Space Age Children & Stardust

I think this is easily the coolest piece of clothing that I have ever owned. In my mind, kitsch clothes are the absolute best - which is why this skirt and my teapot dress are now my most treasured items of clothing. The print on the skirt is a 1956 illustration for biscuits, done in the space-age style (source of image - and check this link out because there is some great 1950s art to enjoy). Choies, where this skirt comes from, has got a whole bunch of wonderfully bizarre, kitsch clothes (LIKE THESE) which I am extremely appreciative of! top - c/o Sheinside skirt - c/o Choies cardigan - Thrifted necklace - c/o Les Folles Marquises hat - c/o Wholesale I absolutely love it when science merges with art. Spanish artist Sergio Albiac uses computer programs to generate his works, and his most recent project "Stardust" uses images from the Hubble space telescope to piece together portraits. For the portraits, he uses images that people from all over the world send to him. Naturally, as soon as I saw this - on IFLS, where else? - I jumped at the chance to have portraits of myself made. This is the result! You can still get your own ones done, and both help contribute to this art project and get your own space portraits - just follow the instructions on the website! "The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff." - Carl Sagan, Cosmos I hope you're all having a marvellous day! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Polar Bears and Telescopic Eyes

I looooove cropped tees! They're my favourite trend to come out of the whole 90s-revival that's been going on, because they're the easiest thing to wear. You can pretty much style them with anything - as long as it's not low-waisted pants. They look great with high-waisted-anything (shorts, skirts, jeans and leggings), layered over dresses and especially cute when worn underneath pinafores. Add a cute animal face, and you've definitely won me over. t-shirt - c/o Romwe skirt - Thrifted necklace - c/o Les Folles Marquises belt - Thrifted shoes - Asos hat - c/o Wholesale Here's something amazing - have you ever used a zoom lens on a camera? Or thought about using coloured eye contacts?  Now imagine putting the two together. The world's first telescopic contact lenses have just been developed. Obviously, the lens has to be really thin to fit comfortably on your eye. This is where the technology has been hard to develop - making something this thin also have decent magnifying qualities is pretty difficult. The image has to bounce 4 times inside the lens, using mirrors, before being projected onto the back of the eye (the retina) where it is "read". Users can switch between normal and telescopic vision simply by putting on a pair of polarised 3D TV spectacles - the contact lens also has a polarising filter on its surface, and so can interact with the 3D glasses. Zoom vision through the contact lens. (Image source) The glasses are intended for people suffering from macular degeneration, who find it harder to make out fine details in their vision, however you could wear them if you have healthy vision, to give yourself super-human zoom vision. Read more here. I hope that you're all having the best of days! p.s. these photos were taken back in Sydney, if they are confusing you with their non-Italianness. Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Neapolitan Feet & 30,000 Ft Microbes

Today I aimed for my feet to look like melting ice creams! Do you think I succeeded?  These neapolitan-coloured brogues sent to me by MartofChina are only $15 - and they have sizes which fit my big feet, too! I really like them - although I think I will swap the laces for something a little nicer (the ones that came with them are a bit like pieces of string). Otherwise, I'm very happy with them! Also - this overall-style skirt is from a physical store in Haymarket, Sydney, that is actually called "Internet Shop". So if you're getting confused as to why there is no link below, and going "but it's called Internet Shop!?!", that is why. blouse - c/o Romwe skirt - Internet Shop shoes - c/o Mart of China necklace - c/o Les Folles Marquises socks - Tutuanna hat - c/o Wholesale Bacteria rule the world. For every human, Not only is there about 10 times more bacterial cells on and in your body than your own body cells, but there are probably about 5 million trillion trillion (5 with 30 zeros after it) bacteria on Earth. They are also extremely adaptable - bacteria can live inside hot springs and volcanoes, deep underneath the ocean and also, apparently, 9 km (or 30,000 ft) up in the atmosphere.  (Image Source) Very recently, scientists at Georgia Tech hitched a ride on some NASA airplanes, took samples of clouds and searched them for bacteria. They found about 100 different types of bacteria living in the clouds. And the bacteria might even affect how clouds form - at 30,000 feet, ice crystals which form the clouds need a particle to grow around - and that position could possibly be filled by bacteria. That means that bacteria not only rule our bodies and our land, they could also be controlling the weather. Read more about it here, it's super fascinating (I've been reading about it all morning). Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Bambi and Mind Control

