Grey Skies

The photos were taken by my sister today - which was actually mostly sunny, but at the first signs of a rather brief shower of rain, we grabbed umbrellas and pulled on our gumboots, mine paired with a charity shopped red hoodie, black tights, and shorts bought from Supré (back when their clothes weren't made in China.) Also, sorry for yet another post with a title that lacks creativity.

I was trying to think of a start to this post that wasn't about me once again being a neglectful blogger (sorry!) or the weather, but with it being more than three weeks since I last posted and with having some major weather recently, this start to the post is only one that didn't end up getting deleted.

So, to the weather, something that has been constantly showing up on my facebook news feed - people posting how much rain they've had, some sharing photos of flooded buildings and streets, constant warnings and updates. While where I am, all that we got was some wonderful rain and strong winds on Saturday (woke up the next morning to some broken off branches and the outside of my house being peppered with leaves). People nearby have had to evacuate their homes due to serious flooding, others were also affected by tornadoes the other day. My heart goes out to everyone, especially those who have been injured and the loved ones of those who have died. The destruction to people's homes and shops is devastating, and I can only imagine how awful it must be.

So for now I'm just hoping to see a little bit better news when I check the updates tomorrow.

And for something a little more cheerful, here's an un-edited photo I took this afternoon of a rainbow at sunset.

The Red Shoes

Photos and Styling by me
Model: Jazz

 A self portrait Jazz took.

For everyone's wardrobe, I think at least one pair of classic red shoes is needed. The perfect shade for such shoes being cherry or hot red. Whether they are thrown on casually with jeans and a shirt, or tucked away and only brought out on special occasions and donned at parties. While the only red shoes in my possession are the ones worn above, ideally I'd have about ten pairs - making sure red gumboots, converse and pointy-toed pumps are included in the mix, and of course, red dancing shoes. I can't think of red shoes without provoking the images of full skirts, tea dresses, tulle, dancing girls and swishing underskirts too. As well as the line of lyrics "put on your red shoes and dance the blues" from David Bowie's song 'Let's Dance.' And not to forget the gruesome tale 'The Red Shoes' by Hans Christian Andersen (which gave me the title for this post.)

The above photos are from the second shoot I did with my beautiful god-sister, Jazz, when she stayed over. After all the shoots my room was such a mess - clothes everywhere! My entire collection of silk spread out on my bed - we both have an obsession with silk. And my silk hoard is ever-growing in size (the other day I picked up a gorgeous lilac silk slip with a rayon lace bodice for $4 from a charity shop, in great condition, and afterwards I discovered it's YSL!) 

You can see the first shoot here. And back in early June she wore a gorgeous Alice-esque dress in this post.

In this second shoot she's wearing a vintage (seventies?) sun-dress, a vintage cream silk scarf (worn as a sash) from my large hoard of silk, the faux pearl bracelet is from a charity shop, a flower headband from a cosmetics store, and of course, red shoes.

Big thanks to Jazz for being my willing model, I hope she didn't suffer too much! It's always a tough job being my photography subject; I can be very bossy! With my demands to jump, look up, lie down in the grass, run, twirl,  'stand over there', 'chin up and put your shoulders back' - poor Jazz was so tired after all the shoots! But she didn't seem to mind. 

The third shoot (possibly my favourite) will be shown in either the next post or the one after that, I'm really happy with the photos as we had some glorious afternoon light to play with.