Last weekend I was lucky enough to get to go to the launch of Illamasqua’s Myer counter here in Melbourne. It was so much fun! I went with all of the MBBE girls and it was like a gigantic playground 😀
All of us had a lot of fun playing around with the awesome hand painted mannequins on their runway!
Having heard so many good things from my overseas friends about the brand I was super keen to try everything out, especially the foundation. I have a really tough time trying to match my skin because it’s so pale. Everything either looks too dark or too orange :S Having heard a lot about how awesome the range of foundations were I was first in line to test it out with the lovely make up artists!
Very excitingly they actually had a shade of the Rich Liquid foundation that did match me 😀 😀 😀
It made my skin flawless! After testing how long it lasted for the rest of the day and night I was so pleased that I went back to buy a bottle last Friday! I’ll do a review soon with some proper before/after pictures so you can see the effect.
Everything there was set up really well, the staff were super friendly without being pushy (which as you all know I love!) I’ve been back twice since then and they were all just as lovely.
Looking through the shelves there were so many products that really appealed to me. Lots of bright things and lots of encouragement to experiment with different looks. Lots of colours and styles that you wouldn’t find in department stores normally. The tag line for the brand is “Make up for your alter ego” which I really like. I love that they embrace the more out there styles.
James took so many photos that day that I’ve put them all in a side show to make it easier ^_^ You really need to see the awesome job the make up artists did on the girls! So much eye candy 😀
Very fun day and I just know I’m going to be going back soon haha! Big thank you to the lovely Christabel for organising the day for us!
Again not a new idea but one that I tend to pull out every year when I need to make cards. To be honest I don’t like cards, I’m no good at writing them XD But sometimes they are necessary! So I make my own. Over the years I’ve done watercolour paintings for people to suit their tastes and put them on the front but this year I just don’t have time for something like that. Also it was kind of sad seeing people throw away things I’d spend hours painting XD
What you need:
Paper or cardboard to make the card
Paint
Paper doilies or lace
Glue
Fold your paper in half to make a card shape…
Get your doily and your paint together. You can use a paint brush if you want but I happened to have one of these paint pens with the squishy foam tips, so I used that.
Find where you want to put you design, I decided to put it right in the middle. Then hold it in place with a finger and start painting.
Keep going gently around the edge.
When you’re finished, remove the doily and you’ve got a pretty pattern!
Then you can re-use the painted doily on as many cards as you want and lastly stick it down onto it’s own card so nothing is wasted.
You can change colours, placement or anything to make them personal. You can also used pretty much anything you want to make the stamp like pieces of lace or pretty stamped tulle. It’s a very fun way to spend a couple of hours and at the end you should have a whole lot of pretty custom cards ^_^
Do you guys like getting cards? Do you keep cards that you’re given?
Shoe clips are awesome, they’re the perfect way to jazz up boring shoes and use up old craft materials. I am a little bit addicted to them actually XD I got a whole bunch of really over the top clip on earrings at a bead store that closed down recently so I decided to go a bit crazy!
What you need:
Old clip on earrings
Something pretty for the clip eg. flowers, leopard print hearts etc
Felt
Scissors
Glue gun
Pull the old earrings apart so you just have the clippy bit like this:
Glue them to what you want on the shoes, I’m using these cute hearts:
Cut a circle of felt and glue it over the top, this is to protect the shoe from any scraping or rust from the clips.
Glue another circle of felt to the top:
Let dry then add to shoes!
You can clip them wherever you want depending on your outfit! You can also clip them to the pockets of cardigans or into your hair. Seriously versatile and very very very easy to make.
I remade some flowers that I had sewn on to these shoes with clips so I can put them anywhere now.
What do you think? I love them 😀 I want to find more earrings so I have make heaps of them now!
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I’ve been trying to clean up our house lately. When both James and I are spending so much time working it can get pretty messy because cleaning and tidying tend to be last on the list *eyes off the gigantic pile of clothes in the corner*…
But I’ve been trying to be more organised! First thing I wanted to take care of was my cupboard 😀 I have ranted quite a lot about my wardrobe because whoever designed it was a moron. It has 3 sliding doors, one of which opens to a wall which encases our water heater. The other two are divided by draws and storage cubes, either side of which is hanging space. Unfortunately one of those sides is useless because it’s not wide enough to put coat hangers in so out of 3 doors only 1 is useful >:(
…Anyway enough of the ranting, Nuffnang and Magnum are holding a competition where I’m supposed to tell you about my most indulgent fantasy, isn’t it sad that the first thing that came to mind was “a gigantic cupboard that could hold and display my things nicely” XD
So let me tell you a little story about my current cupboard, my most indulgent fantasy and what happens when you spend too much time organising your things…
Once upon a time Violet was trying to put her things in her cupboard but there was just no more room. She had been at it for hours to no avail.
She was no where near finished but was sooooo tired that she gave up.
Picking up an old magazine she decided to read for a while before heading to sleep…
Unfortunately she underestimated her ability to keep her eyes open and after 1 sentence had wandered off to slumber land…
…
Waking up, Violet was in for a surprise…
She handled it as gracefully as any princess would…
:O She had been transformed!
But where was she?? Again graceful as a princess it finally dawned on her…
Apparently in her wildest fantasies Violet dreamed of a huge mansion made of Ageha magazines. It was a gigantic manor house in the middle of sprawling highly manicured gardens. There was a hedge maze, rose gardens, well trained butler named Mr. Jensen. All of her money worries were gone as the manor was worth bajillions of dollars and she earned cash on the side from tour groups visiting the super awesome gardens. Also there were no bugs or spiders in the gardens, only lots and lots of adorable puppies!
More importantly there was cupboard space as far as the eye could see!
Obviously as this is in awesome slumberland high definition your tiny untrained eyes wouldn’t be able to cope with seeing the actual awesomeness that was this house… so to protect your brain from exploding here is an artist’s representation:
So what exactly does one do when living in one’s dream house?
Of course it’s time to socialize with the locals…
Or have some fun!
Of course there’s always work to be done so remember that modeling in 12 month old magazines is serious business, you don’t want to mess up on your first day by trying to…
If the work is all too much then you could always take a little break and look for some excitement.
Of course there are always more civilised things to do like…
Violet was no different from other girls, the thing she wanted most was to…
What girl wouldn’t want her own highly photoshopped magazine cover? At least the contrast wasn’t so high as to make her nose completely disappear!
After a long day of enjoying her gigantic magazine house there was only one thing left for Violet to do… enjoy the night with a horse driven carriage with James through her favorite Christmas window display 😀
Unfortunately during the carriage ride one of the horses tripped and sent Violet spiralling out of Slumberland forever…
She awoke with a start and some very princess-y four letter words when she realised her stupid cupboard was still only half cleaned…
It had all been a wonderful magical dream… then all of a sudden she felt something hard and metal in her hand… It was Miss Bunny’s beautiful spoon!
And Violet knew at that moment that even if her gigantic awesome house of awesome didn’t end up being made of magazines, even if she didn’t have a butler, even if no one wanted to pay to see her garden because it didn’t exist and even if the only horse drawn carriages in reality smell mostly of horse poop… everything would be ok because she was going to have the most well organised cupboard EVER. 😀
The end!
So competition time!!
Magnum is having a competition for you guys and you could win AU$1000!
*EDIT* How to enter and the terms and conditions have completely changed! See below! */EDIT*
Here are the new instructions:
1. Play the Magnum dice game and try to obtain the highest score possible
2. Leave your highest score and answer the question, ”What will you indulge in with $1000?” in a comment. (The comment must include their preferred contact method in case they win [blog URL, Twitter or E-mail Address].
3. Competition period is running from November 24 until midday on Tuesday December 14, 2010.
4. The winner will be the entry deemed most creative across all 23 blogs taking part in this campaign (See Terms and Conditions for full list)
5. The winner of the $1,000 prize will be announced on Friday December 17, 2010.
**Please note, entries that have been submitted prior to this change will still be accepted and considered.
In my last order I bought a pink hair extension from Bodyline. I liked it but it wasn’t super wearable straight away because it was a different length and texture to my hair. So what to do with it?
First thing I decided to do was make a clip in fringe. I measured my own fringe (or bangs for those in America) and then added an extra inch and cut:
I then trimmed it to the correct length and made sure the edge wasn’t too blunt so it matched my current fringe.
Unfortunately I had used a little of the pink to test a synthetic hair curling technique that The Fashionate Traveller told me about. So I needed to re-curl it into a fringe-ish shape.
On Leanne’s advice I curled the hair on itself, pinned it and boiled some water.
I put it in a bowl and pored water all over it. I soaked it until the water was cool then left it to dry. Done!
Once it’s all brushed out you should clip it in and style it with your fringe. I used a straightener to gently move any wayward bits into place:
You can hide the top with a headband or brush your fringe over it, I like mixing it with my blonde so it’s a bit stripy! This is me wearing it with the other extensions I bought from Bodyline. I’ll show you how I styled them another day ^_^
There was a lot of left over so I decided to make some small single strands with the left overs. These aren’t overly pretty but good for mixing into other styles.
Grab a bobby pin an thread a strand through.
Loop it around and using a couple of other hairs tie it in place. Secure with a little bit of glue and make sure you do it tightly so there’s danger of it coming apart while you’re wearing it!
Repeat with the rest! Again not particularly pretty at the top but that will be hidden among the rest of the hair!
Lastly what to do with the left over random bits that can’t go anywhere else or are damaged?
Well you could use them as a very stylish moustache…
Or use your hair brush to tease them into a big puffy ball which can then be included in bun hair styles…
So to use it I did two big puffy buns…
Then mashed the pink into one of the buns. Pin and hairspray and you’re good to go!
You could always cover both buns with pink completely. I chose to be asymmetrical and just did half of one ^_^
So there you have it! 3 different things with 1 $6 hair extension ^_^ What do you think?
Illustrator. Strong tea, knitting, watercolours, and making a video game called Moonlight in Garland. Living with her adorable husband Jimmy, fluffy puppy Miss Lottie and Bergamot Bunny in Melbourne, Australia.
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