A Sneak Peek into My Art Sketchbook!

The front of my sketchbook is decorated with Charlie & Lola and Ben & Holly's Little Kingdom stickers.

An elephant I drew - I used watercolours to paint the ears. This is on the title page.

One of my favourite pages - my lyrics & quotes page, full of meaningful quotes with small drawings.

I used a ripped up piece from an envelope to write where the quote came from - in this case, it came from the song Youth.

Another elephant I drew - complete with tribal patterns and painted with watercolours (inspired by Marion Bolognesi)

A collage of makeup products etc with information on the history of cosmetics! This was so fun to make. 

A page dedicated to fashion sketches.

A drawing of Alice from Alice in Wonderland - outlined with coloured pencils.

Envelope with a piece of paper (painted using watercolours) stuck to it on my Alice in Wonderland page. 

I wrote quotes from Alice in Wonderland on pieces of paper and included original pictures of some of the characters. 

One of my artist research pages: Marion Bolognesi. I used watercolours to mimic her style of painting.

I took Art as one of my options for GCSE and these are some photographs from my Identity (Me, Myself & I) project. My book isn't exactly how I want it because I'm still working on it, but the photos include just a few examples of my favourite pages/the pages I'm most proud of. Sometimes I regret taking Art because there is so much work that goes into it - especially the whole coursework side to it - but most of the time I really enjoy it and I love flicking through my sketchbook and looking at the paintings I did last year. It's only really enjoyable for me when I'm feeling very creative - which isn't too often, I hate to admit. However, once I feel like painting and I sit down and work solidly, I'm usually pleased with the end result. I've still got lots of work to do yet but I still thought I would give you a little sneak peak. If you'd like to see my sketchbook in more depth, I'd be happy to do more blog posts or possibly film a video of myself speaking about each page and why I decided to do what I did! I hope I've given you some inspiration if you take Art as a GCSE or maybe you just like seeing what other people do when they're feeling creative - I know I do!

Mind Maps! | Revision & Study Tips

Creating a mind map is my favourite way to revise because I find it's easier to find the key information which means it's much easier to remember. I mainly make mind maps for history because there is tons of information that can be quite daunting once you start revising! My favourite way of setting out a mind map is to write the topic in the centre of the paper and draw a bubble around it - so it stands out and it's quicker to pinpoint exactly what you are revising. I tend to use felt tips pens - mainly because I like everything to be colourful but also because it's easier to memorise certain information, if you write it out in different colours. Once I've written the topic in the centre, I do a few arrows coming off the bubble (I usually do all the arrows in the same colour) and then I pick a sub-title, which I can have various arrows branching off of. Then, I write down the appropriate information and I always write the key words in a different colour - in this case, all the key words are written in pink. Normally, I use A4 paper to draw mind maps on but for topics which require a lot of information that needs to be remembered, I used big pieces of paper like the one above. I'm not sure what size this is but I got it from my teacher at school so I'm sure if you ask around, someone will be able to give you some.

Before I create a mind map, I always make sure I know exactly what I need to put on it. My history teacher gave me a big booklet with all the information - on the history of medicine - that I will need. The first thing I did was to go through the booklet and highlight the key information. This made it much easier and simpler to record the things I need to remember. It was also a good way to test myself as I highlighted the information and then tried to recall it on the mind map, without looking at all the information in the book.

Another way to record information is by using a 'target sheet'. This was given to me by my teacher but you could also create one yourself (on something like Microsoft Word) by drawing different sized circles and placing them on top of each other. The target sheet I completed included information on Galen and why he was important. This is quite a common topic in the History exam. The question is in the middle and in the next circle, I wrote a point: one thing that he did - he proved things about the human body. In the circle after that, I explained the point: he proved the brain controlled speech. In the empty space, I wrote extra information which could be used to pick up extra marks. By creating a target sheet, it helps to plan out answers and now I know exactly what I need to write to get full marks. I coloured each segment in a different colour so it appears more interesting - I get attracted to colour so I find revising more enjoyable whereas if the page was plain, I wouldn't look at it as often.

