Cancan hats are another trend that seems to be everywhere right now. Of course they’ve been around for practically forever with various names… straw boater, basher, skimmer, katie, senni etc. Here in Aus they are actually part of a lot of private school uniforms. I’ve always loved them because the remind me of picnics in the park with a nice cup of tea!

Anyway whatever you call it what I’m talking about is this:

Image courtesy of google, full credit to the owner.

Because they’re popular now they are quite expensive. So I decided to DIY my own ^_^

What you need:

• Round top straw sun hat
• Scissors
• Needle and thread
• Glue Gun
• Ribbon and lace for decoration if your hat isn’t decorated already.

You can easily pick up a big wide brim rounded straw sun hat for $2 from a thrift store and if you check out junk stores you can probably find one new for not much more than that! I happened to have one from back in my Country Lolita days that I had decorated with ribbon and lace but I’ve never actually worn it because the shape looked silly on me… time to make it all flat and pretty

Ok let’s get started!

At the top of the hat you will notice that the whole thing is made of a big spiral of straw which it stitches together. Carefully wedge your scissors into the top of the spiral and cut a few of the stitches.

Gently pull it apart, continue cutting stitches if you need to.

Start unraveling the sprial and cutting the stitches as you go ^_^

Keep going until you get to around this point:

When you get to here there are two options depending on the type of hat you started with. Some of these sun hats have very straight sides and some of them are basically a gigantic dome.

If you’re lucky enough to have one with straight sides then you can skip the next few steps.

If you have one with curved sides (like me) you will need to continue unraveling the hat until you to get to a point where the part that’s left is completely straight. This point might be different for you hat but mine was just above the ribbon band here:

Now you should get your needle ready and thread it.

Ok now it’s time to put it back together so the sides are straight and the top is flat!

Because the straw has been in a curved position for so long you will most likely need to bend it straight before you put it back together. Make sure to be gentle when you do this so you don’t damage it. I straightened it by putting it flat on the floor and gently bending it the other way.

Now you need to start winding the straw back into place. You can either do it the right way and stitch it in place or the quick way and hot glue it in place. Either way secure it as you go around.

You can see that the way I’ve put it back in place is much more vertical than the original pattern.

Keep going until you think your hat is tall enough and then do one more rotation around the top to make sure it is flat enough for the top of the hat not to be on an angle!

When you’re finished you should cut the excess straw off and secure the ends. I am going to cover the straw end with more decoration at the end so it doesn’t show.

Now let’s make the top! Get your left over straw and arrange it on a flat surface in a spiral.

You should measure the spiral to make sure it fits the top of your hat exactly and pin it in place.

Now stitch or glue your top in place.

Continue until it is the right shape and diameter. You should stitch the end of the straw around so it forms a circle like this:

Cut off the excess and this is what you get:

Do make sure that it fits the top of the hat before you cut the ends so you don’t have a gaping hole in your hat!

At this point I cut off the elastic string which holds the hat on your head because it was pointless and in the way.

Now on the inside of your hat, glue/stitch the top in place

You should get something like this:

Hurray it has a flat top!!

Now we’ve made the top shorter and flatter the large brim looks a bit silly! So let’s make it shorter

Find the edge and snip the stitches. It should come apart very easily.

I pulled out maybe 3 or 4 rows of it. Now secure the edge back in place.

And you get this…

Last step is decoration! I wanted a nice big rosette style thing on my hat so I cut off the long tulle tail…

And added another one of top. This also covers the join around the hat. Again hot glue or sewing is fine here.

TAADAA!

And there you have it, an adorable cancan hat that cost me nothing And I have another cute hat to add to my arsenal of bad-hair-day-hiding-tools

What do you guys think?

A few months ago a reader wrote in and asked me to write a “T-shirt Surgery” tutorial. If you haven’t head of t-shirt surgery it’s basically when you take a plain old t-shirt and you make it into something cooler and more fashionable. There is a community for it here where you can see some fantastic examples.

So anyway when I got the request I didn’t think it was something I would do because I don’t wear t-shirts often… but it stayed in my mind for ages and I kept thinking about it more and more until I had an idea When we were in Singapore for the Nuffnang Awards, Nuffnang Australia was lovely enough to give us all shirts. Mine had the slogan “I’m famous (in the blogosphere)” hahaha! I thought it was awesome but they only had large sizes so since then I’ve used it to sleep in… but no more!

So let’s get started in turning this….

Into this….

What you need:

• Large shirt (I’m using my Nuffnang one)
• Other shirt in a cute colour. I’m using an old pink Emily the Strange shirt
• Needle and thread
• Thin elastic
• Flowers or decoration
• Scissors
• Overlocker or sewing machine
• Shirt that actually fits you (for measuring)

Please note that I am hand stitching almost everything here because my sewing machine has been packed up for the move, if given the choice I would definitely use a machine for this project. I am going to redo the stitching when we get to the new house

First turn your white shirt inside out. Lay your white tee on a flat surface and place the shirt that fits you over the top. Line up the shoulder seams to make sure it’s in the right place.

Cut the bottom off in line with your nice shirt.

Cut up the side seems around 1.5cm away from your nice shirt’s seam, this is to give it enough room for the new seam we’re going to sew. You will notice when you’re cutting that the seam is probably not a straight line but instead it curves slightly. This curve will give the waist some shape so if you want to adjust this now is the time!

Cut until you reach just below the sleeves.

Following the line of the sleeves cut around at an angle. Now it just looks like a longer sleeve ^_^

Fold the shirt in half and repeat on the other side.

So this is what you should end up with… it pretty much just looks like a smaller shirt now ^_^

Now let’s cut a new neckline! Turn it the right way out so you can see what you’re working on. I chose a square neckline so I could show up pretty necklaces. I started by cutting out the collar carefully and then kept cutting until I reached the neckline I wanted.

Now get your coloured shirt and lay it out…

Cut the back section from the shirt, you want to remove all of the seams. You will end up with something this shape.

Lay the pink version over the white shirt. You should cut the sides and the neckline to match the white shirt. The pink part should be on the same side as the writing/pattern you want on the front of the shirt. You’ll end up with this:

Now you should use your overlocker (or sewing machine) to stitch up the sides. Start from the bottom and sew towards the sleeves, continue until there’s no hole left ^_^

Now at the top where the straps of the pink part are, there should be a strip of interfacing on the white shirt. Sew the pink to the white. Most shirts have it but if yours doesn’t just sew it into whatever seam is there.

You end up with this (although mine is terribly hand stitched).

Now move over to the sleeves, cut around 4cm off the ends. Repeat on the other side.

Measure a piece of thin elastic around the top of your arm and cut in two.

Sew the elastic around 4cm from the edge of the sleeve. While you sew stretch it to the correct size so when it’s unstretched it will form a ruffle. Mine looks a bit dodgy because it’s hand stitched >_<

So how you have something like this

Turn your shirt the right way out now and fold it in half down the middle with the pattern facing out. This next part is all about measuring. From the bottom of your pattern (my pattern is the slogan on the front) fold the shirt in 3 sections. Place a small marker at each fold.

Flatten the shirt out again but keep it folded in half. The pink strip below is marking how far in were going to cut, it should be as far in as the markers are apart. It’s a little hard to explain but it should kind of form a square.

Now do the actual cutting! DO NOT CUT THE PINK FABRIC! Only cut the white.

Repeat on the other side so you end up with this:

Now we’re going to make the sections into little bows

Cut 3 strips of the hem of the pink shirt.

Fold them in half and use them to form the center of the bow. Sew it all in place like this:

On the bottom bow place a small holding stitch through the white and pink so the bottom bow will keep it’s shape.

Now let’s go back to the neckline! Cut the rest of the hem off the pink shirt and measure it out like this:

Sew along the seams that are already there. Do the sides first and continue around the back.

Add a final piece to the front and cover the edges ^_^

I decided to add some chiffon flowers to the neckline just to girly it up some more. I’m going to add more as soon as I can unpack my craft supplies and dig them out

And so there you have it! Finished and much more my taste than the original

And of course it’s time to try it on!

Close up of the bows…

Mwahaha and no I’m not conceited enough to think I’m *actually* famous in the blogosphere, it’s just meant to be cute and funny

Well there you go, my first attempt at t-shirt surgery and I’m pretty happy with the results! So much so that I’m going to wear it tomorrow to the going away party that Nuffnang is throwing James and I I even made a little matching surprise but you’ll have to wait for the event to see! What do you all think?

This is a reader request post, see I’m slowly making my way through them all!

Lately everywhere I turn around someone is wearing one of these funny little pointy scarves…

Image found via Google, credit to the owner.

