Last day of half term sobbing

My family have a tradition of going out to eat on the last day of a holiday, and as it's the last day of half term this meant today. We planned to go for waffles but that was super busy, so we ended up in Pizza express. I had this huuge salad (which was really really nice) and a hot chocolate after.

When I say my camera is dying this is exactly what I'm talking about. Anyone know if you can replace the lens on an Olympus F1.8? I'm going to have to look into that.

After eating we walked back through town as the sun was getting lower in the sky and I took a bunch of pretty (if slightly out of focus) photos as we were going. These may be the first completely unedited/tinted photos on this blog ever.

Also note that my uh, "adorable kitten friend" is VERY offended that he hasn't get been mentioned. Hi, Billy.

-Julia

Axolotl Progress

This morning I was super motivated to do college stuff (look at this terrible webcam photo of how my axolotl doll is coming along!)

 

But by the end of the day (or maybe like 6) I was absolutely done with the world. By 8 I could be found in pajamas watching Legally Blonde. It was one of THOSE days where my motivation just drops to 0 and doesn't perk up again 'till it's too late, and everything is boring even though I'm full of ideas. I just don't have the energy to do any of them. Eh, this happens from time to time and that's okay. I'll hopefully be back and bouncy tomorrow!

-Julia 

Seasidey

Today I went to a nearby seaside town and stocked up on craft supplies. It was hella rainy most of the time which was pretty. I bought a sketchbook, a cute lil water colour tin, and some white and black acrylic paint. The feeling of having a new sketchbook is definitely one of the best things ever.

I took these on the way there and back. The first one has weird reflections which are maybe a little bit cool? Maybe? The second one is a very nearly tree tunnel. Tree tunnels are magical.

 These last two I took on the beach. You could probably have figured that out for yourself.

On my list of photos to post I have all my new pretty art supplies and the fabric which arrived yesterday. Lots of nice things to look forward to.

Sleepy vibes. -Julia

Tiny drawings + coffee

I woke up lazy and tired this morning. Possibly because SOMEBODY introduced me to this terrible, terrible game which I will not link to because your life and your time is valuable and I will not take that away from you. I will not expose you to endless hours trying to engulf smaller blobs. I would never do this to you.

I started the day with coffee and plants watching the guinea pigs in their outdoor run.

I drew in an old sketchbook lots of small, quick drawings.

 

Excuse the watermark, it's my username on pretty much everything but this blog. The temptation to lie in bed in a cozy onesie all day was very, very strong, but I went to the park with my mum, my brother and his friends. My social life, guys.

I got a very pretty package containing fabric which I will post about sometime too! It was a bit dark by then for good photos but it's really gorgeous.

Hope you all had a nice day. -Julia

Outsidey

Today I walked my guinea pig, cuddled rats and a baby guinea (he was so sweet), and gave my friend a buzzcut. Ooh, and I visited the garden center. These photos I took in the garden this morning whilst watching Margot (my queen guinea) and Caramel and drinking hot chocolate. It was brilliant.

 

I also took pretty photos at the garden center (and discovered this face ˚∆˚)

So ye, today is mainly photos! I have also been instructed to mention:

-That Lily will be deeply offended if I do not write about her buzzcut. It's a great buzzcut.

-My "lovely hatypus friend" and "how cool he is". He's very cool.

-My "lovely mortal, Dyspraxic friend". His brother has a brilliant guinea pig.

I am so tired! Night y'all. -Julia

Axolotl Beginnings

It is 00:32 here and I have just realised that I completely forgot to post today, so I am reserving this spot for photos I took today/yesterday. V sorry!

This day (I'm writing from the future!) I began work on my final project for my college course. It's an axolotl duck creature thing for the theme "Snapshot"- a 3D snapshot of an alternate reality. Where axolotls are sort of anthropomorphic.

Lil guy will look much better when he's more than roughly cut foam and wire!

-Julia

Open Studios 2015

Today I went out with my family and my bae to look around the studios of lots of local artists for Open Studios. I'm not sure how widespread this is, but it's basically this: for a few weeks artists open up their workplaces and you can look around and sometimes buy work.

I wore a white t-shirt and dungarees (which I actually added badges to before setting out, but I didn't get photos somehow). This hand-knitted navy blue jumper was my mum's when she was (I think?) about my age, but it was very itchy and I didn't last long wearing it.

One of the potters we visited taught workshops and was selling off unclaimed work for charity. I bought this pot and I love it so much, my camera is dying and doesn't quite capture how pretty it is but it is very. The base isn't quite intact but I was thinking I could use it for crochet hooks or something similar.

 

Other goodies: ceramic buttons (from the unclaimed work) and a badge which my grandma bought me from an exhibiting artist.

My bae and I also each got a Moomin poster from a shop unrelated to Open Studios, both were different designs but this is mine. Somehow it doesn't have a single moomin in it, but here it is brightening up my wall of amazing (and a lot of my art, too).

