Posts Tagged ‘How To Tutorials’

26
Nov
2010

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Ever wanted princess hair like them Disney princesses? Well, here’s my method on how to get princess-like hair.

Messy Bun Hair Tutorial

1) Gather your hair into a high ponytail
First you’ll need to tie your hair in a secure ponytail at the top of your head. The higher the better, because you want your princess bun to be seen. Adjust until desired and when you’re satisfied with the position of your hair, squeeze a generous amount of styling mousse into your palm and massage it into the loose ends of your pony tail.

Messy Bun Hair Tutorial

2) Back comb the pony tail
With a comb, comb the ponytail upwards against gravity. The idea is to add as much volume to the normally slick ponytail and give it that little bit of messy flyaway effect. Remember to backcomb the entire ponytail.

Messy Bun How to Tutorial

3) Twist hair into a loose bun
Once you’re happy with how much volume has been added to your hair via the backcomb, it’s time to get styling! Twist the backcombed ponytail in one direction around the rubber band into a loose bun at the top of your head. Dont worry if the bun is a little messy, in fact, that’s what we should be aiming for. Once all the ends of your ponytail has been tucked into your bun, firmly secure the messy bun with another rubber band.

Messy Hair Bun Tutorial

4) Accessorise your hair bun
Here comes the easy part. Once you’ve got your bun in place, to fully fall into the role of a princess, accessorise with your prettiest and sparkliest hair accessory. Armed with your best pretty, you’re ready to meet your prince charming. Sidekicks are optional when you find him, but I decided to bring my darling hamster as my trusty sidekick.

Yes inspired by Rapunzel’s magical hair with super powers, I decided to come up with my own magical hair style. My hair style might not be able to pack a punch or do superhuman stuff like Rapunzel’s, but it’ll still win me some awesome prizes from the magical hair contest. Stylish hair can make or break an outfit, but Disney’s Rapunzel has hair that does so much more.

Walt Disney Pictures presents RAPUNZEL: A TANGLED TALE, one of the most hilarious, hair-raising tales ever told. When the kingdom’s most wanted—and most charming—bandit Flynn Rider (voice of Zachary Levi) hides out in a mysterious tower, he’s taken hostage by Rapunzel (voice of Mandy Moore), a beautiful and feisty tower-bound teen with 70 feet of magical, golden hair. Flynn’s curious captor, who’s looking for her ticket out of the tower where she’s been locked away for years, strikes a deal with the handsome thief and the unlikely duo sets off on an action-packed escapade, complete with a super-cop horse, an over-protective chameleon and a gruff gang of pub thugs. In theaters this holiday season in Disney Digital 3D™, RAPUNZEL is a story of adventure, heart, humor and hair—lots of hair.

You know how Disney movies are: they’re warm, funny, touching and a tear-jerker all at the same time. It’s hard not to fall in love with these characters from Rapunzel A Tangled Tale the first few minutes you meet them on screen. I’m not going to spoil the movie for you, but the two animal sidekicks, Maximus the horse and Pascal the chameleon, are ones you have got to watch out for. You can get a glimpse of the other characters on Disney’s official homepage.

Rapunzel Movie Stills

Full of hilarious moments, swash-buckling action scenes and moments that tug at your heart strings, Rapunzel A Tangled Tale is a MUST-WATCH this 2010. It’ll keep your eyes glued to the screen at all times. The animation is beautiful, songs are lovely marks and I would expect nothing less of Walt Disney Pictures’ 50th full-length animated feature.

Although Rapunzel A Tangled Tale in 3D was released 25 November 2010 and the non-3D film will only be out 2 December 2010 islandwide, I’m going to watch the 3D one again and this time I’m going with princess hair.

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1
Jun
2010

With the beginning of a new month, I can safely tell you that beginnings are just as difficult as endings. A beginning always holds uncertainty; a beginning is always full of pebbles along the way; a beginning is always where you start mucking about before you finally find what works for you. As much as you always plan for something, the unexpected never fails to happen and it’s these unexpected surprises that you have to deal with that make a simple beginning challenging yet so very exciting.

It is with the beginning of dweam.com as a Singapore Beauty Blog that I say goodbye to my previous direction. It is today I welcome a new beauty direction in my blog.

I’ve always toyed with the idea of starting a full fledged beauty blog. I can tell you it was difficult to do so. The beginning is always tough. I never thought that I was qualified to do so despite spending all my years in University on stage dancing; never thought that all the time I spent in front of the camera and on the runway was enough for me to tell anyone how to do their makeup. In fact, why would they listen to an ugly duckling like me?


Can you guess which one is me? Hahaha. Fresh faced into Uni. Taken when I was in Year 1 in 2004.

