Practice makes perfect!

Hello!

Over the summer holidays, for some odd reason, I've become more motivated and my muse has had a craving for practicing my artistic skills. This is something I was desperate to do over the summer as I really do love art but since I left school and entered college my muse hasn't been fed.

If you knew me back at school you'd know that this is a big deal for me! Throughout my life I've always been interested in more creative and artistic things. For as long as I can remember I have always been drawing (I even have an artistic based nickname to prove it!). I'll admit that over the past year I have done a few pieces of artwork but not to the extent that I used to and want to. Perhaps confidence and lack of belief in myself has a part to play but I've gotten into the mindset to tell myself that I'm still learning and that practice makes perfect. 

Seeing as I had visited my friends from school for a week I decided to feed my muse and take advantage of the bare faces in my presence -insert evil laugh-.

As you may have already figured out, I am partial to a bit of face/body painting (usually on the hands) and this is what happened:

I set myself the theme 'The Elements' and tried to match my friends personalities to the elements. Each element look has the symbol for that element painted just above the middle of the eyebrows (if you type in element symbols into a search engine, you're sure to find quite a few. I just happened to choose these).

In the first image is my friend Katie. I decided that fire suited her and the reasons for this is that she's passionate about her morals and opinions. She isn't one to let people extinguish (see what I did there?) her opinions easily and for any illogical reason such as to be spiteful. She's one to stick to her guns when it comes to her morals and that's something that inspires my own way of living (she's also totally hot in red - another shameless pun).

The lovely lady in the second image, and my best chum, is Layla; I based her design around the element of air. I did discuss the reasons why I chose these elements for each of my friends but I wasn't entirely truthful about Layla's. One of the main reasons I chose this element for her was that I adore her laugh. It's not a cliché airy giggle, quite the opposite but I smile and laugh along every time I hear it. Her happiness (and the happiness of all my friends) raises my own spirits and spending time with them never fails to bring me joy. Her laugh, despite being the opposite of an airy giggle, reminds me of the cliché anyway. 

"She is like the wind, open and free.", is a quote by Christine Feehan (cited in Dark Prince) that I have come across once before and I think it is extremely fitting for my friend. I do not know what the original sentence is describing or explaining (as I have not read the extract it comes from) but I think it describes Layla a lot. She's often travelling around, exploring different places whether it's abroad or at home. She's always got something to do but she takes it so well and seems as if nothing is to hard a task for her. There's a lot about my friends that inspire me and the motivation Layla has is one of them! 

Now I know this isn't really drawing with a pencil and paper but I enjoy it and it's still an art. I have been practicing with traditional materials as well but I'm not quite ready to show that off yet as I haven't finished the pieces. I'm sure you'll see them soon enough over on my Instagram account (awanderlustbeing) though.

I think that's it for this blog post! I was planning on doing Water and Earth themed looks as well but I ran out of time that week so perhaps you'll see them pop up on my Instagram. I'll update this blog post in the future if I do happen too them or I'll make a part 2! 

Sending my love,

As always,

A Wanderlust Being.

           -x-

Seeing AC/DC at Wembley (Rock or Bust World Tour)!

Hello!

After seeing AC/DC live at Wembley arena 10 days ago and still not having written about it makes me feel disappointed in myself that I haven't stepped up my game; but at 10 to 1 in the morning I feel inspired to write! I don't think there is a lot I can write about the couple of hours where I was physically in the presence of rock and roll gods but I will try my best!

First off, I have to say that seeing AC/DC live is a dream come true for me! It was one of my top bucket list points and I can't believe I was lucky enough to actually have gotten the chance to carry it out. It was easily one of the highlights of my life and I will remember it until the day I die.

As you would expect from AC/DC, an amazing performance was given. It was very different from when I saw The Killers live in the same stadium but I loved it. I'm so grateful for the experience to listen to one of my favourite bands live.

I have to thank my father for the experience as he was the one who bought tickets for us, my brother and sister to go (apologies for my baby face). I think I take after my father a lot when it comes to music as what he listen to when I was a child greatly influence my taste in music these days. 

With The Killers, they interacted with the crowd a lot during their performance whereas the members of AC/DC did not; and although I liked the interaction with the crowd when I saw The Killers, I didn't mind the lack of interaction with AC/DC. They made up for it with a fantastic performance and a killer atmosphere. 

The atmosphere was the best thing I've ever experienced! The fans who decided to stand where jumping and cheering non stop for hours on end and everywhere you looked there would be red flashing Devil horns that they were selling (which I was honestly hoping to buy but didn't get a chance). The feeling of the music travelling deep through your bones because of how loud it was was incredible! 

I honestly loved every second of the concert and by the end of the night my cheeks were hurting from smiling so much. I'll admit that my throat was also sore and my voice almost non existent my the time we got out of there from all the cheering and singing but hey, that's what you do at a concert!

The last thing I want to say is - OH MY GOSH! Angus Young's guitar solo was the greatest thing I have ever had the privilege of listening to. It was, as my Twitter bio says, 'a face melting guitar solo'. He is easily, in my eyes, the best guitarist of our time!

I realise how lucky I was to have gotten this chance my I'd love to know if you happened to be at the same gig? Isn't it a small world if we had been?! If you're not into AC/DC, who do you like? Maybe I can take a few music suggestions from you.

Sending my love,

As always,

A Wanderlust Being.

          -x-

Half way there!

Hello!

I just wanted to share with you that I have offically finished my first year of college, yay! It doesn't seem like I have because I'm still at placement/work experience until the 16th of July but this was my decision. 

I decided to stay until the end of the school year as I have spent nearly a whole year with them already and I won't be going back again because of two reasons: 1) I will be assigned a different placement next year and 2) The school I'm currently in is being closed at the end of next year by the government. 

It's such a nice little school and it being closed down has nothing to do with it being a bad school. It's because it's such a small school and there are many other schools in the area. So overall I guess you could say it is due to funding.

Anyway, I just wanted to spend as much time with them as I have grown to love the placement. Both the staff and children are lovely individuals and treat me like a fully qualified childcare practitioner (within reason) and I just know I'm going to miss everyone there a lot!

But getting back to the original statement, it also seems like I haven't finished because I have a few extended essays to check up on over the summer holidays which I'm sure I'll hate but it will be well worth it for the future. I'm just hoping I can get a good grade out of them as they boost your qualification. See if you don't do the essays you get an overall E grade for completing the course (Extended Diploma Child Care Learning and Development Level 3) but if you do the extended essays you can get higher grades. Apparently without the extended essays we cannot get into university. I don't know if I ever want to go to uni but I'd like to have the option and what's the harm in doing three extended essays over a two year course?

Now that I have finish my first year of work, I'm super excited to get into the next year. Yes this year was hard and stressful for me but next year has promised to be easier since we have the basics already and we have covered most of the work this year. 

I also have a prize waiting for me at the end of the second year which I'm hoping will motivate me a lot more: I'm moving to Australia to work! You read right, I'm leaving Wales for Perth, WA at the end of my course to live and work out there for a year (or more, depending on how I feel). I also have family out there who I haven't seen a lot and I would love to spend more time with them.

I hope that whilst I'm out in Australia that I can earn quite a bit of money and take as many opportunities as I can that I can't do here. Then perhaps after I have earned some money I can take some time off to travel to Edinburgh to explore my family's history and visit my friend who could possibly be in her second year of university there at the time! 

I think that's all I have to say for now but expect more posts over the next couple of weeks as I'm doing a lot of exciting things such as: travelling to London this weekend to see AC/DC live at Wembley, possibly going to Cardiff to meet a group of lovely girls and going on holiday to Somerset at the end of this month!

What are you doing during the summer? Any festivals or gigs you're going to? What about any holidays or summer jobs? I'd love to know!

Sending my love,

As always,

A Wanderlust Being.

           -x-

Becoming a YouTuber?

Hello!

I think I may have told you all before how I originally wanted to film and upload YouTube videos instead of running a blog. As you can tell it didn't quite work out that way and I resorted to blogging which I am so happy with because I love writing out my thoughts and I'm not very good at keeping a diary so writing for you makes it easier for me to have the motivation to do it.

Recently I have been thinking about creating YouTube content but this time I seem to be more driven to do it. Before it was just an idea which I would have loved to have done but thought I'd never do it but now that I have the resources and the motivation my ideas are becoming more clear.

The only thing stopping me at the moment is confidence. You may or may not know this but I have some confidence issues and I don't have a very big self esteem. This is getting in the way of a lot of opportunities I want to take and have stopped me from taking opportunities in the past which I now regret. The biggest things worrying me about creating YouTube videos is the way I sound (as I think I sound like I have a blocked nose all the time) and how I get nervous with somethings and then I don't think I end up making a lot of sense. 

Although I do have this confidence barrier that is stopping me at the moment from doing what I would like to do with my life, I am slowly getting over it and allowing myself to take the opportunities I really want in life. this includes YouTube and soon I hope to relax myself enough to be able to at least make one video. I can always decide afterwards if I want to upload it or not but I know that I will be so proud off self for trying and who knows, maybe I will upload it and many more for years to come but I won't know unless I try.

This doesn't just mean saying yes to YouTube but also saying yes to many more experiences such as events, meeting new people and even applying to be in a movie (which is one of my regrets)!

The other thing to think about is the fact I have no idea what I would film for my first video. That's the video people are going to watch at the beginning so I need to make it kind of interesting so expel will watch it.

