Fighting Evil By Moonlight & Organic Molecules in Space

Annika - shirt is thrifted, skirt c/o Faith & Lola, shoes c/o Chicwish (old), tights from Japan, earrings are handmade.  Katie - dress is thrifted, shoes are mine (thrifted), socks from Clear It and brooch is vintage. I'm glad I'm friends with someone who also gets the urge to go out on a freezing night, dressed up like a nightmarish barbie doll and take photos next to dumpsters. These photos were taken way-back-when in June, but I thought they would be a good set to pull out of the vault just in time for Halloween (I tell myself every year that I'm not going to jump on that bandwagon, but it inevitably happens). Anyway, these shots did end up being fairly appropriate for a Halloween-themed shoot - mainly because of these shots I got of Katie looking throughly possessed (which I turned into an even creepier gif): What... even. The funny thing is that we weren't even attempting any kind of demon-possession shots; Katie just happened to be jumping around, trying to stay warm, while I was trying to focus my camera on her. So we were SUPER freaked when we were later reviewing the photos and these shots popped up, because we couldn't even remember taking them! I also want to bring attention to how cool this vintage (and Sailor Moon-esque) brooch of Katie's is: You may also notice that I have a brand new blog banner! It's by the incredible Em Somerville whose art I have loved FOREVER. I'm so beyond pleased with it. While I loved my old header, this one is a much more accurate representation of what this blog is about - vintage-inspired fashion with a side of sewing and science. If you haven't checked out Em Somerville's artwork before, this is her website, and she also posts some pretty fantastic stuff on her instagram account. Today I will leave you all with an awesome bit of science: A complex carbon-based molecule was found floating around in space, 27,000 light years away from Earth. I'm so blown away by the fact that astronomers are able to detect such a tiny thing (a molecule! You can't even see those with a light-microscope, let alone the naked eye) from such a long distance. But the researchers are pretty confident that it's out there. Furthermore, it's an organic molecule - which lends support to the theory that life-forming molecules may come from outer-space rather than being created on planets. Read more here, it's amazing. I hope that you're all having a lovely day, Bloglovin' | Youtube | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

DIY Floral Pinafore, Zigzag Legs & What's Eating You?

Pinafore - DIY | shirt - c/o Sheinside | tights - c/o Tabbi Socks | shoes - Asos (warning!) Remember when I showed you all this skirt about a week ago? Well I decided that I was going to turn it into a pinafore. I'm still not sure whether I like it better than the skirt, but I have plenty of fabric left so I can always make another one. I could even make a matching shirt, dress and headband and wear them all together and look like a crazy person who really, really likes floral patterns - I'm not going to do that, but just saying - I have a lot of this fabric left over. To make this pinafore, follow my instructions for making a circle skirt here, and if you get that far, you can probably figure out how to cut out three rectangles to make into the front of a pinafore and the two straps! (I might put a DIY up here one day as well). Now, I'm also obligated to do a little review for these zig-zag tights I'm wearing. Kindly sent to me by Tabbi Socks, they are made in Japan (by this factory; I do my reasearch now). Firstly - oh my god they're cool. They are this gorgeous olive-green colour (I don't think the photos do them justice) and the zig zag pattern is just perfect - subtle but quirky. Secondly, the material is very different to normal sheer tights - probably has something to do with them being over 50% cotton - because they're extremely sturdy and don't feel like they'll ever rip or get ladders in them. I love tights that last for more than two wears. Third - they're incredibly comfy. I've been wearing them constantly the last couple of days at uni so that my legs didn't get too cold in the air conditioned buildings! You can buy a pair here (and make sure you have a look at their other designs while you're at it - how sweet are these ones?) Here's some horrific science facts for you guys, just because it's halloween. Enjoy :) You have mites living on your face. They’re called Demodex folliculorum and they look like this: Image source and no matter how much you wash your face, or wax or pluck your hairs, they will STILL BE THERE. Because they can live INSIDE YOUR PORES. But don’t worry, they’re harmless and natural - and just love the taste of your skin. Yum. If you’re not already feeling uneasy, then picture your bed for a minute. Reading this in bed? Even better. Comfy, crisp clean linen sheets, and... dust mites, most likely. Dust mites that like nothing better than to mate and defecate all over your sheets and inside your mattress. But unless you’ve got asthma or are allergic to them, they won’t trouble you. Still, you might want to wash your sheets once in a while. Ahh, barnacles. Harmless, passive sea creatures, right? Not if you’re a female rhizocephalan barnacle. Having grown up on a rock, when a male crab passes them by they’ll shoot  themselves inside their bellies and inject their own cells. They’ll feed off the the crab’s food, and, when the time is right, explode their eggs out of the crab’s bellies. Not only does this make the crab sterile, but the barnacle also alters the crab’s body and brain chemistry so much that the crab now thinks that it's a female. The eggs attract a male rhizocephalan who fertilizes them, and the brainwashed crab continues to treat the eggs like its own offspring, caring for them and releasing them into the sea when the time is right, to go on an infect a whole new generation of crabs. Image source If you’re still not feeling squeamish, why don’t you think about the fact that 90% of the cells in and on your body are not your own? Or even better still - for every single human gene in your body, there are 360 microbial genes. Genetically speaking, that makes you 0.27 % human. Your body plays host to an enourmous number of microbes - bacteria, yeast, viruses... but don’t worry. Most of them won’t do you any harm. In fact, you wouldn’t be here without them. They help us digest our food, they teach our immune systems to spot dangerous invaders and they also make chemicals to fight off bugs that could make us sick. Image source Let’s talk about anglerfish sex. *Gasp* you say, *sex isn't meant to be scary!* Well, you probably wouldn’t want to be a male anglerfish. When they’re born, male anglerfish don’t have their own digestive systems. So they need to find a female anglerfish very quickly. When they meet, the male anglerfish bites the female, makes a hole in her body and burrows inside. The male then wastes away, becoming nothing more than a lump on the female containing sperm - so when the time is right, her eggs can be fertilised, making another generation full of male anglerfish destined to a life of servitude! What about the end of the world? One day, other catastrophic astronomical events notwithstanding, our sun is going to die in a spectacular way, taking with it the Earth and the other planets in our solar system. So not only will you die one day, but so will every trace of you, human culture and civilisation over the entire course of human history. While that's pretty macabre, keep in mind that if stars never exploded, or expanded into all-consuming red giants, we never would have existed in the first place. And maybe there would still be some trace left of human civilization after our sun explodes. Even if humans never manage to explore and colonize other solar systems, we sent the Golden Record into space some 40 years ago and it has recently left the solar system. Maybe, one day, an alien civilization will stumble across it and spare us another thought. Well, think about the fact that someday, the entire universe is going to end. Whether it'll happen with a big freeze, big bounce, big crunch or a big rip, physicists predict that absolutely everything we know (and don't know) will eventually come to an end. Happy Halloween! p.s. If you need to cheer yourself up, why not enter the giveaway I posted earlier today? ;) Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Porcelain Doll

I decided to make a creepy broken porcelain doll version of my outfits. As I said in my last post, we don't do Halloween here (well, not really anyway), so this outfit is just for you guys :) And also possibly because I'm procrastinating on starting my study for exams.  I'm so, so bad at doing make up, but I managed to do this whole thing with a broken eyeshadow palette I've had since I was 10, and an eyeliner from Oasap (which was actually really good because it's got a thin, hard brush so I could draw on the cracked lines really easily). I also made my eyes look super gigantic by using white eyeshadow underneath my eyes and then drawing an eyeliner line just below it. Maybe this will inspire someone to do something similar for their own outfit, who knows. wearing blouse - Vintage skirt - Wholesale hat - Wholesale eyeliner - c/o Oasap And keeping with the idea that I'm a small, old porcelain doll, here's a teeny tiny sewing machine that this porcelain doll alter-ego of mine would sew her clothes on. *spooky*

Vintage Vampire

Happy Halloween my northern hemisphere friends! We really don't do Halloween here, although there were some Halloween parties going on this weekend.  Oktoberfest is something that is just as big as Halloween here, and the two always tend to clash. It's pretty funny though - you end up with a lot of zombies drinking steins in lederhosen. As for myself, I went to a warm, sunny, daytime summer festival instead of a halloween party. There were a lot of zombies though, boogie-ing along to oom-pah bands. Oh, Australia. You beautiful, multicultural place. So for this look, I put black lipstick and a black dress on intending to be all monochrome and gothy for a Halloween look. But, being me, I had to add some (a teeny, tiny, infintesimely small amount of) colour to my outfit, and that came in the form of these floral tights and vintage blazer. So I ended up being a kind of weird amalgmation of a vintage vampire. I think it ended up working well though. It probably makes more sense than lederhosen zombies. wearing dress - c/o Romwe tights - c/o Romwe necklace - c/o Oasap blazer - Vintage belt - Vintage hat - Rubi Shoes One more thing - my Glamorous giveaway ends in about 1 and half days. Go ahead and enter here (if you want to)! Much love and Happy Halloween!