Outfit: fancy faux fur

dress: Forever 21
cardigan: thrifted: Goodwill
tights: Target
shoes: Miss Bisou
necklace: vintage cameo

I love faux fur, especially in black, grey, or odd colors. If this cardigan was light purple with dark purple faux fur, it would be absolutely perfect! I dress up a bit fancy as often as I can, especially when I have days off work. Unless I’m doing a kitchen shift, you’ll almost never see me in pants or jeans. I actually kinda despise blue jeans these days. They feel so uncomfortable compared to my skirts and dresses!

Lovely Things

This adorable locket from The Black Apple on Etsy
I love Emily Martin’s illustrations! She lives here in Portland, and always has a booth at Crafty Wonderland. Check out her blog!

These awesome Lego walls

This would be so much fun. I love playing with legos just as much as I did when I was a kid, maybe more!

These outer space tights 
I wish I knew where to buy these! I have quite a few sci-fi/space t-shirts that these would go perfectly with.

This diy book pendant
Check out the story behind it on Craftster.

This print
I love the typography of this, and the saying itself. As someone who waits tables, I can definitely agree with this.

A Few Things I’ve Been Working on

Here’s some of the jewelry I’ve been creating lately. There’s not much clay creations in this batch, with the exception of the last picture. I’m starting to make more earrings and rings slowly. The earrings in the third picture down contain some of the tiniest cameos I’ve ever seen! They’re so tiny and perfectly detailed. I’ll be putting most of these items up in my shop over the next week, so keep your eyes open for 'em!

Outfit Post

I’ve noticed that some of my favorite posts from bloggers I follow tend to be their outfit posts. I love seeing people’s unique styles and how they throw great outfits together. So, I’m going to try to do outfit posts more often! I have some pretty awesome outfits (if I do say so myself) from years of thrifting and buying second-hand. This outfit is one I wore to work yesterday. The dress code for the pub I work at is pretty laidback, with the main stipulation being that we wear collared shirts. (This is also one of the reasons I want to make some detachable collars, known as dickies.)

shirt: thrifted- Plato’s Closet
skirt: thrfited- Value Village
tights: Target
shoes: Blowfish
brooch: my shop

I’m totally in love with this shirt. It has not two, but FOUR functional pockets, which is pretty impossible to find on ladies’ clothing. One of my pet peeves is clothing that has fake pockets, or pockets sewn shut. GIRLS PUT THINGS IN POCKETS TOO! My new shoes are pretty awesome, too. I ordered them from Blowfish during a sale where it was ten dollars off everything, plus free shipping! When I got them in the mail, they ended up being a bit too small, so I sent them back to be exchanged. One week later, a giant box appeared on my doorstep. They had sent me TWO pairs of the right-sized shoes, instead of one! and for free!  So now I have two pairs of these awesome, comfy shoes. I plan to paint the other pair, but I’m not sure what colors yet.

Sewing Day/Clay Workshop

So I had yesterday off work and decided to do some sewing projects! I hit up Joann’s and got some fresh fabric and some felt to make pretty bow hairclips. I ended doing a lot of mending. I had a huge pile of clothes that just needed buttons sewed back on, seams fixed, or holes sewn up. Just by fixing up some clothes I already had, I added two cardigans, three shirts, and a skirt to my closet! One of these was a leopard print shirt that my dryer somehow tore apart last time I washed it. It had some pretty large, unfixable holes. So the obvious solution: Cut more holes in it!

I cut a heart shape in the middle of the back. I’ll probably have to make some stitches around it to reinforce the shape. I liked the way the shirt turned out! It’ll be fun to wear a bright color or crazy pattern underneath, I’m thinking black&white polka dots or stripes!

I also made one of those felt bows that I’ve been wanting so badly. It turned out pretty well and only took maybe ten minutes! I made just one in red, but I but enough felt to do them in grey, black, and blue!

I also started a Polymer Clay Workshop last night. It meets once a week for two hours. I have kinda mixed feelings about it. For one, the teacher started off the class saying “Polymer clay has been forever tainted by the crafters of their world with their dainty little brooches”. Meanwhile, I’m sitting in the second row wearing one of my polymer clay brooches. Ouch. Other than that, the teacher seemed pretty nice; I liked that he got his start in polymer clay by watching Wallace and Gromit videos (Claymation series chock full of British humor, I used to love them as a kid).  Our class only had four people including myself, three of which are older men. We’ll mostly be doing figures and sculpting, so I’m not sure how much of the class will be applicable to my jewelry-making. It should still be fun and informative though. For our first little project, we made cartoony birds. I liked the way mine turned out, except for the comically large feet.
Detachable Peter Pan collar tutorial
So I had a pretty good day off! I still have some sewing projects to finish up, as I had to stop last night when I looked at the clock and realized it was already two a.m! I bought materials to make detachable Peter Pan collars. I’ve been pretty obsessed with Peter Pan collars lately. I’m just dying to wear them with every shirt or dress I own. I’ll be using the tutorial above, doing some with ribbons as closures, and some with snap buttons. Here’s some pictures of Peter Pan collars that have made me fall in love with them: http://pinterest.com/zombot/peter-pan-collars/
 
(How awesome is pinterest?!) A lot of the dresses on that board are from Modcloth. They have some mind-blowingly gorgeous clothes, especially dresses. If I had more money, I would probably buy every piece they have!

