Instagram | September 2013

I saw a few bloggers doing these and I thought it would be a nice idea to do! Every month I will collate my instagram photos and reflect on/tell you about the past month. Hope you enjoy! 

Top Row L-R

seeing wicked the musical, for the third time in manchester - bought lush's superbalm scalp treatment in order to sort out my horrible scalp - also bought 1D's lipstick...

Middle Row L-R

all of this row is basically me seeing mcfly at the royal albert hall (20th and 21st) for their ten year anniversary. it was absolutely incredible!

Bottom L-R

saw les mis whilst in london for mcfly and met carrie hope fletcher again - forever buying gay magazines for boy bands - selfie after i got my haircut 

NY // 07 - Staten Island

From the ghetto~ area, we took the Staten Island Ferry and saw the Statues of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge and the glorious New York skyline in general.

Thought it would be an idea to create a visual wishlist of clothes that I want from this year's Autumn/Winter collections and share them. All the items shown are from New Look and I think may I do this with other shops too! Or maybe even do book wishlists too!

Summer 2013

I start college again next Monday and I just wanted to let out my thoughts about this summer.

One pretty god damn amazing event happened this summer, LeakyCon London. It definitely was the best weekend of my life and I'm still in denial that it's over. Other than that my summer has been spent in solitude. When I finished college my parents and I went on holiday to Porto, Portugal which was nice and that's all I can really say about it. We saw some lovely things but the weather was just a bit disappointing, because it was completely overcast all week. Of course the cloud deluded us to the presence and temperature of the sun, resulting in my mum getting very burnt and me moderately burnt. I got a good tan anyway, although my skin was peeling for weeks afterwards.

I've been quite unmotivated this summer and been using this idea I had to vlog as much as possible during this month which has been mildly successful. It hasn't been so successful when I've been lazy or my editing software hasn't cooperated. Before Leaky, I was going to bed at roughly 11pm, getting up at 10am, not going to get ready until 1pm and some points not finishing lunch until 3pm. After Leaky, I was going to bed at 1am and getting up at 12pm. I was still tired after this 11 hour sleep and this affected my motivation.

I haven't gone out a lot this summer due to money and I think I went to town once or twice. The days that my Ddad has been off he's gone on walks, but I don't usually enjoy those and I'm usually not awake by the time he goes out anyway. Being inside for most of summer has led to my Dad becoming worried that I'm becoming a social recluse...well I've been a recluse for a while now so clearly he doesn't know me that well if he's only just noticing that.

Other than some significant events, everything else this summer has been timid. In true Karis fashion, I've left everything that I wanted to do until the last week. Including some research task/presentation I have to do for dance.

The week after Leaky I received my A Level Results and they were pretty good as I got an A in Photography, B in Media Studies and a B in Sociology. The first result I saw on my sheet though was my Dance result which was a D. I was pretty much heartbroken, as Dance is a subject I'm passionate about and done since I was five. Particularly as I wanted to continue this subject and discontinue studying Media Studies. The head of department tried to convince me to carry on Media Studies, she did pretty much tell me that I would get a D in A2 althought that's just encourage me to work even harder to do better. I am going to resit this years theory paper though as I was 10 marks away from a C. I was sobbing for half an hour after I found my results, I'm very lucky though to have supportive friends and a supportive Sociology teacher to console me and feel a bit better.

I always say to myself I'm gonna try to blog more, but despite the load of work I've got to do. I'm gonna at least try to do a blog post a week (if I have an idea) in my spare time. Sorry for the very long post, but I hope you enjoyed reading :)

Birthday Book Haul

The Divergent Series by Veronica Roth

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Chopsticks: A Novel by Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral

My Idea Bookshelf, edited by Thessaly La Force

LeakyCon Book Haul

Candor by Pam Bachorz

Boy Nobody by Allan Zadoff

Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them by J.K. Rowling

The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling

13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson

NY // 06 - Ghetto/Subway/SoHo/Things

On our second to last day in New York, we took the Subway down to the Staten Island Ferry and took a boat across to the Island and saw the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty etc. (post on that coming soon)

The area we arrived in was quite a 'ghetto' area with a lot of signs of deprivation which I thought was a nice contrast and we then walked on to the SoHo area, where China Town and Little Italy was also located and did some more shopping.

I was really pleased with some of the photos I took whilst there, and they made a nice contribution to my photography exam project. As I was showing the negative contrasts, I experimented a bit with adding some gradients to the photos as well as doing a series of simply black and white photos to show the bleakness.

NY // 05 - Central Park

We didn't spend as much time as I wanted to in Central Park, maybe some other time. It was covered in snow from a few days ago, which made the area look very picturesque and beautiful. Additionally, it was a nice contrast between the nature in the park and the towering architecture on the border of the park. Either way it was still very beautiful.

I was also pretty impressed by the Apple Store bulding. It was just a glass, cuboid shaped building rising from the ground with a glowing apple logo being suspended, with an escalator in the centre of the building taking you down to the actual store. I don't know, I was just weirdly impressed by that and thought it was pretty cool.

NY // 04 - Museum Of Modern Art

On our second(ish) day we went to the Museum of Modern Art. My favourite exhibitions were definitely the illustratin/painting floors and the photography exhibition. I found the exhibition every inspiring, the composition of the photos were excellent and come of the photobooks/essays displayed were very interesting also. I enjoyed the painting exhibition because of the famous Vincent Van Gogh's and the 'Scream' paintings, it was quite a life experience to be able to see them. We spent about two hours in there and then we ended up getting a hot dog from a classic New York hot dog cart. 

I also made a montage video documenting my visit to the museum. You can check it out below:

NY // 03 - Grand Central Station

Grand Central Station was really magnificent and had lots of little shops and cafes to visit. The architecture is excellent and I really like the photos I've taken, as even though the people are out of focus it looks really effective. I miss this place.