The Vivien of Holloway Runaround Sue - For Running Around Durham

I visited my family recently and had a lovely time. Living in the south of England so far away from my family in Durham I occasionally forget how lovely the North East is.

During my visit we all had a walk into Durham and my fantastic mother decided to take some photos!

My parents live about a 10-15 min walk from the very centre of the town and the walk involves a stroll through the wooded park area near the river. I love how green and lush it is despite the fact it was well into Autumn.

For a wander around town I decided to break out my Runaround Sue dress from Vivien of Holloway. Its a dress that I got on eBay in a lucky bid and I don't think the print is available any more - although the Runaround Sue shape is a long term staple of Vivien's stock.

If I'm honest, I'm a little bit in love with this dress. I feel that I would love to have it in every colour under the sun.

I could only take one coat home with me so I had to pick something universal. I went with a black princess coat that I picked up on ebay. It has a superb shawl collar that can be folded up into a hood (useful for the usually terrible weather in the north!) and its so warm. It didn't have a brand on it, but I know it is not vintage at all. Either way, its a current favourite.

Oh I love this view near the river!

We also had a frolic around Durham Cathedral. My mum had this bizarre obsession with the cloisters and the shadows you get there so it was only natural that she wanted to take some pictures there.

 At the Cathedral they are raising money for renovations and to support the cost they have started to make a model of the cathedral out of Lego Bricks.

Which of course is AMAZING!

I was really surprised by how much they've managed to build so far. I decided to donate a brick and got to place it in one of the pillars.

I will leave you know with this image of my husband and I pretending to be Team Rocket. I'm not really sure why. We're nerds...

Dress: Vivien of Holloway

Coat: Unknown

Shoes: Doc Martens

Mary, Mary quite contrary: The Mary skirt from Collectif

So today I want to share my favourite Autumn skirt with you! October, November and December are my favourite months of the year (mostly since I do much better with winter layers than flimsy summer dresses) and I love the fashion that goes along with them.

Now I have a huge obsession with pinafore dresses/skirts (or jumpers as I believe the American's call them). In fact I have even made a couple of my own way back when where I spoke about my desire to own the fantastical Mary skirt from Collectif (read about it here and here). 

So I set aside a little bit of my October pay cheque for a visit to Collectif in London and try on the Mary skirt. To my utter delight, it fit beautifully!

The Mary comes in a few different colours a plain black and a navy and light blue flock. Navy is my go to colour so I decided to go with the navy flock, although I must say I would very much like this skirt in black too (I should stop being greedy...).

I think the style is super flattering to your waist, although I have found that it can emphasise your bust a lot. This can of course be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your destination.

Possibly the greatest thing about this skirt is that it has POCKETS!! I always love it when designers think to put pockets in garments as that are so vastly under appreciated in women's clothing and they are so useful! Give us pockets in everything darn-it!

Also the amount of fabric in this skirt is phenomenal. 

There are also some thoughtful details to ensure a good fit to this skirt. They have multiple button holes so you can get a good fit over the shoulders. This is perfect for me as I have a really short torso. You can also wear it crossed at the back, straight at the back or even strapless. Its so versatile which makes me super happy.

Of course since there is so much extra fabric in the skirt I couldn't resist giving it the spin test and it passed with flying colours. Its super swirly! 

To complete the outfit I work a blue 70s coat and beret style hat. I also had a tartan scarf that I got from a charity shop last winter. There is something glorious about tartan in winter part of me wishes I could wear something tartan in every winter outfit.

Skirt: Collectif

Jumper: Monsoon

Hat: Beret

Scarf: Vintage

Coat: Vintage

Bag: Vintage

Shoes: Dr Martens

Glasses: Glasses Direct

What are your favourite things to wear on a crisp Autumn day?

Wednesday Addams at Beamish

Blimey I am sooooooo far behind on blog posts! I've been so busy I can't even believe it. But I though it was about time I posted some of the photographs from my little excursion to Beamish at Halloween.

Beamish is such a great place! It is full of historical buildings, people in costumes and ways to role play at going shopping in the 1900s. I went on school trips there when I was a kid and I have very fond memories of those visits.

During my trip home for the holidays Beamish was having some special late night openings where you could dress up and visit the attractions in the dark as well as see the place decked out in spooky decorations.

I needed a light and easy costume to wear as I was travelling light so I opted for Wednesday Addams. All I needed was a black dress with a white peter pan style collar and a black wig that I could plait. Some pale makeup and a black lip completed the look.

I was really grateful for the black coat with its big shawl collar, it really kept me warm during the night.

I really enjoyed getting to see the old fashioned town all lit up in the dark. It looked amazing! And riding the trams in the dark through the fields was a awesome mix of scary and fun.

The staff there were brilliant, they really went all out to decorate all of the areas and to play their spooky parts in the different shops and houses.

I loved the printer that photo-bombed our picture (this is me, my dad and my husband)!  

It was such hard work to keep my serious Wednesday Addams face going throughout the night.