Lovely Things

So, I'm going to start doing a weekly post called "lovely things" with some of the many neat pictures, crafts, or curiosities that I've come across on the internet during that week. So, here's some of the lovely things I've found lately: 

This tutorial for making felt bows

I bought an adorable purple felt bow at Crafty Wonderland last month, and ever since then I've been wishing I had one in every color. Now, after I make a quick trip to Joann's, I can totally make that happen!

These watch-shaped Post-Its

These are such an amazing idea! They're just a design concept right now, but I would totally buy these if they came into existence.

This amazing monster-movie apron on Etsy

I’ve been on the lookout for an apron for cooking at home, and this one is so awesome!

This super-true flow chart:

The Great Portland Cupcake Tour

So during that last epic thrifting adventure with Stacey and Kendra, we were also hitting up every cupcake bakery in sight! There’s quite a few here in Portland. Ready to see some super uber delicious baked goods?
NOM? NOM NOM!

Our first yummy stop was Bliss Cupcake Shop, not too far from my apartment. Me and Kendra picked out a mini cupcake (eggnog for me, chocolate bliss for her), while Stacey broke the pattern right off the bat by getting a giant chocolate chip cookie.

Next, it was off to Cupcake Jones in downtown Portland. This place is amazing, but sadly lacks much room to sit or stand inside. One thing I love is that every cupcake is filled on the inside. I got a delicious dark-chocolate-mint cupcake with an edible golden snowman on top. I honestly don’t remember what Kendra or Stacey got, probably because I was way too busy devouring that heavenly, messy cupcake!

Our last sugar-filled stop downtown was Saint Cupcake. They have two locations, and we ended up going to their new, shiny, wonderfully decorated “Galore” bakery. This place had lots of room to sit, gorgeously tiled walls, and free cinnamon-sugar puffs (which their website adorably calls “bonbonbunbuns”).

I picked out a Willy Wonka cupcake (chocolate chip with green frosting!) and Kendra got a Toasted Coconut Cream. After biting into it, she sadly realized that it had her least favorite frosting ever: cream cheese. Luckily, Stacey was happy to give the cupcake a good home in her stomach.

I totally couldn’t resist jumping into the giant whisk/bike rack outside Saint Cupcake!

The next day, Kendra and I headed out to Lake Oswego to check out Crave Bake Shop. Crave is completely gluten-free. I haven’t tried many gluten-free baked goods, and certainly never cupcakes, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. It helped to know that Crave won the national Cupcake Wars on Food Network.

Kendra got a Hot Chocolate cupcake (with crazy-delicious toasted marshmallow on top), and I got the Coffee and Doughnut cupcake. (Do you see that adorable mini doughnut?!) Everything tasted just as awesomely as it looks. I was pretty impressed by my first gluten-free cupcake.

Bonus: Bitter chocolate filled croissant from Baker & Spice. Oh so good! As you can probably tell, my sister and I end up eating a lot of yummy baked goods when she visits me!

Thrifting Day with Stacey and Kendra

This post is a bit late, since this shopping trip was on a couple days before Christmas, while my little sister was still visiting. Stacey, Kendra, and I had an awesome day full of thrift stores, crazy-busy malls, and The Great Portland Cupcake Tour (more about that next time!).We started off the day with some Black Rock Coffee. The ever-angsty Batman was upset that he couldn’t drink any of it with his plastic mouth, and thus spent the whole trip staring out the window, totally ignoring us.

One of the first vintage shops we stopped at was Lounge Lizard. This place has AMAZING furniture and lamps.

I was totally in love with the dresser in the above picture. They had a large version of it AND a desk in the same style. If I had lots of money, I probably would’ve walked out with the whole set.

Next was Vintage Pink, with its fun assortment of retro furniture, clothes, and magazines. They always have really fun window displays.

I found my dream couch there! Call me tacky, but I’ll always love anything made of fuzzy animal print.

Last, but not least, was the grandest of all vintage stores, House of Vintage. At over 13,000 square feet, it’s definitely the biggest vintage store in Portland, and the largest I’ve ever seen in my life!

They have everything you could imagine, from any era. I kept seeing owls everywhere, and had to seriously restrain myself from taking home all of them. Here’s just a few of them:

Stacey kept finding gorgeous vintage hats. She ended up buying the pink netted hat! It’s adorable and perfect for our random days of dressing fancy.

Christmas lights on the way out of downtown Portland!

Here’s some of the goodies I ended up taking home:

Adorable snowy owl painting on wood. Too cute to not buy.Funky wood painting by a mysterious “Patti”.An Ewok plush from the original Star Wars! Ahhhh!

Ceramic owl. I think he’s a bit drunk. or possibly hungover.
Another wood painting. I’m finding that I really love any weird/tacky/cute painting done on wood. Hmmm.

Retro space rangers from The Dollar Scholar. I bought five of these awesome guys for a buck each!

I just realized Kendra wasn’t really in any of these pictures, then I remembered that she was the one taking most of the pictures.  She just got a new camera, which is wayyyy better than mine. I was having some crazy camera-jealousy while she was here, so now I’m thinking it’s time to buy a new one!