How To-Dramatic Smoky Eye Look

Today I was going to go to the bike trail at my school and take some nature pictures, but it started raining so I decided to do a makeup tutorial instead. Instead of imitating a look I found on the internet, I created my own version of the dramatic smoky eye look. This makeup look is really good if you want to enhance the shape and color of your eyes without going too over the top with eyeshadow colors.

What you will need:

White eyeshadow

White pencil eyeliner

Black eyeshadow

Black pencil eyeliner

Black liquid eyeliner

Any other powder, foundation, lipstick, etc. that you use

Step One:

Apply white eyeshadow to your entire eyelid. Make sure to apply enough so you can see it well (I put about 3 or 4 coats on). Then put white eyeliner in the inner corners of your eyes (a couple mm or longer on the top and bottom), and draw a thin line about 2 mm long going out from the inner corner of your eye.

Step Two:

Apply a couple layers of black eyeshadow (enough to be visibly dark) on the outer half of your eyelids. Use a slightly damp eyeshadow brush to blend the black and white eyeshadows together where the two colors meet so you don't have a noticeable border. (I blended the right eye in the first picture so you could see the difference, but accidentally did it too much. If you accidentally put the black too far over like I did in the picture, just add a little bit of white eyeshadow over top to fix it).

Step Three:

Apply a very thin layer of black pencil eyeliner to the bottom of your eyes, making sure not to draw over the white eyeliner. 

Step Four:

Carefully draw the outline of a wing using the liquid eyeliner, then fill in the outline. I did not put liquid eyeliner over the whole top of my eyelid, just wings in the outer corners.

Step Five:

Add any extra makeup (powder, foundation, lipstick, mascara, etc.) and enjoy! This is the final product:

One last comment: if you get any excess eyeshadow on your face while you're applying it, Neutrogena makes these awesome makeup removing cloths that are only a dollar at Walmart. They work really good and you don't have to scrub at and possibly irritate your face to get extra makeup off.

Eye Makeup-1/23/15

I decided that every couple days (or just when I feel like it), I'm going to post makeup looks that I have done on myself. Sometimes they will be looks that I imitated from other people, and sometimes they will be looks that I created. I will also give step-by-step tutorials on how to create these looks so you can try them yourself.

Yesterday, I imitated a dramatic eye makeup look that I found on Pinterest.

Makeup used:

-White or light cream colored eyeshadow

-Black eyeshadow

-Dark purple eyeshadow (optional)

-Gold eyeshadow

-Brown or maroon eyeshadow

-Black eyeliner pencil

-Black liquid eyeliner

This is the look I was going for:

And this is how it turned out on me:

I also used light powder on my face and nude colored lipstick.

*Note: The first picture I used from Pinterest is part of a bigger post that can be found at http://www.redbookmag.com/beauty/makeup-skincare/advice/g532/applying-eyeshadow/ . Those pictures and that website are not mine.

3 Fashion Websites I Love

Since I really love fashion-related things and I'm sure a lot of other people do too, I thought I would share with you my three favorite fashion websites. They are all really good creative outlets and good ways to meet other people that love fashion too.

Stardoll:

The first, and my favorite website is Stardoll. I have been a member of this website since around 2007 and it has really helped get my creativeness flowing. On Stardoll you have your own virtual person called a medoll along with a profile page and a suite.

You can also buy clothes, hair, makeup, and decor for your suite. Stardoll has a lot of different clothing brands (some of them are real life brands like Nelly, Chanel, Tommy Hilfiger, and Dolce and Gabanna), and they are always updating their stores so you never run out of clothing options.

Besides being able to dress up your medoll and decorate your suite, you can also create your own clothes, hair, and interior, and meet other Stardoll users.

Polyvore:

Another great website is Polyvore. On Polyvore you get to create your own looks using actual clothing items. Basically it is a collage-like website. These are some outfits I've made:

There is also a shopping feature of Polyvore where you can buy clothes from the outfits you've made.

Covet Fashion:

Covet Fashion is a mobile app that you can download. Like Polyvore, the clothes on this app are real-life clothes but instead of putting them in a collage, you put together outfits that you enter into contests. If you get enough stars on an outfit in a contest, you could win things like virtual clothing items or virtual money to buy more clothes.

You can also vote on other users' looks that they have entered into contests. 

Feel free to tell me what your favorite fashion and beauty websites are, I am always looking for new websites to join.

Book Review-The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

I originally wrote this book review on GoodReads, but thought I would post it on here, too. If some of the stuff in the disclaimer came across as harsh and mean, I am not meaning it to be. I just wanted to get my point across. Enjoy!

****Spoilers Throughout This Review****
Disclaimer: Like other people that gave the book a bad review have mentioned, I am allowed to have opinions on the book that differ from other people's opinions, and I would greatly appreciate it if I didn't get hate because of what I say in my review. If you don't think you can handle negative opinions of the book, I would suggest you stop reading this review now. I know that this is a very popular book that most people love, and I respect their opinions, and I am not trying to discredit their opinions or say that they are wrong for what they think of the book. 

The only reason I gave this book two stars instead of one is because I thought some of the plot twists in the book were interesting and I felt for the characters a little bit towards the end. The Fault In Our Stars has been a book that has been at the top of my to-read list for quite some time because everyone I talked to said it was a marvelous, emotion-filled book that will leave you speechless and sad by the end. I went into the book with really high expectations and finished the book really disappointed. I just didn't find the story super deep at all and I found the characters were highly annoying. It might have something to do with the fact that I am a young adult now (19 years old) and am kind of picky and critical about the books I read, but I just didn't think the book was as great as everyone says it is.

I am aware that this is a book about two teenagers with cancer, and I understand that they are going through a lot of difficult things in their lives, but I still thought they were annoying, pretentious, hard to connect with emotionally, and their choice of vocabulary was very unrealistic. 

I thought it was nice and touching of John Green to write a book about teens with cancer, that is dedicated to a girl that died of cancer. However, I thought that he tried way too hard to try and relate to teenagers. I understand that his books are targeted mainly towards teenage girls, but I feel like he went about trying to catch their attention and relate to them the wrong way. He often used childish sounding phrases and words (one that really bothered me was "condomy problems"-I have never ever heard someone say that, ever), which I think he did to try and make his characters sound quirky and relatable, but I did not fall for it at all. It just didn't come off as relatable or cute to me.

Then other times, Hazel and Augustus used phrases and words that sounded like they came from the seventeenth century (one phrase that Augustus used that irks me is when he talks about the "metaphorical resonance" of an unused swing set. Teenagers just don't say things like that). Throughout the book, both Hazel and Augustus would randomly spew out really long, unused word-filled speeches to each other, which is something that teenagers just don't do.  Whenever I would read one of said speeches they made to each other, I couldn't help but picture them reading the speeches off of a little notecard because I just cant picture people as young as them (or anyone else for that matter) being able to come up with the stuff they said off of the top of their head. One example of this, so you know what I am talking about is here:
"I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.” 

And here:
“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.”
Like I have already mentioned, I think it is very sad that Augustus died and that both Hazel and Augustus have cancer, but I could not really connect to their characters because I find it hard to relate to characters that are as pretentious and annoying as both of them were. I know that there are a lot of highly intelligent young people with advanced vocabulary, but (not trying to sound like I know every teenager in the world, I promise) even really smart people usually cannot say really long speeches like the two examples above without actually writing them out and thinking them over first.

Some other small things that I did not like about the book are:
-The fact that Hazel went over to some guy (Augustus)'s house that she just met like an hour ago, even though he could be a (*Trigger Warning*) rapist or a psychotic killer.
-The whole thing with Augustus putting the cigarette in his mouth without lighting it and saying that he was putting the killing thing in his mouth without letting it kill him. I thought it was a neat concept when he first mentioned it, but when I actually thought about it I realized that he bought a pack of cigarettes regularly just to prove a metaphor, but he is helping cigarette companies by buying cigarettes from them.
-This might just be me being somewhat sensitive, but I thought it was really rude of Hazel and Augustus to make out in the Anne Frank house. Sure, it was supposed to be romantic and they were having a moment, but I don't think it was right of them to do that there. And the fact that everyone clapped for them (you would think people would think their behavior was rude) and the two bowed and curtsied after just made it feel unreal and like they were just putting on a show or something.
-This is just a little minor thing that I'm mostly just noting because it's something small I observed, but I thought it was kind of strange that Hazel sold that swing set to someone without asking her parents about it first. Maybe she did ask them to sell it and it was one of those things that isn't mentioned in the book, but maybe she didn't ask them and they wanted to keep it.

Now some good things about the book:
-I thought that the plot line was good. It was neat but kind of sad that Hazel and Augustus were so looking forward to meeting Peter Van Houten, only to find him to be a big disappointment. This is the part of the book that I was most engaged in, I think.  I also thought it was good that he made up for his extremely rude behavior by showing up to Augustus's funeral (even if Hazel wasn't happy about it), and I thought it was really sad when he revealed that he wrote An Imperial Affliction in memory of his daughter that died of cancer when she was eight. 
-I also thought that even though it was pretty predictable (since he would wince and stuff when Hazel would touch him), it was sad that Augustus ended up dying of cancer even though he seemed like the healthier one throughout most of the book. I didn't cry or anything (like I thought I would before I actually read the book), but I definitely felt Hazel's pain when Augustus passed.

Even though the book had some moments where I felt some emotion, over all I thought the book was disappointing and the characters were really hard to believe and like. I found it hard to really get into the book, and it was a fast read for me. Even though people have their own differing opinions and I respect their right to have their own opinions, I personally think that there are books out there about people with cancer that are way better written than the Fault In Our Stars was. A really good example of a book like this that has a good plot twist is My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. Also, anything written by Lurlene McDaniel. Her books are really good, but a lot of them end the same way.

Thank you for reading my review of The Fault In Our Stars. I will post reviews for other books when I finish them.

Literacy Narrative Writing Redux (ENG101)

_________________________________________________________________________________

When I was a little girl, I could not wait to learn how to read. 

I would always have my parents read me a story when I went to bed or even just when I was bored.

_________________________________________________________________________

I had a pretty wild imagination, too.

When nobody was around to read me stories, I would look at the pictures on the pages and make up my own stories.

_________________________________________________________________________

On my first day of kindergarten, the teacher asked us what we were looking forward to the most.

Most kids said stuff like recess, lunch, and making new friends, but I said that I was looking forward to learning how to read.

_________________________________________________________________________

Each week of kindergarten, we would learn all about a different letter of the alphabet. 

For what ever letter we were on that week, we would learn how to write that letter, and we would each have to come up with a word that began with that letter.

_________________________________________________________________________

Every afternoon, our teacher would read us a story.

She would ask us to tell her what was happening in each picture to see if we were paying attention, and she would quiz us after she was finished reading us the book.

When we got a 100 on the quiz, we would all get a prize.

_________________________________________________________________________

One day after story time, I decided to try reading by myself.

I picked up a book and tried to will myself to understand the words.

At first, none of it made sense at all: all the words just looked like meaningless jumbles of letters to me!

_________________________________________________________________________

Then I tried reading the words by separating the words into syllables that I could understand, and it worked a little easier.

It took me a while to read a sentence, but I was on the right track to learning to read.

I kept practicing and practicing, and soon I could read most of the book by myself!

_________________________________________________________________________

When I got home from school that day, I ran into the house and yelled "Mommy! Daddy! I learned how to read!"

My parents were really happy for me, and had me read them the book I learned to read.

I was a little nervous to read out loud for someone so I messed up some of the words, but they were still really proud of me.

_________________________________________________________________________

I read lots and lots of books throughout kindergarten, and became a better and better reader. 

By the end of the school year, I had a shelf at home that was filled with all my favorite picture books.

_________________________________________________________________________

I was really proud of myself. I had learned how to read like I had wanted to.

I could not wait until next school year, so I could get even better at reading!

The End

10 Songs I Love-November 2014

Ghost-Ella Henderson

Hideaway-Kiesza

Budapest-George Ezra

The Driver-Bastille

Lovers On the Sun-David Guetta ft. Sam Martin

Prayer In C (Robin Schulz Remix)-Lilly Wood & The Prick

Hozier-Take Me To Church

Ugly Heart-G.R.L.

Thinking Out Loud-Ed Sheeran

Bang Bang-Jessie J, Ariana Grande, & Nicki Minaj

How to Make Fairy Glow Jars

If you are feeling crafty and want a cheap, easy way to decorate your room, then Fairy Glow Jars will be a fun project for you. They are (mostly) mess-free, and easy to make if you're not the best at DIY projects.

You will need:

-glow in the dark fabric paint

-elmer's glue

-either a small or a large mason jar with a lid

-two paint brushes (one with a pointed tip and one with a flat tip)

-glitter

-a paper plate (or something else to minimize the mess)

Step 1:

Apply a thin layer of Elmer's glue to the part of the lid that doesn't screw onto the jar. Then, sprinkle a generous amount of glitter onto the lid. Set aside to dry.

Step 2:

Squeeze a little bit of each color paint that you want to use on the paper plate. Use the pointed paint brush to dot the inside of the jar with paint. Make sure you do the bottom first, so the paint doesn't smudge on the sides.

Step 3:

Screw the lid on and let the jar sit under a lamp or in the sun for 15-20 minutes. When the time's up, your jar should look like this in the dark:

Voila! You have a Fairy Glow Jar. ❤

These are the other ones I made: