Nasha Wooley is Inspired by Vintage Fashion

02/03/2011

Meet my fellow blogger Nasha Woolery AKA the button owl. The Fashion Director of Street Savvy magazine, Nasha talks about fashion, her likes and her life. So check it out!

What does fashion mean to you? (in one word)

Fun.

Which store do you shop the most?

Topshop. I’m there so often I may as well live there!

Which decade do you think was fashion in its best form? Why?

The sixties. I just think fashion was fun back then, and it was pretty and modest yet still stylish. Back then, women were truly beautiful and fashion was really at its best.

Which actress/model can describe you the best?

I was asked this the other day and was soooo stuck. I think the actress/model that is most like me, if that’s what you mean, is Rachel McAdams. But only because we’re both sweetly spoken haha.

Who is your favorite designer? Why?

It’s so hard to pick a favorite when there are so many great designers out there. I think I’d have to go with Helen Furber though. You probably haven’t heard of her because I don’t think she’s very big, but she designs the quirkiest, prettiest heels you will ever see!

What made you want to be a writer?

Oh, I have no idea! I’ve wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember, since I was a little tod. In fact, I recently found the first story I ever wrote, I think was about seven when I wrote it. It had something to do with bunnies and curly hair (?). I loved writing and reading from a very young age, and always had my head in a book. I think that love pushed me to go into writing. I originally wanted to be a novelist- and still do. But over the past couple of years I’ve delved more into the journalism side of things.

Who is the one person you want to be from the past?

Audrey Hepburn. She had pretty hair.

Which person, according to you, changed the fashion world? Why?

I’m going to pick a blogger instead of the usual ‘model’ or ‘designer’ and say Tavi Gevinson, simply because she changed the world’s view on fashion bloggers and age within the fashion industry.

Who is your inspiration?

This is going to sound a little weird, but my little sister is my inspiration. She’s odd and funny and will wear geek glasses with rainbow print trousers! I’m not sure why but that inspires me.

Quick favorites

Magazine: ELLE
Chocolate: Snickers
Band: Paramore
Movie: The Time Traveller’s Wife/How to Marry a Millionaire
Actress/Model: Coco Rocha
Perfume: Ghost
Country/City: London
TV Show: Um… Hannah Montana? haha!

Her Blog: The Button Owl (http://thebuttonowl.tumblr.com)
Her Website: Street Savvy (http://www.thestreetsavvy.com)

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Diary

Where Do You Find Inspiration?

02/02/2011

I really wanted to make a big, cheesy collage for this post like I did when I started Miseducated.. remember those days?
I miss those.

Where do you find inspiration when you’re feeling overwhelmed?
I always ask the artists we feature here but I’ve never gotten to ask you!

When I’m feeling overwhelmed and can’t focus I like to flip through my inspiration drawers filled with old photos, papers and all sorts of useless things I’ve collected through the years. Useless to the onlooker that is but quite important to me! My favorite place for my brain to play is old magazines.. I love soaking up the eye-candy in 60s women’s zines most of all. I can’t get enough!

What can you not get enough of? What inspires you?

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Design Your Life

Start Advertising Your Products Online

02/01/2011

Those of you that are interested in promoting yourselves or your creative endeavors online will find everything you need to get started here.

Why is it important to promote your brand online? In the very vast marketplace of today it’s important to brand and differentiate yourself to your competitors and fellow crafters, this will tell you how to get started.

After having visited Everything Etsy I was absolutely flabbergasted about the amount of care and a display of the wonderful and sharing community. The Etsy community itself is a very giving community and as you can see there’s a lot to be learned from the many seasoned sellers that sell there.

It all brings me back around to blogs being the best bang for the advertising dollar.

From Use Advertising To Promote Your Etsy Shop at EverythingEtsy.com.

Do you want to promote your Etsy shop without a marketing budget? No problem.

From A Creative Approach to Promoting Your Shop at Etsy Community.

Your own business: will it be a dream come true — or a nightmare?

From Realities of Running an Indie Biz at MICA.

Also don’t forget to read The Etsy Seller Handbook if you haven’t gotten a chance to yet! If you’re looking for great information as a newcomer or as a seasoned seller it’s great to brush up and see how others are finding success.

1 Comment

Self Decoration

A Supermodel Story

01/31/2011

The supermodel era is the time of early 1990s. That was the time when supermodels became extremely prominent in the media. The “Big Six” comprising Claudia Schiffer, Cindy Crawford, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington were the most heavily in demand, collectively dominating magazine covers, fashion runways, editorial pages, and both print and broadcast advertising and were known as the original supermodels.

