Today's Nails

Apologies for the quality of the second photograph, was taken on my iPhone & to blow it up blog-size, the pixels went waaaah.

But I change my nails really quite frequently, because working in retail they chip within days! So I'm gonna start posting them a little more, as I never paint them particularly plainly. I just got a new double-ended dotting/brush tool for my nails, so I'm experimenting with that a bit too, hence the dots!

At the moment I'm trying to be really good with my money as I'm saving for a new car, but I'm having a little hiccup this evening as I've found a little goldmine of stuff I love on eBay. So i'll post a bit more about new purchases soon (:

Hope you're all good.

Who Wears The Trousers?

From left: MANGO Blue Tapered Trouser // MANGO Moroccan Print Trouser // ASOS Coral Heel //

HOBBS Blue Precious Trouser // FOREVER21 Watercolour Trouser // NW3 Diamond Print Trouser

I'm jumping back into blogging folks! Head first, no hard-hat. Sorry for the absence, I had just lost some of the joy that posting on here gave me.. I felt a bit disheartened by how amateur my blog looked to me, compared to others. But I was looking at people who have spent years building their blogs up to thousands of followers & how their blogs currently looked, so I scrolled back to when they first started, and this helped massively, because it made me realise it doesn't happen at once. Blogs rarely start out looking incredible, it takes time and effort and if I stick with it I can make it better gradually, hopefully! I also felt I wasn't posting regularly because my heart wasn't in it & these reasons led to me taking a step back. But alas I've returned!With a much clearer idea of what I want to be posting, lots of ideas in my head and I'm gonna try to only post content that I would want to read myself. 

And right now, I'm very partial to a printed trouser.

So the above ones are some of my favourites, but I still haven't found a pair that look quite right on me. I am yet to try on the moroccan printed trouser from Mango, which are a personal fave. I also found this beaaaut of a blazer from Topshop today, which is enblazened with the most perfect pattern. I would love to find matching cigarette trousers and I can just imagine they would make the perfect dose of garishness when paired together, with a slouchy, plain white tee underneath. And I'm having trouble deciphering whether these heels from Asos are incredibly beautiful or something the 80's has thrown up! Possibly beautiful?!

A bit about me, now I've returned from the dark side. I've been super busy at Hobbs, and I'm actually pleasantly surprised by a few of their recent pieces (the blue trousers above being one). I'm also trying to move up within the company if I can. Visual Merchandising is where I wanna be! But a position has opened up elsewhere, within a different store for Assistant Manager & I've been recommended for the role (with training obv), but this was a massive surprise, having only been in retail for less than a year.

I've also been hitting up London with Oli, where we did the whole touristy thing (London Eye and everything) and then paid a visit to Brick Lane which was super lovely!

And hopefully I'll be going back up to London on Tuesday for a press day, and obviously a mandatory trip to Oxford Street.

I'm on Instagram now, my name is indigosilkblog so feel free to follow, and my Twitter is the same! Click the button at the side to follow. 

P.S If you've read all of this waffle, please give yourself a firm handshake from me, and treat yourself to a Freddo. You deserve it.

What I Wore Today

A pretty boring post, but this is what I wore today to pop into town and go and visit Oli :) Had quite an extensive list of things to do today because it's my parents 25th wedding anniversary next week so I've had lots of presents and cards to buy!

I'll also be wearing this to the cinema tonight to see Life of Pi with Oliver, finally :)

By the way if you have Instagram, my username is indigosilkblog & as I've been so busy/rubbish at blogging recently, that's getting more of my attention, so go follow me :)

The shirt is from Forever 21 & I don't wear it enough so I'm showing it some love today, and these are my new jeans from Topshop. Such an apprehensive purchase, but SO pleased with them! Fit like a glove on my stumpy little legs. I've tried Primark, H&M & New look before & none even come close!

DIY: Leather Clutch Bag (for £3, maadness)

So every DIY post I do, I've vowed to do for less than a fiver! And that is what I shall do.

So if you're all about saving the pennies, then this not only will help, but will give you somewhere to put them too!

I've been loving basic-simple items recently, and the beautiful DIY projects from Love Aesthetics (a truly beautiful blog) are really inspiring me to get creative. Have a look at a few of her amaazing ideas:

Metallic Leather Clutch Bag

Leather/Clear Envelope Clutch

Ferrero Rochet Box- revamped (I want to make one into a box-clutch)

Along with this beaaautie of a bag from Zara's basics range.

So I found a nice large piece of black leather in a charity shop whilst I was working in Walton on Thames for  £2!! So naturally I had to think up something interesting to do with it & I decided to make myself a clutch bag, and here's how!

You'll need:

* To save money, I bought this naff make-up bag for £1 from Poundland & took the zip off, because zips bought from craft shops can be a bit pricey! And it meant I had a template to work with!!

Using chalk, draw around your template, or mark out an area big enough on the back of your fabric, leaving a 1cm edge to sew the seam. Then cut the fabric, following the lines you've drawn.

Fold the fabric in half so that the inside of the bag is on the outside (Hopefully this does make sense!)

Pin the fabric where you want to sew the seam. Make sure the line is nice & straight, as this is your guideline.

 If you have a sewing machine, this will take you 5 minutes. But if like me, you try to avoid the things like the plague then a needle & thread will do fine! 

Next, pinch each corner and turn the bag inside out, so it's the right way!

Once you've done this & flipped it the right way, you'll need to attach the zip! This was the hardest part I found, mainly because I ran out of black thread & impatiently swapped to a red wine coloured one! But managed to hide it thankfully. 

Once you've sewn one side of the zip on, it should look like this! Do the same on the other side, stitching the seam about half the way in on the zip itself.

So once you've done that, and neatened it all up a bit, it should look something like this! You could spend a bit more on a nicer zip if you wanted, a chunky metal one would be nice too. And you can use any fabric you want, I just liked the simplicity of black leather. And now I've got a bag to match my watch, as they were both made from the same piece of leather (:

There you have it, £3! BARGAAAIN

*Apologies for the inconsistent lighting, I made this over the course of a few days at Lil's house as well as mine.

Have you got any interesting DIY ideas you've done? Or anything you'd like me to do perhaps?

You can even challenge me if you like, to make something, but to keep it under a fiver!

Watch This!

Sorry if that title is just ridiculously horrendous & tacky, but 10 minutes have passed & it's the best I've got.

As you might have guessed by now, I'm not one to spend huge amounts on clothes, or anything really, so when I buy something, I like to get as much use as possible from it.

I bought a watch about a year ago from a car boot sale. I paid £1 for it, and have been completely in love with it ever since. It has a clean, simplistic face and the metal it's set on has turned a nice coppery-rose gold colour from wear.

But upsettingly, the tanned leather watchstrap that came with it has been slowly breaking, and finally last week it dropped off my wrist, having worked it to death. This thing was literally in peices!

But not being one to throw something away in a hurry, I decided to give it a re-vamp. I had a scrap piece of black leather left over from a recent DIY project I've been working on (which I'll post tomorrow). So I snipped off what was left of the old strap & cut a long strip of black leather to thread through the watch. I'm pretty happy with how it's come out!

What's the best thing you've ever re-vamped?