Author: christinahopgood

craft, diy, dress, fashion, paint

DIY Galaxy Print Dress

christinahopgood
Recently, I’ve been seeing quite a few tutorials on how to make a galaxy dress at home.  I thought it looked fun so decided to try it on my own, and the results turned out great!

You Will Need:

Cheap black/dark blue dress.  Mine is a really cheap thin black dress from Jay Jay’s.  I wouldn’t normally wear something this short!  But I figured, if I mess it up no big deal.

Spray bottle

Bleach

Fabric paints.  I used both normal fabric paint and some old screen-printing paint I had.  I used dark purple, fuscia, red, yellow, gold, silver, and pearly-white.  People in other tutorials used spray-on fabric paint but mine worked really well with normal.

Paintbrushes

Plastic bags 

Let the tutorial commence.

First lay out your dress on top of some plastic bags, with some inside to prevent things from leaking through.
Mix your bleach with about equal parts of water.  You won’t need much, as this stuff is quite potent. 

Spray on some nebulas and galaxies with the bleach.  The more bleach you spray, the lighter the area will become, so it’s nice to have it whiter on the inside of the shape. 

Wait for it to dry… and you’ll see the bits you sprayed more go whiter.

I added some drip drops of bleach to look like little distant galaxies. 

 The fabric of my dress was extremely thin and weird so it was kind of blotchy.

Now you need to put it through a wash to get all that bleach out!  Stinky gross!


Now get a little bit of paint and put it in the (rinsed out) spray bottle.  Dilute with a bit of water to ensure you can actually squirt it through the bottle.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a bit thin, you can layer it up. Sometimes it’ll squirt out little blobs of paint, but that looks cool too!

I started with the darker colours on the outside of the bleached patches, and moved towards the centre with lighter colours.  Make sure you rinse out the bottle each time.

It was easiest to hang it on the line for this process.

 Lastly I sprayed the whole thing with a mixture of silver and pearly-white, which gave the entire dress a gorgeous shimmer.  I sprayed lots of that colour on the middle of the nebulas to make it look like there was lots of stars there.

 Leave it to dry a bit, and then start to paint on little individual stars with a paintbrush.

 Some were little crosses and some were just spots.  I used gold, silver, red, and pearl to do this.

The back of the dress turned out beautiful I think!  It has a cute keyhole back.

Next, leave until completely dry and then heat-set the paint with your iron according to the instructions on the paint.  Probably best to put an old sheet in-between so you don’t get a galaxy print iron.

Done!

 Gosh it’s short.

 But cute!  I’m really happy with this and can’t wait to wear it to all this Summer’s pool parties!  Does anyone I know have a pool?  Guys?  Anyone?

Now I know this method works, I might get a nicer black dress and do it again!  It was a really fun afternoon!


beauty, diy, hair

Pretty pink and blue hair using pastels

christinahopgood
I’ve been experimenting with using chalk pastels to temporarily colour my hair.  A few other tutorials suggest you use special hair chalk, which I think you can only buy over in America.  But I bought some pretty art pastels at the art shop for literally $1.70 each, and they work pretty well!

Warning!
This stuff DOES DAMAGE YOUR HAIR, especially if you don’t take the proper precautions I suggest in this tutorial.  Any kind of chalk is drying and will make your hair a bit stiff and weird.  Proceed with caution!  Please don’t do this every week!

Let the tutorial commence.

Start with clean hair.  Comb your hair through, make it nice and neat, and style it in your usual way.  I’m always side-parted.

Next, put some moisturising stuff on your hair.  I’m using Schwartzkopf Hair Elixr or something.  It’s really pretty and makes my hair silky.  It’s a kind of oil.  This is super important. 

These are the pastels I’m using!  Make sure you don’t get oil pastels!  You can tell if it’s chalk pastels because it comes off on your hands easily in a kind of dust.  Oil pastels feel… oily.

Wet the strand of hair you want to colour.  If you don’t wet it, you’ll find it really hard for the colour to take.  Some people think that wetting your hair will make the colour dye, but it’s either that or have no colour at all.  You’ll probably need to re-wet the hair a few times before you’re done.  Pastels suck up so much water.

Next advice: twist!  This means that the hair isn’t smooth and therefore it rubs more pigment off the pastel.  It can make it hard to get all the hair coloured though. 

You will get it all over your hands, but it washes off.  Don’t be so precious!

