Sideways quiff hair tutorial

When we were at the Vivien of Holloway shop, one of the assistants had this lovely sideways rolled up quiff, with a headscarf behind it. I tried to recreate it, but couldn't find any you tube tutorials (probably because the style has a name that I don't know), so I tried to make it up myself. And failed.

But never one to let a setback get me down, I have decided that the thing I have ended up with I will henceforth call a sideways quiff, and the proper thing can be called by it's proper name, whatever that is.

Here are some 'instructions' for my trial and error proccess:

1. Separate a section of hair at the front, secure and tie everything else back. The section should have slightly more hair on the side where you want the roll to be.

2. Backcomb the back of the hair you're working with. Put some curl cream, or serum or similar in the ends.

3. Pull the hair up and start rolling it around two fingers. You will be rolling backwards, away from the face.

4. Once you've rolled it enough for a nice circle to have developed (about half way down), pull out your finger and keep rolling, twisting it to the side near the end.

5. You'll probably need to repeat this a few times. Mine kept falling apart and a funny bobble formed on the side that I wasn't rolling towards. What you see is probably about attempt ten, so I got there in the end.

6. Hold in place as much as you can and pin with bobby pins. Really you should just need to pin it at the botton of the circle, so that everything else is nice and airy, but I had to stick in a couple more to keep hair from escaping.

7. Smooth it down again, maybe with some curl cream or serum. Spray liberally with hairspray.

8. Sort out the rest of your hair in a bun or ponytail.

Et voila! Out of failure invention springs!

Also, apologies for the messy bedroom. At least the mess is blurry!

Guide to Edinburgh vintage and charity shops

Summer and with it holiday season is almost here!

My fair city Edinburgh is always a popular as a city trip for those in the UK and as a stop off on longer Scotland/UK/Europe trips for those from further afield, I thought I'd do a little guide of vintage and charity shops. As you will know if you read this blog regularly I am a massive charity shopper (I used to do a series called charity shop finds), and having lived in different parts of Edinburgh for what seems like forever, I thought I'd share the knowledge I have accumulated over the the last 11 years. I hope that this will be useful to anyone wanting to do something a little different from the tourist standards on their visit!

I've organised this post around the Edinburgh Charity Shop and Resuse map, which is produced by local recyling/sustainability organisation Changeworks (I worked there one summer during my undergrad!) which lists every single charity shop in the city. Which is great if you live here, but obviously doesn't help much if your time is limited and you don't know what different parts of the city are like.

So what I've done is picked out some of the areas that have lots of charity/vintage shops, added a little description of the area and picked out some of the shops I particularly like and what kind of things they are good at (obviously that will depend on what people donate though). I should also point out that Edinburgh charity shops are not cheap compared to other parts of the country (like lucky Vix and her 50p steals!) its a big reasonably wealthy city with lots of demand. Expect to pay £3-6 for a top, £4-8 for trousers or skirts, quite a bit more for designer brands or vintage. The upside of steady demand is that stuff doesn't tend to stay in most shops, and new stock comes in all the time, so few places feel picked over.

Anyhoo, lets get on with it!



Newington

This is the student area right next to the (Edinburgh) university and the area with the highest concentrations of charity shops in the city. On Nicholson Street they are actually one right next to the other, so even with a spare half hour you can get through lots of them. My favourite ones there are Shelter, which I used to be obsessed with when I lived in the area as a student and for years was the only charity shop that would put effort into its window displays (the others have now caught up) and Oxfam, which has a good selection of high street stuff and new sustainable/fairtrade things like jewellery, chocolate, bags, cleaning products etc. Further along the street, on Clerk Street is one of the three branches of Armstrong's vintage, the best one in my opinion, with less proper pre-1960s stuff, but more reasonable prices than the bigger Grassmarket branch, and a great selection of second hand cashmere, and some great 70s and 80s bits that can (almost) compete with the charity shops in terms of price.

Stockbridge

Stockbridge is a lovely upmarket family and young professional area, and the main street is an ideal place to wander down on the way to or from the Botanical Gardens. The charity shops are on the road that starts off as Deanhaugh Street nearest town and then turns into Reaburn Place and eventually Comely Bank Road. The charity shops are a bit more spread out than they are in Newington, and mixed up with lovely little independent shops, including the jewellerer where we got my engagement ring. Stockbridge is also a great place to stop for food or coffee. My favourite shops are the Hospices of Hope, which is tiny but I've got surprisingly much from, Barnado's, which makes so much effort with decoration that it almost looks like a commercial shop and Cancer Research, which has a good vintage section, and St. Columba's right at the far end, which is crap for clothes but has great knick/knacks and crockery, and often does 50% off days. There's also a Mary Portas Save the Children one, which I have written about before, and I actually don't bother going into any more, it's so ridiculously overpriced and they've let the interior get too cramped and it's actually not as nice as the Barnado's.

The Grassmarket

The Grassmarket is right in the middle of the historic centre tourist area, with lots of pubs and great views of the Castle. It's also a place of many commerical vintage shops. There's only one charity shop, Barnado's Vintage, which has only got vintage stuff and looks lovely, though it is small and I've never actually bought anything from there. The most prominent of the vintage shops in the biggest (and original) branch of Armstrong's. It's very big, the front room has a lot of stuff from the 1950s or earlier, which is lovely to look at but very expensive (last time I was in there, they sold a 50s dress with all the seams going and bits ripped out of the sleeves so that they were beyond repair and would have to be taken off for £35), the second room is menswear, with lots of uniforms, and the back room has more normal priced stuff from the 60s onwards, including a bit of contemporary and lots of hats. Further along the west end of the Grassmarket, there's Iconic, a fab homewear/aniques/20th century design shop, and on West Bow, the street leading from there towards the Art College, there's Godiva, which sells re-designed and re-fashioned vintage at boutique prices, and Herman Brown, a vintage shop I've never gone into but is meant to be good.

Tollcross/Bruntsfield

I've only started going to there semi regularly recently. Tollcross is quite traffickey so it's not the best place to wander about, but it gets leafier as you go up Home Street and it turns into Bruntsfield Place, where you also get nice independent shops and cafes. And there's some great bargains to be had, with prices a wee bit lower than elsewhere. I love the new Salvation Army, which has vintage at the most bizarrely high prices, but is cheap as chips for everything else, including curtains and sheets for sewing. I've got some great vintage dresses from the Shelter shop, and Birth Link Thrift shop, Scotlands/Edinburgh's oldest charity shop is worth a visit. It's more like an unreconstituted old-style charity shop but is relatively big and cheap.

Morningside

As you follow the main road out of the city, Bruntsfield turns into Morningside, a wealthy and sedate part of town, with lots of big houses and middle aged ladies who lunch. I've made the bus journey or cycle ride out a few times to go to Loopy Lorna's, and amazing afternoon tea type cafe, and there's lots of charity shops there. I don't know that part of town well enough to know the character of each, but this being a rich part of town, upmarket brand cast offs are common. I've got quite a few things from the Morningside Road Shelter shop (not as far out as the others) and just off it on Colinton Road there's an adorable antiques shop called City Vintage that stocks furniture, homewares collectables and a tiny little bit of clothing. I'd never pay the kinds of prices they are asking for some of it but its great for browsing.

Leith

Leith is a large part of Edinburgh (it used to be it's own town, but got merged into the main city) with a strong working class identity. Although they've been speaking of it being regenerated for decades, there's not much in the way of middle classey cafe culture that is cropping up everywhere else. Its still a place of old man's pubs, random hardware shops and specialist ethnic minority businesses. A fascinating place, but since we're talking charity shops, probably not ideal, many charity shops near the foot of Leith Walk and Great Junction Street in particular are pretty grotty. I wouldn't have included this area at all except for the fact that I live there and both my favourite charity shops are here. The first is the St. Columba's about half way down Leith Walk. The clothes section is small, but they have an amazing crockery/homewares section, and massive amounts of curtains, bedding and lacey table cloths. And it's staffed by blue aproned old ladies who are always up for a wee chat. The other one is the Salvation Army near the bottom of the walk, which always has great vintage dresses, and unlike the Tllcross Sally Army, the vintage isn't priced at vintage shop prices. I've got three dresses there so far, and the most expensive one was £10. I still wish they'd put in a changing rooom though!


So there we are, charity and vintage shop Edinburgh! I hope I haven't bored anyone, and anyone with specific questions, feel free to shoot me an email. The proper addresses of the shops can be found on the Charity Shop map. If you're from here or have visited and have your own favourites, please share!

Tutorial: Adding borders to photos in photoshop

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you may have noticed that virtually all my photos have a simple black border. Such a simple thing, but in my opinion makes all the difference in making things look more pulled together and professional. Today I thought I'd demonstrate a quick way of doing it in Photoshop*.

For years I used to make the borders using Picnik after I had uploaded my photos to Flickr, but because Picnik is web based it often ran slow, particularly at peak times. This is so much quicker!

So anyway, let's get started with the tutorial.

Here's the picture I want to add the border to. I've chosen it because it's light round the edges and therefore looks a bit washed out on a white background, which means it will really benefit from a border.



Adding the border is easy:

1. Click Ctrl + A to select our photo

2. In the edit menu at the top, go to Edit/Stroke



3. Enter the number of pixels you want your border to be. My pictures are 3000 by 4000 pixels big, so I usually add a 30 pixel border, ending up with a 3030 by 4030 canvas size. It's worth playing around with different thicknesses. I find a border that's about 1% of the image width usually works best.

4. Select the colour you want the border to be by clicking on the field where it says color. You can change the colour using either the mouse, the box with all the swatches in the top right hand corner of the screen, or the six digit hexademical (?) code (in the field with the hashtag). I used black, which is the swatch at the end of the second row, and code #000000. Once you've selected the colour you want, click OK.

5. Leave everything else as preset. Click OK. Your picture now has a border.

6. Click Ctrl + D to deselect

7. Save your picture.

So there we are - simple! Here's my photo with the border, it makes a big difference on the white background, don't you think?



I hope you found that useful!

* if you looked at this tutorial earlier, you'll see I initially had a slightly longer version if achieving the same thing up. Massive thanks to Tricia at bits and bobbins for setting me straight!

Book review: Hot shots by Kevin Meredith

I found myself in urban outfitters the other day with ten minutes to kill and saw this book. I leafed through it and it looked promising, so I decided to order it from the library. Thankfully, Edinburgh Council is not going the way of so many English councils of annihilating their library services, and we still have an excellent network, including a brilliant fine arts library. They even extended the opening hours of my local one, and I cannot stress enough what difference proper Sunday opening has made. Anyway, not today's topic...

So after a short wait I managed to get my hands on this book, so I thought I'd share.









The author, Kevin Meredith is a professional photographer, both commercial and artistic, working mainly with film and lomo cameras it seems. He was ranked second in the 2000 Lomolympics (? Must find out what that is!). The photos in the book are all his own work, some of them I recognised from advertising campaigns I'd seen, some are his private images.



The book is a great mix of coffee table eye candy and helpful information for inspiring photographers. All the pages on the right show one image, so you can flick through easily and just enjoy the prettyness of it all. The images really appeal to me, because most are of the high contrast, cross processed, bright colours variety. People more into pastelly faded loveliness may not find so much to admire.



But the great thing is that on the left side pages there is lots of information about the photo, usually involving a little background on how that image came about and some advice on how to create that effect/composition or use a particular tool. Its great because each page is more or less self contained, so you can dip in and out.



There is also a short technical section at the back, which talks about choosing a camera and film, introduces concepts like aperture, shutter speed and depth of field, gives photoshop tips and has a little bit of advice about managing your photographic output. It's really just an introduction though, and if you wanted to find out properly what all this stuff is about you would need to look elsewhere. Which is fine, this is not a photography advice book.



My one minor criticism of this book is that the information about each image isn't always as self-contained as maybe it should be. It's like sometimes they forget that people might not know what certain terms mean. For example the book goes on about cross processing in many of the individual picture sections. I didn't actually know what that meant, and because the technical section doesn't have a contents, it's not easy to find the place where it is explained quickly. I actually ended up just looking it up online rather than leafing through the whole section.

Overall, I really like this book, its fun to look at, inspiring and informative. I would definitely consider buying it once I've got myself an SLR, have got to grips with the basics and am trying to improve my photography.

Kevin Meredith has a flickr stream which is well worth checking out!

Your feedback on the commenting and some more discussion about Disqus

Some of you may remember that in the post from last Sunday I asked for your views on Disqus and commenting. I just wanted to feedback on/provide a summary of what you told me in case it is of any use to anyone else. Sorry its taken me a while to do this!

So lets just jump right in:

Checking back for comments
* Lots of you said you never check back for replies or subscribe to comments.
* Several people said that they will only check back if they think a discussion will develop or they have said something that they would like a reaction from, or expect a reply to, and not if they are only going to get a 'thank you' response.
* One person said that she will only check back for a reply on those blogs where they know that the blogger will reply.

Need for individual replies
* Several people shared my view that individual replies are a must for 'proper' comments of questions, but that a 'thank you' aimed at several people is fine.
* A couple of people said that they don't see the point in thank you comments at all.
* Some people liked the individual replies option on Disqus, and thought that if its there you might as well use it.
* Some said they would prefer a reciprocal blog visit to a 'thank you' comment.
* Some thought that you should both reply and visit the person's blog. (I guess that was never up for discussion for me, of course I'm going to visit back!).
* Overall, it doesn't seem like not replying to each and every comment and relying on blanket 'thank you all' messages will people stop visiting your blog, particularly as so many people don't check back anyway.

Emails vs. replying on the blog
* It was mentioned that if the comment contains a question, it's probably better to email so that the recipient definitely gets it.
* However, it was recognised that way blogger notifies you of comments isn't exactly amenable to that, because you can't just hit reply, you have to manually track down the persons email.
* Vahni of Grit and Glamour, who has obviously had loads of success with her individual comment policy, also pointed out that if you email, only the recipient knows that you've replied, and other readers may think you don't care.
* There's a related point too (this wasn't raised in the thread) that if the reply is public, a discussion with other people might develop on the back of it, which wouldn't be the case for email.
* There was much love for the fact that Disqus is meant to (and I say meant to, as I'll get to below) email you if the person replies to your comment, so that the reply is both on the blog and the person knows for sure that you've replied.

Pros for Disqus
* Individual replies, which after a week I really love!
* You can reply directly from your email.
* As a commenter, disqus remembers you.
* The replies get emailed to you, or as I say the are meant to!

Cons for Disqus (most of this isn't from the thread, but my own experience and what I've heard on twitter)
* It takes some time to load
* For some people it never loads at all (Really hope that sorts itself out, Leia!)
* On Friday, the whole system went down for several hours, and you couldn't comment at all. Don't know if this is a regular occurence.
* It's meant to sync with blogger, but it doesn't. It turns out loads of the comments that are meant to sync with blogger ended up in spam and therefore weren't published. I was able to recover those, but its a pain having to go through all the spam. but still about a quarter of the comments that never made it to blogger in the first place!
* However, there were also comments which only come through on blogger, and therefore don't appear on the blog at all. I've manually gone and posted these as myself.
* I tried to fix this by using the export function, but all you get is a huge long text file that you presumably are meant to do something with, but there is ZERO support on what to do. Any advice gratefully received!
* I have yet to get a single email with someone else's reply, so I'm assuming people aren't getting the replies I have posted either. Would somebody who has commented recently mind telling me whether they got the reply or not?

I am a little tempted to uninstall Disqus before any more comments get lost in the ether. At least now I could theoretically copy the comments that never made it over individually. But I am actually really liking the individual replies thing after I was originally sceptical about it. It's nice for a conversation to develop. What do you think?

On another topic, I have taken to twitter surprisingly well! There must be loads of my regular bloggy pals that are on twitter that I haven't found yet. If you want to let me know your twitter name in the comment, I'll follow you. Or you can find me - I'm @apple_franca. Cheers!

Also to remind you that I would love to see your pictures of your workspaces! Pretty please!

photo via here.

