CLOSED // Win $200 store credit at Sarsparilly!

Happy February, guys! This has got to be one of the most exciting giveaways I've ever had on the Pineneedle Collective!! The wonderful Sarsparilly, whose brand new online site launched today, is generously giving away $200 store credit to one very lucky reader of my blog. And it's open internationally for the whole of February! So get entering. With dresses from Bernie Dexter, Hell Bunny, Lindybop, Lady V London and Sarsparilly's own handmade designs, stocking sizes (AU) 6-20, I can see Sarsparilly easily becoming one of my favourite online stores! You may enter using the Rafflecopter widget below. You can complete as many entries as you like, and you don't have to complete them all the be entered in the draw, but remember that each entry you correctly complete will give you extra chances of winning this amazing prize! a Rafflecopter giveaway Goooooooooood luck!  You can see me modelling a Sarsparilly dress here!  Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

DIY Heart Cutout Dress & How To Time Travel

Dress is DIY | shoes are from Golden Ponies | bolero is thrifted | cherries c/o Sarsparilly I'm starting to get to a level of confidence in my sewing where I feel like I can just make whatever design pops into my head! It's awesome! And yes, I filmed the making of this dress and it'll be up on my youtube channel in a few days [update: it's up now], if you wanted to learn how to make a heart cut-out dress of your own from scratch (it's no harder than my DIY dress tutorial!) These boots I'm wearing are new and are from Golden Ponies, a store that was recommended to me after I made my ethical fashion directory. I've gotta say, I'm super pleased with them, no less because I got them on sale for only $35! If I was going to choose another pair to get, I think I'd get these shiny, holographic flats (everyone needs at least one pair of shiny shoes in their wardrobe, right?). Oh, and by the way I uploaded a new youtube video today! It shows a different method of making your own socks, without a middle seam. Click here to watch it! Whenever the conversation of "if you could time travel, without coming back, when would you time travel to?" comes up - and yes, this is a surprisingly frequent conversation among my group of friends - I always say "100 years into the future!!" whereas most of my friends will say "the 60s, duh". I am so keen on travelling into the future to see what technological advancements humans have made - plus, it's also more possible than travelling backwards through time because all I'd need to do is find a super fast vehicle and special relativity would sort out the rest; my friends would need a wormhole in order to travel into the past, and that's much trickier. Anyway, why am I going on about time travel? Because of this awesome minute physics video. Have a watch and learn how you too can travel through time: What really blew my mind was the fact that if you stand up for a minute, your feet will age 10 femtoseconds less than your head. So unless you spend all your time upside-down, your head is actually older than your feet. Thanks gravitational time dilation, you crazy, crazy thing! So I'm curious to know - if you could time travel, with little possibility of returning back to the present moment (and ignoring Back to the Future-esque paradoxes where your teenage parents fall in love with you and you were never born/taking a sports almanac back in time with you and making heaps of money from gambling), when would you travel to? Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Mermaids & Paper Boats

Dress is c/o Sarsparilly | cherries c/o Sarsparilly | shoes are from Yeswalker | bolero is thrifted | necklace is super old | petticoat is from Ebay What was meant to be a quick trip to the lake between rainstorms escalated into an entire themed photoshoot, with me jumping into freezing lake water. I'm going to pretend that I jumped into the water because I really just got into the whole "theme" of boats and mermaids (because of the insanely cute print on this dress), but it's actually because I had to rescue the paper boat, which I very wisely only made one of, then promptly dropped upside-down into the water as soon as we began taking photos. Still, I actually really love how the photos of me in the water turned out - so good on you, clumsiness! A little bit about this dress - about a week ago I was contacted by the owner of Sarsparilly, Maria, who is just beginning to sell her own handmade designs! She gave me a few to choose from, but there was absolutely no way that I could go past the mermaid print on this dress, and the super-full skirt. Her other designs include a toffee-apple 50s dress and a gorgeous blue gingham dress! At the moment, you can buy the first of Maria's new handmade designs as well as some other gorgeous brands, including Bernie Dexter, from her facebook page photo albums, however the brand new website is going to be up-and-running within the next few days so I suggest you like the page and keep an eye out for it, especially if you love 50s and 60s-inspired dresses [Update: Sarsparilly's new online store is now open]! Also, I'm also going to be hosting a little (actually, a somewhat huge) giveaway to coincide with the opening of Sarsparilly.com in the next few days - make sure that you don't miss out on it ;) So I apologise if you've been a reader of this blog for a long time and have already seen this post - but I felt like it was a very appropriate time to bring it up again! Now, this is not exactly scientific per se, as mermaids (I am told) don't really exist. However, speculative biology is always fun! This page here features several awesome images that speculate about what the anatomy of a mermaid would look like. The picture below shows the (imaginary) skeletal anatomy of a mermaid: Also, did you know that in 2012 the US government had to make an official statement saying that "Mermaid's do not exist" following a mermaid mockumentary on Animal Planet? Way to be a killjoy, guys... I hope that you all had a beautiful weekend, rain or shine! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