Click on any of these links below and they will take you to my other Revision & Study Tips posts:

❤ Tip One: Getting Started! ❤

❤ Tip Two: Stationery! ❤

❤ Tip Three: Revision Books! ❤

❤ Tip Four: Mindmaps! ❤

❤ Tip Five: Organization! ❤

Trip to Town! | OOTD

 I went to town today and I did a bit of shopping - despite already placing two orders online a couple of days ago... Today wasn't that cold so I didn't feel the need to wear my big coat from Topshop (which I am going to be doing a blogpost on very soon!) so a simple jumper kept me warm enough. I want to branch out more when it comes to outfits as myself and a jeans-and-tshirt combination have a very strong relationship but I feel like I never step out of my comfort zone often enough. That's why I decided to wear a very casual skater skirt. I paired this outfit with some boots I recently bought. Fun fact - I was going to send these boots back because they're nothing like I usually wear so I talked myself into thinking they aren't my style. I hate to admit it but the main reason I was going to take these back was because I was too worried about what people would think, especially because everyone is used to seeing me in trainers and flat shoes. However, today I felt brave and so I decided to wear them and I actually really like them; I think they are very suitable for the current season and so easy to wear. My feet did start to get quite sore though after walking around all day!

My jumper is from H&M: HERE - I really recommend these jumpers, I practically live in them!
My skirt is from H&M: HERE
My boots are from New Look: I couldn't find them anywhere on the website but they are called "black leather-look knitted cuff lace up boots"
My elephant necklace was gifted to me by my best friend for my birthday.
My flower necklace was gifted to me by my boyfriend.
All my Pandora charms were gifted to me by my family and my boyfriend.
My nose ring is from Ice Nine.

I kept my makeup fairly simple on my eyes. I used my Naked 3 palette: Strange all over my eyelid and brow bone, Dust in the inner corners and inner half of my eyelids and Limit through my crease. I used the L'Oreal Super Liner Blackbuster eyeliner - I wouldn't normally use this because it creates too thick of a line for my liking but I've ran out of my Elf liquid liner, which is actually my holy grail eyeliner. Pray for Georgia! I applied Benefit's Bad Gal Lash and Soap & Glory: Thick & Fast mascara to my upper eyelashes and Rimmel Lash Accelerator Endless mascara to my bottom lashes. I smudged a small amount of a W7 eyeliner pencil on my lower lashline to make my eyes stand out more.

If you'd like more fashion/outfit based blog posts, don't forget to leave a comment! Hope everyone has had a good day. :)

Thoughts on Youtube Videos?

Hi everyone!

I'm so sorry I haven't blogged in a while, things have been so busy - I thought I'd have plenty of time to blog but I've been trying to focus on school work and I've also been to see some of my friends. It was my 16th birthday yesterday (21st October) so I was super busy all day, but I did manage to get a few pictures of my outfit and makeup.
However, I do have some exciting blog posts coming up - the last few posts of my Revision & Study Tips series, how I style a skater skirt, autumn/fall appropriate outfits, what I wore on my birthday and a few other bits and pieces. If you have anything you'd like to see, please leave me a comment.

I've been thinking a lot about making Youtube videos but I've always been too scared to actually film and upload one, mainly because I'm worried about what people at school will say. I was going to wait until I leave school next year to start making them but what's the point? I'm trying to care less and do things I actually want to do. I want to become a much more confident person, especially before I go to college. I was thinking of filming a tag or a haul and uploading it but I want to get your opinion. Would you be interested?

If so, and if you want to, you can subscribe to my Youtube channel here and leave me some video requests!

The Book I'm Currently Reading | October

Hi everyone, I have some good news and some bad news.
The bad news is, I recently went back to school so I haven't had lots of time to write blog posts as I've been trying to catch up on work I've missed. However, the good news is that I'm now off for two weeks for half term and my birthday is on Tuesday. I have lots of coursework to do and I need to prepare for my Spanish assessment that I'm doing once I go back but besides that, I have tons of time to blog - and read!

I've always loved reading, ever since I was little. Before my Great Pops passed away, I would go and see him quite regularly and I'd always have a book with me. Even when he started to get quite ill, he never failed to ask me what book I was reading.
A couple of weeks ago, I bought One Hundred Names by Cecelia Ahern. I think Carrie Hope Fletcher featured one of her books in a video so once I saw this one on the shelves, I immediately wanted to buy it and see if it was any good. I've only recently started reading (I'm on Chapter 5) and I can confirm that she is a brilliant writer. The book is in third person - I normally tend to read books written in the first person - but Cecelia Ahern manages to capture emotion and portray the way the main character is feeling fantastically well.

Kitty Logan has lost her way...
As a journalist, she's spent the past few years chasing the big scoops - no matter the consequences. When she makes a terrible mistake, she finds herself mired in scandal, her career implodes and even her personal relationships are tested to the limit.
At a loss, Kitty finds distraction in a list of one hundred names her late mentor and boss, Constance, has left her. Kitty's been given one final chance, the most important assignment of her life - to write the story behind the one hundred names as a tribute piece to Constance. As she tracks down the people on the list and tries to work out what connects them, Kitty meets some extraordinary people.
Can these strangers' stories help her finally understand her own?

