Melbourne Chinese New Year Snapshots

by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 16, 2011 | Life

This edition of Snapshots starts back at Lunar New Year 😀 James, my Mother and I went to see the festival over at Crown. It’s the year of the rabbit… which is my year so yay!

It was quite warm and absolutely packed! There were a lot less stalls than I was expecting and most of them were just selling random bits and pieces or food.

James was severely disappointed when he saw this stall wasn’t about “Starcraft” the computer game which he spends far too many hours of his life playing hahaha!

Probably the most interesting thing there was the petting zoo!

The flavour of the month here in Melbourne seems to be frozen yoghurt, I’ve seen like 3 new places open over the last month. Of course it was my sworn duty to try them all! After much personal sacrifice in testing (as you can see below at one of the new stores) I have decided that the best one is still from the fruit place in the food court at the bottom of Melbourne Central. $5 for a gigantic cup of strawberry yoghurt? Yes please!

Crossing off another thing that people have been recommending, I finally made it to the Lupicia tea shop and concur that they have an awesome selection and the man that works there is awesomely knowledgeable. I got the “Granita” flavoured tea and it’s been lovely as an afternoon snack!

Also I’ve decided what I want for my birthday this year, this gigantic cupcake! You can judge the size by the regular cupcakes at the far left. WANT.

Speaking of birthdays it was James’ 24th this month 😀 He celebrated as any typical boy would: with a large amount of junk food XD

Other than photography equipment, his biggest wish was for an American style cake from Costco. According to him Australian cakes taste different >_> He picked out this design because he says it had both of us already on it, then added a reference to the Old Spice guy and taadaa…

I feel the need to point out that only 3 people including us were going to eat this cake and it didn’t even fit in the fridge! Even weeks later our freezer is full of cake XD

We’ve been giving our apartment a big make over and to make room for things I’ve been moving all of the furniture around and re-thinking our storage. Part of that meant that my awesome diy cardboard shelves had to be stripped of fabric and thrown out. James took them downstairs and our building manager took them out the the rubbish collection point. I have a *really* terrible memory and our apartments have a high turn over of student tenants who throw a lot of perfectly good furniture out… so of course later that day I was looking out the window and James and I had this conversion:

Violet: Oooo look! Some’s put a big set of shelves out for collection! What a good find! We should go have a look, maybe we could use them in the bedroom, more storage is always good.

James: >_> Seriously?

Violet: What?

James: Those are your shelves… you threw them out!

Violet: No! They can’t be! They look way nicer than the ones I made!

James: Seriously.

Violet: *frantically zooms in with the camera to get a better look* Ah. So they are. Nevermind!

James: -_-‘

The lovely Jessicat is in town at the moment for university so we jumped at the opportunity to hang out! I met Jess at the Nuffnang awards in 2009 and we’ve been chatting online ever since.

There was lots of hot chocolate and shopping that day.

As well as failed attempts at cam-whoring due to photo bombing XD

Both of us were wearing incredibly impractical shoes so that was the main thing we looked for. These were Jess’ offending shoes, poor girl was hobbling around until we could find her some thongs (also known as flipflops for the US readers).

This is one of the dresses I almost bought, reminded me of ETC but when I went back it was gone ;_;

There have been a lot of visitors over the last few weeks actually, my Dad came down for dinner too.

He and James talk a lot about cameras so I had a lot of time to check out the nice decor in the hotel he was staying in!

Not all of the visitors were good though… I should introduce you to my arch nemesis: the sparrow that lives in my building.

If you follow me on Twitter you’ll have heard about him before, he’s a jerk. Every day he comes and sits at my window and stares at me. I think he’s casing the joint for a robbery. What a jerk. He does it to everyone, if you look out the window you can see him doing his rounds: look in the window on the 1st floor, plan the best way to come back and rob them of things like bread and seeds, jump to the second floor, look in the window, plan the best way to come back and rob them of things like bread and seeds and so on.

I knew he was planning something evil. Then one day he came and sat at my window as per usual… and he threw a little rock at me! Damn you little bird!!

Last week he came to visit again and I was stupid enough to leave the window open… and he came inside!!

Evil little bird come to rob me of all of my bird seed. Look at him eyeing off Miss Rosebud, clearly he has the cold dead eyes of a killer *_*

So no, in case you were wondering, I haven’t gone completely crazy. This is just what happens when I spend most of my time staring out the same window with only a bird visiting me 😛

Back to regular scheduling… James was asked to take photos backstage for Illamaqua at the Myer fashion show event so I went so I could write for them and also be James’ assistant for the day. It was a super fun day, you can see the write up over on the Illamasqua blog.

As well as being able to see the awesome make up artists do their thing I was really excited to see the L’Oreal hair team! The styles they were doing were all involved a lot of teasing for volume so I was able to pick up tips and tricks to use in my own hair. Below I’m with Mark who came over to compliment my hair, he was very sweet and it was such an honour to have a compliment from a professional considering I cut and dye it myself!

Lastly here are a couple of photos that James took to test out the camera stuff he got for his birthday. Unfortunately he has a habit of using me as a guinea pig without letting me know first so we have a lot of these SURPRISECAMERAFLASH photos XD

I leave you now with a hilarious cross stitch set I found at a junk store. It’s an “adult” bookmark kit. I can’t tell you exactly what makes it “adult” but I do have to wonder if the flower picture on the front is slightly misleading and by following the enclosed pattern you end up cross stitching something naughty 😛

So what have you guys been up to?

Faux Fur Coat Maintenance For Winter

by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 15, 2011 | Clothing-Tutorials, Life, Tutorial

Now that it’s getting chilly again here, last week I decided to get out the big fluffy jacket that I customised last year. We don’t have a huge amount of space so it had been squished up the back of my closet during the Summer and really needed some TLC! After giving it a thorough hand wash and leaving it to dry completely as I had suspected the faux fur became matted and pretty gross so I set about cleaning it up and getting it back to it’s former glory ^_^

You can see it just after drying on the left and after I finished fixing it on the right:

And again left-bad, right-good.

The first thing I did was sprinkle a little rose scented talcum powder (or whatever the version is that doesn’t contain actual talcum etc) through the strands of faux fur. This helped to loosen the hairs up and prevent them from getting caught on each other.

After making sure the powder had gotten through evenly I used my hair brush (which has short nylon bristles) to gently separate the strands. To begin with I brushed in the same direction as the pile but this didn’t catch the smaller pieces of hair so I found that making small circular motions provided the best result.

As faux fur is essentially plastic how well it can handle brushing will depend on the quality it is, think of it as being the difference between brushing a really cheap shiny wig and one made from nicer matt fibres.

A close up of after:

Good as new! I generally try to give the pile a going over with the brush once a week because faux fur has a tendency to leave little hairs everywhere no matter how careful you are or how any washes it’s been through. You can see how much of the pile came out in the brush, I don’t want to be breathing that in every time I put on the jacket *_*

I’ve never lived somewhere cold enough that I needed to do stuff like this, do you guys have seasonal rituals like changing the clothes in your closet? *winter noob* hahaha!

Violet's Wardrobe Storage Ideas

by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 10, 2011 | Life, Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial

I get a lot of storage related questions in my email, at least one a week and they are usually along the lines of “how can I store X without shoving it in a drawer?”. So this post is majorly overdue and I feel quite guilty in letting it drag out this long but I have been trying to think of a way to do this as well.

I’m always a little wary of how much I share on the internet because my house is a very personal place, only my absolute best friends have ever visited and even then I invite people over sparingly because I like my privacy very much.

The way my apartment is set up I have very limited storage space so every little bit has to count. In the bedroom we have a large mirrored built in wardrobe but even though there is lot os space it’s 50% useless because one of the door opens to a wall which hides the water heater and another of the doors opens to a hanging space which isn’t wide enough to actually hold coathangers -_-‘ I swear whoever designed this apartment had never actually lived inside an apartment.

So once all of that is blacked out, my wardrobe space is effectively reduced to this:

The storage here has been a work in progress ever since we moved in as I experimented with the space and found out what worked and what didn’t. Today I’ll show you what worked and what didn’t in this space and if you guys like this post I might do something similar with other areas in the apartment.So here’s a quick run down of the above:

On the left you can see where I hang my clothes, shirts/skirts up the top and dresses/jackets down the bottom.
Below that is where I was keeping my books stored on a shallow shelf, that wasn’t working because I needed to get them out quite often so I moved them to the shelf at the very top of the cupboard which until then was holding random junk I hadn’t found a place for yet…
Which brings us to the top shelf holding random junk I hadn’t found a place for yet! Most of the stuff up there were bits and pieces left over from when we moved in. Since this photo I have cleared it out, replaced it with my books and boxes of keepsakes we can’t seem to get rid of.
Under that we have a set of 3 shelves. I will go into detail about each shelf below but one thing to note is that I have attached stick on hooks to the sides to hold scarves and hats. I no longer keep the hats in this area because I now have too many but this is a really good way to display them if you’ve only got a couple!
Lastly under the shelves there are 4 sets of drawers holding important things like stockings, pajamas/roomwear and unmentionables. ‘Nuff said ^_^

Below you can see a closer picture of the three shelves.

So let’s go through shelf by shelf and have a look 😀

The bottom shelf holds most of my jewellery. Other than a few prized pieces most of this has been sourced from junk stores but even though it’s not expensive it’s all very pretty so I want it displayed. Also I tend to be forgetful so if it’s not displayed to remind me I’ll never wear them XD

The main storage points to note here are:

Silver tray to hold bracelets and wrist items
Homemade stands to display necklaces
Shelving at the back to hold neck ties, gloves, socks and stockings

With shelves that are quite deep like these the best way to get the most out of your storage is to add levels. If you just pile stuff in then you will have wasted the whole top half! I took advantage of the space by having the tray down low, the necklaces midway and the shelves right up to the top. The shelves are made up of the cute round box that my favorite tea set came in, similar the box at the back of this picture.

The shelves are the most packed area and as they are quite shallow they are perfect for holding (and displaying at a glance) things like stockings, gloves and scarves. I keep the things I use the most (scarves and handkerchiefs) in the middle because it’s the most accessible area. The stockings and socks I keep here are generally the ones I don’t use very often but are still pretty enough to be on display. It’s kind of annoying to get things out of those areas so I keep my every day stockings in the drawers below.

At the bottom of this shelf is a silver serving tray I picked up a thrift store for 20c. This area is the key to my jewellery storage because if I’m in a hurry it becomes a dumping ground but still looks relatively nice. I keep bangles, bracelets and watches here because they can be easily picked out when getting dressed and are still displayed very nicely. When you have a lot of similar colours and elements like pearls and diamantes stuff looks pretty even when it’s all in a big messy pile. In fact I’m sure if I took a close up picture and stuck a vintage filter someone would call it art ;P

Now moving up to the second shelf!

This area basically holds pretty things and trinkets that are too nice to be shoved in a box but also not particularly useful and therefore not going to be touched on a day to day basis.

Again here I’ve created levels to utilise all of the available space. Up the back are my Japanese magazines, next to them is a lovely box my tea set came in which is full of small toys and trinkets. That is used as a shelf for one of my hats which has other smaller accessories that I never use but don’t want to throw away inside it. In the front half of the shelf from left to right are:

A collection of small toys including my absolute favorite Sylvanian Families in a picnic setting.
Trinkets including a broken but adorable clock, collection of oversized diamantes and a ship in a bottle that my Grandfather made.
A velvet necklace display holding my nicer necklaces, behind which is space for small accessories like a pink bow belt.

Now the very top shelf is fairly self explanatory… bags… lots of bags.

I don’t have a huge number of bags compared to a lot of girls but storage for them is still important. Unlike a lot of girls I also don’t change my handbag very often, I really only go between two depending on how much stuff I need to take. The two that I use regularly live on my dresser while these are all of the left over ones that I bought thinking I would use but never actually do >_<

When we lived in our previous house I had one of those bag hanger things that is like a strip of fabric that hangs off a hook with various clips (sorry couldn’t find a photo of one) but it was so bulky and awkward that I ditched it here in favor of the shelves.

The largest bags get filled with either smaller bags or my traveling gear (like luggage tags, travel wallet etc) because that’s pretty much the only time they get busted out hahaha! It also helps the floppier bags to stand rigid and be stacked like books. Smaller bags like the fluffy bunny one get stacked on top of the big ones so it’s like a solid cube of bags 😀

So I guess that concludes the first storage area in my house! Hopefully this post was useful and answers a bunch of questions and requests, if not feel free to leave them in the comments. Or tell me your favorite storage tips for living in a small apartment, I would love that too!

