Before you say anything, don’t worry, I’m acting, well, being in freezing cold water on a Scottish island in the middle of February in a thin floaty dress I suppose there wasn’t much acting needed really.
Continuing onto part 3 of my Isle of Arran blog series as you can tell this is a little bit of a different shoot from my usual with not graffitied walls or pretty doors in sight. The one of the main reasons for going to Arran, other than having a little explore, was to try and find the right sort of landscape to be able to do this type of dramatic photoshoot, beaches and bog lands don’t just appear next to the Hereford industrial estate unfortunately.
The whole sort of concept for the shoot was that I was a “victim” running away from an “attacker” with the whole True Detective season 1 vibes (unfortunately Matthew Mcconaughey couldn’t make it.)
From my acting background it was a nice little opportunity to flex that old muscle again, well thats what Tom said when trying to convince me to do it ;)
As you can imagine it was really rather cold and how I was convinced to do this again for another shoot recently I will never know.
So sit back and have look at me pulling some delightfully awful faces.
There aren’t many places in the world I wouldn’t think that you are able to get a sandy beach and a snow topped mountain in the same picture (other than apparently in Middle Earth however my knowledge of that is rather hobbit sized :P. So for part 2 of my Isle of Arran series you find me frolicking around on a sandy empty beach. You may be thinking “Chloe, what lovely warm weather it looks like on the beach and its amazing that you have managed to get it all to yourself! Well, in the middle of February in single digit temperatures I can’t say many other people were jumping at the chance of going to the beach without wearing a serious amount of thermals. However together we braved the perilous icy cold temperatures in order to get some nice pics (bit dramatic but if you cant be dramatic when standing in front of a snow topped mountain then when can you?)
As you may remember (don’t worry I know you don’t) that A while ago I mentioned on my Instagram that me and my pal Tom took a wee trip over the the Isle of Arran. As someone who rarely goes on holiday a weekend away in the same country I live in for me is probably the everyday persons equivalent to 2 weeks in the Maldives. You may be thinking how nice is was to get away to a far flung island for a couple of days to relax and chill out without any thoughts of work. Well, it would have been stupid to go somewhere so unique and beautiful and not do some blog photos right? lots of photos in fact.
So for the next few weeks through the power of the photograph be guiding you through my wee little trip to Arran.
With leaving all the booking up to Tom and had done little research into the isle myself, I really didn’t know what to expect when I was getting there, well less know what to expect more than I expected it to be a tiny little island with a population of about 5 people and a dog (and many many sheep) and being so tiny a little fishing boat would be in order to get to it. When the large ferry pulled up into the port it new my expectations were a little wrong.
With this being the morning that we arrived I kept the look very casual and simple with these grey mom jeans and oversized shirt and jumper. I love the mixture of textures and prints within the combination of the striped shirt, the knitted jumper and woven scarf. Keeping them all within the same colour pallet they all work together well, despite all being thrown on in a hurry to be warm and cosy from the February chill.
During a less than 24 hours stay in London, with seeming to spend more time traveling there and back than rather in the place its self, (7 hour train journeys feel like just nipping down to the shop for me now) I eventually got round to seeing the VOGUE 100: A Century of Style exhibition at The National Portrait Gallery.
In celebration of Vogues centenary year, the National Portrait Gallery worked in collaboration with British Vogue to put together a fabulous collection of over 280 prints of its best and most famous photographs from the 100 years it has been in print. Despite my best intentions with seeming to miss it on all other occasions when entering the capital this time I finally got down to seeing it.
For any fashion and/or photography lovers this is defiantly a must see exhibition. I am going to have to hold my hands up and say that I have not been a long time reader of Vogue myself, I never fancied wading through a magazine basically full of adverts for a few feature at the back but having become more interested fashion and photography recently, I am rather partial to a little flick through.
