The dotted blouse and blue shoes

Right before I'm the birthday girl, my grandpa is having his b-day. We went there on a typical Dutch summer day.. 'kind of warm' and a bit cloudy. Because of the weather, I wore my new Maison Scotch blazer with a few items you alreay knew. Here is what I wore... ánd another lovely oldtimer I stumbled upon.

Blazer: Maison Scotch

Jeans: Levi's 501 (vintage)

Blouse: Primark

Shoes: Primark

Necklace: antique

What I've been upto lately...

This post will be published when I'm in Spain enjoying some much needed sun! I just wanted to show you some diary pics I made over the last few weeks, telling you what I've been up to. Since I have been so busy shooting ánd staring my new job as a Scotch&Soda stylist :D

1. Crappy Dutch summer... - 2. Lovely Turkish foods at a work lunch (L) - 3. Of course some disco bowling haha - 4.  I went to several fashion shows and events to check out the upcomming collections - 5. Watching roller derby - 6. Attending a coconut-party! - 7. Wearing my new studded boots to my new job! 8. New nailpolish = heavenly - 9. A casual look in between - 10. A selection from the Fifties Darling Boutique is now for sale at Madame de Pompadours new salon!

Top Vintage international give-away madness; The winners!

Top Vintage is a webshop filled with wonderful retro goodies. They sell many different brands like Bettie Page and Pinup Couture. I believe one of the best things about Top Vintage, is that you can shop head-to-toe looks. When you found yourself one of their many pretty dresses, you can continue shopping for shoes... and accessories. Top Vintage even sells her own accessory line, called 'From Paris with Love' consisting of high quality 1920s-1950s inspired goodies; Of which one might be yours very soon.... Just take a look at these pictures I made of the pieces you can choose from this month!

Decadent and colourfull statement necklace. I love the colours!
The perfect accessorie for any special occasion!

Adorable birdy 40s inspired brooch. This cutie will spice up every outfit
with her rhinestone eye...

The most gorgeous 20s inspired bracelet. Heavy quality and the (rhine)stones
are way more shiny than on the pic!

The give-away ended the 21th of July. Which means the winners have been picked! Go and check out the three lucky ladies on Facebook!

Asian rose jacket

I thrifted this cute Asian-style jacket a while ago. I love the quilted effect of the jacket and the fit is great as well. I wonder where it's from...

Playsuit fun

I took my new wedges for a 'test-drive' and they are very comfy! Of course the kitties had to attend our little shooting, they were running after us like crazy haha. Too bad the weather turned bad in the afternoon, because I felt so good wearing this comfy playsuit. Damn you Dutch summers....

RUN KITTY RUUUHHHNNNN 

Playsuit: vintage (Episode)

Wedges: Mango

Belt: vintage

Necklace: Primark

Red wedge beauties

Still very busy... I have been working fulltime for almost two weeks now (including the weekends.. so no days off) and I miss blogging so much! Fortunately it's all temporary :) I quickly wanted to show you these Mango beaties I'd been eying for a while. They didn't have my size in stock for weeks, and since they have been on sale for a while now I lost hope a bit... untill I discovered they were actually refilled! Of course I ordered them immediately.

They reached my doorstep within a few days. And I love love LOVE them in real life! Owwww....Don't you think receiving an exciting pink gift when comming home from work, is one of the best things in life?

The shiny necklace

Oh my... I was a bit overwhelmed this week by work. I had a shoot ánd I started a new parttime job (as a stylist for Scotch&Soda, hence my recent Scotch purchases.) And although it was all very enjoyable; I didn't even had time to eat some of the days. So I'm a bit exhausted now.... good thing I'll be going to Spain in a week :) One of the things I will be taking with me is my new super shiny necklace! I ordered this baby on Doortje last week and it turned out it is much more prettier in real life as I thought it would be! The necklace itself is actually made of real gold and the pendant has so many colours (which are impossible to capture in a picture...)... it's just so gorgeous!

For all of you out there also loving sparkly new jewels; I would like to remind you all that the Top Vintage give-away is ending withing a week from now! So if you are in for the win; don't forget to enter HERE! It's very easy and there will be three winners this month. Have a nice sunday darlings!

High tea pink

For our three month anniversary, me and the hubby were gifted a high tea in Scheveningen. We first thought the cloudy weather was going to ruin the day. But it turned out a walk on the pier with the wind in our hair was quite fun! The strong gusts really caught my 'paperbag' skirt... I felt a bit like a balloon haha. Don't you think my love looked very handsome (L)?

Marnix is wearing a Thom Broekman suit, Barsoi blouse and Manfield shoes.

Skirt: Asos

Blouse: Primark

Wedges: vintage

Belt: vintage
Necklace: Primark

Other jewelry: antique/vintage

Primark (L) Red

I was craving some new red pumps. So when I spotted these pin-uppy darlings at Primark; I knew they had to be mine. The heels are very high and the sole is actually metallic gold/bronze. They're like mirrors haha... How awesome is that! And as I said on FB, thank you so much for all the sweet comments on my mustard dress. Really made my day! X

DIY tea-dye

The crisp white shirt I recently thrifted was ment for a DIY project I had been planning. I wanted to experiment with tea! To be more specific; how to use tea to dye cotton. I sometimes find white cotton just too white, hurts the eyes haha. What I do like are more 'nostalgic' colours. 

A shade I like to call 'parchment' ... is one of my favourites for cotton wears. It makes clothes look much more nostalgic... reminds me of the Edwardian era and antique books. It was my aim to dye the white shirt in this lovely shade. So I grabbed my blouse, a bucket, an empty soda bottle, five tea bags (regular English tea) and something to stir with.

The first thing to do; wash the (cotton) garment you wish to colour. I actually bleeched it up front, to make sure there was nothing in the fabric that could influence the process. After washing/bleeching, rinse it well and leave it damp. Then put ome water on to make a huge amount of tea. I put five tea bags in 2.5 liter boiling water and used a big soda bottle. That way it's easy to close the whole thing of and shake it around. Also, the liquid stays hot for a long time. This is important since you still want the tea to be very hot after having it set to steep up for about 15 minutes.

Remove the bags from the bottle before giving it a good old shake! If you leave them, you'll risk one of the bags ripping and you don't want the tea leaves to be in the water. The tea has to be completely void of leaves what so ever (leaves stain the cotton big time!.) Poor the strong tea into a bucket and give it another stir. Add the garment of choice. Stir the mixture of tea and cotton for about a minute. Then leave it to rest.

After a while, when the tea cooled off a bit, get your hands in there! Start kneading the garment in the tea. Make sure the tea has room to 'move' through every bit of fabric in the garment, to ensure the colour ends up equally throughout the fabric. Repeat this a few times over the next hours. You don't want it to set for too long without stirring; the tea might be more concentrated somewhere in the mixture and that may cause a variation in the colouring.

The colouring will soon set in and when to take it out depends on how dark you want the fabric to get. The longer the garment is in there (and the stronger the tea of course), the darker the cotton will turn out. I left my blouse in there for about two hours when I decided it had reached the right colour. I took it out, washed it by hand and let it dry. 

And that's it! A simple and easy way to turn a white garment into a vintage looking parchment coloured beauty. I had much fun doing it. Good luck when you're going to give it a try! And let me know how it turned out of course :)