Zero One Zero Zero One One...

Are you in love with a geek? This Binary Love card, which costs £2.50 from Folksy seller Jane Cameron would be the perfect way to tell them this Valentine's Day. You'll look like, totally intelligent and witty and stuff.

Fancy a cuppa?

Tea.

Glorious, marvellous tea. Every morning I have a cup of soothing, warm, wonderful tea. Sometimes I like to start with an EG (Earl Grey, duh), sometimes a Yorkshire Tea (it's good for hard water, which means you evade the accursed 'London Scale', that revolting scum that floats on the top of your brew and makes you feel a little bit uncomfortable). I always feel better about anything after I've had a cup. It's like totally affordable and not-illegal-when-you're-taking-it-recreationally liquid Valium. When I was wee, my Nana Rose used to make us tea in those 80s brown glass mugs, really milky with a sugar in, and we used to dip buttered toast in it whilst we watched Sky (old school Sky - it was ALL about the Rugrats, Sister Sister, or maybe Alex Mack).

Did you know that over 80% of the UK population enjoy tea?*  The remaining 20% hate it and will only drink coffee. Don't get me wrong, I love coffee, but tea? Tea is like that old cuddly toy that you've loved so much that he's become real, like the Velveteen Rabbit (mine were called Snugglebunny and Brian The Lion. They're still in residence at Bullivant Towers).

Anywho, the reason I'm chatting so much about tea is because of this brilliant designer I discovered on that there Folksy site I'm so mad on. Her name's Jess Broad, aka Cuppa Tea and Cake and if you're crafty like me, I'm sure you'll be as thrilled by her designs as I am.

Take for example this wooden wool brooch, which costs £5.

Jess illustrates her designs and then uses the magic of lasers to cut the image into the beech brooch. Which sounds pretty high tech to me.

I also took a fancy to this nice tea love badge, which is made by drawing directly on to shrink plastic. It costs just £2.50.

Like what you see? Why not pay her blog a visit, or follow her on Twitter. And whilst you're at it, follow me too!

*Don't call me on that, I'm not a Statistician and I have no actual money to put where my mouth is.

Marvellous millinery

We've talked before about my occasional need for accessories which do a small amount of communication, warding off potentially boring conversations and alerting people to my general mood. So I'm delighted to tell you I've found another Folksy Friend* in the form of Janine Basil, who's bringing comically verbose headgear to the aid of millions of speechless women throughout the MARVEL UNIVERSE. And potentially, this one too.

Check out this beautifully twinkly and ever-so-slightly aggressive BAM! fascinator, which costs £85. This is literally amazing. I would wear this A. to a comic book themed party where I could controversially go as The Text and mumble something that sounds vaguely intelligent about Roland Barthes and the death of the author, or in this case, illustrator, or A. wear this all the time. In my house. Outside the house. And whenever I catch my reflection in a in the mirror or window, just shout BAM! at myself. In the house this would be acceptable, my housemates find my mild insanity endearing. Outside the house, this might not fly, so perhaps I'd just shout BAM! in my head.

My other personal fave, because as you may have gathered from previous posts I'm a girl-geek-who-loves-the-chic (er, whatever, I'm speed typing on loads of coffee this morning) is the comic book inspired POW! rhinestone fascinator, which also costs £85. Man I so want one of these. I could pretend to be a superhero all the day long. And who wouldn't want that opportunity in life?

Moving away from the comic book theme, is the delightful Oh La Lah! rhinestone comic inspired fascinator, which again costs £85. I feel I could easily wear this with a nice pair of tailored black capris, one of my beloved stripey tops and black ballet pumps and you know, just have a totally French themed day. I'd eat tarte-au-citron and think about the Eiffel Tower and ride a bicycle and sigh wistfully and say 'oui' a fair bit, which sounds silly but really it's not.

The fascinators come as standard attached to headbands, but you can put in a special little request to have a comb or elasticated headband. Good old Janine's nice and obliging like that. Each rhinestone is carefully glued on by hand, so you know that she must be really quite skilled, a dab hand with the old glue-gun and totally deserving of our patronage.

If you're not into the rhinestones, or you're happy to speak for yourself she also as a lovely collection of crowns, bows and some hilarious zombie-themed 'oopsie-daisy-my-brain-is-peeking-through' headbands too!


* Well, strictly speaking, we're not actually friends, but I have emailed her to ask her permission to feature her work, so maybe, she'll potentially errr, like me for that? Maybe an internet friendship will bloom. Or maybe not. Who cares? This is getting awkward. I'm going now. Buhbye.


I originally wrote this post for About Your Dress Blog, you can still find it amongst heaps of other posts by me and two other talented ladies there if you'd like to go and have a peek.