BEAUTY | Gosh Matt Effect Top Coat

I have finally tried out the Gosh Matte Effect polish after receiving it in my Box Swap with Jenny. I was going to wait for a black polish to try in on, but then I put on MeMeMe in Indulgent (#58), which came in one of the Beautyboxes, and since the top coat was just sat there, I had to try it out immediately. 

You could watch the polish go from shiny to matt within seconds! It was so much fun just watching it change! (Sounds kinda lame, doesn't it...) It doesn't really come up as good on the picture, but I really liked the effect. 

Check out my water and frozen grapes, yo!

I have also tried it with a Nails Inc. polish. This one was also a Beautybox item. I can't find the name on it, but I think it was the Portobello polish. Yeah, it definitely is. I found it in tiny writing just below the "flammable". Such a lovely summery colour! And I absolutely love how it looks with the matt coat on. 

This one was the closest I could get to the real colour. I think it's absolutely lovely!

If you want to try the Gosh matte polish yourself, I believe bigger Superdrug stores sell them here in the U.K..

Cheers for reading!

x ♥ x

ART | Lots of (fake)blood and Franco in Drag?!

Last week I decided to travel up to London to catch up with some friends. Since London has such a variety of free museums/galleries/exhibitions to offer, my friend and I decided to at least go and see one. She suggested the Psycho Nacirema exhibition at the Pace Gallery. 

After wandering through Camden and grabbing a coffee there, we ventured towards Soho. Now, I don't think I have actually been to Soho before, at least not knowingly. We stumbled upon this amazing vintage magazine store. They had all sorts of vintage pictures and posters and bits and bops! I even found a German poster for- and this is a good guess- Audrey Hepburn's Funny Face. Everytime I came across another cool poster, I imagined, how awesome these would look framed and hung in a hallway! One day, when I have my own place, this will happen. They also sold, as the name suggests, loads of older issues of various magazines! While I was marvelling at Vogue covers from the 60s, Chelsey nearly exploded from excitement at finding Fangoria issues. What an amazing find this place was!

Something missing, but rearrange the letters.

The Pace Gallery was pretty much opposite the store. We didn't initially find it, as the entrance is rather inconspicuous. Maybe I just expected too much, you know, glass doors with art in the windows. I haven't been to many galleries, can you tell? Anyways, we kind of walked around the building and nearly got lost, even though we had noticed the actual entrance, but had dismissed it. We got back to that door we thought would not really be the entrance, oh, but it was! We weren't sure whether we had to ring the bell or just open, and that's when someone security-guard-looking walks towards us and just opens the door and goes in. We followed, of course, and went up to the gallery.

Please sign in, Chelsey!

There, you are first greeted by an infodesk. Past the infodesk was the entrance to "the Motel". You were invited to sign into a massive guestbook, which was pretty cool. And then there was loads of "blood". Bloody messages, handprints... you name it. There were 2 main rooms, excluding the area with the guestbook, a bathroom and a very peculiar third room, that showed slow motion videos on each wall. Now, if you are easily offended, I suggest you do not enter that last room. Or enter and try not to watch the videos. Not all four of them are could be deemed possibly offensive. Only one of them grossed me out a bit, had to look away. 

Look through it and watch what happens!

You got red on you.

If anyone is in London, do go check out the gallery. It is worth a look. Even though I still haven't figured out what the significance of that video room was. To me, apart from the bed itself, the images made not much sense in connection with the rest of the gallery. But, hey, what do I know about art. 

The exhibition will be there for at least until the end of July, although I was certain I had seen it to be there until September somewhere.! According to the Pace Gallery website, there will also be a James Franco book launch on the 2. July. 

Thank you for reading and go enjoy some culture!

x ♥ x

LIFE | Gardening and the return of the Mothership

My sister and mum are back now from their vacation. Quite refreshing having them back after a month. I am sure that feeling will fade soon enough! :)

They brought me some lovely shiny things back. I wasn't sure what else to ask for and considering you can get accessories for quite cheap over there, that was what I asked for.