The thing that drew me to this book (apart from Carrie mentioning the author) was the beautiful front cover - the scoring gives the appearance of a typical tree trunk, with deep lines and circles which are commonly found on wood. The gold writing stands out against the blue heart, which I think gives a nice effect.
I've been trying to find a different style of book to the ones I usually read - cliché romances or mystery books. This one seems perfect and I'm really enjoying it so far. The characters are really interesting and I'm really looking forward to finding out more about the one hundred people that Kitty is going to meet further on in the story.

I also took a snap of each of my cats - Alvin and Tigger - as Alvin is in the background of some of the photographs of the book and I couldn't leave Tigger out!
Please let me know what you think of this blog post as I'm hoping to do one every month and let you guys know what books I enjoy.

What book are you currently reading?

Revision Books! | Revision & Study Tips

I used to find revision books really boring but my dad bought me tons of books from Ebay and Amazon and they've actually really been helping me, especially when I do my homework.
The books I have are:
❤ CGP GCSE Chemistry
❤ CGP GCSE Physics
❤ CPG GCSE Biology
❤ CPG GCSE Additional Science - Higher
❤ Collins Revision GCSE AQA English Language (essentials)
❤ Edexcel GCSE English Language and Literature (workbook) - Higher
❤ Edexcel GCSE Spanish - Higher
❤ Barron's 501 Spanish Verbs (perfect for if you take Spanish)
❤ Edexcel GCSE Mathematics A Linear Student Book - Higher
❤ Edexcel GCSE Mathematics A Linear Practice Book - Higher
❤ Collins Spanish Dictionary

The only subjects that I take that I don't have any revision books for are Art and Drama (because they are more practical subjects) and History (because I have a revision workbook my teacher gave me with everything I need in it).

I didn't take triple science (where you take Chemistry, Physics and Biology as seperate lessons and have to do more exams) but I did take additional (we do one of the Sciences for a certain amount of time and then swap round and do another one - for example, we'll do Biology for half a term and then move on to Chemistry) so I only really needed the Additional Science book but the others have more information in and they are easier to refer to when I am doing homework or revision for a certain Science subject. All the Science books are really helpful though and all the key words on each page are written in a different colour and underlined which I find helps keep the information in my mind. As you can see in this photograph, I always write key words in a different coloured pen when I'm doing revision or I use a highlighter and highlight the key words in my school books.

The Mathematics Student Book is literally the most helpful thing in the world! We used to use this book in lessons a lot and it gives you lots of clear information and also supplies you with questions so you can practice for exams. Alongside this, I also use the Practice Book which has lots of different questions in but it doesn't cover as many topics as the big book does.
My old Maths teacher gave us a sheet with a list of topics which are featured in the exam every year and a list of topics which might show up which is really useful because now I only revise the topics which I need to, otherwise I would've been trying to cover everything in the book!

I have these small Post-Its in four different colours which come out of the small containers really easily. I use these to mark out the pages which I need to revise from so I can easily flip to certain pages. I use the yellow ones for the essential topics and the purple ones for the topics which won't definitely show up (so I revise the pages with the yellow stickers on first and more thoroughly). These would work really well in other revision books, just to mark out the pages with information on that you maybe struggle to remember or understand completely. My mum actually bought me these Post-Its so I'm not entirely sure where you can get them from but I bet places like Wilko or Staples have them. I really like using them because they are so colourful and tiny so they don't clutter the top of the book. The top part is a solid colour and the bottom half is clear and sticky, so when it's in a book, you can't really see the bottom part so even if you stick it over information, the writing still shows through. One thing I will say though is that they aren't very easy to write on so I didn't write on the ones I stuck into my Maths book which can be quite annoying because I can't go straight to the page that I need.

Like I said before, you can buy these books from Ebay and Amazon for fairly cheap, respectable prices and, when you don't need the books anymore (after exams), you can sell them again and get your money back! Pass my GCSEs and get my money back? Yes please! ;)

Click on any of these links below and they will take you to my other Revision & Study Tips posts:

❤ Tip One: Getting Started! ❤

❤ Tip Two: Stationery! ❤

❤ Tip Three: Revision Books! ❤

❤ Tip Four: Mindmaps! ❤

❤ Tip Five: Organization! ❤

Would You Rather...? | Beauty TAG

I've never actually done a tag on my blog so I thought I would do one today because I think they're really fun and it's a good way to find things out about a person. I'm going to do the Would You Rather tag (beauty edition) because I am the worst at making decisions so I thought I'd challenge myself. I tag everyone reading this, let me know if you do this tag yourself.