Apparently the points are supposed to look kind of like bunny ears depending on how they’re worn. They seem to be really popular in Gal fashions at the moment! I don’t know how much these go for but if they’re anything like other imported accessories they can get pretty pricey! Anyway a couple of you have requested a tutorial on how to save some money and make one so here it is! ^_^

What you need:

• Fabric (for an alternative see below)
• Scissors
• Thin wire
• Needle and thread

I decided to go one step further on the saving money front and instead of using fabric I saved time and effort by using a pair of stockings that I bought but didn’t end up fitting They had a cute patten so I’ve been looking for another way to use them and this is perfect!

So first step! If you’re using fabric, measure out how long you need the scarf to be (measure around your head and then add extra for the point little ears) and cut two long rectangles. Because I am using stockings I’ve skipped this step.

Now cut the ends into points. I folded mine in half to ensure that the ends were exactly the same shape.

If you are using normal fabric then sew down the straight sides to form a long tube (don’t sew the ends yet!). If you’re using stockings then you already have a long tube like below ^_^

Now get your thin wire ready! I am using 2 lengths of wire because the wire I had was too thin to shape the fabric properly. So cut a length of wire that is long enough to go all the way around the outside of your tube. Leave an extra few inches so there is room to tie the ends together.

Turn your tube inside out. Fold the wire in half.

Using your needle and thread, sew up the pointy end. Use a plain old running stitch, nothing fancy. I’m hand stitching because my sewing machines are all in storage but if you can use a machine or an over-locker I would definitely suggest it!

Now let’s start adding the wire, this is what will make the ear parts nice and stiff. Line the wire up with the point and starting from there use a blanket stitch to attach the wire to the edge of the fabric. When you stitch you should only pick up a few threads from the fabric, this will ensure that when you turn it inside out you can’t see gigantic stitches.

Keep going all the way down the side until you reach the other open edge. If you started out with fabric that you sewed together then you might  just be able to weave the wire through the stitches you already made.

When you get to the other end use a running stitch to close up one side and then continue with the wire up the edge. You should have a little wire overlapping the edge which we will use to close it up later.

Now repeat along the other side but stop when you reach the opening.

Now using the hole, turn the whole thing inside out…

This is roughly what you should end up with…

And as you can see I have left over wire poking out from the top.

Cut the wire down so it’s only 1cm longer than the tip, then twist the two ends together and fold them down. And you end up with this:

Now hold it flat, fold the raw edges in and sew up the gap like in the picture below. Try to hide your stitches as much as possible by only poking through a tiny bit of the exposed fabric. Make sure to sew the points of the wire really well so it doesn’t pop through ^_^

You hopefully end up with something like this…

Which will hold it’s shape like this!

And when you put it on you will look something like this

So there you have it! They are really quick and easy to make and very popular right now ^_^

I get a whole lot of reader request for cute storage tips so today I’m going to share with you how I store my scarves and accessories. These are only going to be very rough tutorials because I made the items many many months ago ^_^

I have to apologize for the quality of these photos, James is wiping his computer today so I can’t use his fancy camera, these were all taken with my phone >_<

First question is about how to store scarves. I love scarves, they are completely awesome and super versatile. I always have one on my handbag for emergencies! But when you have this many it can be quite hard to store them. I previously had them in a drawer but it’s so hard to find the one you want without searching through all 7 million of them…

So I decided to make something and this is what came out of it:

This is super easy to make with junk you have around the house.

You need:

• Toilet rolls
• Old yarn/wool
• Bows/decoration
• Sticky tape

-First gather your materials!

-Cut the toilet rolls into sections that are around 5cm long. Cut as many sections as you have scarves (or maybe a few more so you can add to your collection later!)

-Sticky tape them together into a grid pattern.

-Get your yarn ready. I used some old scratchy pink and white acrylic yarn.

-Start wrapping around the rolls you stuck together. Keep wrapping until it’s all completely covered. Pay special attention to the places where the rolls join together so they are strong.

-After it’s completely covered add a strap out of plaited yarn to the top.

-And then hot glue/sew bows on if you want more decoration ^_^

Now you can add your scarves in. Loop the scarves through the holes so the ends stick out the back. Choose your favorite scarves for the bottom holes so their ends hang down. You can hang it in your bathroom or where ever you like!

Now on to the hair accessories ^_^

I have a lot of hair accessories. A lot. If they don’t have somewhere to live, they end up getting very messy and broken!

So I made myself a cute place to store them, I like it because it looks like a gigantic shopping bag

So to make one you need the following:

• Fabric in whatever size you want
• Knitting needle or something to make the top rigid
• Plastic handle
• Lace
• Glue gun
• Needle and thread
• Bows/decoration

-Gather your materials

-Cut out the fabric to the size you want.

-Hem the two sides and the bottom either with hot glue or sew it. You can see in the above photo how uneven my hems are because the fabric is slightly see through

-Hem the top in the same way but put the knitting needle in the fold of the fabric. This is going to make it nice and strong and give it structure rather than just being a floppy piece of fabric.

-Sew or glue on lace to the bottom and top of the fabric.

-Sew the plastic handle to the top, you should stitch it so it’s actually attached to the knitting needle. This way it won’t put stress on the fabric.

-Glue some bows to cover the stitches.

-Add accessories and hang it up!

I like to put all my accessories that are on bobby pins along the sides and the ones with pins/brooch backs in the middle

So there you have it, I hope that all makes sense! It’s harder to write tutorials without pictures so if you have any questions just let me know!

If I ever make more of these I’ll make sure to take photos along the way ^_^

*Edit* Shmuberry made her own version of the scarf holder in the shape of a heart!! Go have a look at her post here, it’s so cute!!*/Edit*

Today is all about the double hair buns or as some have called it “Minnie Mouse hair”! So many of you girls requested this tutorial so I hope you enjoy it ^_^

This style works best with medium-long hair but if you used more hairspray you could probably do a version with short hair.

We are aiming for this style:

What you need:

• Brush
• Bobby Pins
• 2 Hair Ties
• Any decorations you want, I’m using leopard print bows I made ^_^

First brush your hair so it’s nice and free of tangles. Divide it into two sections on either side of your head.

Take the first section and make a really high pony tail on the side of your head. I tend to turn my head upside down so I can get it extra high.

This is what we’re aiming for:

Now take a minute to relive your childhood fantasy of being one of the Spice Girls. Please don’t make me feel old by telling me you don’t know who they are >_<’

Back to it! Take one of the piggy tails and tease the hell out of it.

Mwahaha you’re ready for a night on the town!

Ok seriously hair spray all over your piggy tail.

Hold on to the very end of it and twist it towards the front a few times.

Now let’s make a bun out of it! Following the twist you just made, curl the bun around the base of the pig tail. Don’t do it too tightly or else you’ll squish all the teasing you just did.

Get your bobby pins ready to pin the ends in place. Should look something like this:

Using the pins secure the ends into your head. Don’t make the mistake of just pining towards the middle, you need to make sure you are actually pinning to the hair which is not part of the bun to give it a good anchor.

Once it’s fairly secure you can squish the bun into the shape you want. If you find bits sticking up out of the middle, just carefully stick a pin in towards the middle.

Repeat on the other side and then add hairspray.

Time for decorations! I’m using two leopard print hair bands that I made, but you can use anything from flowers to tiaras!

Because the bows are on bands I just pull it over the top of the bun

And taadaaa! We’re all done ^_^

This style is really great for summer because it’s totally cute but it still gets the hair off of your neck!

Hope you enjoyed!

Ages ago I showed you very quickly how I decorated my tray table. I love this thing to death because it means that I can work out in the lounge room without having a gigantic burning laptop scalding my legs! Because it’s adjustable I can make it flat and do crafts and nail art on it too

The problem with it is that on tiles every time you move it scrapes and make horrible noise. This is what the bottom of the feet look like, the tiles have actually worn through the paint! So my solution is to make it some socks to keep it’s feet warm

You need:

• Felt
• Needle and possibly pins
• Similar coloured yarn
• Scissors
• Lace for decoration

First detach the legs so it’s easier to work with. Lay your felt underneath it so you can measure how long you need it. You are aiming to have a long tube which will fit around the legs all the way up to the first hole in the side. My felt wasn’t long enough to do that so I had to use two pieces to make it long enough.

The cut out pieces, one for each leg.

To join the two pieces together I used a shoelace style stitch. This is to make sure it lays as flat as possible, you don’t want a wobbly table!

All sewn together into one piece:

After you’ve sewn them together, just make sure it’s still the correct length…

Now sew the other one

Now thread your needle with the yarn. Wrap the felt around the end of the leg and stitch (or pin) it in place to hold it.

Using a blanket stitch start sewing the felt into a tube around the leg.

It should look something like this:

Keep going all the way up!

When you reach the top where the hole is poke the needle through it then wrap the thread around a few times. This will secure the sock at the top of the leg so it doesn’t wiggle down while you’re using it.

