Rainy Days, Treasure Hunting & Making Plans

Hello everyone 

I've spent this bank holiday pretty much exactly the same way as the past few days - hiding inside from all the bad weather ! While I do love rainy, overcast weather I'm starting to wish there would be at least one sunny day so I can go exploring outside.. I suppose this is England we are talking about though 

On Sunday morning my boyfriend and I headed out to a local car boot sale to see if we could pick up anything good.. I was mostly after old toys and anything a bit creepy ! Sadly, it wasn't that great and the weather was absolutely terrible so we didn't stick around for too long. Before we did leave however, I did pick up these two new girls :

  

There names are Sarina and Maya. They're in pretty good condition ! They came with some HORRIBLE handmade clothes that were made out of old bed sheets or curtains or something so needless to say I quickly threw those away. Sarina on the left also seems to have had some of her hair cut off and some glitter painted onto her feet but other than that they are perfect ! I'm going to be painting them and adding some polymer clay to their faces sometime this week so I will keep you updated with their progress. I'm also going to attempt remove the crimping from Maya's hair, and set Sarina's into curls. I think making them some nice new clothes is also in order.. Probably something nurse/hospital/patient related. I'm going to have a go at giving them new faceups as well which is something I've never tried before. I'm going to take a LOT of influence from this photo in particular:

I'm pretty excited to give it a go, I'll post progress updates as soon as I get started  I also visited a cute shop in China Town this week, called Unique. It is the cutest, most adorable gift shop in the world ! Here are some items I bought :

  

   

A kitty mini cosmetics bag that I will probably use as a sewing bag, some 3D stickers, a little box with cute bears on for holding things and this obnoxious cake phonecharm haha. I also got some Meadham Kirchhoff nail wraps from Topshop ! I was SO excited when I saw these. I adore the Meadham Kirchhoff SS12 collection so I can't wait to get to wear these 

There was so much cute stuff in there, I'm going to head back as soon as I can and have another root around (I've especially got my eye on a Hello Kitty thermos flask - I've been after one of those for ages !) . They also sell bags, watches, home accessories, cute iPhone cases like my Rilakkuma one (they have lots of other characters though), and cute plushies. Maybe if I ask super nicely the staff will let me take some photos.

Also this week I finally took the first steps in working towards my future plans and applied for a one year college course. The course I applied for is a foundation in art and design, and after I've finished that I'll be able to apply for university where I want to study illustration or textile design. I'm so nervous about having to have an interview - I don't think that my portfolio is anywhere near big or good enough - but I'm going to give it a go and get lots of new art and crochet and sewing done in the next few weeks. This is my short term plan I've devised to motivate myself ! 

~ attend college for one year to study an art and design foundation
~ take Japanese evening classes
~ save up for the year and spend the summer I finish college visiting Japan
~ apply for university courses in illustration or textile design - the further away the better !

Although this isn't the longest list in the world and I'm still not 100% sure what I want to do as a career or where I'll end up in the next 10 years, this is defiantly a start and I'm already pretty excited ! I'm going to be surrounding myself with lots of inspiring things over the next few weeks to make sure that I always have fresh ideas for paintings and sewing, so maybe I'll start doing weekly inspiration posts. Until then, I'm going to keep nice and wrapped up and maybe go and play out in the rain if it refuses to stop

On one last note, the reason that my Forbidden Siren review has taken a while is because my boyfriend recently bought the new Katamari game - Touch My Katamari for the Vita - so obviously I've been spending almost every waking moment playing that ! Which I think is what I'll spend the rest of the night doing