Update - Giveaway with Cichic! / CLOSED

Hey guys! (Now, don't worry, this is a scheduled post. I'm still in the process of packing my bags and moving and I'm being good! So you can't yell at me. ^_^) Many of you have already entered my blog's cichic giveaway, but as the number of prizes increases as more people enter the giveaway, I'm mentioning it here again. It's now become easier to enter the giveaway. There are now two mandatory entries and four additional ones for extra entries (but if you have already entered, all your past entries and effort still count, so don't worry!) Please use the rafflecopter below to enter, if you haven't already! a Rafflecopter giveaway So what's the prize? Well, each winner will get to choose an item of their choice from cichic. If 100 people enter, there will be 1 winner. 200 entries = 2 winners, etc. So feel free to tweet about the giveaway, share it on your facebook wall, etc - the more people who enter, the more winners there will be! Open internationally until the 30th of April. Good luck! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

DIY Comic Print Cropped Tee (recycle an old top)

You guys. I shouldn't be posting on my blog. I'm supposed to be moving out of home on Friday - that's why I asked for guest bloggers to submit posts the other day. But it seems that whenever I have something important to do, my brain goes "let's make a DIY!" or "let's make a magazine!" or something equally as ridiculous and non-important to the thing I'm supposed to be focusing on. Anyway, this happened, and it can't be undone. Plus, now I'm all excited to blog about it  because it turned out so well. I'm sure you've all seen these kinds of shirts around lately: Own The Runway | Topshop | Topshop I decided that instead of buying one, I would make my own (because it's freeeee!) This is what to do if you want to make one for yourself! - an old top - fabric pens/markers - needle and thread/sewing machine - a printer (if you want to use a computer design or my stencil) 1. Cut your shirt to make it cropped. First, put it on so that you know where to cut it. Then put 3 fingers below this line, and cut there instead (trust me, you'll accidentally end up with a shirt that is way too teeny if you don't do this. I thought I was leaving heaps of extra fabric on mine, but this was the first cut!). Cut the bottom of the shirt off in a straight line.  2. Hem the raw edge of your shirt. To do this, you just fold the raw edge of the shirt up inside the shirt about 1 inch, and sew all the way around. Now if you just wanted a plain cropped tee, you could stop here! But if you want to add a design as well, then read on... 3. Make your design on a computer, or hand-draw it. I made mine on photoshop. I also made this particular design available to download if you want to use it (click here). 4. Print out your design. Cut out the shape on the inside of the black line (you will see why in a moment). 5. Place your design onto your shirt wherever you want it to sit. Make sure you pin your design on (to the front part of the shirt only) to stop it from moving around. 6. Place a piece of paper/newspaper/anything inside the shirt to stop any ink from transferring to the back of the shirt. Then, carefully trace around your design using a fabric marker, making the outline as thick as it was on the printed-out design. 7. Remove your paper from the fabric. I then also added a lightning bolt and coloured it in with a yellow fabric marker, because I accidentally made a mark above the "K" and it was annoying me too much. 8. Run an iron over your design (or whatever it says to do on your fabric markers) and you're done!  Now dress up like an undercover superhero: shirt - DIY shorts - a DIY project from way back shoes - Bodyline Now, please promise you will all YELL at me if I make any more blog posts over the next week before I've moved  (excluding my lovely guest-posters, of course. Don't yell at them). p.s. don't forget I've got two giveaways running right now! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Guest post: Stereoscopy (The Illusion of Depth)

Hello there, and nice to meet you! I'm Cass, a British schoolgirl and wannabe scientist from my little corner of the blogosphere, Undercover Dress-Up Lover. Though faceless, I really am mostly harmless, except whilst practising violin or playing video games, when I make a lot of horrible noises you would probably rather not hear. While the lovely Annika is occupied with all the trials and tribulations of moving house, I'm going to do my best to provide you a crash course in stereoscopy, the illusion of depth. Grab a ruler and get in front of a mirror and measure how far apart your eyeballs are. Are you getting about 6 or 7cm between your pupils? This means each eye sees everything from slightly different angles to each other. Your brain is rather good at correlating these two images, one from each eye, to help you judge how far away things are from you. 3D films use stereoscopy - creating the illusion of depth - by simultaneously displaying two images which are polarised differently. The two lenses of the 3D glasses you wear are also polarised, so lets in one image into your left eye, and another into your right eye. What's polarisation? Visible light is a transverse wave, so it can be polarised. The particles in a polarised wave vibrate only in one plane. Below is an unpolarised wave on the left travelling right, going trough a polarising filter, and coming out polarised. So the light wave particles of one image of the film are vibrating in one certain direction, and one lens of the glasses only allow waves polarised in that plane through. This is also how those 'anaglyph' red and blue glasses work, except they filter by wavelength (different wavelengths are different colours) and aren't as good as polaroids because polaroids allow you to see the film in proper colour. Top: Your Eyes Lie Jumper: Bless x OXBOW Skirt: River Island Bangle: Chica Style Black Milk's 3D ribs dress makes me laugh. The skeletal element is interesting anyway, but if you buy this dress, you get free glasses too! From Fashionably Geek Why not utilise every glorious dimension of space through what you wear? Pompoms and ruffly flowers that stand out from the fabric are quirky and interesting embellishments that add a whole new texture to an outfit. Or, try something with a 2D stereoscopic print that looks 3D, with the use of anaglyph glasses or otherwise... || Chloe T. || Chai M. || Emma E. || || Joellen L. || Zoe Y. || Stephanie L. || I hope you all enjoyed guest-poster Cass' post about Stereoscopy, and learnt something new! Make sure to check out her blog at Undercover Dress-Up Lover (Cass has also started incorporating science posts amongst fashion ones, and I'm pretty proud to say that I inspired that in a small way :D) x Annika Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Ladybirds (Everywhere!) / A Call for Guest Bloggers / The Scientific Power of Thought