When I was a kid, one of my favourite things about Beamish was the old fashioned sweet shoppe. What was really amazing was that they were hand making toffee apples especially for the occasion. They really looked like something out of Snow White all red and shiny like that. Yummy.

And here is my husband dressed like H. P. Lovecraft while eating a toffee apple...

 Mind you, speaking of tasty treats they had some safe to eat creepy crawlies to try. They had worms  and locusts among other things and while my dad crunched his way through various things it took all my courage to try a mealworm (it had a pretty nutty flavour). Ewwww!

aaaaaaaaand..... I couldn't resist taking a moody photo in the grave yard:

 In one of the sections they also had some live owls for you to meet and greet. This one was a 2 year old screeching owl from the tropics, although I have forgotten his name :(

They were so cute!!!

 So the dress I wore was a vintage late 50s early 60s dress with a pleated skirt and peter pan collar. I got it off eBay a few months ago for only £14.00. It is such a versatile dress and it is especially good for costumes. Its definitely one of my favourites, it fits like a dream and I really love the subtle print design to it.

The wig was a long black wig that came of ebay, it was around £12 from China and does actually have a fringe but I pinned that out of the way for Wednesday, although this was not ideal.

Dress: Vintage 50s/60s

Wig: ebay via China

Tights: Atmosphere

Shoes: Doc Martens

Last but not least I couldn't help but want to take a Halloween picture with my black cat Chloe.

Beamish are also doing some Christmas evening special events. I really wish I could go as I enjoyed this one so much, but I live too far away :(

Do you have any exciting plans for Christmas?

Sailor Neptune Cosplay

Okay everyone, long time no blog, I've been insanely busy in the last 2 weekend I have such a blogging backlog! I have 7 costume posts to do as well as quite a few vintage repro item posts so you'll be seeing a lot of me :)

So at MCM Expo a few weeks ago I wore my Sailor Neptune costume. This costume came from Cosplay Sky (as I reviewed it for them), but I did modify quite a bit of it. You can see more about my thoughts on the costume and how I modified it in this post.

I really couldn't resist some really cheesy photoshop. My favourite parts of Sailor Moon were always the attack and transformation animations so I loved the idea of combining the photographs with some of the anime graphics.

Although my skills at photoshop are somewhat substandard...

In the end I was really pleased with how the costume turned out, I thought it fit really well and was pretty accurate after I made the modifications to the bows.

I was actually really surprised by how well the mirror matched the costume. Craft foam isn't a perfect medium and now I've started working with Worbla I would consider making it from that but I thought on the whole the effect was okay (assuming you didn't get too close).

Mind you, I still can't believe I managed to find an old mirror with a design so close to Michiru's! I wonder if the deco lady was actually a really common design that inspired Naoko Takenuchi when coming up with the design for the Aqua Mirror. Who knows, but what a lucky eBay find! 

Ad for the wig, I bought it off eBay. It wasn't super expensive, but it wasn't exactly cheap and when it first arrived I was very unhappy with it. However I worked on styling it quite carefully and I found that it was actually the perfect shape for Michiru. I did have to trim quite a bit off the bottom of the wig as it was waaaaaay to long but that was easily fixed.

The tiara I wore for these pictures was made out of Worbla. It was a bit of a last minute crafting session, but I felt that the more rigid structure made it look better with the rest of the costume.

Oh and here are the non-photoshopped pictures from above. Just in case.

And of course, the gratuitous back shot. Its not very flattering, but I thought it was worth it so you could see how awesome the back of the wig was.

And of course in true anime style, here is a goofy picture of me doing an anime pose >.<

Are you a fan of Sailor Moon? Have you been watching Sailor Moon Crystal? I have and I think its brilliant. It has really re-ignited my enthusiasm for sailor moon.

A green 1970s skirt for £1

Apologies in advance, my husband is away so I have no one to take my pictures :( So as a result this post consists entirely of selfies. Are they still selfies if you take them in a mirror?

Anywho, I really wanted to share something today as I am feeling rather proud of myself. At the end of August I made a decision to make some lifestyle choices to try and change my health/fitness and confidence. I've since lost about a stone, and plan to lose some more weight as I continue to improve myself.

When I bought this skirt I couldn't even get it done up. I saw it on a £1 rail in a charity shop and I decided to buy it anyway as you don't often see turquoise skirts, and especially not vintage ones. This one is early 70s and it now fits like a dream. Which is amazing. Especially given my stupid 13.5 inch waist/hip difference.

The blouse is very sweet and came from Monsoon in the sale some time ago. Its not often that you get a white blouse with green highlights so I couldn't help feel that it was made to go with this skirt.

The cardigan is a wool number form the 1980s (you can tell from the gold buttons) but I felt that it complimented the green of the skirt wonderfully.

And without cardigan.

I also felt that I should show you my hair, it is a double flat victory roll with an asymetric parting. I added flowers to the side to balance the look and brushed out the curls at the back to get a wave the the bottom of my hair but a smooth finish.

My hair is getting quite long again now. I think the longest parts are around the ideal length now, but still waiting for the fringe to grow...

Skirt: Vintage

Cardigan: Vintage

Blouse: Monsoon