Lottie’s Favorite Dog Treats Recipe
Today I’ll show you guys the recipe for Lottie’s favourite dog biscuits! You can see, she will do pretty much anything for them…
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I had wanted to make her treats for a long time but she wasn’t very interested in a lot of the ingredients that most of the ones I found online had. I ended up making a hybrid and adding things she loves. Obviously if your dog has dietary concerns you should adjust as needed and please do check with your vet before giving your dog anything new.
 You need:
In a mixing bowl add the oats…
 The flour…
 The tuna (including the juice)…
 And the peanut butter.
  Mix it together into a big ball.
 It needs to be sticky enough to roll out and cut into cookies so if it’s too brittle to roll then add a little bit of water.
 Knead into a big ball.
 And then roll out to around 1cm thick.
 Cut into appropriately dog-themed shapes.
 And pop them in the oven at 150 for around 20 minutes or until they dry out and are hard to the touch.
 While they are baking, you might have someone who would like to help clean up and lick the spoon.
 They look pretty much the same when cooked.
 Let them cool before giving to Lottie so she doesn’t burn her little tongue.
  Now see how many tricks you can make her do in one go!
 Hope you enjoyed this as much as Lottie did, let me know if you try it out for your dog!
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6 Hairstyles To Wear With Hats – Hair Inspiration
Today’s hair tutorial is less of a tutorial and more of a list of ideas. Really, most of you guys have all of the basic hairstyle skills down but it helps to have some nice ideas for inspiration to change up and make your own.
So here are my favourite hairstyles to wear with hats!
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1. Plain old down.
Obviously down and out is the easiest one. When I’m wearing a hat I like to keep my fringe side swept even if it’s at the length where I usually wear it straight across. This is because my fringe is usually curled under so with a hat the curl makes it look awkward or get stuck in my eyes. So side swept for the win!
 2. Fishtail braid on one side.
This is one of the styles I wear the most often. It’s quick to do, looks complicated and really pretty. You can dress it up with accessories to match your outfit and most importantly, you don’t have hair on the back of your neck so it’s good for hotter weather.
 3. Rolled
This is an awesome style for when your hair is dirty or just being annoying and unruly. All you need to do is put your hat on and then roll the hair up so it’s just under the hat. You can leave it thinner or use a hair sausage insert for a more impressive look.
 This look works best with hats which have a retro style like cloche hats.
 4. Loops
One of the problems I have with styling hair for hats is that it needs to look balanced especially if your hat is a bit elaborate or has a lot going on up top. Doing loops like this gives the bottom a sense of volume and balances out the top.
 5. Large low bun.
You can double up with one of each side but I like to just put them on one side and then balance them with large hair accessories. Keeping it lower than ear level means you can easily perch a beret or soft hat on top. For large buns I like to use a donut insert so they are prefect.
 6. Mini buns
Twisted mini buns are really cute low down as well and you can vary the shape to sausages or round buns depending on the hat you’re wearing.
 So there you go, hopefully next time you’re wearing a hat this will give you some more ideas!
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Simple Maleficent Nail Art Tutorial
Today’s nail art is inspired by the character Maleficent! It’s pretty much the simplest Maleficent nail art I could think of. I’ve been really busy lately so I’ve had to scale back on my nail art but that doesn’t mean I want to give it up completely!
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You will need:
Start by painting a base coat of either purple or green. I decided to alternate nails.  Once it’s dry, apply a coat of the corresponding glitter polish over the top.
 Prepare your black paint on a thin brush and paint a steep curve which goes from the centre of the nail to the edge quite near the cuticle.
 Mirror this curve on the other side.
 Paint a line along the bottom edge of the polish to mask it out too.
 Fill in the shape with more black.
 Repeat this shape on all other nails.
 Once it’s all dry, give the nails a coat of clear polish.
 All finished!
 Hope you enjoyed 😀
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How To Make Paper Bunting
Some of you guys asked how I made the bunting in my video back drop so here’s a quick tutorial on it!
You need:
To begin with, cut large triangles out of the pretty paper you have. They don’t need to be equilateral, in fact I think these look better if they are longer on two sides.  I used a variety of Cristina Re papers I had in my collection.
 To attach them to the string you can use a variety of methods. I just folded the tops over and stapled them in place:
 but you could also go to the effort of gluing on a second sheet of paper to make a tunnel for the string to go through.
 For these mini ones I cut a diamond shape and then folded it in half to make the triangles. To attach them to the string was as easy as just placing the string at the fold.
