2010 - Page 22 of 46 - Violet LeBeaux

News and Updates :D

by VioletLeBeaux | Aug 17, 2010 | Notices

So as I mentioned yesterday I’m going to be crazy busy this week and there are a couple of really exciting reasons for that!

A whole bunch of you have been suggesting that I write a book full of the stuff that’s included here on the site. Well I am and I’m desperately trying to get it finished this/next week so I can send it off the printers and have it up for sale soon! Very exciting stuff right? It’s going to be sold in 3 different formats that cater to all budgets so hopefully you will all enjoy it 😀 There are going to be all your favorite tutorials from the site but also a lot of new tutorials just for the book.

You all keep sending me interesting questions about blogging so over the last few weeks I’ve been working on an e-book (though I hate that term) which gives all the information that you’ve been asking about and lots more. It’s going to be in my typical pink style with lace, frills and lots of cute illustrations to make it easy to follow. I’m working extra hard to make that available by Monday! I’m hoping that this will be helpful with your own blog so if you have any more questions now is the time to ask!

This Friday I will be speaking about Hime Gyaru fashion at the FRUiTS panel at Manifest. So if you ever wanted to catch up with me or ask me any questions in person you should totally come and meet me at Manifest on Friday! It’s going to be really fun I think, I’m looking forward to it and I would love to see you all there!

I’ve got another post scheduled to go up later tonight too which has a pretty awesome competition run by Nuffnang in it so I hope you enjoy ^_^

Please wish me luck with all of this, I’m working very hard at the moment but I really hope it will be worth it!

Do you all have a busy week ahead or are you taking it easy and relaxing?

Master Chef Finals Party Kitties ^_^

by VioletLeBeaux | Aug 16, 2010 | Baking, Life

This week is going to be insanely busy for me but I’m going to do my best to keep up with you all! Sorry if I’m slow to reply to comments and emails please be patient 🙂

I’ll post abut everything that’s going on properly tomorrow but for today I wanted to post the photos from our Master Chef Finale party ^_^

I didn’t really follow Master Chef at the beginning because it looked boring. People cooking on tv? I can watch James do that in my own kitchen mwahahah! Anyway by the end I was a little hooked just like everyone else in Australia so when Celeste invited us over for a Masterchef finale party I couldn’t say no XD

Each of us was to make a dish from the show, James and my contribution was the macaron tree (surprise!)

This is them cooling:

And our finished macaron trees… Yummy looking right?

Celeste and Kev made beef bourguignon (sp??) and stroganoff. They even hand made the pasta… omg it was so yummy! Seriously this was one of the best dinners I have ever had!

There was a little bit of this during the night…

But it was mostly this…

SMILE KITTY!

Getting to play with such fluffy kitties was a novelty for me, so damn fluffy!

We also had scotch eggs which were yummy!

Here I am putting together one of the trees, James did one and I did the other. *cough* guess who’s looked better!

Pistachio and green tea, Raspberry and white chocolate and Bueno flavors this time!

James making his tree:

Taste test? Why thank you!

Desert was also fantastic with opera cake! So delicious 😀

Gangsta kitty is gangsta.

The kitchen was full of delicious chaos!

The tea was delicious and free flowing. It’s nice to meet other people who love tea as much as me! Celeste has over 40 different kinds of tea in her cabinet!! *40*

And lastly I will leave you with this. Because I can.

DIY Cardboard Furniture

by VioletLeBeaux | Aug 14, 2010 | Craft, Life

When we first moved here, we brought everything down in a car. I mean *everything*. It didn’t leave much room for furniture though so our new apartment was very empty. Well it was full of stuff but we had no where to put it and no where to sit and no money to buy anything to fix it.

So I looked around at what I did have and tried to come up with a solution. I had boxes, the packing junk that comes in boxes and craft supplies.

My brain made lots of clicking and whirring sounds. Lots of cutting and swearing ensued.

This was the first thing I mocked up. It’s a set of shelves for my craft junk. At this point nothing was taped together, it was just balanced so I could see how it would end up.

I taped and hot glued everything in place. I wasn’t aiming for perfect, just workable. Next I covered it all in fabric.

Covering the back was a bit of a waste but I can always re-claim the fabric when we have more money for better shelves. Covering the insides was more time consuming but still very easy.

If I was going to do this again as a proper project I would spend more time ironing the fabric and making sure everything was even/straight. Considering I had limited time though this worked out well. After covering with fabric…

Lastly I covered all of the ugly seams and joins with ribbon and added a couple of bows to cutesy it up a bit.

BAM! Finished and ready for craft supplies:

You’re probably thinking it wouldn’t hold anything but the extra supports in the middle+hot glue+tape really make it a lot more structurally sound. Currently it is full to the brim with yarn, craft junk, fabric, my sewing machine and overlocker, nail art stuff and deco bits.

Next my make shift couch/ottoman.

I took all of the boxes we had and cut them flat. I then stuffed a bigger box with them. I packed it full then I stood on it and packed it even fuller. James stomped on it and we packed it again.

I taped an old ugly pillow I was going to chuck out to the top.

Got some kick-arse (that’s kick-ass for my American friends) purple zebra print fabric…

And covered the whole thing. I’m planning to cover the seams using silver thumb tacs when I can find some that aren’t ridiculously priced. It seems silly but we couldn’t afford a couch and this has been perfect so far. 2 months and still going strong ^_^ I also made out tv stand this way but I haven’t had time to cover it yet, I want it to be pinstripe!

So have you guys done stuff like this before? I think it’s very common to see students with furniture built out of milk crates and stuff, it’s like a right of passage XD

Big Poufy Curly Up Do Hairstyle Tutorial

by VioletLeBeaux | Aug 12, 2010 | Hair, Hair-Tutorials, Hime Gyaru, Tutorial

As promised here is a tutorial on how to do the big poufy curly style up-do thingy that I’ve been wearing a lot lately ^_^

Apologies for how tired I look in these photos, I really wasn’t feeling well but I wanted to get the tutorial finished for you guys >_< I’ve been quite stressed lately so I haven’t been sleeping much!So what you need:

Bobby pins
Hair straightener/curler/hot rollers
Heat protector spray
Decorations eg. Bow and hair flowers
Brush
Hair Spray

First thing’s first, pin your fringe to the side to keep it out of the way.

Brush out your remaining hair so there are no knots.

Apply heat protector spray. Very important step so you don’t damage your hair at all ^_^

Heat up your straightener or whatever you are planning to use to curl your hair.

Btw I’m wearing my new blue lenses from E-Circlelens.netin these photos, the full review is coming soon but I’m excited because I haven’t used blue ones before 😀

So anyway! Curl the bottom 1/3rd of your hair. You don’t need to make the the curls perfectly even or very good because they are all going to get mushed up anyway.

Like this is fine:

Continue until you’ve done all of your hair like this…

Add a little bit of hair spray:

Get all of your bobby pins ready so you can easily access them.

Lightly tease/back comb the front section of your hair at the roots. You don’t need to tease very much at all.

Flip your head upside down! Gently brush the back section of your hair up and forward. Don’t brush the curly ends!

Grab the hair loosely in one hand like you are making a pony tail.

Twist it clockwise once.

Using your other hand grab the ends of one side of the curls. Scrunch upwards to your head.

As you bring it to your head continue to grab hair around it. Once you actually reach the base of the twisted big, grab hold of it.

Turn your head up the right way again and you should have something like this…

See how it’s long on one side and shorter on the side that I did the grabby thing on? Now it’s time for pins!

Start by pinning around the twist. Don’t just slide pins in, slide them half way then twist and push them in the other direction, this is how you get them to stay in really well!

Pin it enough to keep it in place by itself:

Now tidy it up with more pins ^_^ You can create the bubbly waved effect by adding a pin every 5cm or so across the top of your head. This is basically using the curls you made earlier and forcing them into place.

If you’ve curled it well, you shouldn’t have to do too much work, the curls naturally want to sit like this. The back looks like this:

Now time for decoration… I added a big bow!

And I used a bunch of flower pins too 😀 I just put them randomly all over the place, you can use them to add to the bubbliness on top too because when you add them close to the scalp you will squish the puffier bits down.

It’s also a good time to touch up any of the major curls ^_^

Un-clip your fringe and give it a quick go over to ^_^

Extra hair spray!

And you’re all finished 😀

This is a really versatile hair style, you can change it completely just by scrunching the hair up in a different position. In this next photo I had it all on one side rather than a couple of curls hanging down, it just depends on your technique. You probably won’t be able to get it to look exactly the same twice but having it slightly different every time is kind of fun XD

Hope that was easy to follow and you enjoyed it, let me know if you have any questions!

Chimera Nail Polish Swatching

by VioletLeBeaux | Aug 10, 2010 | Nails, Review

If you read a lot of nail polish blogs you will know that Australian polish brand Chimera has had problems in the past, bloggers that I respect and consider to be friends were affected and I do not in any way condone what went on. Since then, Chimera have apparently made a lot of internal changes and I believe in second chances so when they asked me to review these polishes I said yes. I will only be commenting on my opinions and experiences with the actual polishes. The polishes were provided by Chimera and all opinions are 100% honest and mine.’Nuff said.

*EDIT* Ok so it has come to my attention that the problems mentioned above have not stopped. As Chimera continues to engage in behavior like this I cannot recommend their polishes. I do not condone spam. I do not condone underhanded blogging tactics. I believe in second chances but I also believe that those chances need to be used well not squandered. My opinions on the polish stand but I do not support the brand AT ALL. */EDIT*

So let’s talk nail polish!

I received 8 polishes in total so here are the basic details, specific polish details will be with the relevant photos below.

Brand: Chimera

From: Their website

Price: $14.95 per polish

Volume: 15ml

Ingredients: N-Butylacetate, Nitrocellulose, Ethyl Acetate, Isopropyl Alcohol

Bottle: I do like square bottles because it makes them easier to stack and keep tidy. The lid has an odd texture which is kind of grippy.

Brush: Very thin flexible brush.

Drying Time: Pretty much the same for all of them… quite quick.

Colour Name: All of the colours have names on the website but only numbers are printed on the bottles so I can’t remember what the names are >_< This is number 121

Description: Dark grey polish with lots and lots of silver glitter.

Thoughts: Decent coverage with 1 coat, great with two coats. The polish itself looks a little matt so it reminds me a bit of gun metal. I like how dense the glitter is.

Good for: -Industrial style nails -Matte background for designs -Possibly good for Konad as it’s highly concentrated, haven’t tried though.

Bad for: -Glossy nails, would need a good top coat

Colour Name: 124

Description: Purple with pink tones and a silver shimmer through it.

Thoughts: Very pretty light purple, quite metallic but not in a cold way. This is exactly the kind of blingy colour that I like ^_^ Very opaque too.

Good for: -Cute french tips -Flowery nail art -Possibly Konad because it’s very opaque but I haven’t tried it.

Bad for: -Layering over other colours as it’s very opaque

Colour Name: 70

Description: A kind of sea blue with gold shimmers.

Thoughts: Opaque in 2 coats, a little streaky but that makes me think of the ocean even more haha!

Good for: -Ocean themed nail art -Swirly 70’s-ish nail art

Bad for: -Super smooth base coats -Probably wouldn’t be very opaque over dark colours

Colour Name: 101

Description: Very light pearlescent pink.

Thoughts: Very thin polish, took 3 coats to be really opaque. I suspect it is supposed to be used in natural looking French manicures. It reminds me a lot of the colour my Barbie dolls used to wear XD

Good for: -Natural French mani’s -Office appropriate nails -Cotton candy themed nail art

Bad for: -Standing out

Colour Name: 88

Description: Slightly darker than the previous pink, this is a bubble gum-ish pink pearl with gold tones.

Thoughts: Opaque in two coats, the colour you get with one coat is quite cute too. It has quite a pleasant shine to it but is a little thick for my liking.

Good for: -Sweet, girly nails -Nail art on darker colours

Bad for: -Cold colour themed manicure

Colour Name: 68 (or possibly 89 >_<)

Description: Light purple with a pearl finish, more on the blue side of things.

Thoughts: This polish is a bit of an odd colour, it is quite streaky but it layers in an interesting way. The difference between 1 and 3 coats is quite large. It’s quite opaque in 1 coat but if you continue to layer it becomes quite dark.

Good for: -Odd interesting layered designs -Possibly very good for Konad stamping over matte bases

Bad for: -Super smooth bases

Colour Name: 64

Description: Very pale plain pink.

Thoughts: Very pink. Nice and smooth, opaque in two coats with quite a high shine factor. This is the sort of colour that is very versatile because it’s understated enough to go with lots and lots of other colours. While all of the pinks I’ve reviewed in this post are very similar I like this one the most because from a nail-art point of view it can be used in so many types of designs.

Good for: -Super cutesy nail art -Natural French manicures -Office friendly manicures -Possibly good with Konad as it’s very opaque

Bad for: -Mmm… can’t think of any!

Colour Name: 117

Description: Deep chocolaty brown with a shimmery finish.

Thoughts: -Very very opaque creamy brown, it is absolutely spot on the colour of chocolate! The application of this one made me very happy, really smooth and shiny and I couldn’t stop thinking about melted chocolate.

Good for: -Leopard or animal themed nail art -Chocolate themed nails

Bad for: -Plain manicures

Conclusion:

I was really pleasantly surprised at these polishes. After actually trying them I was really happy with the results and I use some of them very frequently now. While being quite pricey I thought the quality was really good, they went on very smoothly and the finishes were overall very pretty and shiny. They have a very wide range of colours (especially pinks!), the shipping was very fast and the customer service that I experienced was very polite and I got same day answers to everything I asked.

Verdict: If I had the money I would buy a lot of the other colours.

So if you decide to order from Chimera I have a discount code for you…