I've decided to give the daily songs a little break but shall be sure to share good music (+ lots of other stuff!) whenever I find it! Ooh, I also finally got a haircut today. No photos of that but it's super cute and short. I'm allowed to say my hair is cute because I like it lots today, plus I wasn't the one who cut it.

Happy vibes -Julia

Sunday, and stuff (I'm running out of post titles)

Today I spent the afternoon at my Grandma's house (which is very pretty) and took a whole bunch of nice photos. We watched "What we did on our Holiday" which was dark and really quite good. Anyway, I took pretty photos to make up for the lack of photos lately:

So pretty and full of plants. The photo uploader seems to be almost working today too, which is great news! I finished crocheting my first tiny pair of booties which turned out cute. I can't find them right now and may well have left them at my grandma's house (well done me!).

This was my first attempt at any sort of footwear and I decided to make the pattern up too, and I think they turned out at least reasonably cute. They were definitely good practice.

Today (yeah! song of the day!) you should listen tooooo this (yes another front bottoms acoustic cover) because I really want to play acoustic guitar on a rooftop or at least somewhere open air and very high up one day.

Thank you for putting up with my weirdly not-flowing typing today.

-Julia

Euronoooooooooo

I did it. I watched every single song in Eurovision this year. I also stepped on a pin, swam, and ate almost a whole pot of hummus. I do not regret any of this very productive behavior. I do mildly regret not taking photos for today's post. Just mildly.

So tragically I have no pretty photos to post today! I've had a really great evening talking to friends and bae and I feel inspired to do things and go out and spend time with some of the lovely people I know.

So I'm really sorry for the lack of photos! I'm just very busy.

Flowery vibes -Julia

Outfit: Actual Plant Vibes

So my image files are still coming up as being broken for some reason, but apparently most people can see them which is good! These I resized and uploaded to photobucket which might maybe help.

Anyway! My t-shirt arrived! It is lovely.

 

I swear photobucket slightly mutes the colours on my photos too. The photo issues are never ending!

I did put on shorts when I went out, rather than just a t-shirt and tights (my legs look super weird in that photo). Other than that I have worked today and that's about it; I am a doll artist (kind of) and I finished one super fast which is rad.

My typing is hella unenthusiastic today ha. I watched about half of this but found it very eerie. The animation is adorable but the voices and music throw me a bit.

That's the ~video for the day~! 

Promise tomorrow's post will be nicer to read and hopefully more colourful if these photos start working. Promise.

-Julia

Imminent Sobbing: ?????

I don't know if you guys have noticed or not but about 90% of the photos on my blog have out of the blue decided to be "broken files". I'm so upset and have no idea how to fix this. My blog looks all sad and empty. Will use a different image host till I find out what on earth has gone wrong.

Outfit post: Moomins + Daisies

Today I wore this! It is slowly getting warmer outside and the days are light enough for long enough that I can work later than usual, and the nights smell amazing. 

I wore:

-Moomin pajama t-shirt which came from Topshop (I think) along with some comfy pajama bottoms. I am breaking the system by wearing this like an actual top and have never actually worn it as a pajama top.

-Daisy circle skirt which I found at the charity shop. I just checked and can't find any labels in it either, which is pretty useless.

-Dark green tights. Again, I have very little information on where these appeared from. A shoe shop in town, I think, but I can't remember the brand name. I have two pairs of these because the first got so torn up through wear!  

EDIT: My mum kindly emailed me and says they are made by Gipsy, and were bought from Imelda's in Norwich.

I spent the afternoon with my bae (I feel like I should maybe give this mysterious guy a name sometime, but I'm pretty sure I know everybody who reads my blog in person anyway so?). His blinds make the coolest patterns on the walls. I've been trying to upload photos of this for a while but the uploaded is being fussy/broken today, eeehhhhh.

Right now I'm so sleepy I can't even think of a song to post, but will edit and add one if I think of a nice one. No point in posting less excellent music just for the sake of it!

-Julia

Pencil Skirts

So I actually overslept by about four hours this morning. Luckily I only had afternoon college! I have pretty much only worked all day, aside from a traumatic episode of Game of Thrones. But I do have something cool to share with y'all:

Not very long ago redbubble introduced pencil skirts and now Swimming Costume Girl is available on them! Look!

 I will hopefully get round to putting other designs on skirts sometime too. I really and truly do not have anything else to post about today! How awful.

Today (tonight) you should listen to Two Headed Boy by Neutral Milk Hotel.

Happy half term to some people (mostly my college group!). 

-Julia

Guitar Crush Part 2

I went back to the charity shop today to see if the guitar I had got brilliant vibes from a few days ago was still there, and it was! £10, a damp cloth, a tuning and some string cleaner later and it every bit lives up to those vibes. It has a lovely warm tone and is just a little smaller than 3/4 size- I think there might be a name for this particular size but at risk of using the wrong one I'll skip it for now.

