My Art and My Plans

Art has always been a passion of mine, mainly because it was one the few things I didn't think I was terrible at.  I studied art in secondary school, and continued it through college, loving it so much that I even considered doing it at university. Sadly, I did not have the confidence to believe I was ever good enough to ever make it. To be honest, I still have those doubts now, but if I don't try, I will never know if I will. 

What I plan to try and do is make an Instagram account that will showcase my art pieces, and potentially interest people enough to like it, publicize it, and potentially even pay for it. This is the plan. The account has been created, a name has been thought of, and a logo has been designed. I hope to launch it by early September, once I have enough artwork to present.

Sarah's birthday canvas

I don't just want to show the final finished piece, I also want to reveal the process, however ugly that may have been. Let me tell you, my work tends to be very ugly before it transitions into something deemed acceptable. Before this would dishearten me when what I saw on the canvas was unlike the image in my head, however I have come to realise that with time and persistence it would eventually turn out OK, if not better. I hope to prove that with my posts. I also want to reveal the inspiration behind my pieces, whether that be an artist, an image, an object, a person in my life, etc.

Canvases for my family and friends have been my specialty so far as I don't fear their judgement and they seem to appreciate them.  I usually ask the person in advance for two or three things they would specifically like to be included in the canvas and then work from there. For example, my sister asked for Audrey Hepburn and Amsterdam; below is the result.

My sister's birthday canvas

Over the last two weeks I have created two canvases, one for my friend Sarah's birthday, and another for my friend Tessa's birthday. As they were surprises, I could not ask what features they wanted, I just had to guess. Sarah's favourite image is one of Audrey Hepburn blowing Tiffany blue bubblegum so I painted that for her with acrylic paint. For Tessa's painting I blended a photo of herself with a photo of Frida Kahlo, her favourite artist, not forgetting to give her that famous monobrow! Thankfully, they both loved their paintings!

Tessa's birthday canvas

Two birthdays have been and gone in the last two weeks, but my revived passion for art has stayed. I have requests for two more canvas from my mum and another friend. When they are complete, if all goes to plan, I will share them on my new Instagram account!

Fem

Soap Making Workshop

On Friday, I made handmade soaps with my mum, my sister, and a friend of ours. I wasn't sure what to expect as I had never made my own soaps before, or ever really enquired about the process behind it. Now I know how fun, easy, and simple it is to do!

The Workshop

Our natural soap only needs three ingredients: water, oil, and lye. This it what forms the soap base before we add our oils, colours, and flowers. You could choose between an olive oil base or a coconut oil base.

Olive oil soap base (left) and coconut oil soap base (right)

An olive oil base produces a transparent soap that shows off the flowers better while a coconut oil base produces a more opaque, pastel coloured soap. My sister chose the coconut oil base, and the rest of us chose olive oil. Next, we chopped them up into small pieces and added them to the heating pots. 

While the soap base heated up, we got to select our flowers. 

We could personalise our soaps even further by choosing our preferred scent and colour. After smelling all the options I chose the coffee & spice (it reminded me of cake), while everyone else went for fruity smells (passion fruit and forest fruits).

Once the colours, oils, and flowers had been combined we could transfer them to our desired moulds. We had enough soap mixture to fill either two large moulds, three medium sized moulds, or lots of mini moulds. 

There was a huge variety of moulds from letters to animals to even babies! The most popular mould, the one we all used, was a 100% handmade soap design, as it would be a reminder of our experience. 

100% handmade soap (left), and a heart design (right)

The bear mould was my personal favourite!

My glittery bee soap!

The whole process took around an hour and we had such a great time! Not only was it a brilliant group activity but you also come away with your own soaps that you can use or give as gifts. The place we went to for this particular workshop was called 'Token Studio', where they also do a variety of other craft activities during the week including crochet, jewellery making, and life drawing lessons (something I am eager to try!). In the future, I hope to be able to write more posts about these crafting adventures!

Fem

Interrailing: The 10 Lessons I Learnt

For most of July I traveled around Europe for three weeks by train. On average, me and my friend moved to a new country every three days, meaning the experience was always unpredictable. We had our ups and downs, however 90% of the time it was fantastic! But you don't want to hear me brag about how great it was, instead I will tell you about the negative situations which I learnt from, and potentially this will help anyone else who plans to do a similar holiday! 