Anyway, I know this was a short blog post but I really would love your advice on this matter. I always ask for comments but this time I would love to see if anyone has any confidence issues themselves and if so do you know any exercises that can possibly help to gain more confidence? 

Also, would you watch my YouTube videos based on what you have read in my blog posts?

Sending my love, 

As always,

A Wanderlust Being.

           -x-

Meeting online friends

Hello!

I'm going to jump right in with today's blog post: meeting online friends for the first time. With all the social networking sites we have these days it's easy to contact people across the globe wi the click of a button and I consider this a fantastic achievement for the human race in general. It allows us to not only keep in contact with old friends or family members but also make new friends and talk to people about your interests or problems without feeling judged. 

Yet there is always a risk with this as some individuals lurking around the Internet do it to deceive others which can be dangerous. This is why I want to talk about this topic as some people have different ideas and understandings of it. By the end of this blog post I fully encourage everyone to comment their thoughts bellow about this topic but please remember that these are all my opinions and not fact.

Firstly I'd like to point out that I have quite a few online friends. A few of them are YouTubers or Bloggers and others are just people I've met online over common interests. Quite a lot of people stress that just because you know them online it does not mean you actually know them. This can be true but it can also be wrong. 

For example, an online friend of mine who I met through a similar interest has been my friend for around 4 years now. At first we were just talking through a chat along with a group of others. I haven't had any visual or audio contact with her for the first 2 or possibly 3 years but I considered her my friend. I then started to talk to her over Skype (as well as talking to another online friend) without the visual.  I eventually found out what she looked like and around 2 weeks ago we met at Comic Con in London.

Meeting friends who you have made online is not necessarily a bad thing but I do encourage you all to have both audio and visual contact with the person before meeting them and to always to it in an area where you know is secure. Please don't meet them alone; always take someone with you or meet up in a busy area or a public event where there are multiple people to help you if your online friend isn't who they say they are. 

But other than these scares I fully recommend that you meet up with your on lines friends if you get the chance to because when I did it was one of the best things to ever happen! It's like having a good friend who you have known for years and finally being reunited with them. It's one of the best feelings in the world! I now can't wait to see my friend again in October and in November she plans to come down to stay with me for a weekend to go to Cardiff Comic Con. 

For those of you who don't fully understand how people can trust others online to be who they say they are, please don't go telling them they are wrong or that they can't truly be friends with that person; instead make sure they know the dangers and help them to be sure that their friend is genuine.

Now that I have met one of my online friends, I can't wait to meet all the others! Two of which (a YouTuber and a Blogger) I hope to meet this summer. A few of them live in America and Canada and I may have to wait a long time to meet them and another lives in Dubai who I hope to meet but this can't be garunteed unfortunately. 

One day though, I hope no wish to meet them all. I also would love to make more friends through this blog so if you ever want to talk just head over to my Twitter account where I should be able to talk a lot of the time (@thewayward_girl OR @wanderlustbeing).

Sending my love, 

As always,

A Wanderlust Being.

           -x-

Summer is nearly upon us!

Hello!

As you probably have noticed by now I have not been very good lately with keeping this blog up to date and presenting you with at least two blog posts a month (which is my personal goal). I could write you a list of excuses but none of them would really magically make it all better and give me my time back; so this blog post is going to be a little catch up to get you guys up to date with my boring but surprisingly busy life through the last month or so!

Let's start with the least important detail of May: My birthday. My mother happened to birth me on the 25th of May in the year of 1997 which so happens to now make me 18 years old! I had lots of fantastic and wonderfully pleasant cards and gifts as well as the company of my friends and family which made this birthday one of the greatest and I am now legally allowed to drink alcohol at a bar!

This leads me onto my next topic of news: driving! Yes, in the UK you are legally aloud to start learning to drive at the age of 17. Hmm, what's that I hear you asking? Why didn't I start a year ago when I turned 17? The answer is because I was stupid. No, I'm just messing, I wasn't that bothered at the time and a car wasn't really needed. I also didn't have a job so I couldn't physically afford it but that is no longer a problem because of my next piece of news:

I now have a part time job! -gives myself a pat on the back- I am quite proud of myself for this as I'm not the most outgoing individual in the world and I'm not very confident with maths or even major responsibility which sounds dumb but I am enjoying it. My coworkers are lovely, I'm meeting new people from the village I live in and I'm earning a fair wage; what more could I want?

I actually knew about this job before the beginning of May but I hadn't started until mid May as I had to go to my cousin's wedding which was so amazing and magical! Here are some official photographs from the photographer hired on the day (Owen Howells).

Over the half term (last week of May which also happened to roll over onto my birthday) I did a variety of things to celebrate my birthday. Here's a small run down on what happened on each day:

Friday the 22nd: Last day of college before half term and work from 4:00pm-7:30pm.

Saturday the 23rd: Travelled down to my grandparents home in Crawley, chilled out for the afternoon before going out for dinner at the hungry horse with my grandfather and then going to see The Avengers: Age of Ultron (which was incredible might I add!! I cried near the end!). Before we left the cinema there was a giant screen with motion censors where you could play a game called 'Hulkbuster' where you could control the iron Hulkbuster suit Tony Stark built (I didn't get a chance to play it but watching my brother trying to figure out the controls was hilarious!).

Sunday th 24th: Today was the whole reason we travelled to Crawley for such a short period of time - London Comic Con! I travelled to London with my father, half-sister and brother to experience my first ever Comic Convention. I was so excited yet nervous because not only was I attending my first Comic Con but I was also meeting a friend of mine for the first time. I call her Kairi as we met over an online role play group about the video game Kingdom Hearts and that was the character she role played (I was/am Aqua by the way). The role play group has gone dead recently but I still kept in contact with a few of them and I occasionally Skype them. Kairi though is different; I talk to her on a regular basis and we sometimes buy each other stuff from eBay or Amazon. (Insert Caegus photos). 

I unfortunately do not have a picture of our meeting but I assure you it did happen and I couldn't be happier that I finally met my friend of approximately 4 years! I also met her friend and a ton of cool people whom dressed up as mostly Five Nights At Freddie's characters but also a few who were other characters.

Monday the 25th: Today is officially my birthday and I had to spend it working from 12:00pm-5:00pm before going out to dinner over the local pub with my father, step-mother and step-grandparents at 7:00pm. I also sat down with my friends and had a chat once they had finished work as two of them work there.

Tuesday the 26th: I travelled down to where I used to live to spend the next couple of days with my mum's side of the family and my old friends from school. 

Wednesday the 27th: I invited a group of friends to come out with me to have a few drinks to celebrate my birthday. Since it was half term I didn't think it would be dead but it turns out I was wrong with my assumption. We stayed out until 12:00am before heading back to my house where a few of us had some more drinks, played a drinking game and chilled out whilst having a good conversation.

Thursday the 28th: Today I invited a few family members from my mother's side as well as my best friend of all time who is like a sister to me out for dinner at the Indian in town. My favourite food is chicken korma curry and I just had to go there for my birthday. We had a wonderful night and I received a few bottles of alcohol and some money which is always good too!

Friday the 29th: lady I travelled back up to my dad's before heading off to work. Not much happened today.

Saturday the 30th: My college friends and I were planning to go down to Dragon FEST which is a festival kind of event but our plans changed but we still had a few drinks over the local pub!

Sunday the 31st: Work at 8am and chilling out before college the next morning.

I'm not sure what else to say apart from I sat out in the garden for a couple of hours after work yesterday and caught a suntan! I also have something planned coming up but I don't want to say anything in case I can't go through with it but you will find out soon, I promise, just wait until August time!

That's all for now I guess! I'd love to hear about what you all got up to during the half term so drop a comment on this post and I'll be sure to give it a read.

Sending my love,

As always,

A Wanderlust Being.

           -x-

Malteser Cupcakes for a 70th Birthday!

Hello! 

This post is a little late considering I made these on Wednesday the 1st of April and yes, my step-grandfather's birthday is on April Fools day. I always giggle at that fact as he is the biggest joker I know. Even if his jokes don't make sense or are not funny he finds them funny and laughs and the joy he gets from it makes all the jokes worthwhile. His laugh can make you chuckle and only occasionally are his jokes not funny.

Anyway, I decided to make him some Malteser cupcakes as I just fancied baking something and his favourite sweets/chocolate are, you guessed it, Maltesers! So without further ado here is the list of ingredients that I followed to make my cupcakes!

For the cupcakes:

- 150g of butter

- 150g of caster sugar

- 175g of self-raising flour

- 25g of coca powder

- 3 eggs

For the icing:

- 250g of butter

- 500g of icing sugar

- 2 teaspoons of milk

- 12 raspberries (in the original cupacke recipe but replace with 24 Maltesers)

- 12 chocolate flakes (in the original cupcake recipe but replaced with 24 crushed Maltesers)

I won't bother typing out the full method but here is the link to the recipe shared by Fearne Cotton: http://www.foodnetwork.co.uk/recipes/chocolate-cupcakes-buttercream-topping.html

And here is what my batch of 24 Mlateser cupcakes looked like (keeping in mind that this is the first time I have attempted these!)

If these cupcakes inspire you to bake in anyway please let me know either in the comments below or on one of my social networking accounts. I'd love to see your creations.

Sending my love as always, 

A Wanderlust Being.

          -x-