I like blogs: Moo

My friend Moo (real name Rebecca, roller derby name Apocalypse Cow) writes (and draws!) one of the funniest blogs I follow - Death by Garage Door. She has been drawing loads of derby cartoons, which are sweet and lovely and funny (and true), and drew this for me!

It's so accurate. I DO like jumpers with horses on them. So sweet (ta Moo!).

Moo is also skating THIS SATURDAY when Auld Reekie Roller Girls take on Glasgow Roller Girls in the first of our two fringe bouts! Tickets are still available here!

National Museum of Scotland

So, excitingly, on Wednesday night I got to go to the opening reception of the new National Museum of Scotland. The museum has been closed for three years, and they've spent £47 MILLION to restore the original interior, open up even more space and make it really lovely.

They have a T Rex!

You now enter from the ground floor and come up into the old entrance hall, which is just filled with light and is so open and pretty!

Every part has been done up - after the speeches, mingling and chatting (I love a bit of mingling and chatting) we made it to the animal room (my favourite!) and the space room (which had a Saltire that has been in space!).

I've been going to the museum since I was wee (including almost-weekly trips when I was a student, and discovered the joys of drawing in notebooks), so it was ace to get a sneak-peek of the new museum. Plus, they plied us with a LOT of wine, which made everything even more exciting.

The museum officially opened this morning with taiko drummers, glitter explosions and ACTUAL DINOSAURS in Chambers Street! Well, okay, robotic dinosaurs... but they looked real (and slightly scary). Go go go go go and visit.

p.s. apologies for the uneven quality of photos, they were all taken on Craig's phone (we forgot to take the camera) & he loves a spot of Hipstamatic!

Zap! Pow! Zebra nails

I'm not going to lie, I am pretty proud of these nails. Definitely a new personal best!

Zebra stripes!

I've been going to the Wah Nails blog every now and again for inspiration (it was a spur of the moment trip to Wah Nails that kicked off my nail art attempts!), so when I saw these I did my very best to recreate them. I think I did quite a good job.

Pow! Zap!

I used a kirby grip for the polka dots, and the tip of my white nail art pen from Claire's to do the black stripes and lettering. I really need to buy some proper brushes or something, as I am just chucking away kirby grips (being too lazy to clean them). Bad.

. 

The tips were done by hand, and are (reasonably) straight and even! They were REALLY easy to do - the only tricky thing was trying to write on my right thumb with a shaky left hand, but I got there in the end.

 

I am smug with nail success.

Star Wars scarf

I'm meant to be saving up (trying to fund the -slightly- impulse holiday buy plus mortgage saving, ugh), but when I saw the latest scarf by Olivia Mew I couldn't resist. It has droids on it. DROIDS.

These are droids. They are cool.

& it came in a lovely parcel with a couple of sweet postcards...

Aww!

The scarf!

AND the colours go really well with my hair. See? It was meant to be.

Pretty much the best $20-I shouldn't-be-spending-but-DID-spend-because-it's-a-star-wars-scarf.  It is available here, along with an amazing cat scarf (which I managed to resist, but may cave in post-pay day).  I feel like such a Jedi. 

How to: twisted hair updo

I've been on a bit of a mission to learn new hairstyles for summer, so that I don't just stick my hair in a messy bun any time I can't be bothered to wear it down. So far it has gone quite well, and I've managed heidi braids, a french braid updo (I'm much better at this now!) and a hair scarf/mini beehive combo.

This week I tried this weird twisty updo thing and it is SUPER easy and I think it looks quite cool.

I found a step by step guide on a site called the Beauty Department (weirdly by Lauren Conrad - her from the Hills). Here's how they do it..

 

& here's my version...

 

Now, clearly mine is a lot (considerably) scruffier than Lauren's, but I've not mastered sleek locks yet. I also did this on quite mucky hair, which I think helped the twists stay in, but it would look sleeker on newly washed hair.  I also didn't start with wavy hair... who has time to style before they style? (Sleek haired people, I guess).

Excuse my knackered expression!

I really like it though! I think it's something that will obviously improve with practice (I had to try a couple of times before getting the initial bun/rest of hair ratio right), but for an 11pm attempt it is okay!

There are loads of events coming up, so I'm planning to try this again for my work festival party, and I will endeavour to get clearer photos (I am not good at lazy 11pm photography, sorry!).