Fantastic Blognanza!

The following post is a submission from readers James Fraser and Amanda Roe. It’s a little different from our usual t-shirt-centric fare, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. Besides, variety is the spice of life!¹

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You have found the perfect Christmas cocktail dress and now the only thing missing to bring it all together, are accessories. There are plenty of ways to make that dress, and most importantly, you, stand out; all you have to do is choose the right elements.

First thing to consider is the style of your dress. If your dress has a lot going on, for instance, very bold patterns, or, sparkles, than it is best to keep accessories at a minimum. Perhaps try some very subtle but elegant diamond jewelry, earrings can add a twinkle and enhance that sparkly dress. If your dress has a Christmas theme or Christmas patterns, avoid going overboard with Christmas jewelry. It will bombard the eye and you will end up looking like a Christmas package no one wants to unwrap. Try choosing solid color jewelry that matches the dress.

If you have a simple dress, you can have a lot of fun accessorizing. Gloves, shrugs, clutches and heels are really trendy and fun ways to spice up your party dress. With black dresses, always go for the gold. A gold necklace with a bold pendant or piece of sapphire jewelry will look stellar.

Also, if your dress has an unusual neckline, or, if it goes too high, opt for an interesting cocktail ring. Wearing a necklace with a high neckline dress is out of the question, so avoid it all cost. Earrings are passable, so long as they aren’t dangly. But a beautiful glitzy ring is really the best addition to an extravagant dress.

Gloves and hair bows are really “in” this season. If you have a long dress, match it up with a pair of long gloves and a satin bow to tie your hair back and look totally sophisticated.

Another pretty idea to try out is a flower corsage. Choose dark, rich, exotic flowers are for winter.

The last and most important is finding the right shoes. Once again, you have to make sure to work the shoes accordingly with the dress. If the dress is plain, go wild with the shoes; if the dress is fierce, simple shoes are best. One mistake too many women make is not buying shoes that fit them, or that are too high and uncomfortable to walk in. Be reasonable when it comes to shoes. There is no reason for you to ruin a perfectly wonderful evening because you can’t dance after fifteen minutes. There are always options for gorgeous shoes, you just have to look. Alexander McQueen has come out with some remarkably sexy flats this season, so you can keep those feet on the dance floor, all night long.

¹ Or so I have been told. I may have been lied to.

This is a quick post to let you know about an addition to our blogroll: The Vintage Afficionado, a t-blog about—you guessed it—vintage tees! Very exciting stuff. If you’re at all interested in old, cool, or rare tees, you’ll definitely want to check it out.

Lots of news today, for some reason. Let’s get right to it.

1) There’s a mid-year sale going on at Glennz Tees!

It’s for the next 5 days, and everything is either $14 or $16. And hey—did you know that you can get 12″x18″ poster prints of any of the designs? Somehow that had slipped past my attention, but that’s kinda neat.

2) We’ve only mentioned Tolky Monkys in TWiTS posts till now, but they’ve got some cute characters that I think you should take a look at. The one that caught my eye was Hikiko, the game-crazy mime.

This kind of reminds me of the evil cultist mimes you run across in Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness.

(Aside: John and I both highly recommend PAA:OTRSPOD; you should definitely play it. It’s available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, so if you’re reading this on a computer (and I have the sneaking suspicion that you are) you can play the game. (Well, unless you’re using BeOS or something, in which case I don’t really knowwhat to say.) And even if you’re not reading this on a computer, you can still play it on your XBox 360 via XBox Live Arcade. If you’re still not convinced, just download the free demo and try it before you buy it. What I’m trying to say here is that you have pretty much no reason whatsoever not to try the game. But I’ll stop harping on this point, since we’re purportedly a t-shirt blog, not a gaming one.)

3) New designs from Imaginary Foundation! You might be a little disappointed to hear that it’s pretty standard IF fare, though: shirts with hand-produced color fade, one-of-a-kind tye-dyed prints, and a dude playing drums on the moon.

Come on, Imaginary Foundation: get with the program! Where are all your snarky text-only tees? Where are the ironic pop culture references? Oh well… maybe next time.