Norman Rockwell

This dress made me feel like I was really going for the whole "I'm dressing up as a little kid look". I think the whole outfit ended up a little too cutsey even for my tastes, haha. Though I can probably still just get away with it at 21, and the whole deal of my blog is "dress however the heck you want to dress and don't let nobody tell you otherwise", I'd like to think that my style has matured just a little bit since I was 15. Or 5. Next time I style this dress, I think I'll ditch the knee-high socks, mary janes and headband, in any case, and add some chunky black boots and a light blue headscarf. Here's some gratuitous photos of me acting like a little kid, anyway. dress is c/o Choies (artwork by Norman Rockwell), socks and necklace are from Clear It, shoes are from Yeswalker. Photos are by Ana Andrés. This dress is the last sponsored item sent to me after making the decision to forgo my possibly more unethical sponsors (which also shows you how long things take to ship to Australia!) that I have been obligated to blog about. And in case there was any confusion over why you might still see c/o's from those companies in my outfit lists, I'm hardly going to throw away all the clothes that I currently own (that would be more than wasteful and worse than buying them in the first place), and I believe that the readers of this blog are able to make their own decisions about whether or not to make purchases from such stores. So I will continue to provide a link where the item is still available (this dress is out of stock now anyway, so that's why there's no link up there!) Today I wanted to share an awesome quote from Tim Minchin. (If you don't know who Tim Minchin is, go and educate yourself - he is absolutely hilarious and offensive, but he also makes you think. My favourite ever song/act of his is Storm). p.s. I posted a giveaway earlier today. You should check it out. Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

A Pocketful of Posies

Dress is from Lady V London (made in London), petticoat is from Ebay, bag is from Italy, shoes are from Yeswalker, socks from Tutuanna. Photos are by Ana Andrés. The sweetest little old lady came up to me and hugged me on the bus while I was wearing this dress, and I think that's the best compliment I could have gotten. When I'm a (hopefully) cute old lady, someone please remind me to hug random well-dressed people - it's basically the nicest thing ever. New Scientist recently created an interactive map of all the "Earth-like" planets in our galaxy. These are "habitable" planets - planets that may not be exactly like Earth but could probably host life. Extrapolating from a small section of sky that Kepler has been searching for the past four years, New Scientist has estimated that there are 15 to 30 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way alone. See the map here. And you can also read my posts about the potential for alien life existing in our own solar system here. Have a great day, Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Golden Hour Hamburgers / Time Perception

Pinafore and shirt are thrifted, socks are from Tutuanna, necklace is from Clear It and shoes are from Japan.  Photos are by Ana Andrés. I love golden hour! It is without doubt the best time for taking photos because you can't go wrong with golden hour lighting - shadows are super soft and the light is warm and nostalgic. And these photos ended up kinda romantic too - if you look very closely you can see two separate couples in their wedding gear in the background (nawww). These photos finally prompted me to slightly adjust my blog layout so that I can have bigger photos! From now on, all my photos will be of this size (and please ignore the inconsistency between this and the last post!) A science paper that came out in the last week has utterly fascinated me, and I needed to share it with you all. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you will know that I am also fascinated by perception and have talked in depth about colour perception in particular. Your perception can be totally different both to another person's, and to other animal's perception of the world. But I've usually only focused on visual perception. Today, I'm going to talk about time perception. You've probably been in this situation before - endlessly trying to swat at a mosquito or a fly, but it always moves away too quickly for your hand to reach it. Well, a new study shows that small creatures probably perceive time as much slower than we do. That noisy flying insect starts seeing your hand moving slooooowly towards it, yawns, has a scratch, then leisurely moves out of the way. For that insect, you might as well be moving though honey. Image source Smaller animals, and animals with faster metabolisms, have their visual system send updates to their brain more frequently than larger, slower animals like humans, elephants and turtles. In order to discover this relationship, researchers from Ireland and the U.K. correlated body size and metabolism with the ability to recognise flashes of light per second. A light that appears constant to us (such as televisions, which are actually a series of images rather than a constant stream), will appear like a strobing light to animals such as dogs and flies, as TVs refresh more slowly than the visual systems of these animals do. And just as colour perception could theoretically vary from person to person, it has left me wondering if time perception can too (children certainly seem to get bored a lot more quickly than adults - could this in part be due to them perceiving the world more slowly?) A lot to think about! Read more here, and have a great day, Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Giant Snails & Floral Yellows

top is DIY (from a thrifted dress), skirt it thrifted, shoes are from Japan, socks are from Tutuanna and hat is c/o Wholesale. Photos are by Ana Andrés. Sometimes, Sydney can be pretty cool. These snails have been popping up all around the city as part of an art project, and while I was taking photos with Ana Andrés the other day we decided they'd be a good prop for one of my outfits! I made this top from a frumpy floral dress that I got from a second hand store in Japan - I couldn't go past the sunflower fabric. In fact, I made it into both a cropped top and a skirt, and it's much more flattering than it was in its previous form! I'm really getting into making my own clothes again - now I've stopped constantly buying new things, it's really forced me to start tackling my pile of "to do" clothing! I was hoping that some kind of giant snail like the one above actually existed (or had existed, though all I could find when looking up giant snail fossils was places to buy them...). However, the actual largest living snail in the world is called the Australian trumpet snail (and I'll let you google them yourselves if you want to see pictures of them, because they're pretty freaky and I learnt my lesson after people freaked about me posting about underwater spiders). Here's a picture of a shell which once contained a trumpet snail, so you can imagine how huge they are. Anyway, these snails can weigh up to 18kg, and be almost one metre long. Apparently they live in Australia - though I've never seen one haha! They exist right up at the top of Australia, in the oceans (they are in fact a sea snail), and also live in some parts of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. These snails are actually about the same size as the pet snails in Spongebob, so now I can't help but imagine that they all look like Gary. I hope that you're all having a most wonderful day! P.s. have a read of the swimsuit styling article I did for Birdee magazine! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Among the Flowers / Tamarin Whispering

Dress is c/o Romwe (no longer available), hat is c/o Wholesale, shoes are from Japan and socks are from Tutuanna Photos are by Ana Andrés. It was a nice change of affairs to not have to be both the model and photographer for once, while having these photos taken! I recently met a lovely physicist and photographer, Ana (who is actually my best friend's housemate), and yesterday we got together to take photos around "iconic" Sydney spots - yes, I even got some in front of the Harbour Bridge (more later). These photos were taken in Hyde Park in the middle of Sydney, while I tried not to crush all these beautiful flowers with these giant shoes. And did you notice? My hair has changed colour... again. I can't help myself. Today I found what is probably the cutest scientific paper that's been released this year. Tamarins are little fluff-ball primates that are highly cooperative with one another. Zookeepers had assumed that everytime someone walked into their enclosure at Central Park zoo, these tamarins would just fall silent. But it turns out that they were actually whispering their alarm calls to each other, rather than shouting them. This is the first evidence of non-human primates whispering to occur (birds have been known to be able to whisper for a while). Cute, right?? image from Wikipedia Their whispering was detected by a spectrogram, which is a device that can maximize quiet sounds and then represent that sound visually (like this). These whispering spectrograms were compared to the shouting calls the tamarins make when not in the presence of humans, and it was found that they were still communicating with each other - just very quietly, so the zookeepers couldn't hear them (maybe they were plotting against the zookeeper?) I hope you're all having a brilliant day, Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr