Work In Progress // Blogging 101

Hey guys! Myself and my friend Gemma decided to tackle the subject of blogging in our podcast this week. Throughout this podcast, we collected and answered your questions from Facebook and Twitter, on blogging; every subject from how to keep your topics fresh, to how to stay thrifty with your money!

In case this is the first podcast you’ve discovered, here’s a quick run down of our podcasting plan. This is the third instalment of four podcasts that we are creating this month, and they go live every Friday. We’re having a lot of fun doing them, and we love that you guys are listening to them. So far we’ve talked about the magazine that we put together with our University, put together a playlist to showcase our different music tastes, and now we’re onto blogging!

So to avoid me rambling for another 5 minutes, here’s this weeks Work In Progress podcast, Blogging 101.

That’s it for this weeks podcast, thank you so much for listening to it! Next week we’ll be officially kicking off Summer with our final podcast! As it’s our last one, we definitely don’t want you to miss it, so be sure to tune in Friday 1 July, to get ready for Summer 2016.

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Another super quick thank you to everyone that sent us questions, and again I’ll give a thanks to Gemma, she puts up with me while I laugh for a solid 3 minutes at the beginning of every podcast recording, before eventually saying “Hey guys!”

What Makes A Good Makeup Brush?

Most of you reading this like to wear makeup, and it may come as no surprise to you to learn that I too, like wearing makeup. But you can feel disheartened if even after endless hours of scrolling through blogs, and watching countless hours of YouTube videos, that your makeup still isn’t looking the way that you want it to.

Of course this can be down to the products that you are using, if they are not the same, or at least very good dupes for the products that the tutorial requires, then the final outcome can look quite different. It can even be down to pure practice, no one comes out of the womb knowing how to perfectly blend eyeshadow, or with the stability to conquer a winged eye.

But if you’ve been practising for a long time, and you have invested in high quality products, but your makeup is still not looking the exact way you want it to, the problem can be as simple as changing your makeup brushes. So today I’m talking you through some tips to help you choose better makeup brushes, in order to achieve perfect makeup looks!You Get What You Pay For | Like most makeup products, makeup brushes are no exception to the fact that you get what you pay for. If you’re just starting out with makeup, then it is completely understandable that you might not want to invest in 3 makeup brushes for £20. But if you’re more invested in wearing makeup, then even with applying higher end makeup with cheaper brushes, you aren’t going to get as high a quality with your blending and application.

Density | A good makeup brush is dense. If you can, when buying brushes that you haven’t tried before, try feeling whether the bristles are tightly packed, or if there are only a few of them. If the brush is dense, the product will sit on top of it, and apply easily to your face, meaning you require less product. Whereas with loose brushes, when you swirl the brush in the product, a lot of the product will be lost in between the bristles, and fall into the brush, meaning you use more product to actually get it onto your face.

Fallout | If, as I mentioned in the point above, you are able to feel the brushes before you buy them, try lightly pulling at the bristles. If any of the bristles fall away from the brush itself in your hands, then it is not a brush worth your time.

Fame | If a particular company are well known for making makeup brushes, then you can be pretty sure that their brushes are going to be of a high quality. However if you’re trying out new makeup brushes from a company that are well known for making lipsticks, you might have to expect, not getting a high quality brush.

Those are my top tips for choosing new makeup brushes, I hope they helped you out! Be sure to let me know in the comments below if you’ve had any bad experiences with a particular brand, or if a brand has surprised you with incredibly affordable brushes!

How To Blog On A Budget

If you, like me, run a blog, then you can very quickly realise that over time, you might be investing some money in it. Be it paying for a domain, to feeling the need to buy every palette as soon as it’s released, we can very quickly find ourselves needing to save some pennies, while keeping up to date with the blogging world.

So today I thought that I’d write a post with some tips on how to save money, while still producing interesting blog posts!

Be Resourceful | It may be incredibly tempting to buy new products to test and review, but why not review something you already own? Even if you’ve already reviewed it, you can do an updated or empties post!

Follow Up | Following on from my previous point, you don’t need to do reviews, you can simply update previous posts. Anything from a personal post you’ve previously shared, to a wishlist post.

Playlists | Making a sharing a playlist is fun, your followers get to know your tastes, and it’s absolutely free!

Collections | I’ve loved reading and creating posts like these lately. All you have to do it talk us through your existing collections!

