Between those gaps and the holes

Wahey! Two blog posts in two days? I'm back baby! Having a very chilled out Saturday today, which is nice - tidying, catching up on TV and doing a bit of blogging. Might even film a video later, depending on how the light in my room is. Hope you're all having lovely weekends whatever you're up to!

I'm currently loving;

Downton Abbey. I've been majorly slow to jump on the bandwagon with this one, as it's been out for ages but it was just one of those things I never got around to watching it. Anyway, my Mum got the first series on DVD for Christmas and I am ADDICTED. It's so good! Even Joe's enjoying it and he really didn't think he would as he's not a big fan of period dramas. Give it a go if you've not done so already!

2012. I've decided that this year is going to be the year I finally sort my life out and become a proper, real grown up. I've already got a new job lined up (starting in a few weeks!) and Joe and I have been house-hunting like crazy. It's all very exciting but quite daunting at the same time, part of me thinks I'm Peter Pan and will never really grow up but I think it's time to accept that. actually, I'm 24 now and need to take on some responsibilities instead of procrastinating all the time. Aimée, who writes The Lost Girl, posted four new year's resolutions and one of them really stood out to me - Be Pro-active. This is something I really need to work on, so I've decided to steal borrow it and make it my resolution too! Thanks Aimée!

My babies. I know I said in my last post that I'm not feeling particularly inspired when it comes to nail art at the moment, but I'm still loving painting my nails as much as ever. I realised recently that I've always loved collecting things - throughout my childhood I went through phases where I was obsessed with, in no particular order, Pogs, Polly Pockets, Puppy In My Pockets, My Beautiful Horses, Beanie Babies and, for a while, I had absolutely loads of those weird alien toys that came in Frufoo yoghurts - anyone remember them? Anyway, now the collecting obsession seems to have moved on to nail varnishes and I can only see this getting worse before it gets better...

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I was a bit hesitant to go and see this, because, having read the book, I was scared that it was going to be very hard to watch. To be fair, it was quite horrible in parts but I knew what to expect so was prepared when those bits came up. I did enjoy it though - Rooney Mara is absolutely brilliant. They did change a few details, but for the most part, the film stays very true to the book, which is always a major concern of mine when a book is made into a film. I know a lot of people think it's mad that the Swedish films were only released in the past couple of years, so it's silly to do a remake already, but I guess it means that all of those people who don't like to watch films with subtitles can still see it? Obviously, it's really just another example of Hollywood cashing in on a successful foreign film (Vanilla Sky, The Ring, Let The Right One In, etc etc) but I did actually think it was very well done, so I can't criticise the Hollywood bigshots too much!

This video. Joe's band, Man Get Out, are launching their new single at the end of the month and they've just done a music video to go with it. I think it's rather bloody good, if I do say so myself! If you're based in or near Liverpool and fancy seeing some very lovely live music, the launch is taking place on January 28th at Mojo and is being presented by BBC Radio 2 DJ, Janice Long, who's a big fan of the boys. (shameless plug over...)

I'm currently hating;

Erm... nothing really! Happy days!

"The prettier the flower, the farther from the path"

Bonjour my little chickens! How are you all? Good weekend? I certainly hope so! This weekend I mainly did a lot of eating (surprise surprise), some singing and dancing (at Into The Woods rehearsals) and plenty of snuggling up with Joe watching stuff on 4OD/BBC iPlayer. Now that the nights are getting darker so much earlier and it's SO DAMN COLD there is literally nothing better than a good snuggle I say!

So this is my November Love/Hate post, I've completely given up trying to come up with monthly pun titles, my brain just isn't as good as it used to be...

I'm currently loving;

Hollyoaks. I'm not even embarassed to admit this. Yes, it's mainly just a lot of stupidly pretty people whose acting skills leave A LOT to be desired but OHMYGOD how good was the Halloween episode?! The whole Silas-is-a-serial-killer storyline went on for way too long, but by golly they did end it very well. If you don't watch it, you won't have a clue what I'm talking about, but in a nutshell; there was an old man called Silas, who was secretly a serial killer and on Halloween he accidentally killed HIS OWN DAUGHTER because he thought she was Lyndsey because they were both wearing the same Halloween costume!!! Dun dun dun!

