Stitches, Beads, Rock N Roll

Sunday, 22 August 2021

I Feel The Need For (The Goodwood Festival Of) Speed

Back in July (I'm the worst for Blogging at the moment sorry) Chris, Vana and I went to the Goodwood Festival Of Speed. For Chris' upcoming 30th birthday we always said we'd go to an F1 race but unfortunately the price and possibility of crowd cancellation we thought we'd give the Festival Of Speed (another event we also had on the 'to go to' list) a visit, and I'm so glad we did! It was such a fun day and we actually got to see more than we would have at an F1 race.

Obligatory "We've arrived!" selfie

First pit stop of the day

Our attention was immediately caught by the revving up of the rally cars. I can't pretend I know much about rallying but the cars sounded cool 😂.

I know that this is a Subaru!

The cars ran in different 'Batches' twice a day which was great as it meant we had the opportunity to see everything. The next batch we saw were some historic F1 and NASCAR cars.

Goodwood House itself is beautiful

I was also really excited as the Red Arrows were displaying and it was the first time I'd seen them in two years!!

Yay!

New for the display this year was the 'NHS Pass' as the RAF's way of thanking the amazing NHS staff and their work and sacrifice through the pandemic. It was fantastic to hear the cheers and applause from the crowd too.

I love how close they get 💓

Chris caught me photographing the Reds with my new Red Arrows tattoo on show 😂

You can see my video of the Red Arrows display here -

Before the next batches we had a look around and the cars on static display.

Not quite sure I can afford this for your birthday Chris!

A lot of the F1 teams had this season's cars on display in their garages (they also had the Mercedes and Red Bull merch stands next to each other - spicy!)

Aston Martin - no Inspector Seb sadly.

Red Bull

Ferrari

Whilst we were at the Ferrari garage they revved up one of the engines and it sounded awesome!

Mercedes

Williams had some of their championship winning cars on display.

McLaren - sadly no Lando or Danny Ric.

We then went to another vantage point to watch the F1 cars and a couple of bikes run again.

Bruno Senna driving his uncle Aryton Senna's McLaren

Jenson Button driving Keke Rosberg's 1982 Championship Winning Williams

Chris watching Jenson!

We think this is Mark Webber's Red Bull (driven by Alex Albon - give him his seat back!)

Esteban Guttierez in the Mercedes

He also pulled some donuts

And last but not least the F1 Safety Car!

You can check out my video highlights of the day here-

We had an absolutely fantastic day and I really hope we can go back next year.

Love Jen

XxxX

Friday, 11 June 2021

Painting A Picture - Fun with hair and make-up

The best way to celebrate finally getting the hair you want is with a cuppa on the beach!

If the Covid pandemic has taught me anything over the last year, it's the power of "Fuck It", prior to the lockdown putting make-up on to go out felt like a chore and something my brain just couldn't cope with on top of leaving the house. I started to really miss popping lip stick and eyeliner on to go to town and taking Eos to the local field didn't really justify a full face of make-up with my scruffy dog-walking clothes.

I also got fed up with looking at the beautiful goth influencers I follow (check out Toxic Tears , Emily Boo and Black Friday) and wishing I had the guts to do their crazy, gorgeous make-up and cool alternative clothes on a daily basis. So I did. As soon as we were let out last summer to meet up with friends and family outside I wore black lipstick to the park (hayfever scuppered my eyeliner each time but hey I tried 😆)

Eyeliner in place for all of 5 minutes despite hayfever tablet and nose spray.

Some more black lippie pics -

Pretending to be an OOTD blogger - I was dressed for a walk in the woods .......

The best goth accessory is always a cocktail

Or a large gobful of cakeshake .............

A punky OOTD

I've hair my undercut dyed for a few years now and really like putting fun colours on it

I couldn't decide what colour to do it .........

More of that later ....

Once I got to the stage that wearing dark or black lippie was the same as putting on clear lipgloss I started experimenting with my eyeshadow too (not just as an excuse to buy the Revolution Nightmare Before Christmas range honest!).

I called this look 'Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge' as it had a My Chemical Romance vibe to it

Admittedly I probably do have a slight problem with the amount of make-up I own now but the best thing about make-up is that it fits no matter how fat I get! The same goes for piercings and I finally got the septum piercing (along with an additional nostril piercing to keep things matching) that I'd promised myself after I had to give up work.

Ta Dah!

Earlier this spring my lovely friend and hairdresser Ian suggested that we split dyed my hair and kept it it's normal black on one side and bleach the other so that I could eventually dye the other side a bright, fun colour. Which is great in theory apart from the living with blonde hair for 2 months.... I have a complicated history with blonde hair, when I was in Year 8 (second year of secondary school so I was about 13ish) I had highlights and bright streaks at the front to try and look more like the 'cool' in-crowd *epic fail* For some unknown reason I also tried it again, with added red streaks (those were cool though in my humble opinion) when I was 16.

Definitely not the Prom Queen!

Mum and me at my 16th with 'the hair'

You'dve thought I would have learned my lesson but no, I tried lightning it again a few years back and it went rather, er, ginger .......

Yesssssssss

I found that when my hair is a light colour I just don't feel like 'me', I used to try dressing rockabilly/vintage but it was the same, it just didn't feel right. So after that I went back to the comforting arms of the 'dark side' and reembraced my gothy self and we've been very happy together ever since.

So going temporarily blonde was a really big deal for me, but I'm glad I took the plunge as the eventual result is worth the identity crisis and gritting my teeth whenever people complimented my 'change of look' or telling me how much it suited me.

A studded hairband, Border Collie, fun lipstick and pretty background helps.

I was blonde for my Halloween birthday party but I made sure I did some black and orange to make up for it. As an aside I think Halloween should be celebrated in the summer from now on - it's far more fun drinking vast amounts of Ophir in a decorated garden bar rather than shivering in the Autumn.

Black and Orange!

Halloween came early to the bar

Earlier this week I had my final blonding -

The next day ....on went the colour ....

There are 3 colours - a blue undercut, purple main section and pink in my fringe.

Hooray! (Spot the Border Collie)

I'm glad that I've pushed myself into experimenting more with hair and make-up, it's helping me sculpt myself into the aesthetic I've always wanted to have (aside from the fat obvs) - a don't give a fuck alternative dresser (plus people leave you alone when you look like me - win!). Next up my Red Arrows tattoo!

Love Jen

XxxX

PS For those of you who made it to the end here are some of my favourite make-up products!

The Revolution 'Jack' Nightmare Before Christmas palette - https://www.revolutionbeauty.com/uk/en/makeup/eyeshadow-palettes/makeup-revolution-disney-nightmare-before-christmas-eyeshadow-palette-jack/1399425.html

The VE Cosmetics Grimoire palette - https://ve-cosmetics.com/products/grimoire-15-pan-palette

(Plus any brand with this as it's logo gets my vote)