somewhere in her smile she knows

Motel Florals by elliecp featuring a vintage print dress

Motel vintage print dress, $59 / Motel vintage print dress, $59 / Motel crop top, $34 / Motel vintage crop top, $37 / Motel vintage crop top, $37 / Motel flared skirt, $51 / Motel vintage pleated skirt, $42 / Motel print legging, $37 / Motel high rise shorts, $51 / Motel vintage canvas backpack, $71

 Hi guys! I know I only posted the other day but as I've just finished the worst of my exams I thought I may as well take the time to share a little summer inspiration with you. I'm going to Reading festival this year and am really looking forward to the outfits more than anything...I mean I have literally been planning each outfit meticulously even though it's almost three months away. I am really into florals at the moment, not only because they are a summer essential but because they are literally designed to be clashed. I adore clashing patterns...for me, if I'm not wearing at least three different patterns at once, the outfit is just not complete. So, I think I am going to be spending this entire summer encasing myself in as many floral prints as humanly possible...and where better to find them than Motel?
I was featured on the Motel blog after London Fashion Week, and although I had actually already bought a few of their pieces before (they're sold in the Oxford Street Topshop as well as online) I had never really realised just how much they have on offer. They stock a lot of really cute, just ahead of fashionable items such as fluffy skirts (the 90s will return this summer I'm sure of it) and cropped Polo necks to the BEST selection of co-ords and an awesome range of reworked vintage pieces. I made the above board to try and demonstrate the awesome-ness of Motel's florals and patterns in one image...which was pretty difficult as there is just so many pretty things!

(Some tumblr inspiration...sources here: 1,2,3,4)

I felt these images kind of summarised the summery, hazy feeling I'm starting to get into, and they kind of go with the Motel board's aesthetic. I'm really looking forward to being able to wear lots of light, floaty floral layers...and am hoping to maybe pick up a few similar pieces next week at Motel's Pop Up Sample Sale! If you are in London next week, I totally recommend nipping down to Great Portland Street and trying to grab a few bargains before the warm weather hits (hopefully). I'm definitely going to go...I have my eye on a few nice pieces for the summer!

I hope you all have a lovely weekend...I am in Brighton tomorrow for a little respite before the next lot of exams begin, so I'll have a post from there up when I get home. Also, if you do get a moment to vote for me again tonight (I thought tomorrow was the last day but it turns out today is!) in Company's Style Awards that would be amazing! Thankyou!

such is the stuff from where dreams are woven

On Saturday, the weather was looking quite nice for once, and so in true English fashion I overcompensated and rushed to the nearest green space to soak up the rare sunlight in my most summery clothes. I've never been a dress kind of girl - as a child my boyish figure and obsession with walking around on all fours made them impractical, and as a young teen I was constantly in fear of a Marilyn moment. My aversion to skirts and dresses has seriously diminished over the years, but I just don't seem to own that many, meaning seeing me in a dress is a pretty unusual thing.
However, last November I found this super cute beige and teal dress in a market in Oxford, and have been dying to wear it ever since. The only problem? The object of my desire had a drop waist; the one thing I just cannot stand, on anyone (especially myself). For all I could see, they did nothing for even the best of bodies, and even the most slender the look of being at least six months pregnant. This in mind, I bought the dress anyway - but have struggled to wear it ever since.
This brings us to Saturday, when I opened my wardrobe, saw it hanging up and was like you know what? I don't care. I love the print, the collar is super cute, it is ridiculously 1920s in shape (it may as well have been in Downton Abbey) and not having a tight waistband makes it so comfortable. I also read an article suggesting that this may actually be the year of the drop-waist revival...so what better time to overcome my fear and wear the damn thing?

I will admit I was a little self-concious at first, and a little unsure how to stand to make it hang right. However, in a very short space of time my fear turned into an absolute love. It was incredibly freeing, loose and perfect for a hot summer's day. I really hope they do make a comeback this year, as I am definitely carrying on wearing this one.
Anyway, I went out for a revision break to a nearby park, and for some reason felt making a daisy chain and carrying around my cutest vintage books was also necessary. I need to stop matching books to my outfits.
I wore my dress from Oxford with a bag from a Topshop sale, socks from Topshop, and shoes from Rokit. I also had a cardigan from Clothes Show Live. The books are secondhand.

