Tender Loving Claire

Claire has started posting in her blog again. She has pretty outfits and makeup for you to see and also old old old photos of me back when I was (relatively) slim and so could wear more interesting clothes! Go follow her at her blog here

Or don't, I don't need her stealing followers from me :P

Why Claire won't shop at La Senza anymore

A short while ago Claire wanted to buy a new bra so she popped into La Senza, picked up her usual size, a 36C and went to try it on. It turned out to be too small, which she was wasn't surprised by as bra sizes tend to differ from shop to shop. Outside the dressing room 2 sales assistants were chatting, so Claire told her the bra was a bit small, that she usually wears a 36C and thought she'd need a bigger cup size. The assistant took one look at her, fully clothed and declared "there's no way you're a 36C in any shop. You're at least a 36F." Claire said that she'd never needed that size, that she'd been measured before and told she was a 36C and the vast majority of her bras are a 36C and fit her perfectly. But the assistant insisted she must be a 36F, that whoever had measured her before had managed to somehow be 3 cup sizes out and that she could now be measured 'correctly'. Claire said she'd rather not and left.

Now this may not sound that awful written down but the assistant was incredibly rude and patronising when she was talking to Claire. The assistants entire manner seemed to be trying to make Claire feel stupid and almost laughing at her for being so ignorant of her size. And insisting that all the 36C bras Claire owns from various brands must either be way off in size or not fit Claire properly when in fact they're fine.

Claire makes her own clothes, she knows her shape and size well and can measure herself. But she's been measured for a bra before because she deals more with dress sizes and trusts professional bra fitters, who have told her she's a 36C. She owns a lot of bras that are a 36C and fit fine. She's made her own bra before and, shock horror, turned out to be a 36C. And yet this person was insisting that she knew better when all she'd done is taken one look at Claire in a bulky jumper.

Claire is 5 foot nothing tall and pleasantly plump. On a 5 foot frame a 36C will look a lot bigger than on someone who is taller. For instance I'm about 5 foot 8 and have 36FF breasts and if you looked at both of us dressed I think my tits would only look a little bigger than Claire's because we have completely different frames. So it also upset Claire because it seemed like the assistant had made the assumption that because she's slightly overweight she must have a 'plus size' cup size.  (I.e. overweight people only wear plus sizes and 'normal' sized people only wear standard sizes which isn't true either way. And anything over a DD cup size is for fatties)

If Claire was a 36F that would make her basically the same size as me which is just laughable, I wish we were the same size so i could nick her clothes but unfortunately her dresses won't do the  whole way up on me as her full breast measurement is about 8 inches smaller than mine!

It's not that Claire really cares what her bra measurement is, if she really was a 36F she wouldn't care as long as the bra fitted. But you can't tell someone's wearing the wrong bra size by looking at them fully clothed (unless they're wearing something very close fitting and the bra is causing the breasts to look odd, neither of which was true in Claire's case). And it was the patronising, belittling way the assistant spoke to Claire, almost sneering at her.

The right way to handle the situation would be to say something like 'oh bra sizes do tend to differ, you may be a size or 2 bigger than usual in here, I could measure you to see or we could just try some different sizes to see what works on you' which would be polite and a lot more sensible than just saying 'you are wrong and whoever measured you is wrong and you're definately 2 sizes bigger than you think' which is really bad customer service!

And also La Senza do run small! Everyone I know who buys bras from there has to go up from their regular size. At one point I was actually a G in their sizes which I've neer been anywhere else.

I'm not saying I'm never going to shop there myself because I really like their bras (despite them being oddly sized) and swimwear. I find they give my boobs a nice shape and proper uplift. It's nice that they have a lot of really pretty 'fashion' bras that go up to a GG cup size. But it's definately left a sour taste in my mouth and I can absolutely understand why Claire is boycotting it.

What do you think? Would you be upset if you had a similar experience?

Valentines OOTDs

This is Claire and I on our Valentine picnic in my garden (before we gave up and went to 'picnic' indoors on the sofa). Claire looks lovely and I probably would have looked nice if I was wearing some different tights (they have hearts on, it was valentines day, thus i had to wear them even though they really really didn't go with the dress) and was less fat! Claire made her outfit because she is talented. I did not make mine because I am not :P

 

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar has learned 1 trick, sitting up on his Bum. He looks so cute we used to make a huge fuss whenever he did it, now he does it ALL the time. It's all he's got! it leads to nice photos though

 

And now, because I like when I make funny faces, there are 'hilarious outtakes' under the cut

Valentines FOTDs

Happy Valentines Day to everyone!

I love Valentines day, the idea of a day being dedicated entirely to celebrating love is right up my street! Also I love pink, red and heart shapes, so that's another plus!

Claire and I were planning to go to Brighton to celebrate, but for some reason I just couldn't sleep at all last night, so i got up in the morning feeling awful and knew I just wouldn't be up for walking around all day. So instead we stayed home and watched Gone with the Wind (can you believe I'd never seen it before! But frankly I don't give a damn!) and then later had a little picnic outside. After a while though it was just too cold, so we had a picnic inside instead. Which basically just meant we sat infront of the tv eating way too much crap :P

Me:

 

Mooore under here!

Doing Claire's Makeup

Claire wanted me to do her makeup. Oh boy was it stressful! I don't think i've ever done someone elses makeup before and i am not very good at it! Though she didn't help, she kept having laughing fits and thrashing around. I originally was going to do a semi complicated eye look but after nearly having a nervous breakdown i wiped it off and went for something much more simple.
Claire wanted a regal look to go with her new crown:

  

The ferret princess is better than the unicorn queen, that bizyotch don't even have no proper crown!

Claire is wearing:

Face: UD surreal skin cream foundation in Illusion, avon face powder, Illamasqua powder blusher in Sin

Eyes: BFTE Lace (on browbone and inner corner) and Sugarpill Goldilux Chromalust on lid, black mascara

Lips: NYX round lipstick in Black Cherry

Anyway even though it was stressful Claire really loved it, she said she felt beautiful afterwards so i will do it again and who knows, maybe i will get better!
However, occaisionally (presumably because i do lots of over the top 'out there' looks quite well on myself) people say i should be a makeup artist. Umm... no! It was so, so difficult to even achieve this look! :P

I then did my makeup in the design i had originally been trying for with Claire before i had to resort to a very simple one colour plus highlight eye look.

 

 

Face: UD surreal skin cream foundation in Illusion, avon face powder, Illamasqua powder blusher in Sin

 Eyes: BFTE Lace (on browbone and inner corner), Sugarpill Goldilux Chromalust used very sheerly over Lace and used wet as liner on upper lid line and on waterliner, Royal Sugar on lid, black mascara

Lips: Well i thought i used the same lipstick as on Claire but it looks different :/

In other news there are too many great things I want to buy at the moment :( For the first time in ages  actually want some Mac stuff (Dare to Wear lipglasses), Models Own are having an amazing 50% off sale, Illamasqua are coming out with their new collection (anyone know if the bloggers event is happening? I got an email saying it might be in August but nothing since then so i assume it's not happening anymore), Cherry culture are having their 20% off sale etc etc 

But i am going on holiday soon and also owe my mum money so i can't afford to get anything and this makes me very sad.