ANTM. Season 17 of America's Next Top Model (yes, that's right, there have been SEVENTEEN seasons of this show and it only started in 2003) is absolutely brilliant. Basically, Tyra "I'm literally completely mad" Banks has brought back contestants from all the previous seasons and is forcing them to take part in just the most ridiculously bizarre tasks ever. The best one was when all of the models had to write a song about themselves and then Tyra told them they also had to incorporate the lyrics "Pot Ledom, that's Top Model backwards" into their songs. Just... so very mad and so very wonderful.

Glamour magazine freebies. Even though it meant having to buy a magazine with Old Misery Face on the cover (I don't know why she irritates me so much, but she really does), I managed to get hold of a free Nails Inc polish. There are four to collect; Picadilly Circus - a dark plum, Basil Street - a nude beige, Tate - a dark red and Victoria - a red/black (oxblood?) which is the one I got. I LOVE FREEBIES!

A blast from the past. I spotted these in Poundland last week and couldn't resist. Please don't think I'm some kind of baking heathen (I know how bloggers are supposed to be excellent bakers, but quite frankly, I'm just not) but these reminded me of when I was little and used to go to my Nan's house every Saturday. She'd buy My Little Pony cupcake kits and I remember how amazed I was the first time she explained that the little stickers you decorated the cakes with were made of rice paper. Paper you can eat. PAPER YOU CAN EAT!

Beyonce's new video. How flippin' gorgeous is this woman?! I think the styling for this video, and the makeup in particular, is just stunning. Apparently everything she's wearing in the video is from American Apparel, so if you wanted to recreate the video, look for look, you literally could do that. Not that that wouldn't be a weird thing to do, but if you wanted to, you could do it.

I'm currently hating;

My hair. I feel like I desperately need a new 'do, but I'm so darn indecisive. It's a tricky one because it's naturally curly, which limits what styles would really work (for example, I can't have a fringe because I'd either have to straighten it every day, or clip it back, which kind of defeats the point). Also, I don't really want to lose much of the length, because I like that when it's straight, it reaches really quite far down my back. I'm also a bit scared of hair dye, because once you start dying, you can't really stop. Basically, I need a style that works for long, naturally curly hair, that can be worn straight or curly and doesn't require much maintaining at all. Does anyone have the answer? No? Right, I'm off to buy a selection of wigs instead...

Bit o' this, bit o' that...

There I was, all smug because everyone around me was getting ill, going on about how my daily Effervescent Vitamin C Tablets have made me completely invincible, when suddenly I started feeling a bit grotty...

I'm not even THAT ill; just a bit snuffly/sore throat-y but I HATE it. Whoever the sneezey bastard was who gave me this cold, know this, you're on my list you germ spreading little monster!

Anyway, that's enough of that. This is just a quick update really as I slipped off the radar last week. The mean reason behind that was this;

Remember how I said I'm in a glee club? Well the glee club is a part of What We Did Next; a Liverpool-based theatre company, and last week I was helping backstage during their production of Spring Awakening. What a fantastic show! It was so much fun to be doing something theatre-y again and to get to listen to lovely live musical theatre songs! If you've not heard of it, search for Spring Awakening on youtube, it's amazing. Lea Michele starred in it on Broadway!

In other news, Operation Foundation-Free February is going ok-ish. I'm not finding it quite as difficult as I expected to, although I am spending a lot more time on my concealer than I usually do. I did kind of cheat on Saturday night as I went out to celebrate the last night of SA and decided to put fake tan on my face. Does that make me a cheat? It was only a bit... mixed with moisturiser... I won't do it again... probably... :P

Two weeks ago I bought series 3 of The Mighty Boosh on DVD and I've been watching it a little bit obsessively ever since because it's mad and brilliant. I've watched all the episodes (there's only six in the series) plus all the special features and possibly one of my favourite things on the DVD is this music video for the Blue Song by Mint Royale;

Oh Noel, how I love thee, you are so attractive in an odd way. I was talking to my friend about people we fancy and by the end of the conversation, her general opinion of me was that I have seriously STRANGE taste in guys. I'd agree with this to an extent; I have been guilty of some weird crushes in the past, but come on, I'm not the only one out there who fancies Noel Fielding am I? AM I?!

