Photography - Initial Shots and Thoughts // The Four Ellenments

It's been a bit quiet over here recently...

I do kind of have a reason though - A Levels are officially in full swing, and a fortnight or so I got a little behind on work due to having tonsillitis :( so i've been working a bit overtime to try and get caught back up, especially on Art and Photography - but now i'm feeling a lot more on top of everything, I thought I'd share a couple of things I've been getting up to in the last couple of weeks.

Predominantly, Photography - i've been enjoying it as a casual hobby for a couple of years, but as my school didn't offer it as a GCSE, this has been my first taste of Photography as a subject, as opposed to just as a bit of fun. and I'm really loving it so far! My only issue so far is being a biiit of a perfectionist setting out pages in my pad tends to take me about 12 years at a time :')

For our first couple of weeks, we've been doing 'mini projects' - small scale explorations that are allowing us to get to know our cameras, and learn a range of techniques that should be helpful when we start our independent projects. So far, we've looked at Abstraction and Aperture, but as we aren't quite finished with aperture I'll just include the abstraction ones for now, and maybe add the aperture shots later.

A couple of individual shots I liked from a shoot I did in my bedroom / bathroom involving acrylic paint:

 I really enjoyed taking these - although I did end up with paint on basically everything i've ever owned.

These are the pictures as they were taken, without any editing - here's how they looked edited and mounted in my pad:

So, that's how my first A Level Photography project went - as mentioned, I might add some more in later this week when we finish up with aperture.

Until then, thanks for reading!

Constellations - NOTW // The Four Ellenments

Ooh it's a Nail of the Week post...

So I went back to school last week, and as I'm now in Year 12, I'm allowed to wear my own clothes - and by extension, I can't get told off for having painted nails anymore :D 

I was in a bit of a rush last week to get everything ready, so I just did my nails a solid black - but last night I had a spare 10 minutes, so I touched them up and added a bit of a design. 

I'd seen these on Pinterest previously, and they seemed pretty quick - plus they matched my lamp: 

These were done with: 

• OPI Start to Finish Base/Top Coat 

• OPI Nail Laquer in Lady in Black 

• Uni POSCA Marker in White PC-5m

• Uni POSCA Marker in White PC-1m

I think I mentioned something in my last post about doing an outfit diary for Reading - having now camped for the weekend, I can confirm I looked like a tramp for 90% of it, so that won't be happening :') but I have been taking photos of my school outfits since going back, to make a post out of those once it's been a full week. 

Thanks for reading! 

A Festival Playlist // The Four Ellenments

I can't remember if i'd mentioned it already or not, but i'll be attending Reading Festival for the full weekend this year to celebrate finishing exams, which i'm super excited about as i've been going for the last 4 years, but only ever for single days.

Since the lineup was announced, i've been trying my best to listen to as many bands playing as possible, so I can get the most out of the weekend - so I've put together a YouTube playlist of all the songs I'm most excited to see played live, which can be found here:

'Songs to see/hear at Reading 2015'

If the weather's good I'm hoping to do an Outfit Diary sort of thing across the weekend, so that might be up here soon :)

Thanks for reading!

Photo Diary: Brighton // The Four Ellenments

here's something a little bit different today -

A couple of friends and I went down to Brighton for the day, and I took my DSLR with me to try and get some photos for my A Level Photography summer task - so I thought I'd share a couple of my favourites, as a sort of "Photo Diary" of the day.

11:02am // the weather wasn't the best this morning...

12:16pm // arriving at Brighton station

12:56pm // the Classic :')

13:01 // tickets in the arcade - expertly focused there...

13:09 // surprisingly blue sea???

13:21 // prepping for A Level English Lit :')

13:30 // Gulls

13:41 // another of the Pier

13:49 // Brighton Wheel (which oddly enough is identical to the Liverpool Wheel...)

13:55 // guuurls

14:15 // very much in love with all of Brighton's tiny art shops 

14:20 // and another (with a mirror this time)

14:32 // finally a bit of sunshine!

14:38 //  managed to get super close to a group of (what looked like) nesting seagulls 

14:56 // Urban Outfitters

15:42 // Another thing I really loved about Brighton was the amount of colour!

15:45 // The Lanes

17:02 // the direct train home was cancelled, so we ended up taking a route that had 2 changes and took nearly 3 hours :( Hannah took this one of me and Abi on the platform.

18:46 // One of the plus sides of taking the long train was the fact that it ran near parallel to the coast, which was still nice, even on a grey day.

So that was my day, summarised in photos :) Thanks for reading!

