My Little Road Trip Box

My Little Box

One of my surprise birthday presents was a three month subscription to My Little Box, it was something that I had seen online and had really liked the look of. So I asked if I could have it for my birthday. I quickly forgot about it and patiently waited till the morning of the 10th of July to see what I had kindly been given.

To my surprise I found a flat present, a wrapped piece of paper, inside was a lovely note telling me that for the next three months I will receive a box from My Little Box. I was so happy, I could not believe it  and I'm still very surprised that I have just opened the July 2015 Road Trip Box.

If you don't know how it works, My Little Box is a monthly subscription service. Inside each box is a mixture of beauty products and fashion and lifestyle accessories. The box also includes their own magazine called My Little World which tells you a bit about some of the products and sometimes a discount code for a website. This wonder also contains beautiful drawings throughout by Kanako.

Fun fact about me, I don't wear make-up. So when I saw My Little Box had beauty products inside, I
wasn't sure if I was excited to try the make-up or whether I would just have to give them away to my sister. This months box didn't come any beauty products I did not want. There was a pink essie nail varnish called, "Bottle Service" it is a bright pink colour which looks slightly better in person than online. A Garnier cleansing water, I presume this is the smaller size for traveling as that is the theme with this box. It is described as an all-in-one cleanser to lift away dirt from your skin which sounds very good to me, I'll look forward to using that soon.

The final beauty related product is a small packet of gold temporary tattoos which first reminded me of the one you would get with your friends where you wet the back then peeled off the paper (I remember getting a spiderman one in a bag of sweets) you know the ones? I mean that in the best possible way because they remind me of when I was little and I can't wait to use them at the festivals we are going to in the summer. The edgy gold designs really caught my eye and I hope they will last all day long.

The lifestyle products included a small material bag with pink stars and My Little Box on the bag, a travel organiser with sections for things like you purse and passport that are beautifully drawn onto the organiser, a cute little postcard envelope that you can write holiday memories in to post to a friend and a fancy bic biro with a stylus at the end and a shiny silver pattern on the pen.

This next product will be useful for the next month or so as on Wednesday we officially finish for the summer holidays. It's an aftersun called,"Summer Sorbet" from My Little Box's beauty company called My Little beauty. I personally think it smells of sweet strawberries, a sort of strawberry ice-cream smell which is perfect for summer.Each My Litte Box costs £11 plus £3.95 delivery costs.

Have you ever been on a road trip?

Joyfully Light

Happy Birthday, to Me.

Friday 10th July 2015

Little bit of a different blog post this week but I just thought I'd share a few of the things i've been up to recently.

Friday was my birthday, it was a school day and I was wearing a badge. This meant that almost every person who walked past us said, "Happy Birthday" my tutor group even sung to me.

After school we went to the cinema then went to Nando's for tea. I had the veggie burger and pinched some of Dad's chips. We went to Krispy Kreme for pudding but I didn't get anything.

For my birthday I got two wonderful lush vouchers, a pandora necklace, a fancy bag and a coat. Everything I got was so nice and I can't wait to use soon.

My family kindly gave me money which I use to buy a record player with. I got a blue and white crosley record player from hmv as well as a James Bay vinyl. The vinyl's are so fun and they sound really good.

I was going to spend some of the lush vouchers but I decided to save them for the next time I go shopping as I had to carry the heavy record player round with me.

Last Christmas I got a lush voucher but it was a plain black design with the logo on. I have to say these two are much prettier than my first one.

As soon as we got home from shopping, we set up the record player. It was fairly simple to do there was a space at the back for the plug and a piece of material about the size of a single 45 record. The material was to place under where the vinyl went - I wasn't quite sure what it was for though. Once it was set up Mum told me some things about the vinyl's like: if you get lots of dust on the vinyl it will get stuck in the needle and try not to touch the vinyl so you don't scratch it.

What is your favourite song/album?

Joyfully Light

Photoshoot Tips

As the weather is getting warmer and the nights are getting longer; what better to do than go outside, enjoy than sun and take cool photographs with your friends.

As photography student  Kate and I are encouraged to take around 15-20 pictures per shoot. Although I often take a lot more than that.

Tip 1: Try to take at least 15-20 photographs per shoot to make sure you get images lots of good images, to post to instagram or just to print out and get framed.

Tip 2: Go on a walk round your local village or town and as you find a nice background, like the one up here, take a few pictures.

Tip 3: Find areas with gaps of shadows and spots of light, like wooden fences or rows of dark shaded trees. These photographs may not work but if you don't try you will never know.

These photographs just above had so much potential and some of them work better than others, but they are quite "busy" as our photography teacher would say. They have to much going on to let the model shine through.

Tip 4: Try not to make your photographs to busy, otherwise the model might get lost in the background.

Tip 5: Lighting, lighting, lighting. Find natural lighting to compliment your model. If you can find a dark area of trees like this, then you are very lucky because they tend to have little spots of sun coming through the leaves which create lovely shadows.

The area that Kate and I took these images in was a quiet public public footpath next to a small thin stream. As you go further down the path you will see: to your left the small stream and to your right a beautiful pond with ducks swimming around, they often climb out of the pond to walk along the path with people, especially if they have bread with them.

Tip 6: This one is possibly the most important if you want to have a laugh with your models. To build a good rapport with your model, it means to communicate and have fun with your models.
 If you are taking pictures with your friends this summer then its not that important because chatting and joking around might not be to hard. Some examples of the happy and funny pictures you can take when building a rapport with your model are below.

Tip 7: Composition, as a photography student this is one of the first things we learnt.
Rule of thirds is one of the main compositions I use as well as 50/50. One of the easiest compositions to explain is 50/50 it basically means that something in your photo spits the frame into two parts. A variation of 50/50 is to have one thing in the frame that fills half of the picture. Its a little bit like the photograph above of Kate's red camera. For the rule of thirds you have to imagine a grid on your picture, although some cameras have the grid on screen, if your subject/model is on the third line, which can be vertical or horizontal. Ta da! You have your rule of thirds composition.

What are your plans this summer?

Joyfully Light