shambala '14

ME AND ROSIE PRANCING ABOUT IN SOME ACTIONWEAR LEOTARDS 

This year was my first at Shambala. I was lucky enough to be able to go there as part of The Fashpack; a wonderful face painting collective who host a range of independent festival wear designers within their amazing immersive tent. This year the theme for their space was 'glitter and twisted', circus freak meets disco chic. They had interactive games and best of all a 'secret snoozalum' in a bell tent out the back where you could go for a little rest! It was great to spend a weekend with a load of likeminded ladies swapping wares and meeting lovely customers.

Though I didn't get to see much of it in the daytime, the festival itself was so lovely, already one of my firm favourites. With a capacity of 10,000 I personally think it's the perfect size; intimate but big enough you'll discover new things everyday. The crowd is diverse, there's definitely a big family contingency which I always think makes for a better overall vibe... but thats not to say that there was no nightlife! The music venues are varied and cute and apparently theres a wide range of workshops and stuff going on in the daytime. My highlights were the little things like going on the chairoplane, hiding in the woods after closing time and watching the sunrise by the fire.

moodboard & mixtape

SCRUNCHIE | FEATHERS | CHANEL SS15 COUTURE | HOUSE OF JAM

CHANEL SS 15 COUTURE | ECLECTIC ECCENTRICITY RING | TOP | BROOCHES

Moodboard & Mixtape plus #ThankfulThursday : Things I am grateful for this week.

Keeping busy, and keeping it varied : The most apt example of this was that I was invited to Bristol's first ever Boiler Room yesterday, where the mighty Eats Everything played in his favourite Bristol chippy (of course)... I then had to leave early to go and run a rug making workshop with my Girlguide group!

live music : Missed out on tickets to see my ultimate favourite lady Laura Marling when she plays Thekla next week.... but spoke to one of my friends who works at the venue and he's taking me!! Also going to be reviewing Hudson Taylor and another one of my favourite ladies Lucy Rose next month for WestWorld. Lucky me!

d.i.y hair : Have faith in your kitchen scissors. I've been putting off getting my hair done for ages now cause I didn't want to splash out but I finally tackled my fringe myself and I'm quite pleased with the results...

Mixtape 005 : 

01. 'False Hope' - Laura Marling
02. 'Fire' - Meadowlark (for Burberry acoustic)
03. 'Idle' - Peggy Sue
04. 'Winter' - Daughter (Warpaint remix)
05. 'Bey Shing' - Jordan Rakei
06. 'Greek Tragedy' - The Wombats

eat : Simply Thai on Gloucester Road

Last night I went out for a lovely lady date with my friend Rhii (see her, looking classy as always, above) to Simply Thai on Gloucester Road in Bristol. Whilst the restaurant may be quite small and cramped (really its more a collection of chairs and tables crammed at the front of a takeaway), the authenticity and deliciousness of the food makes up for the no frills approach. It was fantastic value for money and best of all there's a bring your own booze policy!

Luckily Rhi is also a vegetarian so we decided to share a selection of dishes. We went for the vegetable spring rolls, vegetable tempura, tofu with ginger and chinese leaves (my fave) and some coconut rice on the side... we didn't quite finish everything but that may have been due to the amount of wine we drank and the speed at which we were nattering!

Have you been to any good eateries lately? You can read about more of my restaurant adventures and other foodie stuff here.

Sticky fun at Bristol's Collage Club.

PICTURE FROM THE COLLAGE CLUB'S FACEBOOK

One of the many many things I love about Bristol is the wide range of unconventional nights out that you can partake in. Collage Club is a regular collaborative art social aiming to make art accessible to everyone. Its very simple description, 'beer, paper, scissors & glue', appealed to me instantly! I've already been along to a couple of their events at The Crofter's Rights in Stokes Croft and loved it.

The club is run by UWE Graphic design student Max Malone who featured in a previous issue of WestWorld which you can read here and you can also see some of his beautiful work on his blog. Max started the club in late 2013 and the event we attended in December was his ninth. Attendees can expect to be able to participate in games and challenges focussed around the medium of collage. Max chose collage for its ease and accessibility; working on the premise that “regardless of talent, anyone can cut, paste and get involved”. Collage club entices a great mix of people, from club regulars to drunk revellers stumbling upon it… it’s such a fun way to get involved with art in a pressure free environment. 

I love that there is an emphasis on a ‘waste not want not’ attitude, following the trend of other places in the area such as the Skipchen. All of the paper provided is reclaimed or donated and would ordinarily have gone to waste. Its a free event which relies solely on donations and all materials are provided. 

Join the club on Facebook and you can find out when the next event will be happening.

EQUIPMENT.

 MY CHRISTMAS POSTCARD.

LEWIE GETTING HIS CUT & PASTE ON.

secret garden party '14

We made it into the official album looking like the glorious two headed hindu goddess of afternoon lake swims...

A bit of a late post about a very special week♥

Sometime at the beginning on July my friend, the flame haired Oriel, rang me saying that she had somehow wangled us a stall doing glitter face-painting at The Secret Garden Party. I had never been before and this was the first year that I has actually purchased a ticket already... but it was worth sacrificing that for the experience.

