12 Days (and more) of Christmas Outfits: Week three (and the end)

Christmas is over for another year, but I still have a few more outfits to share with you all (and technically, the 12th Day of Christmas is the 6th of January, so it's not that late).

This challenge was fun and I definitely want to do some more during the year, whether that's dressing to a theme or styling one piece ten different ways. It's hard to pinpoint what I liked the most about this last couple of weeks, but I think maybe the fact that people talked to me. They stopped to complement me, or talk about Christmas, or even just smiled more. It got easier and easier to make time everyday to take photos (not to mention, I got a lot less embarrassed about taking photos of myself in public places). 

Monday December 21

Outfit details

Dress: Kitten D'Amour Girl Crazy collar dress (past collection)

Shoes: Kmart shoes, glittered by me! 

Tuesday December 22

Outfit details

Dress: Black Milk Clothing Wrapped dress (past collection)

Hairpiece: Homemade

Shoes: Novo (they're on sale so hurry!)

Wednesday December 23

Outfit details

Dress: Black Milk Clothing gingerbread dress (past season)

Shoes: Kmart shoes, glittered by me! 

Hairpiece: Made by me

Thursday December 24

Outfit details

Skirt: Betty Le Bon Bon

Shirt: Pinup Girl Clothing Doris top in Red (with a green Kmart shirt underneath)

Shoes: Kmart shoes, glittered by me! 

This one was my Zooey Deschanel from Elf-inspired outfit. I couldn't find a plain red tunic dress, so I paired a skirt and shirt which fortunately matched really well. I always need an undershirt with my Doris tops, so the green t-shirt was an obvious choice for this one! 

Friday December 25

Outfit details

Dress: Mamar Dynamite

Shoes: Kmart shoes, glittered by me! 

This is the outfit I had been saving all Christmas long! Mamar Dynamite is a Brisbane seamstress who makes the most adorable outfits. She's saved my terrible-sewing bacon by taking this impulse-bought Santa fabric and turning it into the perfect Christmas Day dress.

I was going to wear this more than once, but the day I picked it up I knew this was destined to be my last day dress. Next year, I'll pick out some more fabric and put Santa into the general rotation.


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And that's it! I'm already thinking about outfits for next Christmas and want to make sure I invest in some in season pieces so my looks can be replicated (sorry about that - I spent all Christmas long hunting down past season Black Milk dresses and realised that you'd all have to do the same). 

I hope you enjoyed my festive blog posts this December and are enjoying a wonderful holiday season with family and friends. 

Working from home = t-shirts & leggings

This year has been one of big change. I lost my job back in July, I went to America again (which always, even when it's not planned, seems to spark deep philosophical questions about my life when I get back), and then the big one, I started two new jobs, both of which don't require me to spend every day in an office.

While that works for me in many ways (though I have no trouble keeping busy), the one thing I love one day and hate the next is that working from home doesn't exactly encourage me to get out of bed in the morning and be creative with my outfits. In many ways, I feel like I should be more creative than I was in an office because I'm not limited by any office conventions (like low tops and singlet sleeves for example), but who wants to work in their beautiful pinup gear when the only people to see your outfit most days is the dog? 

So I've gone completely in the other direction. That is, my pjs have become my uniform. To counteract being slobby and gross (and being ashamed of answering the door when the postman comes), I've been working on some dressed, but comfy work-from-home outfits and hairstyles that don't involve getting dressed to the nines. 90% of which centre around my Black Milk leggings. The way I see it is, if I make an effort to be properly dressed, I don't have to change if I need to run out to Officeworks or hide when the postman comes.

I'm going to share a couple of outfits here, and then share some others in future posts - I think there are a few work from home-related topics to be covered. Be warned, this will frequently mean seeing me out of the pinup gear, no makeup and the dreaded top-knot or bun (we'll talk about that later too). 

I did in fact go out in this outfit. To the hospital to visit my pop.
Who later told Mum that you'd see me coming in a blackout.
Achievement unlocked, I think.

Outfit 1 details

T-shirt: The Mighty Thor

Leggings: Black Milk Tartan Yellow Leggings (Now a museum piece, sorry!)

Shoes: Bam!Pow! flats from Rubi shoes | Similar

Oh hai, no make-up face

Outfit 2 details

T-shirt: Eff Your Beauty Standards shirt from Tess Holliday | Similar

Leggings (not pictured): Black Milk Matte Black leggings

We're creepy and we're kooky...

 

It's Halloween, yay!

I'm not sure if it's because it's falling on a Saturday this year, or if my dreams have finally come true, but Halloween feels like a bigger deal than it has in years. It was never really a thing here in Australia, but it's been getting bigger and bigger. I've been out and about today and there are so many people dressed in costumes and makeup talking about trick or treating and parties, and I love it.

