♠The oh so girly earring organizer ♣

One of my favorite places to go to in Durham, NC is the "Scrap Exchange", which is a store that sells literally scraps donated to them by various people and companies.  The store is strongly in support of recycling and is famous for it's cheaper than normal goods.  Today, I went shopping there with my mother who is seeking some fabric to make handbags for my grandmother.  Since I had couple of projects in my mind, I also got some goodies to make one and a half earring organizers.  Earring organizers are especially important to me because I own more than 40 pairs of earrings and lose about 3 pairs a year because the lack of organization (and lose more due to the lack of backs to my hooks Q_Q).  Although it might seem that losing 3 pairs of earrings out of >40 pairs is not something to be upset about, I do feel like a part of my body is taken away whenever I lose one earing...and yes, sometimes I would even shed tears over it...(I know...;>.>)  My point is that I really needed something that could hold my earrings better.  

Well, here's the process I went through to make these holders:

One that will only hold earrings with hooks:

  

Here are the "ingredients": 

An old photo frame -- $1.5

A piece of white cross stitch Aida (?) -- $.25

Roll of shelf /contact paper -- $5-10 from Home Depot

Cardboard folder (the orange thing...can be any color)

Scissors or X-acto knife 

Pliers 

Not photoed but a glue-gun is needed

and pieces of decorative stuff...

1.  Cut the folder into the size of the photo frame's glass.

2. Cut a piece of contact paper larger than the already cut folder.

3. Turn the contact paper with glue side up and take off the backing for the glue side, then place the cardboard of the contact paper's glue side.

4. Cut the corners of the contact paper and fold the extras inward.  

This is what it will look like when the board is turned over, make sure to eliminate air bubbles.

5. Cut the Aida into the size of the cardboard.  Also cut small pieces that are the same lengths as the boarders of the Aida.  

The smaller pieces are going to function as cushioning so that the hooks will not be blocked by the cardboard backing.  

6. Hot glue the small pieces to the front of the cardboard.  

7. Assemble everything!  In the photo frame, put the Aida piece first, then the cardboard, and last the backing that came with the photo frame.  

Ehem...excuse the mess in the back.

8. Decorate!  I put a flower and a feather for a more vintage/Gothic lolita look.

Voila!

The second one that will hold studs as well.

I made an earring holder with a photo frame and wire couple years ago and it didn't work as well as I wanted it to, so I decided to change it up a bit.

This is the old one that kinda sucked.

In order to do change the old frame, I bought some fabric from the Scrap Exchange for $1.  It is a netting-type of fabric with golden stars that kind of reminds me of the black version of Star Night Theater from Angelic Pretty.  

So basically all this required me to do was some glue-gunning.  I cut a piece of the fabric larger than the frame.

The gluing process was like stretching a canvas.  I started with four dots of glue in the mid-point of each side and worked around the corners.  It helps to pull the fabric while gluing and hold for a while until the fabric stays at where you glued.  

Glue at the mid-points

Gluing the sides

Trim the extras

Here it is!

Don't forget to put some handmade goodies on the frame to make it cuter! (...I kinda ran out of hot glue...so no deco for me)

at this point you are probably wondering why I'm still posting pictures since I've probably killed some computer's loading ability already...but I'm almost done >.< )

Last but not least with awesome earrings!!

The big red price tag of EVERYTHING

I haven't had any ideas in my head to write about anything after the MCAT mainly because I wasn't really inspired after the trauma.  I'm not looking forward to finding out my score.  On the same depressing side of things, I have found some ridiculously expensive "useless crap" online hence the title of this blog post.  Below are some examples of these expensive crap (the numbers don't mean anything.)

1. A USED plastic headband -- $50

 This item is taken from here
For those who know anything about Lolita fashion, this item is from the famous Baby, the Stars Shine Bright.  I will admit that I think this headband is rather cute, but $50 spent on a piece of plastic seems awfully ridiculous.

2. The new iPhone 4G in China -- $2000 or $1200 for one that cannot be used.

Chinese people are not the richest in the world no matter how much better China's economy has gotten over the past several years.  However, assigning a price tag of $2000 (USD) for a modded iPhone, or even better, $1200 for one that is not modded therefore literally useless is outrageous.  *FYI, an iPhone 4G 32GB costs $299 USD

3. College textbooks. -- could be over $500

Picture taken from Amazon.com


College education is expensive, most private schools would cost at least $15,000 per semester.  On top of the expensive tuition and housing, students/parents also have to deal with the pricey textbooks.  Here is a list I found of the most expensive college textbooks, it is amazing how some could cost up to $1000, no wonder graduate students are poor.  (The textbook depicted above is $500 on Amazon.)

Oh So Catty~ meow :3

I have been studying for the M"CAT" lately and while that is slowly becoming a piston that pushes me to the bottom of my confidence levels I have also been doing some other things to take my mind off from it.  One is cat sitting.  I think cats are cute, although they shed all over the place they are still very lovable.  They have a rather nice life in my opinion since they are able to sleep for a very long time each day and play whenever they like.  Cats get lonely too sometimes.  Whenever I go to cat-sit, the cat (well, actually two cats, but the other one never comes out Q_Q) would rub itself against my leg and try to sit next to me so I could pet it, it really makes me think that she is really lonely watching birds and sleeping all day on her own.

Other than the Medical Cat exam and the cat sitting job, I have also been reading some Lolita fashion Live Journals that I used to be involved in perhaps 3 or 4 years ago.  It is amazing how fast things change, but the cattiness of the Lolita community never seize to amuse me.  Due to my curios nature, I could not stop myself from taking peeks at some of the most "amazing" people bashings on online communities that host them.  One of those communities is called Lolita Secrets.  It is basically a rip off of Fran Warren's PostSecret where people post their "secrets".  Although there are some decent secrets on this site, it is actually just a venting place for catty girls (or sometime referred to as female dogs) to express how much they hated another's outfit because it was cheap, or someone looked fat in their dresses.  Anyways, it is rather entertaining and will definitely give you a "great" impression of the Lolita subculture.  Please check it out! Click Here For Cat Fights

This is one of my favorites so far because...well, look at it :D  Courtesy of Lolita Secrets LJ.

Oh China....you are full of funny people

I think most Chinese people (and some other people) in the world that have access to the internet is aware that there is a 6 months long exposition currently held in Shanghai.  Well, compared to the rest of China, Shanghai is a rather small place, and as you can probably imagine cramming not only the world's largest population but also people from 190 other countries is like a kid trying to eat an elephant.  Anyhow, it is happening right now, and some Chinese people came up with rather interesting ideas to make themselves enter the expo without having to wait in the dreadfully long lines.

Like most "civilized" countries in the world, China is trying to provide better service to people with disabilities.  In the Expo, there is something called the "green line" where handicapped people can get into the Expo without having to wait in line.  So, acknowledgment the fact that you could enter the Expo easily through this "green line", a clever Chinese family of five decided to utilize it by pretending that they are handicapped.  Here are some photo evidences taken from "mop.com".

As you can see, she was just in the wheelchair...

Hummm...perhaps there are invisible crutches...

Well, apparently they are not the only people pretending to be disabled.  Due to the LARGE number of fakers, the "green line" is now officially closed.  Well done guys!  

I do think that there are fundamental problems with the Chinese society, and obviously you can see from this kind of behavior, but this is not necessarily the Chinese people's fault.  The people in China has not exactly caught up with all the Westernization and development that is taking place there, not to mention the growing gap between the poor and the rich....  >.< good luck China! 

Blueberry muffins

Those who don't enjoy the taste of blueberries are missing out on one of the most delicious fruits on planet earth (along with all the other fruits except for watermelon and papaya, the former makes you think that your bladder broke and later makes your odor receptors bleed), and for those who do, you should be delighted to hear that it is blueberry season!  Yes, blueberries have seasons, just because the store sells them doesn't mean that they should grow all the time.  Anyhow, blueberry picking is always an enjoyable activity for you and your family especially with the sky-rocketing price of blueberries in grocery stores right now.
One of my favorite thing about blueberries is that you can make them into blueberry muffins, sweet yummy little things that make you forget you are on a diet.  So, I made some muffins today with the berries picked by my mother who woke up at 6am to pick them.  Personally, I think it is still a little too early for blueberry picking, since the berries were rather sour and small, but regardless they are still great when baked with fat and sugar~

We got the recipe from the blueberry picking place and it called for:
eggs -------------- 2
sugar ------------- 1/2 cup
oil/butter ----------1/2 cup
sifted flour -------- 3 cups
baking powder --- 1and 1/2 tablespoon
salt --------------- 1 teaspoon
blueberries --------1 and 1/2 cup

The steps are fairly simple:
1. mix eggs, sugar and oil/butter.
2. slowly mix in the sifted flour baking powder and salt until everything is pretty much even.
3. put in the blueberries!
4. bake for 20-23min in 400 F degrees
5. voila!

Here are some pictures of our blueberry muffins :D

On a side note, they were not as sweet as most people would like, so adding sugar is advised to those who like their muffins to be a little sweeter.

Enjoy!

Introduction

Hooray!  I finally decided to start a blog about me...well, technically my opinions.  Until this morning, I was going to call this blog "the uglies of high fashion" and make it a blog about *ehem* ugly high fashions..duh!  However, I don't think that encompasses everything I want to blog about.  I care about things other than fashion as well, such as food, art, people, not so much politics, not so much economy, maybe a little bit of Asian culture (no, no focus on anime...this blog isn't used to make your kids emo, hipster, fan girls/boys, or "scene"<-whatever that means), perhaps a little bit of college life and finally science.  

Since the name of this post is introduction, I guess I should write something about myself here.  I'm a rather nice 21-year old currently living in a rather okay town in North Carolina.  In school, I'm a chemistry and possibly art major that spends most of my time either studying/working or having fun.  Like most people, I have all of my limbs, a head, a body and all of my organs (I think...maybe minus some of the skin cells I killed today).  You will notice that my writing is not the best thing in the world since English is not my mother tongue, but please don't be a grammar Nazi since nobody in their right mind likes Nazis.

Anyhow, that concludes my first post!  Sadly...no pictures (which is the best part of a blog).