guest post - eve of womanhood

Hey guys!

Today I have a guest post from Eve of Womanhood - my blog designer - as a thanks for doing such an awesome job on The Blog Hermit! Here she is!

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Hi everyone! My name is Eve, and I created a blog called Eve of Womanhood. 

If you want to check my design blog out then click here. Let me tell you a little bit about myself before I start talking about my design blog. I am a Christian, and I’m also homeschooled. I love blogging, designing, reading, drawing, and painting.

Why did I start a design blog?

Well for one thing I really enjoy doing it! I am also trying to get some practice so that maybe one day I could make it a career (web designing). So when you get a design by me, you’re not only getting a lovely design but you’re also giving me experience for what I want to do someday. I also always wanted there to be someone to design my blog in a professional yet unique way. All the big name designers charged lots of money. (that I didn't have) So then I took action. I didn't want to wait around for someone to do this. I needed to do something about it. So I started learning the language of codes. It was hard work but became something I enjoyed and later loved. Since I'm still learning, I basically started the design website to help those who wanted a design to call their own.

How much is a customized blog design?

It's FREE!

What if you don’t like the blog design I gave you?

  I'll do it over again! I want your blog to express who you are. :)

What can I do?

I can make a slideshow header

I can make a customized background

I can make your blog snow

I can make your side-bar have a border around it

I can design a customized header

I can make you a customized favicon

I can put your page tabs on top your header

I can center your page tabs

I can center your header

I can center your post title and date

I can make slide out links

I can make different hover effects

And more!

Here's some designs I've done!

-Eve

GUYS I NEED HELP

Like urgent, mind numbing help.

Okay so remember when I said I wanted to move to France and become a travel journalist and whatnot? Well, it turns out that I have to make that decision now.

The company which I want to go with for my A Level studies needs my application by September. That gives me less than a handful of days to decide my WHOLE future (basically). And I'm panicking.

I already know that I want to take business studies, but will one A Level be enough to equip me for my whole life? If I take one course, spend five hours a day studying, have to reach the quota of 700 hours, it would take me 140 days to complete it. This would give me 220 days of free time and only one A Level.

Another option is to also go for another course, but which one? I've narrowed it down to four - English, English literature, psychology and sociology. 

Psychology is the study of human behaviour, right? It's not about the human brain and how neurones interract to form said bevaviour??

Sociology is the study of politics and the government and how our MP is an ass, not about how the economy functions, yes??

And then if I want to learn to write properly, wouldn't that just be the English A Level, instead of studying literature??

If I choose this, I only get 80 days of holiday.

Guys, I'm in serious need of help. Do I stick with one course? Or two?? Is two even enough?! And then what should I go for??

Oh, and sorry for rambling, but my life is in jeopardy, so uh, if you can help it would be much obliged.

CAN YOU NOT HEAR MY PANIC?!?!

"amy you should be blogging"

Yes, I know I should have blogged two days ago, and I feel super bad about leaving you guys to your own devices for a handful of centuries. I would just love to be able to blame this lack of posts on my studying, but the truth is that all I have left is a speaking Spanish exam and, well, I've recorded a lot of HIMYM episodes on my TV box. Yes, I have finally admitted that I have a problem when it comes to American sitcoms.

But as the old  saying goes, watching too much Neil Patrick Harris melts your brain (right?), and in this case, I think it might have done. Literally, my blogling inspo has all fizzled out, and despite having a booklet of all my ideas somewhere in my room, it is just that - somewhere, in my room. I tidied it today ~distant cheering~ but I think it must have borne into some untamed corner of my room, amongst wild pencil cases and socks.

So, here's what I've been getting up to, excluding studying ~ahem~. Welcome.

Spent a long weekend with Luke Cutforth. 

On an unrelated note, I also contemplated my life choices, wondering if I have too much time on my hands and too little friends. Hm.

Went shopping and realised that 1; I have a shopping problem. I'm meant to be saving for France but instead spent £50 on clothes, including that above. 2; I really like bows, like, a lot. From now on I'm going to try to incorporate a bow into every one of my outfits, like Miranda Priestly and her Hermes scarves. Don't laugh. And 3; I just noticed that I don't like my smile. Mehh.

I WAS BEING SUCH A GOOD VEGAN UNTIL I WALKED PAST MCDONALDS AND SAW THIS...

And then had sushi... 

And prawns.

Dammit.

I suddenly realised that I don't understand life. We go to school, we're thrown into an education, then forced to go out and work and pay bills and stuff, then it's expected that we get married and raise our spawns* AND THEN WE DIE. This infuriates me so much, just... UGHHH. Opinions?

