Archive for » July, 2010 «

31
Jul
Fancy Friday
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I can be friends with you because I can forget all the bad things. I can forget all the bad things because remembering the good things is so much nicer, and there is more to remember than forget. For every one thing you said that you felt was hurtful, there were fifteen things so lovely that I couldn’t respond. So now, I remember the fifteen and forget the one. I hope you do too.

Some people call this kind of  memory loss; ‘fooling yourself.’ That you can’t be friends with someone who once made you doubt all of everything. Well, I may be a fool, but if the opposite is the kind of intelligence that wins people shiny awards - then I’m happier with an empty shelf and a life full of you.

xBlanaid

Images via ffffound and Mendel

 

 

Category: Fancy Friday  4 Comments
31
Jul
Not an outfit post.
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…as it’s not much of an outfit…it’s really just an excuse to repeat something my mother said. I robbed  this very soft vintage jumper from her and have been wearing it continuously.  Anyway, I wore it to London with my denim cut off shorts, then arrived back at my parents’ house..eh..still wearing it. This was the little conversation my mother had with me about the outfit… I’m not sure if it’s funny if you don’t know her, but she’s just very cute sometimes :

‘Did you wear your jumper to London!’

‘I did’

‘…and did the all the people in London say you were very West of Ireland?!?’

xBlanaid

 

Category: Blanaid's Style  9 Comments
28
Jul
A little moment of loveliness.
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Thank you Stereomood , for introducing me to Maxence Cyrin. He’s a French pianist who’s covered artists such as Justice,  MGMT and My Bloody Valentine. I really like his version of ‘No Cars Go’ by Arcade Fire and absolutely LOVE his version of ‘Where is my mind..’ by the Pixies. 

As for Stereomood - as Biggie  would say if he mixed up the tenses of the lyrics of  ’Juicy’… and eh…if he was still alive : “If you didn’t know, now you know.” I only just discovered it via ‘Luc’s Chlif’ and I don’t how I lived without it before now. Well, that may be unnecessarily dramatic but it is pretty amazing. I think I may have had too much coffee today.

xBlanaid

Category: Inspiration : Art & Design  5 Comments
28
Jul
ethereal
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I know every fashion blogger in the entire world has probably posted these images of Givenchy with text along the lines of ‘my future wedding dress’…allow me to go one step further and say I refuse to get married in anything less than a somewhat decent knock-off of one of these dresses. Let’s be honest, even if I ever had that many millions, I still don’t think I could stand by spending haute couture shaped monies on anything. 

xBlanaid

Images via style.com

Category: Inspiration : Style  10 Comments
27
Jul
white:wood
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I’m currently working on a couple of completely different projects - and above are some inspirational shots from one of the bedrooms….I was heading towards colour, now I’m toddling back to neutral. 

xBlanaid

Images via ffffound. 

Category: My work : Styling  2 Comments
24
Jul
New Look and new blogs.
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New Look picked this site as one of their favourite Irish Fashion Blogs, which was a lovely surprise. They were celebrating 20% off for Irish shoppers. It was even nicer to be mentioned alongside some of my personal favourite bloggers such as: 

Male Mode

Whisty Blogs Dublin Fashion

Ripped Knees

She’s in Vogue

Becky Dazzler 

Which got me to thinking - I’d like even more favourite blogs to be visiting along with the loveliness of the above. If you have, or know, a fashion or interiors blog, feel free to leave your link in the comments section! The more, the merrier.

(I may need to de-spam your comment with link, but will do asap!)

xBlanaid

Category: Blanaid featured in..., Blanaid's Style, Shopping : Online, This Website  15 Comments
23
Jul
Londoninium rigouts.
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I had a work type trip to London recently - which happily coincided with the Lovebox festival. And a long overdue visit to my lovely friends Pa and Nico. And a return to the ‘having a good time’ thing that has been wrapped in a ball of sleep and effort for the last month or so….and what a lovely way to come back…

Here’s a little round up of the clothes from the trip, working from the top down: 

Sleeveless denim jacket : Charity shop €5.00

Sequinned dress : Charity shop €5.00

50’s style clear glasses : Penneys.

Studded belt : Bay Trading €12.00

Silver bangles : Charity shop €2.00

Boots : Zara €80.00

Black hat : H&M menswear £1.oo

Stripy sequinned waistcoat : H&M £10.00

Black t-shirt : H&M €6.00

Black mini skirt : Penneys €4.00

Tights cut in to knee socks : Penneys €2.50

Little black fringed bag (belonging to Laura) : Penneys

Green hat : Charity shop €5.00 (..ish…?)

Black jeans cut in to shorts : H&M €19.99 (apx)

Gold cuffs : Charity shop €5.00 each. 

Coral ring on little finger : K Kajoux €20.00

Green ring : YSL (birthday present)

Fringed leggings : £13.00 Public Beware, Brick Lane, London (incredible shop!)

Paisley be-shoulder-padded jacket : £31.00 Public Beware. 

Also I would particularly recommend falling in love with Chromeo, who played at Lovebox. Dave told me about them a few times, but you really do have to go and see them live to fully fall into that said same love. They’re playing Tripod in November - maybe see you there!

Thanks to Pa & Nico & Juanita for having me to stay! The backs of your heads are ridickulas! Ok-er-er-er-er?

xBlanaid

 

Category: Blanaid's Style  7 Comments
22
Jul
The Sunday Times Oxfam Cover
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So there I am now on the cover of the Sunday Times Home supplement. I was in London when my friend Dave text me to say I was on the cover. I stopped breathing for quite a while. QUITE a while. The Sunday Times is something of a bible type situation for me. We’ve been buying it in every household I’ve lived in for as long as my memory can remember.

Anyway, back to the start of the story - this was a group shoot we did for the Oxfam project, organised by the lovely Dara Flynn (who not only writes for the Sunday Times, is editor of House and Home magazine but also upcycled a piece for the project.) The photographer, Brian Meade was in great form and we had a bit of fun when trying to do some kind of ‘different’ pose with a chair. The shot on the cover was following Brian’s direction of ‘You’re the 50 foot woman! You’re knocking down buildings!’ etc… Of course, I always forget people will actually see the result of leaping about chairs for photos, but I think he did a pretty cool job - it’s certainly different anyway,and I do like different! :) Absolutely amazing coverage for this worthwhile project - you can still bid on the pieces >here< Please do forward that link on to anyone you think may be interested - it’s all for a good cause!

Once again - a huge thank you to Dara Flynn, the Sunday Times, Brian Meade and Oxfam of course for asking me to take part.  

The ‘out-take’ photo below the group shot is courtesy of Oxfam!

xBlanaid

Category: Blanaid featured in..., My Work : Interiors, Shopping : Online  4 Comments
16
Jul
Oxfam Home DIY project.
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I was quite flattered to be asked to take part in the Oxfam Home DIY project, alongside:

Angela Scanlon (stylist and journalist),

Eoin Lyons (interior designer & journalist),

Dara Flynn (editor of House & Home & journalist with the Sunday Times)

 Teresa Martin Varela (photographer) 

Fink (street artist)

and Kevin Sharkey (Artist) 

We were invited to choose a piece of Oxfamhome furniture and jazz it up however we saw fit, which sounded like great fun…and..well… it was!

To begin, I had a great chat with Paul Houlihan, the manager of Oxfam Home on Francis St. in Dublin. We decided that I should go for this antique chair - it was an interesting shape, but just shabby enough to benefit from some affection and love. Farrow & Ball were kind enough to sponsor the Oxfam - so I chose ‘Downpipe’ - while the new fabric is the remainder of the vintage coffee bean sacks from our armchairs in Shutterbug. It was a very well-behaved chair to work with - from the start of the sanding to the final touches, it took around 6 hours to complete.

A huge thank you to the talented crew from Studioseventyseven for taking the ‘after ‘photos of the chair and I, which appear in this month’s TATLER magazine.  Thanks also to Ciúin Treacy for the before photo…and to Clare from Oxfam for thinking of me… I also very much enjoyed meeting everyone involved in the project too. Lovely folks altogether! 

The pieces are on display this month in the Powerscourt Town House Centre in Dublin, as part of the Oxfam Haiti Lives Photography exhibition. 

You can bid on all of the finished pieces *** HERE **** Please do send around this link if you know of anyone interested in upcycled pieces in aid of such a worthwhile charity. 

xBlanaid

 P.S Should I write this? Anyway “wearing…” : Denim shirt (Zara) vintage belt (robbed from my mother), grey skirt (Malene Birger), gold shoes (Gil Carvelho) makeup by Karen Fitzpatrick, hair a sliiiight mess by me. : )

P.P.S - This project will feature in the Sunday Times this week - so do pick up a copy if you see it on your Sunday Morning Lucozade Run! ; )



Category: Blanaid featured in..., My Work : Interiors  14 Comments
14
Jul
the weight of colour
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I’m starting to loosen my grip on my dislike of colour - so I’m using these jewel-laden images as inspiration for a lovely and exciting project I’ve just taken on…but I’ll say no more as I’m kind of afraid I’ll jinx it. Anyone else sort of superstitious and nervous like that about lovely and exciting jobs? : )

Again, I have a photo on here with no link, due to my half-awake internet trawling - I promise to behave from now on….the other two images with chairs within are from the Style Files.

And once again, so happy to be back! Thank you for all the thoughtful emails and comments. I really, really appreciate them. 

xBlanaid

Category: Inspiration : Interiors  5 Comments
13
Jul
A new daze.
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This round-up is inspired by a new style direction I’ve been thinking about - a little bit softer, a tiny bit more colour, more of the jewellery, a return to bag carrying, but basically just coming to terms with the fact that I’m scruffy and no amount of polishing me up will make me look like a pretty girl. 

I spent much of my resting time wandering aimlessly around the interweb, right clicking and so forth. Usually I always have links back to the owner of images I use, but on the next couple of posts, I am as bewildered as you as to where they came from…if you know or are the owner please let me know and I’ll add the link stat!

xBlanaid

Category: Inspiration : Style  5 Comments
09
Jul
Fancy Friday - to all of you.
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Print

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I read all of the comments and emails and texts that you lovely people sent me while I was off doing that thing that needed to be done. Please believe me, for all of the random rambling tangents I toddle off on during Fancy Friday, this one is so genuinely directed at you, reading this, that I can barely figure out what to write.  So here it is - there have been days where I have given in to the frustration and the futility, forgot all the luck and the gratefulness, all the reasons and results. Days where I’m so disconnected that it seems impossible that I will ever be anything but that slightly bewildered kid in school who never understands the rules of the game. “So, I’m supposed to run over here…and then what do I do?!”  

Then there is you, taking the time to think about some other person and hope that she is doing okay and telling her that you hope that for her….

What a wonderful, lovely person you are… 

Thank you. 

xBlanaid

Images via ffffound

Category: Fancy Friday  15 Comments