Now at end you started at use the yarn to close up the hole.

Looks like this:

So this is what it looks like with the socks fully on..

Now it’s time to decorate I sewed a ring of lace around the top of the sock.

Finished! Heehee they remind me of cute little Lolita style socks

Much safer for the tile and a lot less of that irritating scraping noise!

Finished!

On another note, with all the questions I’ve been getting lately about nail art I’m going to do a FAQ like the Hime Style one I did a few weeks ago. If you have any questions you would like included just comment or contact me.

Macarons… it’s become a serious obsession now. I blame Lolita brands for this obsession. If they didn’t keep including them in prints or in sweets deco maybe I could forget about how melt-in-your-mouth-delicious they are… maybe I could ignore the fact that they are incredibly pretty… and maybe I could stop thinking about how I desperately want one for breakfast today with a cup of tea…

But no!

And so it goes on until one day I got so frustrated I decided to make them myself. I suppose that’s in keeping with the spirit of this blog ^_^

I searched and searched for a recipe. Many were too complicated with things like measuring the temperatures in the room and comparing the humidity to get the correct amounts for different parts of the world!? Macarons are apparently the most fickle of all deserts.

Finally just as I was about to give up a friend sent me a link to Not Quite Nigella’s Recipe. It seemed easy enough but I wasn’t too keen on the idea of pistachio as I wanted James to actually eat them too. I kept searching until I found the Tasted By Two version. Seemed easy enough… and so the experimenting began! After maybe 10 batches I have modified the recipe for our kitchen/temperature/humidity/what ever other ridiculous things macarons are scared of. I am not a baking purist, I just did what worked! These techniques might not work for you but I assure you that my result was freaking awesome

So here is everything I’ve learned about macarons and my modified version of the Tasted By Two Recipe:

What you need:

Ingredients for chocolate macarons with chocolate filling-

For the outside bit:

• 65 grams Almond Meal
• 80 grams Icing Sugar
• 40 grams  Caster Sugar
• 1 table spoon Cocoa Powder
• 50 grams Egg White at room temperature
• Oil spray
• Pinch of salt

For the filling:

• Cooking chocolate
• Butter
• Thickened cream
• Icing sugar

Utensils-

• Scales
• Sieve
• Aluminum foil
• Mixing bowls
• Electric beater
• Baking trays
• Spoon etc
• Piping bag/Small plastic bag

Gather everything together

Line your trays with aluminum foil. Yes in the photo I’m using baking paper… and you know what, it sucked. Every recipe I found said to use baking paper but EVERY batch that I did using baking paper failed miserably. So what I ended up using for the successful batches was aluminum foil *very* lightly sprayed with olive oil. I’ll talk more about the failed batches and how to avoid that later!

Measure out your almond meal. Having the correct weights is very important so be quite careful. Now about the almond meal… many recipes I found said that you should crush the meal even further in a food processor to make it extra fine. I don’t have a food processor so I used it straight from the pack. No problems so far.

This is how fine it was:

Do the same  with your icing sugar and sift them into your bowl. Make sure there are no lumps.

Then mix them together very well and make sure the consistency is even.

Now weigh your castor sugar.

And your egg whites. Egg whites are another highly debated point of this recipe. Some say you should leave them out over night, some say leave them for a week. I made macarons with eggs right after cracking them, over night and week old… and they were all exactly the same in my opinion. I really don’t think it makes a difference. Just make sure they aren’t too cold or else they won’t froth well.

Put your egg whites into a mixing bowl.

Add a pinch of salt to them

Now using your electric mixer beat them until they become slightly frothy.

When they look like this you should start adding the castor sugar a little bit at a time…

Keep beating…

… until it looks like this The eggs should be light fluffy and peaky.

Now this part is quite fun! You should take your mixed up icing/almond and add 1/2 of it to the egg mixture.

Mix it up carefully, don’t be over zealous otherwise it will end up like cake. Once the first half is mixed in, add the rest and repeat.

According to a lot of recipes it should form ribbons off your spoon when you’re done.

Now mix in your spoon of cocoa

Delicious yes?

Ok time to get ready to pipe them. You can use a proper piping bag but if you’re not keen on cleaning one you can just use a plastic bag and throw it away after ^_^

Put your mixture into the bag!

And tie a knot into the top of it.

Now cut off the corner with a pair of scissors and pipe circles onto your tray.

Apparently some people will actually draw circles onto the baking paper to make sure they are completely perfectly shaped… I don’t really think that is necessary. If I wanted perfection I would go and buy them, I like he idea of mine being a little individual ^_^

Ok! So we’ve done the hard part! You should take your tray and bang it on the counter a few times to get rid of any air bubbles. Then leave the macarons on the counter for 1 hour to settle. While they are settling let’s talk about some other variations!

James doesn’t like chocolate much either so he asked for some blueberry flavored ones.

I used tinned blueberries, crushed them and added to the mixture just before piping.

This is easy enough, you just need to add slightly more of the dry ingredients to counter the wet of the blueberries. If you’ve made a couple of batches you should be able to roughly guess at what the correct consistency should be.

My absolute FAVORITE flavor is green tea with pistachio filling. OMG this is seriously awesome. All you need to do is add 1/2 a teaspoon of matcha powder to the mixture instead of your chocolate powder. I’m using one from Tea2 but any will work.

Green!

They all look so pretty!

When you come back to the macarons the icing should have formed a very slight shell, you should be able to touch the top without getting your finger wet. Pre-heat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius. When the oven is ready you can put in the tray and cook for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes you should be able to see the little crinkly bottom feet, if not something has gone wrong! Cook for another 4 minutes and then allow them to cool on the bench.

This is a picture of the first time I tried to make them, they weren’t very pretty but you can see the little crinkly feet I’m talking about…

Leave the macarons to cool while we make the filling.Basically all that is involved in that is melting chocolate in the microwave, adding a little cream, butter and a little icing sugar so it doesn’t go solid again. Very delicious. Be sure to taste it along the way

The pistachio variation on this is basically crushed pistachios with butter and icing sugar to make a delicious paste:

Now it’s time to remove the macarons from the tray and turn them over… the bottoms should look like this:

Below is a good example of failed bottoms. The reason this didn’t work is because they weren’t cooked long enough so the insides were liquidy. They stuck to the (stupid) baking paper and collapsed when being removed. Still tasted good though.

Take a half and spread some filling on, pop another half on top and you’re done

Taadaa! Success!

And here are the delicious green tea ones:

So there you have it! No longer will I be a slave to sweets deco and brand prints! Next time I crave macarons I’ll bloody well make some! Mine may not be the prettiest ever made but they tasted damn good and nobody complained so I’m happy!

Hope you all enjoyed the adventure as much as I enjoyed eating all of the failed and successful batches!

Morning everyone

Apologies if this tutorial is a little vague, I’ve been sick all night/morning so if something doesn’t make sense feel free to ask in the comments and I’ll update it ^_^

Today’s post is a reader request! Many readers have written in and asked me to show them how to store certain items in a cute way. For example how to store earrings/jewelery/belts/other junk in a creative way that still displays how pretty the items are. There have been so many requests that I’m going to have to turn it into a series of posts… so this is the first.

This is for girls with a small number of earrings/rings/whatever that they want to store.

We are going to make an icecream shaped jewelery holder:

Firstly, as always you should gather your materials. I’m making mine out of felt but you could use pretty much anything.

-White Felt
-Pink Felt
-Brown Felt
-Dark brown felt
-Needle and matching thread
-A small amount of stuffing, I cannibalized mine from an old pillow.
-A ribbon bow
-Scissors
-Glue gun

Firstly grab your brown felt. and cut a circle the size you want the base of your ice cream to be. Mine was around 6cm across. Then measure out the circumference of your circle and cut two uneven rectangles (trapezium), the smaller sides should be a few mm bigger than 1/2 of the circumference of your circle, while the longer sides should be maybe 1-2cm more. This is how we’re going to make the cone part of the ice cream.

Put the two trapeziums together and use a blanket stitch down both short sides:

This bit is a little tricky but you should blanket stitch the base to the part you just made. My tip is to put an anchor stitch on each side then sew around, this way your circle doesn’t move while you’re sewing.

Now flip it inside out… and you have a cone! Go you!

Now let’s make the ice cream part Ok get your ice cream coloured felt together. You are going to need enough for 3 swirls. I am using standard sheets of felt (I think they are around A4 size). Cut one of the white pieces in half length-ways, this will form our two white swirls. Pick a contrasting colour (I’m using pink) and cut one piece the same size as the white you just did. You now have 3 pieces the same size to be used in the swirl… does that make sense?

Fold a white piece in half and loosely stitch down near the open ends so it forms a tube like this:

Fill the tube with a little stuffing, don’t use too much otherwise your ice cream will be too fat and wrinkly to roll up.

Now repeat with the other two pieces. Stack them together in order and stitch them loosely together at the bottom. You can see in this picture that I didn’t have a wide enough piece of pink felt so I had to use 2 piece stitched together >_<

Now it’s time to roll it up With the good side (the one with all 3 colours) facing you, roll the corner backwards and stitch it in place.

Keep rolling in a downwards motion so it forms the shape of an ice cream…

Stitch the bottoms in place as you go so nothing unravels.

It will probably take you a couple of goes to get it the right width for your cone as well as the right swirly effect but if you don’t like it unroll and start again until it looks like this:

Securely sew the ice cream so it’s not going to unravel and put it to the side. Get your cone part and fill it with some stuffing…

Now place your icecream in the cone and arrange the stuffing so it fits. Turn the tops of the cone over and stitch it to the icecream part.

When you’re done it should look something like this!

Now get your ribbon bow and the dark brown felt. Cut out a bunch of match sticks from the felt that are around 2/3rd the height of your cone.

If you want a really nice finish you should stitch these on but I didn’t have much time when I was doing this so I just used the hot glue gun

Anyway add your ribbon bow to the front and then glue the match sticks around the cone like this:

If you have left over felt you can make a chocolate stick to go on top by rolling a piece up and gluing it in place ^_^

And that’s finished! Now you just need to add your jewelery:

You can hang earrings in any of the swirls as well as rings and small necklaces.

The chocolate swirl is also really good for wrapping longer items around.

So there you have it, a pretty way to store smaller collections of jewelery ^_^

Next in this series of reader requests is going to be “How can I store a really large collection of earrings in a cute way?”

Thank you for everyone who has been submitting reader requests, I’m a bit behind on posting at the moment but I promise they are all on my “List of things to Post” so I will get to them eventually!

In the mean time if you have any other requests please don’t hesitate to send them to me via my Contact page.

So if you’ve been following my Twitter you’ll be aware that I’ve been testing out Circle Lenses! So what are circle lenses? Basically they are coloured contact lenses which make your eyes appear bigger, they are very very popular in Asia especially with Hime Gyaru models. I’ve been interested in trying them for like 2 years but never got around to it until now when E-CircleLens offered to send me some

You can’t imagine how excited I was when I came home from Melbourne to a package from E-CircleLens!

Inside the package were 3 different lenses, some pamphlets and instructions, 3 cases and a cute little doggie travel kit!

How cute is this? The little cases for the lenses have bows on them!

They came with cartoon instructions showing you the do’s and don’ts of putting them in and caring for the lenses.

This is the little doggie travel case! He’s found his way to my handbag now!

The doggie opens up and inside is… a mirror, tweezers, a bottle for contact solution and a case!

All of the lenses come packaged really well in styrofoam, when you take them out they are in little glass bottles like this:

It took a bit of work to get the aluminum lids off but that’s probably because I’m incredibly weak heehee!

These ones here are the Aryan Ring Circles. They have a diameter of 14mm which is huge and they last 1 year.

This is a photo of me trying to put them in for the first time. Considering how un-coordinated I am, it’s surprising I didn’t lose an eye! It was a lot easier to do than I was expecting, I think if I can do it anyone can!

So what kind of difference do they make? Here is me with one of the Aryan Ring ones in and one eye natural. Big difference right?

And when you add some make up, they look awesome!

These ones look really dark but still have a burst of natural colour through the middle.

Here is a close up comparison between natural eye and made up eye with the Aryan Ring Circles:

The second set that they sent me are called Walkure Brown and they have a diameter of 14.5mm! These ones are my favorite because they are the absolute biggest!

Here’s the comparison between my natural eye and the Walkure Brown up close:

These ones were slightly harder to apply because of the size but once they were in, they just look fantastic! The dark brown works really well with hime style as well which is great for me!

I was surprised how natural they looked on me as my eyes are actually green normally ^_^

From a distance they just look cute!

The third set I received was the Angel EX Green with a diameter of 14mm. I was excited about these ones because they were so natural looking and they really made the green in my eyes pop! It probably helped that I’m pretty sure I’ve seen them in Ageha as well

It’s such a pity that these photos don’t seem to capture the real colour of these lenses, they are a really deep vibrant green in real life. I wore them to lunch the other day and got 3 compliments about my eyes, no one even guessed I was wearing lenses

They are darker than my natural eyes but the green really stands out!

Pretty!

So my review!

Ok the quality of the packing was really good, the box arrived dented by a careless post office worker but the insides were still perfectly ok because of all of the packaging. The complimentary instructions they include are really easy to follow and well set out. I have never used lenses before and I managed to put them in very easily.

I have to say that unlike some other resale companies I’ve dealt with, the staff at E-CircleLens were super helpful and really knowledgeable about their products. I couldn’t have been happier with the support I received.

The actual lenses were really comfortable to wear and after I got the hang of actually putting them in I didn’t really notice that they were in during the day. On the first day that I wore the Angel Ex Green ones I actually forgot they were in, if James hadn’t reminded me I probably would have gone to bed with them in

If you want your own sets, all of these lenses can be bought via E-CircleLens for around US$40 and they last for 1 year if taken care of correctly.

I’ve made a fun little video tutorial to show you how to apply circle lenses, click below to see!

So in conclusion, my first experience with  Circle lenses has been really positive, I’m definitely going to keep wearing them and I want to get lots more different colours to try out

What do you all think?

Ok this post is pretty huge if I do say so myself, it even has two tutorials… that’s right two! I’ve been getting a lot of nail polish related requests lately so here is a gigantic post to take care of some of them!

Firstly a lot of people have been asking how many nail polishes I have… the answer is 87. That sounds like a lot… and well it is a lot but I’ve collected those over the last 4 years aaaaand a lot of them were gifts and the ones I bought were all like $2 so it’s not actually the gigantic money pit it sounds like!

Question 2: how do I store them? Well if I’m going to be making a lot of nail art to sell at once then I set them all up on a table organized by colour. Other than that they all live in a draw organized by whatever I shoved in there first.

With that many polishes how do you choose colours that go well together?! Well I make swatches out of old fakes nails and paddle pop sticks like this:

I got the idea from one of your blogs actually… but I can’t for the life of me find the post and I’ve been searching all morning >_< If it was you just let me know in the comments because I want to credit you!! *edit* some has said it was invented by “krisprimps.bradandkris.com” but I haven’t ever been to her blog so I must have seen it somewhere else!*/edit*

A random selection:

I use white nail tips so when I need to test out how opaque a white polish is I paint the tips black first.

So how do you make them? Well let me show you with the new Lilac polish that Eyeko was kind enough to send me

Gather all the items above, you need:
-A glue gun
-Paddle pop sticks
-A pen
-Old false nail tips
-Various polishes you want to swatch, I try to save them up and do around 10 at a time.

First count how many polishes you have and get that many paddle pop sticks and nail tips.

Heat your glue gun and put some glue on the back curve of one of the nail tips.

Press it down onto the edge of the paddle pop stick. Be very careful not to burn yourself!

Add some extra glue to the back to make sure everything is secure.

Rinse and repeat for how ever many you need…

Now wait until all of that is dry and paint one coat of polish over the whole thing.

Wait for it to dry!

While we’re waiting for it to dry here’s a mini review of the Eyeko polish:

The application was quite good it was a nice consistency and very shiny after application. It was opaque/the colour in the bottle after 2 coats. This next photo is a really good representation of the colour, it’s nice and soft and reminds me a lot of OPI “Do you lilac it?”. I didn’t find the smell of the polish over powering either which was nice.

The packaging is super cute too which is a plus!

The bottle is quite small at 8.5ml for £3 but for a boutique company that seems to be fairly standard. So the verdict = good! Everything they have is themed on a very cute manga which they update on the site every week, here’s some of the cute info they sent through:

Now back to the tutorial! After the first coat is dry write the name and colour of the polish on the other end of the stick!

Just like this

Now time for the second coat, this time you should only paint the top 2/3rds of the nail.

Then leave that to dry. Once it’s dry you should paint one final coat on the top 1/3rd of the nail.

So you should have something like this, the numbers represent the number of coats. This doesn’t mean much for a polish as opaque as this one but when you have a more sheer polish it’s much more useful to know how many coats you’ll need for the finish you want. Now you can see at a glance without having to trial and error it every time.

This is an example of some polishes where the differences are a little more obvious, especially the orange.

So there you have it! Now it’s time for a nail art tutorial Today we’re going to make a pretty but easy lace finish on a base of the Eyeko Lilac Polish. Video is below!

Hope you enjoyed the double tutorial post! And please let me know if you have any other nail art related questions <3

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