A guided tour of our study, some tips for organising your workspace, and a call for submissions

*** July 2011 Update: This is an old post, but perfectly fits the Friend Friday visual post on where we blog from hosted by Suze, so I am submitting it. And my workspece still looks like that! See all the other posts here. On the back of this post, I also did a roundup of other blogger's workspaces if you care to check it out.***

We all know that an organised workspace can make a huge difference to the work you do, so one of the things Dave and I did at the end of the Christmas holidays was to clean up our study. We didn't do anything major to it, but I'm happy with the results, so I thought I'd show some pictures - this is quite a phototastic post! There's some tips at the end of this post if anyone fancies tackling their own workspace.

Our study is tiny (2.57m by 2.23m) and windowless and also doubles up as a guest bedroom. We both dream of a dedicated studio/craftroom where we can store all or sewing, knitting, painting and modelling supplies as well as our art books in one place, but we're unlikely to get that any time soon. So we're making the best with what we've got, it's not as if either of us actually works from home!

This is the back wall of the room.



The inspiration board/random postcard holder.



The floating shelf. The boxfiles are old ones from work that were about to be thrown out, that I've painted. The desk tidy things are from ikea, and we painted them red.





Fishies.



This is Dave's work space. The desk is one of those cheapy wood ones from ikea, we've had it for years. It used to have a pod at the side for putting the computer in, but that made it too wide, so Dave took that off, and sawed the tabletop down to size. He also painted it navy.



Dave likes penguins and turtles.



The left side wall. The lights were left by the flat's previous owners, and the seating is a futon, because as I said, the room is also our guest bedroom.



This is where I write my blog from. I used to get a sore back from crouching over, so I now rest the laptop on a storage basket for height. Ginger likes to sleep here, hence the blanket.



The frame displays cd singles circa 1996-1997.



The door of the room, looking into the hall.



The right side wall, the view i have while working on my laptop. You can't really see this, the print is that Japanese wave picture but instead of water, there are bunnies. Annoyed I didn't take a closer up picture! The window is an internal one looking into the living room. It doesn't usually give any light, but at least there's some sort of connection with the outside world.



In decorating and tidying the room, These are some tips I can share:

* Start with chucking stuff, ruthlessly. I threw away about 10cds with random stuff burned on them. I don't know why I was keeping them, if I ever needed that stuff again, I would never have known that's where it was and would therefore have just gone and tracked the thing down again. Because we're not proper home workers, we don't have too much paperwork, but at work I adhere to a strict 'if its not essential, it goes' policy too.

* Everything in it's right place. Clutter is the enemy no.1 of a workspace. This means that everything that you do need to keep should be in a storage container, like my box files, and the storage underneath the fishtank, which is mainly in these ikea boxes. (It sounds like I'm being sponsored by ikea, doesn't it, the way I keep mentioning them! I'm not). All the cables for my camera, my ipod and the external harddrive are in those wicker storage baskets stored inside the coffee table so that I can access suff easily.

* Surround yourself with things you love. I'm not a fan of minimalism taken to the extreme. When I stare into space while writing, I want to see things that make me smile.

* But not too many of them. There's a balance to be struck between inspiration and clutter of course. Too many things standing about for decoration get in the way of order, and actually make you appreciate each thing that is out less, in my opinion.

* Therefore, try switching things about. This is how dave and I solve the inspiration/clutter conundrum. The inspiration board is a slowly evolving thing, with new things being added piecemeal, and old ones being removed. Plus, we switch the hung pictures around every now and then. It's nice to give yourself something new to look at every now and then!

So there you go! Any tips to add? What's your workspace like? I'd love to see some pictures, bloggy friends! Maybe I could do a roundup of people's spaces? If anyone does a post, could you link to it in the comments? Or email my pictures if you prefer - franca(dot)likes(dot)apples (at)gmail(dot)com! If I get more than three people taking part, I'll do a roundup! Woo!

How to make (long) blog posts more readable

A couple of weeks back, the Friend Friday topic was Blogging Reflections, and reading through people’s answers on what turned them off a blog post, length kept getting mentioned. I was surprised to hear how common a complaint this was, because I would never consider it a problem. Or to be more specific: Unnecessary length should be avoided, but length in and of itself is not a problem. Some of my most successful posts in terms of views and comments are very long, even by my own wordy standards. I strongly believe that you can take people with you through quite a lot of material, with the use of a few simple tricks.

So this is what today’s post is about: Hints and tips for how to make long posts more readable. I’m just going to launch straight into it:

Keep it concise

Like I said, it is important to avoid unnecessary length. A successful post should be concise (which is not the same as short) and that means avoiding two things:
(1) repetition – noone wants to read the same things three times, expressed in three very slightly different ways
(2) tangents – tangents can be charming and fun to read in some circumstances, but if the post is in danger of getting too long it’s best to pick a topic and stick with it.

The way I write is that I usually start off with a stream of consciousness rant about my chosen topic, and I usually end up with plenty of repetition and random tangents. And then I cut, cut, cut stuff out, and sometimes if it hurts my heart too much to just delete it, I turn the cut stuff into another post. But I’m ruthless in my editing! For example, this post on the oppressiveness of fashion was originally about three times the length, and had lots of sub-points about racism and sexism in the fashion industry, the sustainability of fast fashion and so on. But I took them all out because they were getting in the way of what I really wanted to say.

