Monday, 20 April 2015

How To Balance Studying, a Job and a Blog


If you didn’t know already, not only do I write this blog but I am also studying fashion at university and I work at MAC during the weekends, so I have a pretty busy lifestyle!
I often get people asking me how I balance between all these and still do my hobbies like tennis and going to see friends. I can tell you now it’s not easy but it is doable so here are some of my tips that I would give to anyone else in the same position. 

Be Realistic
When thinking about getting a part-time job look into realistic hours, think to yourself ‘Are you already struggling with time management?’ If so maybe look into a few hours a week, if not you could go for a couple of days a week. 
If you have a blog, having a post schedule can be pretty handy but don’t be unrealistic, don’t aim to post every day of the week, maybe once or twice. That’ll be enough to keep your readers interested in your blog.

Give yourself weekly goals
I try to set myself weekly goals, so if I have a particular project going on for uni I will set days to aim to do certain parts of it. I may even set myself a couple of hours to go through press emails, updating my blog, replying to comments or even researching up new ideas for future blog posts. 
Having goals set at the start of the week will push you to be more motivated to get stuff done, rather than just being very here and there about it. I love my little to do list from Paperchase by Rifle Paper which I have staring at me on my desk all the time. 

Have blog posts and social media scheduled
Sometimes I will have one week that is jam packed and then the next I will have a lot more time. So during my less busy week I will try write up a few blog posts and then just schedule them to post during my busier weeks. This means I don’t end up with weeks of no posts coming up on my blog as this can cause a drop in followers and views. 
You can do the same with social media, for example I use Hootsuite to schedule tweets, as sometimes when I’m doing uni work I’m trying to stay away from it so I can focus better or I’m at work so I don’t have access to social media. 

Have time for yourself
Try to not make things become a chore, make sure you still get time for yourself. Sometimes I get my best ideas when I'm at the gym or just going for a walk through town. If I give myself a couple of hours a day just to do whatever I want, sometimes that'll be just watching youtube videos, giving my self a manicure or chilling with my housemates. I find that I become much more productive when it does come down to getting on with work.

If you’ve already put yourself up to be juggling all these things, you’re probably already a very organised person. But if you aren’t so much, then hopefully following the few pointers I’ve said above will help you that little bit more to becoming better with time management.  
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Tuesday, 7 April 2015

Budget Beauty Storage





My beauty corner really needed a tidy up and some new storage, but being a student I was on a bit of a budget. I found all these storage pieces at H&M Home, they were great value and really good quality which often lacks in budget products. 
I now store all my current skincare products and perfume on the small wooden tray £9.99, it keeps them all in one place and displays all the pretty packaging instead of them being stuffed up in a tin. I pop all my cotton pads in the glass jar £6.99 which keeps them clean and means I can chuck away the packaging cotton pads come in as it's not particularly attractive. Finally I got the set of 3 storage boxes £12.99 where I now store all my makeup brushes and other beauty accessories, I like how they are all different sizes and the heights are great to display brushes. 
My beauty corner now looks a lot more refreshing and modern and I haven't had to bust my bank! I think I'll be purchasing more from H&M Home in the near future. 
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Thursday, 6 March 2014

My Nail Polish Collection & Storage





So as you can see, I have a little obsession with nail polishes. For Christmas I finally got some nice super organised storage for them all, before they were all just shoved in a old perfume gift box. 
I managed to fit 83 bottles in this rack, but thats a mix of full size and miniatures. The rack fits roughly 70 full size bottles. Its clear acrylic and is pretty sturdy, it doesn't feel like it would break easily. 

You can buy this rack from here for £19.99 on ebay. 

I've organised mine in brands, but I've thought about changing it into colours but because of different brand bottle shapes I may not be able to fit them all on.
In order from the top of the rack to the bottom I have Barry M, Illamasqua, Deborah Lippmann, Miss Sporty, Collection 2000, Maybelline, Models Own, Butter London, Topshop, Essie, No7, Nails Inc, Kiko, Rimmel and Ciate. There are also a few random nail art ones in there but I don't know what brands they are from. 
Out of all of those my favourites have to be Topshop, Essie and Ciate as they seem to stay on without chipping for the longest and are well pigmented so you only need about 2 layers to have it fully opaque on your nails.

How do you store your nail polishes? What are your favourite nail polish brands?
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