Because we’re moving, we’ve been trying to spend as much time with our friends up here before we have to say goodbye for a while.

We had so much fun with our other “Cooking with Susie” sessions that we decided to give it one more episode!

What did we decide to cook? Sushi! Well not really sushi but erasers that are shaped like sushi in a a little kit thingy.

We bought the kit as a present for Susie while we were in Singapore so she brought it over to play with.

Basically it’s a little box that comes with clay and molds and when you put them in the microwave it magically transforms them into erasers. You can read more about it here.

With these sort of things reading he instructions is very important. Even more so when they are written in Japanese!

You should fill the little molds with some water so the clay doesn’t stick to it!

Add some clay to each side…

Squish the sides together

Pull the extra off and you’ve got a piece for your sushi!

Use something pointy to wedge the clay out.

No matter how realistic they look don’t eat them!!!

Bad Susie!

Keep making them until you’ve made all of the pieces!

This is the reaction you get when you tell two girls that you’re going to eat all their sushi…

These are some of the parts that will eventually make the wholes: rice, egg and roe! Susie made these ones so they are all perfect.

This is an example of the crappy ones I made…

Eventually she wouldn’t let me touch the clay anymore because of my shoddy workmanship mwahahaha! This mismatch of skills tends to lead to some jealousy.

But you know all of that can be fixed with our awesome dancing!!

So enough messing around, making sushi is serious business!

Fill the paper container that came in the kit with water and add the sushi pieces.

Wait patiently for them to come out of the microwave!

Then dump the pieces into cold water.

Cut out all the bits of paper for the nori wrappers etc!

This is a good point to exchange presents too… Susie made me this awesome gigantic leopard print bow!! She is so talented and awesome. On the other side of that because I’m an awesome friend I got her…. my love and admiration

And here is our finished sushi!

Yummy yummy yummy Congratulations you have successfully completed a craft project made for children! I will claim that the language barrier was the reason it took us several hours. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

But also even after it’s cooked you probably shouldn’t eat it.

Thanks for watching Cooking With Susie… and Violet!

Come visit Melbourne soon Susie!!! Let’s start a petition to make her come live in my spare room and do stupid stuff like this all the time?

Sneaker Sunday is really taking off huh? It’s been fantastic to see all of your posts and photos, keep them coming in ok

If you still don’t know what all the fuss is about check the original post here!

So this week in honor of Sneaker Sunday Valerie and I wanted to talk about foot care. When you’re on your feet all day running around and being busy it’s easy to forget about the little things that are carrying you. We so readily will give ourselves cute manicures and nailart but pedicures are much more rare, so this week I present…

Violet’s Favorite Foot Care Routine With a Cute Summer Nail Art Idea… Which Is Awesome… Ok.

Longest title ever.

Step 1.

Get in your most comfortable pajamas and make sure your feet are clean.

Step 2.

Remove any old and chipped toe nail polish.

Step 3.

Use some cuticle oil around your toe nails. Please don’t use the same one that you use on your finger nails, that’s unhygienic. I have a second one for my feet so they feel nice and soft!

Nail art time!

Gather together toe separators, pink, purple and clear polish and a white dotting tool. You will also need some Fimo fruit slices.

Step 4.

Paint your toe nails alternating in pink and purple.

You might need two coats.

Step 5.

Use the dotting tool to place small white polka dots all over the nails.

Fimo fruit slice time! The lovely Jin sent me these slices, how cute is the container?

Step 6.

Using the clear polish as glue, set 3 of your favorite fruit pieces in a u shape on your big toe. Once it’s dry give it a clear coat over the top too.

Step 7.

Once your polish is nice and dry use your favorite moisturizer and give yourself a foot rub!

Even better, find someone willing to do it for you Thanks James!

Step 8.

Put on your favorite pair of cotton socks and sleep in them. This will keep all the moisture in but still give your feet breathing room.

And there you have it, you’re on your way to feet that love you a little bit more

If you’re hungry for more Sneaker Sunday action don’t forget to check out Valerie’s post on her own DIY foot spa because it’s totally awesome!

Have a great Sunday everyone!

So this is going to be my big Melbourne post I’m sure you’re all sick of hearing about it by now! There is one more post coming up about something we did down there but it’s a surprise so I suppose you’ll all just have to deal with hearing about it for a tiny bit longer ^_^ I’ve actually got a lot of other photos from down there to be used in tutorials and the like as well…

But on to the photos!

So on the first day we mostly just rested because we had to be up at 2am that day for the flight. Sight seeing on 2 hrs sleep really isn’t very fun, so we took it easy and just had a little wander around Box Hill shopping center. That night we went out for a yummy dinner and got our first taste of Melbourne traffic, 2 1/2 hours for a 45min trip LOL apparently no one told us that there happened to be an ACDC concert on that night… oh wait that’s not true we were stuck on the flight with a crazy ACDC fan! He had been waiting in line to check in with us and struck up a conversation about how awesome ACDC were and how he was flying around the country to see every concert, we were polite and then somehow we ended up next to him on the flight as well >_< Most awkward 2 hours  of pretending to be asleep ever.

We also met SuperKawaiiMama‘s adorable children Miss 5 and Miss 2 who have more energy than anyone I’ve ever met! On the Friday we also went shopping… ok yes we did a *lot* of shopping! You’ve already seen the photos from the tea party on the Saturday so now we’re up to Sunday which was Valentines/Chinese New Year!

We went down to China Town for CNY and saw the dragon dances as well as more shopping…

James bumped into Mr Gadget outside and 5min later we bumped into Fashion Hayley! It was so strange to keep bumping into people we knew in a city we didn’t live in!

Our outfits for the day:

People kept asking for photos as well which was quite amusing. Some guy even wanted us to take photos with his kids >_< The strangest part of that day was being hit on by a skeezy old asian guy who apparently thought I was 15… Gross and all kinds of illegal!

Delicious lunch that day:

Mr SKM enjoying the delicious lunch:

Ok yes there was a lot of cam-whoring that day!

The dragon (edit apparently when there are only 2 people it’s a lion) eating up some yummy looking watermelon:

Those fire crackers were so loud!

Of course the whole time I was trying to keep up with you guys online as much as possible!

Including making fun posts like our Valentines Day Entry to the Nuffnang competition. This was taken while I was getting ready ^_^

SuperKawaiiMama’s yard also made a great backdrop for all of the photos. So pretty and green!

And we had a lot of fun being ridiculous!

James demanded I include this because he thought it was hilarious

Miss 5 decided my make up wasn’t pretty enough one day so she gave me this awesome make over! Ready for a night out yes?

One day we went wandering around the city by ourselves, it was really beautiful.

That night we were supposed to meet up with my awesome old friend Steampunkerie but I managed to twist my damn ankle on the curb in China Town so we had to cut it short and had drinks instead. I had the weirdest green tea and icecream concoction I’ve ever tasted, it was really yummy though!

That afternoon we caught the train home and were surprised at how clean, easy to use and efficient it was!

Living with another creative girl with similar interests produced a lot of late night crafting sessions

That night we made hair clippies, mine is the rosette on the left ^_^

We ate a RIDICULOUS amount of delicious food there, I don’t think I’ve ever eaten out that much in my life. It was SO good!

So much food!

We did a huge amount of shopping, I loved all of the imported Asian make up stores like The Face Shop and Missha. I’ll have some product reviews for you soon from there once I test everything out

We also visited some Op Shops and got some great bargains! The highlight of which was an old guy stopping his mobility scooter and saying “An old guy like me can say it… YOU LOOK REALLY GROUSE! Really beautiful young lady!” I have to say, I’ve been described as a lot of things but “grouse” is new on my list! For the overseas readers, grouse is really old Australian slang for awesome eg. “This beer tastes grouse mate”.

James was in his element taking photos of everything, I think he really enjoyed having so many locations to shoot at and new interesting back drops!

Here’s another one of his:

On the last day we all ruined our awesome diets with a fantastic meal of McDonalds…

There was a carousel at the airport, so awesome!

After a long awesome filled week it was time for a very sad farewell ;_; (you just need to pretend that I’m not laughing in this photo ok?)

Back to Brisbane and back to the horrible humidity On the plus side hopefully we’ll be back in Melbourne sooner than you think!

Thank you so much to all our wonderful friends who made our trip so great! Special thank you to SuperKawaiiMama, Mr SKM, Miss 5 and Miss 2 for letting us stay with you and showing us such a wonderful time! It’s awesome to know that we won’t be alone when we move down!

<3

When we decided to take a trip to Melbourne, the one thing I *really* wanted to do was have a big meet up where I could catch up with all of my blogging friends and everyone else we knew in Melbourne ^_^

SuperKawaiiMama was completely awesome about the idea and organised a tea party for us at the new Cristina Re flagship store. I had only heard of Cristina Re in the sense that she makes the beautiful scrap-booking supplies and stationary and I had no idea that there was a beautiful little cafe attached!

The cafe was decorated with beautiful butterflies:

We had a great turn out! From left to right below:
Super Kawaii Mama, Me!, AuroraHime, Nicole from Circa Vintage, Esme and the Laneway, Fables in Fashion, Kitty’s Drawings, Petite Valse

Being that we were pretty much all bloggers we had a huuuge amount of photos by the end of the day!

There were two token boys there as well, Kitty’s Drawing’s partner Johnny and James who was being the photographer for the day ^_^

Here he is!

Everyone was dressed so immaculately!

The setting was delightful and oh my god the food… the food!

There was so much food! We had spinach quiche…

Macarons:

Tiny delicious cupcakes:

And the most beautiful hand made chocolates:

James ate about a billion of the delicious sandwiches!

Everywhere you looked there was something else beautifully presented!

It was quite funny, not many of the people who came had actually met in real life before but I don’t think there was an awkward pause the whole time! We bloggers sure can chat!

SuperKawaiiMama and I chatting to our hostess, who was the friendliest person in the entire world!

I so love this photo:

We ended up staying right up until closing time because we were having so much fun

Some of these photos are by James and some are by SuperKawaiiMama

Esme and the Laneway looking beautiful as usual!

Some of the yummy food:

There were several yummy teas served that day including mint, lemon, chamomile, fruit and others that I’ve forgotten. We had a lot of fun trying to work out which tea was which because they all came in the same tea pots Lucky dip tea!

I was totally jealous of Aurora Hime’s nails, they had little bunnies on them!

SuperKawaiiMama, Aurora Hime and I all had crazy nail art on so we had to take group photos

More food… because I just can’t get enough of it! The service at the cafe was really great, and they just kept bringing more tea as we drank it all.

I wanted to take this chandelier home with me!

We had such a wonderful time that day, it was a really lovely introduction to Melbourne and it was great to finally meet some of the people I’ve been chatting online to for years! I can’t wait to go back!!

Thanks so much to everyone who came <3 <3 <3

Quite a while ago… well before Christmas in fact… Super Kawaii Mama aka Candice DeVille had the most awesome competition ever. It was her Perfect Vintage Christmas Competition and I made a video entry (you can watch it here). And guess what? After voting on a semi finalists… I won! HOW EXCITING IS THAT?!

Firstly I want to say a huuuuge thank you to Candice for holding the competition, I really enjoyed making the video and omg prizes!

Firstly a 30 Pound gift voucher from Notorious Kitsch!

I had SO much fun picking out everything from Notorious Kitsch, there were just so many things on their website that I couldn’t decide :O

What I ended up with waaaaas:

-I Married A Monster From Outer Space greeting card
-Looking for Trouble pouch
-Of Course it Buys Happiness business card holder
-No Reason Note book holder
-Sew n Save Tin
-Je T’aime Paris magnetic Address Book

All of that for 30 Pounds! One of the coolest parts? She threw in an awesome set of mini emery boards in the shape of an old hotel match book! SO COOL! I keep them in my purse now for emergencies Fiona was so delightful to deal with and she really went the extra mile to find cool things that were in stock for me Go check out her store now!

Prize number 2 was a swimsuit from For Luna!

They make the most beautiful swim suits I’ve ever seen. They are all retro themed and have really flattering cuts. One thing that I *really* liked was that you can choose some of the designs to fit your bra cup size. As a girl who is slim but *cough*curvy*cough* I have a lot of trouble finding swim suits that well… fit. After chatting to Vicki about which style would suit my figure the best as well as be very supportive I picked one out

This is what arrived at my door… How cute is the packaging?!

And this is the swim suit, you can see it on the site here. It’s made of quite thick material and it has boning in the sides to give you a really nice shape.

Okokokokok after much debating I decided to post some pictures of me actually in it.. but I’m completely self conscious so be nice ok! I normally don’t even leave the house without stockings and a cardigan so this is quite out of the ordinary! I’m also a little paranoid that the photos will end up somewhere I don’t want so extra water marks today sorry!

Hahaha so pasty and white, I love being  pale! Epic tanning fail=

I really can’t say how much I LOVE this swimsuit, I used to hate swimming and going to the beach because I was always scared of having a “costume malfunction” but this is so supportive and nice that I go swimming with James all the time now

What you don’t check your false lashes while you’re swimming too?

James played with the colours here to make it look really pretty!

How cool does my hair look here? Next time I want to order this one and feed my leopard print obsession some more!

Last but definitely not least I got a $100 gift voucher from Blue Velvet Vintage.

I had a huge amount of fun trying to decide what to choose from Blue Velvet Vintage, there were so many pretty things on the site that I came very close to spending a lot of my own money too *_*

Adorable business card!

So what did I get? First I got this super cute bracelet by Sarah Coventry. Unfortunately a couple of the rhinestones had fallen off in transit but they were very easily fixed and Theresa was extremely apologetic. Anyway it looks so pretty on!

The other item I got was this super awesome purple pleated skirt from the 1950′s!

It was way too long on me so I took it up around 10 inches very carefully and taadaa:

Too cute right?

I absolutely love it!

Thank you so much to Notorious Kitsch, For Luna and Blue Velvet Vintage, I really appreciate all the wonderful gifts they made Christmas extra special!

Special thank you goes out to Super Kawaii Mama for being incredibly awesome and holding this competition! LOVE.

What do you guys think? Did I pick well?

Quite a while ago I was sent a bunch of 1000Hour lashes to test out, I’ve shown you all of them except the individual ones:

To be honest I wasn’t really thrilled about the idea of individual lashes, it sounded like an awful lot of unnecessary effort to me. I mean who really wants to apply full eyelid’s worth lash by lash? Who has time for that either? It wasn’t until I did a bit of a rethink and took some inspiration from the lovely SuperKawaiiMama that I got some inspiration.

These lashes are perfect for a cute casual look. You don’t actually need to put lashes over the whole eye to get an adorable effect, these are perfect for a cat-flick at the side!

Ok so here is how to do it ^_^

These are my lashes to start with, I’ve applied some mascara and given them a little bit of a curl.

Before: cute and casual look.

This is the packet they come it, it’s a step up from 90% of other lashes available in Australia because the little tray they come in actually has a lid. I hate when you get lashes and they just come in the tray, it makes them useless for storage! This however is good and you get a lot of them in a pack so they last a while especially if you reuse them.

So to begin with get one of the little bunches.

And some scissors.

And cut the tip of the bunch on an angle. You need to do 2 of these (one for each eye so cut them in opposite directions). This is the part that will gradiat to the longest lashes on the ends. If you don’t have one of these it will look like you’ve just one a random flick on the edge.

This is what they should look like.

Now grab your lash glue. I would not recommend this brand unless you are allergic to others like me.

Add a tiny bit of glue to the base of the bunch. Depending on the glue you’re using you will probably need to wait for it to get tacky before applying.

Ok now apply it to you lash line, you should apply it a couple of mm before the end of your lashes. Once you apply the bunch, give it a little pinch to make sure it’s in line with your natural lashes.

Here is a photo of it applied to my lashes, you can barely see it because the shape blends into the length of my natural lashes. In the next photo I’ve highlighted where it it.

This is where it is placed, if you compare the below and above photos you’ll be able to see exactly what I mean and the angle of the cut.

This is how it looks when my eyes are open, it’s much easier to see here but you can still see how it blends.