when I look to you, you look so bored

Despite the fact that I get irrationally angry with Zooey Deschanel's character in (500) days of Summer (says a lot about my past relationships I think), I do love her quite a lot. She's just so darn cute and cool and pretty and has nice hair and wears lovely clothes AND she can sing! In fact, have you ever noticed how many of her films she sings in? Well I've not counted, but it's a lot of them. In fact she sings so well, that's she's even in a band. If you don't already know about them, they're called She & Him - it's just Zooey and a guy called Matt Ward and the sound is kind of gentle, folky pop. What I really like about them is that everything's very simple. By simple I mean, they're just very much 'about the music'. And I mean that in the least pretentious way possible. There's not a lot of production on their tracks, it's mostly just voices and instruments; maybe it makes me sound like an old woman, but most of the time I hate when artists do loads of post-production on songs and use all that computery/technical/synthy stuff (see how I really know what I'm talking about here?) - why can't they just sing?! Anyway, She & Him's sound is very pure and Zooey's voice is dreamy. Also, she and Matt do most of the backing vocals themselves too - they're very good at harmonies (something which always impresses me, because I'm pretty shit at them). Also, their two albums are simply called Volume One and Volume Two. And they don't have a load of posey photos in their album sleeves - they're just illustrated with cute, whimsical drawings (not that I have an issue with artists being pictured on their own records - it wasn't that long ago I was gushing over Paloma Faith's album images). And the actual CD itself just comes in a little card sleeve, rather than a plastic case. See what I mean? It's all very simple. Just music for the sake of music. There's something very refreshing about that, don't you think?

Cover and insert from Volume One, designed by Maggie Fost

Cover from Volume Two, designed by Kate Quinby

Anyway, if you do nothing else this evening, watch this video - I defy you not to love Zooey!

Diamond girl who could talk for hours

On Friday, I headed into town just to buy a couple of things that I actually needed, but then did my usual trick of suddenly remembering that I have money again and spent a whole lot more of it than I should have done. I think I've mentioned it before, but one of the shops I should never be allowed into EVER is HMV. There is always some kind of sale or offer on and, because I'm obsessed with buying DVDs, I quite often end up standing in there for an hour, pondering over which 4 DVDs to get for £20. I went in to buy the Paloma Faith album, which I've been meaning to buy for a while, but somehow managed to leave with both the album and this;

To be fair, because of all the saleness, both the album and boxset only came to £22, which is pretty good when you consider the boxset contains 7 DVDs. However, at this point I had already spent a good deal of money in Boots, bought two pairs of shoes in Primark AND owed Liv money for the Particuliere, so I probably could have done without the trip to HMV. But let's not worry too much about my scary spending habits and instead focus on lovely, lovely Marilyn. I briefly mentioned my love for Marilyn here; she is definitely my favourite Hollywood icon. My sister and I had an argument about her the other day as Liv favours Audrey Hepburn and thinks that watching any Marilyn film is painful because she was such a bad actress. I, of course disagree in a big way; I honestly think she had the most amazing screen presence and a brilliant sense of humour. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot are two of my absolute favourite films, I just find myself smiling all the way through them. The boxset I bought is actually Volume Two of "The Collection", they didn't have Volume One, but I'll no doubt buy it at some point. As I said, it contains 7 DVDs, most of which are Marilyn films I've not seen before, so I plan to work my way through them over the next few weeks and enjoy a bit of old Hollywood glamour and sexist stereotyping. Lovely.

Yesterday, I watched How To Marry A Millionaire, the title says it all; it's about three models who are on a mission to find rich husbands. (ever noticed how many Marilyn films involve her trying to find a rich husband?! She's certainly not the best example of a strong, independant woman, but I guess that's old-Hollywood for you...) Marilyn, playing Pola Debevoise, probably has the smallest part of the three leads; (the others are Lauren Bacall and Betty Grable) the main angle of her storyline is that she needs to wear glasses because her eyesight is so poor, but refuses to let men see her wearing them, (because "men aren't attentive to girls who wear glasses" apparently) so spends a large part of the movie bumping into things. Fortunately, love conquers all and she meets a man who finds her more attractive with her glasses on and they get married. And he doesn't even have any money. Well done Pola, well done.

As with all of these old movies, the fashion is fabulous and Marilyn looks stunning throughout;

Marilyn as Pola, Lauren as Schatze and Betty as Loco. For some reason they all have really weird names...

