5 minute up-do!

Monday 30 April 2012

My sister came over the weekend for a friends birthday at a nightclub called 'The Sugar Hut' I think it sounds like the inside would be covered in sweets, but it's not like that at all; it's been made famous by a really popular television show here called 'The Only Way Is Essex' it's like a reality show (but I don't think much of it is really real)

She wanted a pretty hairstyle, I usually do a lot of 'down-do's' on her, long loose curls and lots of volume- that sort of thing, but today we were feeling an up-do, so an up-do we did!





I was meant to take pictures as I went through but we were short for time so I only have the before and after- but luckily, it's so darn easy that I can explain it without the visual aids!



1. Separate the top section of hair and backcomb underneath to act as a kind of 'cushion' for the smooth top part of the hair to be laid over to make an automatic quiff! Pin it in place and smother in hairspray!

2. Gather the rest of the hair into  tight and low ponytail, use a plain and simple hair tie

3. Take the ponytail and flip it and push it through the hair behind the pony tail, to make a kind of 'fancy- twist' ponytail

4. take the ends of the hair and flip it again, although instead of pushing it through hold it flipped inwards and pin until your hearts content and its held in place. Add another layer of hairspray, focusing specifically on the bun.

5. Finsh of with pretty itty bitty hair clips that match what you wear, my sister was wearing a dusky pink dress so I pinned 2 mathcing hair slides into the bun



 The finished result!

There you go, hair stylist (haha) and customer!
I know-I look like a vanilla popsicle next to my sister!

Mermaid Makeup - Wearable!

Sunday 29 April 2012

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll know I have a secret love affair with pastels but especially mint! Spearmint, peppermint, and any kind of bluey-greeny pale mint colour!
Yesterday I went for the mermaid-y look, if you fancy trying out the hair then check yesterdays post! For the makeup, keep reading!

~Insert artsy eye makeup photos~ (too bad I'm not a photo editing whizz and they look like home snaps)


Here's how it went down:
For the eyes-
Painterly Pain pot by MAC
Sea foam eyeshadow all over the eyelid by Madison Street Beauty (MSB)
Tiffany blue eyeshadow on the outer corner of the eye by MSB
Mermaid eyeshadown along the crease, blended backwards and fowards by MSB
Folie eyeshadow on the outer half of the crease and feathered out so that you can still see the Mermaid blue eyeshadow underneth- Folie is by MAC
Shade 001 Time Resist White by L'oreal on the brown bone and inner corner of the eye
Brown gel eyeshadow along the top lashline by MAC
Folie by MAC along the lower lashline, so that it's not so harsh and heavy on the eyes
White eyeliner along the waterline - Fascination by MAC
Black Mascara by BareEscentuals


For the face-
Bare Escentuals face primer
Avon Cream to powder foundation
Bobbi Brown Bronzing Brick underneth the cheekbones
Well Dressed by MAC blusher along the cheek bones
Snowglobe highlighter by MAC along the cheekbones and down the center of the nose
Eyebrow pencil shade Lingering by MAC

For the lips-
Lovelorn by MAC
Shade 001 Time Resist White by L'oreal dabbed ont he centre of the lips
Barbie from Avon clear gel lipgloss with glitter in it!

Then we're all finished! Don't forget, if you like the look of the mermaid hair then read yesterdays post named 'Hello Kitty Curls' for a breakdown of how to do that, it's super easy!

Hello Kitty Curls

Saturday 28 April 2012

Saturdays are the perfect days where you have a little more time to give your hair a little more
'ooh-la-la' there is nothing particularly Hello Kitty about the curls other than I'm wearing a hello kitty jumper!


Here it is! My insanely easy and not-so-slow loose, perfectly-imperfect mermaid curls


First of all, split your hair into an upper and lower layer, and clip up the top layer (you might need to split it into more clipped up layers if your hair is super thick)

Pinch at little sections of the bottom layer of your hair and place it between the plates of the straighteners


Holding the straightener pointing downwards, begin in the middle of the hair strand so that only the ends are curled and it looks more 'loose and natural' twist the straighteners to wrap the hair around the straighteners and slowly pull the straighteners downwards so that the hair is pulled out between the plates. It's super important to do it in a kind of slow and graceful motion, like when you use scissors to curl ribbon!


Here's a little looky at how my curls looked!


Once you've curled the bottom layer, pull at small sections of hair from clip that seperates off the next layer


...And do the same again as you did on the bottom layer, same technique with the straighteners pointing downwards and curling like ribbon, but rather than beginning half way down the hair you may want to start twisting closer to the root for more curl and body to your hair


Keep going all the way around your head until you have pulled all the hair from the clip seperating the curly from the straight hair. If your arm gets tired have a little break- maybe a quick snack!




The end result! Wonderfully, natural looking waves that just ooze glamour but are super simple and can be done with a straightening iron curlers, mousse or even hair spray is really needed!



And while we're here.... We may aswell have a quick look what I wore today, it's not super exciting

A baggy Hello Kitty jumper that looks like it was from some 80s dance movie where baggy dance gear was 'all the rage'! I wore a white vest underneth because it's kind of cold today!


Then some simple black treggings on the bottom, they're super comfy stretchy and go with everything, I got them from TKMaxx
(of course, the thick hello kitty socks are the most glamorous part of this outfit, theyre from H&M)



For my Make up that I wore today I'll do a little step-by-step for that tomorrow otherwise this post will be a bajillion pictures long and you might fall asleep half way through! Haha

100th post and a new study-time video!

Friday 27 April 2012

It's a double whammy of treats today and it's Friday!So maybe that's a triple whammy!?

First of all...
Happy 100th post day to my blog! Who would have thought? 100 days of writing about crafts and videos, tips and trick and all other kind of cray cray and peculiar posts.

I did not mean it to coincide with making a new video, but it does so here it is:



This is more of a practical how-to because although it may give you shudders to think about, exam season is upon us!
These tips work for all kinds of tests, exams, mid terms, end of terms, anything!

Please: take note that cramming is never ever a recommended form of studying, and for good reason- you won't be able to answer questions so insightfully with sophisticated links between theories and ideas than if you had learnt things over a longer period of time- this is true for theoretical topics
For numerical and more factual based topics, you won't be able to answer the hardest and higher level questions as easily, if at all.
But, cramming is going to be a million times better than nothing!

So cram this time- but next time make sure that you don't have to!

Uh Oh silly-O!

Thursday 26 April 2012

This post seems like it should be an April Fools post, whereas actually- it's just my embaressing real life!

For Easter I got what looked like a box of eggs- I actually said 'are they real?' 'They look like real eggs!' But after being convinced that they are not real and just amazing sugar art I kept them for a while to look at.





Today (or what felt like today but was actually yesterday since it's gone midnight) around half 4 I thought, well maybe I'll have one.
So I smell the shell and think 'is this really all sugary?' and it sure smelt like it was! It smelt of chocolate.
I bite into the shell and think oo.. this isn't chocolate, it must be solid sugar, like on those mini eggs that Cadbury sell...

The funny thing is it tasted good, because the chocoalate inside was so amazingly delicious.



About twenty minutes after having pigged out I start to feel like a cactus is doing cartwheels in my belly- it just felt so dang spikey, pretty much as soon as the pain came on, I knew I'd made a horrible, horrible mistake.

I checked the internet but it wasn't much good as it only referred to eating little bits in your scrambled egg, I'd eaten almost an entire shell!

After 2 and a half hours of a persistant and spikey stomach ache I call my friend who's a nurse who told me to call the NHS helpline- the first nurse I had was not very kind and sort of spoke to me like I was stupid (which I suppose I kind of am)

The second nurse was much nicer and very sympathetic, but told me that I would be fine and that it will just give me a stomach ache as my stomach doesn't like digesting it very much (I don't blame it!)

And that was the story of me and my unhappy egg.
I know I should have known, but I've never in my life seen real eggs filled with chocolate before- but they came from France, so maybe it's a french tradition. On closer inspection I see there's a hole in the bottom of the egg where I guess the actual egg was poured out and chocolate poured in; but I didn't think of any of this at the time!

Oh-well! Better luck next time for me!

♫ ♫ It was acceptable at the time! ♫ ♫

Wednesday 25 April 2012

Okay, so my jewellery doesn't fall into the retro catagory yet, but judging by what I found I think it will only take another decade or so!

Since I moved house I have only unpacked the 'essential' bits of jewellery and just bought new bits since I've lived here, but last night I suddenly remembered that I had some earrings that were still packed up and wanted to get them out.
So after a lot of hunting, and cutting through various layers of newspaper and sellotape to hold my jewellery box together I found some beauties and some hideous-ies

I'm not sure what catagory some of them fall into so I'll show you and you can decide!


A Spongebob Squarepants locket, it came from Clairs Accesories I believe


 I love this fun bow earring! I would never wear them as a  pair though as I thought that was too much going on with my head!

 These are giant, like the gem is the size of a 5p coin, I liked them because they reminded me of cherry gum drops or wine gums and I kind of wanted to eat them up!

 These were a present but I always thought they were cute, I used to think it would be a cool idea to get five holes pierced in my ears and have my name spelt out on my ear...er....yeah...that would have been 'super stylish' I'm sure...


And finally! My amazing charm bracelet I found! My sister got it for me and for birthdays and christmasses would get me a few more charms to add onto it. I forgot I had it so I wore it today and lots of people commented on even though it was old, it was still 'so me' I don' know if that's really a compliment through, my favourite charm is the chocolate bar on the end, I love that one!

What's your favourite?

Thank Zip for that!

Tuesday 24 April 2012

Today, thanks to Google's adorable doodle we all know that it is the birthday of Gideon Sundbäck!

Who? You say....

The man who invented the Zip, Zipper, Zippy or Zip-Zip whatever you want to call it

Zip is such a funny word when you think about it, the word zip actually sounds like the noise that a zip makes! Maybe that's why he called it that!

Look at all these great things that never would have come to be if it wasn't for good ol' Gideon...

Zippy! You'll remember this if you were around in the 80s/90s

A purse made entirely of zips!

A dress made of zips, something about this doesn't seem so classy though; although you could unzip certain sections to make your dress look diferent each time- or to cool off, while keeping it modest!

A trainer that with a few unzips- becomes a flip flop! Great space saver

And the only thing that I might actually wear among this stash- these zippy boots, although imagine the annoying 'jingle-jangle' every time you walked!

A Zip file! If it wasn't for Gideon maybe they'd be called velcro files, or popper files!

Zips are surprisingly important when I think about it, I'm more inclined to buy bags and purses with zip fastenings because they feel safer, but maybe that's just me!

The Good The Bad & The Ugly

Monday 23 April 2012

Today was a straight up mixture of all three:
We'll start negative and go to positive

The Ugly:
-I had a long walk in the rain, the one day that I forget my darn umbrella. This also meant that I had to wash my hair again, and I try to keep a day between washes to give my hair a little break but the universe decides nuh-uh wash that hurr again!

The Bad:
-I was wearing a pair of 'last resort' trousers- the kind that give me ugly red marks on my hips as they are just a little too tight, not cute
-Neverending workload!
-The screen protector that I ordered was a total annoyance and bind, it left ugly bubbles all over the screen and totally obscured the viewing so I had to peel it off and try and start over but the little protectant was simply not having any of it!

 The Good:
-The company are sending me a new screen protector for free, hopefully I shall have more luck with that one
-I used a new dove conditioner which has made my hair feel the most luscious that it has felt in a long, long time (Before that I was using BB conditioner which I found to be a complete waste of money!)



The downright crazy:
Okay so I made a whole new catagory because I felt like it needed to be said, the weather it super cray-cray right now, we've gone through all seasons in one day for every day the past week now! I don't get it, I don't remember Aprils being this erratic I don't know what I'm even wearing when I get up as in the mornings I'm all warm in my cosy room then I get outside and it all goes downhill from there.

Sometimes it's good to reflect on the good, bad, ugly, crazy, happy, clappy parts of your day so you can always be glad that no matter how much of a mundane-average day it sempt, their were little gems in it to still be appreciated!
Also... lets look back at my favourite sky pictures! We'll be back to sunny break through clouds and ice cream skies soon!


Happy Monday!

Sunday Blues? Nuh-uh! Sunday Greens!

Sunday 22 April 2012


I wanted to try out my new vegan makeup from Madison Street Beauty and pulled together this fresh and light green look. It's very subtle and daytime. And as usual super duper easy.
Here's the breakdown of what it took:


Once you've applied primer to your eyelids, start off by applying a light coral-y shade all over your eyelid, I used Opal by MSB (Madison Street Beauty)
Then a bright matte green on the outer corner, this is Shamrock by MSB and blend the centre of your eyelid to look like a gradient from coral to green.



Right on the outer corner do a little dab of a rich, sparkly green- I used Enchanted Forest by MSB



 Blend the sparkly green into the crease and be sure not to muddy the grandient from the matte green to coral
 Apply a brown eyeliner as close as you to the lashline so that it is just a thin, almost unnoticeable line but it will still make your lashline look thicker. Bring the brown eyeliner down to the waterline.


Use a highlight colour on the browbone, I used Stardust by MSB and then you're done!

Quick breakdown of the rest of the face:
Eye Primer: Painterly by MAC
Blusher: Desert Rose MAC
Bronzer: Bobbi Brown Shimmer Brick
Lips: Elemis chapstick
Highlighter: Snowglobe by MAC

Saturday spring clean!

Saturday 21 April 2012

I was getting a little irritable with my wardrobe, I couldnt really see anything, and I needed to use my mega muscles to pull anything off of the rail.

So I  decided that enough was enough and took everything out to create sepearete piles that went like this:
1. Keep
2.Charity shop
3. Craft projects
4.Throw

Another perk was the mountain of spare hangers that I had at the end! It's always to darn hard to find enough hangers and half of them snap and crack and break within a minute.


So here you have it, my grand (or not so grand) BEFORE AND AFTER!


Hooray for organisational posts on Earth Day!