Part 3 of Setting Up Your Blogging Space- Putting it all together…

by VioletLeBeaux | Dec 30, 2009 | Inspiration, Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial

I have a couple of little announcements before the main post on setting up your blogging space!

Firstly I’ve done an interview with the lovely Hollie from Mermaid’s Closet click here if you’d like to have a look 🙂

Secondly, I’ve been planning on doing an FAQ about Hime Gyaru styles for a while now and I’ve actually gotten around to starting to write it ^_^ So if there are any questions you have about my style or Hime Gyaru in general I’d love to hear them. You can put them in the comments or go to my contact page if you’d like to do it more privately 🙂

Lastly I’m going away for a few days to the beach for New Years (I hope my new swim suit arrives today or else that’s going to suck!)… anyway that means I’ll probably be missing Art Friday this week but I’m taking a sketch book so I might post something on Sat. I’ve just gotten WordPress on my phone so I might test it out and try to post some snap shots 😀

But back to the important bits…

I’ve had a lot of questions about the mechanics of blogging lately so I’ve decided to make a series of posts with tips on setting up a productive blogging space ^_^

Part 1- Tutorial on making an inspiration board Part 2- Tutorial on decorating a mirror and lamp Part 3- Putting it all together and what else do you need?So today is

Part 3- Putting it all together and what else do you need?

Well isn’t that the just longest title in the universe? Very important though. One quick disclaimer, this isn’t actually my blogging space at the moment. Because we’re living in a room at James’ parent’s place for a few months to save for our mortgage deposit, my current blogging place is in bed with a tray table holding my lap top… and it sucks. James has a big computer so he gets the desk in our room, nuts to him I want the desk! In our new house when I’ve stolen my desk back this is how I’ll be setting it up 😀 Oooow it’s like you’re seeing into the future! *cool sci fi music*

So this is *my* blogging space:

I’ll go through it bit by bit but the most important part of the whole thing is the laptop! You can’t blog without a computer ^_^ My laptop of choice is a big Mac Book Pro with lots of useful programs. You can see my pink twitter page on the screen heehee! If at all possible you should have a desk and a really comfy chair with lots of back and neck support. When you spend a large amount of time in front of a computer screen you really need to have a supportive chair which doesn’t hurt your back! Trust me, blogging in bed is not as comfy as it sounds.

From the picture below you can see that I’ve set up my inspiration board up right in front of the window. This way I can see outside (natural light is really important fr your eyes too) but I have lots of things to inspire me.

Here is a close up of the right side of my desk. Here is a list of what’s there:

-Decorated mirror (to check I look cute before photos)
-Wacom graphics tablet (for work and to draw all the cute graphics for my blog)
-Nail up magazine (INSPIRATION! God I love this mag so much but on any given day it could be replaced with some other book or mag. Inspiration is so important!)
-Cake eyelash holder, ok see the little thing that looks like a cake on my graphics tablet? It’s actually a false eyelash holder I made. I’m going to do a tutorial soon, but the point it that I keep recent or current projects close by so I can remember what I’m talking about when I write up the tutorials. That an false eyelashes are awesome 😀
-Water bottle/soft drink (Always keep yourself well hydrated, when you’re using a computer time can run away from you and all of a sudden you haven’t had a drink in 7 hours >_< Very important!)

And for the right side:
-My lamp (For when it’s night time or I’m decorating something small and need extra light)
-Cute headphones (For when you want to watch videos and it’s like 2am and you don’t want to wake up your boyfriend who is asleep right next to you.)
-Video Camera, case and mini tripod (Very important for video blogging obviously…)
-Phone (Important for taking calls from clients and also for quick photos etc)
-Kinder Chocolate or Bueno (Snacks! Chocolaty delicious snacks! Very, very important to remember to eat. Snacks are fantastic, especially Bueno shaped snacks. Damn would Bueno hurry up and sponsor me? I give them enough advertising!)

Not pictured here but also important:
-Reliable camera. I use my phone and my video camera when James doesn’t have his awesome DSLR handy.
-Boyfriend who’s good with his fancy DSLR camera to take photos for you

Having lots of power points around your area is handy too so you can plug everything in.

I think colour and decoration are very important to putting me in a good mood for blogging. I find pink and other pastel colours make me happy so I’ve decorated accordingly. You really don’t need to spend much money on decorating, the table cloth is just a scrap of fabric ^_^

So there you go! That’s the series, I hope you guys found that a bit helpful. If you have any questions I’d be happy to answer them, if there are lots I might even do a reader Q&A post on setting up your blogging space in general. 🙂

Part 2 of Setting Up Your Blogging Space- Decorating

by VioletLeBeaux | Dec 28, 2009 | Advert, Craft, Inspiration, Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial

I’ve had a lot of questions about the mechanics of blogging lately so I’ve decided to make a series of posts with tips on setting up a your blogging space ^_^

Before I get into today’s post I just want to let you all know that I’ve started a second Twitter account called Violet’s Cuties which will basically be me posting cute things that I’ve found along my internet travels. I’ll be posting pretty much anything I think is adorable from clothes to puppies to Hello Kitty shaped sushi makers. Click here to follow me if you’re interested 🙂

Part 1- Tutorial on making an inspiration board Part 2- Tutorial on decorating a mirror and lamp Part 3- Putting it all together and what else do you need?

So today is

Part 2- Decorating a Mirror and Lamp

Ok so now you’ve got an inspiration board to look at, you are going to need a few other things to reach optimum blogging potential 😛 I’ll show you the rest in the next post but today we’ll focus on 2 very important parts: 1. A cute mirror and 2. a really good, cute light source.

Let’s start with the mirror. You’re probably wondering why you need a mirror, well you want to look good for all the photos you’re going to be posting right? Well having one next in your blogging space is very handy when you’re doing a last minute post or twittering photos. Now you won’t have the problem of taking 109281 photos trying to get your hair right etc. Also useful for taking self portrait photos so you can see if you are in frame and watching tv in the reflection if your desk doesn’t face it!

Materials:

Glue gun
Cheap mirror (mine was $3 from a discount store)
2 kinds of lace
Ribbon is optional

My mirror has a thin plastic frame around it so I’m going to glue to that but if yours doesn’t then just glue straight to the glass. Ok starting with one end of your lace (the rufflier the better in my opinion) put a spot of glue in the middle of the bottom edge of the mirror frame. Don’t start at the corners otherwise you will have one corner that is slightly different from the others… and that would bother me.

Slowly continue gluing the lace until you reach a corner, glue right up to the edge like the picture below.

Now put a little dot of glue on top of the lace right on the corner.

While it’s still wet fold the lace over so it forms a right angle, it should look like below. Please be very careful when you do this, the glue is very hot and if you touch it it will burn you!

Keep going until you’ve done every side!

Now if you want you could leave it like this but I like over the top things so I want more lace! Flat lace works best for the next step. With this part it’s best to start at the corner because the pattern in the lace makes it easy to hide corners. Before deciding to start in the middle/corner check your own lace and see how it looks as some work better than others. You can use ribbon for this step if you prefer or put a strip of ribbon at the bottom etc. What are you waiting for? Be creative and get gluing!

Aaaaaand you’re done!

Time to test it out 😛

Now part 2 of this! Decorating a lamp!

This is what I ended up with:

Lighting is super important plain and simple. If you don’t have good lighting you can ruin your eyes trying to squint and read tiny fonts online. When you look for a lamp (as well as being cute) you should look for something with an easily replaceable bulb, variable brightnesses and the ability to adjust which way it’s facing. Being so adjustable means you can not only use it for reading online but also for different lighting effects in photos. A while ago I was sent this lamp from Buyster which was exactly what I was looking for (being very adjustable etc) but it was quite plain. So It was time to start decorating!

Materials:

Lace
Ribbon bows
Diamantes in various sizes
Fake flowers
Epoxy glue (make sure you check the packet for what temperature the glue is stable until as lamps can get very hot when left on for a long period of time)

Before you start test how hot your lamp gets when left on for a long time, if it get very hot in some places it’s best not to decorate there.

I decided to stick to a flowery theme and not go too over the top because James wanted to use the lamp too XD First roughly lay out what you want to do with your lamp, using epoxy glue means you only get one shot at the final product because once it’s stuck it’s not going anywhere. I decided to put lace around the bottom of the lamp.

After gluing my lace I added some large pink diamantes and pre-made ribbon bows.

Using a match stick with some old blue tack I dipped the back of each in glue and placed them. Be careful to hold them in place for a few minutes otherwise the glue will just run off and you’ll have a bunch of diamantes all over your lace.

I decided to cover where the neck and base meet with flowers. Because this part bends it’s not a good idea to use glue in this area so instead it’s better to thread a needle and sew the flowers in a circle around it.

Taadaa flowers…

As a bit of an after thought I added some diamantes to the top part. This part gets *very* hot if you leave it on for a while so my original idea of turning it into a gigantic hungry face of diamantes went out the window.

And there you have it, finished lamp! If you want to make one exactly like mine you can get this kind of lamp here.

Hope this was kind of helpful and stay tuned next time for Part 3- Putting it all together and what else do you need?

As always let me know if you have any tips for setting up your blogging space!

Merry Christmas Everyone!!

by VioletLeBeaux | Dec 25, 2009 | Life, Notices, Outfit Of The Day

<3 Have a great day!

Nuffnang Christmas Party 09

by VioletLeBeaux | Dec 23, 2009 | Hime Gyaru, Life

So while I was away the Nuffnang Christmas Party was held and my gosh did we party!

The night started off with me being in a grumpy mood because I couldn’t get my hair or outfit to work 🙁 I had planned to do this huge awesome gigantic ball of hair but it didn’t go so well so I desperately had to scrape it into hime style in like 2 minutes before we left ;_;

We were running very late and there was no parking near by so we had to run up a gigantic hill (yes I was wearing heels) to get to Bohemia. So when we finally arrived we met the lovely Miss Sharon (above).

And my Mum (above left). That’s right my Mum has started her own blog! As soon as she starts posting I’ll give you all the link 😉

We waited for others to show up (around 15 people RSVP’d) but no one did! So we made the best of it and had an awesome night!

James was driving but Sharon, my Mum and I decided to order a bunch of cocktails to try. To be perfectly honest none of us usually drink so we only had a sip of each one LOL.

Most of them looked very pretty but holy bajeebus were they disgusting! I can’t STAND the taste of alcohol! YUK!

James was clearly the star of the night! I can’t believe he can hold up that heavy camera to take photos of himself >_< This next one is such a terrible photo but I like it for some reason anyway:

Of course being a typical blogger I can twitter with one hand and take delicate sips of some disgusting green tea concoction with the other…

There was sooooooo much food! We decided to only get 1 platter in the end but there was still so much! We each ended up taking home a doggy bag XD

How cute is Sharon!? Her dress was so pretty and she even had matching blue earrings!

James thought this would be hilarious…

My outfit for the night… Ok it’s mostly white but the blue sailor top I was planning had a gigantic pink stain on it I didn’t know about until last minute 🙁