Symposium! (and stuff :)

Hi,

 

Last week was a really good week for me as it was 'Symposium week' at my college. What this means is basically a week off of timetabled lectures with loads of fun and interesting workshops, talks and performances going on instead :D

 

I booked myself onto loads of the workshops including zumba (which was really enjoyable), dream catcher making, sword fighting (super fun!!!!!) and I did quite a few costume related ones, including 3 morning workshops about Kimonos :0)

The lady was really nice and knowledgeable and bought in tons of the kimonos from her collection from martial arts related ones to bridal.

 

Here are a couple of her most extravagant kimono over-robes:

 

 

And here is me (from behind so you can see my freestyle- tied

 obi which hangs down) dressed as a Geisha :) It was cool being dressed up- I learnt a lot about how it actually feels to wear the kimono as well as how to put it on properly:

 

The obi is done up so much more tightly than I imagined it was and there is a lot more padding than I thought there was underneath too :P Brian who is next to me was dressed up like a shogun (military warrior). The lady who ran the workshops also rents out her kimonos etc... and has a website- where there are more pictures of all the kimonos we all tried on at symposium: here!

 

Another workshop I did was trauma makeup. Hahaha, a lot of fake blood was used! and some cornflakes mixed with coffee, golden syrup and red food colouring to make stuff that resembled blood clots.

 

I warn all those who are faint hearted to LOOK AWAY NOW!

 

As the following picture of my work I did in the workshop although FAKE (of course! :) is very gory:

 

 

I think I actually did get it quite realistic looking thanks to the techniques of the tutor :-)

 

Another thing that made my week really good apart from symposium was finding out that I was the special winner of a free Royal School of Needlework day course from the draw I entered at the creative stitches and Hobbycrafts show at the excel :D I am soo excited and have chosen to do a course on 17th century design inspired metal/gold work button brooches- It sounds so interesting- that is in November so kind of like a great early Christmas present!

 

And if all that wasn't enough for one week me and my mum went to the John Paul Gaultier fashion exhibition at the Barbican Arts centre/Theatre in London which was fabulous.

 

It was really different to other exhibitions I have been to as they gave some of the mannequins faces using digital projection- they even talked! I thought this really brought the whole exhibition and the clothes to life a bit more.

 

Look at the amazingness of these dresses!:

 

 

Another thing that was cool and different was that they actually had a moving catwalk! All these mannequins were dressed and on stands that moved around the catwalk, again this brought so much more life and excitement to the clothes making them look even more spectacular than they already are:

 

Well, that's just about it for the catch up of my week...

 

.....No.... Wait! I have one more fabulous thing to tell you about :P The Chocolate festival I went to on Sunday with a friend from college at the London Business and Design centre  (I really did have a crazy fun week :oD)

 

There were quite a few different samples of yummy chocolate to try and lots of baked goods on sale. As a treat I went for this brownie:

 

 

It was sooooo delicious, it was called a 'buckeye' brownie. It was a normal chocolate brownie topped with Oreo cookie frosting and a layer of milk chocolate ganache mmmm... I want another one!

 

My brownie was from Batch bakery: http://batchbakery.co.uk/

 

My friend had a peanut butter brownie which she said was amazing from the Brownie Bar: http://www.browniebar.co.uk/

 

They do a really good price online delivery of brownies so I think I may have to get some of those sent to me in the near future as they looked good too but I couldn't fit a second brownies in after my Oreo- sugar overload one :P

 

I hope you are all well, and now I promise my post is officially finished :)

 

Don't forget to enter my Spring/Easter giveaway if you haven't already as as I found out last week you never know your luck!

 

Speak to you all again very soon,

 

Bye XxXxXxX

Last holiday update!

Hello everyone,

This is my last holiday update as tommorrow I am coming back home. I had a really good last day today though as the sun has been shining and me and my family went back to the Chocolate Apothecary (a reaalllyyy nice cafe). I had half a cookie, half a brownie (I shared with my dad as they are to good to try and choose one of them :P) and some appletizer :0) Mmmmmmmmmm! Also this evening when we went to the pier my brother won a cute donut plush on the grabber/claw machine and gave it to me (we have been trying for the whole week to win something and finally on our last day we did!)

 

Yesterday we had a 'chipnic' ( a chip picnic :) on the beach, hehehe :0) my dad made up the idea. we packed some rolls and sauce and then went and bought some IOW potato chips from the local chip shop and sat on the beach and ate our chip butties :P I had a few chips left at the end so I fed them to the seagulls, they went crazy for them!!!

 

On Wednesday we went for a meal at pizza express with some of the gift vouchers my nan gave us, that was really nice I had doughballs, some margherita pizza and then a big toffee glory ice cream :P It was very tasty :)

 

Tuesday was a shopping day really, my mum took me back to the vintage clothes shop as I really enjoyed looking round it the first time. She helped me look through all the rails for something my size and I tried on some different dresses, they were all so pretty and in the end my mum treated me to my two favourites and a cardigan for me to wear to my upcoming 18th birthday celebrations!(Pictures coming when I get home I am just still struggling to upload them)

 

This week I managed to finish the teddy bear cross stitch kit I started a while ago and the mini butterfly one my mum bought me last week. And I started another dress for my Monster high doll out of some pretty Chinese style fabric I bought in the IOW this time last year! I also came up with another tutorial to share with all of you which I shall be posting up over the next week or so :D

 

I hope you all had a lovely week,

 

See you all very tommorrow to announce the winner of the 2nd blogiversary giveaway, If you haven't entered yet don't miss out! Good luck to everyone :0)

 

Bye xxxXxxxXxxxX

 

Dad's Birthday!!!

Hi,

Today is my dad's birthday!!!!! WOOOOOO!!!!! Happy birthday dad!!!!!!!!!!

My dad likes to bake (as many of you will know from seeing the pictures of the amazing cakes he bakes for me and my brothers birthdays!) and one of my favourite things he makes are these delicious brownies........ mmm:P:

They really are good so I designed and knitted up the MEGA BROWNIE for him as a gift :0)

 I did a slighlty lighter shade on top (like where the brownies get cooked and lighten) and sewed on the nuts to make it look as realistic as possible. The reason I called it a MEGA BROWNIE is because it's quite substantially bigger than the real thing!

I also got him some other gifts and as an extra surprise me and my brother made my dad a very special cake. My dad's favorite place is the Isle of Wight so I came up with the idea of making him an IOW cake.

 I am a perfectionist so as soon as anything went wrong I had a panic attack and my brother had to calm me down! :D But we got there in the end and I think we did really well.

Here is the IOW cake:

I had to cut round a cut out map of the IOW to get the shape just right!

The little flags show some of my dads favourite places to visit.

(I'm so jealous though as my brother wrote the flags and I think his handwriting is nicer than mine! :)

My dad really liked it and we've finished the cake now as we had it for breakfast,  it tasted good! All that icing and jam...:P

I think next we are off to visit some National Trust gardens as that's what my dad has chosen as his birthday outing,

See you all later, bye!