lightning strikes maybe once, maybe twice

The last week has been a long one. I started my exams, and have actually started to sort of enjoy the relaxed timetable I now have. I feel a little bit like I'm on holiday already; I only have to go in for exams, and so even my Sunday nights have lost that depressing, sickening feeling as I no longer have the grey cloud that is school to look forward to the next day. I've set myself the target of using my extended break this summer to actually do something useful - I want to try and do a minimum of one really productive thing a day as I think that if I'm not careful I might waste the opportunity to gain loads of work and life experience that I wouldn't get if I just stayed in bed the whole time (which I can't deny is sometimes really tempting).
I also want to spend the time doing artwork, mainly as I am taking it for A Level next year but really don't think I've had anywhere near enough practice with painting. I used to be really scared of painting anything as I thought it was going to be really bad, so I just avoided it for two years and stuck to mainly textile-based pieces for my GCSE projects. Who knows, I just might become a painter yet (fingers crossed).

On the subject of art, this outfit was from my final GCSE exhibition on Thursday. The whole art department was converted into an exhibition of our work, which was actually a lot nicer and less embarrassing as I had expected. It was somewhat calming to see it all up and finished - considering the amount of nights I have spent working until late to avoid missing a deadline. I'd kind of forgotten about my old projects, and although it was a little unpleasant to be reminded of the collection of quite awful pieces I've produced over the two years, it was quite nice to see everything all together for the first time. It felt like everything was finally complete, if you know what I mean.

I wore an old pair of shorts that I bought in a sale in Urban Outfitters, a hawaiian print shirt from Camden, tights and socks from Topshop, shoes and bag from Rokit, belt and pearl fish pin from my Mum, and my necklace and favourite metallic threaded jacket from Beyond Retro. I haven't worn this jacket since it made it's appearance at London Fashion Week, and I'd forgotten just how much I love it. I may or may not be planning to spend the next week in it purely because it's shiny, and not much beats that in my opinion.

I wear these shoes way too much...I think I like them because they combine the platform that's really big right now with that sort of old school-shoe style that I really like. I also love them because they make me quite a bit taller, which is great as I really do need all the help I can get when it comes to height. I've never really thought of myself as small until fairly recently when I realised I am actually one of the shortest people in my entire year at school. I quite like it though, I mean I get to go in free to lots of things as I can often pass as under 16. The downside has to be never being able to reach anything in Sainsburys, and having to wait awkwardly for a nice tall person to come and help me reach.

Anyway, for my final art project (Order and Disorder) I looked at the natural order of things by researching the natural order of species in typical victorian collections. I then looked at how humans can disorder this by making species extinct, for example, and how we may try to reproduce the original natural order but can never make something as ordered as nature itself. It doesn't really make sense without looking through my sketchbook...but anyway my final piece was a huge frame of fifteen handmade unique moths, made to look like a typical collection (but jazzed up a little with some text and other details). They look a lot better in real life, but they took ages and so I thought I may as well show them to you (also I've talked about them loads on here).
I was surprised at just how varied everyone's projects were...the art department at my school is really good in that way as they really encourage you to produce quite unusual pieces, which then look really good all displayed together. I did kind of wish I'd had some of the other people's ideas though, as their projects looked so interesting.
Afterwards my family and I went out for a meal in Banners, a restaurant really near where I live that I only discovered a few weeks ago. My friends have been telling me to go for ages, and when I finally had the opportunity I realised why - the food is absolutely amazing, the portions are huge, and the atmosphere is so warm and comfortable you might as well be at home in your own living room (if your living room is covered in posters of Bob Dylan and serves complimentary popcorn, that is).

I hope you all have a good week...just as a reminder (sorry to keep mentioning it!) that the Company Style Blog Awards actually end this Friday on the 23rd of May, so this is our last week to vote! I was so lucky to be shortlisted, and am so grateful to you all for nominating me to get there, but obviously it would be so amazing to win and I would really appreciate it if you could just take a minute or two to vote for me here. You just select a blog and click 'next page', and keep doing that until you reach the 8th category (teen blog) where you select 'Rose and Vintage'. Then just keep clicking 'next page' and selecting a blog in each category until a box comes up and you can submit your votes!
Thankyou so much!