The exhibition includes many classic photos of stars such as Naomi Campbell, Alexander McQueen, Keira Knightly and Kate Moss (making many regular appearances, having seemed not to have aged a bit in her whole career might I add). It was also a lot bigger than I expected with each era (1930, 1940, etc) having their own dedicated room, each full of images from the worlds highest acclaimed models, actors and photographers at the top of their game. It was amazing to see the magazine from its small illustrative beginnings to the high gloss of its content today and truly see how it has changed and developed over the years.
The exhibition is running until the 22nd of April so if your ever in London get in there while it is still on!
Yes were throwing back to one of those, now seeming vintage post of a style file with being back on familiar territory now with fashion and not a car in sight. With the sun on occasion finally poking is glorious head out its time for many to start packing those winter warmers away in favour for something a little thinner. However being a Scotland dweller there is still a slight chill in the air so the knitwear and scared haven’t been banished to the draws quite yet. So as ever, enjoy a couple of photos of me sat on various steps and leaning on various walls.
(Hold on in there, I know there are a lot of photos)
For this look I have been channeling my inner man and gone all androgynous with one of my favourite styles of the high waisted tapered trousers. High waisted trousers and I have had a long lasting love affair for me (don’t tell the black skinnies) with last summer consisting in me living in my pair of high waisted black ones from Topshop with never wanting to wear anything else. Topshop have done their best again with this pair of dark navy pinstripe beauties.
I love these specifically being made from such comfy fabric, I really didn’t want to take these off, a tie waist band synching you in at the waist to add a more feminine touch and a great cut. These are a great versatile pair of trousers working casually during the day with a cropped jumper and and flat shoes, or dressed up in the evening with a nice lightweight shirt and heals (like I ever wear heals).
Finding this style such a flattering shape for me, I find them such a breath of fresh air from the normal jeans and T shirt combo all students are very familiar with. Being fitted and high waisted its nice sometimes its nice for the change to wear something a bit more form fitting encouraging you to put a bit more effort in and show off those curves. However I haven’t been afraid to throw on my biggest baggiest jumper over them in one of those just get out and go moments.
Now they may not be bright yellow covered in purple spots but being made in this lovely navy pinstripe to me they are a rather statement trouser so unsurprisingly the rest of the outfit consists of black, black and more black.
As you may have been able to tell this was my second little post from my lovely day in Bath. In England I don’t think you could ask for a better setting than the undeniably beautiful royal circle and crescent in the lovely sunshine and beautiful sunset (totally decided that is where I shall ‘summer’ this year). I’ve always loved this city and was very enjoyable to explore all the little nooks and crannies while taking some lovely little photos of this beautiful city.
BUY THE LOOK
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On another day of galavanting around the country in the search of another set of blog photos, after seeming to have exhausted our local surroundings, we headed down to the beautiful city of Bath. The combination of beautiful old sand stone buildings making up the picturesque streets with a great splash of sunny weather made for a great little set of snaps.
With us getting our full tourist on I went for a simple, comfortable monochrome look of some classic black skinny’s, which seems to be my uniform nowadays with barely being able to prise them off myself, an oversized white shirt (not quite a shirt dress for a change) and the normal accessories of a scarf and Doc Martens. With not being blessed with the figure of Kate Moss (Nutella is just too hard to resist sometimes) in true rabbit style I like to bury myself under loose fitting clothing for those days when you just don’t fancy breathing in. It has been a long term mission of mine to find the perfect white shirt with it being a classic wardrobe staple basic. Despite this one in photos making me look doubly wide, I like the length and crisp white fabric of this one, despite its ability to crease at the slightest touch. (luckily these photos were taken just before dropping my pizza lunch all down the front) Despite the beautiful sunshine with the slight chill in the air I threw on this thick baggy grey cardigan for a little extra warmth.
Now I can hear all you British readers saying ‘you went all the way to Bath but yet didn’t go and visit The Royal crescent or The Royal Circle?’ Well, obviously I wouldn’t be that stupid so stay tuned for part 2 coming up soon featuring some of these lovely photos.
GET THE LOOK
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The snow may be long gone now here in Glasgow (yet it still decided to leave the cold weather behind) but I couldn’t help having a little reminisce about the beautiful fluffy stuff, and not just with a blog post, oh no no, with a video as well! I finally bit the bullet and decided to stray into the realms of what my mother like to call ”the youtube’’ and start vlogging. So if you would like to see me frolicking around in the snow, click the link below!
So with the snow crunching under our feet we headed off to Kelvingrove park in the lovely west end of Glasgow to get some fun little shots. It was so nice to see so many family’s and groups of friends out enjoying the snow (and for once we didn’t look odd taking loads of photos with everyone joining on the band wagon). It was nice to let out my inner 5 year old again if not for very long throwing around some snowballs and couldn’t I resist joining this funny line up of snowmen
As much I wanted to put on the biggest puffa jacket with many many layers of thermals underneath, I braved the cold to with one of my new favourite looks with really wanting to show it to you (don’t worry, not frost bite was caught in the making of this blog, my jacket was surprisingly warm). As ever it centres rather solely around black but I added a touch of pattern with, you guessed it, a scarf. (more about this in my statement scarf post here)
I have to give a moment of appreciation for my favourite part of this outfit which has to be this skirt. Nowadays I far prefer long skirts over mini skirts finding them more comfortable, not worrying about putting them down all the time, more stylish and more age appropriate (god I sound about 50!) Its made of such lovely silky fabric which doesn’t cling to you, resulting in it’s meters of fabric flowing from places I didn’t know they could flow from. With it being a dark plain colour it is very versatile meaning you could be a lot more adventurous than me with just a plain black jumper.
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Finally the Scottish weather played up to its reputation. We may have had to wait until January but eventually it snowed! From growing up in the countryside the snow was always rather bitter sweet to me. It will look lovely for about 10 minuets but probably end up leaving you stranded in the middle of nowhere for days on end with just the sheep for company. So controversial statement alert but I don’t really like the snow. But since moving into a city centre, being able to walk through the beautiful Glasgow Westend with the snow falling all around you and crunching under you Doc Martens, you can’t help but like it a teeny tiny bit.
Obviously with it snowing warm clothes were a must, being the best excuse to wear my biggest scarf and bobble hat! Now I may be known for wearing a large scarf from time to time however I think this one must be the most blanket-esk one yet. I love this bright orange and blue tartan scarf from Zara and it was the perfect way to stay cosy and keep the snow at bay. It also brilliantly brightened up the rest of my all black along with my snuggly bobble hat.
Outerwear wise there was no big puffa jacket in sight just this simple black cord jacket. Cord isn’t usually a fabric I would go for with it just reminded me of my Granddad’s trousers, however in this jet black colour with the lovely soft sheep skin esk lining (making it surprisingly warm) it has made it to one of favourite items in my wardrobe .
As someone who has already become a victim to the snow with my bum knowing a certain path far too well, Doc Martens may not have proved my perfect Scottish weather shoes in terms of grippy-ness but they did keep the frostbite at bay.
I know you can barely see it but I do have a give a mention to this black denim shirt dress ( I know, another) with it being the one item I can’t stop wearing right now. Ever since buying it I have had to ration myself wearing it otherwise it would be on my person at all times.
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Once again I popped along to the Birmingham Christmas Market and with the beautiful bright lights of the christmas wheel behind me, what better place to take some outfit photos.
After a long time reluctance too avoid the 70’s bandwagon with feeling my hippy phases should stay as distant memory as all those gypsy skirts back in 2005, I finally gave in and broke the seal with the button down mini skirt from Topshop. I may not be adopting the full on suede and fringing look complete with cow boy boots quite yet, however it is a nice change from my usual black denim jeans.
This ended up a very colourful look for me with the addition of this spotted wrap around top from American Apparel with this lovely colourful circle pattern. When I first think of a wrap top I can’t help but be transported to being a little girl running, rather ungracefully through my ballet class, but with them becoming ever more fashionable all grown up I get to wear them again. American Apparel has always been brand I have loved for their simple and stylish basics however, spending 3 times my weekly food shop on a basic is rather unjustifiable for any student, especially when Primark is just around the corner, but with their 75% off black Friday sale, this top along with a pair of jeans very soon became all mine at a fraction of their normal prices.
With wanting to avoid adding anymore colours or patterns to the look at the risk no longer recognising myself I simply paired it with this large black scarf and my patent black Doc Martens.
After the success of my first batch I couldn’t help but churn out another batch but this time with a little bit of a festive twist.
When I think if christmas food and cooking the first thing that springs to mind for me is all the festive spices which go into making all the mince pies, christmas puddings and cake.
I thought i’d stay simple and stick to muffins with a little christmas kick! (unfortunately not of the alcoholic variety)
Ingredients (to make 24)
3 mugs of self raising flour
1 mug of brown or white sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 mugs of milk
3/4 mug of vegetable oil
2 apples (one in the mixture one for decoration)
paper cases and muffin tin
Recipe
Pre heat the oven to 180 degrees fan oven/200 degrees/ Gas mark 6
Mix all the dry ingredients together, then add the ‘wet ones’.
Finely chop up the apple and add to the mixture
Spoon all the mixture into individual muffin cases and place pieces of sliced apple on the top and sprinkle with sugar
and bake them in the oven for 20/25 minuets depending on the size of you muffins.
Simple!
Again instead of making the full 24 which this recipe makes I halved it to make 12 which thinking recipes never quite make what they intend to so surprisingly I actually did manage to come out with 12.
I decided to use a normal apple instead of a cooking apple for these with wanting the chunks of apple to still remain whole instead of mush down into the cake its self.
Extra top tips for these:
Fill the cases quite full of the cake mixture, they do rise but not quite as much as i thought so you don’t have to leave too much of the case for rising room
For the apple slices for the top, roll them in sugar before placing them on top for an extra sweet flavour.
Instead of just doing the normal run of the mill gift guides as every blogger does at christmas (I’m not shunning them, I do love reading them) I decided to try something a little different, something a little more closer to home, literally, the process of decorating your home for christmas.
With the decorations as you can probably see I went with quite a neutral theme this year with a lot of golds, silvers and white, mixing together metallic’s and wood like textures with geomatics shapes and pretty feathers. With a lot of them being on a neutral theme many of them will be great to work year after year as stable decorations which you could mix and match around with different styles and colour schemes of additional decorations.
I have collated together a mixture of some cheaper products and some more expensive ones for you to have a browse at. All the products are linked below the images and If I wasn’t on a student budget living in a tiny box I would love to adorn my house with all these beautiful pieces.
I have really loved compiling this collection of decorations for you all and I hope you love them as much as I do.
So with it now being less than a month until jesus’s big old birthday celebrations roll around in an effort to try and get into the christmas spirit I have decided to 5 special christmas features for you all.
With task of finding the perfect gifts for those loved ones being on all our to do lists I thought I would try and make the task a little easier for you all recommending some products for you. Now I may be slightly using one of my christmas features to plug some of my own makeup bags would be some perfect little stocking fillers for female friends and family members out there.
I started making and selling these in the summer of this year after deciding to make something practical out of the some of my hand screen printing samples with thinking make up bags were a good place to start.
The first collection which I have avalible to buy consists of a beautiful collection of one off prints that are designed, hand screen printed and sewn together by myself. The second collection is created out of a selection of a lovely collection of fabrics I have collected and combined together in a range of sizes and designs. I wanted to celebrate some the beautiful fabrics which are available on the market already and which have given me inspiration for some of my designs so have created this collection to showcase these.
For the christmas period I have added a couple of new designs purchasable for you all. Don’t worry, their not christmas themed by being covered in christmas trees and ginger bread men so only suitable for one month a year, there just a couple of new lovely fabrics added to the range.
All of these bags are available to purchase on Etsy and are very reasonably priced between £8 and £14. For this weekend, in the spirt of black Friday I have 10% off all stock which ends at 12 GMT this evening. There all one off so when they are gone there gone! I would love it if you could take a look. Also take a look at our Facebook page for all the lasted updates and info.