Keep it clear

People are generally much more likely to read something if it is clearly written, regardless of length. And I can guarantee noone wants to plow through a lengthy post if it's also difficult to read. There are many rules and pointers for writing clearly out there, which I won't go into here, but for me the single most important thing is to avoid long sentences. Long sentences are usually difficult to read and understand, particularly in English. In other languages, it possible to go on for entire paragraphs without ever placing a full stop, but in English anything longer than two lines really isn't advisable. So keep them simple, and your readers will thank you.

Make your structure easy to follow

In my experience as a reader, I am much more likely to persist with a long post if I know from the start how it's going to be structured. I want to know where in the text I am finding myself as I read.

One way of doing this is to follow the classic introduction - main part - conclusion structure: tell your reader what you're gonna tell them, tell them, then tell them what you've told them. This is undergrad essay 101. Obviously a blog post isn't an essay, and tends to be much less formal/more chatty in style. Unless you're a complete perfectionist, you'll also be spending much less time on it. But this kind of structure can still be helpful.

In terms of the introduction, it's important to get to the point of what your post is about fairly quickly. By all means have a chatty anecdote to kick things off (I often do this, as I find starting posts quite hard), but I'd recommend saying what your topic is in the first paragraph, or at the start of the second one.

For the conclusion, again I'm not talking about a formal 'In conclusion, I have argued that XXXX' but it really helps to have a summary of what's been said or a reminder of the key points. Alternatively, I sometimes highlight my key points and conclusions in bold. That way, readers can scan over them and then decide whether they want to read the whole thing properly. Here is an example of a post that both concludes at the end and highlights key points in bold.

Signposting

To keep the structure in the main part of the post clear, leave signposts around the place to let your reader know where you are. The most obvious signposts are headings, and I use these liberally, because they also break up the text (see below).

Another good way of signposting is to number the things you're talking about. There's a reason list posts like 'ten things I learned at London Fashion week' are popular, but you needn't even go as far as numbering everything in your post. Just the odd bit of numbering works too - like I did in the first paragraph under 'keep it concise'.

A more subtle form of signposting is via the opening words of paragraph. Each new paragraph should link to the one before it in some way, and it should be clear what that relationship is, eg. whether you are changing topic, continuing to talk about what you talked about in the previous paragraph, presenting an opposing point of view and so on. Opening phrases like 'However', 'Another thing that illustrates this point' etc. are more typical of formal writing, but come in handy in blog posts too.

Break up the text

This is probably the single most important thing. Continuous text can be really offputting and can make a post seem really long even if it actually isn't. I therefore try to avoid paragraphs longer than 6-8 lines and I also use an arsenal of little formatting things to break up the text:
* headings
* bullet points (numbered or not)
* lines
* empty space
* bold type

A couple of things I would avoid though is to tinker with either your font or your font size. Having different types of type usually ends up just looking messy in my opinion.

I also break things up with pictures all the time. Pictures can add a lot of actual length to a post, especially if they're big, but they are ideal for breaking up text, because they give the eye and brain a chance to deal with something other than writing. See for example this post or this one. The latter is really very long, but I think manages to still be very readable (in my opinion!).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

So there you have it: keep things concise, sentences short, think about your structure and signpost it well, and break up chunks of text into smaller digestible bits, and you're well on your way to making long posts (or any posts, really) readable, fun and informative.

What do you think? Do you use any of these things? Any other ones? Do you read long posts or do you find them too much regardless of how well formatted they are?

Picture via here.

Friend Friday: blogging reflections and top tips for a successful blog

It's Friday, time for Friend Friday! this week the questions are all about looking back over the time we've spent blogging.

How has your blog changed over the months/years you’ve been blogging?

I’ve been blogging since December 2008, so coming up for two years! Scary biscuits!

Looking back over my archives, I’m surprised actually how little has changed. I’ve just looked back over my archives and surprisingly I’m actually pretty happy with what is going on, even right at the beginning! Which is nice.

A few things that have changed:

- Content. I made a conscious decision from the start that this blog wouldn’t be a themed blog, but an assortment of lots of different things I like. As such, it’s changed emphasis quite a bit, although there’s a core of outfit posts that have stayed consistent. I used to post lots about my knitting, but I’ve also gone through periods where I haven’t knit anything for weeks and months, so that comes and goes. I used to also do some series, like flickr faves, and library corner (where I showcased coffee table books) that I now don’t do any more. I stopped mainly because other things became more important, and there was no space, rather than because they didn’t work. At the moment, I am going through a phase where I’m really interested in photography, and I just started doing the Friend Friday series (obviously!).

- Formatting. I changed my layout to three columns. Then I changed it back to two. I designed link buttons, then I switched to horizontal tabs. I’ve gone through a number of header designs. My photos are bigger now. Again, I’m not sure that the changes I made necessarily make things *better* in an objective way but what you see now is what I like right now.

- Frequency. I started doing daily posts in September 2009, which was a bit of a turning point for me. When you commit to that, it automatically makes you take things a bit more seriously.

What was one thing you did wrong in the beginning and how have you changed that?

Like I said, I’m not sure I did anything hugely wrong, but I stopped doing posts on music after I asked for feedback and a few people said that that was what they enjoyed least. To be honest, I knew they weren’t really up to standard myself. For some reason, I’m finding it harder to put my love for music into words than I do my love for clothes or design.

I also learned to chill out about posting my outfits chronologically and always reporting everything I did and took pictures of. I used to talk more about my daily activities and my private life (within limits, it was never a proper personal blog), but actually people aren’t really looking for a record of my life. I still talk about things that happen to me if they’re interesting, but I’m less completist now.

When you visit a blog what’s the greatest turn off? The thing that make you close a tab?

Poor photography, an over-busy background and layout and music playing when you open the page are the main things.

How did you find your voice?

Trial and error, and experience. Though actually, I think my voice was pretty strong from the start, maybe because I was older (27) when I started blogging. I’m quite a confident person with strong opinions on loads of stuff, quite a bit of writing experience helping me to express these opinions clearly, and I had developed a strong personal style (and outfit photography skills) through years of involvement in the wardrobe remix group on flickr before I started blogging. My attitude was always that I would do what I like and hopefully people would be interested. This is not to say I don’t listen to feedback, but it honestly never occurred to me to do kinds of posts that are generally popular but aren’t ‘me’.



If you had three pieces of advice to give to a new blogger what would those be?

1. Write what you want to read.

This relates to what I said above in relation to voice. As far as I see it, there is no point in trying to blog about what you think will be popular if it’s not something that you’re personally interested in. There are so many people out there interested in so many different things out there that even if you tried to work out what people wanted, you’d never get a clear answer. The only thing you can ever truly know is what you yourself think. So my advice would be to think about the kinds of things you like as a reader, the topics and types of posts that work for you, and then try to produce a blog that you would like to read based on that.

For example, I have always enjoyed reading ‘think pieces’, posts where the blogger takes on a big or difficult issue and really thinks it through properly. These kinds of posts are fairly rare because, as I know now, they aren’t easy and they can be extremely labour intensive to write. So I decided that that would be what I would focus on, and they’ve become the ‘arguments and musings’ series. They’re consistently the posts that get the most visits and comments, and sometimes they stimulate discussion on other blogs, which is exciting! These kind of posts is what makes my blog stand out from other lifestyle and fashion blogs. And I LOVE doing them just for the satisfaction of thinking something through properly. Even if I didn’t get a single comment, I would still do them!

2. Good photography

There’s no denying this. If you’re an outfit blogger, badly lit, badly frames photos, cluttered backgrounds etc are a huge turn off. Invest the time in skilling yourself up in photo editing and the principles of photography. There are numerous advice posts on how to take good photos out there that will help you. And just in case you’re thinking ‘Oh but I don’t have an SLR’, honestly, you do not need to spend big money. My camera is a point and shoot that cost less than £200 (Canon PowerShot SX200 IS) and I have no intention of upgrading any time soon. I achieve (mostly) good looking pictures by taking full advantage of the manual features my camera does have and editing virtually all my photos. I also do my outfit posts myself with a tripod. You definitely do not need a photographer boyfriend/husband/friend either.

3. Make friends!

Find likeminded blogs that you admire and make friends with the blogger via comments. Most people will visit the blog of any new commenter, I know I do. Commenting thoughtfully is the single best way of getting yourself noticed and its really fun! The fashion blogging community is incredibly supportive and I know I sound like a broken record, but being part of that community is just about the best thing about blogging.

A slight note of caution though. Obviously getting yourself noticed is only going to help you grow if you have the content to keep people interested once they’ve noticed you. So don’t scrimp on the time spent writing! My time is pretty limited, what with a demanding full time job and a wedding to plan, and my approach has always been to spend as long on the posts as I need to and only then going out commenting and reading. One of the reasons I’ve not joined Twitter is because I just don’t have the time for another social network, and if I did, I know my blogging output would suffer.

Did you find these tips helpful? Do you agree/disagree with any of them?

This week's random photos are Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe via here and Audrey hepburn via here.

Visit Modly Chic for the round-up of this week's posts!

Book Review: Very Vintage

When we were in Barcelona, I was spending a lot of time browsing through museum shops with lots of lovely design books. One of the ones that caught my eye was 'Very Vintage: theGguide to Vintage Patterns and Clothing', so I got it out of the library when we returned and now I'm reviewing it for you!

In the authors' own words, Very Vintage

aims to chart twentieth century fashion against socio-economicand cultural movements. The focus is how fashion was created from these events and discoveries or produced as a reaction to them. Fashion cannot be looked at in isolation and should be viewed as a series of symbols which informs the viewer of our hopes, wants and desires and where we are positioned in relation to the current cultures in which we inhabit (sic). It is these reference points which make garnments become true fashion and not some form of fancy dress.

Sounds good, doesn't it! The authors have put together a great selection of pictures from the late 19th century until today, lots of vintage photos including fashion in the street, fashion editorials and pictures of the stars that interpreted and created the fashions. There's even some drawings breaking down how key garments are constructed, though anyone looking for actual patterns will be disappointed.

Despite the ambition of the book to link fashion with its socio-cultural context, words seem secondary to the pictures. There's not that much writing and it's all pretty high level stuff, with the occassional foray into baffling amounts of detail in odd places - for example, there is a ten line paragraph on how the costume designer that won the Oscar for Funny Face should have shared her prize with Mr. de Givenchy, since he designed some of the clothes Audrey Hepburn wears in the film.

Overall though, the writing does its job. Its not enough to actually tell you anything very much about anything, but it touches on pretty much everything. All the key names, historical developments and films are referenced so that you can go off and find out more if you're so inclined.

