aided by the fact that I have had a massive clearout and filled four charity bags with things I rarely ware or don't see myself wearing forever more. Hello guilt, for being such a horder. Recently moving out of my uni halls I realised that I brought my entire wardrobe with me in September, and then wore about 15% of it consistently. What a waste!  We've all been there, thinking 'oh but I might wear it one day…' 

So from now on, it is classic, timeless pieces. That doesn't mean they can't be fun, or to my taste! Let's face it, I will always be a little bit scruffy, and a little bit shabby. Much as I would love to dress only as Carey Mulligan in An Education, I will always have days when I've been listening to Beady Eye or Frankie and the heartstrings or watching skins, when I will just want to roll up my tshirt sleeves or the bottoms of my jeans, and lash on the necklaces. But this is fine. It's all about finding the balance. About classic pieces, not throwaway fashion. Good for my mind, good for my soul, and heaven for my bank balance! 

key classic items i'll be searching for

• classic worn-in parka
• navy barbour/quilted jacket
• soft slouchy grey blazer
• good indigo skinny jeans
• couple of slouchy breton striped tops
• black (hopefully slightly girly) loafers 
• fit & flare short dresses
• yellow slouchy shoulder bag

the idea of a capsule wardrobe is enticing. i have made a start already! any views on this? big love
x

you had a fun summer but its suddenly colder

x