And here it’s highlighted…

Ok! Now you want to get 2 more bunches per eye. These ones should be full sized. Do them one at a time so you have lots of control over the placement. Add the glue!

And this time we’re going to place this bunch next to the one we just did on the outside side (closer to the corner of the eye). You should make sure that the last one sits on the very edge of your lash line. By the time you’re finished you should have 3 bunches on each eye (2 full ones and 1 angled one).

Once you’ve placed them if you want you can add another coat of mascara to make all the lashes the same thickness or even curl them again. One other tip I have is that if you find they are sticking up at a different angle than your natural lashes, give them a coat of mascara and pinch them together with your natural lashes gently. The mascara will act like a light glue!

So this is what you should end up with:

And here is where the lashes are:

With eyes closed you can really see the difference:

And highlighted!

So there you go! This look is great as an everyday look because it’s not too heavy but the flick at the end is super cute.

Now as for a review of the actual lashes I found them to be really good. I was really surprised at how durable they were, I’ve used the same 6 for this look several times. The best thing that I found was that they were comfortable enough to sleep in… probably not something I need to worry about every day but great when you’re on a 7hr plane trip! I was worried that because they weren’t held on by much glue that they would be hard to keep on but I haven’t lost one so far. You can get them from Priceline, Kmart and other beauty supply stores for around AU$7.95 which is an average price for lashes here in Aus. I really like them and I’ll be buying them again… though with this many in a tray I probably won’t need to for a long time hahaha!

“Kichi” suggested by Esz

Congratulations Esz and thank you to everyone who voted and entered! Kichi is very happy with her new name and I’ll be decoing her soon so she’s all dressed up!

I’ve contacted Esz via email so you’ll all just have to wait to see what she’s going to request for the tutorial, I think it’s going to be great!

I’ll see you all later today to kick off my week of awesome posts!

Lately a couple of people have been asking about how I decorate my hair, when I posted my make up tutorial Victoria Suzanne from Lolita Charm asked:

“I’d love to know about the roses in your hair – did you make them and how are they in such a cute little band? “

Here is a screen shot of my hair from the tutorial (the best one I could find anyway!)

So I thought today that I would talk a little bit about hair and show you how you can turn pretty much anything into a hair clip ^_^

So let’s make the hair clips first. These are my favorite types of roses. They are actually made from styrofoam which sounds strange but they are very soft, durable and realistic. I got mine from Spotlight but I imagine most craft stores carry them.

So what you need is flowers (or whatever you want to make into a hair clip), a hot glue gun and some bobby pins.

Using the glue gun you should put a good amount on both the rose and the bobby pin. Press them together. A good tip is to make sure that hot glue actually gets through the loop part of the bobby pin, this makes sure that it can’t pop out of the glue later.

You should hold the bobby pin where the stem on the flower would go. Normal hair clips would put the clip on a right angle but I find that it’s easier to hide the pin amongst your hair like this. Be careful not to burn yourself on the glue! When it’s dry it should look like this:

If you want you can cover the ugly glue on the back with a small circle of felt but seeing as it’s going to be buried in my hair I don’t mind so much ^_^

You can really do this with anything. Here is a sneak peak at what I’m going to be wearing in my hair at the Nuffnang Christmas party… I bought these butterflies at a junk store.

Now I have an army of butterfly hair clippies!

They are going to look super cute!

So now that you’ve made your clips it’s time to decorate your hair! How you arrange them greatly depends on the look you want. For me I want a hime style look but my other motivation is to cover my re-growth of non-blonde hair so I can wait longer between dyes and damage my hair less. So this is what I start out with:

When it’s up like this, the regrowth is super obvious. I’m sure I could cover it with a hat like a normal girl but with hime style hair it doesn’t go so well!

So to do the style I did in the video you need to start with a base head band. I like to use one which is similar colour to the flowers and has something interesting on it like a bow.

Everything about the style I’m making is lopsided so make sure you pick your best side for the bow!

Now get your flowers, it’s nice to use a few different types or shapes of flowers to make the style more interesting.

