aDiva Special!

aDiva is another of my favourites when it comes to formal wear, though casual and smart casuals can be found there too, but it's the gowns that always take my breath away...so when I found that this Azalee gown will be sold at 50L for a very limited time, I just had to grab it!!!

Never Enough

Lately, I just realized that my ever-growing inventory mostly consists of dresses and more dresses!! *LOL* I guess a girl can never get enough of them, well..not me, at least! Not when they are on sale at a huge discount or better yet, free!! *grins*

Dress: Retro Glamour from La Maison de la Couture--50L (discounted)
Hair: gST01 from Cri-Cri--group gift
Necklace: Abigail from Elisabeth's Store--40L
Shoes: Gemma Stilettos (black sequins) from VDI--group gift






Dress: from Glitterati by Sapphire--January 2010 group gift
Hair: Swing from Tekuteku--75L (sale)
Necklace and Bracelet: Black Rounded from Zaph Creations--free
Shoes: Bella Black from Pixelfashion






Dress: Little Party Dress (matching earrings and bracelet included) from SLC--group gift
Hair: Sun from KC--gift
Necklace: from Brilliante--group gift
Shoes: Bobbijo (white platform) from Lathilla Heels

My Precious Collection

I've been a fan of Agnes Finney's My Precious line of beautiful gowns for as long as I can remember in my SL life, and her gorgeous ballgowns always ensure that I make a grand entrance everywhere I go, and that's why her creations are really precious to me indeed. So imagine my dismay when one day I found that SL had 'swallowed' some of my inventory (again) which included my favourite Agnes Precious Princess pink ballgown!! *sigh* Anyway, besides the gowns which have made Agnes Finney synonymous with elegance, opulence and grandeur, she also has a variety of dresses in various styles, displaying her versatility as a designer. There are also regular sales of specially priced dresses and gowns for members and the general public. But no matter what the price, anything this precious will always be priceless to me...

Gown: Christelle (Cerulean)--1L for new members

Dress: My Butterfly Princess--5L for members

Ballgown: Vera (Champagn)

Dress: Godiva (blue)

Seeking Inspiration: Stories by Polaroid

Photo from: yenstefanie

Dearest Devotees,

After our inspiration packed week, I've got to say, I was wondering if I should even publish a seeking inspiration post today. But I decided that the show must go on and when I heard the song Story by Anna Leddra-Chapman, I knew that I had to share it with you. The song basically talks about love and how all relationships, even when they've ended, become a part of the story of your life. I absolutely adored the music video because it largely consisted of Anna walking around taking pictures with an instant camera. An instant camera, darlings! Just in case you haven't noticed, I am currently head-over-heels in love with cameras and everything to do with photography.


My first camera was one of those barbie instant polaroid cameras and I just loved the way you could take a picture and have a ready-made photo in your hand in seconds. Watching this video made me recall those days, and reminded me of how wonderful it would be to make a picture story of a fabulous trip using instant photos. You could use your camera to take pictures all day and write cute and funny captions on the bottoms of the pictures at the end of each day. Then at the end of your trip you could put them into a gorgeous antique album or on a board above your home/dorm room desk. Either way all the photos will tell you a lovely story that you can relive anytime you see them.


I want to start doing an inspirational exercise every week. I'm going to post either a polyvore set or photograph here, give my translation (into my favorite art form of the week) and invite you to give me yours. Think of it as weekly exercise on the skills that you may have picked up in the artistic retreat. So here's the first one.

Photo from:Randy

Jenny sat on her yard staring past the ancient rustic fence separating her from the rest of the world.

''Why would they leave me?" she pondered silently. Yesterday had been pretty normal, at least it had been for her family. They had all come together for a quiet but otherwise average dinner with neither of her foster parents bothering to make small talk. Granted they had hinted that they would not tolerate her generally abysmal behaviour at school any longer, but she had told them that the teacher really had been making inappropriate advances towards her. Just because the principal hadn't believed her and had assumed she was insulting him because of a bad grade, and had subsequently suspended her didn't mean that she was lying. She had gone back to the Mayers' expecting them to give her a chance to explain. But they didn't. Instead, she woke up this morning to an empty home and a letter explaining their decision to send her back to the social worker.



Sad, she wasn't. She was livid.



And here are my favorite links for the week:



I am totally loving the Make Your Life Amazing month series on Charade, but I especially love this post on picturing your amazing self.


This post by Cafe Fashionista is helping me battle the dull weather (read rainy) weather blues.

This outfit post by Keiko Lynn has some of the most gorgeous pictures I've seen in a long while.


I love Catie's decision to spend a year working on achieving happiness.


Love you all and Stay inspired,





P.S. So let me know what you think. Have you ever used an instant camera? Do you own one? What's favorite type of camera: instant, DSLR, film or compact digital? Feel free to let me know in the comments below.

OMG Erwin Made a Bikini!

My dear Erwin has just made a peachy yummy sexy barely-there wet-look bikini!!! It has two layers so you can play with the transparency level (I personally like it more transparent-hehe)...definitely not for the faint-hearted!! *grin*

Bikini: Peach Wet Bikini from Provocative Clothings
Hair: Nicole from Glitter

How to Budget Shop: Income,Outcome and All that jazz

This is part 4 of the Budget Shopping series. If you haven't already, please check out part 1- How to Budget Shop: The Rules, and part 2- How to Budget Shop: Investment Pieces, Basics and Classics and part 3- How to Budget Shop: Sales, Thrift stores and Shopping Your Closet.

How many times have you looked at your bank statement and loudly exclaimed "I've been robbed!" , only to realise minutes later that you actually made all those purchases and withdrawals and not some creepy computer hacker/highly skilled robber? I don't know about you, darling devotees, but I've only been living in a dorm for 4 months and this has already happened to me too many times to be comfortable with. Darling devotees, I can honestly say that I learnt the following lesson the hard way: In order to live on a budget, one must have a budget to live on. It is really asking too much of yourself to resist than $300 purse, if you don't monitor (or even know) how much money is coming in and going out of your account. Last semester I would tell myself that I technically knew how much money I can spend this month, and expected that I would be able to keep track of my expenses in my head. Clearly, that didn't work out and after much research, I have come up with this list of activities that should help one live on a budget:

1. Set up a visible monthly budget: It can be on paper or on Excel, either way is fine as long as you actually have it written somewhere. The reason I love Excel is because you can update the figures easier, but having a little notebook where you record your income and expenses as well as your monthly plan is fine too. When creating your monthly plan, look at your total income (or the amount of money you have or will soon have for the month) and list all of the categories of expenses you will have to take care of over the course of the month e.g. rent, food, clothes (!) , school supplies, transportation, emergency, miscellaneous, etc. Allocate a certain amount of money to each category and try to stick to your budget as much as possible. As time progresses you'll be able to predict how much money you spend better.
   
2. Monitor your income and expenses: Whenever you spend money, reflect that in the expense column of your budget according to its category. Do the same whenever you receive money. You don't even have to say what exactly you spent the money on, that's why we're using categories. By doing this you get a better idea of where all your money goes to every month and can therefore know where you need to cut back, if necessary. Evaluating and monitoring your budget also lets you know what options you have on how to use your money i.e. more shoes or more trips to the movies.


3. Cost-per-wear: As I've mentioned before one of the major keys to budget shopping is calculating the cost-per-wear. All you really have to do is guesstimate how many times you will wear an item (e.g. 1 a week for a year= 52 times) and divide it by its price. The problem with this is that people sometimes overestimate the durabilitiy/quality of an item, which causes them to get a wrong cost-per-wear. A couple tips to help you better determine high quality items are:

-Check the seams of the clothes: If threads pull apart relatively easily or if buttons are hanging loose, it probably wasn't well sewn.

-Check the quality of the fabric: some fabrics just look cheap, others really are. Being able to tell the difference between the two is something you can only learn with experience.

- Weigh the trend factor: Will you even want to be seen wearing the item in a couple of months? If not, will it be good enough to resell or use for something else?

If you want more help on setting up a budget or organising your finances, check out Suze Orman, particularly her advice on Oprah.

(Photo from: toolmantim )

Love you all and Stay inspired,

P.S. So let me know what you think. Do you have a budget plan? Does it work for you? How do you determine quality of an item? Feel free to let me know in the comments below.

2010 Artistic Retreat: Making it last forever

Photo from: Stuck in Customs



Day 7: Visual Immortalisation

My Darling Devotees,

When I came up with the idea for this retreat week, it was an idea bred from necessity. The reality of how art-centric my year is going to be had just hit me and I was wondering where I would get the inspiration to get everything done. I had also noticed how many of you, my devotees, had resolutions that involved improving your artistic skills. That's when I decided that a retreat week devoted to learning how to find inspiration in everything around you was exactly what we all needed , and I feel like this goal has been achieved. We started off this week by establishing where we were coming from stylistically by looking through our past work. Then we really begun actively seeking out sources of inspiration by watching movies, visiting the library and other places that tend to make creative juices flow. Over the past couple of days I've been asking you to not only visit these places but to try to think out of the box, by brainstorming ways in which you could translate what inspired you into your art.


Now, I want you to immortalise this week by putting all of these ideas and points of inspiration into two visual media you can always refer to: an inspiration board and an inspiration portfolio. The board should be kept somewhere you can easily see it when you want to work on your art, preferably in your room or studio . The portfolio should really be a sort of book that only has works in progress and sources of inspiration, no finished works or pictures of finished works. The idea is that your most inspiring visual pieces should go on your board and your larger or more word-intensive pieces should go in the portfolio. I also recommend that you have a digital back-up of your portfolio.


This has been an amazing week and I for one am sad to see its end. I've learnt so much about myself and the things that move me this week and I hope you have too. I've also learnt a lot about you my darling devotees, through the comments and suggestions you so kindly left me under all of the parts of the series. Thank you so much for partaking in this artistic retreat with me. Like I mentioned before I have a problem with finishing projects that I've started and only recently realised what the cause may be. I needed to finish this series to show myself that I can complete things I've started. Your comments encouraged me to continue writing and coming up with new ideas, and showed me just how fantastic you people are. Part of the reason I started this blog was to meet people who shared my interests, people I could influence positively and that could influence me positively too, and I really feel like that's happening. Once again, thanks for your participation and good luck in all your artistic ventures.


Assignment Summary

1. Gather all your major pieces of inspiration, select the most attention-grabbing and aesthetically pleasing pieces and pin them to your board.



2. Type up key words that inspire you and that describe some of the pieces on your board and add them to the board, too.



3. Put the more detailed and word intensive pieces in your inspiration portfolio; key pages from your retreat notebook could be removed from the notebook could be added too.



4. Put digital photos, online links and other digital inspiration in a digital portfolio.



5. Begin to document any art that you do and create a finished products portfolio.
   
   

My Interpretation:

This post by Luinae of More Magic Always, I feel really explains how to make an inspiration board. I already have an inspiration portfolio (that I'm currently updating), but I've never had a board before and I'm really excited about making one. When I'm done, I'll put the pictures in a separate post. Finally, I want you to feel free to record your work in whatever format suits you best i.e. if you dance, you can video your routines, if you sing, record your songs, etc, as long as it accurately records your achievements and lets you see how much you improve each day, it's fine.

Be open to new experiences and your life shall be fulfilled.
-Me

Love you all and Stay inspired,

P.S. So let me know what you think. Was this retreat helpful? What did you like? What would you like to see next time? What quotes, pictures, links, etc are on your board/in your portfolio? If you have any links to pictures of your boards or portfolios you'd like me to see feel free to put them in comments, along with your answers, below.