Art Break! - Seahorse Embroidery

*If you want to skip this one, I don't mind at all. This one mentions babies.

This piece is for R's baby!

I sketched it out in my art book,

then onto the material.

I went with yellow and orange as my main colours for this piece, bright and cheerful.

I almost left this as just the outline, so cute!
Filling it in.

I backed it with a circle of yellow felt, to hide the edges.

I made a little 'moz' patch for the back as a way of signing my work.

Then I trimmed it with aqua ribbon and attached it to the baby blanket.

Attach it to the blanket and done!

Verdict: R loved it! It was so lovely being able to make a one-of-a-kind piece for this lovely young family!

I also showed  it to my mother, who has seen a lot of my projects, and she really liked it! High praise!

Lavera - Volumen & Kraft (Volume & Power)  - Shampoo

This is a orange and green tea scented shampoo which smells amazing! 
This wonderful fragrance is from organic orange oil and green tea extract.

It is silicon, parabene, phthalate, microplastic, and mineral oil free. 
It is also vegan.

It cleans well and lathers well.
This is an easy favourite for me!


Price: 4/5 ($3.18 for 250mL)
Scent: 5/5
Effectiveness: 5/5

Lavera - Vitalisierendes (Vitalizing) - Duschgel (Shower Gel)

This smells amazing! Like mandarins. <3

This body wash has organic orange and sea buckthorn extracts.
It is vegan, organic, all natural fragrance, paraben-free, phthalate-free, and mineral oil-free.

It is a clear gel which cleans well, not much of a lather though, but that's ok.

It is a bit expensive, but you get a very good product that smells so good.

Price: 4/5 ($6.26 for 200mL)
Scent: 5/5
Effectiveness: 5/5

Colourpop - Crystal Balm - Aventurine - Lip Balm

This is a green-silver iridescent, orange-watermelon scented, non-drying lip balm.

The colour doesn't photograph well.

The shimmer is actually quite wearable, despite being green.


Price: 5/5 ($6.26 for 3.25g)
Scent: 5/5
Effectiveness: 5/5

Tea Advent Calendar - Day 5 - Fruchtparadies Natürlich (Fruit Paradise Natural)

I dumped it in the tea pot before I took a photo... D'oh!

This tea has apple, hibiscus, pineapple, elderberry, mango, papaya, natural aroma, peach, orange pieces, orange peel, lemon pieces, fig, and bergamot. 
Note it also has some added sugar and some rice flour because of the dried fruit.

A nice rich red colour.

The smell immediately reminds me of a herbal tea I had when I was little. 

They don't make this any more.

It tastes like diluted, less sweet cordial, but it is very nice.
When it cools down it tastes stronger, this may be a good ice tea.


Rating: 4/5

Sleek Makeup - Pout Paint - Peachy Keen

This is a light orange lip colour that claims to be highly pigmented.

This was patchy, poorly pigmented, streaky, too thin, and all round unacceptable.

I had to wipe it off and apply a different lipstick.

Does this sound like the actions of someone who had all the pigment they needed?

Price: 4/5 ($11.95 for 8mL)

Scent: 3/5 (faintly candy orange)

Effectiveness: 0/5

***** This product could be reviewed thanks to the raunchy, informative and gorgeous Miss Smut Buttons! *****

Naturals - Bio Orange - Aromatic Shampoo

This smells quite nice, with the formula including 'bio' orange oil.

It cleans well, lathers well, and does not irritate the skin.
Also, a little goes a long way.

Price: 3.5/5 ($5.60 for 150mL)
Scent: 4/5
Effectiveness: 5/5

Purple Prairie Botanicals - Organic Olive Oil Lotion - Frankincense & Myrrh

This smells AMAZING! It is herbal and spicy.

It contains olive, sunflower, coconut, frankincense, myrrh, orange, and rosewood oil.
It also has witch hazel, black willow, and rosemary extract.

I really wanted to love this, but my skin on my torso didn't agree with it. 
But you better believe it was all used up on my legs!

It absorbed well and left my legs well moisturised.

Price: 3/5 ($15.89 for 237 mL)
Scent: 5/5
Effectiveness: 3/5

HI FI Healthy Inside - Daily Fibre Supplement - Orange

I got this thinking it would be like Metamucil... IT IS NOT!

OMG! This is revolting! It is made from orange rind and by George, it damn tastes like orange rind.

The container it suggests you can add it to smoothies... this will RUIN your smoothies!

I didn't want to throw this out (that's just wasteful), so I came up with a solution by which I can still use it, but can't taste it:

Thanks ebay!

Price: 3/5 ($14.29 for 200g)
Taste: 0/5 (SO REVOLTING!)
Effectiveness: 1/5 (I shouldn't have to make it into pills)

Original Source - Daily Scrub - Blood Orange

This is the body wash I took with me to Germany, S and I both used it and it lasted for two weeks (which is pretty good). And no one said we smelled bad! :p

The scent is AMAZING!
It smells so much like oranges (but not too acidic).
It contains orange extract and limonene which probably explains a lot.
The scrub component appears to be made up of sweet almond shell powder.

Price: 4/5 ($4.99 for 250mL)
Scent: 5/5
Effectiveness: 5/5

Art break - Pumpkin Carriage for Pumpking

Whilst on my recent travels, I went to visit my friend Pumpking (it isn't as dirty as you may think, he just really like pumpkins).
So I thought I would bring a vision I had for his home-grown pumpkins to life.

To begin this little art journey, we need some air-dry clay and clay tools.

I don't have a kiln and I don't think I want one.

The centre needed to have good structural integrity while being able to support windows and a doorway. To do this, I molded the core in two parts using yogurt containers as molds.

The bottom one has the beginnings of the seats inside the carriage.

Once dry enough, they could be freed from the molds to dry fully. One advantage of air dry clay is that it shrinks as it dries, naturally pulling away from the sides of the molds.

This time I was smart enough to put down baking paper to limit the mess I made!

Then the two parts just had to be glued together.

This one looks kind of dirty atm...

Just craft glue will do.

Together!

To create the texture of the pumpkin surface, I stuck on rolled 'worms' of clay. Like a prize ham I did not take a photo of this bit. I also added a stem and began to paint it all.
I used acrylic paint in various shades of orange and green.

See the 'worms'?

Done!

Then we have a pumpkin!
Now we need the wheels and frame. For that I used floral wire. It is green and very easy to work with.
I also used a green ribbon to make the leaves.

I put craft glue on the ribbon to make it stiffer (hur hur hur) and cut it into leaf shapes.

Big ones and little ones!

I then added a little interest by painting the centres light green...

... and adding some veins.

These leaves were then glued to the frame and the whole lot glued to the pumpkin.

Final result:

On the road!

In nature!

Verdict: I believe he really appreciated it :D

Herbal Essences - None Of Your Frizzness - Shampoo

It has pictures of mandarins on the bottle, claims to be a mandarin orange fragrance but smells of peaches. D:

Why!? Why they do these things?!

Aside from being crushed and disappointed in the script, it cleaned well with a good lather.

I don't know if I can say this helped with hair frizziness, but I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, my hair did seem less frizzy.

Price: 4/5 ($4.95 for 300mL)
Scent: 2/5 (Why?!)
Effectiveness: 4/5

The Body Shop - Vitamin C Daily Moisturiser SPF 15

This was such a delight to used on a daily basis! It smells so nice! Like oranges (or orange-flavoured vitamin C tablet).

I like that is has SPF in it as well, nice to protect the face from the aging Sun's rays.

In addition to vitamin C, it also contains camu camu and sesame seed oil.

It goes on smoothly, soaks in well enough and doesn't feel too heavy.

Price: 3/5 ($29.95 for 50mL)
Scent: 5/5
Effectiveness: 5/5

Art break - Glowing ember for B

During a camping trip, B expressed a love of glowing embers and a desire to hold one. Clearly that is a terrible idea... so why not make him and glowing ember he CAN hold?

I took a flickering orange LED circuit out of a LED candle and covered the switch and battery compartment with cling film. This was to protect it from any moisture from the paint and modelling paste. 
The LED and wires on top were protected when I attached a covering made from a plastic drink bottle.

Next, I used layers of modelling paste to hide seams and make it look more coal-like. I left some of the drink bottle plastic uncovered by paste because we want some of that light to come through.

I then mixed some red-orange paint with a mattifying gel medium (embers don't have a sheen and it made the paint a bit more translucent) and placed this where light could shine through.

The next step was painting the rest of it black.

But an ember isn't so clean looking, so to improve realism I made some ash (I have a lot of incense and it creates a nice fine, predictable ash).

I stuck this ash on using more of the matt gel.

Finally, it had to be put in a suitable container for gifting. I used some aluminum foil to line the box to add some insulation XD It also emphasized the glow nicely. 

Final verdict: B loved it! He can now fulfill his wish safely.