So grab one of your flowers (I’m starting with the light pink ones) and attach it. You should slide the flower under the headband because the band will hide the metal bit. You really don’t actually need to get much hair to hold it in, just a tiny bit. I get a tiny bit of my fringe in to it then push the whole way into my pouf.

This is how it looks all the way in. See how it hides everything nicely?

Now add another one on that side above the first.

And one on the other side… For this style I work with uneven numbers of flowers to make it even more lopsided.

Now you have quite a good base to work with, start adding the other kind of flower. You can add as many or few until you like how it looks. I like a lot of flowers so this is what I ended up with

No regrowth to be seen ^_^

Now here are some variations on this look, it’s very versatile…

This time instead of a head band I started with a row of flowers that I’ve glued on a comb.

So add it to the side because it’s going to be your feature piece.

This version requires more flowers if you want to cover up regrowth but still looks cute.

If you are wearing awesome earrings you can pull the bits of hair on the side backwards and pin them over the headband. Here is how it looks with a different headband.

So I hope that answers some of your questions, if you’d like ore information just leave me a comment Btw if you’re interested in Lolita fashion you should check out Victoria Suzanne‘s blog, it’s full of really interesting articles!

Wow you guys all really came through with the entries for my name my camera competition! So many entries

So here is a list of everyone’s entries, scroll down to see the finalists and vote for your favorite ^_^

Nixxy- Joey Jo-Jo Shabadoo!
Rumtumtigger- Naomi, Ayumi
Angel- Coco
Hear Mum Roar- Penelope
Karla- ickle
Dyra- kuchi-kuchi
TrayTable- Minnie, Handie
Jaede- Miss Indiana Jones
Naka- Pikachu, Kirby
Esz- Peko, Kichi, Beebi
Abby- Happy Days, Happy Damsel Inc, Heart Diamond (made out of pictures), Just Violets Camera
Kara- Susan
Jillian- Equine, Jillian
Auroragyps- Blinky
Moon- Hontas
Lolitadewdrop- Finky/Francis

There were so many cute entries that it was quite hard to narrow it down to 3… dun dun duuuuuuun dramatic pause…

Hey everyone! I have something a bit fun for you all today So as you would all know I’ve been doing some fun videos lately and to do them I had to buy myself a new video camera. I wanted something HD but small enough that I could just pop it into my handbag. After much umm-ing and ah-ing and comparing of specs I decided to buy a JVC Picsio.

I think I made an awesome choice because not only is it cute, for a tiny little thing it’s good quality too. I’m going to leave the technical review to James when he gets a chance but if you want to read more here is a good review which compares all of the current mini HD cameras on the market.

Now I have a habit of naming all of my appliances, my iphone is called Ruri, my computer is called Sophie and my old laptop is called Edward (no not after the stupid vampire!). I wanted to deco it but I’ve decided to wait until it has a name…

And this is where you guys come in… my new camera needs a name!

The winner will get to request a tutorial/video/post about whatever they like (within reason obviously eg. no I will not do a tutorial on pole dancing).

So what you need to do is submit your favorite idea for a name in a comment here or a message to me on twitter. I’ll pick the best 3 and then everyone will vote for a winner. You have until midnight this Friday (Australian Eastern Standard Time) to submit your idea then voting will start on Monday.

If you’re stuck for ideas here is some information about it!

The camera is super tiny and super light, here it is next to my iphone…

I bought one of those gorilla stand thingies so it can go anywhere and likes to adventure… even hanging off the side of a table.

It lives in a little pink case in my hand bag and once we’ve picked a name I’m going to cover it in deco goodness.

It has this cool finish on the front that kind of looks like quilting…

There are lots of fun buttons on the back…

So there you go! I’m looking forward to seeing what names you guys come up with and what tutorials/posts you request ^_^

Now here are some posts that are coming up over the next few weeks just so you don’t request them
-Craft tutorial: how to make a cute display for holding/organising headbands
-Hair tips/how arrange flowers in hime style hair for maximum effect
-Ideas on organizing your space for blogging (including a tutorial on customizing an ordinary lighting/a lamp like this one from Buyster into something adorable)
-Tip for decorating a cute Christmas tree