Art Deco – Food, Fashion and Fitness

Happy New Year, everyone – I hope 2013 is treating you well so far! I posted a preview of my New Year costume for my parents’ murder mystery evening the other day – and here’s the full run down of my outfit and accessories.

First of all, I have to show off my new Miss L Fire shoes, which were a Christmas present from my husband – I love them! And, the Art Deco detailing was perfect for the party…

I love those details on the back… The shoes are also available in green or black at Miss L Fire’s shop.

I had a beautiful sequined dress, which consisted of black netting over the top of blue fabric, which created a really nice, two-toned effect. It showed up bright blue with a flash, but in natural light was much darker.

The dress is from Principles, but I got it on eBay – I’ve been stalking flapper style dresses for years so it was great to finally get one after all this time!

Both of my accessories in this photo were from Primark – I love picking up accessories from here, as they’re so cheap and usually great quality, all considering. Both of these items have served me well over the years! I also wore three strings of fake pearls I bought last year from Tesco… Dead upmarket, me!

For my hair, I used a brilliant tutorial from YouTube, which you can find here. I couldn’t get my hair to curl properly, but it turned out it didn’t really matter in the end as I was able to pin it up in curls even though it was fairly straight! It came out pretty well, I thought.

If you have long hair and you wanted a really easy and straight forward flapper hair style, check out this video about how to fake a bob. I tried it last year and it worked really well – everyone thought I had a hair cut!

We all had a brilliant time – everyone did really well with their costumes, and my nan even managed to guess the murderer was the maid! I definitely recommend murder mystery nights – they’re great fun, and really cheap, plus they give you a chance to dress up… Like I need one, right?

1920′s New Year. Get ya flapper out! (immymay.com)

Being an enthusiastic fan of OPI’s Bond collection, I had naturally been hankering after the amazing Man With The Golden Gun topcoat; a clear base with real 18k gold flecks. At £24.99 it was beyond my price range for a single bottle of nail varnish, so I was over the moon when I got it for my secret Santa gift this Christmas – thank you, Omar! *

Having seen some amazing combos for Skyfall and The Man With The Golden Gun, I decided to break it out yesterday for a trip to the Balmer Lawn hotel for a carvery lunch with my husband! We had our wedding reception here so it’s nice to come back – and I wore my new Amelia Check Doll Dress from Collectif too – you can see the gorgeous fabric in these photos:

I love this top coat! It’s so opulent and beautiful – although I do feel a bit rotten when I have to take it off… It’s like throwing money away!

(Delicious post-carvery Christmas pudding…)

I also had a trial run with my ’20s outfit for New Year – we’re doing a murder mystery and I’m going to be an AMERICAN FLAPPER. Very imaginative, I know… I’m wearing a navy Principles beaded dress with purple and gold Streamlined shoes from Miss L Fire (Christmas pressie from my hubbie), and I shall be wrapped in a dishevelled stole as per my character instructions. Here’s a bit of a preview: