This DIY was taken from Pinterest (and we all know how hard Pinterest DIYs can be to complete), I found out this one to be relatively easy and do-able. Although this DIY is slightly time-consuming, the product is extremely cute.

DIY: Heart-Shaped Papercips



Materials:
  • Paperclips (any color, mine are the standard silver)
  • Wire Pliers
  • Sharpies (optional)

Steps:
  1. Take your paperclip and locate the longest end (shown by arrow above)
  2. Use your pliers and clamp over the wire at the middle
    • You might have to fit the pliers in between two of the wires
  3. Using your fingers, bend the two ends of the paperclip up until the paperclip resembles a heart




I'm not strong enough, so to make the paperclips bend the whole way, I used the edge of the table to help me. 

These paperclips look adorable, and can also resemble a heart when you clip them. Although some of them may not clip easily, they are really cute to keep on your desk. Some of my paperclips also clip differently, which I found was really interesting.


Sharpies: Because my paperclips were silver, I decided to color them using Sharpies. It's harder than it seems, because your fingers get stained with the color, and within the first few minutes it's easy for the ink to rub off. It's also pretty hard to try to get the edges of the paperclip to make it entirely red, or else you'll see bits of silver poking out of the corners. 





I originally wanted to create a binder cover with various tissue paper that I had slowly accumulated over the years. But after a few weeks of desperately taking photos and recreating the same one for my Spanish binder over and over again for a blog post quickly became old, I decided on a new idea.

Minimalist Quote Binder Covers
Materials:
  • Ruler (optional)
  • Fine Point Sharpies (in multiple colors)
  • Copy paper
  • Binder
  • Quotes
  • Pencil (optional) 
I chose my Sharpies in complimentary colors, or similar ones so they would look better together. I also had some according to the design I wanted to make.
Any size paper is fine for this, but I used the classic warehouse paper. Make sure your binder has a clear plastic covering in the front so you can slip your cover in there.

Finding Quotes:
I chose four quotes; two song lyrics and two book quotes.

Song quotes: Go through your playlist, or a list of songs that you like and choose some of your favorites. I googled up their lyrics and chose a few of my favorite lines from each.
Book quotes: I went to goodreads and went through a bunch of quotes from books that I had already read previously.
Quotes from people: Try Brainyquote, Goodreads, or Great-quotes. Goodreads gives you a list of the most popular (or most liked) quotes on the site. Brainyquote and Great-quotes allow you to search through quotes at either people or topic.

It's pretty simple...

  1. Take your paper
  2. Smack your quote on it in fancy colors and fonts with your sharpies
  3. Decorate around it
  4. Done

Designing it?
I used my ruler as a tool to create cool geometric patterns. Both of mine were dealing with lines, but you can use triangles, oddly angled squares (for a more interesting effect), octagons, parabolas and anything else that you come up with.

Color Combinations that I used:
*Color names are not accurate.

Green:
Olive green, Forest Green, Light green, Lime green, Yellow


Pink / Purple:
Red, Pink, Baby pink | Purple, Light purple


Blue / Orange:
Light blue, light purple | Peach, Light Orange, Orange, Gold


Misc / Other Colors:
Silver, Black


Since I didn't have another blue color that went nicely with light blue, I chose a light purple and that definitely works. You don't have work with similar colors, you can definitely choose crazy, clashing colors. 
You can go all dark colors, or all pastel colors too. Another idea, is making your cover rainbow.  

My designs: 





Thanks guys~ 
I hope this helped you a lot. I really loved these binder covers and I hope that you'll find them cute and usable too!
I first got this lipstick a few weeks ago, and I wanted to some sort of 'first impression', but after a few days of laziness, I gave up. But now, I'm here with a review of the Elf Lipstick. 


This product is actually the first one that I have used from Elf. I had originally bought it along with a package of oil blotting sheets at Target. The color I own is in Pink Umbrellas.
Price: 2 dollars
Size: 2.8 grams



In this light, it looks slightly orange, but it's actually a really delicate pink.


It's not an extremely harsh color, but it's actually a few shades lighter than my actual skin tone. When I wear it, it doesn't bring a lot of color in my face, but washes it out a bit. 
But it does give your lips a lot of moisture
When I put it on, it doesn't bring me a lot of pigment, and it usually lasts up to two-three hours.

With Lipstick


Without Lipstick


The lipstick itself has a slightly minty smell, and it has a really nice application. But I tend to use the sides of the stick instead of the top, so sometimes the lipstick will get onto the edges of the lipstick tube. 
It does twist up, and you have to be careful with the clear lid in case you accidentally stick it onto the actual lipstick or get it stained. 

I have a best friend who also has a blog. A few days ago, we were emailing each other and we came up with 10 questions we would answer to our viewers as a little 'about me' kind of thing.
If I ever mention my best friends in future posts, I'll post likely reference them as 'sisters', but I don't have any sisters that I am biologically related to.


Why do I have a blog? 
I have a blog to express myself. It's a way to occupy some time, vent emotions and lets me talk about what I like to do. Hopefully I can get feedback from you guys and improve myself. It's also kinda of like an album or a diary. It lets me reference to my past experiences and thoughts and also lets me help you guys simultaneously. The goal I'm trying to reach is to have a blog where you guys can help me and I can help you guys. If there are any suggestions, you guys can just pop those onto the comments area and I'll update my blog post.

What makes people beautiful?
The word beautiful is very opinion based. The statement 'beauty is in the eye of it's beholder' is absolutely true, but that still doesn't stop the public from making it clear their standards of modern 'beauty'. My suggestion is to be someone you're comfortable being, and someone you think is beautiful. It's okay if you change yourself because of society, it's okay if people don't like you better. It's okay. As long as you're confident and happy in yourself, you're set.

What are my dreams?
For the future, I hope to go into art and become an influential artist. I really want to help other people by brightening their day, because I feel that it's really important for people to be happy. I also want to write books and be a person with stories and experiences to share to everyone. A lot of my happiness depends on other people's happiness, and I find it extremely hard to be satisfied or pleased if someone around me isn't. Therefore, a lot of my dreams is to make other people happy with themselves for not only their emotional welfare but for mine too.

Who are your best friends? 
My best friends are Joey, Jaylene, Ira and Sarah. Their last names will be kept in secret for privacy issues. I do have other friends, if you were wondering, a bunch of guy best friends, which will pop up from time to time.

How do I stay happy?
Do what you want to do. There will be many limitations in your life, and you will have to find ways to think out of the box and doge them. It won't be easy, but in order to achieve happiness you need to be creative, you can't let yourself be blocked by these barriers.
Happiness for me comes from friends. I have my best friends, a group of people who I hang out with and a lot of my guy friends whom I love a lot for their silly antics and ability to loosen up my tension. I also love to write on my blog and draw in my sketch book. Find smaller things, it doesn't have to be going to Disneyland or donating thousands to charity. Little things add up and they can end up meaning a lot.
What is love?
I have to admit, I am one of those people who uses love everywhere. After using a lot, the word 'love' slowly loses it's meaning to me, but that doesn't mean that love isn't important to me. I just have many shallow loves. I will love a lot of things, but I won't love them deeply.
Love is when you care to an extreme point. Where all your emotions come together to form one thing. When you can do everything for them out of genuine care. Love is like one of the highest forms of 'like' or 'adore'.

What are the top 5 most important things to keep in your mind?
There is a difference between being happy about yourself and happy with your life. Being happy with yourself is more important than being happy with your life. If you're rich, but you don't do good, it won't matter if you're rich or not because it's how you feel about yourself that matters.
Uniqueness is important. It makes you stand out and makes you noticeable. Not only can that bring you more friends, but also more opportunities.
Do what you love and do it well. Or more importantly, do things well. It's a plus one if do what you love, because it gives you self-confidence and more pride if you do something you love well. Do things well and you will feel better about yourself for putting in hard work.

What are your fears or pet peeves?
I am afraid of spiders, the dark and failure. Spiders are just unnatural, and so are squids. Actually anything with more than 8 legs pretty much freak me out.
The dark is mysterious. It's ominous and anything can come out of it, like a serial killer, a rapist, a spider, or even a unicorn shooting out rainbows from it's horn. (Let's be real guys. If you saw something like that you'd run too).
Failure is my biggest fear. I hate disappointing people. It makes me feel like I have failed them and I have done something terribly wrong. Ever since day one, I've been telling myself to do the right thing. Be the perfect daughter, girlfriend, best friend and sister. Turn in my homework, write a book, produce oil paintings. Be someone people would be proud to call a friend, a daughter, a girlfriend.

As for pet peeves, I hate it when people are disrespectful to anyone. I don't like it when people are disrespectful to their elders. I don't like it when elders are disrespectful to the children.
I also don't like creaky hole punchers. (Shudders)

What are your top 5 favorites?
Books. Sketch paper. The smell of oil paints. My friends. And tape.

Tape is a must.

What kind of music do you listen to?
I'm going to link a playlist here. I usually label myself as an alternative listener, but I do listen to dubstep too and a lot of other things. My Spotify username is waterbluewings and feel free to explore through my playlists!


The Blood of Olympus by Rick Riordan
5 stars

Young Adult Fantasy
Time it took to finish: 5 hours (ish)
Price: $11.35 (US) [Amazon Price] 
Length: 502 pages
This is the grand finale of The Heroes of Olympus series, which has been going on for roughly 4-5 years now. This book also may possibly the last time we get to read about Percy Jackson and his quests, because after this would be Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard which will be on Norse Mythology. 
For some reason, this book took me longer than I anticipated. I expected myself to finish this book within the first two days, but I received it on Thursday and I didn't complete it until Saturday night. Even though, it was perfectly written, and (thank goodness) gave all of our favorite characters a very happy ending (depending on how you see it). 
It starts differently than most of the other books: smack dab in the middle of their quest. Then it goes on as usual, different skirmishes that all lead up to the big face-off in which Percy does something so ridiculously stupid due to either his naivety or child-like nature. 
The large fight in the end gave me so many feels. There is just something about reading your favorite character fight for possibly the last time, with a bunch of other characters that you love so so so so so much. It just hits right there in your chest. 
There are some romantic action going on the story and a bunch of cuteness too (the ending is so great). And it's so filled with feels it's going to make you explode.
It's romantic. It's funny. It's action packed. It's everything I would've wanted in a finale.

[Spoiler]
Jason has glasses. Just look closely at the cover.
(Captain speaking) The Caleo ship has successfully sailed.




Anyone else excited for the release of the Blood of Olympus today? It's the 5th and installment in Rick Riordan's The Heroes of Olympus series.
I had pre-ordered it off of Amazon in anticipation of the price rising after it comes out. But sadly, it doesn't, and stays at it's $11.35. But that's good news for you if you haven't bought it yet. I am not sure how long it's going to stay at this reduced price, but original price is $20 so I snatched it up while it was cheaper.

I'm such a huge fan of Percy Jackson and I am so excited for this last book! I'm not sure what to say and feel and it's just all so overwhelming that this series has come to an end. I think I will do some sort of cover-reaction/book-review/spoiler-alert huge post for The Blood of Olympus.

I'm anticipating tears and a lot of bloodshed in this last book, so a box of tissues is a must. I'll be receiving mine tomorrow (I ain't paying extra for one-day shipping) and I'll probably read the entire book in one sitting.


Future possible posts:

Elf Jumbo Lipgloss Stick Review
The Journey of a Struggling Writer
Halloween Costume
How to use Painter's Tape/Washi Tape

Bye!

The Maze Runner by James Dashner
4.5 stars
Young Adult Post-Apocalyptic
Time It Took to Finish: 5 hours (in total over a span of 2 days)
Price: $9.99 (US) [paperback] [b&n]
Length: 376 pages

Thomas has every trait of a honorable character. It was hard to find a single flawed trait in him: he was heroic, nice, intelligent, curious and loyal. Although he did often break the rules, he was an extremely likable character. 
What I like about this book is that the idea is new to me. It's a gigantic maze, and teenage boys have been in there for years. They don't know how or why it works, but they live. They find ways to survive and endure through it. It's kind of similar to Hunger Games in a way, but the character doesn't know why it happens, they just know that it does. It leads you on, making you want to know more and more and more about how the Maze works. 
One of the biggest points about this book is that it clears things up for the reader. Not to the point where they understand everything, but everything to be able to understand Thomas's situation. I've read dystopian, science fiction and time traveling books where they don't explain the problem well enough which makes the reader confused and not eager to continue reading. 
This book is action packed all throughout. There is a bit of a long wait for the girl, but overall, the Maze Runner was really good. 

The movie for The Maze Runner is Out!

Summary: [c]
If you ain’t scared, you ain’t human.
When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his name. He’s surrounded by strangers—boys whose memories are also gone.
Nice to meet ya, shank. Welcome to the Glade.
Outside the towering stone walls that surround the Glade is a limitless, ever-changing maze. It’s the only way out—and no one’s ever made it through alive.
Everything is going to change.
Then a girl arrives. The first girl ever. And the message she delivers is terrifying.
Remember. Survive. Run.

 [pc]



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