They both wear glasses! It's a match made in Heaven!

I think these specs are adorable, I'm very tempted to get some myself.

As well as all the incredible clothes, I always find myself distracted by the hair and makeup in old movies. It was always so sophisticated; hair was coiffed and curled to perfection and the makeup was simple but sexy, with fluttery lashes and bold red lips. I love how this trend for 40s and 50s styling is making a comeback today, with a lot of stars choosing to go for old-Hollywood glamour when on the red carpet at various events (think Christina Hendricks at the Golden Globes and Cameron Diaz at the Oscars). This look has also become really popular with the rise of Burlesque, with people like Dita Von Teese championing the classic glamour of the 40s; porcelain skin, strong, sculpted brows and flawless hair.

Even though, at first glance, this look appears to be quite minimal and simplistic, I'd imagine there's actually a lot of work involved, especially with the hair. Dita is never seen looking anything other than immaculate, so imagine how long it must take her to get ready in the morning!

Someone else who embraces the whole burlesque/old-school glamour look, though she brings a distinctly modern twist to it, is Paloma Faith. As I said, I've just bought her new album and I thought I'd share the photos from it because I think the styling is just beautiful.

The album cover is probably my least favourite of all the images but those tattoos are very Chanel. In fact, her album was released before the Chanel show took place so you could say that she's the one who set the trend...

Excellent eyebrows, Paloma, truly excellent.

Just hanging about in the grass with her accordion, you know how it is.

These are my two favourites I think. The hair is gorgeous - I find it so difficult to create loose waves like that. Any tips?

Wow, I didn't intend for this post to be so long, it was originally going to just be about Paloma (isn't that a nice name by the way? I may call my first child Paloma, regardless of whether it's a boy or a girl...) with just a brief mention of Marilyn, but ah well, this is what happens when it's a Sunday morning and there are so many pretty pictures out there!

All Paloma images are scans from the album "Do You Want The Truth Or Something Beautiful?" which I thoroughly recommend! The Marilyn and Dita images were all found on Google.

That Friday Feeling

It's Friday afternoon, whooooo yeah!

Let's have some music to celebrate;

Zooey Deschanel = Babe

Why's she dressed like a mint imperial?

Zut alors! I didn't realise how long it'd been since my last post - bad Little Curly Girl, this really will not do.

I don't have much of an excuse except that I went to London last week, came back and then was back down there again before I had time to really think about it.

It's now 1.20am and I need to rest my head, so I'm going to try and keep this short, but I've got much to speak of so let's just see how it goes, shall we?

First off, the Topshop sale started last week, and while I didn't manage to get hold of a cheap blazer (they had a few but sadly not in my size), I did buy a new dress and some jingly jangly earrings;

Not sure if you can really see from the photos (courtesy of topshop.com), but the bottom is all hitched up, kind of like a saloon girl or a lady pirate. You can never have too many black dresses, especially not ones that are as versatile as this and at £15 it pretty much would have been a criminal offence not to buy it. The earrings I bought aren't on the website, so I'll show them in another post - can't be bothered getting all snap-happy now. But rest assured they are jangly and brilliant.

All in all, I was impressed with the sale; if I'd had more money and the shop hadn't been so goddamn hot and hectic, I'd have probably tried on and spent more.

Now that was the Liverpool store. While killing some time on Monday afternoon in London, I took an eye-opening trip to the Oxford Street store.

Oh. Sweet. Kittens. I can't believe I've never been there before. It's just...so...BIG! They have two basements - you go down once, then you go down again! There was so much to look at! So many brands and concessions and vintage things and shoes and they have a Nails INC and an eyebrow threading studio and a place where you can get your hair blow dried! And they have toilets! AND a cafe! A cafe INSIDE Topshop! You could basically live there and maintain a perfectly groomed, stylish life. That is, until the security guards realised that the "Topshop hermit", which they had previously thought was just a myth conjured up by busy mothers trying to frighten their children into not wandering away from the changing rooms, was actually a real thing, living on bagels and dancing around the store at night wearing Sass & Bide jeans and Johnny Loves Rosie hair accessories.

But I digress. I didn't actually buy anything in the London Topshop, even though the sale was massive and I'm sure I could have found many wonderful things had I stayed longer, but I didn't really have time as I had to get across London to meet a certain Ealing-residing lady to go to a concert. Or 'gig' as the young folks say.