Tonight I'm planning on watching something scary and hopefully handing out lollies to some trick or treaters (if any come - it's not a sure thing). Halloween is weird sort of non-event for me as a cosplayer, which is weird. I think it's because inevitably, someone asks to borrow one of my costumes and I have to explain to them how much work goes into them. So, I decided to show off how easy it is to put together a closet costume without spending a penny.

It's hot here in Brisbane today, so no long sleeve sweater for me. Instead, white shirt under a black t-shirt, black skirt and Docs. For my makeup, I mixed my regular foundation with some white face paint, went heavy on the eyes and easy on the contouring (just a little along the cheek bones). I always suggest to my non-cosplay friends that they pick an iconic character who wears normal wardrobe items if you don't want to spend hours crafting.

Outfit details

T-shirt & white shirt: Kmart Australia

Skirt: Seams Nostalgic

Docs: Vintage

 

Out of the bargain bin

 

 

I’ve been wearing vintage for a really long time. Even back in the day where I was a complete rock chick/tomboy, I would drive over to Wooloowin where a lady had a retro store in a house called The Retro Stop, and buy 60s and 70s men’s pants (grandpa pants as they were known as in my house). But when I first started to change my outfit to being vintage-inspired and then pinup, I had no money to buy repro or the really expensive, highly curated vintage beauties you see at retro stores. I’ve mentioned before that I changed my dressing style by buying cheaper clothes from Kmart and Target if they had a vintage shape, or adding vintage hairstyles and makeup to modern clothes. But the other thing I did was shop the bargain bins.

Back in the days of the Love Vintage fairs (vintage shows that traveled around Australia and that were pretty much the best for getting a lot of shopping done in one place), I would dive straight for the bargain bins. That’s where you’d find dresses with a hole or a tear, things that needed a stitch here, a new hem, or a good soak to get stains out.

This dress is a bargain bin dress. It’s in perfect condition, the only thing wrong with it was that it was missing a couple of buttons. So for $15, I bought it, found some buttons in my cousin’s huge collection and resewed them.

I love the dress because it incorporates so many different colours and I’ve worn it with bright yellows and reds, oranges and green. It works in the summer (though, it’s a nice coarse poly blend that isn’t the most breathable fabric) with sandals or in the winter with tights. Or, like I am today, a warm spring day but a cool night, with brown boots and a brown belt.

So, don't discount the clothes in the bargain bin! They just need a little TLC.

And now, because the outfit is vintage and you can't buy the same (though the belt and boots are from Kmart Australia), here are some derp photos from this set (it's sad when you like 90% of your derps better than the serious face pictures). 

Wardrobe tantrums and dresses as tops

Most days I plan what I'm going to wear before I get up in the morning because if I don't, disaster can strike (particularly on the days where I'm teaching and need to be out of the house early). Wardrobe tantrums are the result of what happens when I don't plan - I am sure lots of you ladies can relate to the way it feels when a dress doesn't look right, so you pull it off and it goes on the floor, then that skirt doesn't fit, so it goes onto the floor too, and before long you're standing in your underwear, hot, sweaty, stressed and usually late. 

But this outfit was a lucky stop to what was fast becoming a wardrobe tantrum. I'd grabbed my Black Milk bowerbird play dress off the hanger on a whim after not planning (on an early start morning too), and I decided quickly it was a winter dress, and too short to wear in the spring now I've given up on tights for the season. I grabbed a skirt off the clean laundry pile and was pulling it on at the same time I was pulling off the dress, but then realised that actually, the dress worked well with the skirt as a top. The green cardigan had been given to me a couple of days before and also easily accessible, and after that, choosing shoes to match was an easy choice! 

I was really happy with this outfit because it gave me some new inspiration and a way to wear some of my shorter Black Milk dresses in the summer. I also wore some of my new Ariel jewellery, bought from Hot Topic while I was in the US. I felt like it was a nice pairing - bowerbirds are collectors and Ariel's kind of the bowerbird of the sea! 

 

Outfit details
Top (actually a dress): Black Milk Bowerbirds white play dress

Skirt: Seams Nostalgic (custom made) 

Bow and Necklace: Hot Topic
Shoes: Crocs

 

Picnic print + small white photo bomber

I've definitely shared this Pinup Girl Clothing Jenny dress in picnic print, styled for winter before. But when I sat down to take some shots for Instagram Outfit of the Day pictures, a little friend of mine kept jumping into the photo. He was helpful in the beginning, standing about where I planned on sitting so I could take a test shot:

But then he was all over me for kisses and cuddles the rest of the time I was taking photos! 

Outfit details:

Dress: Pinup Girl Clothing Jenny Dress (sorry, this is a long gone, much sought after Jenny colourway)

Cardigan: Collectif Jo Cardigan Bluebird in black

Shoes: Vintage black Doc Martens (similar)