Writing this post was actually a lot more fun than I was expecting so if you would like me to turn it into a series just let me know ^_^

Melbourne Snapshots

by VioletLeBeaux | Feb 17, 2011 | Life

What better way to start a snapshots post than with some strawberry and pink whipped cream scones?

I’ve been seeing lots of pretty flowers around lately.

These ones are my favorites at the moment, not sure what they’re called but the colour is lovely.

I’ve notices a lot of really pretty buildings lately too. This one is part of a university and apparently it’s actually only a couple of years old, they just built it so it fit in with the surrounding ones!

Another view of it:

Lions in China Town…

Some apartments with awesome windows. I imagine that if you owned one it would be a requirement of the building to have an entire floor devoted to a library with big leather arm chairs!

I love the art deco buildings around town too, I can completely imagine Hercule Poirot living in them!

I forgot I had this picture of some pretty Christmas decorations.

I can’t remember why we took this photo but it’s one of the few when we’re actually both in frame!

Easy way had a promotion for a while where if you bought two drinks you got one of those little cake shaped towels. I ended up with so many of them XD

Pretty lights on a street called Hardware Lane which is full of delicious smelling restaurants.

Yet another creepy Santa. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to get through all my creepy santa photos XD You have to walk through this one to get to the Christmas stuff in Myer and it kind of looks like he’s raising his skirt or something for you to walk through XD

Really pretty outside of a restaurant:

Desert from Le Petite Gataeu.

More pretty architecture! I can’t believe I have so many of these saved up *_*

These two buildings are next to the one above, it’s really interesting to see 3 completely different styles in the same street!

Even more lovely architecture…

Lastly to lighten the tone a little, I present my pink moustache:

Before I got a chance to decorate my cap James enjoyed it too much… Please enjoy the many faces of James!

My personal favorite is the last one… Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch James XD Love my early 90’s boyfriend!

What have you all been up to?

Crafting Tutorial Request To Do List

by VioletLeBeaux | Feb 13, 2011 | Craft, Life

I love making lists, unfortunately once I’ve made that list I tend to forget where I put it and so I have lots of lists floating around the place XD

This is my attempt to consolidate all of my crafting to do’s and tutorial requests into one thing I can look at. I now post an updated version of this to my mobile blog every few weeks so I figured I would add it here this once so if you guys have requests for posts or tutorials you could leave them in the comments. I know that when consolidating all these lists together I’ve probably most or missed out on some older requests so just let me know in the comments if you’ve requested something that isn’t on the list and I’ll add it again ^_^

Crafting to do soon:

Red are the ones I’m hoping to get to soon Blue are waiting for a day when I can get out the sewing machine.

Silicone phone case mod
Make pretty cushions (request)
Try beading something 3D like phone charms
Hime nails tutorial
Make a lap protector thingy for driving (request)
Chopstick lanterns
Faux fux bow wrap thingy
Make better laptop bag/cover/thing (request)
iMac cover to avoid dust at night (request)
Cute oven gloves (request)
Tea storage ideas (request)
Sew easy comfy romper
Paper brief case thing (request)
Cuter paper towel holder (request)
Crochet water bottle holder (request)
Claw clip hair bows (request)
Basic Hime Gyaru Dress (request)
Wrist protector for mouse pad (request)
Embroider black beret
Other pom pom hair tie
Sew light box
Learning to knit, the basics (request)
Learning to sew the basics (request)
Blythe snow ball scarf
Snowball tea cozy
Strawberry pompoms
Nautical skirt knitted
Blythe winter coat
Go through entire yarn stash and delegate it to projects.
Other things I’ve forgotten -_-‘

Currently on hold because I need more supplies:

New phone deco
Recycled clip top purse
Deco laptop
Make fly screens. need Magnets
Re-upholster couch in leopard print (or maybe something slightly more tasteful) Need to photoshop the results so I can decide if I like it
Embroider handbag (need more thread from Daiso)
Nail polish stand. (need more boxes)
Cake tissue box cover (need brown felt)
Try making frozen yoghurt

Reader requests for the long term:

This is stuff that I will get to eventually but not right now due to lack of materials, ideas, time, inspiration, whatever. If your request isn’t here that means it’s been lost while I was consolidating all my lists so please send it again!

Blue means it’s half done.

Something to do with crochet table cloths
Redo gradient nail art with solid colours
What to do with ugly green eco bags
What to do with recycled candy wrappers
Home made wedding ring pillow
Making ribbon flowers
Lolita hair accessories
How to host a tea party
How to put together a cute hime outfit with off brand items
How to store bags
What’s in my handbag
How to use a dotting tool
How to store stockings cutely
How to store bracelets
Cute nail cases
How to make rings and hair accessories
How to make the $10 coles dress
What are cute/girly iphone apps?
How to make cute nail art with fimo
How to take nice photos for blogging/photography tips

I feel much more organised now XD Now I’ve just got to set time aside to start tackling it all!

Melbourne Snapshots!

by VioletLeBeaux | Feb 10, 2011 | Life

Snapshots time ^_^

James and I have been doing a really big work project lately so we haven’t had much time with each other. Even living together and working in the same room on the same projects it can be really difficult to find actual time together.

So around a month ago, enough was enough and James took me on a surprise picnic!

The first stop was EasyWay for my favorite “Rosella Ice Blend Tea”. I’m going to be so sad when they discontinue it!

We talked up to a park called the Carlton Gardens. I was very surprised how quiet it was considering the busy road it was on.

We set up our picnic blanket in a nice shady spot (oh my god so many tiny bugs*_*) and James unpacked all of the things he had planned!

Man with chocolate cheesecake? DO WANT.

He brought all of my favorite foods and even though some of them were a little melty because of the heat they were still delicious.

He put on my favorite music as a background and this seagull who was looking for scraps kept tweeting along XD Seagulls creep me out!

After we were finished eating he pulled out a present!

Taadaa! Apparently he had found the big stone at the markets and tried to find a pretty base to put in it but couldn’t find one that fit so he bought the other one too. So cute!

Gratuitous close up shot because I love it!

He totally shot himself in the foot though because it was all so romantic and lovely that if he ever proposes now he’s going to have to do something *really* spectacular!! XD

There was a little family of ducks swimming near by, very cute.

Pretty trees:

Tree graffiti:

It was a lovely day!

I had to show you all the packaging on a parcel that the ever wonderful Alisa from KindaFancysent me. She is totally my leopard print sister from across the sea! Where on earth do you find awesome tape like this?? Here in Aus we only have stupid black gaffa tape ;_;

She wrote me the most lovely heart felt letter I’ve ever received and it’s friends like her that will keep me writing this blog for as long as I have fingers to type it. I can’t tell you how awesome it is to know that the silly stuff I write here actually has an effect on others 🙂

When she said she was sending me a package I certainly didn’t expect this!!! So many new things to play with, a couple have already made their way into my favorites drawer 😀

I couldn’t believe how she managed to fit all of this in the box! Mad Tetris skills *_*

I can’t wait to try out these lashes, the hand creams smell devine too!

The beautiful make up case which while I’m not travelling is the perfect size for my embroidery supplies!

And tights! These are the beautiful ones I wore to the Nuffnang meet up recently. LOVE THEM! Thank you *so* much Alisa, I love love love everything!

My Mum has come to stay with us for a while and the first day she was here we went to get Grill’d Burgers. The last time we went there I got a salad (which was literally a gigantic bowl of rocket with very little else) this time I decided to try a burger and I have to say I wasn’t that impressed with it either. I mean it was good but the way everyone hypes these I was expecting awesomeness :/

I found a new favorite sushi place this month too, it’s run by the most friendly people. I’ll take some better photos inside next time of all the delicious food. Their bentos are HUGE.

And what month is complete without a visit to Costco? We’re members now hahaha! I wish they would hurry up with having online shopping though, it’s too hard taking bulk things home via the tram >_<

Funniest thing ever at Costco… FROZEN MACARONS!

SO WRONG! But I kind of want to buy them to see how terrible they are, 24 macarons for $16 is pretty damn cheap compared to regular prices here!

As you guys probably read, Celeste moved away earlier in the month 🙁 She had many many going away parties though including one at a pasta place I’ve forgotten the name of. There was SO much pasta. Seriously we ordered stuff to share and ended up with 6 kinds of pasta plus seafood and there was so much left over that we look like 5 containers of it home *_*