Liebster award!

I got nominated by Aida for the Liebster Award, thank you! Make sure you check out her blog if you haven't already, it's one of my favourites. Here are the rules:

• You must answer the 11 questions set by the blogger who nominated you
• You must then pick 11 blogs who have under 200 followers and think of 11 questions for those blogs You must also tell them.
• Finally link back to the blog that nominated you

1. Did you have any new year's resolutions? If you did which ones haven't you broken (yet)?

I had two and I've kept up both so far! The first was to make more art, and although I have a lot of schoolwork and a budding social life I can honestly say I've done more so far this year than in the whole of 2012. The second was to keep a jar of little pieces of paper with nice things on, like things that happen and that people do and stuff that's made me happy, so I can look back at it at the end of the year.

2. If your life was a movie who would you want directing it?

Don't we all kind of wish our life was a John Hughes movie? But then, idk, I think that really I'd just most like to direct it myself.

3. What made you start blogging?

I wanted to have somewhere to talk about things that I really love but that don't really interest my friends, and also kind of as inspiration to motivate myself more to stop dressing boringly. I read a few blogs and I thought it was quite cool so I figured I'd give it a go!

4.What are you looking forward to most this summer?

I'm mostly staying in town, which is actually pretty good since a lot of my friends are too (most of the time, anyway) so I guess I'm just looking forward to hanging round with my gurl gang and watching movies a lot and being able to dress really cute because yay, no uniform! I'm also going to camp in the week before last which is pretty exciting too.

5.What's your star sign?

Sun: libra, moon and rising: pisces.

6.What's your favourite Crayola crayon colour?

Salmon.

7.If you could be best friends with any character from a book, who would it be?

There's quite a few, but preferably Nika Mickiewicz from Felix, Net i Nika which is a Polish sci-fi series which, as far as I'm aware, hasn't been translated into English but is actually really good. We have a lot in common and I've always thought she was just a really cool character and wished I knew someone more like her.

8. Laduree are going to make a dessert named after you. What would be in it?

Meringue!

9. Do you collect anything?

Yeah, but they're not very interesting things; CDs and tickets, mainly from trains and museums etc. 

I used to collect earrings and even though I don't wear them as much anymore, I do still have almost sixty pairs.

10. What's your favourite font?

I've never really thought about it, but probably some nice serif font like Bell MT? I also quite like Courier as well.

11. Do you prefer the morning or the evening?

The evening.

Thanks again for the questions, Aida! Here are mine:

1. If you could only ever listen to one band from now, who would you choose?
2. Who are your biggest style inspirations?
3. You are stranded on an island. Pick one album and one book you'd like to have with you.
4. What's the last thing you ate?
5. What is your best childhood memory?
6. Which is longer, your index or your ring finger?
7. If you had to choose color that represented you, which would it be?
8. What is the most dangerous thing you've ever done?
9. Do you like watching musicals? What's your favourite?
10. What are you most proud of?
11. What is your strangest/most annoying habit?

I don't follow very many blogs yet, and I'm not sure if I'll be able to get eleven people under 200 followers who haven't done this at least once or twice already, but the people I nominate are:
Bronia
Charlotte
Eleanor
Dani
Hannah
and anyone else who wants to do it!

Paulina x

♡ revolution grrrl style now!! ♡

"BECAUSE we girls want to create mediums that speak to US. We are tired of boy band after boy band, boy zine after boy zine, boy punk after boy punk after boy… BECAUSE we need to talk to each other. Communication/inclusion is the key. We will never know if we don’t break the code of silence… BECAUSE in every form of media we see us/myself slapped, decapitated, laughed at, objectified, raped, trivialized, pushed, ignored, stereotyped, kicked, scorned, molested, silenced, invalidated, knifed, shot, choked and killed. BECAUSE a safe space needs to be created for girls where we can open our eyes and reach out to each other without being threatened by this sexist society and our day to day bullshit" ~ Bikini Kill zine, riot grrrl manifesto

Hey there, people of the interwebz! First of all, a shoutout to Megan, my partner in crime and my favourite riot grrrl and one of the biggest babes I know. Now, you probably realize I'm really into feminism, and I find the riot grrrl culture really rad; the music and the zines and smashin' the patriarchy and generally being really badass n' cool. I realize that, like in all communities, there are some flaws, such lack of trans* representation and women of colour, however the culture itself is pretty cool and addresses issues like rape, abuse, double standards against men and sexuality via spoken word, music and art and also focuses on reclaiming our bodies and taking back slurs and rejecting stereotypes. Being the woman you want to be and doing whatever you want.

I also really like the aesthetic, not only of riot grrrl bands but also just punk and grunge bands of the 90s in general, like the DIY stuff and thrifted things and kinderwhore, and my role models for this are bands like Bikini Kill and L7 and Babes In Toyland. I put together last night's outfit with them in mind, kinda~

The dress is thrifted, I'm not sure about the choker but I think it may have been from some alternative store, the earrings (you can't really see but they're tiny sunflowers) are from Republic and I found the t-shirt in a box of old things my family don't really wear and wrote on it, I think it looks pretty cool with the dress but here is a full picture:

Also when I went out I wore a denim jacket (thrifted) with a Pearl Jam badge, a little bow on the collar and "Alien She" (Bikini Kill!!) written on it and this really cute holographic bag which looks a lot more sparkly in real life and is one of my favourite accessories. I also wore my docs and they looked good but damn, it's outfits like this that really make me wish I had jelly shoes! Below is a close-up photo of the detail on my jacket, which I really want to add more things to.

Also, here are some of my (currently) favourite songs that fit with the theme~

So, what are your thoughts on the culture? And who are your favourite riot grrrl bands?

Paulina x

Beetlejuice and boredom

Hi, y'all! How've you been? I haven't updated this thing for ages but I've been so busy lately asdfghjkl~ It doesn't help that my grandparents are currently over so we've been going on trips the whole time, sigh. I've been feeling kinda uninspired and I've hardly had time to dress up nicely, let alone blog about it or other fashion related things, but my outfit today was really cute and I figured I'd share it. The pinafore dress (Topshop) is one of my favourite clothes I own, and I also really like the shirt (New Look, I think?).

 I bought it because it made me think of Beetlejuice which was one of my favourite movies when I was younger, and this morning when I wore it my stepdad pointed it out which was pretty cool.

I also wore these cute lil' hair clips from the kiddy accessories section at Asda which I wear with pretty much everything recently. (Also, note to self: never try to pluck your eyebrows this much ever again!) 

This photo was taken accidentally but I like how it turned out. You can see the rest of my outfit and also my boots, which are plain black Docs and you'll find me wearing them most of the time, even in the summer, though I've really wanted jelly shoes like these for ages and it's about time to buy some!

I'm really bored of doing things I don't really want to do the whole time, but today I could finally relax and in the morning I went thrift shopping and then visited my friend, and in the afternoon I wrote a story in which I was basically trying to rip off things like Daria or Ghost World and which actually turned out quite good. Also tomorrow I'm in a raft race with my stepdad and some family friends, and we had to build our raft which is viking ship themed and I painted these dragon heads to put on it while listening to the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack (and, of course, singing along to it really loudly and tunelessly) in the shed which was fun, and they turned out really cool:

I'll hopefully have more time to blog next week and although I don't really know what I'll write about yet, I promise it'll be more interesting than me talking about dragon heads. So long~

Paulina x

♥ Lazy Oaf ♥

Hello again, people of the interwebz ♥ How are you all? I'm pretty good, although I've had so much schoolwork lately I've hardly kept up my blog and, let's face it, I suck at updating it anyway - although I hope this is at least slightly excusable due to the fact I'm just a teenage girl with a large CD collection and a budding social life wanting to get fairly good end of year grades! I promise I'll make up for it in the summer, after July 19th, which is when my holidays start. I wanted to make an outfit post, but recently I've had hardly any time to dress up, or wear anything other than my school uniform really, and the weather's been miserable so instead I'll try to cheer myself up by writing about Lazy Oaf which I absolutely adore and totally wish I could afford more of (also because, not gonna lie, I'm sometimes a bit of a cliché).

So, let's start with their most recent thing, the Lazy Oaf x Nasty Gal collab, brought to you by stickers and awesome colours and cutesy cute things and your very own fruit bowl. I mean, just look:

The patterns have a cool element of, like, a 90s childhood, but the clothes are still pretty ~badass n' cool~. I love the shorts so so much, and the rest of the watermelon set is pretty great too.

       

The backpack is one of my favourite things from the collection, and what makes it even cooler is the silver pizza zip pulls~ if you know me (or, really, probably even if you don't), I'm pretty sure you realize I'm a total sucker for pizza in any form! 

My other favourites are these; the sweater is kinda 90s and uber rad, and the dress is fun but still quite versatile and basically asdfgsdhg~ 

The flower patch set is ~fab~ too, especially the tee, but then so is most of the collection (you can see the rest of it here, and here is the lookbook)

Sigh, the Nasty Gal stuff is too great for words (and actually fairly easy to replicate when you've got cool patterned fabrics and a lot of spare time on your hands, oh, I need summer now, and also a working sewing machine!) but that's certainly not the end to Lazy Oaf's greatness. 

The boots are from their collaboration with Kickers, and I wish I had both of these so much. They're so glittery and cool and the silver ones somewhat make me think of a disco ball but only in the best way possible; they're probably my favourites, along with the black ones, though I have to admit these are rad too.

These are from their summer lookbook and, really, I probably like them even more than the Nasty Gal pieces. They're more pastel and I love the others, but I guess these are just overall kinda nicer and more wearable. The denim dress, jeweled collar shirt and pink cat tee are basically the epitome of perfection.  Also, a shout-out to Lazy Oaf for having some of the coolest lookbooks ever (and practically the coolest everything ever too).

So, what are your thoughts on Lazy Oaf? And which pieces do you like best?

Paulina x

Andy Warhol collection by Comme des Garçons

I've been ill for the past couple of days and basically spent the whole time watching Studio Ghibli movies, drawing, listening to sad music and browsing my favourite blogs which left me wishing I had more money to buy all the oh-so-pretty clothes I saw and ideas of what to blog about, until I saw the latest post by Aida which reminded me of what I've been wanting to blog about since before I even had a blog. Comme des Garçons is one of the few labels which make me want to stand on top of a hill and scream really loudly about how much I love them, and I'm also a huge fan of Andy Warhol's art so I was basically over the moon when I saw the Comme des Garçons x Andy Warhol Capsule Collection which came out on April 27th.

The collection uses a variety of Warhol's classic prints on some t-shirts, two pairs of shoes, a tote and a backpack, and they're basically the coolest thing ever. Some of the best pieces are-

These t-shirts. I'm not massively into t-shirts but the prints are really great and the lines make them even cooler and more Warhol-ish, and also this one:

It has the quote "If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it" and also a picture of him on it and I really really like it

Also these are practically to die for. I like the other pieces as well, but these are my favourites, and I like how unique and fun but also versatile they are. I wish I could afford any of them or at least be able to save up for them because I have the worst spending habits, which isn't exactly the best thing when you've got the budget of a fourteen-year-old, oh dear~ 

Paulina x

Daisies

So I guess summer is finally here, and not only in the way June is officially considered a summer month, but also in that the weather is nice, even here, in rainy England (I certainly hope I didn't jinx it this time) and I can now play out my daydreams of walking (almost!) everywhere barefoot and spending whole days down by the lake with a book and a sketchpad. You know what else I love about summer? Daisies. They're pretty much everywhere and they're the nicest of all flowers. Forget the tulips or roses or irises - daisies are where it's at! I guess it's just something about them that makes them so, you know, sweet and simple and sincere. So, to fit with the ~daisy appreciation post vibez~, below are some images from tumblr that are so perfect they make me cry and, while we're at it, I thought I'd also throw in at the bottom a photo from the movie Daisies (1966) which is a movie so good it certainly deserves a post of it's own one day. Also the second picture is Drew Barrymore and, oh, she's a goddess.

I love the orange dress so much! Also the skirt in the first picture is so cool, sigh, why are none of my clothes as cool as that? I ordered a daisy patterned dress from eBay the other day and it's yet to come but nevertheless my outfit today (well, yesterday, since it's two in the morning and I still can't sleep) was kinda daisy-ish and nice enough to share:

Excuse the awkward pose, my camera battery was about to die and this was the best photo out of the three or so that I took although I do look slightly like I want to murder you or something. Anyways, all the clothes are vintage, the rings are gifts, the headband was from H&M last year and the necklace is from Accessorize, I think. My mum bought the top last week and decided she didn't want it anymore so she gave it to me, and it's slowly becoming one of my favourite items of clothing - as you can see in the photo below, it has such a cute texture, and it's so nice and soft and basically asdfghjkl~

Also I recently saw this photo by thecoolcustomer (who, by the way, is one of my favourite bloggers) of her sister's new hi-tops from Next Kids and damn, I just really hope they have them in size 5 because look how rad they are:

So yeah, this post basically sums up my love of daisies, and as it's 3 am I should probably try to get some sleep now - I have to be up in four hours! So long~ x

Cindy Sherman's film stills

Today I was looking through my old school sketchbook, and I found a page on Cindy Sherman's film stills which I still really like. In case you're not really familiar with them, they're a series of sixty-nine black and white photographs of Sherman posing in different settings and portraying stereotypical female roles and identities, as comments on the society and how she sees it. Here's a slideshow of some of her work and a good article about her.

I thought it'd be fun to try and take some of my own stills in the style of Cindy Sherman, and although they might not really represent stereotypical female roles, I quite like how they turned out:

Let me know what you think! I really enjoyed taking these so I might post a couple more later. Also, expect a proper introduction from me in the near future. x

Sea green

Hello internet! As this is my first ever blog post, I believe I should introduce myself in some way or another. I've never been good at writing about myself but I promise I'll try my best! My name is Paulina, pronounced pow-lee-na and thus lovingly shortened to Pow by just about everyone I know, I'm currently fourteen years old and I procrastinate too much - and therefore, I'm afraid, a proper introduction might have to wait until I've figured out what to say and contemplated certain things, like if I prefer strawberry or pink grapefruit or lavender lemonade, and if that even has any significance whatsoever. 

Anyways, I was looking through my old family photos yesterday and I found one of my cousin's old prom dress; I wish I had the picture to show you. It was long and flowy and sea green and I basically fell in love so, naturally, I had to include some sea green in today's outfit:

The sweater is thrifted, originally from M&S, and the skirt is from Stradivarius. My friend bought it for me in France and I didn't like it that much at first, but it grew on me after a while and I started to like it even more after seeing these gorgeous dresses by Mary Katrantzou. I accessorized with a star necklace and round studded choker (possibly from some alternative store), two thin rings given to me by my first girlfriend which I've hardly taken off since, and purple nail polish. Also black docs and a brolly to match when I went out.

I have also created a polyvore set of some pieces I really liked - don't you just love the kitty wedges and the hair bow?

So, I hope you liked my first blog post, and that I'm doing this whole blogging thing right. There'll be more coming soon. So long! x