After a brief mishap which involved me firstly getting lost on Oxford Street trying to find the entrance to the tube and then getting trapped in rush hour traffic while underground, I finally met up with my lady friend and we made our way to the Soho Theatre to see the lovely Camille O'Sullivan.

Camille O'Sullivan is the sort of person who, if she was living in a 1940s cheesy American film, she would walk past a group of men and they'd stop and stare and then say "What a woman!" just like that.

Basically I'd like to be her. She's fabulous. I could go into great detail about how amazing the show was, but I was meant to be keeping this short and there's already quite a lot of stuff about her on the Internet, written by people who probably know much more about music than I do. But I do urge you to check her out if you haven't already because she is something special. Beautiful voice, beautiful character.

What I am going to talk about though, is her style. You can probably tell from the pictures above, that there's definitely an element of burlesque and old-style glamour there. But she wasn't quite as polished as some of those other ladies (Dita Von Teese et al), there was something a bit more shabby chic about her; pretty much everything she wore was a bit old or vintage, her shoes were worn down, her dress looked damaged and at one point she wore a kimono that had makeup stains on the back. Yet she looked stunning and I found that whole 'give a damn, I'm going to wear this coz I love it, not coz it's fashionable/new/clean' attitude so intriguing.

I very rarely shop for vintage clothing, partly because I never find anything that fits me and partly because I think it's difficult to find really good quality vintage; some of it just looks old and faded and scruffy and that's never really been my thing. But seeing how Camille could take all that worn out stuff and still look glamourous and sexy was just so interesting and it made me think of that kind of bohemian/gypsy/Moulin Rouge type thing, where it's more of a case of wearing whatever you could get your hands on and still looking damn cool. I searched for some photos of this sort of ragamuffin, gypsy, scavenger style, hoping that maybe I'd come across some fashion editorials that played with these ideas, but I couldn't find anything that went along with what I had in mind. This image from The Terrible Infants, a show I saw last summer in Edinburgh, is probably the closest thing to ragamuffin chic I could find;

Anyway, as I didn't manage to find any photo shoots which featured this kind of style, I'm thinking I might rope my sisters into doing one with me; my wardrobe is full of things that I think would work in this context, and I'll use this old nursery rhyme as inspiration;

Hark, hark, the dogs do bark

The beggars are coming to town.

Some in rags and some in jags

And one in a velvet gown

I'll keep you posted on my progress!

Leona?

Is it just me or is there something strange about the cover for the "Deluxe Edition" of Leona Lewis's album, Spirit?

Here's the original, with Leona looking how she always looks, all curly and pretty-eyed -

Lovely

But I spotted the new version in HMV recently and didn't even realise it was her until I read her name;

Leona? Is that you?!

Ok, maybe you can argue that her hairstyle and hair colour plus the angle of her face are the main contributers to her looking so unlike herself. But compare the above photo with this one, from The Evening Standard, October 2008, where she's in a similar pose and with similarly styled hair and the difference is fairly obvious...

Whichever way you look at it, she is quite unusual looking as she's got a long face and wide-set features. I think she's beautiful but not traditionally so, and that's what I like about her. But her new album cover screams 'airbrushing', (or drastic wait loss a la Beyonce in Deja Vu, but I don't think that's it). I mean, her face just looks smaller! It's like they've shaved off the bottom of her jaw and chin!

Now I've always said that if 'face reduction surgery' was possible, I'd be all for it, as I have a face of epic proportions, but as far as I know, it's not possible, which leads me back to the airbrushing. I know everyone does it these days, but she just looks so drastically different. It begs the question "why?" because she looked gorgeous on the original cover anyway!

I blame America...

WHY?!

Lady Gaga, I know I'm a bit slow on the uptake but I'm finally paying attention to you and very much appreciate that you are extremely cool. I'm a sucker for a quirky girl, I hold my hands up. But why Lady Gaga, when you're so stylish and quirky and wonderful in all other ways did you decide to go for the boring, dance/pop/electro route with your music?!
I ask this because, having seen this video;



it's quite clear that the acoustic version of Poker Face is so much better than the one that was actually released! And she's got such a good voice! Silly, very silly.
Either way, I bloody love that bow-bun. Do you think that's her real hair?!