I have no rose tinted tales from the nineties for you today only an outfit...
Vintage 70s suede jacket , 60s dress, 50s booties, 90s lurex jumper, M&S tights, knitted mohair hat, soapstone & macrame earrings, a plethora of bangly things (all thrifted from car boot sales and markets)
We went for a quick stroll around the park earlier and it was VERY cold.
I forgot to bring my gloves, so by the time we got to the park I had what I would describe as "hypothermic hands".
Last time I felt like my hands were going to break clean off was in February last year when I was kneeling on a training platform at the bottom of Wraysbury lake.
The water was three degrees Celsius and my life was flashing in front of my eyes.
Still one of the best experiences I had in 2012.
I'm absolutely hankering to go diving again...hurry up spring!
Back in the
autumn of ‘92 something happened that would change my music taste forever.
Up until
then I'd pretty much been a pop chart follower & my record collection played
host to some of the most dire music ever made.
One afternoon I
was on my way to a local café where a little cluster of my classmates used to hang
out after school, when I spotted a new record store.
It looked really groovy from the outside and the scent of burning incense drew me in.
I wasn't going to buy anything but I left with two albums, which
were
'Nirvana –
Nevermind' & 'Pearl Jam –Ten'.
I wasn't even
into that kind of music then but the owner of the shop was so convinced that I’d
fall in love with them that he even told me that I could bring them back for a full refund if I didn't.
I brought them
home & listened to them all weekend, then I went back into the shop on the following Monday & shook the dude’s hand.
After that pop
was dead to me, I weeded out all the inane crap to make room for proper music.
I was an alternative rock convert, hallelujah ;)
The record store became a regular haunt for me and my mates.
The owner had an uncanny ability to unite people
with music that they never thought they'd like; he also had a really
infectious love of rock music & an almost encyclopedic knowledge of bands.
It was an exciting time of my life and one that deserved a more kick-ass soundtrack than the ten a penny pop I'd previously favoured and a kick-ass soundtrack is just what I got.
Later that year I bought the first album by 'Rage Against The Machine' and my life was never the same again ;)
The last record that I
bought from the store, before I moved away from Sweden in ’93 was ‘The The – Dusk’
which is still one of my favourite albums.
I love all the
songs on this album and I think they've kept fresh.
What 90s albums do you have that you can still listen to and enjoy all the way through?
I’ll leave you
with another wonderful song by 'The The', enjoy…
After waxing lyrical about the overlay function on PicMonkey earlier, I decided to go one further and do a basic tutorial.
It really is easy peasy lemon squeezy ;)
I chose a photo of my mum from her modelling days in the late 50s & a photo that I took in Eastbourne last year.
As they both have a neutral & uncluttered background they are easier to blend together.
I also used a plain white base image to layer the pics on but you don't have to, I just like doing it this way cause it offers more scope of movement.
So here's my little tutorial...
Find two images that you want to merge together and a plain white base image if you want.
Go on to PicMonkey and click the 'Edit a Photo' option. I chose to work on a white base image but you can just open one of your photos instead.
Now I have opened my base image and I want to add my two pics onto it. I do that by going to the 'Overlays' tool, fifth icon from the top on the left hand side of your screen and click the 'Your Own' option at the top.
Here I've added my two pics to my base image and now I can start having some fun with them.
In order to really blend the two images together, the best course of action is to tweak around with the fade slider and the blend modes. There is also a handy eraser tool.
Lined up and blended to my liking. With some images it is quite difficult to completely get rid of the seams where the two images overlap.
Now I want to crop the layered image , so I click the top icon, then simply adjust & apply.
If you want to add more effects to the image, you can do so by clicking on the second icon from the top to access some awesome stuff. Not all of the effects will be suitable for your new image cause they make the overlap seams show up again...play around with it :)
You can also add a frame to your image by clicking the sixth icon from the top to access frames.
As a final touch you can also add some text by clicking the 'P' icon to access loads of cool fonts.
When you are happy, save your masterpiece by clicking the 'Save ' button above your image and save photo.
All done, now you can make someones day by posting your good work onto their FB page or sending it to them in an e-mail ;)
I'm sure most you clever cookies already know about PicMonkey but just in case there is still someone out there unaware of its awesomeness, I thought I'd better do a quick blog about it.
I've been using the same antiquated photo editing software that came with our very first scanner for years; I'm actually too embarrassed to tell you how many, it's that long.
I just got used to it (read:LAZY) and thought that learning anything new would be a complete hassle, so I didn't.
I was always admiring photos on other peoples blogs, convinced that they had all been edited by Photoshop wizards using mega expensive software.
Imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon PicMonkey which is a partly free photo editing website.
The service is a so-called 'freemium' with a whole bunch of ad-supported features that you can use to your hearts content at no cost and some premium features that you can only access though paying a monthly membership.
So far I have only used the free stuff but I have to say that I am very impressed with how the pictures are coming out and needless to say my old editing software has finally been retired....and there was much rejoicing!
I have been playing around with it for the past few days and my favourite feature is the 'Overlay' cause you can add your own.
So now I can finally create those dreamy layered pics that I've been hankering over.
It's pretty straightforward, even I (a complete cave dweller when it comes to stuff like this) was able to get a handle on it after a few hours.
So if you haven't used it before, pop over and have a play around, I'm sure you won't regret it.
Just in case you are wondering, PicMonkey did not give me a bagful of cash to sing their praises (if only), I genuinely want to spread the word about this service cause it ROCKS & a lot of it is FREE which in my book makes it even better!
Are you using PicMonkey already, if so for how long have you been using it and would you recommend paying the monthly $4.99 for the Royale membership?
One of my layered images ;)
HAPPY FRIDAY everybody, I can almost smell the weekend ;)
I’ve had the black velour jumpsuit that I’m
wearing today for over twenty years.
All throughout my teens my mum would let me
order a few bits from the mail-order catalogue each season.
What would usually happen is that I would scope
out the things that I fancied & then hang on until the sale to get more bang for my buck or kit for my krona as it were.
Invariably the things that I’d chosen ended up
in the sale, perhaps cause I would usually favour the more impractical &
ostentatious garments.
Whilst my mates took their fashion inspiration
from Beverly Hills 90210, I sought my style stimulus in music videos; I wanted to look
like the chicks on MTV, hell yeah!
The early 90s saw my wardrobe embrace a holy
mishmash of clingy, second skin like leggings, jumpsuits & mini dresses, jewel tone long velvet waistcoats, ridiculously oversized jumpers in a kaleidoscope of colours anda rough and ready camouflage print bomber jacket.
I also bought my first ever pair of DMs and wore them to death.
My favourite shade of lipstick was called
‘Chocolate Kiss’ and my perfume was New West by Aramis. I know that some people recoil in horror when faced with photos of their younger self, mainly because of the clothing they were sporting back then but I see these photos as little snapshots of a journey. Personally I love seeing how someones style has evolved throughout the years and although my own long & winding road has been laced with a fair few fashion disasters, all-in-all I'm pretty pleased with where its taken me. How about you?
Back in the early 90s I spent a summer working in a very
well known holiday resort on Costa Blanca.
An older friend of mine had done a few summers there in the
late 80s and had enthralled me with his tales of excitement, adventure and
really wild things.
So after I finished college I booked a flight to Alicante
and blagged a seat on a package holiday transfer bus to the resort.
Once there I managed to find some very cheap accommodation
in a grotty hostel situated in the old town and set about looking for a job.
For two nights solid I was job hunting, going to almost
every bar & club in the resort but everywhere was the same story, fully
staffed.
I did have a back up plan, which was to go fruit picking in
the south of France, but ideally I wanted to stay where the buzz was, I was
only eighteen after all.
On my third day there I was sitting at a café near the
bullring eating a huge bocadillio and having several ‘kick in the back of the
head’ strength coffees when a handsome middle-aged man approached me.
At first I thought he was just some random perv trying to
chat me up but he turned out to be a real diamond geezer; after making a few
calls to his mates he’d sorted me out with a club propaganda job.
I started sharing an apartment with three of my workmates
& although it was bordering on claustrophobic we had a whale of a time that
summer.
On a good day we’d borrow some mopeds and head for the
cliffs further down the coast, listen to loud cheesy techno music, drink cheap
beer and play truth or dare, in which the dare usually involved launching
yourself into the sea off a steep cliff.
In the evening we’d head back into town, feast on huge
plates of tuna pasta and drink cheap plonk out of cartons.
Some times we had to do special promotions or leafleting on the
beach during the day but most days we just worked from 9pm until 2am and after
we would join the throng of punters inside and party until sunrise.
The busy season started slowing down in late September and
one by one friendly faces sloped off.
By mid October the resort had been transformed into bingo
heaven for well-heeled old timers spending the winter abroad.
I bought a bus ticket to London and endured the most
excruciatingly long bus journey I’ve ever taken.
My diamond geezer had offered to buy me a flight ticket but
I quite stupidly turned it down cause I didn’t want to feel as if I owed him
anything.
I think that I must have really hurt his feelings cause I
never heard from him again.
Sadly I have very few photos left from this time of my life
cause I “lost” them in a particularly nasty break-up from a jealous boyfriend a
few years later but I will always have my memories.
The awesome vintage ski jacket I was wearing today was bought for a tenner fifteen years ago in a Fort William charity shop.
At the time hubby was doing snowboard instructing at a ski center and I was trying really hard to find a job.
As we were quite skint we rented a microscopical room in a house owned by what we thought to be a widower.
Only after we'd moved in he told us that his wife had not long eloped to Spain with another man.
It was an odd experience to say the least, we'd hear him argue and plead with his wife on the phone in the middle of the night and whenever we went into the kitchen he'd corner us and talk incessantly about her.
He was also rather keen on wandering around in his underpants when he'd had a few too many swallies.
Our little nook comprised of a double bed that dwarfed the room and a chest of drawers with a black and white camping telly & a kettle perched on top of it, there was also a small built in wardrobe, that you couldn't open properly cause there wasn't enough space.
There were no jobs in Fort William so I spent a whole month holed up in that tiny room watching crap daytime TV and eating Pot Noodles.
In the end I had to leave my beloved to his snow covered hills and jump on a bus to London.
This jacket was bought with giro money on my last day in Fort William and I remember wearing it for the entire duration of the ten hour bus journey down south cause it was absolutely freezing.
I sat together with a bald, toothless weegie who had just been paroled & he was plying me with sickly sweet MD 20/20 and telling really crap jokes but he still had me in stitches.
I've had fifteen years of wear out of this jacket and it is still going strong.
I'm not the only one in this house who poses for pics by the way.
Here's Mark showing that anything I can do, he can do better...
Mark has been feeling a little bit blue this weekend cause the ski center that he used to instruct at is open for business with powder galore, I believe my man is pining for the hills.
To cheer ourselves up we revisited the pub that we went to last Sunday cause they were hosting a vintage jumble today.
I'm hoping to get a space here myself next time, fingers crossed.
The pub has got a really nice, laid-back vibe & the monthly vintage jumble was well stocked, cheap and cheerful, just how I like it.
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