Two outfit of the day posts in a row, i’m spoiling you ;) After having spent a lot of time wondering around the city finding cool locations for photos as seen in my last Style File linked here, we decided to head out of the centre of the city and over to Glasgow cathedral and The Necropolis. This was someone where recommended to me by a friend to go and visit and it was defiantly different to anything I had seen before. To sum it up it is a huge victorian graveyard comprising of approximately 3500 monuments and headstones. But it doesn’t consist of just your usual headstones. Along side these there are lots of very large cormemorative monuments which I didn’t expect to see. With these, when you start to approach it from the cathedral it makes it look from a distance rather large and intimidating. With it being a graveyard it defiantly has an eery feel about it and when wondering around and does feel quite off to go to it as almost a tourist attraction with effectively being a field of dead people but it was still interesting to look around and read of some of the people buried there from the stones and monuments.
On this day the Glasgow weather decided to rear its ugly head and do its best to deter us with the wind and the rain however we didn’t let it dampen our spirits and headed to it in spite of this.
This day was very much a ‘put on chloe uniform day’; top, trousers, scarf and long coat with probably over 50% of the content being black. With trousers I decide to give the black skinny jeans a rest for one day and wear these high waisted beige linen trousers from Topshop. The main thing that drew me to these were the fit. They draw in nice and tightly around the waist and fit nicely around the hips and bum while still remaining nice and loose around the crotch and legs, just remember to breath in :) (and even better when they only coats you £7 in the sale! I don’t tend to wear browns or beiges at all but beige linen is such a classic fabric but I think these are a good way to introduce lighter colours and fabrics to my wardrobe. These would be an item probably more suited to the summer months however when layered up items they can work for some of the warmer winter days.
You really couldn’t dispute the view
With its blue and beige pattern this scarf from Zara I thought it worked perfectly paired with these trousers. Despite being being quite a muted colour pallet it defiantly doesn’t lack in the pattern department with a beautiful liney/zigzagy/squarey pattern (their all words right?). The colours on this are lovely mixing together the whites, blues, greys and browns making it go really well with many items. Now I’m not going to lie, it is massive and when the winter nights here in Glasgow to start to get arctic like, I would probably double well as a blanket, however, its not like this has stopped me before with big scarfs always being my favourite types. This has now defiantly become the key items in my collection.
With having 2 quite bold items in the scarf and the trousers I decided to incorporate my best friend black to keep the rest of the outfit simple. This consisted of a plain black long sleeved top from Primark and this lightweight black trench coat. When I say lightweight I really mean it, when it comes to keeping out warmth it is not top of the list, as it rather proved on this day specifically, but what it lacks in warmth I think it makes up for in style (cheese line alert). Being black it goes with everything and is easy to just throw on top of any outfit to give it that stylish twist.
One thing that I did mix up from the usual was the ditching of Doc Martens for these brown suede loafers from Office in replacement. These may have not been the most practical shoes I realised for this weather, but a little bit of water isn’t going to hurt. For along time I have been looking for a pair of brogue/loafer type shoes to mix it up from just wearing boots all year round but never managed to find quite the right pair – with having quite small feet they tend to make them look even smaller. But after finding this pair in the office sale that whole it my shoe wardrobe seems to now be filled. I love the bright orangey/tan colour of these making them for me at least quite a statement piece. I also like how they are a more substantial shoe than a dolly shoe with the top coming up over the foot more unlike a lot of shoes like this which you find.
We topped of the day with a visit to our favourtie cafe after to dry off and for a well deserved milkshake.
Now with starting any new university college or even job you are bound to be given the obligatory starting off project just to dip your toes into the water. This was no different for me with starting at GSA with our first project Drawing Beginnings based no the practise of mark making and drawing from still life. In an effort not to make it as mundane as it appeared I decided to try and make the project very much my own by developing some pattern designs from the mark making and still life sketchbook work. So this week I am taking you down a small trip on memory lane back to starting off at university (those long 4 weeks ago).
After being told to go on somewhat of a scavenger hunt to find possible mark making materials (please say you hate that term mark making as much as I do), after slopping them in some ink and various paint materials as groups we created these large mural like images all out of our different marks. When creating these all ideas of being neat and precise went out the window in exchange for being expressive and abstract.
Offending items for mark drawings and final experimentational images.
As you can probably see compared to the rest of my group I decided to work solely in black and white just using ink and ignoring the brightly coloured paint used by others. This decision was based on the fact that I knew from starting this that I wanted to take these drawings into photoshop to edit and manipulate into patterns so didn’t want to overcomplicate them with colours and with not yet deciding on a colour scheme (although the odds of it starting off as a variation of red and blue were pretty high) I didn’t want to tie myself down within any of the source drawings.
Taking this combination of lines as a whole this is the design I produced this with my usual style of mirroring and rotating. I’m very pleased with this design with it being possibly my favourite coming out of the whole process (I promise it doesn’t go too far down hill from here) with one of my favourite aspects being the fine detail within the thinly crossing lines contrasted the the larger black spogges. Although I thinks it works really well as a finished black and white illustrated design I think this one would look really cool if colour was added to it creating an almost paisley inspired design but obviously in a slightly different style however when it comes to adding colour I would have to deconstruct it and go back to the beginning to create a repeatable section of it instead of trying to colour in the whole thing which would be madness.
2 more created from mark making experiments
When it got down to creating some of our own smaller scale mark making experiments I did decide at this point to start adding colour and surprise surprise as I had preempted earlier on red and blue were the chosen suspects – with a smattering of orange and various shades of blue to not limit it too much. A while ago I had the idea within my pattern design to of using oil paint to blend together a background with the pattern arising with various marks over the top. This was a perfect opportunity to try this idea out. Using some of the earlier mark making techniques I layered these on top of an acrylic paint background starting to make a pattern with it. As well as adding on top with the black ink with using oil paints as a base I was able to mark into them dragging the paint around creating another element within the design. I really wanted to try and replicate some of the flowers I had found and used for mark making within the designs by using the colours of them within the choice of paint and using the flowers them selves to print with creating the black flower splodges.
As I did with my earlier back and white drawings I mirrored, repeated and layered these scanned in images to create the new designs. Im really pleased with how these and the previous black and white ones have come out however I can see how my work is all becoming very similar using the same ideas and techniques with a lot of my designs. This could be considered as my style of working however I think it is still quite simple and could be pushed further and maybe isn’t the style which I ideally want to be creating.
In order to do this I took the jump and decided to try to start using adobe illustrator as well as photoshop. After plenty of blood sweat and tears (maybe subtract the blood for watching countless youtube videos) I started pick up some of the effects which I wanted to try and create.
I found that the marks I created using the feathers when sectioned out and played around of By some sort of happy accident when using the pattern brush tool created a really cool butterfly image. This wasn’t really what i intended to create but I’m very pleased how I managed to create it. Unable to leave my beloved photoshop for too long, I took this motif I had created and used and manipulated it in there, adding colour from some of my previous designs and layering design behind it until I has created a design with them which I was really happy with.
This final butterfly design is a lot more muted than the work I usually do however I still really like and it and is a good start at varying my portfolio a bit. I also love it when I create a design which has a lot different designs and layers involved in it knowing that a lot of different work came before it and wasn’t just simply created in 5 minuets.
Drawing from still life of a dream catcher. The still life element of this project was an area which I definatly struggled having not gained much inspiration from the items we were drawing. The dream catch was the only item which caught my eye with the design made out of wood in the centre and the lovely feathers hanging off it. I did first draw it in its natural colours of brown and beige but changed it when paining it into red and blue to link in more with my collection of other designs.
Final design of dream catcher kaleidoscope
Thankyou for taking a look and reading, I will be doing regualr updates on my uni work so please make sure to come and check back in the future to see what I am up to.