Lists & Tips | These posts perform outstandingly well, they are so quick and simple to put together, and once more, they’re free!

Personal | If you feel comfortable doing it, why not get personal with a post? Your readers will enjoy getting to know you better, and it can feel really good to get some things off of your chest.

Reviews | If you are obsessed with writing reviews, and you don’t really want to stray from that, you can try reviewing a movie, book or tv show that you have watched. You don’t need to buy anything new, just tell your readers what you thought about it!

Those are some of my tips for blogging on a budget, I hope you enjoyed this post and it gave you some ideas! Let me know if it did in the comments, and feel free to leave any ideas you have too!

42 Handy Beauty & Health Hacks

You guys know that I care about you, and I want you to always have a great day, but I know that sometimes that can be tested, be it by the arrival of unexpected cramps, an ingrown hair, or redness after waxing. So today I’ve collated 42 crazy, but totally worthwhile, health and beauty hacks to help you if you’re struck by any of these things, and just about anything else you can imagine.

So if you’re struggling with something bugging you right now, just quickly CTRL + F, and search for anything from “If your nose won’t stop running”, to “If you feel a cold sore coming”, and I’ve got you covered. These tips are intended to be quick fixes that you can do just about anywhere, usually without having to buy anything. I hope you enjoy!

If your nose won’t stop running, inhale a handful of warm tap water (add salt if you have some; it’ll dry the nasal passages)  Your nostirls will now be clear for a few hours.

If you have a splinter, put a piece of banana skin on the affected area and cover witha  bandage. The enzymes from the banana will help draw out the splinter.

If you’re hit with cramps, warm up a wet flannel in the microwave for 30 seconds, check the heat and then lay it on your stomach. It’ll lessen discomfort until your painkillers kick in.

If you jam your finger or stub your toe, straighten it out and squeeze it, it’ll stop any swelling.

If your heart starts to race, gently massage your temples and take slow, deep breaths, then apply pressure to the point between your first and second knuckles.

If you’re fighting foot odour, applying baby powder and then wearing clean socks will dry out the perspiration .

If you have a friction burn, lather vaseline or petroleum jelly to ease the sting and eliminate redness, ensuring that alcohol isn’t a key ingredient.

If there’s no time to take a shower, but you’re pits aren’t fresh, dab liquid soap or antibacterial handsanitiser on them, it’ll mask odour-causing bacteria.

If you develop a painful nail, dip the finger in salt water, it can reduce swelling and the risk of infection.

If you can’t stop coughing, mimic sucking on a sweet, the saliva will coat your throat. (This is exactly what cough sweets do, but without having to buy 12 packs!)

If you have an ingrown hair, hold a paper towel dipped in cold water on the area, swelling and redness will shrink within 15 minutes.

IF your heels hurt from wearing heels or flats, roll your foot over a cold water bottle or can for two minutes, it’ll stretch the arch of your foot and block pain.

If you’ve got a spot about to burst, run hot water over a metal spoon for 10 seconds, then press it onto the emerging blemish. It’ll wear off the spot for a while, and majorly reduce the size of it once it does appear.

If you feel tension in your neck and shoulders, rela them by looking ahead, turning your neck 90 degress left, and then right. Then move your head up and down, and slowly tilt it from side to side.

If you’re feeling nervous, do something mundane like deleting photos from your phone, or write a shopping list, mundane tasks such as these, cancel out feelings of nerves.

If you feel like you have bad breath, drink 2 glasses of water and try and get ahold of some parsley, as it cancels out strong scents.

If you feel sick, eat or drink anything with ginger in it, as ginger calms the stomach.

If you feel like you’re about to fall asleep and don’t want to, take deep breaths through your mouth, it sends oxygen to the brain, just like yawning!

If you notice you have some dandruff, massage your scalp for a few minutes, this will release the natural oils to rehydrate your scalp.

If you are suffering with itchy eyes, splash cold water on them. They may itch ebcause of pollen, and this will wash it out, and protect your eyes for a couple of hours.

If you wake up with puffy eyes, hold ice cubes wrapped in tissue on them for one minute.

If you burn yourself with straighteners, cool the burn with honey, it’s a natural antibacterial and anti-inflammatory agent.

If you feel a migraine brewing, go to a darkened, quiet room for 20 minutes. This will eliminate any throbbing until your painkillers set in.

If you want to clean your teeth, but can’t, a crunchy fruit or vegetable will clean off plaque.

If a ainful ingrown toenail is digging into you, fold up a piece of tape and wedge it between the toe and nail.

If you cut yourself shaving, cover the cut with baby powder.

If a blister is growing, place a piece of tape over it to create a barrier between it and your shoes.

If you bite the inside of your cheek, drink a cup of cool raspberry juice, this helps close the cut.

If your eye is twitching, rubbing an ice cub in tissue over it for 30 seconds will stop it.

If you feel bloated, try and rock back and forth unti your body has relaxed.

If you feel tispy, and perhaps shouldn’t be, eat something greasy, the fat lines your stomach and slws the alcohol absorption, meaning you’ll sober up quciker.

If you have heartburn, sit still with your back very straight for a few minutes, it’ll stop the pain worseneing and ease it.

If you get a shaky muscle, drink a cup of water and massage it until it relaxes.

If you get a nosebleed, pinch the bridge of your nose, then try placing a torn piece of paper between your top lip and gum.

If your ear canal itches, that probably means that moisture is trapped inside, placing a drop of hlf vinegar and half water will restore the natural pH.If you feel a cold sore coming on, put ice on the area for 2 minutes. This wil delay its arrival.

If your skin is red after a wax, ice it for a few minutes, after that the redness shouldn’t return.

If your eyes are bloodshot, close them and splash cold water on them to shrink the blood vessels.

If a toothache is bringing you down, try gargling salter water for 30 seconds.

If you get a stitch, slow down and put your hands above your head, taking deep breaths.

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That’s it for my unusual but worthwhile beauty and health hacks, thank you so much for reading, and I hope you found something that can help you out!

Tips For De-stressing

After I wrote my post on procrastination, I realised that as it is still exam and deadline season, that a lot of us will be feeling stressed and tense. So naturally I thought, why not share some tips for de-stressing? So today I’ve collected 4 tips that I’d recommend for how to de-stress, to share with you guys.

Exercise | I know everyone always says that exercise is great for alleviating stress, and we all roll our eyes and say we’ve heard it before. But the truth is that if you’re starting to feel yourself getting more stressed and tense as the days go by, it is a good idea to invest some time undoing that tension. You don’t have to go for a 5 mile run every night, in fact the types of exercise that I find are most useful for undoing knots and relieving tension, are yoga and light walks. Another benefit of walking is that you are removing yourself from the area that is causing your stress.

Socialise | Set some time aside every week (or day, if you prefer,) to spend with your friends. During this time you can easily forget about your stresses, or you can actively talk about your stress, which will help you in combating it.It’s not you | When you’re feeling stressed, you can find it incredibly easy to blame yourself for things not going to plan, and therefore find yourself stuck in a negative cycle. But it’s important to remember that it isn’t you, so try and give yourself some positive affirmation, it could be through doing something you’re really good at, or just taking some time to pamper yourself.

Change | If your stress is not due to exams, or other deadlines (i.e your stress has a time limit) and it’s a much more permanent part of your everyday, then it’s highly important to see what you can do to change. Be it working with different people, changing your work area, or looking for alternate work altogether. It might seem like a daunting idea, but stress is not something that people should just put up with, if it’s more permanent, you need to make a change.

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Those are my main tips for de-stressing, I hope that if you’re feeling stressed that you can take something from each of these tips, and that they’ll help you out. As I mentioned, stress shouldn’t be a permanent part of your life, so don’t leave it if it is starting to affect you every day.

Thank you so much for reading this post, be sure to let me know what type of posts you’d like to see from me in the future!

5 Tips To Stop Procrastinating

With a lot of people going through deadlines and exams this month, I know that it can be a difficult and taunting time, and that at some point, you might experience yourself procrastinating. So today I wanted to share some tips that I’ve collected, on how to beat procrastination, and stay on track with your work and revision.

Set Big Goals And Small Quotas

This tip is really useful because you can start implementing it, and it doesn’t even feel like you’re working. Essentially all you have to do is work backwards. Firstly you outline your ultimate goal, i.e. Revise Maths, or, Write 3 Essays. Then you work backwards with what small quotas you can easily achieve within a short time, for example, Select 2 Units To Read, Summarise Those Units In A Paragraph, Write An Essay Plan, etc.

Pre-Commit

This point is quite an obvious one, but it does make a great difference. Instead of leaving any attempts of your work or revision until the last minute, take advantage of the time that you’re allowing to be free time, to just jot down and bookmark things that might help you when it comes down to actually getting the work done. That way you’ll save a lot of precious writing and revising time.

Lists

Written lists help just about everyone. This tip links into the small quotas one, because f you’ve written down small easily-achievable tasks, you’re more likely to achieve them quickly, because you get the quick reward of being able to tick it off of your list.

Redirect Your Procrastination

When you do find yourself procrastinating, try and take advantage of it. This might sound quite confusing, but why I mean is, when you’re mindlessly browsing through the Internet, and not doing what you intended to, or should be doing, redirect your attention onto something else that needs to be done, for example, clean out your emails and respond to whoever you need to. This means that when you’re running out of time on your work tasks, you’ll have eliminated other distracting things to do, so you can identify your procrastination faster, as you’ll only be able to waste time by watching cat videos.

Rewards

This is another obvious tip, but if it has been proven to work, why wouldn’t I include it?! If you are really struggling to get something done, just bargain with yourself, and decide on a reward for when you’ve completed it. You can also set up things to do with your friends after you’ve done your work, and then you have an outside independent motivation to get your work done.

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Those are my tips on how to avoid procrastinating, I hope some of these tips can help you guys out! I’d also like to quickly mention that if you are going through a stressful time at the moment due to work and exams, it will all be worth it in the end. You’re working right now, for yourself in the future, and you won’t let yourself down. So keep your head up and don’t let procrastination kill your vibez.

Tips For Flat-Lay Photography

If you enjoy taking photos, at some point you might find yourself stuck in a bit of a rut. Either your images aren’t looking the way you want them to, or you’ve gotten caught up in comparing your images to other peoples, and that can stifle your confidence.

So today I’m sharing 6 tips, focussing on flat-lay photography, on how to improve your images!Lighting | Try getting as close to natural lighting as possible, I know it’s always one of the first things to be mentioned when it comes to any style of photography, but it really does make a difference. If you can afford to invest in lighting then you’re lucky to be able to take your photos at any point during the day, but if you’re not, I’d recommend taking your pictures in the very middle of the day, as if you take them early in the morning, they will have an orange/yellow hue, and too late in the afternoon and they’ll be blue-toned. Taking your pictures at around noon also means that you reduce the amount of shadows in the image.

Arrangement | Always try and take images with the products in different arrangements, as this gives you a lot more options for the final post. I’ve found on quite a few occasions that what I liked in front of me, didn’t really translate on camera, so if you rearrange your objects in a few different ways, you won’t be limiting yourself.

Steadiness | I’ve also found that when I’m taking photos, I tend to hold my breath, as I think that it steadies me, and ensures that you don’t have to take as many pictures, because you don’t have blurry ones where you’ve moved slightly.Tricks | Blu tack! The day I learnt that you can keep lipsticks and mascaras and anything that is likely to roll, from rolling by securing them down with a little bit of Blu tack on the underneath, was life changing. It saves so much time and stress of positioning your products, only for them to slightly roll out of frame.

Props | If you’re finding your images to be too plain or boring, you can always throw in some fun or relevant props to give more life to your picture. They can even be fun to put altogether for posts that don’t necessarily have a product or ‘thing’ for you to photograph!

Fun | The most important thing about any images that you’re sharing online is to keep your unique style and character in them. Sometimes bloopers and funny shots can be the perfect one to add to a post, people don’t always want to see an aesthetically perfect image, they want to get to know you too!

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Those are 6 quick flat-lay photography tips that I wanted to share with you guys, I hope some of these have inspired you with your own photography! Let me know in the comments any tips you might have, and we can all help each other out!

Ariana Grande Dangerous Woman Makeup Tutorial

Hey guys! As Ariana Grande’s latest album, Dangerous Woman, was released today, I thought it’d be fun to recreate the makeup look that she wore in the Dangerous Woman music video.

It’s actually a surprisingly easy look to do yourself, as it’s a mix of nicely blended brown shades on the lid, light contouring, and a pink/brown toned nude lip.

Products used:

Collection Illuminating Touch Concealer
Rimmel Stay Matte Pressed Powder
Makeup Revolution Fortune Favours The Brave Eyeshadow Palette
Rimmel Brow This Way Brow Gel
Maybelline Lash Sensational Mascara
Fleur De Force False Lashes ‘Fleur Loves’
MAC Lipliner in ‘Edge To Edge’
Soap & Glory Smoulder Kohl Eyeliner
Makeup Revolution ‘Golden Sugar’ Blush & Contour Palette

Here’s the tutorial! Hope you guys enjoy it!

