DIY Watermelon Print Cropped Sweatshirt

Whenever I have had a spare moment lately (a rare occurrence - I've been working every single day in the laboratory) I have been making my own clothes - something I've really been wanting to do more of since around the time of this post. Anyway, I finally finished this project - a watermelon print cropped sweatshirt! Instructions for making your own are below. First off, draw a watermelon shape like this on a piece of cardboard, and cut it out. This will be your stencil. Figure out what you want your design to look like. I used this watermelon printed top and basically copied the design exactly, haha. But whether you decide to draw this style of watermelon or use some other picture - or something entirely different from watermelons - it helps to find a picture of what you are drawing before you start (particularly if you are not good at drawing, like me). It will also help to draw your design onto a piece of paper first, to make sure that you can get it right and like the design before committing pen to fabric. Place fabric pins or some other marker in each place where you want a watermelon. Make sure you're only pinning one side of the fabric (you will need to insert a piece of paper inside later). Insert a piece of paper inside the shirt so the pen doesn't bleed through to the other side of the fabric. Use your black permanent marker and the piece of cardboard you cut out before to draw watermelon outlines wherever you placed a pin. Then simply colour them in one-by-one using fabric markers (making sure you always have a piece of paper behind the fabric). Now you're nearly done! Iron the shirt to seal the colour into the fabric. Then, if you want to crop the shirt, simply cut across the bottom, a little bit longer than the desired length, fold the edge up twice, and sew across the bottom using a straight stitch. I picked up this tip from Rachel for making sure the edges don't pucker when hemming - simply sew across a piece of paper, then rip it off when done! It works a treat for any kind of stretchy fabric. Extra tip: be smarter than me, and place the piece of paper below the fabric, so you can actually see where you are sewing. You're done! Congrats, enjoy your new super sweet watermelon top! Have a lovely day, Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Among the Flowers / Tamarin Whispering

Dress is c/o Romwe (no longer available), hat is c/o Wholesale, shoes are from Japan and socks are from Tutuanna Photos are by Ana Andrés. It was a nice change of affairs to not have to be both the model and photographer for once, while having these photos taken! I recently met a lovely physicist and photographer, Ana (who is actually my best friend's housemate), and yesterday we got together to take photos around "iconic" Sydney spots - yes, I even got some in front of the Harbour Bridge (more later). These photos were taken in Hyde Park in the middle of Sydney, while I tried not to crush all these beautiful flowers with these giant shoes. And did you notice? My hair has changed colour... again. I can't help myself. Today I found what is probably the cutest scientific paper that's been released this year. Tamarins are little fluff-ball primates that are highly cooperative with one another. Zookeepers had assumed that everytime someone walked into their enclosure at Central Park zoo, these tamarins would just fall silent. But it turns out that they were actually whispering their alarm calls to each other, rather than shouting them. This is the first evidence of non-human primates whispering to occur (birds have been known to be able to whisper for a while). Cute, right?? image from Wikipedia Their whispering was detected by a spectrogram, which is a device that can maximize quiet sounds and then represent that sound visually (like this). These whispering spectrograms were compared to the shouting calls the tamarins make when not in the presence of humans, and it was found that they were still communicating with each other - just very quietly, so the zookeepers couldn't hear them (maybe they were plotting against the zookeeper?) I hope you're all having a brilliant day, Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

I've Got Butterflies

Dress and boots are from Dotti, tights are c/o Chicwish and bag is c/o Chicwish. Glasses are from Dangerfield and headband is from Japan. I was in the mood for darker hair and makeup today to match this dress and boots. I haven't worn black lipstick in such a long time, and I really need to remind myself to wear it more often - even though the lipstick that I have requires constant reapplication, and if I ever try to eat while wearing it I end up looking like I have a chin beard - which is not the best look haha. I was thinking about writing about butterflies (the creature) for this blog post, because they undergo metamorphosis which is kind of an amazingly cool process (here's a picture of it, anyway). However, I then discovered this insanely cool image of a "butterfly nebula" taken by the Hubble space telescope and knew I had to write about that instead. This "planetary nebula" is in fact the remnants of a dying star. When 95% of stars die, when they have burned away all the hydrogen in their cores, become red giants and then shrink to white dwarfs,  they eject a mass of gasses - like what you see above (the other 5% become supernovas - but to become a supernova, they have to start out life at least eight times the size of our own sun). This butterfly nebula actually has two orbiting stars at the centre of the gas cloud, which makes it even cooler. Planetary nebulae are credited for spreading "heavy elements" - things like carbon, oxygen and nitrogen which are what we ourselves are mostly composed of - throughout the universe. Without these dying stars, life as we know it wouldn't exist. I hope that you're all having a great weekend so far! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Edible Accessories & Waterspout Science