That is when modeling became actually a career. They earned millions,did talk shows, were cited in gossip columns, partied at the trendiest nightspots,landed movie roles, inspired franchises and dated or married film stars.

On January 1990, Peter Lindenburgh photographed the ‘big six’ for the cover of Vogue, embarking the journey of The Supermodel Era.

From 1990 to 1993, supermodels ruled the industry. They commanded exorbitant fees, showed diva-ish behaviour made extraordinary demands, wore the dresses in which they modeled. Linda Evanlegista quoted that “We don’t wake for less than $10,000 a day”.

When Marc Jacobs debuted the grunge look in 1992, Alexandra Shulman, the editor of the British Vogue chose Kate Moss as the cover girl of her first issue to show of this new look. That is when Kate moss started the ‘waif’ look.

In 1998, fashion swung towards healthy beauty with models like Gisele Bundchen, Angela Lindvall and Cameron Kass. Gisele Bundchen became a supermodel in the original sense, she juggled fashion shoots, campaigns and big brands and ended the ‘heroin chic’ of the Supermodel Era. She is now the highest paid supermodel since 2004 by Forbes Magazine.

Looking from a perspective, the ‘big six’ were actually a path for people aspiring to be models and they made a suitable path for the young guns to follow.

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Design Your Life

Sex and the Nature of the Beast

01/28/2011

World Sex Report 1971

Some people just can’t help it – sex, no matter how casual, means something to them, and they feel some attachment. Others seem to be able to do it, put their clothes back on, and walk away without so much as a second thought. Often, those who tend toward a large variety of sexual partners use the excuse that it’s not natural for humans to practice monogamy, and that because we are, at our base, animals, it’s perfectly acceptable to behave like animals.

What’s interesting is that what goes on in the brain of any human does not vary according to how they feel about monogamy and sex. Either way, the process begins in the brain stem, which is responsible for our lowest nature, but it then continues on up through the mammalian brain, where it encounters a bridge between thoughts and actions, and finally it ends up in the neocortex, which is where the thoughts get processed into decisions, according to desires, beliefs, or influence from our conscience.

So that means that as much as some people try to tell themselves that their behavior is not their fault, that’s complete nonsense. The thing that separates humans from animals is this more complex cognitive process, which gives us the ability to override our base nature any time we choose to. If this weren’t the case, you wouldn’t be reading this right now at all – you’d be grunting and trying to decide whether the computer is something you could eat or something you could hump.

Nonetheless, a staggering amount of us try to pull the “it’s the nature of the beast” card when excusing the hurtful and careless behavior of others or ourselves. How many times have you heard women (or even the men themselves) justify promiscuity by saying, only half-joking, “it’s not his fault, his penis has a mind of its own”? This sort of cop-out has nothing to do with a penis (or indeed a vagina) actually leading anyone around, but rather it is the way our egos rationalize the things we probably shouldn’t be proud of. All our egos want is more and more pleasure more and more of the time, and the easiest way to get around the hurt this can cause others is to blame nature instead of taking responsibility.

If you’re skeptical that we actually have the power to choose a higher nature rather than just reacting to a lower one, think about the way we eat versus the way a “natural” human would eat. When was the last time you saw a guy in a suit chasing squirrels in the park, catching one and biting off the head for lunch? Not too recently? Because we have accepted that we can choose the higher path of buying food at the grocery store, no one feels like they “must” give in to the natural tendency to hunt.

The same goes with many aspects of our sexual practice. Most of us understand that we cannot just mount people randomly in the street whenever we feel like it – we must gain consent, find a suitable place, and so forth. So clearly we can accept the higher consciousness option when we feel like it, and yet when it comes to some abhorrent behavior we want to justify, we try to get out of the guilt by saying we can’t help it, it’s just who we are.

So maybe it’s time that we all look inward and inquire about the true meaning of claiming that something is in our nature, because when we don’t examine that concept and simply act as if it were fact, the results can be truly devastating. It is an insult to our intelligence to cop out and say that we couldn’t be expected to behave any better, but choosing to change that attitude is a fantastic way to create greater understanding and respect between people. At the very least, you can enjoy the freedom that comes with being completely honest about your thoughts on sex and monogamy!

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Day With a Camera Diary

Day With a Camera: Let Them Eat Cake

01/27/2011

Making chocolate and cherry iced mini cupcakes for after dinner~

So here I am after group therapy finding nothing of sustenance to eat for lunch.
(Ok.. I’m being a little picky.)

I’m playing with the idea of calling my husband to bring home food when he gets back.. I want to ask him what I should make, he always has ideas when I’m uninspired.. I look around the kitchen and see it.

There’s nothing to eat … but cake.
I just had to go to the grocery and buy all the ingredients for delicious cherry and chocolate cupcakes last night because I wanted cake.
Now all I have is cake and I can’t seem to eat it.
Let me eat cake.

I eat WAY too many sweets.
How about you?

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Self Decoration

In the Closet With Kera Magazine

01/26/2011

As I was reading Kera recently I came across a new photoshoot that I adore.
Finding things in the closet and wearing them all together.
Now that’s something I do way too often… I never match and I always wear too many layers.

Just go take a look through your closet and dresser drawers to find items you’ve forgotten about, items that you can wear together to give them a new life.
Don’t limit yourself, go crazy.
It feels like 90s grunge is mixing with gothic lolita and decora to create a cake made especially for us.
Layer yourself in your favorite fashions and see what new outfits you can unearth.

.. and I also loved this POP accessory feature that has a necklace I own from 6% DokiDoki.

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Design Your Life

Five Simple Ways to Love Yourself Now

01/25/2011

Hard as it can be to realize sometimes, no matter what you think, you are good enough. With the onslaught of picture perfect images in the media and culturally defined ideas of what we “should” look like, sometimes it’s so hard to just do one of the most basic things — love ourselves. To me, loving yourself is the very first step to living a positive and present life. If you can’t love yourself, you’re going to have a hard time truly loving the world around you and enjoying the life you’re living. However, loving yourself is no easy task sometimes. It actually takes a lot of hard work, which is why I’ve come up with the top five ways you can start loving yourself right now.

1. Stop comparing yourself to others.

The entire world encourages us to compare, to want what others have, to want to be like others. In the post I wrote back in 2009, Stop Judging: 4 Reasons, 5 Things, 6 Ways, I talked about how much we lose when we waste time judging others and ourselves. If you truly want to love yourself, you must stop your comparisons. Focus on you and what’s great about who you are, what you have, and what you do. Don’t waste any more time comparing yourself to those around you. This is the first — and most important — step to loving yourself now.

2. Focus on your achievements — big and small.

To often, we focus on the things that went wrong (or could go wrong) and not on the things we did right. We’ll dwell forever on a conversation that went poorly, but hardly think at all about a wonderful interaction with had with someone. Likewise, people are often more likely to focus on their failures than their achievements (probably as some sort of self-protection in order to avoid future failures). It’s okay to acknowledge the things that didn’t go swimmingly, but if you really want to love yourself, you have to spend most of your time thinking about what you did/said right. And, remember, even the little things deserve a pat on the back.

3. Look past the mirror to your true self.

It’s all too common for people to define themselves by the way they look. Remember: you are more than what you look like. Yes, it cannot be denied that appearance is important and has some merit, but it is not everything. The way culture is set up, it’s hard to remember that sometimes. Next time you look in the mirror and find yourself filled with negative thoughts, remind yourself that you are more than what you see in that reflection. Your worth is more than the way you look. Once you convince yourself of the truth in those words, it will become much easier to love your true self.

4. View yourself from another perspective.

We all have the tendency from time to time to get wrapped up in our own minds. Our thoughts and ideas take over and we tend to forget that there are millions and millions of other opinions and ideas out there in the world. The next time you find that you’re giving yourself a hard time, take a step back and try to look at the situation — and yourself — objectively. You may soon realize that the way you were looking at yourself or the situation is not the way that others would. Taking a step back and looking at yourself with fresh eyes will help you to realize that you are worth more than you realize — and you are certainly deserving of your own love.

5. Make a list of all your awesome traits.

Feeling like you’re not quite up to par? Stop. Drop what you’re doing. Grab paper and a pen. And get to work. The activity might seem like a silly one, but, seriously, taking some time to write about how great you are will help you to realize that, no matter how you might feel about yourself sometimes, you really are pretty awesome. And if you find yourself struggling with this exercise, enlist the help of friends and family. Hearing their input about your awesomeness will make you realize that, hey, if all of those people can love you, you can certainly love yourself!

