Saturday, February 26, 2011

Grovelgrovel

Sorry for the unplanned hiatus guys! Whilst I've been silent on the blogging front, a lot of stuff has happened, such as:
  • Being really sick on my birthday
  • Going back to university
  • Flying to Melbourne for the weekend for a family thing (NEVER. AGAIN.)
  • Having a job interview (for a super fancy coffee place)
  • Turning down a job interview (the shop was waaaay too far for me to get to)
  • Having another job interview (for a supremely overpriced makeup shop)
  • Not getting a job (at the makeup place)
  • Getting a job (at the fancy coffee place! part time! OMG)
  • Reading a buttload of new comics, and a few books
  • Enduring stinking hot weather (it's 29 degrees Celcius in my house right now)
  • Buying new jewellery supplies and not doing anything with them
  • Accumulating more makeup and trying new perfumes
Two weeks into semester and I'm behind already! There's a lot more reading to do since I'm in third year, and there are small, recurring assessment components as well. I have about 16 draft blog posts at the moment, I'm having trouble finishing things. Blogger's block? Anyway, I'm aiming to try and post 2x a week from now on, bare minimum.

I have a give-away planned in a few weeks :) true to my blog's theme of 'everything', the prizes range from comics to perfume to a pair of earrings made by yours truly. I'm waiting for something to come in the mail and then I'll set it up.

READER QUESTIONS! Please comment OR, if you feel like a more private chat, you can email me at the.jade.carver at gmail dot com. I'm also on Twitter a lot more than I should be.

1. What would you like to see first, or more of in general from my blog? I.e comic/webcomic reviews, book reviews, personal posts, photography posts, makeup reviews, EOTD/NOTDs, Blog Brags?

.2. What have you blogged about recently that you would like me to read and/or comment on?

3. What weather do you prefer, hot or cold? (Personally I can't wait for winter to come back, though I haven't really made use of the hot weather at the moment - I've probably swum once so far and I haven't been to the beach yet. I am such a bad Aussie!)

Friday, February 11, 2011

If you've ever bought makeup online

You need to read this, NOW.

If you haven't heard about the Glittersniffer Cosmetics scandal, thank your lucky stars.

This is why independant beauty bloggers are important. Wasting your money on repackaged products is one thing, being scammed into buying UNSAFE products, having money stolen and being suckered into supporting a lying, amoral seller with NO business ethics is another. Beauty bloggers like Grey, Ana, and Phyrra put their wallets and now apparently their skins on the line to make sure that when we click that 'buy' button, we know what we're getting into.

I hope that anybody who has ever read a review of mine - be it of cosmetics, a comic or anything else - knows that while I don't keep up with current releases, or do hours of research into ingredients and FDA regulations like Ana does, that I will ALWAYS be honest in my reviews.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Link sharing

10 comic books that pass the Bechdel test. More in the comments.

Support the online mag I slush read for!


Bubble wrap, anyone?


This is funny to those who live in/have visited Aus.

In more personal news, I updated my list of magazine submission guidelines, and I have five articles I am starting to work on so I can actually start submitting stuff! I don't expect I'll be published until late 2011, but I know I need to write more often, and get much, MUCH better at editing my work.

Feel free to share some interesting  links in the comments :)

EDIT: Persephone Minerals review and swatches coming soon, I checked the mail after posting this and there was a package full of SPARKLY DUOCHROME GOODNESS!

Thursday, February 3, 2011

I ain't doing this for kicks

Lately it seems I've written about a million cover letters. I won't deny the practise has been helpful, but lordy is it depressing! For every application I send, for every half an hour I spend agonising over word choices, I am getting nothing back.

I've heard a lot of people say that Australian employers are by far the worst for getting back to you. I've never tried to get work outside of Aus, but I'm inclined to agree with that assessment. If you don't want to hire me, FINE! Just bloody well let me know! I'm not going to sneak in during the middle of the night and vandalise your shop!

It especially gets me when I drop my resume off at a shop in the city that I walk past often. No emails, no phone calls, and nearly a month later they still have their 'staff wanted' sign up. Doesn't do much for a girl's self-esteem. I've heard back from maybe one out of four places I applied to, and it's all been "Blah blah thankyou for your application we found someone with more experience".

Picture snitched from here.

I pretty much am doing the assistant manager's position at my current job, because we don't HAVE one, and one of the 'co-managers' has been away. I've done rosters, customer orders, banking, returns, opened and closed the store, and tracked the budget. I'm not getting paid extra for it but I don't care. It needs to be done and I'm here pretty often so I just do it. However when I get back to uni, because of our weird shop schedule and overabundance of casuals, I'll be getting 6 hours of work a week. Yup. SIX. HOURS.

Hence why I am looking for another position. New or second job, I'm not fussy. Except that I've been looking since about November.

I have a lot more availability this semester than I did last semester. A lot of places are looking for full-time staff but even more are looking for casuals. I have a ton of experience in a wide range of fields. I learn fast, I'm easy to work with and I'm great with customers. I don't understand what I'm doing wrong! I want to be able to save money while I'm at uni, not just scrape by.

Writing endless cover letters and worrying about money isn't fun. It's sapping my creative energy, hence why I haven't been blogging much. I haven't done any writing for myself lately either, despite having some really great feedback from a magazine.

I've got about a week and a half til I go back to uni, so I'm applying for things left right and center, and trying to muster inspiration to get things started and finished before I get bogged down with studying and assignments. I have been thinking about (thinking about thinking about :P) opening a jewellery shop on Etsy - simple and slightly geeky items, but I don't know if I have the stamina for such an extended creative project! I also don't have the equipment or expertise to do anything beyond beading. I know that some of the stuff I have come up with is really quite pretty and marketable:




The first and last necklaces also have matching earrings. Some of the pieces I can fairly easily re-create... but some of them are really 'one-off' designs that were made out of vintage beads or just took really long to make. I've been working on a gorgeous tiered safety-pin necklace for months now, it keeps falling apart on me! I'm thinking it may need to be soldered. Clamping them works fine for the earrings as there's no strain on them, but the weight of what I want to make usually ends up being too much for a necklace and it just falls to pieces on the third or fourth wear.

I also don't want to just make random junk-y things, I wanted it all to be 'discreet geek': inspired by books, games and TV shows. I don't know if I'm going to be able to come up with enough designs to merit a whole shop... I get inspired by beads, by jewellery and by plain ol' necessity. Most of the pieces in those photos were created because I didn't have a piece with a certain colour scheme, I acquired a piece of jewellery that didn't quite work for me so I altered it, or I saw the beads and just HAD to make something with them. This inspiration process can take anywhere from a day to years.
 I have had these beautiful blue marbled beads for months and still haven't been able to decide what to do with them.

I guess I'm still in a state of indecision, where I'm waiting for things to happen (i.e, uni to start so I know how busy I'll be, and to hear back from some jobs) so that I can figure out what my next move should be.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Blogger Collaboration: Eyeshadow swatches!

A while ago Wendy of Turtle Beauty was asking for volunteers to do a collection of 'favourite colours' swatches. I'm doing black/silver/grey.

Li-Ann did yellows.

Robyn will be doing greens

Kimmie will be doing blues.

Wendy did purples.

Rachel will be doing reds and oranges.

Here we go!

Thunderstruck from Sassy Minerals: smooth, light matte grey


Phoenix from Evil Shades: dark matte grey with red and gold glitter 

Bling from Sassy Minerals: soft black with gold glitter


Chantal from Aromaleigh: greeny-silver with violet glitter. Quite hard to capture the glitter in photographs, it is quite evident in person.


Double Barrel from Evil Shades: light shimmery silver-grey

Crown Jewels from Sassy Minerals: smoky charcoal with silver, green and aqua glitter

Smoke and Mirrors from High Voltage: deep black with flecks of silver holo glitter



Saved my three most used for last.

Black from Sleek Safari and Curious palettes - the Safari black is completely matte and a little chalky, but the Curious one is opaque and shimmery. I use these to line my upper lashes.



Immortality from Fyrinnae - black with rainbow glitter, and Gasoline Rainbow from Sassy Minerals - black with rainbow glitter. I didn't realise before today how very similar these two shadows are! Both are a beautiful opaque, matte black packed with rainbow glitter. The Sassy is on the left and the Fyrinnae is on the right, but the differences really are miniscule.







That's my stash of black/silver/grey shadows! Hope you enjoyed the prettiness, make sure to go check out the other installments :)

EDIT: forgot to add, all swatches are done over Concrete Minerals Electric Eye Primer, except for Immortality and Gasoline Rainbow, which were done over Pixie Epoxy.