Top is from Forever 21, skirt is thrifted, socks and necklace are from Dangerfield and shoes are from Italy How great is this hamburger necklace?? Though I'm a vegetarian and don't eat actual hamburgers, I'm happy to honor them in wooden-necklace form! I've been wearing it with absolutely everything, and I'm sorry if I wear it in the next 50 outfit posts I do (actually, not sorry, because it's awesome). There are a bunch of them going for $2 at Clear-It (Dangerfield's clearance store on King street) if you live in Sydney ;) It was extremely windy while trying to take these photos - the majority of the photos did not look like the above one, which somehow looks like it was taken with an artfully-placed wind-machine. The rest of the photos feature hair flying everywhere, including my mouth, and I just lucked out with these ones. Still, I should be thankful I wasn't caught up in a waterspout, as cool as they look. Waterspouts, often featuring wind speeds of up to 200km/h (124mph), are a mild type of tornado that occurs over water, and are spinning columns of rising moist air - though they can be very dangerous. In fact, some people think they might explain the "mystery" around some disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle. Image by Joey Mole Waterspouts usually form where there are patches of warm water, and a strong current of warm air rises from the surface of the water. Other air then rushes in to replace the rising air, which makes the air spin around and upwards - and as this cycle continues, a waterspout is made. Most of the water in the spout isn't being "sucked up" from the surface, though - moisture is actually sucked out of the surrounding air. (I was imagining fish flying around in the waterspout. Doesn't happen.) Apparently waterspouts are pretty common in Florida, which Google Analytics tells me is one of the states who most reads my blog out of anywhere in the world (California is still winning, though). So can I ask my readers from Florida - has anyone ever seen a waterspout?? Please let me know! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Bright Orange on an Overcast Day

dress, gloves and tights are from Dangerfield clearance store, headband is c/o Milanoo and shoes are from Italy. I moved house! And this wall is part of my new backyard - I have a plain white wall to take photos against! Finally! I was so excited, in fact, to find that I've got endless possibilities for photo taking around my new home. It's a fashion blogger's dream home. Because the best thing is that we're right next door to a big park with all these amazing community murals; there will definitely be some photos taken against those! I couldn't resist this dress from the Dangerfield clearance store "Clear It" (118 King St if you live in Sydney - go, and search through the $5 defective stock bin - it's amazing). The dress was from stock that was going to be thrown out because of some slight defect (in this case, a button that needed to be sewn back on). I also couldn't resist these gloves because they were only $4. It's pretty warm now - we've basically said goodbye to the cardigan and coat season - but I wonder if I can pull off gloves without people looking oddly at me? These photos are my attempt to do so, anyway. What do you think about gloves when it's not the middle of winter? And if you're currently somewhere that's not overcast or raining, raining, raining like Sydney is, then see if this video makes you want to go outside and get some fresh air ;) Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Spring Fling / Meeting Minute Physics and Asap Science

dress is c/o Modcloth, cardigan is Forever 21, bag is thrifted, hat is wholesale. Today I remembered that I entirely forgot to post these shots! Which is great, as I've packed away my tripod and camera for moving house tomorrow, (eek, tomorrow?? I really have to pack my clothes)! Before I get back to packing up, let me quickly tell you about this outfit. These photos were taken on the first day of Spring in this beautiful dress from Modcloth. I'm trying to rewear the "older" stuff in my wardrobe a lot more, and I can't believe I had neglected this dress for so long (in fact, the last time I wore it was on the first day of Spring last year!) For shame! It's got such a gorgeous vintage cut and the super-bold print of sunflowers is magnificent. Today's science story also happens to be some exciting Annika news - please indulge me. And possibly also get jealous. About a month ago, I met the brains behind minute physics (Henry) and asap science (Gregory and Mitchell), whose videos I have featured countless times on this blog before - see here and here for example. I also managed to also palm off blog business cards to them both, though I don't know if they've ever had a look! I met them because they were in Australia for the IFLS Live show (to which I missed out on tickets), but they had a "meet up" in Sydney beforehand to which I enthusiastically attended with about 3 other fans - and then awkwardly said hello because I didn't actually know what they looked like, seeing as their videos mainly feature their hands. They were all such lovely people, though, and my housemate and I chatted to them for almost an hour! Real-life proof that I met Henry (left), Mitchell and Gregory (right). Here's a couple of amazing science videos from these guys. Firstly, asap science aims to destroy any notion that what you see is really real. (I recently made a very similar post about the illusion of reality).   And this is a favourite video of mine from minute physics, which I posted about nearly a year ago now in relation to this pink dress, about how the colour pink doesn't physically exist. I hope you're all super dooper fantastically well, Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr