Preview of Blogging in Style eBook and Review of Blurb

by VioletLeBeaux | Oct 15, 2010 | Life, Notices, Review

So as you all saw in the last Snapshots post I received a hard copy of the blogging ebook I’ve been working on.

Firstly I just want to clear up something, some of you were under the impression that this was the craft and tutorial book I’ve been working on, that is not the case ^_^ This is a basic guide to starting and maintaining your own blog which I have *also* been working on. So I’ve been writing two books (which is why I as being run so ragged!)

Blogging in Style with Violet- 76 pages on how to start and maintain a cute blog. A basic how-to guide for beginners to the world of blogging with lots of cute pictures to help understand new concepts and ideas. Released only as a PDF ebook at this point. Priced at US$8.
The craft/tutorial book which is still in progress and yet to be named. This one will be available in a large hard cover volume and several soft cover versions which comprise of 1 chapter each. It will also be available as a PDF for those who want to read but can’t afford postage of a heavy book. It will be a couple of hundred pages and price is yet to be determined.

But enough about that for now! Let’s talk about this ebook 😀

The last time I mentioned I was writing this, the lovely people from Blurbcontacted me and offered to print me a copy so I could have a physical reminder of all of my hard work.Basically Blurb is a website where you can upload whatever you like and they will print it into a fancy little book for you. They do hard covers and soft cover, pretty much anything you can think of.

I chose the hardcover option with an image wrap. It looks so beautiful and professional!

They make the process very easy so even someone with no design experience can creat something like a book with photos from their holidays and have a really pretty keepsake.

These are the three options they offer for book creation:

1. Bookify (our newest addition to the product range, this is an online bookmaking tool for streamlined book projects that can be done over a night or two) For example a quick travel book from your recent trip or a child’s birthday party.)

2. Booksmart (Blurb’s free software that’s made easy for everyone to download, pick a layout and just add content)

3. PDF To Book (for experienced designers and Indesign software users)

I was in a hurry so I used Booksmart and imported my page layouts. It look me about 15 minutes from opening the program to uploading my images 😀 Of course before that it took weeks of writing, drawing, colouring, editing and organizing the layout of the book XD

The best part:

All in all I am very happy with the quality and service from Blurb and I will be looking them up again if I ever write another ebook so I can have a personal printed copy 😀

If you want to have your own book printed they have been nice enough to include a discount code for you all:

Code: VIOLETSHIP (this is case sensitive)

Good for Aud$9.99 off your shipping charges for books you make

Expires Nov 15, 2010
one per customer, one time use.

Get up to 3 books shipped for free!

Hurray! So there you go 😀 I will let you all know next week once it’s up and available in the shop!

In the mean time, if you want to get a little taste of what it’s about I have made a free low quality preview that you can download, it contains a random selection of 14 pages. Hopefully this will let you get an idea of things and decide if you would like to purchase the full book next week. It’s around 1.9mb big so if you have a download limit please take that into account.

Best viewed in Adobe Acrobat ^_^

DOWNLOAD THE PREVIEW!

Site Updates ^_^

by VioletLeBeaux | Oct 14, 2010 | Notices

It’s all workworkwork around here ^_^

I’ve been progressing with the clean ups and updates to the site. This week I have made the following changes:

Updated the Tutorials page to include all tutorials up until today.
Updated the Snaps page with all new videos. Also updated all of the galleries with about 50+ new photos
Completely overhauled the FAQ page. Now everything is divided into categories with drop down answers for much easier browsing. Removed the search area as no one used it, please use the side bar search now.
Completely overhauled the Links page. Again, now everything is in drop down categories and alphabetical order. I have added a huge amount of links to blogs I’m currently reading. I am hoping to update this every few months now.
Please note that the shop is currently undergoing maintenance to make browsing easier so it will be out of commission probably until next week.
Minor updates were made to the About and Sponsors pages.
A new form was installed on the Contact page as the old one was accepting messages but not delivering them to me >_<
Back end changes were also made to reduce general load times of the site.

So what’s coming next? Over the next week I will be making these changes:

New updated banner image to match the new background.
Shop updates to make browsing easier, new checkout system and new items added.
New drop down system for posts.This one is probably the most important one as it will effect browsing. Basically what I am planning to do to all of my posts is create a drop down effect so everything loads much quicker for those who don’t have as fast internet. This will also mean that you will be able to view more posts on the front page of the site. It will not be like traditional blog excerpts as you won’t need to click to a separate page to read the full post. When you click the link, the rest of the post will drop down below it. Hopefully this makes it less annoying and quicker to load!This will be the same on the permalink pages of posts as well so that if you have read the post on the main page (as according to my stats, most people do) and then click to leave a comment you now won’t have to scroll down through the whole thing again. Each post will have a teaser image before the drop down so you can get an idea of what the post is about and if you want to read it.

Here is an example of what the typical post will look like soon ^_^

I have been playing around with my monogram a whole lot lately. I drew it a couple of months ago but never really put it on anything.

I decided to try to use it a bit more because I really like it so I made a wallpaper for my laptop. Haha now I can stare at myself all day woohoo self involvement! XD

And so there you go. This is an example of a drop down post! If you don’t want to see the post anymore, you can click the drop down button again and it will collapse. Nice and Simple!

I hope you enjoy the updates and it makes things easier for everyone to use. Please let me know if you have any questions, suggestions or concerns ^_^

Blixz Nail Art Foil Review

by VioletLeBeaux | Oct 13, 2010 | Beauty, Review

Last week I was sent some Blix Nail Foilsto try out. As you all know, I’m a sucker for nail related anything so I was quite excited ^_^

These are the designs they sent me:

They come in singles packs like the ones below or salon packs like the top 3 above.

The singles packs come with scissors, nail file/buffer and a little cuticle pushing tool which is used to apply them. According to the website these singles packs cost $17.50 which at first thought seems a little pricey considering you only get one application out of it. The price isn’t so bad when you consider they are supposed to last for up to 2 weeks and if you were going to get a professional design it would probably cost that or more. That said if I was to make a habit of buying them often… paying for a pair of scissors, file and cuticle pushes when I didn’t require them would probably bug me quite a bit.

Anyway on to the application!

First you file and buff your nails so they are smooth and ridge free. If they are too bumpy you will be able to see the imperfections through the foil.

I decided to do these on my natural nails because at the moment I’m doing a lot of nail art and I can’t have fakes because the chemicals ruin them. I kind of want to do some nail art tutorials which are more work-appropriate and for girls that don’t have crazy long nails too.

Instructions said to pull off the top layer of the stickers next…

Then you match the closest size to your nail.

Now you should cut the bottom and sides to fit your nail exactly. This bit was a little bit confusing if you ask me. Each single set comes with 16 foils, 8 on each side which to me seems like a weird number to have considering that you have to cut them to fit your nails anyway. If it were me I would just provide 10 large sizes and then you could cut them to size… or provide 20 of them so you could get 2 uses rather than having 6 left over. That’s just my thrifty brain’s thinking though!

So you apply it to your nail and smooth it down with the cuticle tool. The instructions then say you should use the nail file to remove the extra… instead I used nail clippers to snip it off which was much quicker ^_^

Repeat and you’ve got pretty nails!

Now here’s the step which makes all the difference, when you first stick them you can see they bubble a bit and get wrinkles if you don’t have perfectly flat smooth nails. Well the instructions suggest that once you stick them you use a blow dryer to gently heat them up and then use the tool again to push out air pockets. They looked much better after the hair dryer treatment!

They are shiny as hell and I really like a lot of the designs on the website. I think they would be good for a big night out or a fancy event especially for those that don’t have the patience for painting intricate designs themselves ^_^

For good measure here is one I used on a fake nail:

I kept them on for 3 days with no problems and I only removed them because I wanted to change to a different design. To remove I just soaked my hands in warm water and peeled them off again.

Because they are quite thick (almost like vinyl car decals) and the heat molds them to your nails I think they would be quite durable. I could definitely see them lasting a few weeks easily if you were careful with the application. I really like the idea of these and they come in a huge amount of designs.

VERDICT: DO WANT

Yay I’m so glad to start doing beauty reviews again, I can’t wait to show you guys some of the cool things from the Beauty Blogger event the other week 😀

Melbourne Snapshots!

by VioletLeBeaux | Oct 12, 2010 | Life

This post was sponsored by Nuffnang and Panasonic.

For more information on sponsored posts please click here.

Snapshots time again!

First we start with the obligatory architecture shots ^_^

I love how reflective this building is, especially because it’s reflecting an older prettier building!

This week we had a mini beauty blogger meet up… well it wasn’t so much a beauty blogger meet up as it was a bunch of girls eating waaaaay too much pasta and nachos. As suggested by Jacie, we met at Spaghetti Tree which is… an interesting place. Basically it’s the kitschiest restaurant I’ve ever been to.. but the kitsch is all in the theme of theatre so none of it matches… so it’s kind of like a blind decorator threw up on it during the 1970’s XD It awesome! You can definitely get the vibe if you visit their website ^_^

My favorite part was these hanging lamps:

The delightful Jacie and Jess.

And Amy, myself and James!

Jacie showing off her awesome model-like posing skills, there is an awesome story behind this one but you’ll have to ask her about it!

This is James’ crazy huge plate of nachos! I tried spaghetti with champagne sauce and it was really yummy, everyone kept asking whether it tasted like champagne but as I’ve never really had any I didn’t have anything to compare it to haha! Verdict: very yummy!

I was trying out being casual that day. I’ve worn jeans twice in the last few years and they were both this week XD I found these sunglasses when we went thrift shopping last week, normally I don’t like gigantic sunglasses but I fell in love with these ones for some reason! The jumper here is the one I found for $2 in the Camberwell markets. Definitely not an everyday look for me but it’s nice to have a change once in a while!

Funny photo of the week… how did something called the “Tap That” get through market testing?! James thought it was hilarious…

This week has been a fantastic week for receiving mail too! I came home one day to find a lovely package from the Big Green Dinosaurawaiting me! She is definitely the friendliest, most thoughtful dinosaur I’ve ever met 😀 She even made me that adorable headband, clearly dinosaurs are awesome at crafts too ^_^

Yesterday I showed you the cute felt cupcake project from the care package Retro Jet Girlsent me well this is the rest of it! How sweet was she to send me that many craft projects? My absolute favourite part of it is the little bear in the bottom left corner… he is actually a retractable measuring tape and you press his nose to rewind the tape! SO CUTE!

James made his famous pizza again this week, my side is the one full of spinach and feta 😀

Lastly but possibly most excitingly of all… I received a hard copy of the blogging book I’ve been working on all this time!!

This is actually going to be sold as a PDF ebook but I wanted my own hard copy and Blurb were nice enough to offer to print it for me 😀 I’ll show you all properly and give you a review of the process later in the week but I was so excited that I couldn’t wait to show you a little bit!

I am so happy to be holding something I’ve worked on so hard! It should be up in my store later this week and then it’s back to working on my craft book ^_^

Felt Cupcake Kit :D

by VioletLeBeaux | Oct 11, 2010 | Craft, Other-Tutorials, Tutorial

Oh my gosh these little felt crafts are getting around aren’t they? The lovely Retro Jet Girl was out shopping a little while ago, found some and sent me a care package! Now I have 3 more of these little guys to show you 😀 Thank you so much Retro Jet Girl! I’ll show you all the lovely care package items she sent me tomorrow in snapshots!

Obviously again I can’t take any credit for making this tutorial because I was just following their instructions. Full credit goes to the original company but I took photos while I was making it because I thought you might find it interesting anyway ^_^ You can find most of the materials around the house and you can easily substitute anything you like.

I find crafts like these really relaxing to do while watching a movie or unwinding before bed time.

So the first one I made was the cupcake!

Cute packaging as per usual though it doesn’t really look like any cupcake I’ve ever eaten XD

What you need:

Small brown circle of felt
Strip of brown felt
Needle and thread
Stuffing
Large white circle of felt
4 rounded triangles of yellow felt for icing
Seed beads
2 small circles of cardboard
1 large circle of cardboard

I started with the brown pieces and blanket stitched them together to form a tube…

Like this:

Next I took both small cardboard circles and 1/2 of the stuffing and sandwiched together. I shoved it into the tube and left it for later.

I took the yellow triangles and stacked them. I then sewed down the center from top to bottom.

… and flared them out. The instructions said I should leave like this but the felt kept springing back into place so I needed to stitch the sides together.

Last for this part I added a pearl on top.

I deviated from the instructions because this seemed easier. To make the top of the cupcake I took the icing and stitched to the middle of the white circle.