Dearest blog readers, farewell.

...for 10 or so days. I am taking a brief hiatus for about a week and half while I study my ass off. After this hiatus, I am going to be on a 4-month uni break and I promise that I have the most amazing DIY's planned that you are all going to love, and I'll hopefully be posting other interesting things and outfits near daily. (Also, any sponsors who sent me items to blog about, I will make sure to blog the heck out of the stuff you sent me - it'll just be after the 18th of November. I hope you understand.) Just let me become a crazy study hermit for the next few days. Thank you so much for all your love and support, particularly those of you (you know who you are) who have taken the time to send me super nice personal messages/drawings/fan art/love. You are the best ever. Here's some of my favourite links/outfits from my corner of blogland from the past few months, to keep your need for anything Pineneedle-related satiated for the next 10 days: My favourite outfits from recent times (click to see the full blog post): This fan-art sent to me by lookbooker Bruno Harryson. My attempts to brainwash inspire you guys with science and the latest addition of a science-related fact to my outfit posts, including this awesome video explaining "Why is it dark at night?" My DIY rompers (here and here). My pinterest board full of inspiration for things that I'm going to create after my exams. And the start of something magical... (this will be the first thing I finish when I am on holidays! DIY tutorial to come.) (and a sneaky "I'm procrastinating on my study" update on 9 november: this fan art as well. Well, it's too good not to show off here.) This fan art sent to me by Kat at LookBookIllust. And I will also leave you with some of my favourite outfits, posts, links and DIYs from around the world: Besty McCall paper dolls from the 50s - 60s (I have plans to base a bunch of outfit posts around these). This lookbooker, Shuxi W. Anything posted by Jessica Celebre from the Tragic Sense. These magical pictures from the Paulie's Antique lookbook photoshoot by Polly Bland. One of my favourite bloggers Megan from the Briar Rose wearing new creations from one of my favourite stores, Mod Dolly, as a collaboration with one of my favourite ideas for a website, Sketch Street (this was almost too much, I'm telling you). & Kate Gabrielle's handmade sweater clips. See you guys on aroundabouts the 18th of November! Wooowhohowhooo! p.s. apologies if I inadvertently gave anyone a heart attack with my tricky blog post title ;)

I Heart You Back

I love any item of clothing with hearts someway incorporated into it. I'm pretty sure that no one could find any item of clothing or any accessory that would be an exception to this rule. Anything with hearts = awesome. Anything. Another thing - Someone please nominate me for a blog post title award. They're just too good and only getting better. "I heart you back?" Amazing! I must be some kind of literary genius! wearing dress - c/o Romwe tights - c/o Choies bag - c/o Choies belt - Vintage shoes - Wholesaledress Science factoid for the day: This amazing representation of the blood vessels inside the human head. I figured this related to my outfit because of the heart-shaped back of my dress. Heart = pumps blood = blood vessels carry said blood around body, including the head. YEAH. (source: Neuroscience Research Techniques) Who knew you had so many blood vessels running around up there? The ones in the brain area don't surprise me so much, but the incredible amount of blood vessels around the face and front of the skull? I had no idea. Much love,

Burgandy, Black and Theoretical Physics

wearing all vintage except for shoes (c/o Chictopia), hat & sweater (wholesale) For today's interesting science related factoid, here is a photo of a very dapper young scientist. Now 70 years old, he is one of the most brilliant physicists of all time. Can anyone guess who this is (before cheating and looking at the answer at the bottom of the photo?) Yep, it's Stephen Hawking, at around the age of 21. He was some seriously babin' geekiness. In addition, he is of course one of the most incredible theoretical physicists of all time. You should also definitely read A Brief History of Time - I am about halfway through and it is mind-blowing. Hope you're all doing wonderfully,

Why is it Dark at Night? (Alternatively, Ponies!)

I'm so very colour coordinated today! My sweater matches my shorts and even my lips match the black bits of my outfit. Also, I really like this new black lipstick. What do you guys think of it? wearing sweater - c/o Sheinside blouse - Vintage shorts - I made them (kind of)! - DIY shoes - Vintage lipstick - Ebay So you know what? Being a scientist/science nerd and all, and in an attempt to make outfit posts a little bit more than "so I wore this sweater today because I like it and I think it looks cool... *awkward shuffle*", and also in an attempt to convince/brainwash you guys into thinking science is cool, I've decided to include an amazing science thing at the end of my outfit posts. If you're not into that, then feel free to skip right past it, but if you think it's worth your while then you may just learn something :) I'm also going to try and relate it to my outfits somehow... this following video has a lot of bright yellow and black so... yeah. That totally counts. I've got another clip from Minute Physics today, because they make the cutest little science videos. Have you ever thought about why the sky is dark at night? Because the sun isn't shining - well, yeah. But if we didn't have an atmosphere, the sky would always look dark, night and day. So why is space dark? Why don't all the stars light up space? The answer to the question is not as obvious as you might think. I hope you're all having a marvellous week. I really need to start studying for my uni exams so I can become an actual proper scientist, so I'm going to go do that now. Much love!

Pink is actually anti-green

Hello beautiful blog readers! I'm super excited to introduce you to an Australian label that I started working with just last week - Faith & Lola. They make some seriously gorgeous dresses, and I am a little bit (actually, a lot) smitten with this lacey, neon, puffy-skirted, backless pink number. They're a small label so they don't have their own online store, however you can pick their stuff up from here (and you can find this particular dress right here). Also (alert: science nerd-dom) it may interest you to know that the pink you are seeing in these photos doesn't actually exist (see the end of this post). wearing dress - c/o Faith & Lola tights - c/o Choies bag - c/o Choies shoes - Rubi Shoes necklace - c/o Oasap So in case you were interested in where my odd post title came from, check this video out. Minute physics explains why pink doesn't actually exist, and should in fact be called minus-green. Watch this, then go look at the pink dress again and totally freak out. Or at least think "hmm. That's cool I guess." This is why science is amazing. (If that fascinated you, I post stuff like that on my sciencey blog all the time. You should go check it out.) Much love,

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!

Flashback

If you happened to follow my blog a year ago (unlikely that's any of you reading this, I think about 10 people did at that point, haha), then you might recognise this dress. It was one of my very first DIY's - from the time before I got my sewing machine! I remember doing it, it took me about 5 years of planning and then another 6 years to complete (exaggeration. But it took several hours) which is kind of ridiculous-seeming now. You have to start somewhere I guess! wearing dress - Vintage + DIY necklace - c/o OASAP bag - Vintage shoes - Vintage You can also see the really bad DIY instructions I wrote for it here (gee I'm good at selling myself). Love,

Thunderbolts & Lightning, very very frightening (me)!

I should win some kind of award for my awesome blog post titles. They just get cooler and cooler. Today's is brought to you by Queen. But anyway these tights - oh these tights. They're so preetty. I could have probably easily DIY'd some myself like this, although coloured paint never seems to work as well. Plus, painting tights takes forever, as anyone who ever tried my DIY painted tights tutorials would know. And I'm lazy/crazy busy with uni right now. So pretty tights with all the work already done is just fine by me. wearing dress - Chicabooti hat - c/o Oasap tights - c/o Oasap shoes - Rubi Shoes belt - vintage Oh hey, I have a new hat on ;) unfortunately, my boyfriend promptly decided that he really liked this hat (and it did look really good on him, so...) so I have had to relinquish my new hat already. Not sure if I'll ever get it back to take pictures with! If he ever lets me put a photo of him on my blog, I'll have to try and snap a photo of him wearing it! Also, I'm really sorry if you've been trying to enter my Glamorous giveaway in the past day or so and it hasn't been working. I've asked rafflecopter what's up with it and hopefully they'll get back to me sometime today! Thank you for everyone who has entered so far though! I'll let you know as soon as it's  up and running again. *It's working again (as far as I can tell) so if you want to enter, enter here! I've also extended it for a day so extra time to enter!* I love you guys :)

This is no Modern Romance

So, if you've got a keen eye/follow my blog obsessively, you may notice that I have adopted a slightly different background for my last few posts! Exciting, right??? (No, not really at all.) I love a number of things about this outfit. The first thing is the ridiculously cool fabric that this dress (courtesy of Mod Dolly) is made out of. A nod to pastels in amongst a spectacular pattern. I definitely approve. (The dress is on sale if you want to get yourself one!) The second is these amazing tights. Pretty sure patterned tights don't get any better than this. And the third - my amazing new boots. Guess how long I've wanted bright pink docs?  About 3 years. And finally, they are mine! (They're not real docs unfortunately. But they will do.) wearing dress - c/o Mod Dolly boots - Raben Footwear tights - c/o OASAP socks - c/o Sock Dreams bag - c/o Wholesale Necklace - c/o OASAP Much love! p.s. Modern Romance - Yeah Yeah Yeahs