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.
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 ^_^
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 ^_^
Today we did a whole lot of walking and exploring some of the thrift stores in Melbourne 😀
James who loves shopping is suave as ever!
Our tour guides were Celesteand this awesome book 😀
We saw a whole lot of cute things including beautiful tea pots, dresses and skirts. One of my favorite dresses for the day was this blue number which reminded me of a Regency gown. It’s hard to see here but the details of the flower chains were lovely. I didn’t end up buying it, but I did end up buying the pink skirt hanging up for a whopping $4.99 😀 You’ll have to wait until next time for photos of the haul!
I think we ended up hitting around 8 stores today! I can’t wait to have some more money to go shopping with… I left behind the most beautiful 4 piece Maxwell Williams mug/plate/dinner plate set in mint green with pink flowers only $15 but out of my budget ;_;
After all of the shopping we stopped in for lunch at Ping’s Dumpling Kitchen.
Delicious noodles, dumplings and crispy chicken rice was had!
I tried something called Chinese Black Fungus which was a first! It’s kind of like yummy jelly… but it was also hairy so I didn’t like the texture XD
I’ve been obsessing a bit over green tea lately, what are all of your favorite blends? I really like Jasmine at the moment 😀
Now some lovely architecture I spotted this week…
This arcade houses my favorite chocolate shop: Haigh’s!
They have the most beautiful mosaics all over the floors.
And the ceilings are wonderful too. There are fantastic details pretty much everywhere you look in this place!
I received the most lovely letter from Omthis week too, I can’t wait to sit down and write her a reply. She included the cutest little hair bows (photos later) too. I love receiving snail mail 😀 I mean I love email but it’s so nice to get a good old fashioned letter. I love seeing other people’s hand writing!
James’ baking this week consisted of one very yummy swirly sponge cake ^_^
And I’ll leave you with the worst number plate I have ever seen in my entire life… Yes it is made of torn cardboard and written on with a ball point pen -_-‘
Tomorrow I am going to show you all how I painted those rose print nails in a video tutorial 😀
On the weekend I was lucky enough to be invited to attend the Melbourne Beauty Bloggers Event. It was spectacular!
We took cute beauty blogger mug shots on the way in to the party!
It was held at the Oxygen Skin Centre in Docklands, food was supplied by the Earl Canteen and drinks were from Nudie. James had his fair share of his treasured “tiny sandwiches” haha!I’ve never been to a event quite like this before, everyone had so much in common that conversation was nice and easy and I felt like a princess being treated to so much luxury! I think I was a little out of my depth hanging out with so many beautiful and eloquent ladies but I had such a lovely time :DUnfortunately I can’t seem to get my stupid gallery plugin to do it’s job so you will have to make do with a smaller selection of photos and I’ll hopefully be able to update it when the plugin starts working again. Ugh technical drama![zenphotopress album=18 sort=random number=100] [zenphotopress album=27 sort=random number=100] [zenphotopress album=22 sort=random number=100]
With James being photographer for the day we ended up with something ridiculous like 500 photos :OYou can see all of the photos of the day on my Flickr here.A special thank you goes out to Val of Ponikutawho organized everything, she was fantastic and it was awesome to finally meet her in person!The event was a long time in the planning and so I think most of us had been chatting on Twitter in the lead up, it was fun to put real faces to Twitter handles 😀 I met so many lovely bloggers and I’m really hoping that we can stay in touch!Here is the list of attendees, they all run fantastic beauty blogs so do check them out!
(I don’t think I’ve got everyone on the list so if I missed you I’m really sorry! Let me know in the comments and I’ll update!)
At the end of a lovely girly day full of pampering (foot spas and hand massages) we were treated to a *fantastic* array of gift bags! Val did some serious organising and put together a huge amount of goodies for us!This is what I looked like at the end of the day XDOk ok ok so only half of that is actually mine but still… HAUL and a half!You can see all of the goodies we took home here^_^ I’m such a lucky girl! So many products to try and that means lots more reviews on the blog!I had an absolutely wonderful time and I can’t wait until next year! I think I’m the luckiest blogger in the world 😀
Quite a while ago I was invited to be a guest speaker at the Fruits Panel at Manifest. Manifest is a pop culture and anime convention here in Melbourne and this was my first time attending 😀
We went on the Friday which is the quietest day. We spent a lot of the day at the One Day in Paradise stall hanging out with Celeste and Marie. It was a great vantage point to see all of the fantastic cosplayers who were walking past! I didn’t get many photos of the cosplayers because I was shy but we got quite a few of the Fruits contestants.
Here are some of the best photos we got during the day…
[nggallery id=14]Thanks so much to everyone involved and a big hug to Sefie who was the co-ordinator for the panel. She was fantastic and made sure we were super comfy and knew what was going on.
I had a ball and met a whole bunch of lovely people, totally a fun way to spend a day!
This post was sponsored by Nuffnang and Panasonic.For more information on sponsored posts please click here.
Another addition of snapshots 😀 This has been quite a fun busy week, I actually got to leave the house a few times XD
Architecture first, this is one of the most awesome buildings I’ve seen here in terms of details. I think it’s a bank though, such a waste >_<
Every single window has a ridiculous amount of detail!
And the doors are awesome, I want a house like this 😀
We also visited the Camberwell markets over the weekend. They are absolutely huge markets! It’s mostly vintage things and clothing as well as little bits and pieces. There were a lot of beautiful flowers too.
It was crazy busy!
More pretty flowers, I want to fill my window box with these ones!
James found some fancy walking sticks…
Of course he managed to pick up the manliest one there… with a dolphin on it XD
Posing with the delicious “wall of chewing gum”. Seriously there was about 10 times as much as you can see in the photo. Ick!
I didn’t have any money to spend so I just took photos of all of the things I wanted to buy. The sad thing is I didn’t realise until we got home but everything I look photos of matched XD
Cute little dress…
Matching handbag which is completely hand embroidered…
Lovely bowl that I would keep accessories in…
Heehee scotty doggie tin with little figurines XD
VERDICT: There was so much there that I wanted to buy, I definitely want to go back when I have more spending money. The only thing I ended up buying was a gigantic comfy sweater with flowers embroidered all over it, it was only $2! I’ll show you a photo next time 😀
James decided to try and make another of the recipes he really misses from the US. This time is was “Onion Blossoms”. Apparently this consists of cutting an onion so it looks like a flower and deep frying it. Then you eat it with ranch dip 😀 Hideous looking but quite yummy.
We also had a date night this week to try to relax. James cooked a lovely dinner and picked the movie… 1993 live action Super Mario Brothers XD Epically awesome and terrible! Who knew Luigi looked like this in real life….
Last thing for the week! James made me afternoon tea the other day, he said he was bringing cheese and crackers ^_^ I didn’t quite expect this…
He’s always going above and beyond the call of duty!!
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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