Try to refrain from rubbing UP the hair, as this will damage it a lot and give you billions of split endz.  Nice downward strokes.  Like you’re stroking a cat.

You can stop at once side and look weird.
I ended up putting a pink and blue streak through my fringe, some pink at the sides and blue tips.  It looked pretty pigmented when I first did it!  The blue was really strong at first.
Now wait for it to dry.  Don’t brush it til after it’s dry or all your colour will come out.  Once dry, put some more moisturiser through it, since it will feel strawy and stiff until you do.  Comb carefully.
Mine dried with a nice soft pink, and the blue pretty much wore off.  I can hardly see any blue in my hair at all!

There’s a bit in my fringe I guess.

I like wearing my hair pinned back at the sides when it’s coloured.  Pretty!

From my last experiment with this stuff, I learned that you can wash nearly all of the pigment out on your first shampoo.  I was left with an extremely subtle peachy colour from the pink, and the blue completely washed out.  If you have darker hair, I’m sure it will immediately wash out, and if you have lighter hair than me, it might stay in a bit longer.  But I’m pretty sure that this is not permanent on anyone!

button, buttons, OOTD, outfit

Outfit of the Day and… Buttons!

christinahopgood
First up an outfit!
This is my new circle skirt I made last weekend, in this post here!
Skirt: Handmade
Shoes: Vintage
Tights: Forever 21
Cardigan: SES
Belt: Came with another dress
Blouse: Target
Brooch: Family heirloom

This mint green cardigan received three compliments that day!

I bought these little brown shoes at a vintage fair.  They’re super comfortable to walk in, but still give me a bit of height.

This brooch was made for my grandmother by my grandpa.  It’s an old penny with a pin glued on the back, and the front decoupaged with pretty paper.  It’s one of my most special things.

Off to work in the office!

Later that night I played around with my enormous button collection.  I’m sick of hunting through them for hours trying to find matching sets, so now I’m trying to tie together all the matching ones!

 Cute little girl shank buttons.

A few of my favourites.  Those back left ones I actually covered myself with a kit.  They match a skirt.
 All the paired up ones!  I just used a bit of thread to tie them together.  There’s still SO MUCH to do, I get quite overwhelmed doing it.  I must have thousands of little white buttons which are ALL DIFFERENT.  I’d like to get rid of a lot of my buttons because they’re cluttering up my life.  Any ideas on how to get rid of them?  Do people buy buttons on etsy?
life, photo

Photos from my old phone

christinahopgood
These are photos I’ve been wanting to get off my old Nokia for years! Charles finally figured out how to do it and now I can see them anytime I want 🙂

I work in a music library, and this one particulary caught my attention… 
“Piano Pieces for Advanced Children
or Retarded Adults.
II. Six Technical Studies
(Which Will Teach You Nothing)”

Cool sunset at the Shinedome 

Titan looking cute – making this at least four years old.
Duckies at ANU
Cute Charles being cute in the percussion room.
A birdy eating an apple at ANU.  A guy asked me if I was a photographer after taking this. I am not.
A vintage 1950s wedding dress

That’s all folks!
lancome, makeup, review

Beauty review – Lancome Genifique

christinahopgood
While I was in California recently, I visited some Sephora shops.  They always give you little free goodies at Sephora, and one day I was given a tester pack of Lancome’s Genifique.  It was a one-week sample with little foil baggies for each day of the week.  I thought I’d give it a shot, as obviously I need it.  Right?  That’s what I took from the experience.

Here’s the Genifique info page on Lancome’s website.

 It said to apply every morning and night after cleansing, and before using your normal moisturiser.
The stuff itself is a clear liquid which is slippery to touch, and then is absorbed (or evaporates) really quickly.  When it’s been absorbed it feels like there’s nothing on my face.  It was a good canvas for makeup as it evened out my pores a little bit.

Since I don’t have a giant head, I got about 3 applications out of every packet, meaning my trial went for around 10 days instead of 7.


The result:

My skin feels a tiny bit more “velvety” or smooth/soft.
There is no difference in my fine lines.
The serum did not make me break out, nor did it make my pimples go away!
Would I buy it again?
No.  I’d try a few other anti-aging serums before getting this one again.  The results were not noticable enough to be worthwhile.  It costs around $100 depending on where you shop!

Interested in other’s thoughts?  Here is the Makeupalley review page for the product.  It received 3.5 out of 5.