So content-wise its pretty good, but unfortunately the same can't be said of structure and style. The book is organised both chronologically and thematically at the same time, with headings like '1930-1940: The Magic of Hollywood' or '1970-1980: From Androgyny to Jet Set'. Unfortunately that doesn't really work as the two ways of structuring the material are in conflict all the time. The actual information provided in each chapter isn't very chronological at all, for example, the chapter on 1900 to 1930 actually starts off in 1865, and the 1930s to 1940s one starts with a discussion of the origins of the Hollywood studio and star system in the 1910s and 1920s and then goes all the way through to the 80s and 90s. But because they do try to keep it chronologically to some extent, some of this stuff is then repeated later on, without any signposting or acknowledgement that this is what is happening. Some of the headings are quite random too. Theres a chapter called '1950-1960: The Two Giant Collossi' which then goes on to discuss four fashion designers, giving each a couple of pages. No mention is made of which two of these four are meant to be the Colossi.

The writing style also has something of the undergraduate essay about it, i.e. the person writing obviously knows a lot, but in the eagerness to cram as much in and use big words, the point is often lost and there is no logical flow through the text. There are lots of non sequiturs, needless repetition and odd turns of phrase like the use of 'this very day' instead of 'today'. I know Im a factual writing geek so this may not bother some people, but I found it a bit grating stylistically.

What is far more worrying though is that there are actual spelling and grammatical mistakes everywhere. There are lots of examples of sentences that have obviously been rewritten but the old parts of the phrase havent been taken out, so there are too many words, or there are words missing, or the tenses are wrong. Even the section I've chosen to quote above has one ('in which we inhabit' - someone obviously changed 'lived' to 'inhabit' and then forgot to ake out the 'in'). These are kind of things any sort of proof reading really should have turned up. And typos, including ones that arent keyboard based but make me think that the authors spelling may not be all that - for example 'stiletto heals'! Its the kind of thing you would probaby expect in a blog post, that would be dodgy in a magazine, and that is definitely unacceptable in a book, particularly one that retails for £25.

I don't want to lay into the book too much, and am resisting the temptation to give you lots and lots of examples of poorly written sentences, because its actually a great idea for a book and it has got lovely images, it's just a shame it's so poorly executed. The sloppy writing and obvious lack of editing undermine the whole effort and make the authors seem unprofessional.

So yeah, I wouldn't recommend anyone go out and buy this, though if your library stocks it, it's worth having a look for the pictures.

Can anyone recommend any similar books that I could go and have a look at and possibly review? I'd be particularly interested in ones that are heavier on the writing.

Is it worth buying more expensive nail polish?

Remember a couple of weeks ago I asked you all for nail polish recommendations? Thanks to those who replied! The overwhelming recommendation was OPI, which is apparently what a lot of salons use and I didn't even know was sold retail. But they sell it in those Sally shops, which I have avoided to date for completely irrational reasons*, so off I went to investigate and I ended up buying the light pink. My friend then bought me the white Barry M one for my birthday party, after I complained on facebook that opaque non-glittery white was hard to find.

So this ended up as a perfect compare and contrast of the two polishes to answer the question I had asked in my original request for recommendations: Is it worth spending the extra on more expensive brands?




I painted alternate nails with the OPI and with the Barry M to see what would happen over time. I briefly considered just painting each hand with a different colour, but that wouldn't have been as fair, because I'm right handed, so obviously the nails on the right hand get more wear and tear.

So without further ado, here are my conclusions:

Barry M

Price: £2.95. Can't argue with that.

Packaging: Simple and clean. Nothing exciting, but you expect that for the price, and I like it. If you were one of those people with bazillions of nail polishes, the square shape would make it easy to store.

Colour: Lots of pigment, really opaque even after one coat. The picture shows it with two coats and there is no see-through-ness at all. And actually the only matt white I've seen in all of Boots that isn't a nail tip whitener for French manicure.

Application: Not great. It's really hit and miss how much you get onto your nail, the brush affords you very little control. The polish is quite gloopy (I guess that's all the pigment) it hides at the top and you've got hardly any on the tip and then all drops down in one go, so you've got loads on your nails and it takes ages to dry. Though I should say though that I am really inexperienced at applying polish, so I'm sure someone with more skills could make it go on evenly.

Drying time: I left about twenty minutes between each coat while watching the football, so I can't really say. But because it's so easy to use too much I would say it probably makes sense to err on the side of caution here.

Durability: I applied it on Monday, and by Wednesday minor cracks were starting to appear. On Thursday, a big bit started peeling off one of my nails and I started picking at it and eventually ended up taking it all off on the Friday. That being said, I applied it to my toenails on the Saturday before, so it's been over a week and not a chip in sight.

O.P.I.

Cost: £9.50, so mid-to high end. If you know what colour you want, there's some cheaper offers on ebay and amazon though.

Packaging: Not as snazzy as you might expect for the price, it still has a simple feel to it. But compared to the Barry M the bottle does feel reassuringly heavy in your hand (why that is reassuring I don't know, but it is) and the plastic of the lid has a nice matt surface.

Colour: No opaque white to be found. Instead they had five almost identical shades of light pink called things like 'Marshmallow dreams' and 'Walking on a cloud' (these are not actual names, but you get the picture). This is the lightest shade they had, called 'Sweet Heart', though on further investigation there is actually a white shade called 'Alpine snow' wasn't in the shop. Anyway, this pink is actually a sort of French manicure-y see through shade. You need three layers to get it as opaque as in the picture. So it wasn't really what I wanted (I wanted the white of the tips to be covered up), but actually now I prefer it. It's really subtle and elegant if you only put on one coat, as I have while typing this.

Application: This is where the key difference lies. I don't know how they do it, but the brush is magical. It's really wide, so with a bit of luck you can do the entire nail in one sweep, and it distributes the polish evenly. I am really really impressed!

Drying time: Like I said, I didn't really check, but I reckon it dries pretty quickly, because the brush lets you make it go on really thin.

Durability: Some small chips near the tips by the Thursday, but unlike the Barry M, no danger of it peeling off. I took it all off and reapplied the one coat on Friday, so not sure how long it would have lasted, but I reckon at least another couple of days.

Conclusion

So there you have it! Based on those two brands, and my probably inferior application skills, my answer would be yes, it's worth spending the extra if you plan to use it for your finger nails. If it's just for toes, I would say go with the cheaper option.

* That reason being that the 2005 London bombers bought the peroxide they used to make the bombs in a Sallys. So In my mind there's a connection between Sallys and international terrorism. I know, not hugely rational.

Video post: Colour-coordinated holiday packing

Dave and I are going to Barcelona on Thursday for a week! It's my annual birthday trip - we always go away for my actual birthday (which is the 7th of June, fact fans).

I made a little video, nattering about the clothes I'm going to be taking away with me.

I haven't really filmed this as an 'advice' type video, but I just want to point out that colour-coordination is the way to go for packing for trips! Taking things only in a small number of colours (in this case, red, blue and purple) involves enough planning for holiday outfits not to seem completely random, but also gives enough flexibility to change outfits at the last minute, as mood and weather dictates. I never get the approach of laying out entire outfits in advance and packing them on hangers. How do people know what exactly they'll be doing and what the weather will be?

What is your approach for packing for trips?

Technical notes:

I had vaguely planned to do this as a 'haul' style video, with me holding things up to the camera. But it's harder than you might think, because for big things you need to obviously be a quite a distance from the camera, so that they can be fully seen. And it's a logistical nightmare, having everything close enough to reach without going off camera! Plus, it would have taken forever. So I decided to just show you everything laid out on the floor.

As you can see, I'm using vimeo (thanks for the tip, Diana!), and I've also filmed this on the lowest quality setting on my camera. This reduced the upload time to about twenty minutes, but obviously doesn't look as nice! What do people think?

How to edit outfit photos

People often tell me they like my photos, and so I thought I'd let you into my 'secret' - it's all in the editing. Of course, the best way to have pictures is to take good photos in the first place. That means investing in a good camera, learning how to use it properly, finding a good uncluttered background with lots of natural light, never ever using flash unless it is absolutely utterly necessary. If you have a good photo you can basically just stick it online as it is, saving lots and lots of time.

BUT. Sometimes you don't have a great photo because you left it too late for the ideal lighting conditions, there wasn't time to get the framing right, or your camera just won't do what you want it to. Then a good photo editor is your friend.

Here's an example of a recent outfit pic that wasn't quite there where I ended up doing a bit of adjusting.



Here's the photo. As you can see, the framing's all wrong, there's a funny shadow on the left, there's mess all over the floor and the colours are a bit dull (this always happens with green incidentally). So here is what I did, using Photoshop. You can use other photo editing programmes, including free ones, for most of this I think, but Photoshop is the one I use.




Ok then. Step 1. Preliminary cropping via Image/Crop. I just wanted to get the worst of the mess on the floor out of the picture and focus on what this picture was about - me. I left enough space on all sides though for more cropping later on.




Step 2. Upping the contrast via Image/Adjustments/Brightness/Contrast. If I could only edit in one way, this would be it. It's hugely helpful when you have a lot of bright colours that have ended up a bit washed out, it makes everything clearer and colours brighter without changing them significantly. I very rarely NOT change the contrast on my photos.

At this stage I could also have adjusted the brightness (ie. lightness, though that is something else in Photoshop), but it wasn't necessary in this case.




Step 3. Adjusting the colour via Image/Adjustments/Selective Color. My main issue was the colour of the sofa, which looks a lot paler than in real life, so I made all reds in the picture more magenta and slightly more yellow. This also made the maroon shades on my clothes more true to life.




Step 4. Adjusting the colours in parts only. If I hadn't planned on making this How to guide, I probably would have left the colours as they were then, but since I wanted to show the possibilities, I also adjusted the colour of the scarf.

To do this, I selected the area of the scarf only, with the Magnetic Lasso tool on the toolbar, right clicked and selected Layer via Copy. This creates a new layer on top of the original photograph, which you can edit without affecting the rest of the photo. Again using Selective Color, I made all neutrals (i.e. greys) more cyan and more yellow. I've found that my camera always makes greens look grey, so adjusting the colour of the neutral is more effective than adjusting the green itself, which hardly makes any difference. The layer is important here, because there are neutrals everywhere and if I had adjusted the neutrals throughout the picture I basically would have ended up giving everything a green tint.



And Finally, Step 5. More cropping. I played around a little bit with various ways of cropping it, and ended up going in quite close, getting rid of the rest of the mess on the floor, and the shadow on the wall.

So there we are, compare and contrast. Better isn't it?



As I final final step, I added a border with Piknic, the photo editing software that is attached to Flickr. It's free, and as far as I can see will let you do most of the things I was talking about above, except the layering. Since I'm lucky enough to have Photoshop, I'm not really too knowledgeable about free editing software, but there are plenty out there. Does anyone have any recommendations?



I hope that was useful!