5 Minute DIY Sock Tutorial

This project is a "5 minute fashion tutorial" collaboration with Aiko from Hapy Friends Shoppe, who is a crafting, upcycling and kawaii fashion genius. And I say genius, because she does things like make bear-shaped tote bags out of old towels. You absolutely have to check out her youtube and blog (after you watch my video, of course). Plus, she's basically the sweetest person that I've ever met! Go go go, visit her channel! The video that I made is a really quick and easy tutorial that shows you how to make your own socks out of any stretchy fabric! (I just used some old t-shirts in this tutorial - because you can use the hemmed edge of the t-shirt as the sock's hem. But if you wanted to make snuggly bed socks, for instance, an old stretchy sweater would work great as well!) This tutorial was adapted from The Sewing Rabbit's tutorial for making kids socks. Method 1: Middle Seam Method (easier and faster) So this shows the absolute basics of making your own socks. What you could do next is to use fabric pens to draw a repeating polka-dot, heart-print or fruit-print pattern (I'm in the process of doing this with one of my pairs!), or you could add some pom-poms in a contrasting colour! Method 2: Side Seam method (takes longer but is prettier) Let me know what you think! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Dorothy Was A Pin-Up Girl / Portraits Génétiques

Top is DIY | skirt is DIY | headband is DIY | shoes are from Yeswalker Remember my pink top from my last post? I made one in blue as well, but this time I made it look like a dress by pairing it with my gingham circle skirt made from the same fabric. I'm definitely going to make a proper dress using this style pattern after seeing how well it worked - though I think I'd make the skirt longer and even more voluminous, so it's super-dooper 50s! I went a bit nuts looking through fabric the other day, and I am dreaming of making such a style dress in this pastel ice-cream fabric. I just need to get my hands on some US dollars first so that I can buy it, as the australian dollar is currently rubbish (Hey! Want to sponsor my blog to help me buy it?? Shameless plug? :D) Soooo I also somehow also reached 300 youtube subscribers and I guess that means I need to get moving on making another tutorial. I actually have one all planned to post tomorrow! Guess what the tutorial is about - it's a ubiquitous item of clothing commonly worn on the lower 1/8th of the body (although sometimes it's worn on the hand and paired with googly-eyes). Can you guess what it might be ;)? Subscribe to my channel and keep an eye out for it tomorrow! Now for some science! If you've been a reader of this blog for a while, you'll know that I am very much interested by biology, and in particular, genetics! You'll also know that I love the merging of scientific concepts with art. Artist Ulric Colette has created these spliced-up portraits to explore both the similarities and differences that genetics creates between two individuals. To do this, Colette seamlessly merges two family members side-by-side into a portrait-style photograph. She compares brothers, sisters, twins, mothers, daughters and fathers. While the combinations can often be quite jarring, they're also extremely compelling. In the top left photo below, you can see what difference the environment makes on two individuals who are genetically identical - identical twins share 100% of their DNA, and so any differences between them comes from the lives they have lived! In the others three portraits below, you can notice the similarities in genetics between individuals who share 50% of the same genes (this includes siblings, fraternal (non-identical) twins and parents and their children). However, even though these people share 50% of their genes with the other, some look much more alike than others! See the whole series of photographs here. And a good explanation of the genetics & statistics behind the whole thing is here! See you all tomorrow! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Sweetheart & Sandgrains

Top is DIY | ring is DIY | skirt is thrifted | headband is DIY | shoes are from Yeswalker I made this top, I made this top! I'm so excited with this new pattern I've made, with it's sweetheart neckline, and I'm going to be using it for both tops and dresses. It turned out to be perfect for pin-up style, which is awesome because that's probably my favourite style in the world, and since I recently learnt how to do my hair and make up properly (even though I've been blogging about style for two years I am really awful at the whole beauty thing), I think I can just about pull off pin-up style. I still don't really know how to backcomb my hair properly to make a giant beehive, but I can almost hide that under a pretty bow! So this is what happens when you magnify sand 250 times: Image source Isn't it beautiful? When you look really, really closely at a handful of sand (like, with a microscope, not just by holding it really closely to your face - unless you have bionic magnifying eyes), you can see that it's actually composed of tiny shell fragments, glass, crystal and volcanic rocks. Image source A scientist named Dr Greenberg takes these gorgeous photos of the microscopic world (see his website for more sand, along with magnified moon rocks and food), combining both his photographic background with his background in biology to make people take notice of how beautiful the world is - a world that we'd be unable to see without science.  I hope that you're having a great day! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr