Edinburgh

This week I spent a few days in Scotland with my wonderful best friends (Jamie aka The Boyf, Michael, Francesca & Daniel), it was a much needed mini-break just to relax with each other after exams etc! 

Here are a few photos from our day in Edinburgh - we all arrived on Tuesday night, but just went for a delish dinner at a cute BYO indian restaurant and a few drinks and a dance in the Opal Rooms before crashing in our hostel for the night. On Wednesday we wondered around the city, went to a few vintage shops and charity shops, went to Edinburgh Castle and had a coffee or two before getting the bus to St.Andrews where the boys are at Uni.

Cardigan - Vintage, Shorts - Vintage Levi 501s, Glasses - Gok Wan for Specsavers, Necklace - Vintage (My Grandma's), Shoes - Cow Vintage

My cardigan is a new 'vintage' purchase, £12 from Ryan's Vintage in Manchester and goes so well with most of my summer clothes, its such a cute minty green colour and the bead work is beautiful. Its originally Escada & has detachable shoulder pads hehe. Also rocking my new specs, what do you think? 

Yes we had candy floss like little kids, and I got excited by many strange Scottish souveneir displays!

I found a few great bargains in the charity shops which I will post about, and wore some new bits and pieces whilst in Scotland which I will post the photos of soon!

VW x

Charity Case

I'M ALIVE!
Sorry I've been completely M.I.A these last few weeks... well almost a month out really! I have been thinking of you all, and have occasionally had a little read, but I just havn't had the time or energy to post myself!

NB: These plimsoles actually have a cute floral print all over them, but came out like fluorescent white in the pics :-S hmm

To catch you up, I had a few big deadlines at uni, including a presentation, urgh, and a stupid logistics assignment which I really struggled with :-( That coupled with writing my weekly College Fashionista articles (have you been keeping up? sign up to site for free and comment on you're favourite outfits/articles *mine* haha) and generally just trying to keep up with life -  nothing particularly interesting to be honest!

eek should have put some more lippy on! Oh and my fringe is so long and crazy in my eyes now, as you can see its sitting very strange against my raybans! Have had to start wearing it sweeped to the side instead of full fringe :-(

Oh of course, major stress last week was my laptop dieing! My beautfiul HP, it served me well, but alas it is dead. I was in such a tizz because i had so much work to get done, thankfully after a frantic phone call to Oz my wonderful parents transferred the money for me to buy a whole new laptop :-) I just got the cheapest full sized one they had in the shop at the time (couldn't handle one of those crazy little notebook things *technophobe*)! Lucky I havn't lost any of my files, and I got all my work handed in on time!

Hat - Miss Selfridge, Sunnies - Ray Ban Wayfarers (Chrissie pressie from Oz only £30 from an outlet mall), Shirt - Charity Shop, Leather Jacket - Miss Selfrideg, Denim Cut-offs - Vintage Levi's, Belt - Primark, Plimsoles - Australia (5 dollars)

I went for a little wonder the other week to discover some new charity shops, the kind that are down little side roads and are tiny and a bit 'scummy' with rails crammed with crap, but in amongst it all you can find some truly wonderful things at bargain prices! You know, the best kind of charity shop. I hate ones like the Oxfams on the highstreet, all newly fitted out with colour coded rails of completely overpriced stuff... the moneys going to charity for goodness sake, just take what you can get for it, don't charge us a tenner for a 2 seasons old dress from Primark that probably only cost 8 quid to start with!! haha. Found the floral shirt pictured for £4, I love that it has poppers instead of buttons, and it's little breast pockets. Buttoned all the way to the top, naturally.

Also got this blouse, I have no idea whats going on with the print but I was immediately drawn to it. The little doodles remind me of the margins of an old maths book or something. The inner workings of someones random imagination. I'm not crazy about the colour, but I couldn't resist for £2!

Got the navy heels for £2 aswell, they're real leather, fit perfectly and are in great condition, there's like barely any wear on the soles apart from a few little scuffs. No idea when I'm ever gona wear them, but what the heck!

I was gona add another photo here of my favourite purchase of the last few weeks (not from the charity shops though so didnt fit really anyway) but I am literally so obsessed I wrote like 3 paragraphs and have now decided that their own post is well deserved.. so I'll schedule that now.. love to keep you hanging ;-) haha you'll probably think I'm crazy actually...



Anyway... I'd love to be able to tell you I'm back on form, and you'll be seeing a load of beautiful outfit posts in the next couple of weeks, but.. that'd be a lie. My 9,000 word dissertation is due in 3 weeks...and we have our two amazing bestest friends Michael and Francesca coming to stay for a few days next weekend (Hi guys, I'm literally so excited, eeeee!!!), so... we'll see what happens!

