What Will Next Year Bring

So you'd have had to have just climbed out of a time machine or just come out of a coma to not know it is NYE!! At 12 tonight everyone will be celebrating the passing of the last year and will be resolving to do things bigger and better than ever. 
This year (hopefully) fashion and my own designing will also be better than ever.
 As the sales started the new season stock hit the shelves we got our first glimpses of how the high street has jumped on the trends designers showcased earlier this year. 
The top trends forecast for 2013:

What's your favourite trend? and what's your new years resolutions??

The Sales!

Since my last post I headed back to all the end of season sales. I spent far more than I planned but I got paid today so its all fine. First I headed back to New Look

the same jeans from my previous post but in forest green, oversized owl shirt and this lovely floral shirt which was great for the pub last night and sits nicely due to the elasticated hem.


Next I visited M&CO where I picked up these lovely burgundy jersey trousers, I love the seam running  down the front of the leg instead of the outside makes them just that little bit more interesting.

Now my perfumes: I wanted to go into Victoria Secrets any way where I found this lovely set of perfumes. Then being the clutz I am I nearly broke the bottle when I dropped it on the floor!!! After that the manager came over to check if anything needed clearing up and to tell me it wasn't my fault - made me feel much less embarrassed - she told me about the gift set, £8 more but with body lotion, shower gel and handbag spritzer extra. I also popped into beauty base where I picked up this great offer, £7.99 each or 2 for £10 (one also came with a deodorant spray!) This is them.

Lastly - my AMAZING lounge pants. I have been after these for about 6 months after I watched The Avengers and saw these in tesco, I was waiting for them to go into sales and before they did they ran out of stock, turns out parents bought the very last pair!! Here they are!

Christmas and The Sales

Its Christmas!!! Today I'm gonna mention pressies and also THE BOXING DAY SALES!!!! So first, I like (but am not good at) nail art. When I went to the craft show I saw this set!This Nail Supreme art set comes with both normal nail varnish end and an ultra fine nib for decorating, so I had to start experimenting!! This was the out come! 

I also got these cool boots. 

Now the boxing day sales!!!! I headed to new look before they closed on the 24th to see what had already been marked down. This is what I ended up buying!! 
Jeans £9 they are so soft they feel like velvet!! previously £16.99
Top £4 that's my type of price!!! originally £7.99

So I currently am in love with SOOO many things on inlovewithfashion.com after their design comp, their partywear especially! So this morning when I woke to find there was a 50% sale I thought this was great.
I then found out about this:

I am a massive fan of when things say free or win, as everyone else should be! If you head over to their facebook page you could win this for yourself. Just head here to be in with a chance! Alternatively you could enter any of their other competitions on their store website.

What do you think of their giveaway?

My Christmas Lust List

This is a little different to a normal wish list as I already know I wouldn't wear them much so instead this is my 'lust list'.

Christmas is all about sparkle and glitter, from baubles and tinsel to the pretty little fairy lights. This means its about the only time of year I don't feel weird glitzing up.
This is my glitz, glam / just plain sparkly items I'm really liking at the moment.

All these Asos items I spotted while doing the 'fashion bingo' on their facebook page! Just clicking HERE should take you there for the chance to win stuff!!!

The Other Item

1 and 2: inLOVEwithfashion 

3: Jones by Jones on Topshop

4: Topshop
5: Oh My Love on Topshop

6: New Look

7 and 8: eBay

Holidays at Last

So college is over for a month so no more stress from that and I finally have internet again (I had to survive without it for 5 days! with no notice) Although I'm likely to get distracted by friends back from uni, I'm planning to pick up the paper and sketch book and start designing again, not just all the designs I need for college but others I like, things to get me going. I'm also planning to finish my business plan, if not just getting that little bit further. With everything else I haven't had time focus on myself and what I want to do but I did manage to enter one design competition. The NEXT TOP DESIGNER CONTEST, held by InLoveWithFashion the competition was to design a winter formal dress. I thought this was a great opportunity but kept forgetting to submit anything so I had to rush it a little. Here is my entry.


The 5 finalist were invited to an event were the winner was announced and the design shown made up.
These were the five that made it to finalists.

This was the winning design which will be selling on Love's website A/W 13 

First Step to My Own Business

Just a quick little post today.
So this week at college we’ve had project week. Basically this is just a week off of timetable to tell us what jobs we can get into, how to get in to uni, how to put together an effective portfolio and so on. This made me realise how important putting together a portfolio may be and also that I should really have started thinking about what I need to do to set up my shop.
This evening I trawled the internet to find any help I needed and, although I haven’t done too much yet, I’ve made a solid start on my business plan. I have written most of it in notes so far.
My main step now is to do my field research. Then I’m almost ready to roll out my plan so I can actually start. It’s only an hour or so of work but feels like such a weight has been lifted and a positive step forward. =D

Read on for student Discount!!!

I haven't had much of a chance to do anything on here because I've been swamped with work at college and with buying everyone's pressies before they get expensive!!!

However I thought I'd do quick post about student discount.

If it wasn't for student discount I would have NO money and couldn't afford presents for everyone but now I can (yay =D)

This site gives you varying online discounts for great sites such as paperchase (were to get presents, notepads and art supplies), Asos, Topshop/man, waterstones, wh smith and loads more.

All you need is a college/uni email address and to click this link:
http://www.myunidays.com/r/DI9tSaCmY1A

This will take you to sign up page. Sign up. Enjoy lovely discounts!! =D

Okay so it's been quite a while now so I should probably catch you up.

First Manchester.
We won 2 tickets to a craft show there and it was great. There was far too much to look at but I'll try keep it short. There were stands for cross-stitch, lace making, felting, paper making, sewing machines, card making kits, jewelry stands (so you can make your own) and so much more! We were also treated to a live catwalk curtesy of isme.com. Yes it's aimed at older women but it was still good to watch.

While there I bought:

• Pandora style beads but I'm yet to make the bracelet
• Beads and a leatherette strap £8
• Letraset Promarkers which gave me the confidence to start drawing more
• and lots of card making things for peoples birthday and christmas cards =)

Day in the Life of a Toruist

I met my friend and set off from Debden station at about 10 o'clock. The train remains above ground for about 20 minutes so we could look at the outer London area first. Then we reached Stratford, bearing in mind the paralympics finished only 2 days before it was EMPTY!!! as in ghost town empty! We were underground for another 25 minutes until we surfaced at Tottenham Court Road.

First off I showed my friend my college.

Then we set off for our first stop - The British museum. Of course we couldn't stop at the outside we had to look at sarcophagi and the Rosetta stone as well as dancing in phone booths.

 We also picked up some postcards in the tourist-y shop.

Next we made our way back to Tottenham Court Road to get back on the train but we couldn't not take a photo of Freddie Mercury.

Next stop was Green Park where we walked through to Buckingham Palace.

Then through St James Park where we saw a very cute squirrel to Horse Guards parade.

Next passed Downing St, next to parliment, along side the Thames (with yet more phone boxes).

 A quick photo in Trafalgar Square, before onto China Town where we stopped for lunch.

 After a delicious meal we headed off to Covent Garden, Drury Lane and the Royal Opera House.

 After having to stope in the apple store to charge my friends phone, we got off the train at St John's Road station, visited the iconc Abbey Road, and then walked to Swiss Cottage.

When waiting for a bus it decided to pour down - I was almost sure it was actually a hurricane!!!!

So we decided to call it a day.

Tourist!!

I promised I would, so I have. I spent yesterday roaming around London taking photos of whatever my camera would allow me (unfortunately this wasn't as much as I would have liked). We left Debden around 10 and I got back about 10 so there was plenty of London to be seen.

The photos need to be sorted through and cleaned up before I can post any but it will happen.

It maybe a short while coming as my mother won tickets to a sewing show in Manchester, so I won't be spending the weekend here. When I have a proper amount of control over the computer - they will come.

Just a little pic when I was getting in the mood for my day =)

V&A

This will only be a quick post today.
Today I visited the V&A museum. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures while going around but I did find some new inspirations I'd like to use soon.

First off is Dior. Looking at the works from the 60's through to the last decade there was some great works and even better were the silhouettes.

Secondly the Victorian era. There were some lovely petty coats, great corsets and how can I not mention the velvet bow embellishments!! the red and black theme running through the clothes also worked so well and is a mix I want to try experiment with!

Plus I got to buy a great bracelet for £8.

Everyone Loves A Sale

Its almost back to school time so the family went out to buy my brothers new school shoes. As this is boring I wondered off to look at the sales! =D
EVERYONE LOVES A GOOD SALE
Todays sale items came from New Look and do not disappoint!
I had a bit of trouble with them going through at the corredt price but it was sorted with no problem.

 

This stripy hombre t-shirt was reduced from £7.99 to £1!

The tie front cami was £2 instead of £4.99!

I got this bracelet, It has quite an Indian feel to it which doesn't show too well in the picture but is so sparkly and amazing (although it wasn't reduced it was bogof so mum got a pair of earrings for a wedding so I effectively paid £3 instead of £5.99)

A while back I bought this lovely dress from boohoo.com and have been waiting for shoes to match!! Then in the sale I stumbled upon these. They are a lovely colour and although not the same as the dress compliment it just great as its on the same colour pallet. The shoes are a perfect, comfortable fit and, from £19.99 reduced to £6, possibly my favourite shoes of the year!

Me and a friend went in to London today - although I have nothing to show from my trip =(. It's not that big a thing since we live on the central line(!) we just don't do it often. After serching for Mandeville statues and looking in all the tourist shops we decided we should go in to London as tourists.
While I was there I saw so many intersting things to  inspire me!!
I have decided when we go up to have our touristy day I should take my cameras and document all the inspiring things around me. We will hopefully do this before she goes back to uni so soon I will (hopefully) have loads of nice photos and you'll start to see some lovely designs come out.

I'm looking forward to this one!!

So today (strictly speaking yesterday) I decided to start the pattern cutting for the circus style top in my previous post.
I had make a FBA to the pattern - but as I haven't really been taught this before I didn't realise how much effort it would be.
2 hours later and I had finally made the adjustment =/ it was long - although I was watching Sherlock, A Game Of Shadows (didn't help timewise).
After that I had to move the dart to under the arm and curve it. I had to remove excess from arm whole and neckline. Then I had to cut the rest of the pattern into sections and add scallops and seam allowence.
After 3 hours I finally finished the front and now I need to do the same adjustment to the back and find the right material - Thats the hard one!!

Excited for when I can finish it =) !

My Latest Inspirations

A college assignment was to write about what inspires us. One thing I chose to write about was FONTS. The tutor didn’t see how I could use a font as inspiration for designing clothes so I decided to do exactly that – design clothes using fonts as my inspiration. The First font I have decided to work with is:  

ROMANTIQUES

Okay so I know the image quality is poor and drawings are wonky but oh well.

I won’t give the whole collection away though!

Other Inspiration

My ‘art’ lesson at college required me to design a collection to turn into flat drawings. This assignment came with a collection of possible themes. I looked through them all and two stood out the most, JEWEL TONES and COLOUR BLOCKING. I love jewel tones and most of my wardrobe consists of them and I didn’t want to be copying any of the things I already owned so I chose to do colour blocking – something right out of my comfort zone. I was really pleased with the outcome and this is what I came up with.