Magpie

A fraction of the collection

OK, so I may have a teeeeeny problem when it comes to buying jewellery...

As I alluded to in my last post, I have a certain common trait with a particular member of the Bird genus in that we both have an ongoing attraction to reflective surfaces - the only difference being that I don't steal mine, though that would probably save me some money (I kid of course, I'm not actually condoning grand theft jewellery heist...)

Shiny...

All you need is LOVE (and jewellery)

It's hard to tell when my collection started but I do remember going through a phase when every time I went shopping I came back hauling new necklaces, bracelets and rings Goonies-style (shame on you if you don't know that reference).

OK, I may be exaggerating slightly, but I do  did have a serious problem - so much so that my friends actually noticed and advised me to maybe avoid the jewellery section for a while...yeah - that bad. So I did - but then, this summer, after 17 years of being an earring virgin, I went and had my ears pierced - so naturally I needed to go buy some new earrings...

Feather Earrings - New Look

Silver Cross Ear Cuffs - New Look

What started out as a simple earring run quickly escalated into an all-encompassing jewellery haul,  the glinting metal was too hard to resist! I ended up with four pairs of earrings, two new necklaces and a skull hand chain bought within the first hour - I guess old habits really do die hard.

Origami Crane Necklace - H&M

Returning home and adding these to my existing collection made me realise just how in need of a jewellery organizer I was - the spare boxes and pots brimming with stuff was getting impractical (try disentangling seven different necklaces every time you want to find a particular one - NOT FUN).  Once again, a quick Google search lead me to some amazing inspiration on the internet for different jewellery storage solutions such as the ones here:

thevintagetreehouse on Etsy

Mr. Kate's Framed Jewellery Organizer 

I used:

• an old canvas frame
• black paint
• black ribbon 
• a couple of small picture hooks

As I had an old canvas frame lying around, I thought I'd put it to good use and create a framed jewellery display using a lick of black paint (acrylic because that was what I had to hand, though you could use wood stain if you prefer or even neon/metallic spray paint to JAZZ things up a bit ); around 1.5m of 1.5" black ribbon left over from an art project; small screws to attach the ribbon to the frame (hot glue/superglue will do, I was just improvising for lack of better resources again) and a few small picture-hanging hooks I hammered into the top of the frame to hang necklaces from.

All in all, I was pretty proud of my day's labour as I managed to solve a storage problem without spending a penny and whilst simultaneously using up random craft supplies that would have otherwise cluttered my room - killing two birds with one stone as it were ...ooh that's nice coincidental bookending: start with a magpie and end with a bird idiom (...ahem... sorry, that'll be the inner English Lit student coming out again).


Peace and love
Ness x

A Study in Watercolour

Watercolour Nails <3

To steal a title from Sherlock (one of the best shows on TV right now, so good that if you haven't seen it I won't mind of you pause here now and go watch all six episodes before you come back) and adapt it clumsily to suit this post - something about summer made me feel like picking up a paintbrush again and capturing the effervescence and luminosity of watercolor - only, on my favourite canvas of all: my nails.

A quick internet search (thank-you, Google!) led me to some awesome tutorials on how to achieve this look here and here though I improvised quite a lot on the materials used as I was too impatient /poor to go buy a new white base-coat and 100% acetone. I managed to achieve the same effect using nail polish remover with acetone in it, you just have to be careful you're not dragging the paint brush across the surface too hard or you'll remove the layer underneath. Using a pearly white base was maybe even a superior substitute to a normal matte white base as the base was already slightly reflective and thus the light seemed more prominent through the layers of colour creating more of a stained-glass effect really.

Yes, my nailbeds are probably suffocating from the amount of times I remove and reapply art to them; yes, my bedroom smells like nothing short of a chemical factory - the fumes from which I will no doubt have permanently damaged my lungs BUT ...they're so prettttty! Ahem... (Someone clearly has her priorities straight...)

Possible permanent lung damage aside, these nails are so distracting to look at - there has been many a time when I've been 'working ' on my summer assignments and my nails have just caught the light in a certain way that seems to hold my attention for the next few minutes. Either I was a magpie in a past life, or maybe I've been hypnotized? That would explain a lot...

Watercolour Digital Print Dress by Mina UK

Anyway, the best part is I have a dress to match the nails! I didn't realise until after I painted them that I'd coincidentally chosen the same sort of colours (Rimmel's Silver Bullet - base; Nails Inc's Victoria; Revlon's Tropical Temptation; Missguided's Misstique; and Buttercup Shine) that appear in the digital print watercolor design of the dress. There is a certain kind of weird child-like dressing up delight that I get in matching something to my nails or vice versa that I can't quite explain - simple pleasures I guess.


Peace and Love
(just beginning to hear how hippy I sound but hey-ho)
Ness x

The world through rose tinted glasses...

Naive it may be, but you can't tell me there isn't part of you that is bored of the pessimistic cynicism that seems to pervade the world as we know it today - with all this talk of recessions,  lying politicians (nothing new guys, let's face it) and soaring student debts (something I will be all too familiar with in the imminent future) - sometimes all you (at least I do in my case - it might just be me, but that would make this blog a bit pointless - sorry, rambling again...I really need to stop doing that)...as I was saying, all you really need is a bit of pure escapism - to put on those rose tinted glasses that have been so battered by life as we know it and just forget the bad stuff - even if only for a while.
Thus,  I propose this blog as the place where I  will share all the  things that make me happy - all things sugar-and-spice-and-everythimg-nice about the world around me in an attempt to negate all that NEGATIVITY spewing out of the world right now.
So dust off those rose tinted glasses and enjoy some unadulterated inspiration through fashion , food (because who doesn't love that!?) and general miscellany as I indulge my inner obsessive aesthetics lover and pretend it's not sad because there are other people reading...ahem.
Peace and love
Ness x