The Romanticised Leather Cuff

Hey everybody,

This morning in my Mid-Quirkies I talked about being crafty.

Well, I can finally show you something I created in my spare hours:

Before the sceptical ones are going to say: "you didn't craft that yourself"(which would actually be a compliment 'cause that would mean it looks professional), let me show you my steps...

Step 1: the Gathered material:

I still had a pastel green leather cuff I did not do that much with. And I had the idea I wanted to create I posted over here, so:

Step 2: Mid-process:

Sewing on the buttons, roses, beads and leftover of earrings. The needle is especially for leather, btw, but you still need some muscles to pierce through the leather :D.

Endresult: better view from the other side:

I quite like the outcome....♥

crafting hair deco

All of the browshing on Etsy made me hungry for a bit of creativity on my own...I love buying things, and I love creating some of my own thingies. I was so enamorated with the various hairpieces and clips I saw on Etsy, and especially the ones with a Flapper/art deco-esque vibe (eg this and this piece).

So I bought a couple of appliques (sort of sparkly and sequinned forms -flowers, bows, butterflies, etc that you can add on your clothes etc), found a piece of copper beading thread, a needle and a haircomb and started crafting:

These are a couple of the appliques I bought: I bought a golden fan, the flower you saw above, a butterfly, and you can see a tiny part of a coral applique on the bottom of the page...

I sewed the copper thread manually through all of the hairpin holes. I checked the front if the thread was not visible, and VOILLA...a gorgeous hairpiece for a fraction of the normal price.

The front...no thread visible from the sewing...

Here is the piece in my stick-straight hair...I love hairpieces for giving my hair a bit of 'unboringness' (is that a word? it is now...LOL)

(Jamilla Camel, if you read this...yes, I still have quite pale skin...LOL)

Totally credit crunch friendly and very sassy for the summer season of flirting and flaunting ;P

THE cutest blushroll from bittenbefore

The title is really dodgy today, but how to describe my joy about my new brushroll?

Oh, I was slightly jealous of the lucky bloggers who were able to haul from Yumeko's first brushroll-sale on her blog bittenbefore: these cuties were selling like hot-cakes!

THIS time, I was so lucky to buy one myself!!! it was one of the last ones, but actually, I found it the cutest design of all!

Sometimes, I really have to guess what is in the package: what did I order...with this cute package, I had instant kawaii vibes: It must be my new brushroll from Yumeko!



Kawaii-cuteness starts already with the sticker tape on the envelope...

OMGBBQ! Wowza, it looks so cute in real life...look at that candy, annnnnnndddd, the girl included a hot-a@# fantastic eyeshadow palette. I LOVE those colours: Yumeko, are you psychic?

More cuteness with the transparent 'Love' wrapping and THAT card is too cute....

This is why I loved the design so much: it is romantic with a childish twist

Stich & Angel are sitting in a tree...K..I..S..S..I..N..G...

Smoochtastic:

The blue band holding the brush-roll together matches the roll so good.

And how about the lining? I loooove polka-dots...

Running, or kicking a tree? I first thought these yellow dots with black mini-dots inside were birds, but I think they are coconuts (?) now...

Kawaii Sanro character: I find these character more original than Hello Kitty...because they are not seen so often over here...She is PIIIINKK

Look at the eyeshadow again...it looks buttery smooth and has gorgeous silver and silvery blue colours...mmm...I need to make an EOTD with it tomorrow!

Oh Yumeko, this is awesome! I love love love the roll! I will become addicted to kawaii Japanese fabrics for now on!

HAVE a WONDERFUL and KAWAII weekend!

I'm so random...

KAPWOOWW....I need a new starting line for my blog...so I picked KAPWOOWW!

Thursday again! and a lovely thursday it is: I received my Topshop order today, which I will not show in this post yet.

What I can show you is my bead-box! he he! I haven't been crafting and beading for five years now, so the beads are quite old (are they antique yet?). I picked up a bit of beading on the day after Eastern, which was a free holiday in mi leeetle country...I did not want to venture outside as everybody and their pets venture outside, so I went for an attempt of creativity...

Hey, once upon a time I organised my beads into different colour sections...what has happened to my orderness?

More beads: I kind of have to laugh about the neon-yellow cord, as 5 years ago neon was returning into the scene, and I was still hip enough to wear neon (ha ha, so I thought I was).

A cosmetic shop had 20% on their cosmetics...tahaa! Dior was calling me: I picked a colour I have been lusting over since 1998: Dior Ultra Gloss addict in 157. It is a gorgeous corally nude with green microshimmer. I love green microshimmer in lipsticks: somehow they plum up my skinny lips...

In natural daylight: It looks like a completely different gloss, but you can see some of the microshimmers...

I finally dared to swatched my precious Shiseido Integrate palette I received a while ago. Although the colours are so lovely and earthy, I espected them to be a bit more green instead of brownish.

The only colour that is a bit greenish is the darkest one on the right, oh, and the second one in the middle, but that one is too glittery. If you prefer a greener palette I would suggest looking at the Kanebo Kate Deep Trap eyes in GN 1 (here)

They are still lovely: the bronzy brown is luscious, and the darkish green is very useful for a alternative smoky eye.

Oh, and I am lusting over this product:

The bronzer on the left is the object of my affection (Goddess 001)! It is from Paul & Joe's Summer collection Gold. Beauty Anonymous has spotted it already on Beautyhabit, but I once mailed to beautyhabit for international shipping, and they were only able to ship by DHL, which would have costed me $54 for shipping alone...

So I have to wait patiently for gooddealer or ichibankao to release them....

Ezprez yourself!

The days around the 19th of January are scientifically known as being the most depressing of the whole year (coverage here and here) Scientist have even developed a bit of match in order to calculate the exact day. It is a simple calculation of a lack of sunshine, lack of money and a gain of extra weight from the Holidays...Gloom galore...

So your dear Birkinbagbeauty wanted to lift her own spirit and injected some crafting in her life: cosmetic crafting, that is! I still had a bottle of Ezpres lying around. Ezpres is a pressing medium from one of the most know companies in the beauty-blogosphere: Coastal Scents.

I also had some pigments from tkbtrading that I ordered in December...Anyway, I am not going to do a tutorial about pressing loose pigments, because the whole blogosphere of beauty-bloggers has done a tutorial about this. I will show you how they came out...

It was my first order from TKBtrading and I wanted to place an order because of their micronized pearl powder. TKB has a minimum spending limit from $19, so I filled up my cart with some Holiday-appropriate loose pigment colours, such as golds and silvers. The ones pictured are Green Quartz, Mermaid's Gold and Gold Leaf.

Mermaid's Gold is my favourite out of these three colours. My camera was not able to fully pick up the green idirescence of the colour, which was also the fault of the crappy weather which makes this period one of the most depressing period of the year, LOL. But I can assure you that Mermaid's Gold is a stunning and original gold with a beautiful green idirescent layer on top...very mermaid-tale..

The top colour is Quartz Green, which seems more gray-green to me and the lower colour is Mermaid's Gold again. My pressing pattern went all right, but it is not perfect yet.

Mermaid's Gold and a closer look on the pan. I need to clean up the sides of the pan in order to make it look more pro-like.

It is absolutely a nice craft in my opinion. I still have enough pigment left for two other pans per colour so it makes a frugal way to make cosmetics...which is quite handy in our economic times. I really want to improve my pressing skills so I can include my homemade eyeshadows as swap extras soon...

My next project will also be cosmetic crafting, only this time I will be mixing and ReMixing lipsticks in order to create a bunch of PERFECT colours....

I blogged about it before (here), when I received two not so perfect lipsticks that could become one perfect colour. Anyway, I received my LipStixReMix -set this monday...just in time to craft ways the Blue Monday blues.

The things included in the set:

Nice, now I have to select all my neglected lippies and find the perfect blends between them....

Perfect Pouty lips...here I come. It might be January, but my lips are already feeling the joy of July....