Shiny things

The musical note is my favourite! I used to have a very simple silver one, which I had bought at a German Christmas market in Edingburgh a few years back and can't find now. Would you believe, each of these were less than a fiver! Much less in some cases!

And while mother was away, me and my dad decided to tackle that jungle growing in our backyard.  

Holy Moly! This had to go!

Yeah, long-ass grass, right! With the weather being so lovely at the time (it does happen), it was just unpleasant to look at and hanging up the washing was more like an adventure, when all you can think about is "I wonder what's hiding in there". As much as I'd like to be, I am not the biggest fan of creepy crawlies. Any crawlies, really! And since our lawnmower refused to tackle this, I borrowed some garden shears and started chopping bit by bit. I must say, this was such a great workout! We spent about 4 or 5 hours in the heat chopping away. While I cut bits off with the shears, dad went over the patch with the mower. We got about a third of the garden done and worked another few days on it. I was aching so badly! I even felt muscles on the top of my hands for days! Say whaaat? So worth it. Fancy a good workout? GARDENING will do the trick!

Thank you for reading and have a lovely day!

x ♥ x

FILM | Sweet 6teen... Best bloody party I have seen.

I am so psyched to write this post today!!! Basically, in earlier April I had the chance to be part of a short film production, which I may have mentioned before. I had been appointed to take care of the Art Department, try and get all the necessary props (which in my case also meant baking some cupcakes! awww yeah) and getting the set ready for filming. My friend Chelsey Burdon wrote, directed and- I guess- produced this 3 minute horror short. We had Kate Mollins in cinematography, Matthew Law in sound, Olivia Whitaker in hair & make-up and Michael Savva in editing. The short is called Sweet 6teen and is starring Emily Rose Perrin and Cassandra Bond. It will be entered into the 666 Shortcuts to Hell competition and the winner will be selected by FrightFest, Movie Mogul and the Horror Channel. It's an exciting opportunity and, without further ado:

Here is Sweet 6teen. 

I hope you enjoy watching it. Feel free to rate, comment and share! 

Thank you for reading and have a lovely day!

x ♥ x

BAKING | Cabin Fever and a Green Treat

It's so lovely outside! After days of glum and rain, the sun came out to play! And even though I am usually not the outdoor type, I knew I had to get out and soak up the vitamin D while I could! I even got a handy little tracking app (RunKeeper) to keep me humoured! Since a nice walk is a free and fun form of exercise, and - to be fair - the most exercise I'll be doing, I just had to pop my tunes in and go for a random walk. I did get lost at one point, but what are smartphones and their gps maps for, right? Besides, I think I was more excited about trying out the app than anything else.

As a little treat, I had a slice of the Waldmeister cake I had made Thursday night. My friend Jenny would always bring some packets of "Waldmeister" flavoured jelly over when she came to visit, and since I had hardly touched them, it was time I started using them up. (I never found a good translation to that flavour, until the other day. Apparently it is known as "woodruff". It is quite a common flavour for sweets back in Germany, from what I remember, and I absolutely love it!) 

So the other day I did make a batch of jelly, but with my sister and mum on holiday, it's just me eating it. I wanted to try and make a cake with it and looked on chefkoch.de for recipes I could try. After sifting through the numerous recipes, I decided I would try this one, and so began the hunt for the vital ingredient: Quark. Our local shops did not stock it nor any adequat substitute. Finally found it in town in a massive Sainsbury's. So, I made the cake, finally having gathered all my ingredients (after realising I didn't actually have any flour in the house, so had to run back into local shop.) and unfortunately I overbaked the base a little. It's come out a little dry! :( But that's ok, It still tastes very refreshing. I have also halved the sugar content, cause I usually tone down on the sugar in my baking. Makes me feel less guilty.

My mixer broke completely. Disaster!!!

At the beginning of the week I went on a little train-journey to Bracknell to meet with Tash and Jo, and also meet Jo's furry niece Lola. We had a lovely day walking through Bracknell and having coffee and taking little Lola out for a walk in the park. 

Lola, either waiting for the ball or her drink

Thank you for reading and have a lovely day!

x ♥ x