Hello!! I’ve missed posting, tweeting, and chatting with all of you. I’ve been busy getting over nasty allergy/sinus stuff and pushing through the final stages of my graduate project. Being sick plus getting some not-so-positive feedback on my project pretty much made me an emotional mess, so I needed a break. But I’m BACK! And I’m heading to Boston on Wednesday! And life will be grand again, right?!

I missed last week’s Five Take where the girls did geometric, and instead of running to catch up again, I figured I’d just let that week pass and come back in this weekend (Check out their geometric looks here: Claire, Nicole, Becky, Gina). For those who don’t know, Five Take is a group of five bloggers who “take” on a theme once a week in our own ways. This week’s theme is color blocking (which seems much more chic when the Brits write it as colour blocking), and it definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone because I was determined to do it with bright colors. Most of my outfits tend to have one stand out color, so I decided to take a cue from color queen Weesha, who always manages to mix colors in an inspiring way. In some of her posts, she keeps things very colorful in her tops/skirts/dresses but uses more muted colors for shoes and jewelry, such as in this post here. While I don’t have any shoes that exactly match the tone she has, I managed to keep my colorful pieces center and let my jewelry and shoes accent but not distract from the look.

The skirt is actually an Avenue dress that is very fitted at the top, and I put an Old Navy striped peek-a-boo top on top of it. Since the top has lines that are see through, the color of the dress comes back through the shirt. This color combo is one that I wouldn’t normally be very comfortable with since both colors come from similar hues, but if I can’t be risky during Five Take, then when can I? As I wore the look for a while, the color combination grew on me.

Once the look began to grow on me, I started getting a little color happy. I went through a blue purse, yellow sandals, blue necklace, and an orange belt before I told myself to chill out. I had opened the color-happy gates, though, so I had to add one more color which is the green purse.

Since my outfit was so “busy”, at least for me, I chose to keep my hair pretty simple by sweeping it to one side. I added dangling gold earrings and purple-ish MAC lipstick in Rebel, which didn’t photograph well.

Avenue dress, Old Navy top, ASOS bag, Nordstrom BP earrings, Avenue shoes

Color blocking my entire outfit, rather than just keeping it to my top and accessories for instance, was a challenge (a good one!). I felt a little bit like I was playing dress up, but I’m starting to believe more than ever that it’s really important to “play dress up” and try on different styles than your usual. You might find that it’s exactly where you get your inspiration from or you might come up with outfits you never would have previously. Make sure to check out how the other Five Takers are wearing the color block trend:

Becky at The Ramblings of Mrs. BeBe

Claire at A Monkey Fatshionista

Gina at Fat, Fit, Fine

Nicole at A Well-Rounded Venture

What do you think of my take on color blocking? How do you wear the trend?

P.S. I went to find a picture to best illustrate my stressful/crying-in-the-bathroom kind of week and this is what I found:

(source)

If I ever get to the point of biting my laptop, please tell me to break up with Academia!