1) Don't eat 'fancy food' in 'cheap restaurants'
This lesson I learnt the minute we arrived at our first destination. I have, and always will be a foodie, so I convinced my travel companion, my good friend Caroline, to have a cheap 2 course meal with me (I thought 2 courses for 12 euros ain't bad, especially when a hard boiled egg for 7 euros seemed to be the norm in Paris). Caroline had a safe option of a Hamburger, whereas I went adventurous and ordered the steak tartare. I love steak tartare, despite it essentially being raw beef, so I knew what to expect, but I was not expecting raw beef mince with the addition of some raw chopped onion. Needless to say, it was as appetizing as it sounds. This may have been a case of bad luck, or just a bad experience, either way I'm too afraid to make the same mistake again.

Can you see that it's just raw mince!? (bottom left hand corner)

2) Less luggage will mean more laundry
After researching the top tips for interrailing, the one recommendation that popped up time and time again was to pack as light as possible. As much as I appreciated this tip, no one mentioned the amount of laundry would need to be done as a result of my frugal packing. This may seem like common sense, but that is something I have lacked in all my life. I was moving around every 2-3 days so drying time also was limited. And laundry could be expensive, depending on how desperate you are. Basically, take in account time, money and amount of washes you expect to do when it comes to your luggage. 

Another thing... buy a rucksack with many pockets! I kept losing my socks :(

3) WiFi is never a certainty
I had an important email to send and had a little meltdown when I could not get WiFi. WiFi was guaranteed in the hostel description, so I thought I would be OK, but I quickly came to learn that that does not guarantee a good WiFi connection. To avoid stress, and I admit some tears, then send any important messages in advance, preferably before you go travelling. 

4) Have low expectations when it comes to 'free breakfast'
Many of the hostels we stayed at offered us a 'free breakfast' with our stay. Now I am not complaining, as a free breakfast is better than one that costs you money, although I will advise that it is best to have low expectations. For example, at our last hostel the breakfast basically consisted of cake, again I can't really complain about that, but it doesn't set your stomach up for a day of walking. At another, it was stale bread and warm milk. With low expectations, also comes many opportunities to surpass them, and the majority of the breakfasts did just that. 

Unfortunately, this was not the cake in the 'free breakfast' option.

5) The brilliance of a 'free' tour! 
I had never heard of a 'free' tour until a guy we met in Munich recommended it to us. Essentially, you are given a tour of the city you are in, and only after do you have to decide if the tour was worth any money. If the tour was terrible, you don't have to pay. Luckily the two free tours we did were incredible so they more than deserved a tip. 

Free Tour: http://www.neweuropetours.eu/ 

6) Always bring plasters!
Again, my common sense prevailed here. Who would have thought that you would obtain blisters from 8 hours of walking, nearly every day, for three weeks? I certainly didn't. But I did get blisters, and I did not bring plasters. Thankfully my travelling companion is prepared for anything and bought an entire first aid kit. We didn't use anything else from the kit so I am only going to emphasize the importance of plasters.  Oh, and in her case, also bring bug spray!

Resting my poor feet on the final days of our trip. 

7) Bring a book (or two)
This may sound strange to those who could think of nothing worse than spending time reading a book when you are visiting another country: 'You should be making the most of it! You can read a book at home!'. However, I am someone who needs their downtime, especially after walking on cobbles for 8 hours. My travelling companion agreed with me, although her entertainment of choice was a power nap. Whenever she was napping, I was catching up with my reading.

8) Running red lights is a normality in many places...
Be prepared to put all fears aside when it comes to crossing roads, especially when visiting Berlin and Rome. In Berlin, we heard you would only get a five euro fine for running a red light, so no wonder it was happening so often when we were there. And in Rome, you just have to have the confidence that cars will stop and not hit you when walking a zebra crossing.

Budapest was one of the better places for driving.

9) How much I hate selfie sticks
If you want to take a selfie, that's your prerogative. It's not something I would personally do, especially when travelling, as I'd rather memorize the landmarks than a photo of my face. However, what I don't like are people so involved with selfie-taking that they forget that there is anyone but themselves walking around... shocking, considering that all the places we were in were busy tourist areas. I cannot tell you how many people bumped into me because of this, but I can tell you that I did not appreciate it one bit. 

The landmark that attracted the most selfie stick users. 

10) Do not drink alcohol on an empty stomach.
This is definitely a life lesson, and boy did I learn it the hard way. I'm sure this is not a lesson unique to interrailing, it just happened to be one I discovered on this trip. Let's just say, saving money on food so you can spend more of it on a pub crawl, results in a lot of vomit and regret. This was the first, and last time, I will ever drink on an empty stomach. 

The perfect end to our experience. And see, there is food... I learnt my lesson. 

Fem