Love love, VW x

Ps. Look at my yummy FREE Graze nibble box... someone on my facebook had a code, to get you're first box free and a second box for £1.75, so naturally, student, free food, ordered. So exciting getting yummo, free food posted through your letterbox and bonus its all healthy too! I recommend the 'chanachur panch phoron' which is kind of like bombay mix with a rew raisins and goji berreis thrown in and was literally polished off in 2 mins!! So my favourite thing.

So my gift to you lovely readers, go to http://www.graze.com/ and sign up using my code - W8Z2TJ63 and you can get a free box too! You rate the things you like, and then they'll send you a 'balanced mix'.

OOTW - Revolution and Revival?

Firstly I must apologise big time for my lack of posting! Well over a week since my last!! Blogging kind of tok a backseat for a while as I had my dissertation synopsis due in, which meant catching up on a lot of reading, and well you know, uni work has to come first. I found the whole thing pretty stressful to be honest, no one said 3rd year would be easy! Speaking of my diss, it's on second-hand/vintage fashion and I have some primary research to conduct, so in the coming weeks I'd very much appreciate your help and feedback. I'll be formulating a quick qestionnaire to email out, so hopefully you could fill it out and pass it on to people etc, I'm sure you all have some great insight considering the subject area!

So, not only did I think you deserved a post, but some pictures were obviously in order to make up for my bad blogger behaviour! Ok so the title is a bit misleading, as denim cut-offs are hardly revolutionary are they? And neither are these rather plain photos against a brick wall! But maybe that’s the point? It’s been getting dark sooo early here, so I seized the moment today when I got in from my 9am lecture, grabbed The Boyf, told him to wrap up warm and marched him outside to make use of the natural light. Never mind what I was wearing, how my hair was sitting today, or the fact that I filled my brows in a bit wonky (not to mention the lurking spot on my chin), you guys were getting some shots!

Jumper - Topman, Scarf - H&M mens (stolen off The Boyf), Levi Cut-offs - Vintage, Belt - Vintage, Brogues - Urban Outfitters, Earings - made by me!! In later photos, Trench - Zara, Gloves - Tu at Sainsburys

I think I must have been the only vintage fashion lover around who didn’t own a pair of denim cut-offs!! I bought this pair of Levi 501’s yesterday for a tenner and am in love. I’m hardly surprised, I had lusted over girlies wondering around in tiny little hand-cut 501s for over a year now, and there really was no excuse for not buying a pair. Although... I have to say maybe a few gals did cause apprehension – larger ladies in a style that really is more knicker than short, not so good. Perhaps I was worried I would look exposed, flabby or larger than life, my thighs are hardly me favourite feature after-all! So in this respect I am however pleasantly surprised, at how comfy and casual they are, yet they make me feel, well, pretty damn sexy. You American girls have been avid lovers of the daisy dukes for years now, why did it take me so long to catch on? Also, I'm so addicted to the fab high-waisted 90’s cut that I’m left gagging for a full length pair!

So why did I bite the bullet and finally nab a pair when its so chilly outside? Well as some of you may have read my parents and little bro recently moved to Australia and I’m going out to visit them for Christmas, I can’t believe I’ll be seeing them in 29 days time! They were visiting family in Sydney (my mum’s Australian) and just arrived in Perth today where they’re hoping to settle down. Earlier I enjoyed a crazy little virtual skype tour around the house they’re renting which is massive and gorgeous and has a swimming pool! It was 39°C there today, and might get hotter by the time I get there, so obviously I needed some super cool summer clothes! To be honest though I don’t think you’re going to see any pictures of me from Oz in much more than my strapless bikini, these cut-offs and the odd vest! I’m not sure if I can be bothered to look fashionable at forty degrees, we’ll see!

And the final 3 pictures? No your eyes are not deceiving you, some of you may recognise these as old brownie culottes! I bought them on ebay last week for 2 quid! Why is it that the Girl Guides were the only ones that could make a good culotte? I mean get it right, you should have seen some of the things people were passing off as the traditional shorts/skirt combo! I myself was a Brownie, and I’m not so sure I fully appreciated the uniform at the time, but I’m fortunate enough to be able to fit into this pair 26” waist, so call it a revival! They arrived in the post this morning and seemed ok with my jumper, so made a quick costume change just to give you a quick peek, I’ll style them differently next week sometime I think! Comfy is not the word for these babies, nice little elasticated waist and oh so roomy, plus the colour is perfect for autumn!

Culottes - Girl Guides Association by way of Ebay!

Anyway I’ll stop jabbering now, turns out when you don’t post for nearly two weeks you have a lot to say! And it is rather nice to finally be able to write something for me rather than uni work!

Hope you’re all ok, in all my procrastination I did manage to keep up with reading a few of your bits and bobs... there’s always time to discover a great new fashion blog and check in on your faves ay?!

Ciao for now, VW x

NB: I tried to post this yesterday when I actually took the photos and wrote the post, but evidently blogger was mad at me for neglecting it and was in a proper mood, haha, sorryyyy, better late than never?!