I really like the Draw Something appmabob. If ya'll want sketches like this, send me a drawing at itsamymush. And, to answer your questions, yes I am totally addicted.

Happy Saturday!

~Amy

*oops, I mean children.

~clicks tounge~ Ju-li-OHMYGOD

GUYSSSS I NEED YOUR INSPIRATIONAL BLOGLING HELPPPP!!

Okay, so basically a couple of weeks ago my media project was due, where I had to create my own magazine cover. I'd edited it all and made it look awesome (casually), buuuut then my teacher said I'd have to photograph my own model to really understand what it was all about. Hence fourth, Imogen.

I've narrowed down the shoot images to five, but still need your help. 

Imagine you're a French-born, Portugese photographer called Julio. You're super sassy and click your tounge a lot, sighing and sashaying and going oh no dah-ling when people wear white shoes with black socks. Okay, are you now Julio? Good, let's begin.

This is image #1 - I think it could work. The perfume is a tropical-type one, but I'm still unsure on the title. However, if you just sort of imagine Imogen edited onto a sunny Venezuelan beach wearing-- OHMYGOD I just realised she's wearing a jacket in this. Sigh, that's slightly irritating. However, you, as Julio, should really be making your sassy decision on this.

#2 - jacket gone, phew. I'm not too sure about the black and white colour scheme, but hey I guess I could always change the perfume. Again.

#3 - back to the jacket. 

#4 - black and white and, thankfully, jacketless. C'mon Julio, help.

#5 - back to the jacket again. HOW DID I NOT REALISE THAT WHILST PHOTOGRAPHING.

So, my little blogling Julios, whatcha thinking? I think maybe #1 or #5, but hey, the decision is in your hands. Just snap them in a Z formation and COMMENT BELOW BEFORE I GET KICKED OFF MY COURSE?

Totally not panicking at my limited amount of time for an overdue assignment. Cool as a cucumber.

- Amy 

~panicks~

review of the month; demiflux rings

Hey Bloglings, you know that I said I'll start to do a monthly review and see how they go down? Well here's one for a small shop called Demiflux, a cute little handmade shop on Etsy. She sent me two gorgeous little globe rings for review, and y'all should definitely check out her shop.

Demi, what's the best thing about owning an Etsy shop? 

I would have to say my favourite thing about it is the ability to fulfil custom orders. 

What's your opinion on what you do?

I love being able to work together with someone on their ideas and help bring them to life.

How much longer do you think you will be selling your homemade products for? 

Forever! It's what I love to do.

What do you think of your buyers? 

I am grateful for each and every one of my customers. Obviously they have good taste too. ;)

The ring is shown here with colour enhancers added, creating an almost galaxy-like effect, with colours bursting from every curve.

"Love this ring; have gotten so many compliments on it everytime I wear it. I tell everyone I know to shop on Etsy so we can continue to support small businesses, artists, and all the things that seem to be missing from all the "box stores" of today. Not everything has to be mass produced and I love wearing things that are unique! Would def recommend and buy from this seller again! Thanks for making wonderful affordable unique items :)"

I absolutely adore the small clear cocktail globe ring - it has a cute glitter shimmer to it, and the colours within it dance around from blue to yellow. The liquid has a thick movement to it, meaning that the glitter rises and falls at a slow speed, falling delicately to the base of the ring before stirring and flying back up again.

The globe's ring settings are adjustable, meaning that it'll fit any sized finger up to around 15mm. I love the fact that it's silver plated, as the majority of my jewelry is silver - I find it to be one of the most complimentary materials, even rating higher than gold.

Here's an image of the ring resting, with the specks of colours inside it slowly falling to the base. Where the sun catches the glitter it has a faint blue to yellow colour to it, almost like a two tone piece.

This ring has a tendency to change colours, depending on the angle or which it is being viewed from. It begins as a pale mint green (my favourite), then sliding into a bright yellow-orange palette, sparking out into a vibrant red, dark purple and cobalt blue, and then finally it fizzes out into an ever-continuing black. It's a marvel to watch!

The base of this ring, as well as the ring itself, is a bright bronze colour, which although is not my favourite material colour, goes perfectly with the overall theme of the ring - anything else (be it copper, gold or silver) wouldn't look as good, let alone illuminate the globe's features as well as the bronze does.

This image briefly shows some of what the globe can do, with most of the colours mentioned above glimmering brightly upon the bronze base.

One major problem that I found with both rings was that they're adjustable. As I've said many times in previous posts, I don't buy adjustable rings for myself because once they've been stretched by even as little as a millimetre, they don't tend to return to their original size. This means that both of these Demiflux rings are never going to fit me properly, due to the fact that I've tried wearing them on a different finger and they've expanded. This is really irritating as they're both really nice rings, minus, of course, the adjustment features.

The size of the globe is illustrated here, with the circumference being slightly smaller than the width of my middle finger. It mirrors the reflection in the plastic, as can be seen with my zebra print backing. You can also slightly see that the fitting of the ring is a few millimetres too wide, meaning that if my hand is open the ring will slip down, creating a major fault with the product.

As is also evident here, the adjustment feature of the ring has already expanded, meaning that it'll never be the perfect fit that it once was. 

"I love my mystery items & every other item I've purchased from Demi. I really think her products are unique & pretty. Also if you like a style but want something changed you can ask her & she may be able to help you out. Regarding the mystery items specifically, she asks you to tell her what you don't like. Who else does that? She's a very nice seller that cares about her items and her customers. You can't go wrong."

The rings were sent straight from the Demiflux studio, all the way over to my base by London, in perfect condition. It isn't often that a miracle like that happens, so it was awesome that the rings survived the century-long journey that they had to undertake. They came in a cute little white box (textured!) and tied with a multicoloured washi tape strip - gorgeously perfect!

Demi's shop is rated an astonishing five out of five stars, but is it really any wonder with products like these?

"I have two other shops here on Etsy. The first shop is 'BaronessX' and there I sell my handmade indie nail polish which is made with a non-toxic, 5-free and cruelty-free blend."

www.etsy.com/shop/BaronessX

"The other shop is 'Elemental Haiku' which is mostly nature and beach themed jewelry with some semi-precious stone pieces and kumihimo bracelets. I take custom requests there too."

www.etsy.com/shop/ElementalHaiku

All opinions expressed in this post are my own and are merely that - opinions. All negative views are only statements of what I believe. My reviews are always 100% honest.

feminism, equal rights, double standards

Just a short post for now - exams are literally plugging up my breathing hole. But once they've all died out I'll be a better blogger to you guys, promise.

Okay, so we were talking in Sociology about feminism, and what it means to fully believe in equal rights. I've always been like woo I'm such a feminist and even considered joining those rally things where people hold up signs and moan about what's wrong with the world. But then I really thought about what it means to be a feminist, and honestly, I think I've been living by massive double standards.

I tend to watch rom-coms most than any other film, and always go aw and shucks whenever the guy buys the girl a teddy or opens the door for her or wins her a prize at a carnival, etc etc. So really, does this mean I'm not a feminist, just because I wouldn't expect a woman to do it for a man? And, actually, does this make me a bad person?

Also, in media class we were discussing the stereotypical film characters that tend to appear in every single genre. Mainly, you get the big, strong, 'manly' man, and the beautiful, yet weak, 'girly' girl. When we were describing the physique of a weedy geek guy, my teacher literally called him girly. But since when is the female pronoun associated with weakness? Since when have I been offended to be stated a girl? I'm just saying it's interesting.

The thing is, I'd love to be a full-fledged feminist and be so confident with myself that I don't shave or wear makeup, but to be honest I'm just too darn self-conscious - sucks, I know.

So, would any of you guys devote yourselves to the world of feminism? Or do you disagree with what feminists stand for? Let me know in the comments below!

guest post - the amazing emily from emily etc.

Hello Amy's followers! First of all I'd just like to say thank you to Amy for inviting me to post on The Blog Hermit - one of my favourite blogs! - and thank you all for reading. I blog over at Emily Etc. and today I'm going to sharing some very simple tutorials with you for emergency card situations. 

OK! ~rolls up metaphorical sleeves~

Time for tutorial number 1 - you don't even need to be good at drawing! (But it probably helps.)

You will need:

Watercolour or cartridge paper

Blue paint

Red paint

White paint

Paintbrushes - a thick one and a thin one

Black felt tip

1. Paint a blue wash: wet your paper with a large, clean paintbrush/sponge and then paint blue stripes on it, painting water on the joins to blend it. Make sure not to do this straight onto your desk, to prevent bleeding - use a backing sheet. (In case you're wondering, this backing sheet is a photo of a Ritz crackers box that I was copying for this drawing ... funny how all this art links together!) Oh, and see that hair at the bottom of the picture? Don't do that. And if you do, remove it.

