The Pineneedle Collective

Friday 4 July 2014

DIY Lace Waist Dress

Look! I made a thing!

Dress is DIY | necklace is c/o Ginger Pickle (Eclectic Eccentricity piece)

I am really happy with this DIY that I came up with the other night to revive a couple of old stretchy tank dresses that I had lying around! I made a few failed attempts before getting it right - let me just say that when I say to use stretchy lace, USE STRETCHY LACE. Otherwise you'll make something that looks really nice, but you'll be massively disappointed when you can't actually get it on over your shoulders.

Enjoy :)

p.s. if you missed it earlier today, I'm selling my wardrobe ;)

I'm selling my clothes!

It's that time of the year again where I freak out and realise that I have far too many clothes!

My wardrobe situation is currently somewhere between bursting-at-the-seams and clothes-explosion - I have taken over two built-ins and all the underneath-the-bed space and there is currently nowhere for Luci to store his clothing. Since I have promised to make room for him by the time he returns from overseas, I am doing a MASSIVE wardrobe clear-out.

Many of my favourite pieces are going because I simply can't house them anymore. There's even some Black Milk and Wheels & Dollbaby pieces in there, going for muuuuch less than their recommended retail prices! You can browse through everything that I'm selling here!

This time, I have some larger-sized (by which I simply mean too big for me) things as well! I keep picking things up from stores thinking "Yeah, I'll resize this to Annika size..." nope. Never happens. But that's lucky for you guys who were disappointed about the limited size-diversity of my previous wardrobe sales, because those things also happen to be super cute!

Oh yeah, and all the dresses (apart from the Wheels & Dollbaby one) are $10! Click here to shop.

Wednesday 2 July 2014

Thrifted Transformations (Apron to a Pinafore) & Water All Over Mars

I made this pinafore out of an apron that I found at the op-shop! The apron had enough material that I could wrap it all the way around my booty, so I simply inserted a zipper where the material joined up at the back - and BAM, cute pinafore!

It also had these cutie-patootie buttons on the shoulders, so there was no way that I could leave it as an apron! While Katie has successfully rocked an apron over the top of a cute blouse and skirt (not only while cooking, but as an actual outfit) I preferred making mine into a pinafore dress.

Now I'm on the lookout for cute aprons everywhere...

Also, me and Katie are massive dorks, but our outfits match! Check us out:

Pinafore is thrifted/DIY | cardigan and blouse are thrifted | tights from Japan | boots are from Golden Ponies

I love speculative science almost as much as real science! And while we can never know for sure what happened billions of years ago (at least without a time machine), this video from NASA is based on real calculations and observations as well. From the NASA, this is what Mars probably looked like 4 billion years ago:

A thick atmosphere once allowed water to cover the surface of Mars, which may have disappeared over time either because of asteroids or solar wind (which is a stream of electricity, blown out of the sun). The video above shows the passage of time, from 4 billion years ago to how we know the planet today - an icy red rock with a thin atmosphere and no liquid water.

But how do we have any idea of what Mars used to look like?? NASA explains the evidence here. You should definitely have a read if you have the time, it's super fascinating!

Monday 30 June 2014

Eggs, Oranges and Billion Story Buildings

Annika: everything is thrifted except shirt (c/o Sheinside (ages ago) and shoes (Naot)) and handmade egg brooch
Katie: Everything is thrifted except for handmade egg brooch and earrings (made by us!)

Hi all! I am posting this with a very heavy heart because Katie is just about to hop on a plane to Scandinavia for the whole of July, and I'm at a complete loss as to what I'm going to do without her! Over the last 6 months we've grown incredibly close, spending much of our spare time hanging out, making crafts, talking about feminism, anthropology and science and dressing up like weirdos together. I cried even more after we said goodbye than when my boyfriend left the other day (also for a month-long holiday in Europe *grumble jealousy grumble*).

So we spent all of yesterday hanging out and taking photos, our outfits becoming progressively more ridiculous as the day went on. I styled both of our outfits here - for some reason I was feeling Autumnal even though it isn't Autumn anywhere in the world right now. Autumn and... eggs. Because eggs are awesome. Yep.

I also forced Katie to buy these cute chilli suspenders the other day because I thought they suited her perfectly - what do you guys think?

So I've posted about What If before (a website where a physicist takes ridiculous questions completely seriously), and I really liked this particular one so I wanted to share it!

This question actually comes from a 4-year-old, so it's also super cute. If you were to build a skyscraper with one billion stories.... just how big would it be? This is also happens to help you get your head around the concept of a "billion" - it's just so large!