But maybe it was really when I finally ventured into the pageantry circuit and had to “fend for myself” that I finally got the courage to start. Afterall it was then that I had the most “drastic” changes in terms of how I looked. Hahaha. No, it was not plastic, but merely a refining of the basic techniques I already had. With this experience in dance, modeling and pageantry, yes, I’ve decided to give myself the go ahead. That’s not to say, up to this point, my beauty tutorials, makeup reviews and DIYs come from professional backgrounds. They are simply genuine reflections of what I do, use, experience and feel for the products on a regular basis.


Fast forward 4 years later, 2008.

However, beauty, to me, is not merely about who has the biggest eyes, the fullest lips, using the best makeup or having the most extensive number of products. I have to say that coming from a Psychology background (oh yes, I’m trained in Psychology. Let me read your mind now) that beauty to me is really just a mental state. I fully believe that we can and all should dream of the beautiful to be truly outstanding. My one month in the Philippines representing Singapore as Miss Earth also taught me that exact same thing. It wasn’t the girl who had the flashiest clothes, biggest eyes or the best hair that eventually won the crown. It was the girl who could compose herself well in times of duress that finally got crowned Queen. It was her who could smile despite not having things go her way. It was her who was a friend to all. Despite landing only Top 16, I have to admit, I learnt a lot during that trip to last me a lifetime.

Being beautiful is an art, but more importantly, being beautiful is a holistic development. As I share with you what makes me beautiful outside and in through my DIYs, reviews, tutorials, outfit posts, the not-so-newly conceived SneakerSunday and the occasional lifestyle posts, I hope new readers and potential followers will take my hand (albeit a virtual one) and join me in my beauty journey. For those who have been following me for a long time, I thank you for your unfailing support. There are so many people I have to thank, because without them dweam.com would not be where it is now. But, I will leave that for another day.

As an ending note, my dream for this blog is to inspire you, my reader, to become more beautiful inside and out as you explore uncharted territories with me, in this new chapter of dweam.


2010. Photo credits: Brad Lau

This is me. This is dweam now.

Not everyone can be a beauty queen, but everyone can be beautiful.

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23
May
2010

Think of sneakers and laces are probably the first things that come to your mind. Sneakers and laces are like breakfast and pancakes; you can’t exactly have one without the other. But there are probably 257941134 ways to tie your laces and each can make your sneaker look different. It’s rather amazing what laces can do for your sneakers. So, how do you tie your shoe laces? Here’s how I usually do mine.

Some people like to leave a big floppy bow at the top of their sneakers but I prefer to criss-cross my laces and tuck them inside my shoe so clumsy ol’ me never ever runs the risk of tripping over my own laces. That being said, I also never ever have to undo my laces whenever I put my shoes on. I simply slip my foot into my sneaker! Hooray for laziness!

Another variation to the lazy girl no untying method is doing your laces straight across. How cool is that! I’ve always seen these laces on the awesome sneakers of skater girls and boys.

But guess what, if you’re a big fan of having your laces straight across, I’m about to show you how to make your cool laces even cooler in this week’s Sneaker Sunday post. Sneakers are meant to be cool, and with the right laces, you can make them so chilly it’s almost like the North Pole. Lol. Pardon the cold joke. HAHAHAHA.

All you need to jazz up your sneakers is a shoelace of your favourite colour. But if you are like me and couldn’t get the colour you wanted, I opted for a gold ribbon measuring the same length as that of your original shoe lace.

Start at the lace nearest to your ankle. Push the coloured lace under the first lace and then bring it over the second one. At the third lace, go over again and under the fourth shoelace. See the pattern yet? Good. You want to alternate and weave the coloured lace over and under the original lace on the shoe. Keep the weave as straight as possible.

When you reach the last lace on your shoe, fold the decorative lace over the bottom lace and slip it under the shoelace above it. Repeat the weave by going over and under again next to the weave you already did previously.

It takes a little patience to finish the entire grid but keep going over and under the laces and when you finally finish weaving the entire grid, tuck the loose end into the shoe and viola, your laces are now super cool awesome laces. Here’s how your regular laces should look like after.

What do you think?

If jazzing up the laces aren’t enough for you, you have to check out what Violet did to make her shoes stand out! They are amazing!

We have super sneakers this Sunday! Happy Sneaker Sunday everyone!

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4
May
2010

Mother’s Day is less than a week away! Have you gotten your Mother’s Day presents yet? If you haven’t, here is an idea for your gift. If your Mum loves flowers or if she loves chocolates, why not get her the best of both worlds and make her…. CHOCOLATE FLOWERS!

Our Mums have put in lots of blood, tears and sweat to raise and provide for us. So instead of buying her a present off the shelf, why not take a little time and effort to make her a present? Our mums surely deserve it.

Here’s a simple step-by-step guide to showing you how to make chocolate flowers for mum, with love:

Things you need:
- satay sticks
- chocolate Ferrero Rocher
- ribbons (both cloth and plastic ones)
- scotch tape
- cling wrap
- tissue wrapping paper

Step 1: Pierce the satay stick till midway through the Ferrero Rocher. You want to make sure the satay stick makes a clean stab yet doesn’t entirely go through the chocolate. We wouldn’t want to spoil a pretty flower would we?

Step 2: To keep the chocolate fresh, wrap a large square piece of clingwrap around the chocolate and secure the ends around the satay stick with scotch tape.

Step 3: Now we move on to making the petals of the flower. Fold a 20cm length of plastic ribbon in half.

Step 4: Leaving a margin of about 2.5cm (1 inch) from where the two ribbon ends meet, use a sharp scissors and cut lengthwise. Each cut should be approximately 5mm away from the other.

When you fan the strips out, they should look something like this.

Step 5: We will need two of these ribbon petals. Wrap them one on top of the other around the satay stick and again secure with scotch tape. This makes for a fuller flower with many lovely petals.

Your chocolate is now complete! YAY! Decide how big you want your bouquet to be and make as many stalks as it takes to fill up your bouquet.

Step 6: We’re going to individually wrap each chocolate flower before we put them all together in a larger bouquet. Fold your tissue in half so the ends don’t match.

Step 7: Carefully place your chocolate flower in the middle of your tissue wrap.

Step 8: Fold the right corner of the tissue towards the middle.

Step 9: Now fold the left one over the right.

Step 10: Finish off the wrapping by tying a secure ribbon at the base of the flower.

When you’re done with one flower, keep going until you’ve got the desired number of flowers. Bunch them together, wrap with pretty paper and you’re good to go!

When next Sunday comes around, present them to mum with a big hug and kiss, and watch her gush over them. I promise she won’t bear to eat these beautiful chocolate flowers, but you gotta make her really. These flowers don’t last forever, but the thought of you working hard to make these chocolate Rocher flowers specially for her, will.

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2
May
2010

This week in honour of taking good care of our poor worn out feet, Violet and I have decided to do posts on home foot care. Most of the time, we tend to overlook the little hardworkers that we squeeze in pretty pumps and staggeringly high stilettos. Because Sneaker Sunday is about looking good without crippling foot pain, what better way to get rid of foot pain than to DIY a home foot spa. I really like to treat my feet to a good DIY foot spa every now and then because I know I can count on them to take me places. I’m sure your feet do the same for you too.

Remember, feet are friends, not food the forgotten.

So why not indulge your friends a little as a way of saying thank you? I promise they will thank you and show you some fancy footwork afterwards. No no, I’m not talking about any expensive foot treatment or treatments that require live fish. This blog is about going green remember? We do it DIY style here.

To pamper your feet, here’s how you do it:
1) Soak it. Prepare your spa by filling a small basin with warm water. You can add in one or two drops of essential oils, bath salts or even soap to really pamper your feet. When that’s ready, put your feet in and relax for about 10 to 15 minutes.
2) Scrub it. It’s time to scrub the dead skin and hard calluses off your feet because the skin has now softened thanks to the soaking. I use a foot file or foot scrubber for the deed and target stubborn areas like the heels and balls of my feet. Remember be gentle while scrubbing because it’s your foot you’re working on, not a piece of wood.
3) Moisturise it. Once your feet is all smooth and dead skin free, moisturise your feet with your favourite foot cream and throw in a little foot massage too. Oohhh… Ahhhh.. Tickly.
4) Nail it. I like to paint my nails at the end of it all. Because to top it off, other than having nice soft feet, pretty nails just completes the entire foot pampering session. I’m quite predictable with my pedicures. I usually go for red nail polish or a classic french pedicure (pictured).

Not sure how to do a pedicure? Violet’s latest Sneaker Sunday post shows you how to do one with cute nail art. Combine both my post and hers and you’re on your way to having happier feet for the entire week!

Sunday’s still not over yet, so break out your nail polishes and start your Sneaker Sunday right this instant!

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17
Mar
2010

Sometimes when we’re swamped with work and don’t have the luxury of indulging in a nice long bath, hair can get oily if not washed for several days. Ive heard that if you don’t shower for 30 days your hair/scalp will start to clean itself. I don’t really know how that works and don’t think anyone would be willing to wait that long to find out if this was true. Haha.

A easier, and much quicker, alternative to keeping your hair matt and oil-free during busy periods is to apply baby powder at the roots of your hair. The powder works to absorb the excess oil from your scalp to keep your hair baby clean!

Dust an appropriate amount on your scalp at the roots, massage gently and then, shake the remaining powder off.

If you choose to use a scented baby powder, not only does your hair get oil-free, you get a hint of a fragrance along with it too!

Remember to thoroughly dust off the excess powder from your head when you’re done though. You don’t want to look like your hair is growing out white! Well, only maybe when you’re trying to look like Einstein.

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