So in the space of a week (some of which I was at Larmer Tree Festival frantically trying to sort out our glitter orders on dodgy wifi on my phone) we managed to sort out all our stock and find a way to transport all out gear to the festival; this somehow included a vintage dressing table, signs, mirrors, antique chairs and of course jars and jars of glitter! It was a miracle!

OUR GORGEOUS FIRST CUSTOMERS

It was amazing to have our first proper stall but very hard work especially as we were keen not to miss out on any fun in the evenings... there definitely wasn't much sleeping that week. We worked solidly throughout every day but we were blessed with stupidly gorgeous weather all week and we did manage to sneak some morning swims in the gorgeous lake situated in the middle of the festival.

Like all of the very best festivals Secret Garden Party is full of hidden surprises and unexpected treats. For example next to where we were working there was a massive field of sunflowers which you could find your way into through the back of a portaloo! There was also a recreation of Narnia, which was an ice rink you could only get to by finding the secret entrance - a wardrobe of course. Sadly I never found it! I also missed two of the biggest 'events' at SGP; the humoungous paint fight in front of the main stage and the Saturday night spectacle, which is apparently the. best. firework. display. ever. 

moodboard & mixtape

DEN MAKING | BRIGHT EYES | MUSHROOM HEADPIECE | BACKPACK | PRINT | CIRCLE SCARF

SEQUIN EYES | POM POM JACKET | SECRET GARDEN PARTY | BUM BAG

Hello, hello, bonjour! This used to be one of my favourite post series but it's been over a year since I last wrote one, so welcome back to the moodboard and mixtape series. Alongside this I'll also be taking a little leaf out of Lisette from Lisette Loves popular Thankful Thursday posts and celebrating what I am most grateful for this week.

finding lost things : I lost my purse on the bus last Saturday and the bus driver himself knocked on my door three days later to return it!! So wonderful ♥ I also found a memory card that I thought was stolen along with my camera back in September so I've got all the SGP and Shambala pictures to share.

sales : I went a little bit mental in the ASOS sales this year but definitely got some steals; 3 jumpers was perhaps a bit excessive but at least I'm going to be pretty cosy for the foreseeable future.

the sisterhood : I'm not usually keen on video bloggers but I found the youtube videos of Laura & Megs (geniuses) through the blog of Emma (also a genius) last week. Together they call themselves Superlatively Wonderful and I especially loved their 20 things I learnt in my 20s video. Well worth a watch!

Mixtape 004.

01. 'Change' - Lucie Zara (this one is special cause its my friend, go give it a like and share!)

02. 'The Blood I Bled' - The Staves

03. 'The Concept of Freedom' - Will Varley

04. 'The Depths' - Dizraeli & the Small Gods

05. 'My song 5' - Haim ft A$AP Ferg 

06. 'I forget where we were' - Ben Howard

goodbye 2014, hello 2015

Happy new year!

Possibly a little late for one of these posts but I've been drowning in deadlines (yay 3rd year!) Also if you follow me on Instagram you won't have helped but notice I've only just got back from being up some quite nice mountains last week; skiing, drinking 'chocolat chantilly avec rhum', taking pics and generally relaxing and maxing. Here's a few photos of some of the amazing views of Les Gets & Morzine. Not bad for a smashed up iPhone 4 eh? 

2014 bestest bits: 

+ you can see last year's resolutions here. I think I've done pretty well! Some things I didn't achieve... but then I achieved things I didn't even know I could!

+ my main achievement (of my whole life ever) was making Dulcie's Feathers my sole income and then affording to go to a whopping 11 festivals and have the best summer of my life last year. You can see my best dulcie's feathers moments here.

+ with my friend Oriel I also created a new business Shiny Happy People, sticking sparkly stuff to people's faces and it really took off. We were lucky enough to carry this through after summer and we were the resident face painters for Bristol warehouse club Motion; my second home and this year named DJ Mag's 29th best club in the world.

+ i also continued as the editor of my university's arts and culture mag. We decided to welcome the music editor over to our side of the paper (so we now officially cover everything cool) and we also had a bit of a redesign!

 ...soo I'm now technically a magazine editor, make-up artist and fashion designer. Ha ha!

2015 goals:
keeping them simple this year.

+ #1 priority. Don't fail uni.

+ get back on the blogging bandwagon, I've been a bit sedate for a few months and the blogging world has seemed to zoom ahead without me! I did treat myself to this marvellous new layout though to try and keep up with the times. It's from pigdig and every blogger and his dog seems to have one, but I can't recommend them enough! Easy peasy super friendly installation, so sleek and stylish but also plain enough to customise a bit yourself so you don't look like everyone else. Fantastique! 

+ be a super business babe! There's a lot of plans in store for both my headdress and glitter ventures, so stay tuned.

+ save enough money to be outta this country by December!

What are your new years resolutions? How do you stay on top of them? Drop me a comment or tweet me @dulciee, I'd love to hear from you! x