As I was racking my brains as to what to wear to Sydney rental inspections last week (notoriously one of the most difficult rental markets in the world), this awesome care-package from US Trendy with a Miss Patina dress inside arrived in the mail, along with these fantastic cat collar clips from Lady Bird Likes. (Funnily enough, the dress also had a lady bird print on it, which was a weird co-incidence as the collar clips are from an etsy shop with lady bird in their name!) And I have some really exciting news! The outfit must have worked a treat, because we were accepted for a really really (I mean, for the standards of a first-time-renting student) lovely property! So, for the next week or so, I'm going to be moving house! But I'm also going to university at the same time, and in between packing, it means I'm not actually going to have time to blog. I was wondering, if there were any super lovely bloggers out there who wanted to write guest posts for me, to be put up over the next week or two? I'm particularly looking for DIY, crafts, vintage style or science-themed posts (but am open to any other idea as well)! Shoot me an email at annikavictoria@gmail.com with your ideas first, if there's anyone out there who feels like helping me out! :] Also, if you can see them, please excuse my dodgy nail colour polish - I had my nails painted by a 6-year-old the other day and she was really proud of it (she actually did a pretty good job for a 6-year-old I think). dress - c/o Us Trendy clips - c/o Ladybird Likes socks - Tutuanna (Japan) shoes - c/o YesWalker It's no secret to anyone who's been reading my blog for a while that I'm really into brains. Well this video from ASAP science is an awesome exploration into the ways that just thinking can physically change your brain. Let me know your thoughts on it! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Panda Bears and Flowers / Clever Hans

Yep, it happened again, I murdered another plush toy to make a cute bag out of it. Inappropriate-guilty-feelings aside, I am actually so happy with this panda bear backpack. And I bought him for $3 from an op shop (yes, it's a male panda bear), so at least there were no sentimental attachments there. If you missed it the first time around, I wrote up some instructions on how to make a DIY plush toy bag here. The only difference with this one is that I added two straps (thrifted belts) instead of one! My pretty floral blouse & red skirt are both from Sheinside! Many thanks to Sheinside for providing them to style! blouse - c/o Sheinside skirt - c/o Sheinside socks - Shop With Romi shoes - c/o Yes Walker bag - DIY hat - c/o Wholesale If you're a casual reader of science stories (or have joined IFLS on facebook) you may have heard people talking about "blinding", or that an experiment was not reliable because it wasn't "blinded" or even "double-blinded". You may have thought, what on earth does "blinding" mean and more importantly, how on earth does anyone know what's happening if no one can see what's going on?? Well "blinding" is one of the most important concepts to science. Human beings, clever as we may be, are unfortunately very susceptible to something called bias - that is, seeing what you want to believe. That's where the story of Clever Hans comes in. Clever Hans was the name of a horse who lived in the early 1900s. His owner claimed that Clever Hans could not only count, but could also do complex maths problems and understand German. His owner would ask him questions, and Clever Hans would answer by tapping his foot. His owner paraded his horse around Germany, showing off his apparent skills. Clever Hans performing in the 1900s in Germany. Also check out all them boater hats - I'd be so trendy if I were to go back to 1906 ;) (Image source) Clever Hans was investigated by veterinarians and teachers. They removed the audience to make sure Clever Hans wasn't getting cues from them, and they even used different questioners (other than the horse's owner) to rule out the possibility of fraud. Then they made a realisation - if the person asking the questions knew the answer to the questions, then Clever Hans would get the right answer 89% of the time. But if the person asking the questions didn't know the answers themselves, Clever Hans was only right 6% of the time. It seemed that Clever Hans was clever in a way, although he didn't know how to count or do maths - he had learnt to tap his foot whenever the questioner expected the horse to tap its foot. Take away the expectations of the questioner, and the horse had no idea. This was a very important observation for science and where the idea of "double blinding" comes from. Now scientists make sure, especially in fields where animals or humans are being measured, that not only does the participant not know what condition they are in, but the experimenter is also "blind" to the conditions of the experiment as well. Only at the end of the experiment, when all the tests have been done, are both the subject and experimenter allowed to know what was really going on. And that's your neat science fact of the day. p.s. I announced another giveaway earlier today! Enter here if you haven't already. Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Giveaway: Cichic - win an item of your choice! / CLOSED

Brand new online webstore cichic is generously donating an item of clothing to my blog for this giveaway! What you need to do to enter is (via rafflecopter): Register an account with cichic here (you don't need to put in your proper last name if you're worried about that, I never do hehe), "like" their facebook page and leave reviews on cichic.com on your two favourite items. Please use the rafflecopter widget below to enter! Details must be entered in the rafflecopter widget (as well as commenting below) or they won't count! a Rafflecopter giveaway There are two mandatory entries and four additional entries. Please make sure you do them properly, or your entry will be invalid (I do check!) [EDIT 7/04/2013] Please note that I made the giveaway easier since launching - but any entries you have already made will not be invalid and still count :) So if you've already entered, don't worry about the small change :D So what's the prize? Well, each winner will get to choose an item of their choice from cichic. If 100 people enter, there will be 1 winner. 200 entries = 2 winners, etc. So feel free to tweet about the giveaway, share it on your facebook wall, etc - the more people who enter, the more winners there will be! Open internationally until the 30th of April. Good luck! p.s. I'll also be having a 1-million pageviews giveaway soon! Thank you all so much for your love and support. p.p.s. if you're on a mad giveaway binge now and you don't want to stop, make sure you enter the other giveaway I also have running from TNK vintage! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr