Cameo Club

What I Wore:

Shirt: Zellers

Cardi: Smart Set

Skirt: Made by me

Tights: Old Navy

Boots: Chocolate Craving Boot from ModCloth

Necklace: Xcetera

I am going to admit that these boots and this skirt together was a pairing I had envisioned since I purchased the boots. I have been biding my time to wear them together until it was cold enough because the skirt is heavily lined and too warm to wear in early Fall. If you have been reading this blog for a while, you may recall that I actually wore it in the summer to a convention. It was part of a set that I made for school, but the skirt by itself is a little more subtle and can be worn as a "normal" piece of clothing.

Not much else to say today really. There probably won't be much going on around here besides outfit and nail posts until after Christmas. I have been working on some projects and cooking up ideas that I want to share with you, alas there is not much time to do so right now. I hope you are all well and not going too crazy with the holidays approaching!  

Red is Best

What I Wore: 

Shirt: Jacob

Cardi: Smart Set

Skirt: Smart Set

Tights: Old Navy

Shoes: Spring

Hair bow: Shoppers Drug Mart 

These tights made me think of this book that I had as a kid called Red is Best. The little girl in the book insists that everything red is better than anything in other colours. That book was one of my favourites, which is funny because red wasn't really a favourite colour of mine as a kid. It is quickly becoming a favourite though, which is why I thought that title fit with this post. I like how the colour of the tights matches the lipstick of the ladies on my shirt (which you can't really see, so you will have to take my word on it). 

I had a pretty jam packed day today. I did some Christmas shopping (almost done!) and then I had a dentist appointment before I went to work. The pieces I am making are slowly coming together, but I really have to buckle down over the next week if I want to get everything done in time. I may have bitten off more than  I can chew making so many of my presents (I wasn't expecting to make any when I at first), but I really enjoy it. Somehow presents seem a little bit more heartfelt when the extra step was taken to construct them. Plus I enjoy thinking up things to make for people, and I like the creativity that comes with construction. Maybe next year I will attempt to do an entirely hand made Christmas! 

Silver Collar

What I Wore:

Shirt: Suzy Shier

Cardi: Smart Set

Jeans: Thrifted (Frenchys)

Boots: Chocolate Craving Boot from ModCloth

Necklace: Ardene

Not much to report today. I am pretty busy trying to complete my Christmas sewing projects and shop for the things I am not making. I think I got a little bit carried away with the list of things I am making and that has started to consume all my time. I wore this outfit to the mall today to do some shopping. I didn't come back with too much so another trip will probably be in order some time in the future.

I forgot to mention the reason I didn't post last Friday was because we went to see Mother Mother again! I intended to do the pictures and post before we left for the concert but time got away from me and  I didn't get a chance to do it so I apologize. The concert was really good though, so totally worth it. I didn't bring my camera so I didn't get any pictures to share with you this time around, but if you are interested in seeing some from the last show you can check those out here. 

In case you missed the little post bout it I have opened up some advertising spots. If you are interested in purchasing/swapping a spot head over to the Sponsor tab for more information. 

Sponsorship

This is my Serious Business face, which Colin is kind of ruining but it still works.

So you may have noticed that there is now a Sponsor tab up at the top of the page next to the About Me section. I am officially open for business aka advertising, which is really exciting! I am totally up for ad swapping, as long as you run my ad I will run yours. If you want to know more about advertising options click on the Sponsor tab and check it out!

Mauve Trees

What I Wore:

Dress: Thrifted (Talize)

Cardi: Thrifted (Talize)

Tights: Ardene (? I think, they're from a few years ago)

Boots: Chocolate Craving Boot from ModCloth

Hair clip: En Gry & Sif via the Peterborough Museum and Archives

I was really debating buying this dress because it is a little bit shorter than I would normally wear. I was feeling a little self-conscious wearing it today too, but now that I see it in these pictures I am really glad that I did buy it and actually wore it in public because it looks good. I love the print (tress!) and the colour scheme (mauve!). Plus it has pockets and is 100% organic cotton so you really can't lose. It matches the cardigan I bought on the same trip too, so super bonus. I have been  going for a lot more colour lately and my wardrobe is starting to look more like a rainbow than sea of black, haha. 

Today I went on a fun trip out to Waterloo with some friends from work. We had a lovely Christmas lunch and watched a show. There were some impersonators (Elvis, Nancy Sinatra, Tina Turner, Sunny and Cher, etc.), a stand up comedian who was hilarious, and a magician. It was a really good time and I am glad that I got to spend some time with them outside of work. The show was also Christmas themed, and since it is after December 1st I can start getting into the holiday spirit. I am not a Grinch, but I really don't like to start thinking about Christmas until December. I guess I just go inundated with it when I used to work in a mall and the Christmas music started playing and the decorations went up right after Halloween, it was just too much. Plus in my house we never really started before December, so I am just kind of used to it. My mum's birthday is Christmas Eve and we would always go to my grandparents on the 24th to celebrate her birthday and Christmas and then get our tree and decorate it that night. It sounds really late to be doing it, but that was our thing. One year they actually had no tress left and my sister and I stayed up late and made a Christmas three out of paper (by made I mean drew one on several pieces of paper, but it was still awesome). I feel like I can start getting into Christmas now though. I wasn't planning on making a lot of my gifts this year, but I have been surrounded by inspiration at work and now am making most of them. I am almost finish one already so I am feeling way ahead of the game. Has anyone else started getting into the Christmas season yet? 

Craft Time! DIY Comic Book Shoes

1. Amass an obscene amount of comic books. I absolutely loved Archie comics as a child (and still do) so I have a huge collection. Some of them are also my sister's and she did a pair of shoes too.

2. Collect the necessary materials. I used Golden Gel Medium (semi-gloss) and a large paint brush (not pictured). You could also use a matte finish or high gloss finish gel medium.

3. Cut out all of the pieces you want to use for your shoes. I found it best to use large-ish rectangular pieces for the base coat. We also cut out some "statement" pieces for a second layer.

4. Find a pair of shoes to use. It is best to choose ones that have a plastic/poly-vinyl finish. I found that if you use shoes that don't have a thick sole the comics near the base rub a bit. This problem can be avoided by using thick soled shoes, not putting the comics right to the edge, or sealing the base with rubber cement.

5. Apply some of the gel medium to the back of the comic strip.

 6. Line the strip up on the shoe, and then paint another layer of gel medium on top of it. Repeat this process until the entirety of the shoe is covered (or as much of it as you desire is covered).

7. Let the shoes dry for an hour or so. then you can choose to put some statement pieces on top if you like. I chose some standout images like people's faces and the titles from the comics. Let that layer dry for about half an hour, depending on how many you put on.

8. Paint a full layer of gel medium over the shoes and let dry. I put a pretty thick layer on mine so I left them to dry over night. If you so desire you can put another layer on the next day. If you want the comics to be really sealed in I would recommend doing a second layer. Let that dry for a few hours. Now would also be the time to apply the layer of rubber cement as mentioned in step 4. 

9. Ta-Da! You are all done and ready to wear your fabulous shoes out in public. Get ready for some oohs and ahhhs!

Comic Shoes

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What I Wore:

Shirt: Jacob

Cardi: Thirfted (Talize)

Pants: Zellers

Socks: ??

Shoes: Aredene made-over by me!

Introducing my first DIY item for the blog: my shoes! I am really excited to share these with you. The step by step post for them will be coming along tomorrow is here in case anyone wants to try these puppies out for themselves. I think they turned out really well, but they're definitely not an everyday wear kind of thing (or at least not for lengthy walks). In honour of the comic shoes I decided to wear this polka dot sweater which kind of reminds me of the dots that made up the colour and printing in old comics. It has a bit of a pop art feel too which also makes me happy. Yup, if you weren't aware of it already I'm kind of a nerd. Stay tuned for tomorrow to see how my shoes came to life.  

New Directions

I have been thinking this over for a while and I think it is time to expand this blog a bit. Working up to the new year I am going to start adding in some new features. I feel like I have more than just outfit posts to offer and I wanted to make this blog a bit more entertaining and draw in some new readers.

First of all I am going to be opening up advertising and sponsor options. I have been looking into using Passionfruit ads, I have heard great things from other bloggers who use their services. They have an option for doing ad swaps, which I plan on utilizing, as well as selling advertising spots which I will also do. I am hoping to be able to ad swap with a few of my favourite bloggers in order to get things moving.
     

I have been thinking about adding a weekly/bi-weekly nail feature. I mentioned before that I have been really getting into doing my nails recently and I have been keeping up with that so it seems logical to add some nail posts in.

Design from this post

Sewing is a major part of my life and I want to be able to share that with my blog readers. I think it would be really neat to have a monthly "Sew Along" feature. I will choose a pattern out that anyone could have access too and then work my way through it in the month with some update posts along the way. If people are interested in working on the same pattern with me they can e-mail me and let me know and I will be open to answering questions if they have any problems. I don't always work from patterns so I might also get into some draping tutorials or maybe do a few posts about good sources for learning the basics. Intermingled with this will be some craft oriented posts as well. I have a few in the works and they could be more of a "Craft Along" than sewing. It might be a one month sewing one month craft, we'll see how it pans out.

Here are some sneak peeks of projects:

Dress A is a planned project

I'll be sharing this soon!

I also want to try and do some more photography posts. I have been neglecting that a bit recently and it is sad. There are a lot of nice spots around Hamilton and it would be great to go and capture those and share them with you. I have some pictures from trips and the like that would be nice to put on here too.

Garden Eel at Kew Gardens

That's about it for right now. This list is kind of a motivational prompt for me to get out and do things too. If it is on here that means I have to actually try and accomplish it right?

Squares Just Wanna Have Fun

What I Wore:

Dress: Thrifted (Talize)

Tights: Clothing swapped

Cardi: Smart Set

Shoes: Spring

This dress was one of my Talize finds from last week. I loved the print, it is really unique and black and white, my favourite haha. I was trying to come up with a clever title involving squares because of the print, but all I could come up with was "Squares Just Want To Have Fun" which is pretty sad. The dress also has a perter pan collar which is awesome because I have been looking for a dress with one for a while. It is kind of hard to see that in the pictures because of the print, but there is a collar I swear. I was also wearing a broach on my sweater, but it kind of got hidden near my arm and didn't show up in the pictures either. There were some comments made about my paring these tights with this dress but I think it works well. It needed a little pop of colour in my opinion. I should direct the person who made the comment towards Rachele's latest post, which pretty mcuh sums up my thoughts today.  

I don't have much to say because I have some super secret fun projects in the works right now. I am not quite ready to update just yet, but stay tuned for a post sometime this week, yay!  

Giddy Up! Cowpunk Style

What I Wore:

Dress: Made par moi (Simplicity Pattern 2403)

Cardi: Thrifted

Belt: Ardene

Boots: Chocolate Craving Boot from Modcloth

I am so excited because yesterday my boots arrived in the mail!!! I was so giddy I practically raced down the stairs and bowled over my family when the package arrived last night. It was perfect timing really that they came the day before a blog post so I could test them out and then wear them today. I was a little worried that they wouldn't fit (for numerous reasons which I discussed here) but they do, so yay! They are a tad big, I could have gone maybe a half size down, but they will be perfect with warm socks for late fall/early winter weather. I got a ton of compliments on the boots today at work and overall I am very happy with my purchase, another ModCloth win.

Another reason I was excited for them to arrive is because I had the perfect outfit picked out as soon as I ordered them. Is that weird? I like to plan outfits around new clothing items, I am kind of odd that way.  I have to credit the "cowpunk" in my title to my friend Madeline, she coined the term. I think it describes these boots really well (a mix between riding boots and steampunk style) and it fits with my dress which has little horse heads with red bridles on it. It is really hard to tell in these pictures because the print is pretty small, but you can see a close up shot from when I was working on the dress here. 

I really wanted to put this post up earlier today but I was having some technical difficulties. Apparently there is a photo storage limit on blogger that I was not aware of. I reached that limit today and was attempting to figure out how I was going to continue posting if I couldn't upload images anymore. There was a momentary panic when I thought that I would have to a. delete old posts, b. move to a different platform, or c. stop blogging. Luckily I discovered that if I re-size the images I can still post them. I was uploading the files the same size that they are on my camera, which means they are huge because my Canon T1i is 15.1 megapixels. Colin is a techy an was able to find a program that will allow me to re-size my pictures quickly and that lets me keep the originals.I select all the ones I want re-sized and then it does them all at once, so I can do it a post at a time woot! This basically saved my blog, I have arisen triumphant. There will be no heart attacks in my small but loyal fanbase, haha.