For readers who live somewhere Spring = warm, here is a reminder of why my Winter/Spring sartorial season (aka Cool Spring) doesn't end until mid-April. I woke up on April Fool's Day to 8"+ of fresh, beautiful snow glistening in the sunshine. This brings us up to over 89" of snow this season, making it the 3rd snowiest winter on record. (I hope we don't get another 6" of snow to move us up to 2nd. I would be quite content for this to be the last significant snowfall of the season.)
These bushes look like some kind of ice monster getting ready to creep out of the shadows...
This is why today's post features two sweater outfits with tights and boots! (But I didn't layer anything over the sweaters, so you can tell it's not that seriously cold winter we get in January-February.) I wore my light teal/white marl sweater (cotton, 3/4 sleeves) in two very different color combinations recently.
My first outfit has a color scheme inspired by the scarf with light teal and white plus maroon and navy. I like an aqua/red/white color palette, so this wasn't a major stretch, but it still wasn't one I had tried before. (I tend to add black rather than navy to my aqua/white/red combos. Substituting one dark neutral for another may feel like no big deal, but for me, it was a slight stretch.) I made light teal and navy the dominant colors of the clothing with white and red/maroon in smaller doses in my accessories.
I used a white scarf ring because that color is present in both the sweater and the scarf. I like how it brings out the white stripes between the teal, maroon, and navy areas.
Because the scarf's color scheme is so unusual, I went matchy-matchy with this outfit rather than adding in any extra colors. I thought the four colors from the scarf was an interesting enough set! I took advantage of some accessories I had already created for previous aqua/red/white outfits, such as these world's easiest DIY hoop earrings with red and aqua glass pearls on silver-tone hoops. (I look kind of drunk or in pain in this photo, but I was just having to work really hard to get a picture in which I wasn't blinking; it was a very dark morning and my blink reflex was on overdrive when the flash came on. I'm half squinting/half grimacing against the flash of light. But luckily the earrings show up well in the photo anyway!)
I also selected my red/aqua/white paper bead bracelet set for my daily bracelet stack. (See this post for details of the design and creation of this bracelet set as well as an example aqua/red/black outfit.)
These "navy" tights are...interesting. I ordered them recently on Amazon, where they were described as navy. When they arrived, I found them a bit baffling both in color (definitely lighter than navy) and texture (especially shiny), but I decided to roll with it. I already have several pairs of true navy tights so a pair in a lighter/brighter shade of dark blue adds a bit of diversity to my pretty boring selection of neutral tights. I'm standing right in front of a floor lamp here so you can get a good look at the color. In this outfit, I thought these royal blue tights worked well.
My second outfit has a more typical spring-like color palette with some print mixing from the scarf and skirt.
I thought this print mix worked out pretty well because the two pieces share two colors: blue and aqua/teal. The scarf also has yellow, and the skirt has several other colors (such as orange and purple), so there are a lot of different accent colors here, though mostly in small amounts. I really like the sweater + scarf combo (another Pleasing Pairing) and would readily wear it again. I would like to try it with a different bottom half for another look.
My earrings are faux white pearl studs with gold-tone rabbit ears. Subtle but very cute. I wore my go-to sparkly gold headband to coordinate with the gold rabbit ears. (I have a similar pair that is faux white pearl with silver-tone rabbit ears, so I can go either way with the metals, haha.)
My beloved tall cognac boots make yet another appearance, chosen due to the orange and rust colors in the skirt. I am wearing (true) navy tights under them. The end of tall boots season is approaching, but we're not quite there yet!
The colors in my daily bracelet stack photo came out terrible! They are much more vibrant than they appear here. Luckily I am sharing the page to bead photos where you can see the actual colors of the two paper bead bracelets. I designed this set to coordinate with this geometric print skirt, picking out the aqua, blue, and orange (in a softer sandstone coral version) from the print and using gold as the metal.
The top bracelet was made from this Lands End catalog page with a variety of colors that work well with the skirt print. Both Lands End and Coldwater Creek catalogs frequently feature this kind of "stack of clothing" image, which rolls up into fairly neatly striped beads. The two ends of the page have blue + white and peach/sandstone, so when the strips are cut and the beads are rolled, those colors will show up strongly. Both of these are within my defined color palette, and I'm happy for them to dominate. Aqua, purple, and green also appear in the beads but less prominently.
For the bottom paper bead bracelet, I chose a full-page ad for an ocean travel company from The Economist. I liked the range of green, aqua, blue, and coral colors and the fact that the page included a variety of different images. But because there are multiple small images with the colors kind of randomly placed (compared to the very neatly placed colors in the catalog page above), it's harder to predict what the final beads will look like. Because we only see the edges of each strip on the final beads, a color can be much more visible on the page than in the beads...which is what happened to some extent with the orange/coral colors. But I was satisfied with how these beads turned out! I had added gold marker along the side edges of each strip so that the final beads have those gold stripes, which I find to be a lovely addition.
Other posts in this series:
My rabbit choices today are two very different bunnies: a sweet little blue-eyed white Polish rabbit (2-3.5 lb.) and a gorgeous large fawn Flemish giant (average 15 lb.).
The Polish's white, blue, and pink/red color scheme was a good match for my first outfit.
The fawn color of the Flemish giant fits right into the gold/warm brown continuum of my hair and my cognac boots.
Has sweater weather come to an end in your neck of the woods? Have you ever been taken by surprise when an online purchase arrived and the color was quite different from what you expected?
Blogs I link up with are listed here.
Light teal is a nice color for spring. I like how you added the pops of red to brighten up the entire outfit. Thank you for sharing this post in the Talent-Sharing Tuesdays Link-Up 59.
Carol
www.scribblingboomer.com
I love the scarf in the second outfit - it works so well with the knit and the print on the skirt. I can't believe you still have snow in spring! It's autumn here and still so hot, we have had a couple heatwaves and it's still feeling like summer, although thankfully it has started cooling down in the mornings and evenings a little, so proper autumn weather should arrive soon I hope!
Thanks for joining the Weekday Wear Link up :)
Wow, snow in April! The aqua sweater looks fantastic with the unusual aqua, maroon and navy scarf. I love aqua too. Thanks for linking.
We met a woman out here on vacation whose flight back was cancelled because of the snow you're getting. I do love these lighter colors. I won't brag that it's getting up into the 90s this week, haha. XOXO Jodie
www.jtouchofstyle.com
I love both of these outfits, Sally! Loving the teal - red combo in the first one, and the print mix in the 2nd. Fabulous! It’s supposed to be 78 degrees here today. Our second foray into the 70’s. But it will cool down again. Not enough for sweater weather though. 89 inches of snow! Crazy!
Michelle
https://funkyfashionstyle.com