As I said, loving yourself isn’t easy. It seems like the kind of thing that should come naturally, but I think most people are filled with reasonable amount of self-doubt and, as a result, their minds fill with self-deprecating thoughts from time to time. It’s okay to struggle with self-love, but it’s not okay not to give it a really solid try. You deserve to love yourself because, no matter who you are, you are awesome. So start embracing your awesomeness and use the five tips above to start loving yourself now. There’s no time like the present to learn to love yourself!

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Design Your Life

Learning to Live in the Moment

01/24/2011

I like to pinpoint areas in my life I’d like to change and then work on them..
If you can retrain your brain you can begin to let go of those issues.
I feel that I have never been able to live in the moment.
I’m always thinking about the past or waiting for the future.. never living in the here and now.
My new goal is to change this.
Want to come along for the ride?

In order to live a happier and healthier life, we need to slow down and learn to live in the moment.

We’re often so worried about our health, what we’re eating, doing, wearing, seeing that we sometimes forget how to enjoy living right now. Today. I seem to always be focused on my schedule and what I need to do next that I don’t enjoy the moment. This is one of the reasons I have started therapy, I want to live in the moment. I don’t want to be concerned with the past.

Just because we’re learning to live in the moment does not mean that we ignore tomorrow. Still concern yourself with tomorrow but involve yourself more in today. Tomorrow will come. Yesterday has gone. There is nothing you can change about the past, let go of your sadness or regret.

Living in the moment is easy when you’re having an exciting time.
Think back to vivid memories you have about fun times in the past.
You had no problem living in the moment then, why can’t everyday be that sunny vacation?
Why can’t every cup of coffee fill your mouth with a warming aroma of energy that warms you to the bone?
For some periods of time you are living in the moment.
Now how can we do this all the time?

One mistake that I and many others make is focusing too much on the future.
Weighing your happiness over something taking place, a raise, a lover or a bigger apartment.
Every time we achieve the “if only” we find we need something else to maintain this false facade of happiness.

Living in the moment means seeing the blessings you have today.
This is another one of those “take gratitude” tips from me.
Realize what you DO have and be thankful.
Try to quit focusing on what you DON’T have.
Allow yourself to leave your worrying behind to become a thing of the past.

Just as you guessed there are skills you can use to help yourself live in the moment, here are a few of them:

1.

Make a list of everything you have that makes you happy. Don’t try to be picky, just be thankful. These things, people, places may not be perfect but they are a part of your life. Make sure all of the people in your love understand how much they mean to you.

2.

Take time out of the day to do something special for yourself. Try having a square of chocolate in a bubble bath surrounded by calming lavender candles! Why not? No chocolate? Savor some tea.

3.

Do something special for someone you love.
Don’t expect anything in return, including a thank you.
Just watch their expression and see their enjoyment and know that it is because of you.

4.

Learn to laugh at everything.
Find humor everywhere and don’t take yourself so seriously.

5.

Keep a gratitude journal of everything you are thankful for. Try 5 things a day for a few weeks. Soon you will take notice of all of these wonderful things naturally.

Remember that for many of us, living in the moment is tough, it’s is a skill to be learned.
Start small and take each day as it comes.
Stop trying to change the past or live for the future and live in the right now.
I’m going to make a drastic change in my daily life to ensure that I experience each moment to it’s fullest and I know you can too.
This is your life, these are your years, let’s enjoy them.

4 Comments

Diary

Reading, Writing and Running Around in Circles

01/22/2011

Lately I’ve gotten even more addicted to reading because my best friend got a Kindle (which I have been putting off, I have some kind of strange obsession with paper) and it makes sharing books a snap.

You can loan out books you’ve bought for a couple of weeks, perfect for an addict like me to munch on books with my hungry eyes. I highly recommend it.

Also — if you’re tight on space you don’t have the ton of books looming in the corner. I like to stack my books but now that I have Colette I’m going to have to .. why are bookshelves so scary? Is that my agoraphobia looming in the background? I love bookshelves, tall ones anchored to the wall.. however with the baby they make my nervous. Perhaps the wall-unit shelves.. but wont things topple off one they’re bumped? I suppose they’ll do. The large IKEA expedit will not fit on any of my walls.. we had to part ways. It was a sad day but luckily a friend found use out of it.

This is a Saturday post.. it’s way too wonky to be a weekday post. Don’t you agree? 😉 Mostly I just enjoy making art for posts sometimes.. would posts with art-journaling only be acceptable?

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