I finally updated my shop

So you probably didnt realise I had a shop and I would forgive you for not knowing as I haven't mentioned it or really paid it any attention in the last few months. 

I started my shop nearly over a year ago on Etsy and I was really super into it and used to get so excited when I'd get someone liking my shop or an item. Then school and other pressure took over and I kind of lost interest, I'd make sure there was always some products up there but I never made anything new. 

This all changed last week when I did the stenciling I mentioned in a previous post and I was over come with the need to do more stenciling so I went on tumblr, got some inspiration and made a huge amount of stencils to paint with, found some clean plain fabric and started a mini production line. 

A mini production line of just me actually.

I made a huge amount of patches for the shop and these are just the ones I've photographed and put online. The patches above were cute 60s/70s Roswell vibe alien head patches that I really like. I'm thinking of doing these in lots of different colours as they're small and fun to make as the stencil is so simple. The patches below are Arctic Monkeys patches that were less fun to make as cutting out all of the individual letters can be irritating as the paper weakens and can break. I do like making the band patches though, I'm thinking of taking requests.

These two last ones are really tumblr inspired, the one on the right is inspired by the whole websites love and belief in mermaids, quite rightly too. The second is a sassy little banner patch which links to another item in my shop, a 'no' hair slide, which made me laugh when I thought of it. 

If you want to see the shop, or buy any of the items and make me really happy, the link is here and I have a link below my archive that I really wish I could re position but as I really cant work out html I had to get my brother to do it and even he struggled with it.

xxx

Rosie

Kind of a stenciling DIY

I love stenciling, I found a DIY article about it while trawling through Rookie Mag in January and I've become a little obsessed with it. I find it so easy to create an image and really pleasing look, the block colours and the clean lines created what I think of as a good aesthetic. 

While the Rookie article was fantastic I had  to alter it a little to suit me, I have no idea what refrigerator paper is but I doubt we had it in the house and I dont like to waste ink so rather than printing off the images as it suggests in the guide I just traced it straight from the computer screen onto thick-ish card. Apparently refrigerator paper is sticky on one side and will stick to the fabric/whatever you're stenciling onto, instead I used a glue stick on the back of the stencil to make it stick.

These were done on my first time stenciling, Morrisey and my babe Bowie, which looks pretty full on for a first try but they really aren't that complicated.

For paint I used some fabric paint which I suggest using if you're putting a stencil onto clothing or fabric as it will dye the fibre rather than Acrylic which will have a plastic like texture. It doesn't really matter which exact paint, I use a mix of different brands as different paints create different cool results. 

One thing I do suggest is using a sponge to apply the paint, it gives a much more even spread of colour and texture and is a lot easier to work with than a brush.

Some band patches I made and stitched onto my school bag to be cool. I'm thinking of buying some black paint and doing a bunch of these to sell on my etsy shop as they're so easy to make.

These were the patches that I did last week in preparation for Reading. You may be confused as to what the Dirty Water Dogs are, quite rightly as it genuinely is ridiculous, so settle down and I'll tell you a little tale.

Last Christmas, when term's coming to an end and the teachers are running out of lessons to give, in one of our classes we were given a 'Christmas quiz' to keep us busy. It had been a long day and we'd gone a little bit insane and one friend decided to start rapping the Christmas quiz. 

This was the birth of the Dirty Water Dogs.

We have an album, including the single 'A to the G' and the Christmas No. 1 'Christmas is Shitmas'

Really it's just me and my mates prating about making up bad rap lyrics but we have fun.

This previously plain hip flask is now completely super cool.

Once I actually finish it

If you want to try stenciling yourself and my crummy advice wasn't super helpful, please leave a comment and I'll get back to you with some better instructions

xxx

Rosie

Primark festival fun, or Rosie does a haul

So me and a couple of mates are going to Reading Festival in august as a big goodbye before they have to leave for England and university's and I'm left in little Wales all on my lonesome. With that came festival wardrobes and as none of us are particularly rich we headed to Primark to look through for fun and cool stuff to wear, and of course for a bra to hang from the welsh flag we're flying from our tent, unfortunately we couldn't find a welsh flag bra.

I didnt get a lot as my bank account is still suffering from London but I found some really cool stuff after wading through the treasure trove of polyester and neon. 

These fantastic but awful to photograph
checkered/gingham highwaisted trousers
that are kinda cropped and so cute. Like
super cute.

this soft, knitted, super long, super swingy
kimono style cardigan that makes me feel
like Misty Day from American Horror Story
Coven which is always cool. Also, as its
quite a thick heavy material it'll be lovely for
evening sets at Reading when it gets a
little colder.

This hat that makes me feel like such a
witch its unreal. I love the shape and how
it fits my head, I've been looking for a
good hat for ages and this one is just
perfection. 

I also bought, along with the four other girls going to Reading, bought hip flasks from Tiger to keep our alcohol safe, just because it's so expensive buying drinks there. They're blank and stainless steel so we're gonna decorate them with fun stuff before we go.

xxx
Rosie

Hair dyeing and struggling through the heat

I'm not sure how it happened exactly but Wales is going through a completely horrible heatwave at the moment, it reached  29▫, which is about 85 in Fahrenheit (look at me, sounding like I didnt just have to Google it) I know it doesn't sound that hot but Wales never has to deal with intense heat so there's no Air Conditioning or copious amounts of ice to help us. We just have to sweat away in our own misery. 

While that's a pleasant mental image the heat also means I cant go for walks along the beach or down to the shops without feeling like I've taken a stroll through the Sahara and looking like I've run a marathon I'm so red and sweaty, so instead I've had to find new ways to entertain myself. 

Last year I made a couple of promises of things I would do for myself in the future and while I never put a date stamp on it, because that only ends with the cold feeling of failure when you dont get it done in time, there was something I wanted to get done after I left school. Because of the stupidly strict rules at my school, unnatural hair colour was not allowed and a lot of people I knew were taken out of lessons for having dyed hair, because that was so beneficial for their education. So last summer, when dip dye and ombre were huge, I thought it would be cool to add some colour into my hair at an opportunity when I wouldn't have teachers breathing down my neck about it.

Yesterday my mum was bleaching part of my brother's hair so he could dye it blue and as she had some left over she put some on the two end inches of my hair, blending in with the grown out, slightly faded highlights I got years ago, to make an ombre style. I plan to dye it an actual colour, like a light blue or pink or purple, in the near future, probably before I leave for Edinburgh so I can have coloured hair for the Fringe, and maybe a different colour for the fringe.

My hair pre-bleach. It usually looks quite dark but in reality
its a lot lighter, more of an auburn colour.

My brother looking happy while his
hair went blonde.

My brother's hair was white blonde
as a child but it got darker as he got
older. The bleach made his so much
lighter because of it.

What it looked like post bleaching,
It was a lot thicker than mine which is a
little more evenly done.

I think he looks like an evil genius
here, with the bleached stripe in one
part of his hair.

I dont have a huge amount of photos of myself as it was
too hot to try for selfies. I also had to change into my worst
clothes which happened to be a fringed tshirt from the
charity shop. 

I cant wait until I get some colour onto it, while I like the ombred look, I really want colourfull mermaid hair and its not permanent dye so after a few washes it'll be back to this colour. 

Which means there's a whole rainbow of colours to try after that!

It does make me consider bleaching the whole thing, it would be crazy expensive and damaging to my hair, the bleached ends are already so bad, but then I think it's just hair. 

I'll have to think about.

xxx

Rosie

London, Central Saint Martins, living alone and fashion sketchbook

So this post has been a long time coming, considering its been nearly a week since I got back from London but I've been a little unsure of how to put it as I cant seem to get my words out properly. Instead I'm just going to post some of the pictures I took and give a general overview of my time on the course.

Living alone in London 

It was weird living alone, I'd never even been to London on my own before let alone stay completely on my own for two weeks. It was kinda crazy and being completely on my own, despite making several friends, could be a little lonely and I found myself missing home a little, though I wasn't as homesick as I thought I would be. I guess it wasn't properly living alone, it was only two weeks and it was a sort of holiday so I didnt have to worry about rent or eating properly. It was still a pretty big event for me and I did enjoy the peace and quiet of living alone. 

While I was unhappy at the time because I was stuck in my room the rain was much better than the awful heat wave that London was experiencing in the second week. It also made the photos look seriously intense.

Me pretending to be cool with my new
jeans where as I actually just looked really
sweaty. Although I did match my bedding.

Double Denim Feat. 80's hair

I genuinely ate so much Pret food over the two weeks I'm
having withdrawal symptoms. The hot wraps were my savior. 

Company's high street edit which was really cool to read on
the bus in the mornings.

The tissue I used to clean my paintbrush.
I've no idea why I took this. 

The lovely view at the end of the corridor that I would wander
down when I was bored in my room

The view from the accommodation in Shoreditch

I caught a cold in the first week, and by the second week
everyone on the course had caught it which was a shame.
I decided to go for a fancy 'n' ill selfie.

Shoreditch fulled my obsession with instant ramen and
noodles. I wish I'd have kept the bowl as it was really cute.

 Shoreditch was super cute and artsy and I loved going round
and taking photos of the street art.

Like hipster hieroglyphics 

Even the Starbucks looked really cute and it was so relaxed
I sat and watched tv on my phone there for a while. 

While there is just water in this photo the Green Tea and Peach
drink from Pret was so delicious.

Just planes making pretty patterns.

For some reason I was surrounded by american style fried
chicken places which was a little weird but I had really nice
 chips from there.

Slightly fancier food here. On the last day we had a meal at a
cute and fancy cafe and I had this goats cheese and chutney
toasted sandwich, which was really tasty.

Central Saint Martins and Fashion Sketchbook

The course itself was fantastic and our course tutor Peter was a genius. Absolutely mental but defiantly a genius. The course wasn't what I was expecting but so much better, while the main focus was fashion design it wasn't about drawing pretty dresses or just looking at current styles, we studied anatomy in great detail and were taught what we were drawing and why we were making a mark here or there. We looked into how to make marks on the page and how colour works in fashion design. It was a fantastic course and it's a real shame that it was the last year of the course, I wish I'd have heard of it earlier as I'm sure it would have been a huge help during A-level but I know it's going to help me out in a huge way during art foundation. 

We weren't allowed to look pretty so here's our lovely group
showing off our lovely big ears.

So London was a blast,the course was fantastic and I still love London and I really want to go back there soon, me and my friends made half plans of going up for a joint 19th birthday between me and another friend. 

Next up is Edinburgh for the Fringe Comedy festival next week where I'll be staying with my grandparents and seeing some of the family that live in Scotland which is always fun. I also have posts planed for while I'm away rather than just leaving it for the week.

xxx

Rosie