 

I've researched the model from the numbers KC 265 written on the inside and found that it was probably made in the 1970s. There are definitely some cons to having an older guitar- for example the tuning pegs are stiff with rust. I'm hoping when I restring it and clean it properly I can access them with some WD40 or something similar to ease them up a little.

I have never owned a classical guitar before, but even I am sure that this stringing looks a little odd. At first I was confused about how whoever last changed the strings had managed to put them in half ukulele style and half I didn't even know what, but I figure some of the strings must have broken over time and been replaced with ones from a different set. Poor thing will be restrung just as soon as my final college project is finished.

I wasn't able to get a very good photo of this, but one thing I really love about this babba is these tiny notches in the frets. I'm sure that from a technical point of view they're not good news at all but think about all the songs that must have been played on this guitar before it ended up in a charity shop looking somewhat sad. I bet it's seen some lovely things.

So here it is. My beautiful grubby 6th member of my string instrument family. Three acoustic guitars, one electric guitar, a baritone ukulele and the obligatory soprano ukulele. This is getting wonderfully out of hand.

My song for today is Urge Overkill- Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon. There is no denying that this one certainly has some iffy lyrics. Girl, you don't ever need a man. That aside, Pulp Fiction and this song are both brilliant.

-Julia

Monday (nondescript noises of vague disappointment)

Today I had my super long college Monday. I've been hella productive actually; I created some new characters and Flo let me take photos on her amazing weird internet connecting phone because I forgot my camera.

It was kind of dreary but the rain was really nice.

 

For practice with techniques I drew skulls from some of the photos I took of Flo's (not actually from life but hey if it fits the criteria!). 

I also ordered this pretty t-shirt from ebay after realising I don't actually wear most of my t-shirts and only have about 2 wearable ones. I honestly have no idea how I didn't already have one of these because I see them everywhere and it fits my pretentious aesthetic perfectly?

Today's song post is I Saw the Wolf by Tigers Jaw. I really have no idea how I have never posted a Tigers Jaw song before, they are by far one of my favourite bands and I have a ticket to a gig they're doing here in August. And I hate gigs. That's how much I love them. I learned the proper tab to this song and everything.

Happy vibes -Julia

Skulls

Today has been slow, and all I've done is college work (mainly printing off photos to stick in tomorrow), so today I thought I'd share the photos of Flo's skulls I took last Monday. They're so pretty and she finds them all herself which I think is a very cool thing to be able to say about a collection.

(Thank you lots Flo for letting me photograph your morbidly beautiful skulls and sorry again for injuring babby skull, I hope he is feeling lots better now.)

Today you should maybe listen to Pirate Ships sung by The Cure. I'm not sure if I've already linked to this one but it was first introduced to me by Lily and it's so sleepy and comforting.

-Julia

Mad Hatter's Nature Walk

Everyone should be sad to hear that my poor guitar is still not mine or any closer to being mine because I've had a day which was somehow too busy to go to the charity shop and see if it was still there. My poor baby.

I did, however, go to my friend's Mad Hatter's Tea Party, which was amazing! I was a rather non specific character but I feel like my Alice in Wonderland vibes were strong and not to be messed with. I didn't get many photos there but I did take this outfit photo before I left. Sadly it does not show the pretty lace at the top of my over-the-knee socks (which I wore over grey tights) or my velvet jacket or my incredibly worn out purple doc martens, but this dress is one of my favourites.

This party was quite a while away so my mum had to drive me there and I get very nervous about large groups of people who I'm not entirely familiar with and also about eating in front of people, so this was all quite scary. Izzy (whose party it was) is super understanding and lovely about this stuff and I went for a walk with my mum in the countryside and took lots of pretty photos while everyone ate.

It was all v pretty.

I'd type more but I have at this moment about 6- no wait, 5- minutes to get this published before midnight so must move swiftly to a very cool song. Hm.

Buzzcut Season by Lorde because it is buzzcut season and girls with buzzcuts are magical.

-Julia

Guitar Crush

I have spent today obsessing over The Falling and it's amazing soundtrack, and also obsessing over a guitar which I absolutely do not need. At all. But it is so pretty and worn out and it even has the tuning pegs facing towards the back rather than outwards (there is probably a name for this?) and it is in a charity shop all alone and £10. Sigh.

I always fall for really old and slightly grubby, chipped guitars. There's something awesome about cleaning them up and making them sound nice.

I had this super weird vegan sandwich for lunch. It had nice things in it- hummus, sun dried tomatoes, lettuce and olives- and yet somehow it tasted totally off. It is possible that I am ill and tasting things weirdly, or that it was actually just really weird.

Please look at this image and pretend it tasted as great as it looks.

This afternoon I very sneakily chilled with my bae when he absolutely should be revising 24/7 (nope). It was pretty and sunny.

Next in Julia Obsessing Over The Falling: you should listen to Follow Me Down from the soundtrack yes thank < 3

-Julia