The Periodic Table of Awesome and a Bright Bottom

I went for a little trip down to my local consignment shop this weekend, the one where I take in bags of clothes, Annie goes through them and then she tells me how much credit I can shop with. This time I got $150! Sweet!

Many of my clothes (as you know) are thrifted or pretty cheap on consignment and I usually get good wear out of them before I get tired of them. Sometimes I make a profit! Anyway, two of my items from yesterday and today were "purchased" with my credit.

The first being this skirt I wore on Monday:
Before we all moan, "Oh, another black skirt," I must say that this is yet another Smoking Lily find - and all of $23. And you know that means it's not just Another Black Skirt.

Oh no, my friends, this is the Periodic Table of Awesome Skirt:

Although this skirt didn't have the Smoking Lily label in it, I've seen the periodic table print around enough to know that this is one of theirs (the content label matches all of my other clothes). Plus, here's a couple of examples of it in other items by them: the original Periodic Table of Awesome (I'm totally stealing that name for this skirt now!), and a ladies' tee with it, both from their blog.

This skirt is a cotton/spandex mix, like a thick t-shirt material. The waist is nice and loose (and low, which is why I'm wearing the cashmere shell outside of it).

I'm wearing my French Connection jacket again (last seen here) and my Fluevog Coffee Sumatras (last seen here).

Here's a better look at the skirt pattern:

I like the touches of the gold flowers (also hand-silk-screened). And hey, my favourite element is there: molybdenum! Who doesn't love molybdenum??

Jacket (French Connection, thrifted), top (Ellen Tracy, swap from Caro), skirt (Smoking Lily, consignment), necklace (consignment), shoes (Fluevog, Coffee Sumatra).

Today was the first day I've been able to walk to and from work since getting my tattoo - it felt great to be moving again! The tattoo has healed up and I'm just keeping it moisturized now. We have a party to go to this weekend, so I'm excited to show it off in all its glory.

Anyway, today is also the day I let a little bit of it peek out at the office:

I love when fashion bloggers write about their tattoos (like Audi's great post here from last week), because it helps me figure out how I want to present mine, as well as to consider how I want (or don't want) it to be seen. As I work at an IT company, and I'm easily the dressiest person there, and other people have visible tattoos, it's not really an issue. However, I am the front desk person and I think it's important that I present a respectable and professional first impression if a client comes to our office (which is very infrequent).

I chose to have a little bit of my tattoo creep up the back of my neck because I like to be able to see it myself and have people see it and wonder about that lady ("is that a tattoo?").

I'm also showing off the back of this new-to-me sweater that I picked up (also $23). I love the rich bronzy-olive colour and the smocked back detail.

I also wanted to wear this bright skirt one last time before I put it in the consignment pile (I have another yellow skirt I like more) - I noticed that Megan is doing a Bright Bottom theme day in her next Fashion Challenge, so this one's for you, hon!

Here's a better look at the back detail on the cardi:

Isn't that nice? I love those extra details.

The outside shot shows the colours much better:

It's still cooler here than most places (it was up to 24 degrees today - that's hot for us!), so I can wear layers of sweaters still!

The stuff:

I wore my olive cut-out t-shirt (seen one day here) underneath everything - it was the exact same colour!

Those are my gold shoes - they are getting more and more comfy with each wear as the leather weaving stretches out.

The jangly bits:

I liked how the bronzy jewelry looked with the green.

Sweater (Kensie, consignment), t-shirt (RW & Co., consignment), skirt (Club Monaco, consignment), shoes (Aldo, consignment), earrings (Plum), bracelet (Jacob).