As a personal challenge I have decided to learn River Flows in You by Yiruma. I took my ABRSM grade 5 exam this summer and I was SO nervous. I desperately wanted to pass and after I'd already had the stress of 21 other GCSE exams I think the timing was really bad for me. Fortunately, I passed! (yay) For a little while after I think I was a little scared to get back on the piano as I'd been so nervous for my exam and during the waiting period, before I found out, I had convinced myself that I had failed. After that I really didn't want to make any mistakes whilst playing, so I avoided it. Then I realised. Everybody makes mistakes and why does it matter any way, I'm not performing, I'm practicing. I decided not to continue playing my grade 5 pieces as I didn't need to and also it would be quite annoying if I ended up playing it better than I had in my exam, which was almost inevitable.
I needed to take a moment to just stop and be proud of myself for passing my exam. After that it was so easy to rediscover my love for piano. I'd always wanted to learn River Flows in You as it is such a beautiful song but I'd always pictured it as really difficult. Now that I am a grade 5 pianist I feel that it is much more comfortable for me to learn - although I must admit my sight reading isn't the best!
I think it's really good to set personal challenges and this is one of mine for the summer, I can''t wait until I can play it fluently!
Friday, 31 July 2015
Think Like A Blogger Challenge // River Flows in You
Labels:
challenge,
dailyblogging,
goals,
lilymelrose,
music,
piano,
riverflowsinyou,
songs,
summer,
thinklikeabloggerchallenge,
yiruma
Location:
Europe
Tuesday, 28 July 2015
Think Like A Blogger Challenge // Fresh Air
Is it just me or do you find spending all day inside totally rubbish? For the past two days that's all I've done. Not going outside actually makes me feel physically sick. I think living where I do, it's quite an outdoorsy sort of place, so not leaving the house is kind of a shock to the system for me.
As part of the Think Like a Blogger Challenge, today's post is about good old fresh air. My go to place when I need to get out the house is the beach. There's something so peaceful and calm about it and it's good 25 minute walk for me. When I'm feeling like this, I find anything helps - just walking and listening to my headphones gives me that automatic happy feeling. There's something you can't really describe about a good walk. (Does anyone else sometimes get so lost in their music and it feels like you're in a movie scene or something as you walk down the street:')?)
For today's post enjoy the calm aura of the beach with me and check out some of my recent favourite songs. It's kind of like a go-to walking playlist.
As part of the Think Like a Blogger Challenge, today's post is about good old fresh air. My go to place when I need to get out the house is the beach. There's something so peaceful and calm about it and it's good 25 minute walk for me. When I'm feeling like this, I find anything helps - just walking and listening to my headphones gives me that automatic happy feeling. There's something you can't really describe about a good walk. (Does anyone else sometimes get so lost in their music and it feels like you're in a movie scene or something as you walk down the street:')?)
For today's post enjoy the calm aura of the beach with me and check out some of my recent favourite songs. It's kind of like a go-to walking playlist.
Against The Current - Ain't It Fun // (Cover of Paramore) |
The 1975 - Chocolate |
Kings Of Leon - Radioactive |
Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit |
In case you're wondering... Yes it is summer, but British summer time likes to disappoint and it's very risky to leave the house without my trusty leather jacket nowadays! A good old sea breeze to blow the cobwebs off, that's what I keep telling myself!
What songs have you been loving recently? Where's your 'calm' place? Comment down below!
Have an awesome day!
JAZ BISHOP x
Labels:
againstthecurrent,
beach,
converse,
freshair,
kingsofleon,
leatherjacket,
lilymelrose,
nirvana,
playlist,
songs,
the1975,
thinklikeabloggerchallenge,
walking,
walks
Location:
Europe
Monday, 27 July 2015
Bold Lips & Think Like A Blogger Challenge
So recently, as I scrolled through my reading list, a post by Lily Melrose caught my eye. The 'Think Like a Blogger Challenge'. You can read it here but the general gist is that you just need to use inspiration by looking at the things around you! You don't need to over complicate blogging and that you shouldn't feel like you have to rush out and buy the 'latest' thing, you should just be able to pick out something you've had a long time or that you use every day. This is great timing for me because I've been trying to think of blog posts as my blog is finally up and running. So, inspired by the amazing Lily I will be blogging daily for this week only, following up the 'Think Like a Blogger Challenge' and I challenge you to try it too!
Recently I went shopping and as I was getting ready to leave the house I discovered a lipstick that I actually got for Christmas last year and I've never had the confidence to wear. I felt like it was actually too dark for me and it was too bold(Now I think is there such a thing? Be as bold as you like). Reluctantly, I slapped it on with the rest of my makeup and I suddenly felt really good about myself. I was surprised how good my lips looked for such a daring colour that was completely out of my comfort zone. Say what you like but there's something about a lipstick that just makes you feel good. I personally am not really one for all these bright/hot pinks as it's not really me, but this deep dark purple was perfect. I wore it with a really simple outfit and I actually felt great all day and it's staying power was pretty damn good. I know you may think purple is more of a winter shade but why not break the boundaries and wear it all year around? I know I'll be using this a lot more this season and in the following ones - I mean why can't you have an all-year-round lipstick?
