Tate Modern

Recently I went with school to the Tate Modern to get ideas for art. Sadly I have none yet, but I did see several pieces which I loved.

La Fenetre - Pierre Bonard

I love the sunny feel of this window view. Sort of wish this is what I saw out my window every morning!

Trivaux Pond - Henri Matisse

Blurry photo, sorry :S

Looks like a magical wood to me :)

Venus of the Rags - Michelangelo Pistoletto

Makes me think of the whole world of consumerism and excess, how people have piles of unwanted and unneeded things... Deep.

Untitled - Peter Fischli, David Weiss

This is amaazing! The room is set up like a builder's workshop, and then if you read the information board it tells you that everything is made out of foam! You would actually never guess, it looks so realistic.

This was just a beautifully colourful and cheerful flower stall we passed on the way back. It brightened my day :)

Camera :)

was extremely lucky this Christmas and I got something I've wanted for such a long time, a camera of my own! It's a Canon Powershot and I love it! It's so preeeetty :)

This Christmas, for the first time ever, I think, my gran's house had very deep snow on Christmas day, something I've always wished for! And this gave me an exciting opportunity to take some photos. Enjoy!

Snowy animal prints :)

Close up of a Christmas light.

View out of the window! Lovely snowy landscape.

Winter wonderland :D

Close up of the snow on the hill

Christmas Day sunset :)

Day after Boxing Day, in Stratford-Upon-Avon. Dusk was lovely and misty

Completely accidental blurring. But I thought it actually came out quite cool :P

Let it snow!

I hope everyone had a wonderfully HAPPY CHRISTMAS! :D

I'm extremely lucky, (or unlucky, you could say :P ) to have had a huuuuge amount of snow in the last few weeks! It got up to about 35cm where I live, which for London is pretty impressive! Me and my brother took out our dad's amaaazing SLR canon camera for some photos one evening, so here are a few we took.

This is the only one in the post I actually took myself, and I'm actually reasonably proud of it. It's taken out of my brother's window, looking through all the icicles and out over the trees.

Look at the snow deepness! :O

Hmm, strange facial expression here :P

I'm wearing, in case anyone's interested:
Wellies - Millets, I think

Tights - TopShop sale, £5 :D

Shorts - Republic, £22

Gloves - Accessorize, birthday present from the lovely Rachel

Jumper - Next. It was my mum's from years ago but I've sort of permanently borrowed it now :P

Snood - Primark, about £3?

Hat - Accessorize, birthday present a few years ago

And obviously, tops under my jumper as well, but I can't remember what I wore , sorry about that.

Fields near where I live. Lovely photo here taken by my brother.

Spectrespecs!

YAY BIRTHDAY! It was my birthday a few weeks back, and I had such an amazing and busy time :)

One of the ways I'm celebrating is having a Harry Potter themed party, and of course I'm going as Luna Lovegood :P And obviously, the best thing about Luna is her Spectrespecs, so I set abo

ut making some, and I thought I'd show you how, just in case you ever feel the need to make your own !

So I'm aiming to make a pair of those glasses --->

1. Firstly, you need this template. Copy it into Word and resize it to fit your face, and print two copies. If you can, print onto card, and skip to step 5. If not, print onto paper, and continue with step 2.

2. Put one paper copy of the template to one side. Find a cereal box or some cardboard which can fit the frame the sides

on it. Use double sided tape (like in my

photo) or glue each part onto the cardboard. This will make each piece stronger.

3. Cut out a piece of sticky back plastic to fit over

er each piece of the glasses. This will give the shiny effect on the frame.

4. Use a piece of cardboard to push the sticky back plastic flat over the glasses, peeling back the paper backing with the other hand. You will then need to cut out around each shape. At this stage, you should have the main frame, and the two sides, mounted on card and covered in shiny plastic.

5. To make the lenses, take some silvery paper, or paper with a special effect on it. Cut two circles to fit in your frames and colour one circle with a pink pen, the other with a blue pen.

6. Use a cutting knife to cut two small circles in the centre of each circle, so you can see through them. Then cover the back of the glasses in sticky back tape or glue, and attach the circles colour down on the back of the glasses frame.

7. Using blue and red wrappers from sweets, cut out a small square and attach this over the back of each circle.

8. Take the second template you put aside at the start, cut it out, and using glue or sticky back tape, attach the templates onto the backs of the cardboard pieces. This means that your glasses

have the pattern on both sides.

9. Bend the straight ends of the side supports, like hinges, then use glue or double sided tape to attach them behind the front frame.

And your glasses are finished!

I look incredibly cool, I think.

;)

Oh dear.

I'm sooo sorry everyone! I have not blogged in so long, and I'm incredibly sorry. I hope you can find it in you to forgive me :( I've been incredibly busy, I've been away, and then had a lot of work and revision and all sorts. So I hope this shall be the first in a series of much more regular blog posts! :)

Recently, I hit the beautiful TopShop midseason and emerged with this absolutely BEAUTIFUL, in my opinion anyway, pocketwatch. It was half price from £30 to £15 and, thanks to Tania, who worked out for me that it wasn't broken, but was actually a windup clockwork watch, it will never run out of batteries! Apologies for the bad quality on some of the photos.

I love all the pattern on the back, and I think it's amazing how you can just turn it over and see all the clock mechanism working away, and watch the ticking :D

I love it! What have you got in the sales recently? xxxx

BRACELETS :D

This has not been a particularly great week. I spent Wednesday getting gradually more ill throughout the day, ending up with a fever, aching all over my body and a headache... and the same on Thursday. It hurt just to move! But then had a great sleep thanks to some wonderful drowsy flu medicine and woke up Friday feeling fabulous! And then today I woke up with the worst headache I've ever had in my life, which hurrrrt so much whenever I moved at all... :'(

Fortunately, I seem better for the moment so lets hope it stays like that :) Anyway!

I LOVE bracelets. There's something about how you can just easily slip on a few to make an outfit a bit more exciting, and you've also got something to fiddle with if you're bored :P So over the years I've accumulated a fair few!

I've picked out a few to show you today, which are quite new to my collection.

These three were given to me from my brother, and I absolutely love them! He went to Costa Rica for a month, and brought these back from some of the local craftsmen. I love the homemade natural feel of them all!

I'm not entirely sure what this is made of, but you can just about see that is says 'Costa Rica' and has a lizard on it. I like wearing this so I can pretend I've been there, and lived out of a rucksack for a month :P I'm so glad my brother did that instead of me, there's no way I could pack a month's worth of my life into one rucksack xD

This one is quite clearly made of seeds from Costa Rican plants. I love how the seeds have such a bright orange colour on them, that really makes them contrast nicely. Out of all of them, I probably wear this one the most :P

I think this one is made of a seed which is painted, but I love how it's got a pattern a bit like a sun on it :)

This is often how I like wearing my bracelets - mixed up with a little bit of everything else. That way, each bracelet I have on is different and has a different story :) How do you like wearing yours?

A little bit of a lot

I am sooo sorry, its been quite a while since I've posted something :( I've been trying really hard this school year to keep up to date with work, so I've been doing lots of putting-into-folders, cutting-and-sticking and general sorting and of course, homework.... but in truth, and this might sound a bit strange, I'm actually sort of enjoying the satisfaction that I'm getting all my work done, and being organised! I feel like I'm actually achieving something, getting somewhere. Which, is great! Wonder how long its gonna last :P

So I think this is going to be a bit of a bits n bobs post, if that is okay :)

First things first, its Tania from forget me not's birthday on Sunday! So why not pop over and wish her a happy birthday on the 3rd :) I need to buy her a present... If you're reading this Tania, I'm not going to tell you what I'm thinking of so haaaaa ;)

Second,

its also Tania's sister's birthday party soonish as well, and I need to rustle up a fancy dress costume, on the theme of a 'fictional character'. Naturally, of course, I want to go as a princess :P So if anyone has any ideas or suggestions how I can become an Aurora or a Cinderella, but cheapishly, that would be wonderful!

Oh, and! I came across this amazing shoe website! It's called Discount Shoe Store, and they sell beautiful heels and other shoes for the cheapest prices ever - you can get heels for like, £10! So its definitely worth having a look, here's the link: Discount Shoe Store

I'm not sure how much they charge for postage though, I've never bought anything from there, I just admire how preeedy they are :P But I'd really recommend the 'Black Gardenia Satin Platform' shoe, I have them, but I bought them off the Barratts website a while back, and they are beautiful, and comfy too :)

And one last thing! I've been busy playing piano and singing a lot recently, which I actually LOVE! I normally learn chords or piano parts from songs I like and then sing along with them :D And, quite a lot of these are by Lady Gaga , whose music I absolutely adore (that's one of the things I put in my first blog post ever!) She has a lot of acousticky lovely music that isn't very publicised.

So one I came across about a month ago is You and I , and its going to be on her new album. (EXCITED!) I just thought I'd share it with you :) And maybe if you look out in the future I might post a clip of me singing it :P

There we go, quite a lengthy post in the end! I hope you enjoyed it!

I love all you lovely people x

Natural Beauty Treatments

We all know how many beauty products there are out there, claiming to have wonderful benefits, most with huuuuge price tags. So I've put together a few beauty treatments you can try out at home for a fraction of the price. :)

Problem: Dry, limp hair

Treatment: Olive oil

The first time I tried this, I was a little sceptical. I warmed up a small cup of olive oil in the microwave and used enough to cover all of my dry hair, using my fingers to ensure all my hair was covered. Then I left it for about 15 - 30 minutes, and washed it off afterwards thoroughly with shampoo. Make sure you thoroughly rinse it out, or your hair will be greasy, even once you've dried it. I blow-dried it and I have to say, I could REALLY feel the difference! My hair felt MUCH thicker, and very soft, and very shiny. The next day at school, several people commented on how nice it looked, even after I'd slept on it. And it wasn't at all greasy, either!

I tried it again the same week, and I didn't see the same effects, so I think its something that's best done about once a week, otherwise you overdose your hair a bit :P

RESULT: Softer, shinier, more volumised hair

Problem: Dry, chapped lips

Treatment: Sugar

Yes, believe it or not, sugar is just wonderful for this. Use some caster sugar, or any other sugar you happen to have (except icing sugar), and rub it against your lips, and it will gently scrape off dry skin. And even better, you can lick of any remaining sugar at the end! I have a posh version of this, from Lush, and its a lovely product of flavoured sugar scrub, but you really don't need to bother buying something when plain cheap sugar does just the same job. Just finish off with Vaseline, Carmex, gloss or whatever takes your fancy!

RESULT: Soft smooth lips

Problem: Spot scars

Treatment: Lemon juice

If you have ever had a horrible pimple or spot, and after time the redness and lump goes down, but you're still left with a teeny red dot? And while they are very small, once you have a few, they don't look so great? Well, I have read that applying a few drops of fresh lemon juice onto each scar and leaving for about 15 minutes, and washing off. If you do this every day for about a week, it should make them fade. I've only just started doing this, but after about two goes I think they have begun to fade a little.

RESULT: Hopefully, no more scars!

Problem: Tired eyes

Treatment: Cucumber

This works so wonderfully! It's best to chill the cucumber in the fridge beforehand, so it is very refreshing. Just cut two thin slices, lie back and relax for about 10 minutes, and afterwards, your eyes should be more awake and hopefully dark shadows should have faded. Really does make you feel better!

Result: Awakened, refreshed eyes

I hope you've learned some useful new tips! :) x

Holiday house

Regular readers will know that I recently went to France, and we stayed in a little woodland cottage the first week which which lovely, and the second week, an absolutely GORGEOUS place, done up by an extreeeemely artistic English lady. Everything in the house was wonderfully vintage and mismatched and just loverly loverly. I, of course, felt it was far too big an opportunity to miss out, so took some photos to share :)

Looking up from the stairs.

There were loads of vintagey hats and old books everywhere.

And a huuuge amount of pots, vases, glasses, ornaments, and general decoration.

I LOVE this mirror! Looks like its from a church or something :P And there were lots of those metal lantern all over the house.

Not to mention a MASSIVE collection of DVDs to keep me occupied! I just had such an amazing time :)