How to take the perfect selfie

Selfie type 1:

Find the best light in the house and stand so you are facing it, the best selfie is taken slightly above your head, facing slightly downwards. If you are using apple technology 'turn the camera around' and shoot!

Selfie type 2:

This is my favourite trick! Take your apple device and place it somewhere with good light, facing you. Start filming and literally pose, don't stop. Stand in each pose for about 5-7 seconds. When you've finished 'posing' stop the video and go to 'photos', you need to then go to photos and go to the video. Play it and screenshot any poses that you love, if you find that difficult pause the video before you screenshot. If you don't know to screenshot you need to press the power button and the home button at the same time. This comes in useful for photos where you're jumping midair like this one:

Edit every picture that you are satisfied with - my favourites are Instagram, insta-effect, iPhoto, touch colour, pixlr express, waterlogged and aftershape. The best photography app for selfie type 1 is definitely retrica - it's very popular with teens because there's no 'after-editing' because the effect is already there. It's a really easy app to work with. 

Waterlogue costs £1.99 and is brilliant! It makes photos look like paintings, it's beautiful on the right photo!

Pixlr express has loads of different effects and is the most time consuming because the photo completely 'handmade'. It's very professional and completely free!

iPhoto is brilliant for cropping and enhancing photos, it's not such a good effect program. It's good for brightening, sharpening, shadows and contrasting - it's good for the essentials and I would NEVER delete, it handy and I use it to edit most of my photos before they go onto effects.

Aftershape is for after you've added the effects, I wouldn't use it on every photo but it's good for littl effects in the blog such as the profile pic.

I edit practically every photo on Instagram, it's my diary. I put about 3 photos on everyday, it's great everyday editing software! It's good for everyday:

And professional:

Jelly x

New Look haul + Mother's Day 2014

Hello everyone!

I apologise, I havnt posted in about a week, I'm really sorry - I've been so busy I just haven't had time!

As we all know, yesterday was Mothering Sunday and I spent it wit my Mum and my Nan. We went to Bury St Edmunds and had a lot of fun!

First we went shopping and as I have my holiday in 7 and a half weeks we decided to get me some new beach clothes! It took us quite a while to find anything that I liked but when we went to New Look everything changed! I found myself pulling multiple items off the racks until I had loads of shorts, crop tops, bikinis, dresses and shawls in my hands as well as huge sunglasses! Obviously I didn't buy everything but I did buy quite a lot!

This is a beautiful black bikini with white elephants on, well - I think it's elephants. Put has two layers of frills on the top of the bikini top and a strap that goes around the neck.

This is another really cute bikini that I bought, they are electric blue and there is a hole in the middle of the bikini top which I think looks really cute! It also has a strap which goes round the back of the neck. There was also an orange/Coral one exactly the same but we decided to leave it for another day.

These shorts are absoloutely gorgeous! Thee colour fades in the middle of each short (?) and there is also a beautiful lace type pattern on either side that I thought was just beautiful!

I fell in love with this shawl as soon as I saw it. It has arms that go about 1/4 of the way down my arm and the shawl itself reaches just above my thigh, maybe a bit lower. It has beautiful red and pink roses on it - it's a sheer kind of black and it feels so beautiful. It's light - very light and it just floats, it's beautiful!

I also loved this as soon as I saw it!  It's a crop top and it hangs just over my belly button. It's a bright white (I don't actually own that many white clothes!) and it has tiny little flowers on the flowers on the top of the top.

This dress is gorgeous! It's sleeveless, plain black and it almost reaches the floor! It looks stunning if I do say so myself and, again, it feels weightless and soft on my skin. It's the sort of dress you never want to take off!

In total, it cost me (my mum, lol!) £72.34! That's quite a lot of money! But it was worth it, don't you think?

After we had been shopping we decided to let my nan in on the surprise, the surprise being that we going to Harriet's Cafe Tearooms for afternoon tea! It really was as fun as it sounds!

This is the stand that we had, on the bottom there are sandwiches: salmon, cucumber and cheese and chicken. My favourite was the chicken, I didn't like the salmon - raw fish, eurgh! On the second layer there were scones with clotted cream and jam. As I don't like cream, I just had the jam and they were lovely! On the top layer was our deserts: chocolate cheesecake, lemon cheesecake, an orange profiterole, a strawberry, bitter chocolate tart and a fruit tart.

These are my mum's deserts - fruit tart and lemon cheesecake. I tried the lemon cheesecake and it was absoloutely delicious!

These are the cakes I made my mum for Mother's Day, they are chocolate cupcakes with marshmallows! 

Ingredients:

For the cakes:

100g self raising flour

20g cocoa powder (Cadbury bournville is best)

140g caster sugar

40g unsalted butter

120ml whole milk

1 egg

12-hole cupake tray, lines with paper cases

For the buttercream:

50g dark chocolate

100g unsalted butter

200g icing sugar

BBC good food:

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 170C(325F)Gas 3
2. Out the flour ,cocoa powder,sugar and butter in a free standing electric mixer with paddle attachment (or use a handheld electric whisk)and beat on a slow speed until you get a sandy and everything is combined.
3. Whisk the milk and egg together in a jug ,then slowly pour about half into the flour mixture,beat to combine and turn the mixer up to high speed (scrape any unmixed ingredients from the side of the bowl with a rubber spatula).Continue mixing for a couple more minutes until the mixture is smooth.Do not over mix.
4. Spoon the mixture into the paper cases until two-thirds full and bake in a preheated oven for 20-25 minutes,or until the sponge bounces back when touched.A skewer inserted in the center should come out clean.Leave the cupcakes to coll slightly in the tray before turning out onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely.
5. when the cupcakes are cooled,spread the frosting* on with a pallet knife , or squeeze in with a piping bag and decorate with chocolate vermicelli or silver balls. Vanilla and Cream cheese frosting also works well if your not a chocolate lover

*Method (buttercream):

1. Melt the chocolate in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water. (Do not allow the base of the bowl to touch the surface of the water.) Allow to cool until the chocolate no longer feels hot to the touch.
2. Beat the butter in a bowl until soft, then gradually beat in the icing sugar. Add the vanilla extract and beat again.
3. Fold in the melted chocolate until completely incorporated (add a few drops of milk if the mixture is a little stiff).
4. This icing can be kept in the fridge for a few days. Bring to room temperature and beat again until smooth before icing your cake.
   
   
   
   

I really hope you enjoyed this - how was your Mother's Day? Leave a link to any blogposts below in the comments section, I look at every one!

Jelly x

Mother's Day gift ideas

Hey everyone!

Mother's Day is coming up so I thought I would give you some advice about buying gifts for your mum or nan or aunty, great grandma or sister!

Yankee candles are always a huge hit with mums, I think the rose one is lovely - it reminds me of my childhood - I also think it would look good in a Nan's house, I just feel like rose is a nan thing, don't you? All of the Yankee candle smells are absoloutely wonderful and I definitely reccomend them to anyone. The one downside is the fact that they are a little pricey, but they're easy to find, they're pretty much everywhere!

Another big one with mums is pandora beads, above are a few of my favourites from the Mother's Day collection. Again, they do happen to be quite expensive but I do think that they're worth it! The beads range from about £15 - £65.  I think they are all beautiful but not much use without the bracelet so if she doesn't have the bracelet I would reccomend just getting that.

Every mum loves a designer lipstick and I think this one ^ is PERFECT for mums! It's a little bit pricey but it's absoloutely gorgeous! Yves Saint Lauren is a designer and the lipsticks feel, smell and look beautiful! Your mum just has to appreciate it! 

Hope this gave you some inspiration, but to be honest it doesn't have to be expensive, buy dupes if you want - it's the thought that counts!

Jelly x

How to: messy bun

1) start by brushing your hair into a very high pony tail and tie it with an ordinary hair band/bobble

2) Get the ponytail and lightly twist it and wrap it around the bobble. Secure that with a bobble - you don't have to be neat with it

3) Your hair should be very tight and not messy at all at this point so what your going to do is pull the front section and sides and back to give it a bit more volume. 

4) pull out tiny little sections right above the ears to shape your face

5) Pin down any flyaways and shape it using the pins so that it's in the middle

6) Pull at the bun so that it's bigger and more messy

7) Add a decoration if you want e.g. A Dougnut decoration

Hope you enjoyed this post! I used Zoella's tutorial to achieve this look!

Jelly x