The illustration above (by XKCD's What If) shows a skyscraper that's only 10,000 floors high. Still much smaller than a billion! Click here to see what a billion-story building would look like!

I hope that you're all having a lovely day.

Friday 27 June 2014

A Picnic in my Backyard & Spellbound by Space

If you gave someone the task of creating "Annika's dream jewelry store", and this person knew me well, they would make it 1. Science-themed 2. Vintage-inspired 3. Handmade 4. Kitschy/novelty and 5. An alliterative brand name (pun optional, but highly recommended).

So when I visited Eclectic Eccentricity for the first time, I was fairly sure that I had made their store up in my head - because they are all of these things.

And then! - I found out that they wanted to work. with. me. And send me all the cute stuff. Eeeep! Yep, I thought, I have definitely dreamt this all up. So can you all please do me a favour - visit their website, and tell me if they really do exist? It still seems a little too good to be true!

The two space-themed necklaces that I'm wearing are pieces from Eclectic Eccentricity, though I actually got the astronaut necklace from Ginger Pickle a few months ago. I always wear the two necklaces together so I can pretend that the astronaut is Sandra Bullock, and the intense scenes from Gravity are playing out on my chest.
Yeah. I have way too much fun with my clothes.

Image credit - European Space Agency via NASA TV

So this seems appropriate considering my outfit - did you know that you can live-stream the Earth from space, from a camera mounted on the international space station (ISS)?
The ISS is a station (in space, as you may have guessed) where astronauts go to hang out, 410 kilometres above our heads, in orbit around the Earth. While there, the astronauts are usually involved in different biology, physics and chemistry experiments and observations.

Anyway, you can watch a live HD stream of the Earth below! If you just see a black screen, that means that it's currently night time for the ISS because the sun is on the other side of the Earth - but don't worry about waiting a whole 12 hours for it to get light again, because the ISS goes all the way around the earth in just 90 minutes!
So if the screen is blank, come back in about 45 minutes, and you'll see some amazing footage. I just watched the sun set behind the Earth and IT WAS AMAZING.

Hey, you're down there, somewhere. Wave for the camera!

Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

This page shows exactly where the ISS is at any particular time of the day (so you can see if it's just about to pass over you!)

Tuesday 24 June 2014

Style Challenge: 12 Item Remix

When it comes to fashion, remixing is one of my favourite things to do! It forces me to get much more creative with my clothes, so that I don't have to stand there in front of my wardrobe, tearing out my hair, yelling "I HAVE NOTHING TO WEAR!" (well, that's the idea anyway).

Last year I started a short-lived series where I limited myself to 12 items of clothing for the entire month. Unfortunately doing that once a month was way too much work, so I only ever did two months (and you can see those past Style Challenge posts here). But I did really enjoy those posts, so this one is basically in the same vein - except that this time I decided to make a video!

a: thrifted b: thrifted c: DIY d: DIY e: vintage f: thrifted g: Naot h: thrifted i: vintage j: Yeswalker k: thrifted l: thrifted

In the end I got up to 24 outfits (I basically kept going until I had forgotten all the outfits that I'd already worn and gave up ^^ ), but I'd like to know if you can think of any cool combinations that I missed!

I hope you're having a lovely day!

Friday 20 June 2014

Indoor Picnics

Cape, skirt, basket and belt are thrifted | shoes are Naot | blouse is from Forever 21 (several years old)

I am back from my self-imposed exam exile! With my last exam this afternoon, my responsibilities have suddenly melted away and now I am basically free for an entire month to blog, sew and make videos. I have been scheming on so many different DIYs for the last four months and now that I'm finally free, I'm both buzzing with energy to get started and entirely overwhelmed at the same time; scrolling through this pinterest board, I've been having so many ideas come flooding in at once that it's become rather like a traffic jam. I think I'll take a couple of days to breathe, have a break and then begin on some serious crafting!

My picnic basket is busted ;__;

This red cape remains one of my favourite thrifting finds to date (although this recent find is a serious contender). And how good is this stripey pastel pink skirt - I thrifted this on the same day! Somehow, going op-shopping became the thing I did every time I needed a study break. Which... was a lot. Which also means that my wardrobe is basically bursting at the seams right now >.>

I'll keep this post short and sweet, but I'll be around here a lot more in the next couple of weeks ;) I've got some really exciting things planned, and a LOT of new thrifted clothes to blog about (if you can call thrifted clothes "new"), so stick around!

I hope that you're all having a beautiful day,