How To Proof Read Your Own Work

As I know that most of you guys reading are fellow bloggers, today I thought I’d write another post with writing/blogging in mind!

Jack Bun-Bun is here to give you all of his editing advice

We’ve all found ourselves looking back on a post, (usually just after having pressed ‘publish’…) just to be confronted with annoying typos and missing/extra words that we swear weren’t there after our final scan through the post. Or even worse, having someone point out a really obvious mistake that you hadn’t noticed at all. It’s much easier to proof read someone else’s work than it is to check through your own, so today I’m sharing some tips that I’ve found and collected for how to proof read your own work!

Dissociate | The most important thing to do in order to be objective when re-reading and critiquing your own writing is to separate yourself from the fact that you know how the piece is supposed to read; which means we tend to not pick up on the little details. A quick way to go about this is by reading the piece backwards. It really can be as easy as starting with the last sentence and reading backwards, as that way our brains pick up on anything that doesn’t make complete sense.

Bring Your Words To Life | Again, doing something different with your work, that can be as simple and obvious as reading your work out loud, or printing it out, instead of just writing and rewriting, means that our mistakes are much more obvious.

Plan | I really should take my own advice on this one, but sometimes proof reading your own work can be a lot easier if you’re not proof reading on the same day. So planning and drafting posts ahead of time gives you a lot more opportunities to redraft and find errors.

Avoid Scanning | When we are faced with a mass of text, we very often tend to scan the piece as a whole, instead of actually taking the time to read the sentences as we would if someone else wrote them.

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Those are the best tips I’ve found, let me know in the comments if you can think of any tips that work for you that I might have missed. I hope that these tips can help some of you out! I am by no means a professional; in fact, I have some very lovely editor/proof reader pals who usually find my errors and let me know about them, but hopefully these tips can help us all out!

New Years FOMO?

Hey guys! Welcome to the world after blogmas, where we are all about NYE now!

Obviously this time of year quietly creeps in behind Christmas, without giving many of us a chance to properly plan what to do. From staying in with your family, to going to a massive party, our decision in regards to new years eve is usually a very last minute one.

With the last minute nature of our decisions, FOMO can sometimes follow.

What the heck is FOMO? Well, FOMO is the ‘Fear of missing out’, it’s a word we’ve created for the emotion we feel, when we feel like we aren’t doing what everyone else is doing. Now obviously, this isn’t always a bad thing, in fact sometimes doing something differently to everyone else can be a really good thing.

So this post isn’t about how to ‘keep up’ with anybody else, or how to ‘properly’ celebrate any occasion to avoid feeling like you’re missing out. Oh no, the purpose of today’s post is to help you in living exactly the way you want to, and how to avoid disappointment in that.

Of course, the biggest piece of advice I can give you guys is to plan. I like to keep a planner on me at all times, on my desk or in my bag. That way I can pop any events or important work I need to do in immediately, and not put it upon myself to try and remember until I have another moment to write it down. I’ll also try to put a small amount of time aside each evening to tick off what I’ve done, and prioritise what I have to do throughout the coming week.But if you’re not old like me, and you prefer to keep your life in the cloud, you can follow these steps, but just use the calendar in your phone!

However, if you’re quite confident with how you stay on top of what you have to do, then I’m very excited to introduce you to Eventbrite!

Eventbrite is an app that you can browse through to see upcoming events near you, or anywhere you might be travelling to in the near future, such as concerts, networking events, training sessions, and talks. You can even create and host your own events on the app or site, for free if the event itself is free!

So with Eventbrite, you can relax in knowing that you’re being kept in the know with exciting events near you, never again will you see a friend post about an awesome concert they’re going to, and find out it’s sold out.

Eventbrite, helping us sleep soundly, knowing FOMO can never strike.

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Thank you guys so much for reading, as I always ramble on, it really does mean a lot to me. And thank you to Eventbrite for giving me the inspiration behind this post, check out Eventbrite now for their FOMO Prevention Campaign!

Finally, I just thought I’d let you guys know that I’m currently in a little bit of a limbo with my blog at the moment, so the next 2 posts may go up on the scheduled days, but please don’t worry if they’re not, I might just be taking a little break. I still love this blog very much, but I need some time to evaluate and understand what I want to do.