June 29, 2013

IT'S PINK - I WANT IT!


Didn't this bookcover just get you within a second? Ohhh how I love my BUST DIY Guide to Life! And because today was such a rainy, gray day (rhyming like no other...) and all I wanted to do was to cuddle up under a blanket, I grabbed this precious little thing to brighten up my afternoon a bit.

I bought the BUST Guide last January as a late Christmas gift to myself after having hovered over it literally every time I'd walk into Barnes & Nobles for weeks. I fell for the book the day I discovered the craft section at the store (reminder: I was there as an exchange student so I didn't know there was such a section at the store). I discovered there was a magazine to this book and so I bought my first BUST issue. It didn't take a day for me get through it and start longing for the book real badly...

BUST is sort of a feminist magazine but not quite so 'Hear me roar, I'm a feminist!' (nothing against that type of (maga)zine). I guess I would describe BUST as an indie magazine for creative girls - and man I've been looking for that for ages! So in the book the BUST team has collected all kinds of DIYs, recipes, tipps on style, sewing and life from former magazines issues.

Okay enough chatting, here's a peek inside!
This' the season to be sewing lalala-la-laaa! Haha, there's some great advise for sewing beginners like me in there. First they explain how a sewing mashine works, simple stitches and stuff. Later on one learns how to reshape sweaters, hem and sew skirts and pants and also how to make fascinators and jewelry! Homemade fashion here we come!

There's a hair and beauty section and I'm especially a fan of these curls, how darling are they? I'm debating on cuting my hair .. mmmh.

In this section you'll also find some snazzy tutorials on how to create the Amy Winehouse Beehive and the Twiggy eye make-up. But since beauty isn't all about hair and make-up you can find tipps on how treat scratches, insect bites and PMS etc. I find that very helpful and it also promotes the whole 'beauty comes from the inside'-thing. Like that!
Talking about the inside ... It's called a Guide to life - so there has to be food! Gooood food! As you can see the recipes look flipping delicious, but you know what? There's even a tutorial on how to make a pinata! Ahu! We love pinatas!

The lower picture is from my favorite part of the book. When I first read it, I just felt so encouraged. Finally there was someone out who'd talk excatly about the things I think about future-wise. Travelling alone and articles related to independent businesses and part-time working ... I was in wonderland!  The chapter is called 'Moving & shaking' and it'll give you all the tools you need to move&shake it as an independent lady! Makes me excited to move out and pursue my goals and dreams!
Lastly - tell me how cute is this? There are lots of cute little doodles all over the book which along with the other photos make it really fun and visual.

Hope I could infect you a bit with the BUST bug - 'cause being a BUST-girl is cooool!
Lots of Love, Tabea

June 27, 2013

PATIENCE OH PATIENCE...

Hello there! Today I want to talk to you guys about a topics that's been on my mind for quite some time now... Patience. 

My mom always tells me to never say 'I'm so impatient' at a job interview when they ask me about my weaknesses. Well I won't but ... I AM impatient at times. We all are, I think. It's probably sort of a thing for this generation to be impatient. Did you know that on average people my age get nervous or angry when a web pages takes more than 11 seconds to load? How crazy is that? 

I told you about the thunderstorm that had struck into our internet aerial (talk to me if you have any problems finding the right terms for any electrical devises - I'm a pro.). Our Wifi had broken down for a few days and I had to use my mobile internet ... which is sorta slow. Well while I wasn't finding it too hard to wait for a page to load for a few seconds, some of my friends actually went kinda crazy about it. Some even switched phone with other friends whose internet hadn't been slowed down by the phone company yet... 

Got me thinking... what are we waiting for so eagerly when we surf the web with limited speed? Why are we getting mad at our phones (and yepp I caught myself doing that) when we're just waiting for our Facebook feed to load? I've talked about the whole phone issue before here, but I just found it weird that something we think is so indispensable in our life actually brings out such bad traits and makes us unhappy, you know?

There's another issue though that's been on my mind connected to this. How much patience do we need to have with people? Is there a magic limit of how many chances you can give a person before it's time to leave? And is it possible to change a person or is trying this just a waste of time? Questions over questions. Sorry friends I don't have an answer and but wanted to throw this out there... Does anyone have the ultimate answer?
Personally I'm not very patient with people unless we're really close which isn't that often. But taken the case it is, I tend to hold on to people for a long time. Obviously I get mad, I want to leave, I know that I derserve better. But for some reason I always pick myself up and stay with the person. Does anyone feel the same as I do?
Okay ... as long as we are waiting for our relationship coach / most patience experienced person: Here's the first photo of my face ever in a blogpost. I love this blue dress from Topshop! I wore it to a Jazz concert given by the Blue Lake Jazz ensemble from Michigan, USA. The little girl on the right was super duper cute and I think her face (even from the side you can see her impressed stare) says what we all thought of this concert. It was beautiful. And I think it's really admirable how much patience these young musicians put into playing their instruments! Had to make that connection haha!

 Lots of Love, Tabea ♥

June 25, 2013

FABRIC COVERED PHOTO ALBUM

She's back! Woohoo! The reason why I was gone is rather simple - a lightning bold struck into one of the local aerials which is responsible for our internet. I've never seen lighting that bright and I guess neither did the aerial. So we were cut off the world wide web for a few days - thank god for mobile internet, but a blog post just wasn't possible to upload! 

Well today I'm back and ready to share the progress i made with my photo album. 

So this is how my embroidery project turned out - I love it! The colors are nice and bright and really scream: Summer's here! Looking at the back part of it you can see that I didn't suture the left-over thread. I'm not entirely sure whether this is the best way to do it, but I wanted to avoid any bumps the knots might have caused.

Now we're coming to the main part: How to cover an album with fabric...

You start by mixing equal parts of glue and water and spread that mixture over the front or back of the photo album. Try to get especially the borders and corner and don't use to much of it - you don't want to get your fabric all soaked, do you?

The next step was nicer to show on the middle part where the binding is. You've already put the glue in place and now you'll just flap the fabric over and gently smoothen it out with your hand. Do this until the entire outer part of the album is covered with fabric and watch out for any creases close to the binding part. Glide over them with your fingers so the fabric really sticks to the book in all places - otherwise you'll get ugly air bubbles underneath it.
Okay good job so far! Now we're coming to the tricky part. You cut off all four corners of your fabric so it'll be easier to fold later. You also make a straight cut where the round binding part starts. 
Self-explanatory, isn't it? Haha this photo just screamed for handwriting! It's simple. Put glue onto the edges of the book and fold the fabric over. You might have to fight a bit with the corners depending on how much fabric you have to fold over. My advise: Put glue on those bad boys until they stay in place! You are the boss here!

Lastly...
Covering the binding... This might get a bit violent. I'm kidding! It's all good and easy! Two steps: 1) Put glue onto the fabric flap 2) Bend the book boards to the back and the whole between the cover and the binding thingy wil expand. Now push the fabric flap in there! See the scissors I placed so nicely in the background? I USED THEM FOR THIS! Don't know why I sream when I say this but yeah .. I'll advice you to use anything long and flat like a ruler.

Well I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial - I'm really sorry I don't have more pictures of the album itself ... the light and I were just not having it today.
To make you curious (muhaha!) - here's another picture of me working on the last decorative part of the album. So hope to see you again for more DIY album action!

By the way did you spot my creative way of spelling summer? SUMMME. I'm a pro, I know...

Lots of Love, Tabea ♥

June 20, 2013

LAKE SUMMERS

Did you ever love anything so much you could just run in circles and scream out of happiness? I hope so for you! Right now I could be doing the 'hands over my head' and yelling 'I LOVE THIS' all the time! Summer is so great! Today I had the chance to hang out at a lake / canyon close by with some pretty sweet people. Isn't this what we're waiting for since like january? 
Lying on my back with the sun on my belly I thought about summers that have been gone by over the years. My favorite summer memories were all made around lakes. Last year I spent this amazing day down in Canal Park, Duluth MN with one of my friends. We had Caribou's Coffee, walked along the beach and sat on rocks for hours to talk. Go visit if you ever get the chance - and I'm not just saying this 'cause Duluth is my second home, it's just so fun there!

Also I remember the many days I spent paddling around the water close to the beaches of different lakes around my region - I couldn't swim until  I was about eight, so ya.. I was easy to watch as a kid I guess. Always tried to stay out of trouble and life threatening situations hehe! Living on the edge was never my thing .. except living on the edge of the water. Ha. Ha. Sorry...

Oh and one of my very, very favorite memories from about three years ago (say whaaat?!): My parents and I spent a week in southern France at a lake called 'St. de la Croix' I think. Sooo Saint of the cross? Mhhh.. anyway it was pure magic down there. I have never seen water so turqouise! Beau-ti-ful! Take a trip to France at least once in your life - it's truly a blessed spot of land.

Well this was my post for today. I'm sorry but the thouht of eating watermelon and getting tan while reading a good book out in the sun is just really promising right now. Just to keep you updated, I have been crafting over the last days so there are more fun posts coming your way! Stay tuned friends!
Does anyone else have favorite summer or lake memories? I'd love to hear!

Lots of Love, Tabea ♥

June 17, 2013

HOMEMADE ALBUM COVER - PART I


Remember my Summer To Do List? One of the points on there was to create a summer journal... Well the 'journal' turned into more of an album. I have never filled an actual photo album myself the traditionell way - like in the old days, when my mom had to go and have someone develop her film rolls. I thought it would be fun to try it though and also I feel I'm gonna have a blast looking at this during the cold winter months. 

Because I always thought that store-bought albums look either boring or plain out cheap, I wanted to give my album a make-over. While working I realized this is sort of a longer process - upps, overestimated my fast-embroidery-skills! 

So today, I'll share my first steps to a homemade photo album cover. Enjoy!
Using tailor's chalk I marked the size of  my album on a piece of fabric that could fit around it comfortably. Well, I actually had to use two pieces of fabric, because one would not have been enough - it's fine, gotta work with what you got! Secondly, I put a white sheet of paper on my album and marked out the space I wanted to fill my embroidered type later.

I wrote and sketched out the words for the front on the paper, turned it over and traced along the outlines so I'd have a reversed picture. I taped it to my album with the reversed side up - still in the place where I'd originally wanted it. 

I covered the sheet with my fabric - right side down. Now I have the side of fabric facing me that'll later be unseen, as well as my reversed type underneath it. I traced the letters one more time through the fabric with pink tailor's chalk. Finally I could get to fun part - working with my embroidery hoop. Don't you think embroidery hoops are the most fun thing ever? They're wood and feel smooth and round ... Pretty snazzy ...
Well getting to the point - grab your thread and get stitching!



One by one the letters will appear as you follow your traced outline. I've mentioned the word 'embroidery' like two thousand time in this post already - so just more time: Embroidery is awesome and such a relaxing task! 

Be thrilled for my process on this project!
Lots of Love, Tabea ♥

June 15, 2013

SHOUT OUT FOR RANDOM PHOTOS!


Blogger are  overall pretty amazing at sharing about their life through photos - some even take better daily life photos than blog-post photos. I don't know what it is, maybe the age old curiosity thing, that makes people wanna have insight into other's lifes. I'm not sharing too much personal stuff here, probably because I'm scared of stalkers. Haha, no, but sometimes I wonder whether certain bloggers actually have stalkers ... They have fangirls for sure ... so who knows?

Well I don't want to talk about fans, stalkers or creepiness (no offend to anyone - I consider myself a bit of a fangirl, too, sometimes). I'm just fascinated by how bloggers document their daily routine. I take pictures for this blog regularly. But the other day I wanted to put up some more personal photos up on my wall and naah. I didn't have any recent ones that I really connected with at first. So today I wanna give a shout-out for random photos! They are personal, lovely and great memories. 
I took this picture during my biology class. It just captures the moment so perfectly. We use a lot pencils in that class to draw things and well ... sometimes I like to put my head on the table. Just for a minute. Haha! Moments like oftentime get lost in the daily hassle. Also I could take a picture excatly like this one any time during my school week - there wouldn't be much of a difference. 

But 'not much of a diffrence' is still a difference.Just a few weeks ago the seniors at my school graduated. That made me realize how precious our school time is and within less than a year I won't be going to school anymore. So by taking picture more frequently I can hold on to those moments for a bit longer. 
Also, our days might often seems quite similar to each other, people aren't. And neither are cats. So I'm a big fan of 'living-things'-photography. I don't do it often enough though. Taking selfies in front of my mirror is one thing, but with other people I just find it uncomfortable sometimes to take photos. It's not a common request around here to take a photo that is not all smiles or even take random photos in general. I often hear things like:' What are doing? Are you taking a picture now?'... Makes me feel a bit awkward. 

On the same page I think it's so important to find new angles for photos. It takes a lot of practise to realize quickly, oh this is a picture-moment and immediately find a cool angle to snap a great shot. That's why I love the pciture of my cat above. It's sorta unexpected.

These last two photos kinda show the difference between 'real life' and 'real nice set-up' pretty well, I think. The first one was taken while walking up the stairs from a subway station in Berlin, the second one is once again my night-stand. I happened to have all these notebooks flying around and I thought: 'Well this is cool, let's take a picture'. So I actually arranged them to look like this - tried to make it look like a coincidence though, such a ganster! 

As a photographer of any kind, I think it takes a lot of courage to do what you like. Simply because others aren't used to cameras being around them for no appearend reason. So let's pull ot the iPhones and DSLRs and what-nots and make people feel comfortable, so we can feel comfortable snapping away every moment of our life! And soon I hope to have more meaninful photos to frame and decorate my room with!

Hope to encourage!
Lots of Love, Tabea ♥

June 13, 2013

JOURNAL # 5 - STORY TIME


Summer is seriously my favorite season. I took this picture around half past 6pm and is was still so nice and bright outside. I just felt this design needed gras as a backdrop. Also my biology trip went on a field trip yesterday. We explored the woods and rivers in a town close-by. Yepp, we're all around the age of 17- 18. It was an exciting day for us. I'm on a nature kick now - thanks biology teacher! 

I created this page rather spontaneously and tried to think of something fun to journal about. I remembered a video I had recently seen on Youtube where someone talked about creating a whole journal about the things one has accomplished in life. Well, I didn't wanna go that far today, but digging up memories is always fun!
I found the 'activate self-esteem' and '100%' signs on a bag from 'The Body Shop' and thought the colors would go perfectly with my baker's twine. 

Because recyceling is awesome I re-used the sheet of baking paper from my Dream Journal to create the pattern on my basic sheet of cardboard. I like going a little crazy with paint ... a destroying brushes apparently. I killed like three of them within the last couple weeks! 

Also I'm having an obsessison with embroidering these days - and the feeling this obsession might continue for quite some time. I think it's kind of a nostalgic thing, since I used to do this with my favorite art teacher in elementary school. She was so sweet! One day she just gave me this whole bag of embroidery thread, needles and other things. Still have some of it today. Great Lady!  
Here's another close-up. I also used some lace and more embroidery, this time with yellow baker's twine. Yeah and then I added some fun stories from my life. I think the average profil information like 'I love crafting and photography' are getting old. These are so much more personal! Here are some further details on the stories... 

1) I was about 10 when this happened and beforehand I had lost a game against my uncle, my cousin and pretty much everyone else who was there. I was bitter! Such a fun game and I was the loser! Because know you better than you know yourself, she felt that I was a bit upset and decided to play another game with just the two of us. Well long story short - I won. Mmmh, just five minutes before my mom had almost won a game against a flipping genius-bowler called my uncle.. I guess my mom is pretty awesome. 

2) No, seriously. I went to America. I bought 'cheese in a can', because we don't have that stuff in Europe. Aaand I had to find a video on Youtube to figure out how to work the can. Yepp, there are videos out there about this topic. 

3) I was about three. Always the same stairs - I wanted to figure out how dogs walk down the stairs so badly. I never figured it out until today so sometimes I'm still tempted to crawl down the stairs head first .. But nah. I don't wanna ruin my senior year GPA. 

4) On a bus ride while we were on class trip to France. I did it to impress everyone else - and then I discovered the deliciouness of chocolate and mayo. I'm not sure if I'll ever eat this stuff again though. Was kind of a 'What happens in France, stays in France' thing.

5) My hostfather laughes about this until today - and so do I. To my defense: I didn't use this word very much in my english class prior to going to the USA. So how was I supposed to know?!

6) I remember this one time when a friend of mine who could swim told me she'd hold on to me and drag me trough on this twirling whirlpool which was supposebly really fun. Well she let go of my hand just when we had gotten in. I and sank and stayed under water until she was all the way around the thing and pulled me up again. For whatever reason I didn't move. I just stared up at the surface and waited, floating throught the water. . Water was never my element. 

7) At my High School they had this thing called 'Camp-in-a-box' to raise awareness for the homeless. You had to raise 20 bucks though to take part in it. So yeah I didn't excatly pay for it, but you get my point!
8) Well apparently I was very tired and my friends weren't. I still love them. 

Hope you enjoyed story-time today! 
Oh and on another note guess who joined me while I was taking the pictures or this post?
My cat is awesome. 
Lots of Love, Tabea + Hildegard the cat ♥

June 11, 2013

DREAM JOURNAL

Whaaaad'up? Uh yeah, I'm finally fit again and ready to get my craft going! Lately I've been having weird dreams .. well my dreams are always weird. But lately I had several weird dreams in a short period of time. Is that a sign? Apocalypse?! Let's hope not ...

The other day I dreamed that I there was a Grizzly bear by my house and my dad chased it away with some weird rolling pin, another day my friend's car was stolen from outside my house and he was just freaking out, screaming at a truck that had suddenly appeared. And yesterday night, I dreamed that I got to know one of my friend's moms who I'd never met before - and she was mean! Like 'what are you looking at me?' - mean! Why are my dreams so terrible??

Because I love to remember my dreams (no matter how horrible they were), I sometimes write them down. So today I'll show you how to create a dream journal. It'll be the size of about 3x5inches.
You'll need acrylic paint (any color), cardboard, paper (I like to use old paper that I would not use as notebook paper anymore) , brush, needle, embroidery thread, marker, pin

This time, I put the steps right onto the pictures - for all the 'visual'-types out there! I'm with you!

Lastly glue both cardboard pieces onto the booklet. Done!
This is sooo cute! Can't wait to fill it with the things my nightly imagination comes up with!
For everyone interested in more 'dream-journal'-inspiration - here's my old one. I think the cover is pretty rad. It's Tavi Gevinson glued to the face of Jonny Depp. I made this one in a late-night session - Probably thought this was hilariously funny at the time. Okay, I still love it.  Also some of the pages I created in it - just plain lines would have been boooring!

Okay, have a great night / day (depending on when read this) everyone and remember to write down all the funny things that happen while you're awake or asleep. Rereading them later is a treasure!

Lots of Love, Tabea ♥