1.) Would you rather lose all of your mascaras, eyeliners, lipsticks, and lipglosses or lose all of your palettes and eyeshadows?
I only have a couple of palettes and the only one I use is my Naked 3 but I only use that every so often. I don't wear eyeshadow that much; I tend to stick to eyeliner only. Mascara really pulls a look together and eyeliner is my one staple piece of makeup. I feel so much better about myself when I've got a simple black line on my eyelid. Weird, right? So I'd much prefer to lose all of my eyeshadows.

2.) Would you rather chop off all your hair or never be able to cut it again?
I wouldn't cut my hair! Obviously if it was for a good cause (for example, if people sponsered me and the money went to charity or it was used to create wigs etc for cancer patients) then I would cut all my hair off but if it was just a casual trip to the hairdressers, I would never get rid of my hair. My hair is literally my baby. I even hate just having a trim!

3.) Would you rather have a coral cheek or a pink cheek?
Probably a pink cheek because I think pink blusher compliments my skin tone better. However, I'm not a huge blush person anyway so if I do wear it, it's very subtle so it wouldn't even matter.

4.) If you had £1000 to spend, would you rather buy clothes or makeup?
CLOTHES! I went through a stage of only buying makeup and I was wearing the same outfits over and over again but once I got into the swing of shopping for clothes, I barely ever bought a makeup product again. It's nice to treat yourself with new makeup but I've taught myself to only buy it when I need it. Now I find myself scrolling through H&M, New Look and Topshop's websites for hours.

5.) Would you rather apply lipstick as eyeliner, or eyeliner as lipstick?
This is a really hard one because, even though I don't really wear lipstick, I was trying to think which one would be easier to apply. If you had to use a typical lipstick bullet as eyeliner, it would be so hard to control whereas eyeliner as lipstick could possibly work if you used a nude colour. So I think I'd rather use eyeliner as lipstick.

6.) Would you rather only shop at MAC or Sephora?
We don't have Sephora in the UK so I'd rather shop in Mac because I've never shopped in Sephora so I wouldn't really feel like I'm missing out on anything.

7.) Would you rather only use one eyeshadow color or one lip colour for the rest of your life?
One lip colour for definite! Lipstick doesn't really suit me and I always use the same generic pink colour if I ever do put anything on my lips. Eyeshadow wouldn't look very nice if you could only use one colour because it would look pretty boring and it's nice to blend colours together.

8.) Would you rather wear winter clothes in summer or summer clothes in winter?
Winter clothes in summer because I practically do that anyway... I wear jumpers all year round but I opt for thinner ones in the summer so I can keep cool. If you wore summer clothes in winter, surely you'd freeze?!

9.) Would you rather have dark nails or bright nails all year round?
Bright nails, dark nails do look nice in the winter, but bright colours make a statement and they can really brighten up a dark outfit.

10.) Would you rather give up your favourite lip product or your favourite eye product?
Probably my favourite lip product because, like I said before, I don't really use many lip products and I always focus on my eyes when I do my makeup because they are my favourite feature.

11.) Would you rather only be able to wear your hair in a ponytail or a messy bun?
A ponytail because I can never get my messy bun to go right! Also, my hair is pretty long and thick so if I ever do wear my hair up in a bun (when I'm at home) it always falls out and my bun goes into a strange wrapped up half-ponytail and it gets super annoying whereas with a ponytail you don't have to mess with it as much.

12.) Would your rather never be able to paint your nails again or never use lipgloss?
I don't paint my nails anyway because I bite them (a disgusting habit, I know, I'm trying to get better!) so they're always too short so when I paint them they look ridiculous! The only time I ever have nail varnish on is if I'm wearing acrylic nails or when my nails are at a decent length - when my nails are painted I don't bite them as much. I like to wear lipgloss instead of lipstick because it's easier to maintain.

13.) Would you rather shave your eyebrows and have none at all or sharpie them in everyday?
This is literally the hardest question from this tag. Good brow game makes everything look better but if you shaved them off, would you still be able to draw them on with a regular eyebrow pencil? Wriggling out of the question like a boss.
Also, eyebrows grow back! Eyebrows drawn in with sharpie would look ridiculous and imagine how long it would take to come off.

14.) Would you rather live without makeup or nail polish?
Without nail polish for sure! I mentioned this earlier but I don't wear nail varnish so it wouldn't be a big deal but I love makeup. It makes me feel ten times more confident and it's so fun to experiment with different eyeshadows and colours.

I hope you enjoyed this little tag. My next post for my Revision & Study Tips series will go up tomorrow. I tag everyone reading this, like I said before! Hope you're having a good day and I'll speak to you soon. x