Manic Pop

  So the other day I was so mad about my shoes breaking I set out to find more shoes. While at The Ark, browsing around at their shoes, I spotted this dress just hanging there on a rack just waiting for me.  It was $5 so I didn't even try it on and seeing as how it was jersey knit with a tie in the back, I knew it would be fine. The result? A kind of weirdo dress, but I couldn't resist since the sleeves are so amazing! I like the way this old necklace from H&M plays off of the stripes on the sleeves. I don't wear this necklace nearly as much as I should.   Funny thing about these shoes: I had a pair almost identical to these early this summer by Steve Madden and I destroyed them within 3 months of wearing them. I found these at Sears of all places - a last-ditch attempt on my quest for shoes. I seriously didn't expect to find ANYTHING there but I found 2 pairs! There you have it - my crazy, striped-sleeve thrifted dress!  Thri...

A quick outfit post - I've been pretty behind on posts, projects, etc. Summer is pretty busy and there have been back to back street festivals at work each weekend so my schedule has been flip-flopped a bit and I'm now almost a week straight into work. Yikes! Such is life. Max bought this little romper for me when we were in Fruitport over Memorial Day Weekend. I had to get a souvenir from the mall while we were there and I found this at Charlotte Russe of all places. Not sure what it is about that location, but I have the best luck there even versus the Chicago locations. I'm pretty sick of all the "put a bird on it" references though I do love Portlandia, but this is definitely a bird print. It's been so hot out (100 degrees here and there) so I've kept my look pretty simple this summer.  I was playing with a fabric backdrop here, but the space I could hang it isn't tall enough to let me stand straight (and I'm 5'1" on a good...

I didn't mean to wear 2 dresses in the same color, but I guess that's what I was feelin' today. The temperature severely dropped and when I got home I put on something a little warmer. I love how flowy this dress is. I often find myself twirling in it. The color also makes me feel like a cupcake. I consider this a good thing. This dress is from 2 years ago, but it keeps getting hidden in my closet because I have sooo many other dresses. Percy was battling me in these photos which is why they're blurry. That, and he messed up the camera setting as I was bringing him and the camera outside. You can see him struggling to get away in most of these. It was his 2nd time outside ever (as they're not outside cats) but sometimes I like to let him look around. He usually has a leash on, but I was holding him a majority of the time. He did NOT like it. 1st outfit - Dress: BKI Shoes - Franco Sarto Necklace - Chicago's Chinatown 2nd outfit: D...

So dummy me never got "before" photos of this dress before I made it my own size.  Believe it or not, this dress was about 3-4 sizes too big for me when I first bought it at a thrift store. I was this close to putting it back on the rack when I realized I was dumb to pass it up. So I took it home with me. $2-ish?  I typically think of it as "too patriotic" but with my new favorite cardigan (haha) it tones that feeling down a bit.  Originally this dress had cap sleeves. I totally could have edited them to make them fit on the dress but I actually am a huge fan of sleeveless dresses. That and perhaps I was too lazy to edit the sleeves. All I did really was turn the dress inside out and fit the side seams of the dress to the curve of the mannequin which is sized to me more or less. This dress is a nice, slightly stretchy polyester to it lends itself well to being fitted. Overall, I am so glad I didn't pass up this dress - I love the ...

 Lots of times getting dressed in the morning lately, I keep wanting a really bright cardigan. Nothing super-special, but here it is An orange cardigan!  I never seem to get my shoes in any of the photos. When I originally bought these, I wasn't quite sure how to wear them. (Duh, with ANYTHING!) They're a fun oxford shoe/saddle shoe combo.  The blue-green (but mostly green) hair continues. I re-saturated it the other day and the pigment is much better now. I think maybe I should wait with this dye after bleaching. That seemed to help for me.  Detail of my favorite scarf. Waves or clouds? I like to think it's clouds, but I think it's waves. I have totally destroyed it last time I put it in the washing machine. Whoops.  Yes, I still need to finish that insane dress behind me. Sooooo close!  My goal is to finish and wear it over my week off... which is happening right now.   Heading out! (With my Victrola pin...

Not sure what possessed me, but I decided to dye a huge chunk of my hair one of my favorite colors - blue-green. Perhaps my cat Arthur 's death on Friday night, early Saturday morning had something to to with it - I don't know. Brian and I found him in much pain and zombie-like that night and took him into the emergency center. Hardest night of my life. I absolutely loved that cat and cannot express how much I miss him. The vet was nice enough to make a paw print of him for us since he was a polydactyl (in my opinion the best cats!). Anyway... this dye took 2 processes of bleach. The dye I used from another beauty supply store initially did NOT take at all in my hair. A friend tipped me off to a salon in Chicago called Twisted Scissors  which is one of the very few places to buy Special Effects dyes in the city.  I had used this brand some years ago (like 4?) when I dyed my entire head Atomic Pink . I didn't have to re-dye that color for a MONTH! Best unnatural ...

Fun little mini photoshoot with Max today.  Originally we had planned to seek out a crazy, striped mural downtown but we were losing time for natural lighting. I like this mural we found anyway. Something crazy to go with my bright, cartoon-y, mod dress.  Lens flare is a joke and a nod to Max - haha! I had a super-small colorful water gun in my bag. It was about 84 degrees today. Shoulda filled that up and ran around the neighborhood! Sloan tote bag! I originally found out this bag existed by googling a photo of Flight of the Conchords one day. There is this photo of them running through the airport with it. No idea they were Sloan fans. They have been my favorite band for about a decade now. They're primarily considered the "Canadian Beatles" but their sound is so much more than that. The height of their career was really in the mid-to-late 90s, but as a huge Sloan fan they still have awesome albums after that and shouldn't be written of...

Today I was teaching Brian to use my SLR. We had it on full auto really, but he's getting the hang of it. We both had the day off today and wandered around as it was 80 degrees yet again! After today, I kind of love this dress. I think it must have been an old, 70s bridesmaid's dress at one point. It used to be a maxi dress but I hemmed it to a mini because the maxi just looked outdated on it. See the transformation I did last summer here . Much more sassy short, right? It's also my favorite fabric - polyester! (No, seriously!) There are all these flowering trees all over our neighborhood and I liked the gentle, subdued contrast of them compared to the dress. Still breaking in my Franco Sarto platform shoes. I did end up wearing some shorts underneath this dress. It was quite windy and I didn't want to take any chances! Not sure what I'm laughing about here, but you can really see my thread-art earrings I bought at a li...

So Tuesday was PERFECT weather-wise! (But not as awesome as Wednesday). Perhaps I was pushing it by walking around in a sleeveless dress a bit, but I had a jacket with me so I was fine.  Me and Brian went to the Bongo Room for brunch, then wandered around downtown so I could pick up a roll of Holga photos I had developed at Central Camera.  Of course, I find colorful settings for photos to be taken of me - I love the colorful boardwalks we found within a (dead) garden near Grant Park. Nice contrast with the stripes of the dress too. These are actually Brian's cell phone camera photos since the battery on my point and shoot was still dead (ugh!) but they still have a nice effect to them. I amped them up a bit in Photoshop.    I love the orange and yellow trees by Lakeshore Drive. I had photos taken here with my friend Jane in Fall 2010. (Funny, that photo Jane took I am also wearing something I made, just li...