Nails

Amazing what you can do when your bored and ill. 

...after all, all he did was string together a lot of old well-known quotations.

I often become obsessed with certain quotes, or meaningful phrases and I like to collect them- write them down so I can remember them and who said it. 
Sometimes they sum up what you want to say in something short, sweet and to the point. Or they can inspire you and be a code to live by, either way I'm going to write down a couple i've found and fallen in love with and some that other people have shared with me. 


- 'Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters.' - Goya


- 'Hard times arouse an instinctive desire for authenticity'


- 'Humanities greatest desire is to belong and connect'


- 'Life is all about risks and it requires you to jump. Don't be that person that looks back and wonders what they could have had. No one waits forever' 


- 'Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire' - Dan Brown


 - 'The earth laughs in flowers'


- 'In order to succeed, your desire should be greater than your fear of failure'


- 'All men by nature desire knowledge'


- 'Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained' - William Blake


- 'The hottest love has the coldest end' - Socrates 


- ' Desire of having is the sin of covetousness' - William Shakespeare


- 'You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to loose sight of the shore' - Christopher Columbus. 


- 'The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks' -Tennessee Williams


- 'The importance of being able to sacrifice all that you are for what you could be'


- 'My bright is too slight to hold back all my dark' 


- 'Ambition is not what a man would do, but what a man does, for ambition without action is fantasy.'- Bryant H. McGill


- 'It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all' - William Thackeray 

Mast Cell Activation Syndrome

So after six years I finally found out what has been affecting my life for so long. 

I honestly after so long didn't think we'd ever really know what it was, why i had these mysterious chronic pains, why my immune system had become weaker and weaker and why it had affected my life for so long. But my mum got a call from my doctor who was so excited that she could finally give me a diagnosis and that treatment could commence. 

When my mum came to tell me i could tell how deflated she was, she looked upset- and this wasn't because it was incredibly bad news but that it can't be cured only managed. 

It must be incredibly hard for her, she has been the constant throughout the 6 years taking me to every single one of my appointments, staying overnight in hospital when i had tests or was ill. She has been like my personal assistant telling school to back off and leave me alone when their constant berating took it's toll on me. 

I think the last year has most definitely been the worst for me, Clinical depression, constant chest and throat infections, loosing all interest in everything around me. It was the worst for my parents because they had to watch this happen but couldn't do anything about it. I think i changed so much in 2011, i lost so much and had to adapt and rebuild everything. This is not to say that it's complete, i'm still having to work hard on a lot of things that most people around me don't understand and probably never will. I lost a lot of friends this way but that has made the ones that stuck by me all the more special to me. 

I can obviously talk about this subject for pages, it's been my life for 6 years theres a lot to say on the subject. But the point of this is to be able to say what i finally have instead of never knowing what to say. 

So I have Mast cell activation syndrome. From what i know about it which isn't much as not much is known about it- it's very rare and they don't know how people get it or develop it. But it causes problems with the immune system weakening it which in turn explains why i am constantly ill and why i now have chronic fatigue. But it can be managed with anti-histamine, yearly monitoring, help from the immunologist and a special diet and exercise plan that will supposedly give me more energy which is what i'm severely lacking in at the moment. 

I don't really know what my feelings about this are yet. 

At work i've helped out in pretty much everything; press, sales, shop management etc. But I've never really had the time to go downstairs and learn a bit more about how they make jewellery. I love watching them and finally last week Trish started teaching me the basics. 

 This is the first thing i made before anyone really taught me anything they were just bits lying around that i used jump rings to attach together and i just enjoyed putting it all together.
The earrings below were the first things i made using memory wire for the oval shape, and gimping to add the beads. This is basically when you put the bead on a bit of metal and make a loop at the end. Once you get used to it you can make it really quickly and get really into perfecting it.

The other two pairs of earrings are just more practice to try and perfect my gimping and i got to play around with the shapes and perfect it. It's actually really rewarding and you don't realise how much goes into making something like this. Every little hoop is made or added and everything has to be cut and shaped just right. 

Hopefully i'll be able to move on to bigger and more complicated things such as soldering and creating some of the bigger pieces that Erickson Beamon are known for. 

The wound is king and how.

I finally got my tattoo last week, i've been meaning to get it for months. There is always that moment when you decide to get it done that day that you get a little bit apprehensive, and i guess that's why i never went to get it on my own. 
Especially as when i got my first tattoo i was only 16 and got a little bit freaked out as to if i'd done something i really wanted. But this time i walked out after having it done completely happy, and although it hurt like a motherfucker i was really pleased with it. 
So it was an early birthday present to myself and i'd been wanting this phrase for ages as i love the meaning behind it and can really relate to it. I went through a lot of shit and lost my way quite a few times, and it's just a reminder to not let my vision become obscured by those things around us that seem important at the time but that ultimately aren't. 

These are from when i had just had it done. It reads 'Visions clipped by wings and crowns'

Ruven Afanador

I have somewhat of an obsession with this photographer. I just love his work, the way he creates these stories in his pictures, almost fairytale-esque. 
Originally from columbia he is now based in new-york he does everything from fashion editorials, advertisement to iconic portraits. He really is worth checking out and has inspired me with pieces i did for my A level art last year. Here are some examples.. (everything was done by myself;setting, dress, hair, make-up, photography and editing) I'm a bit of a control freak and like to do it all. 

Link to check him out-http://www.art-dept.com/artists/afanador/ 

Birthday in just over a week.

As I really was not paying attention to the date, I only just realised that it's my birthday a week on thursday. 

It's not exactly an interesting age to be turning, especially after the big 1-8. So i'm not really expecting anything very exiting, below is more of a wish list of things i want atm. 

The likely-hood of me getting any of these isn't huge, but everyone can dream and hope. 

(think i'm going to get the tattoo this week, it'll be my second one)