 You can see the fold here when they are hanging:
  Easy!
  Hope you found the tutorial useful and I’ll see you all next time!
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Basic Watercolour Techniques – Let’s Paint! Watercolour Walk Through
Good morning! Today we continue on from the last instalment of Watercolour Walkthrough with a tutorial on all of the basic techniques you’ll need to learn before you get started on your grand painting adventures ^_^
One thing to keep in mind before you start is that it’s a great idea to spend a day just painting splotches and practising techniques before you try to paint anything useful. It seems like a waste of materials and time but it’s important to have a feel for things before you get into anything complicated!
First off let’s talk about the combinations of paint and water. There are many ways to paint and the difference between all of them is the amount of water and where it is put. You can paint with a wet brush or a dry brush. You can paint with paper pre-wet or on dry paper and the results are all different.
Below is a photo of each option where I have dipped the brush in my paint and continued wiggling the brush down the page until I ran out of paint.
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The bottom two of the options involve sprinkling salt on the wet paper/paint and allowing it to dry. It sucks up water and moves the paint around making really interesting shapes:
 Each of the colours you have will react different to the water so make sure you give each one a try and experiment.
So from this point on, assume that I’m doing everything with dry paper and a wet brush unless I say otherwise. It’s the most common way to paint ^_^
So let’s look at mixing colours together now. If you’re starting out, you probably don’t have many colours in your kit yet. It’s actually good to start out with only a few colours because it teaches you to mix your own! Even some established artists prefer to have a limited palette and mix their own colours.
So here is a basic colour mixing chart. The primary colours are in the middle: blue, red and yellow. The secondary colours are between them: purple, green and orange.
Use this as a basic chart eg. blue+red=purple.
 Of course, mixing colours changes depending on how you do it. For example, below I painted a circle of blue in the middle, on the left I painted a circle of red after the blue had dried and on the right I did it when it was wet. When the first colour is still wet they mix easily. When the first colour is dry you can see both the mix and the distinct outline of the two colours.
 As a guide it’s a really great idea to put together a colour mixing grid. Sketch out a grid which is as wide and as high as however many colours you have + 1. For example, I had 16 colours so my grid was 17×17 squares.
 Number them like a multiplication grid.
 Now give each number a colour up and across.
 Then paint into each of them mixing the colour from the top and side colour co-ordinates. A lot of them will be pretty terrible but it’s a great guide to see what colours you have available to you!
  Ok now let’s have a look at using a LOT of water. This is pretty much my all time favourite technique!
This technique involves dripping a large amount of water onto the paper and then adding various colours. It creates amazing effects but you need a really sturdy paper to be able to cope with this much water.
 Use as much water as your paper can hold and draw designs with plain water.
Load your brush with colour and gently dip it into the water on the paper, this will leave behind colour swirls.
 Like this…
 You can watch the pigment interact with the water from the side.
 Now add another colour so the pigments mix.
  Now allow it to dry completely. As it dries, the pigment will be pulled to the edges of the shape and make awesome patterns.
   You can play with this even more if you are adventurous! Try painting a spot of colour then when it’s half dry, put a few drops of water in the middle and watch the pigment move around.
Below you can see how that turns out as well as how layering water with more paint in it works.
 These kinds of tiny details just look awesome!
 Layering is really important in watercolour because the pigments are transparent.
 So there are some of the basic techniques you will need to start painting! I hope you guys found that helpful, let me know if you have any questions that I can help with and we’ll move on to some more techniques and full paintings soon! Next we’ll be learning about shading, so excited for that one!
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How To Do Sugar Crystal Ice Lipstick
Ok so this is tutorial which has been requested a surprising amount considering how old the photos are! We did a photo series which was themed around a snow queen where I had sugar icicle lipstick a few years ago.
Here’s a slightly warmer version…
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But the original version was super icy with the light blue lipstick underneath it.
  It’s super easy to do, start with clean bare lips.
 Apply a really sticky lipgloss. If you want to make the lips coloured then start with coloured lipstick and the apply a sticky clear lipgloss over the top.
 Try to be as neat as possible because it can be tough to clean up later.
 Pour out the sugar into your hand or a tray.
 Press your lips into it.
 Use a make up brush to dust off around the edges and any loose pieces.
 Done! You can also press it in a second time to crust it on even more. For the snow queen look I think I did like 3 layers.
When the sugar touches the lip gloss it crystalises a bit more together. It looks cool but it will get everywhere so take your photos quickly! Also it’s hard not to just eat it haha!
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