Let me know what your bold lipstick shade is, comment down below!
Don't be a stranger Twitter // Instagram // Bloglovin'
Have an awesome day and stay tuned for tomorrow's post!
Topshop Lips in Black Widow
Top - Topshop
|
They may say blondes have more fun, but they're wrong - bold lips have more fun! Give it a try, I dare you.
Let me know what your bold lipstick shade is, comment down below!
Don't be a stranger Twitter // Instagram // Bloglovin'
Have an awesome day and stay tuned for tomorrow's post!
JAZ BISHOP x
Saturday, 25 July 2015
How to Create a Header for Your Blog
Have you just started out but want a personal and professional look for your blog? Look no further…
So as we may all know when we first start a blog (I’m new to
this too!) we want something unique to us but don’t want to have to fork out
the pounds to pay a professional, well here is a really easy way to make your
own professional looking blog header for Blogger.(This may also work for other
blogging platforms such as Wordpress but I personally use Blogger). I think the
first thing that is really important to consider is what type of blog you want:
do you want a theme? What kind of look do you want? After all, your header is
technically the first thing readers/visitors will see of your blog. FIRST
IMPRESSIONS ARE EVERYTHING. I decided I personally wanted something fairly
fresh and simple but arty and slightly ‘soft-grungey’ I guess that’s what it’s
called. As you might have noticed by the header (subtle I know)… this is a
music, fashion and art blog so I wanted to do something quite arty but this is totally
optional for you!
① Naturally I started with good old
fashioned (can you really call it that if it’s for such modern technological
blogging purposes… probably not.) paper and pencil. After I had sketched out
some roses, you could literally choose any image you liked, I decided to fill
them in with water colours. I think water colours create the pale/pastel/soft
grunge feel. If you struggle with the sketching you can completely skip this
step and find an image off the internet (check for copyright regulations) or
take a photograph of your own or even just use the free photos and
illustrations available on Canva (mentioned later, you can skip to step 5 ).
② As soon as
the water colours have dried the next step is to either take a photo of it
(USING A GOOD LIGHT SOURCE AND QUALITY CAMERA – iPhone/phone cameras are good
as long as you have the right lighting) or scan it into your computer.
Unfortunately I didn’t have access to a scanner but I feel that this was just
as effective.
③ The next
step is editing (the REALLY fun bit). I always found this concept really
daunting but it’s so much easier than you think and you don’t even have to go
out and pay for expensive software like Photoshop which I know isn’t ideal for
people just starting out. Some great alternatives? I use the Pixlr editor but
there are loads of others ones out there all you need to do is search! So I
open the image in Pixlr (which is actually really easy to use) and the best way
to get a really clean, fresh, simple background is to really bring out the
white of the background, does it sound complicated? Yeah, I thought so too. All
you need is the burn tool. I set the brush size to either 200 or 100 select the
range to be on ‘highlights’ and the exposure to 100. Now, this is for the
outside area of the image, you don’t want to get too close to, in my case the
roses, as the burn tool will start to whiten out those too.
④ Once you’ve got a good cover over the
majority of the background you now need to go in with the burn tool again but
with different settings. You might want to play around but you want a much
smaller brush size such as 30 or 50 and the brush that is slightly faded around
the edges, you also want the exposure to be lower such as 70 or 80 but leave
the range on highlights. This brush size will be much better for getting
inbetween the lines without blurring out the details you’ve so elegantly hand
drawn.
⑤ So, what now? Well once you save the
image on your computer you need to go to Canva, this is also completely free
and easy to use. You have to sign up and make an account etc but you will more
than likely get a lot of use out of it. So you want to select ‘use custom
dimensions’ and type in the dimensions of your blog (these can be found in the
‘Design’ section of Blogger on the adjust widths tab). As an example for my
header I selected: 1200 x 360 px . Once your on Canva you can easily upload your image, or use the free ones
available to you, and add text etc. This is obviously just right if you are creating
a header as you can easily add the name of your blog and maybe a short
description. The best thing to do is just play around with it and see what
looks best. Another brilliant feature of Canva is that you can duplicate what you already have by pressing the 'copy image' button to the right of your design. So you can have the same size canvas, same images, same filter and then use different text and compare them side by side!
⑥ Time to
upload! All you have to do is download the file as an image from Canva and then
upload it to your blog, on Blogger this is done on the Layout page. If you
struggled to follow this tutorial feel free to contact me jazbishbashbosh@gmail.com with
enquiries/arrangements where I could create a header for you using my own
artwork/graphics.
I’d love to see how yours turned out! Leave a comment down below with your blog or tag me in a picture on Twitter or Instagram!
JAZ BISHOP x
**DISCLAIMER** I am by no means a professional, this is just
how I created my blog header in a fairly simple way and I thought I would share
it with you! **DISCLAIMER**
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