Turqoise Rising

Tunic: Skyla, ruffled vest: H&M, knit shorts underneath: LF, belt: LF, sandals: Sam Edelman, earrings: Urban Outfitters, ear cuff: Something Borrowed, Urban Decay eyeliner in "Electric."

Aaand we're still going with the 100 degree temperatures! This is nuts. Although I really don't mind; now that I've moved back home to Sacramento where it actually gets cold in winter, the extended summer is completely welcome in my book. Okay, enough about the dang weather.

This vest has been waiting patiently in my closet since I got it from H&M last year. I just haven't known what to do with it! It's one of my favorite colors -- blush -- and it's pretty enough, but it has a tendency to look fussy, and no one likes that. But lately I've found that if I put just a little more time into the getting dressed process, i.e. jumping in and out of different combinations to see what works, I'm more likely to find use for things that usually get overlooked. Go figure, right? But sometimes it's important to be reminded of the basics.

I like how these colors work together to reflect a desert motif - the rust, turquoise, and pink sand create a sort of sunset/oasis effect. What are your favorite color combinations?

Tangerine Dream and a Peanut Butter Cookie

Tangerine Dream by vanessy137 on Polyvore

Recently I've been into playing with colors in different ways. I think part of it is that the color wheel has been trending lately as a means to plot out the color scheme for one's outfit. My current favorite color combination is one that uses two or three colors directly next to each other on the color wheel, i.e. the same shade of color in various gradients (like the water melon and light creamy coral pictured above).

The outfit below is a sorry example of the aforementioned color combining technique since I thought of collaging my love for the combo after the fact, but there's a tiny element of it in this outfit that I threw on for lunch today. Humor me!

Top: Emma and Sam, shorts: Car Mar, sandals: Sam Edelman, bracelets: Urban Outfitters, clutch: Scout Living, nails: OPI Mod-ern Girl.

I went to Magpie for lunch and sealed it all off with a vegan peanut butter whoopie pie. Super noms.

P.S. I scored Tina Fey's Bossy Pants for half price today at Beer's Books! I've been meaning to buy it ever since I found myself laughing out loud as I browsed through it in bookstore earlier this year. Isn't the cover genius?

Music Mondays

Gothic Pipsqueak

We're in the thick of summer, which may incline one toward beachy tunes, sunny indie-pop,  or maybe even some over-the-top Miami party jams. But today I took a break from the cheery numbers and flashed back to a couple artists I was listening to during the winter months: Grimes and Salem. The two fall under the genre of goth-pop, which sounds like something birthed from Hot Topic and Justin Beiber, but is actually just a darker but just as sexy sister to electronica. 

Grimes has marched to the beat of her own synthesizer since her debut album in 2010, but met critical acclaim this year with her third album, Visions. Her "grave-wave" style (Forget naming nail polishes, wouldn't you love to name musical movements?) is at once sexy, strange, and danceable in a lo-fi, ethereal kind of way. In a makes-you-want-to-apply-black-eye-makeup-and-twirl-around-in-a-field-on-a-cloudy-day kind of way. You know.

Grimes's latest album, Visions.

Oh, one more thing about Grimes, she (real name: Claire Boucher) sings in a chipmunked baby voice. So if you ever doubted that goth could be adorable, think again. It's unexpectedly charming against the dark beats and gives me no choice but to employ the ever-pretentious word -- juxtaposition. As in, the juxtaposition is real good (Said with a hillbilly twang. There, less pretentious?).

                                                            
                                       Grimes's single, "Oblivion", from her latest album, Visions.

Grimes's song, "Vanessa" off of Darkbloom, her 2011 collaborative album with fellow Canadian musician, d'Eon.

Onto Salem, which also falls under the grave-wave umbrella, but in a hip-hop way. It's so cool when opposite genres collide. Airy vocals hover over distorted bass beats and Southern snares to create a world in which Gucci Mane might be serenaded by an Arwen-looking chick wearing a crown of daisies. In a field on a cloudy day. I'm getting a lot of field-imagery.

Here's my favorite Salem song called "Redlights":

Now that all that adorable, sexy doom and gloom is out of my system, I think I'll go back to the new Frank Ocean now. Maybe I'll cover that next week? What are you guys listening to this summer?