Camden OOTD, 28-07-15 // The Four Ellenments

just a quick one - a friend and I did a spot of shopping today in Camden, which is one of my all time favourite places. 

As well as for the shops, I love going to Camden because I've always seen it as a place where anything goes in terms of fashion - so it's always fun to experiment a little bit, and dress a bit more out there than I perhaps normally would.  

 

nice American Apparel changing room selfie there :') 

I'm wearing:

• Black Vest (Primark)

• Black Jumper (Primark)

• Black Skater Skirt (H&M)

• Black Knee-High Socks (Topshop)

• Demonia Trashville 208 Boots 

• and a variety of accesories, from various markets 

Thanks for reading! 

Too Much Fondant // The Four Ellenments

I wasn't 100% happy with how this came out but I guess that's how you learn so I'm gonna go ahead and post it anyway

Basically, it's my Dad's birthday this weekend, and my mum's original plan was to get him a cake made, buuuut we ended up leaving it too late for our local bakers to have it done in time. So, guess who got the job? :') I'm no expert, but I've dabbled here and there in cake decorating (pretty sure there's a cake related post somewhere on this blog? eh) so I thought I'd at least give it a go. 

We literally just wanted a plain cake with something motorbike-y on top, so I starting by finding a cartoon of a bike on Google, and re-drawing it on a sheet of grease proof paper. From there it was basically a lot of cutting - cutting out each shape on greaseproof paper, then using the shape as a template to cut each shape out of either black or orange fondant icing. Then I just used a black icing to add details, like the spokes of the tires. 

Here's the finished cake, complete with sparklers and candles (which conviniently distracted attention from the bike a bit..) :

I'd like to think my many years of watching Cake Boss didn't let me down :') 

Thanks for reading! 

Eye, Eye... // The Four Ellenments

I haven't done nail art in a really long time - it's something I used to be totally obsessed with, but with exams and what not I didn't really have a lot of time for it - but I had a quick bash today when I had a spare 5 minutes, and I don't think it was a total disaster.

I've seen this manicure on a lot of Pinterest boards and Instagram feeds recently and I looooove it, so I thought I'd give it a whirl...

All Seeing Eye Tips:

It took me around an hour from start to finish, including drying time for each coat. 

For the nude base, I used:

- OPI Start to Finish (as a base and top coat)

- Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure polish in 220 (Cafe Au Lait) 

And for the eye details I used: 

- Schminke acrylic in 111 (Titanium White)

- Schminke acrylic in 771 (Lamp Black) 

- Schminke acrylic in 441 (Royal Blue)  

-Daler and Rowney Pro Arte Polar 31 2 brush 

Overall, I found the look relatively simple to achieve, as it's comprised of relatively simple patterns, but I loved the effect it had - I love the use of negative space in the nude, and the eyes remind me of a sort of kooky french tip.

I might update this post later this week with how well they last, but for now here's a couple of photos, as well as the links to some of my inspiration sources:  

Original Inspo, soured from Google:

 http://blog.flauntme.com/2012/08/31/daily-nail-art-eyeballs/

Photo from Charlie Barker's Instagram:

https://instagram.com/p/3WcZ4mqEgr/?taken-by=charliexbarker

Buzznet article I found through Pinterest of various eye designs:

http://callinamarie.buzznet.com/photos/eyelovenailart25eyeb/?id=68545703#id=68545704

Thanks for reading! 

The Four Ellenments: 2.0 // The Four Ellenments

so...

Over the last few months, I've been thinking about what I wanted this blog to be, and moreover what I wanted it to represent in terms of me - and with that in mind, I've decided to have a bit of a blog "overhaul".

So, what'll be at this URL from here on out is The Four Ellenments, 2.0: a platform to keep a record of things I do, but mostly in a creative sense - almost like an online Portfolio, hopefully :)

This meant going back and deleting a few posts I felt didn't really need to be there (such as a ramble-y account of my five favourite films, because I'm pretty confident no one was ever really that interested in how much I love Hot Fuzz...), but it also meant keeping a few that I still felt were sort of relevant.

I've added this little paragraph in to make it clear that although these posts are still relative to the theme I'm aiming for, they were written, in some cases, quite a while ago - so they aren't always perfect, but to be honest, they took quite a while to type out and I was proud of them at the time, so I couldn't bring myself to delete them!

So, that's basically all there is to it - now I've finished GCSEs, and i'm moving on to study Art and Photography at A Level, I'm hoping to be able to keep this blog more updated,  even if it just means I can look back in a few years and be able to see what progress I've made.

Thanks for reading, bye for now ^_^