2. Mix some orange-red paint (it is a lot brighter in real life than in this quite awful picture) and paint lots of shapes like these. What did I tell you? You don't even need to be good at drawing! 3. Paint on some, uh, body parts. Legs ... tail .... antennae? Feelers? Whiskers? I'm not quite up on the biological terms, but you get the point: prawn bits. Paint them on. 4. Add an eye with your felt tip.

5. And repeat the process multiple times! You may want to add a message as I did (in case you're interested (which is admittedly unlikely but still) I made this as a thank you card for a family who I went to Portugal for. I think it's a good card because unlike many flower- or butterfly-themed numbers I have been known to produce, it is male-friendly).

Ta-raa! Prawntastic! (Prawntastic? As in, fantastic? No? No? No, OK then ... ) Note: it looks better in real life. This just isn't a great picture.

Nooow, time for tutorial number 2. When I say tutorial ... this doesn't strictly count as I only have one picture on account of the fact that when I made the card I wasn't expecting to do a tutorial of it ... but you can be guided by the solitary sound of my voice!

(I really hope someone gets that reference.)

You will need:

Watercolour or cartridge paper

Watercolour paints

A thin-ish paintbrush

Water!

And, this, in all its weirdly shadowed glory, is the card! I was very pleased with it actually, though this picture is far from fabulous. SO BASICALLY: Mix some very watery watercolour paint and paint the bottom of the trunk. Then - and this is the cool bit - drip some watery paint of a different colour into the shape, and it will spread to the edge without going over it. This I find extremely cool. Paint is amazing, isn't it? Continue painting the trunk and branches, then add the leaves and a goat! Or birds, or a dog, or whatever the heck you want - this technique works well for anything. You don't even need to do rainbow colours - you could pick, say, a warm palette of pinks and oranges, or maybe a cool one of blues and greens. It just works so well!

Sorry I don't have more pictures for that one, but trust me, it's easy! OK, last tutorial - this is definitely the girliest one. I made it for my grandma - the perfect recipient!

You will need:

Heavyweight A4 watercolour/cartridge paper - if you only have lightweight, you'll need to cut your picture out when you're done and stick it onto a piece of card

A wax crayon

Watercolour paints in bright colours

1. Fold your paper in half and taking a wax crayon - I used pink - draw lots of butterflies! Add patterns to some of them. :) 2. Mix some paint in different bright colours so that it is quite watery and paint in the sections. This technique is called wax resist - basically, the wax pushes away the paint so that when you fill in a shape it will have an outline.

However, do NOT make the mistake of thinking that the wax will resist the paint if you paint OVER the outline. That was my mistake here. Be careful, friends.

3. Now it's time for everyone's favourite thing - splatter effect!!! Make sure to put scrap paper down so you don't get paint on your desk, and splatter away from your clothes or bad things will happen. Now before you pick up your completed card to survey it in all its glory, go wash your hands - because this happens, and a purple fingerprint in the top corner would not be desirable!

TA-DAAAA!!!! Again (and I know I keep saying this, but only because it's true) it looked better in real life. The flash in this picture was too bright. But hey - being a card-maker doesn't mean accomplished photography skills!

And that is all from me today. Thanks once more to the fabulous Amy for letting me rampage around her corner of the internet guest post, and I hope you've enjoyed these tutorials. If you make any of these cards, do pop by my blog and tell me!

Emily x

the blog hermit; travel, photography, lifestyle.

So in case y'all haven't realised, I have NO IDEA as to what I'm doing with this blog.

When I first entered the blogosphere, I wrote hundreds of book reviews.

Then I wrote about my life, things that occured to me, my opinions on everything.

Then I wrote about fashion and Vogue and whatnot.

Then I did a helluva lot of reviews on tops and rings and bags and stuff.

And now?

I guess that The Blog Hermit has slowly turned into a lifestyle/ photography/ travel blog, and to be honest, that suits me just fine. But what I want to know is - is this change okay with you guys?

This new blog theme would consist of me posting a load of my photography with Jayze (the Nikon) and trying to write my own travel articles (remember I want to be a travel journalist?). I would also continue with my monthly guest post where you can feature on my blog, and post recipies and art pieces and music and culture and fashion and adventure.

Does that sound okay?

Also, for those of you who are on mobile devices, you might not see my new header (featured above), created by the amazing Eve of Eve of Womanhood and Designs By Eve (go over to her blog and let her know how awesome she is for doing this). For those of you who can see my blog's design process, what do you think? I'm slightly incredibly in love with it so far.

Comment and love guys, comment and love.