Back to regular programming

Yep I know I have been AWOL for a while but I'm back now! I've just been living life - working hard, playing hard with abundant birthday celebrations (not mine, that's to come - yippee!), girl's nights out and trips away to beautiful cities.

Thanks to everyone who has been emailing me with postive comments and even better sending me lovely gifts (to be shown here soon). 

There are so many things in life that I end up feeling guilty about and blogging (or lack of in my case! Whoops!) should not be one of them. I started this as an outlet for me and my love of all things fashion and it will continue to be that. It's just that life just sometimes gets in the way....but I'm ok with that.

But, with all my time off I've been thinking up and creating loads of new posts - so stay tuned!!!

xxx

Shades of inspiration

(photos from 5 inch and up and Yvan Rodic)

I want grey and taupe nails and matte brown berry lips.

p.s. how cool is that man shirt with camel coat?

xxx

It's in the bag - part 1

You guys may have seen my tweets from "Tweet My Bag", which is this great site that, in the words of the website itself "features a fabulous Rebecca Minkoff bag daily and offers a day-long 25% discount to Tweet My Bag users who upload their handbag pictures to the website and share with Twitter and Facebook friends. In addition, Rebecca Minkoff will be giving away a handbag each week to the most stylish, active tweeter/Facebook sharer from TweetMyBag.com." It's a fab site and there's no better incentive to join and start uploading your favourite bags than the possible promise of a gorgeous Rebecca Minkoff bag! The site has been promoted by two of my favourite bloggers Keiko Lynn and The Glamourai , check out their sites to see their fab Rebecca Minkoff bags.

Since I have a massive bag obsession, I have been uploading all my bag pics to the website in the hopes of winning a fab Minkoff bag (you can check out my looks here). So, in honour of Tweet My Bag, I thought I would do a "What's in the bag?" post and show you all my most treasured possessions that I drag around with me all day and everyday.         

In my first bag (yes I carry more than one bag around on a daily basis, but I'll get to that in a minute), which is usually one of my smaller favourite like my Chanel (seen here, here and here) I carry all my "essentials"....
1.  Compact mirror in the shape of a heart that my boyf gave me - it has his name for me engraved on it and is my talisman
2. Ballmania lip balm - I suffer from intolerably dry lips so this is vital plus it has SPF 20 so keeps away those harmful rays
3. Smythson Fashion Planner leather notebook - my mum gave me this for my bday and I carry it with me all the time so I can jot down all my outfit ideas and inspiration whenever they come to me. I am a list-making maniac so always expect to see my surrounded by notebooks and bits of paper covered in probably very illegible writing
4. Pens - black, blue and red, for list writing obviously
5-6. Pocket tissues and anti-bac gel - to ward off unwanted germs and H1N1
7. Black aluminium card holder and business cards
8-12. Keys, mobile phone, wallet, gum, hairclip - essentials, no explanation necessary
13. Mini pink torch - because the light in my corridor always goes (and I never replace it) so this makes finding my keys a lot easier!
14. Nail files - because I hate broken nails, not least because they tend to be the most deadly assassin of all my tights!
15. VW Beetle USB key - the lights come on when you plug it on - how cute! For keeping and uploading all my blogs and inspiration pics of course.   

Bag no.2 is usually a large tote big enough to hold any work I need to carry around plus a spare pair of shoes to change into once I am indoors and I can rid myself of my ever-so practical rubber boots (much better for navigating the icy pavements of Norway than any of my heels). This one is my Coco and Lolly tote, also seen here - don't you just love the animal print lining? In it I carry...
16. Hat and gloves - to keep me toasty warm
17. Even more notebooks - I have different notebooks for different lists, when I come to think about it I think I might have some sort of list OCD!
18. Metallic pink Coco and Lolly make-up bag which contains my MAC Studiofix and matte bronzing powder, YSL touche eclat concealer, 2 mascaras (these are my must-haves and I have one for the top lashes that adds volume and length and one for my bottom lashes which just adds length), eyelash comb, lipgloss, blusher, nail varnish and top coat (to touch up chipped nails), tweezers (to keep my brows in shape even when on the go) and more, even smaller hair clips (I seem to have a bad hair day nearly every other day so I constantly need help!).

So, as you can see I never travel light but everything I carry I consider vital for my day. 

Let me know what your bag essentials are and link me to your in the bag posts. Oh, and remember to check out TweetMyBag.com and upload your entries.

   
Good Luck!

 
xxx

How to: apply false eyelashes

I've figured out how to embed videos to my blog, and I said here that I would show you how I learnt to apply flase eyelashes, which I love. This is the best video I found to teach yourself how to apply false eyelashes. You won't get it right the first time, but practise makes perfect!

Let me know how you all get on - good luck!

Have an excellent Friday

xxx

Happy Birthday Lise

This weekend it was my gorgeous friend Lise's bday and even though this is belated, I just wanted to say Happy Birthday Lise! She's probably going to complain about these pics and say that she looks horrible in them but I think she looks beautiful. We had a great dinner at her apartment where our lovely friend Adam (that's him looking scared below) cooked us some incredible curries (my favourite dish of all time!). Drinks flowed and we all bounced around to classic tunes from the 90's! It was a perfect evening and we had so much fun that I forgot to get any proper outfit shots - sorry! I am wearing the playsuit I showed you all here . I really love it so I definitely be wearing it again and then I'll get some better shots of it. 

Because it was the weekend I donned some of my beloved false eyelashes, of which I have hundreds of pairs. It might not show in this blog but I love beauty as much as I love fashion and false eyelashes sometimes just provide the theatrical edge I need to top an outfit off. I just think they are really fun. Do any of you guys wear false eyelashes? If you think they are hard to apply, you'd be wrong! I know the best video on You Tube which shows you how to apply them - it's how I learnt. Once I figure out how to post videos I'll show you all.

I really hope you all had a lovely weekend too and that you likes my pics - even those these pics aren't "fashion" I really love them because they show my goofy side - I sometimes look so serious in all my outfit pics and really that is the exact opposite of me!

Hope you're all having a fab week with an even better weekend planned!

<3

 

p.s. I don't normally wear glasses like this, I'm not jumping on the geek glasses bandwagon - they were just lying around and I thought they were a funny prop. Quite honestly, I think I look a bit like Kim Jong Il from Team America! LOL!

(image from http://scrapetv.com/)

Think Spring....

I can't believe how much it has snowed here in Bergen in the last three days - there has literally been metres of snow, which means that getting to and from anywhere is a real mission despite how beautiful it looks from the cosiness of my apartment windows. I'm not used to all these over-efficient seasons and in my mind, it's spring already. Hence my outfit that I wore to work yesterday (obviously, the boots were swapped for rubber wellies when dashing about in the knee deep snow!). I donned my trusty fur gilet to stave off the cold (also seen here) but layered it with my 10 yr old faithful Gap denim jacket - a timeless classic, and a chunky scarf. Floral prints, my gorgeous Chloe Heloise bag and a slick of hot pink lipstick gave me the final spring in my step I needed to kick-start the day.

Hope you all had a lovely weekend, even though that seems so far away already. I went to hot yoga and it was intense but brilliant - just what you need to blow the cobwebs away. I've signed myself up for another class this week plus some meditation....Ohm.....am determined to rid myself of any stresses.

Have you all been following London Fashion Week? Some of the shows have just been fabulous. I am spending many a happy hour trawling through the collections and designing my A/W 2010 wardrobe. I can't wait to show you all my favourite pieces.

Have a lovely day, wherever you are, whatever the weather!

Fur gilet: Coco and Lolly

Denim jacket: Gap

Chunky green scarf: Tescos

Black cardigan: New Look

Floral dress: Primark (first seen here)

Belt: Primark

Boots: Bianco

Bag: Chloe Heloise

Rose ring: Topshop

Hot pink lipstick: Girl About Town by MAC

xxx

I am dreaming of.....

Hello my name is Anna-Jayne and I am a shopaholic. I dreaming of chunky black heels paired with massive metallic jewels and tiny little black outfits. Pair with mussed up hair, smokey black eyes and nude glossy lips and you've got the outfit I wish I was wearing right now.

Playsuit: asos.com

Boots: Irregular choice at asos.com

Black linen skirt: asos.com

Mock suspender tights: House of Holland for Pretty Polly (these are the only things I own!)

Silver collar necklaces: Topshop

Heels: Dolce Vita April heels (I cannot find them anyway in Europe!! Sob!)

Mosquito ring: Stephen Webster for asos.com (see Insecticide post)

If I'm a good girl maybe some of these gorgeous goodies will be waiting for me when I wake up in the morning.

Goodnight and sweet dreams everyone

xxx

Neonism

My love affair with Ashish started when I spotted his beautiful leopard wedges that he did for Topshop last year (see Major Shoe Crush! and Mannequin posts). Soon after I saw Pixie Lott and Lily Allen in these sequinned Ashish dresses and my love for Ashish was confirmed. He is a man after my own heart, as I sure you are beginning to appreciate I love animal prints, sequins and one shouldered dresses. But there is another thing that I love, and it may not be totally fashionable, and is probably a relict ingrained in me from my 80s childhood and teenage adventures at Gatecrasher and Sundissential, but I unashamedly love most anything if it is neon!

Just to prove my point, here's a few of my neon adventures from 2008 and 2009. Mostly I only feel liberated enough to wear neon during raucous occasions such as festivals (e.g. Exit, Serbia) and during afterski (e.g. Hemsedal, Norway) where it is almost a HSE requirement that you stand out or you risk being lost in the crowd. However, when I was in Miami last fall I felt it was the perfect backdrop to bring a little neon into my daywear, which is represented by my neon green shades and hot pink bikini top peeking out from under my blue AA skater dress. I am sure you are wondering how the black and white prom dress fits into this all - these pics are from NYE just gone, and even though the dress is monochrome, I was armed with my beloved neon face paints and set about spreading a little neon love amongst the crowd of Get Loaded in the Dark (see Mannequin post). This was also a good time to post these pics and show you what I wore for NYE. I said I was going to wear my neon splatter AA dress but after one too much supersized dinners over the Xmas holidays I felt this Topshop striped prom dress was more forgiving. I did recreate the make-up from the Mannequin post though, or at least I attempted to. It wasn't as crystalline as I would have liked but it still looked pretty good. I'm going out in London again soon and will try something similar but more intense then. But I digress....

I just found that gorgeous Ashish dress that I spotted on Lily Allen on net-a-porter.com with 60% off!!! It was obviously a sign, since even though I love that website I never spend as much time on it as I would like (probably because it is pretty close to torture when I can't afford most of the things I fall for on it). But with 60% off how could I resist the dress I have been coverting for so long? So I bought it!! It's currently in England being looked after by my mum until I visit her in a couple of weeks! I really hope it fits!!! I have the exact occasion I want to wear it for all planned out in my head...but I am keeping that a secret...I don't want to spoil the surprise ;)

Oh, and before I go, if anyone out there wants to donate one of these fabulous Blumarine dresses from last season to me....I would be eternally in their debt. How gorgeous are they? Love the crystal gladiators as well...swoon...

xxx

Mannequin

Not since watching Kim Cattrall in Mannequin have I ever been so jealous of a shop dummy but when I spotted these gorgeous models in Topshop, Oxford Circus I fell in love. I love the neutral yet sparkly pallette of their clothes contrasted against the rainbow glitter and smokey eyes of their make-up. It's all so crystalline and enchanting. Their fluffy feather accessories just make the whole look so fun. The perfect christmas attire I say! Topshop is one of my most favourite places - I could literally spend hours in there, and I did. As well as scooping up the Ashish wedges I have been lusting after, I picked up these gorgeous Aggie boots (below) and tonnes of gorgeous statement jewellery and fab patterned tights (some of which I'm wearing below). I even got my eyebrows shaped and my nails done at the beauty bars there! My nails are now this uber cool sparkly red courteousy of Nails Inc (Apsen overlain with Petticoat Lane) - very Christmassy.

I'm going to Get Loaded in the Dark @ Brixton Academy (http://www.getloadedinthedark.com/) for New Year's Eve so I'm going to try and recreate the make-up from the Topshop models and team it with my American Apparel neon splatter dress that I bought when I was in Miami (http://store.americanapparel.co.uk/rnt46p.html?cid=29) - neon and glitter, the perfect raving combo. When in London, there is no point in being understated, which is why I miss it so much.

xxx