I've been stuck inside the house for far too long. It has not stopped raining in Sydney. I can't wait to trade it in for summer in a couple of days! I'm a very excited (and lucky) lady to be travelling again this year. But hey, look at this Les Folles Marquises necklace above - it reminds me of an Adventure Time character! It's sooooo cute, plus it's handmade. What do you think? shirt - Thrifted skirt - c/o Sheinside necklace - c/o Les Folles Marquises socks - c/o OASAP shoes - c/o Yeswalker beanie - Stolen from boyfriend Here's a bit of incredible science news from Italy. Giving mobility back to paralysed people using science! The man in the video below has not been able to walk, move or feel his legs for two years. This exoskeleton is now under his control, and has helped him to walk for the first time since he was in a car accident that severed his spinal cord. The exoskeleton is part of a project that aims to eventually give people movement by correlating brain-patterns to the exoskeleton, train them using virtual reality, and then allowing them to control it through thought alone. How cool it that? Check out the the Mindwalker website here and the video of it in action below! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Hot Air Balloons and Aeroplanes

Les Folles Marquises, a gorgeous little etsy store, sent me some of the cutest ever necklaces! I can't even tell you how in love I am with this handmade doll necklace. I wore it to my exam as my good-luck charm (not that I'm at all superstitious nor believe she bestowed good luck upon me, but being able to look at the necklace during my exam did make me smile! Which has gotta help, right?) As a side note, Les Folles Marquises, according to google translate, is "The Crazy Canopies" in English - any French speakers want to tell me if that is at all correct? What a cute name for a cute store, though! And although you'll all know me as an advocate of cheap clothes, if something is handmade this well, it's definitely worth paying more for. I've been making some pretty great thrift-shop finds lately, like this pink cardigan and velvet fitted blazer. Every winter I only ever seem to have one cardigan and one coat which I end up wearing every day, which just makes winter even more depressing, so this year I am making an effort to own quite a few different coats, sweaters and cardigans so I can mix and match them (almost) as frequently as my dresses! Op-shops are definitely the best place to get coats and cardigans from, especially as they are usually under $10 - I don't think I've owned many "new" ones in quite a number of years. dress - c/o Sheinside necklace - c/o Les Folles Marquises cardigan - Thrifted blazer - Thrifted hat - c/o Wholesale socks - c/o OASAP shoes - Yeswalker And isn't this balloon-print Sheinside dress super cute, and just the perfect amount of quirky? Speaking of Sheinside, I have the winner of the Sheinside giveaway to announce. Is this you below? If so... congratulations! You have won a $100 gift voucher to spend at Sheinside. And I highly recommend the dress I am currently wearing ;) So I'm going on an plane to Italy in just a week's time from now. Whenever I go on an aeroplane, at at least one point in the flight I will freak out and go "HOW ARE WE POSSIBLY DOING THIS?!" Knowing really nothing about physics, I am as ignorant as caveman trying to comprehend a smartphone (in fact... I don't really know much about that one, either). I just think that the fact that something as big and heavy as a plane full of people hanging around apparently weightless in the air is insane. And if anyone asked me how planes stayed in the air, I probably wouldn't be able to give them a very good answer, either, apart from mumbling something vague about thrust and lift. And I like to know how things work, rather than just blindly accepting them as fact. So flight is actually kind of simple on the surface. There are four main forces all vying for dominance of your aircraft. You have thrust, which is what the engines provide - propelling you forward - drag, which pulls you backwards, weight, which drags you back down towards the earth, and lift, which is the one that holds you up in the air and is provided by the wings. Lift is the one that helps hold a super heavy object up in the air, and is the cause of my freaking-out. (Image source) Aeroplane wings give you lift, because of the relative differences in speed between a solid object (the wings) and a fluid object (the air). The wing deflects the air above and below the wing, splitting it into two directions. The shape of the wing makes sure that the air that goes over the top moves faster than the air on the bottom. And when air speeds up, its pressure drops, so there is more pressure pushing up from the bottom of the wing, than from the top of the wing. That's how you get lifted up into the air! The speed of sound is what is known as "Mach 1", and commercial planes don't fly this fast, however, the plane I am going on travels at Mach 0.85. That is 85% of the speed of sound, or about 280 metres per second. That is just a little over 1000 kilometres an hour (621 mph). That's... really, really fast. And a good way to segue into this XKCD comic. Speculative physics is even more fun than actual physics. If you could make a stereo fly past someone at twice the speed of sound (Mach 2), then would it sound like it was playing backwards to someone who was sitting by? The answer is yes, the song would sound like it was playing backwards. The stereo is flying faster than the sound it is playing can travel (sound travels at the speed of... well... sound), so the stereo would reach you first, followed by the sound it emitted one second ago, then two seconds ago, then three seconds ago, etc. I can hardly wrap my head around it, but I think that it is one of the coolest thought experiments ever (plus, it's an awesome fact to tell people at parties). Read the whole comic here (especially if you've never seen XKCD's 'What If?' site before.) Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr