£100 Asos blogger challenge

I came across this challenge yesterday at the Discount Coder Blog and thought I’d try and give it a go, but with a vintage twist – if at all possible.

Quirky Purple Asos challenge style collageWell, I decided to try to go with a 60s inspired look so thought I’d start with a dress and then add some accessories. It was actually quite tricky to get what I wanted within the £100 budget. The collage here is the overall look. Looks pretty good doesn’t it? And it’s all for under £100! The dress is really cute. I was also tempted for a nice white crochet dress look. There’s also a nice little daisy theme going on here.

Here’s the breakdown of the items and the costs:

Vera Moda 60s Dress at £26.50Quirky Purple Asos challenge - dress
Quirky Purple Asos challenge - shoesAsos crochet ballet flats at £15.00
Quirky Purple Asos challenge - handbagRiver Island handbag at £40.00
Quirky Purple Asos challenge - headbandAsos daisy headband at £4.00
Quirky Purple Asos challenge - tightsGypsy 40 denier white tights at £7.00
Quirky Purple Asos challenge - ringAsos trapped daisy ring at £3.00

This all comes to a sum total of just £95.50.

That leaves enough to buy a nice 60s cocktail...

You can find the challenge and other entries here at The Discount Coder Blog

Could you do this challenge for under £100 and try to give it a vintage look?

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Floral frenzy in our online shop

Quirky Purple floral stockI’ve just been adding some extra sections into our Quirky Purple online shop. One of the features is a section on Trends. I’ve done a few blogs on current trends and I thought it might be quite nice to split the stock into the various trends.

One of the trends I have blogged about recently is florals in Flirty florals and playful playsuits blog.

More Quirky Purple floral stockWhat is really odd is when I think of florals I always think of those ditzy type designs or Laura Ashley type patterns, or tea dress prints. Well, I’m not a huge fan of these, so I usually think I don’t really go for florals.They are a bit too girlie for me…

Anyway, as I was moving things around in the shop, I noticed how many different floral designs there are. There are loads.

So, I realised that I was wrong – and that’s not something I usually admit. I do like florals – but the big and bold florals. Much more your 60s big flowers patterns or your 80s Monsoon style. Something with some ooomph.

Anyway, we now have sections on current trends in our online shop, which includes the floral designs in the swatches on this page. Jump straight to the Florals section by clicking here.

What’s your favourite floral design? Big and bold, or girlie and ditsy?

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Monochrome, mods and sods

Quadrophenia_albumThere was a fab documentary on the BBC a few days ago about the writing of the Quadrophenia album. Here’s a link to the information on the BBC site – Quadrophenia – Can you see the real me?

Watching this really transported me back in time a few years. As a teenager I was a die hard mod and Quadrophenia was seen as a soundtrack to a mod’s life.

And as a mod, monochrome was the perfect colour scheme, along with plenty of olive green. In case you’re not hip enough to understand that, well olive green is the colour of old army parkas. You had to have an original one that looked a bit battered and certainly not a snorkel parka from a high street store – that would be a ‘plastic parka’ and you’d be in danger of being a ‘plastic mod’.

Mods in the 80sWhen I first started to dress like a mod I had a couple of black and white dresses which I had saved up for and bought from high street shops. This was just before I discovered the joys of charity shops, and all the 60s clothes that they sold for pretty much pennies! Yeah, I know, charity shops aren’t like this anymore. All the good stuff is sold off before it reaches the shops and then what’s left in the shops, is actually quite expensive. Of course there are exceptions, but it’s rare to find them these days.

Anyway, once a mod, always a mod. So, monochrome still tends to feature high on my list of faves.

Monochrome at Quirky PurpleAt Quirky Purple we have some cool vintage monochrome for sale in our online shop and have been having a Mid-Week Monochrome Auction, which ends this week. There are lots of sizes and styles.

Check them here – Monochrome Auction items

Do you have any fave mod outfits from past or present?

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I like zombies and I like tea – yeah, it’s a zombie tea cosy!

Well I’ve always loved reading and will read just about anything – I’ve even been caught reading the back of a cereal packet. I just can’t help myself.

My favourite genres are horror and sci-fi, in particular I like any sort of post-apocalyptic story. This is how I got into zombies. They feature in a lot of these books. I’ve been reading these books for donkey’s year, but all of a sudden zombies seem to be starting to get fashionable.

Not only are there a lot of zombies TV series and films around, it sounds like there are more to come. I’m quite excited about World War Z coming to the big screen soon. I can’t wait for the new TV series of the Walking Dead and my favourite zombie book series, Zombie Fallout, has a new book out soon.

It’s had an effect on fashion too. I keep seeing more and more zombies inspired clothing around, for example:

My Little Zombie Pony at Amazon
Hell Bunny’s Zombie Unicorn Dress
Iron Fist Zombie Stomper shoes
Iron Fist also do a Zombie handbag
Darkside’s Zombie Killer bag
Darkside also do a whole range of t-shirts
Zombie brain knitted hat on Etsy
Even baby clothes at My Baby Rocks

I could go on for ever. Zombies are suddenly cool.

Well, it got me thinking. I’ve been crocheting a lot of things lately. So, I wondered if I could design a zombie tea cosy. I did and below is the result:

Quirky Purple Zombie Tea Cosy

These are now for sale in our Online Shop.

Is that gross enough for you? What’s the best zombie item that you’ve seen?

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