In other news, I am nearly finished my first two weeks of exams. The worst ones are over now - English is done, the hardest parts of Science, and Geography...and it's actually quite nice knowing that there's nothing more I can do. There's something kind of exciting about exams...they feel incredibly important, which is quite nice and makes a change from all of the classwork you do in lower secondary school that doesn't appear to contribute to anything. That being said, the revision is a little too stressful for me, as I'm a real visual learner but there's only so many diagrams you can do to try and learn about different fibres and weaves. Textiles is a great subject but I just don't think it suits a written exam, if you know what I mean.

Ok so now for the main point of this post - today is THE LAST DAY that you can vote for me in the COMPANY STYLE BLOGGER AWARDS in the TEEN BLOGGER category. It has been so amazing being shortlisted amongst so many amazing blogs, and it would be amazing if you could take the moment to vote once more just to see if we could maybe win! Just click here, click a blog, click next page, keep doing that until the 8th teen blogger category, select 'Rose and Vintage', keep going then click submit! Thank you all so so much. Have a wonderful weekend!

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!

looking out of the window imagining the world has stopped

 Happy Friday! It looks like a nice one...but then again I'm slightly biased as I don't have any exams today. I'm not exactly enjoying the weather, as I'm holed up in my house desperately trying to learn physics before Monday, but it's a welcome break to hear the birds singing outside instead of the erratic rain patterns of the last week or so. It has made me ridiculously excited for summer, as all I can think about is how amazing it will be to just get to lie in the sun all day and not have to think about anything or do anything whatsoever. I also really want to just watch movies for a day, as I feel there are lots I have somehow missed seeing and need to catch up on.
I threw this outfit on the other day to go out and buy some more decaf green tea. Naively I had assumed that green tea was caffeine-free because, well, it's all herbal-y and healthy and all that jazz and it says absolutely nowhere on the packet that it contains caffeine...but to my dismay I realised it did and I had been unknowingly filling myself with ungodly amounts of caffeine every single day. Not that I have anything against caffeine but I may as well have been drinking coffee all day or something. As you can see I have some really interesting struggles in my daily life (not).

I have essentially been living in these dungarees for the past week because they are absolutely perfect for exams...mainly due to the whole no-waistband situation. There is nothing as freeing and comfortable as wearing something without a waistband, and so I was in my element for the whole day. They're also so easy to wear because all you need do is find some form of top and tad-da, you have your outfit. The perfect solution to those lazy day blues when you just don't feel like putting a full outfit together.
I got these dungarees from Beyond Retro (they have so many. And sometimes cute novelty ones too) and wore them with my current favourite shirt which I picked up from the Vintage Car Boot sale I went to on the Southbank. I love the cute lace detail on the collar and sleeve cuffs, as it looks sweet under jumpers as well as on it's own like this. I also wore socks from Topshop, glasses from the Car Boot sale (which say Gucci on the arm but I have yet to find out if they actually are or not) a bag that belonged to my mum and my bowling shoes from Clothes Show Live in Birmingham. I never thought they were that unusual when I bought them, but for some reason they seem to confuse / offend the entire human population. Numerous occasions have led me to explain that yes, they are bowling shoes, and no, I did not steal them from the Hollywood Bowl. Raised eyebrows and a few confused stares have become normal when I wear them, though I'm not sure why because I mean they're hardly fluorescent pink or something. I will never understand normal people.

In other news, you may have noticed my blog has had a (complete) makeover. I haven't been happy with it for a while now, and thought I may as well try and make it look a little more 'finished'. There's still lots to be done but for now I'm quite happy with it...I love having more of a logo instead of my blog title just written in a regular font. I have Elevator Musik on Etsy to thank for the redesign, and highly recommend her themes as getting this one sorted was quick and easy (and the instructions were so helpful as I'm not known for being the best at HTML).

As you know voting is still open for Company Magazine's style blogger awards. I really appreciate you all for voting and helping me get shortlisted, and would be really grateful if you had a moment to vote again (this time to win) in the Best Teen Blog (Under 18) category (it's about the 8th page, you have to vote for a blog in each of the other categories as well and then submit them all). Thank you so much and sorry for being annoying and reminding you again!
Hope you have a good weekend!