Snow and a DIY blue pencil case

This is how a part of the Wuerzburg campus looks like under snow.

and this is the by-product of staying inside the warm house when the weather is harsh.

A pencil case made out of dark blue felt with lace outer-lining. It has white cotton inner lining and a beige zipper. I love how the colours complement each other. For the upright structure of the whole case I used an extra stuffing of washable plastic paste textile  (uhm... for lack of a better description ). It was a really easy to make project that only took me half of an afternoon to start and finish.

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Home-made Laptop Tote

 

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For some weeks now I've been the proud owner of a happy looking laptop bag. This is a project that I began some days before New Year's eve and Christian finished it a day after. It took us 3-4 days to complete it because we were busy with other side-projects, like studying and sleeping. We did the work mostly at night and because there was lack of light I couldn't document the whole process ( my digital camera is pretty bad with blitz ). But there will soon be on this blog a small and neatly presented tutorial on how to adorn a T-shirt with your favourite printed pictures. Coming back to the laptop tote, we used IKEA textiles (around 6 euros for both) for the inside and the outside, also IKEA cushion pads for chairs to used as stuffing (because they are already neatly straightened), and black Velcro from our local Bastelbedarf. I already gave the bag a first wash in the washing machine and it resisted! That is to me the measure of all quality DIY products :)  

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I'm getting very inspired lately to create my own garments. My wardrobe has a bunch of scrap-material that I wanted to throw away with the next spring cleaning. The thought of  recycling them somehow into wearable projects crossed my mind but it always came connected with a string of obnoxious and time-consuming little problems that I didn't want to be bothered with. However my view on this changed and I feel a rain of creativity flowing though my body ( I guess it's also mid-winter denial and the excitement of imaginary warm days ). I think I'm ready to work and sweat a bit for this projects. My main focus will be dresses because I think they're the pinnacle of femininity and practicality in basic form - also they match what I already have in my wardrobe. I plan a 10 dress pictorial by the end of the summer only with the clothes that I will sew myself. But until then I'm focusing on reading Burda Style and Cut magazine to get familiar with patterns and pattern making and in this process I've discovered some neat things that I will soon blog about. Until then happy inspiration!

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The" Ridiculous conclusion" post

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Notice the bewildering difference between up-coming glamour girl Toni Garrn and already established super model Claudia Schiffer ? Yup, none whatsoever. Which is considerably scary.
They both look pretty much the same, just that Toni is younger and Claudia is more alluring.
I find it interesting to see how the German ideal of beauty didn't change since the 80's and still continues to praise the blonde girl-next-door image. However poster-pretty this may be in the demurely classical way, it is also a bit of a yawn and not at all the new wave of sexiness that the fashion scene has been craving to meet. I get the feeling that German beauty "exports" are lacking in originality and they seem to replace each other unnoticeably. I personally prefer Sara Nuru (Germany's Next Top Model winner), because she's black, funny and a breath of fresh air on the face of Germany.

 

Eh? Now that's personality

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Dark blue and gold

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I finally found it. The style piece that completes my makeshift wardrobe.

A pseudo-army jacket of the Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club era.

In navy blue. From H&M (what else?). Pretty and on a budget.

Bought from my own wages, which makes me very proud, of course.

It's one of the many things I look forward to when spring will arrive.

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Application fever ...

...has come to an end. Here's a list of the Uni's I applied to :

Now all I can do is sit and wait for invitations to the coveted interviews.
Hopefully by end of March the mail box will make me very happy.

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Sista got clawz!

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A new blog is born!

My sister just made her own Arts and Crafts blog where she will post the result of her handiwork. As an insider note I can say that she's sneakily talented at making paper, thread and glue things. Hopefully she won't forget to update soon with some neat tutorials.

Beauty Triplet : Face wash

If there is something among beauty products that is of great use to my skin then that is a face cleanser.

It's truly one of the beauty products that I do not look at the price when I buy. All I'm interested in is...

* does it do a good job?

* does it smell nice ?

* is it easy and quick to use on an daily-basis?

 My complexion is fair and I tend to have periods when the oily parts on my skin (forehead, nose and chin) break out pretty meanly into red spots. To make things even more fun my skin is sensitive enough to flake if I use harsh face cleaning products.  So I'm always looking for a product of good quality that can make my skin radiant, pimple-free and smoothly soft. As a quircky side-note I tend to avoid facial cleansers that are in green bottles/packages and tend to smell of lemon grass/mint, as sadly most of the mixed/oily skin variety on the market nowdays look and smell. So I'm picky that way, which makes my quest to find the perfect face wash even more tricky :) .

Ironically the products I've been using in the last two years were not at all bought by myself. That is the case of the first which was a gift from my husband and the latter which was recommended to me by my dermatologist. I have a lot of things to praise about both of these products.

For example the Clinique Liquid Facial Soap - oily skin formula is a long-lasting, highly concentrated product. Just a tiny drop on the finger and it creates a really pleasant foam that is enough for a whole wash. Its 200 ml content lasted for almost a full year of face washing. Other advantages is that it's fragrance-free and it has a push-cap which makes it fairly easy to use. The low-down is that it's not such a clever thing if you travel a lot and plan to take it with you ,as it occupies a lot of space in your travel beauty kit. In the end I sort of grew slowly tired of it as it didn't quite create the smooth, radiant sort of skin I wanted. It did a good job at refreshing my skin but the black dots where still peaking out and the skin dried quickly after each washing.

La Roche Posay's Purifying Foaming Gel ph 5.5 is a good Acne treatment companion. If you have oily yet sensitive skin prone to Acne outbursts and are following a treatment for it, then this is the perfect choice. It has a very fine odour that doesn't bother (even if in the case described above it's better to use cleansers without perfume) and it is a transparent gel (just like in the case of the Clinique one) that doesn't foam a lot but cleans in depth. The disadvantage is that it lasts up to about 3 months, it has 150 ml and I really disliked the bottle. It's made to be used upside down with the gel flowing out as soon as you open the cap. Somehow lighter than the Clinique one and easier to carry around if you travel, it's not really better equiped with a good opening system. I had problems with squirting too much and making a mess of myself when I wanted a quick refresh washing. Also the pharmaceutical aspect of the the product isn't enticing and fun to look at everyday.

So this is why I am currently using a self-acquired facial cleanser that I'm very happy with.

Vichy's Oligo 25 Mangan+Polyfructol Face Foam is a cute pink bottled elixir that makes your face radiant, smoothly soft and black-spots free. I use it everyday after I shower and it's really so pleasant to smell (has a fruity aroma) to use and look at. It has the same amount of 150 ml as the La Roche Posay one, but it's more compact and very easy to place in your travel kit because of the tube shape. It has, like the Clinique one, a push cap and it delivers a ready-made foam - there is no need to rub it into the skin to create foam.

Price-wise it is also the least expensive and it is suitable for all skin types. So if there is something I would recommend to someone looking for a good, inexpensive, pleasant face wash, then Vichy is it.

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Emil Nolde, Nick Cave and the Melanesia folk

This entry should have been completed some two weeks ago, but I didn't - evidently - have the precious time to write it. So let's see what I can remember...oh yes, there came in Wuerzburg an Art exhibition finally worth mentioning and that is : the Emil Nolde watercolours ensemble brought to Bavaria from the Berliner Kabinett.

I visited the Kulturspeicher - a brilliantly redesigned old building on the shore of the Main river that houses modern art collections - on the first days of the exhibition's opening. I have to say that there weren't that many watercolours to be seen but the few presented were impressive. I loved the portraits of the aborigenous men from Melanesia at the turn of the century. They were coming from different tribes and Nolde had a keen eye for portraying their unique jewellry, their original hairstyles and their various skin nuances. The illustration of powerful facial expression that bordered sometimes onto scary, was done with graceful brush strokes allowing the water and the colour to beautifully intermingle on the Japan paper. Observing them gave me an insight into how watercolours can be effectively used - I enjoy painting in my free time with such colours because they have a bright intensity that acryl or oil colours don't live up to. But the way I use them on paper is consistenly different than Nolde's. My strokes are thick, compact and dense with colour, disregarding shades. However there isn't really a term of comparison between myself and a true artist, but it's fascinating to toy with the idea of painting like the masters :) . On another note I found in one of Nolde's frames something that made me laugh and stare. This is the watercolour named "Young Couple", and what I found really weird is that the man depicted in it looks incredibly much like Nick Cave (!)

Here is a photo of Nick Cave for comparison. I'm enthralled by the idea of Emil Nolde unknowingly painting Nick Cave, even before his birth. From artist to artist here is the colour-on-paper proof that genius breeds genius ;)

mmm Schokoapfel !

Every year from the 27th of November until the 23rd of December the Wuerzburg Christmas market takes place. I'm discovering it bit by bit and every bit is yummy! Take for example what has become my favourite German X-mas treat: the chocolate-apple. This simple invention of an apple coated in chocolate is the best possible way to spend 2 euros and quiet those sugar-craving munchies at the same time. In Bucharest there is seldom such a thing to find (or maybe I didn't look for it harder) but here in ye' old Wuerzburg the city-centre is practically reeking of sugar coated fruits, toasted almonds, baked goodies and cinnamon-spiced wine exploding with flavour directly into your nostrils even from some 2 km away. And what do you know, this synesthetic cacophony of smells and tastes boosts dramatically the serotonin production in your body and puts a big dumb happy smile on your face. For some minutes you become the same person that is now stuck in between the glossy pages of your family album. Yes, you become a kid again!
Now isn't it fantastic what a schokoapfel can do?

A tourist in the waking world, never quite awake

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It happens that when I'm alone for some days and my husband is not with me I go into this retreat mode. I don't understand time anymore - I wake up and I go to sleep in a haphazard sort of way and I feel a bit handicapped as if I'm missing a hand or a leg. However I still manage to do normal things like cook, wash up, go to courses, go swimming, plan events, talk to my family and so on... it's just that my sense of being somehow mysteriously shifts and I feel heavy, grounded by gravity. In this state of mind I drifted today into imagining how impossible it must be for people who are truly in love and lose their loved one. I guess that they must carry a sense of bewilderment in front of reality, a surreal detachment, that is most intensified by the knowledge of the fact that your loved one is never coming back. I have goosebumps just thinking about this, but such people unfortunately exist in the world and I try to do my best to understand them. With the same acuteness I also try to understand my very own feelings. Some days ago before my husband actually left for 4 days to Hamburg and I knew I will have to cope with sleeping by myself, I started drawing. For the first time in 2 years, I took up drawing again. And this time in a very serious way, I began drawing myself. I was always afraid of drawing portraits. I believe that I was shy about people's faces and I always thought I was unprepared for the task - to be able to look straightforwardly into the eyes, hence into the soul of another person. However this time without thinking I just began drawing and I was very astounded by the result. Not only can I draw myself but I am also strangely satisfied with the result. Maybe more is soon to come...