Happy New Year Everyone! Bring On 2015

Hey Everyone!

I just want to say Happy New Year. Another year to to do all things you love and enjoy! Make sure to stay safe and have fun and of course keep it halal :)



This post is a pre-post, and should be posted exactly on New Years Day where is live. So in the UK, London. I wanted to write something special for you all so that I could be a part of your New Year just like you are part of mine! :D I normally spend every year watching the fireworks that happens in the London Eye with my family, and just like every year we have the best seats. Our living room. It's cosy and beautiful and safe as well.

On 2013 I predicted sort of how things would be in 2014, I said people would be more optimistic, big changes will happen in my family and one of those changes would be that my big sis would get married. I was shockingly right about all three! My sister did get married this year! Alhamdulilah! So that was the big thing that happened in my family. About people being more optimistic I don't know if you noticed but everywhere you look something positive is happening. For example, I don't listen to music but my younger sister would tell me the lyrics of some of the songs and they are optimistic. The same with movies and tv shows. Maybe it's just me but honestly saying that's what I feel went down.

I told my big sister and youngest sister and when these things did happen my youngest sister said to me how I was freakishly right! And no I'm not a psychic, I only have Allah to thank for what I have and believe. She asked me today (a day before New Years) what my prediction is. I said I don't think it's a psychis thing maybe just intuition. So I said to her I think in 2015, that this year would be a productive year, not just for me but everyone. For me it could be my novel? Health? Marriage? For others it could be an exam, organising an event, anything! But I believe that this year would be a productive one and there would be bumps along the way but it would be worth it in the long run even if you can't see it at the time.

Anyway, I just wish you all a very Happy New Year. Stay positive, thinking optimistically will help you be more confident and realise many things that you may not realise otherwise. I hope you all have a wonderful and eventful year ahead. Control the way you think and you would be able to avoid doing any wrong. Seek forgiveness and pray to Allah to keep you safe. Remember, He is always watching you.

If you are one of those people who managed to get a ticket to the fireworks that's happening at the London Eye, then be sure to be safe and stay with your loved ones and also help out wherever you can. There's no harm in helping someone.

Well that's it for my post. Oh except for one thing. My New Years resolution is to be myself, take care of my health. Think of Allah. Be with my family as much as I can. And to do good and spread the optimism as much as I can.

Take care and Happy New Year! Tarana A beaming star shining with positivity for the world to embrace. Bring on 2015!! xoxox

Holidays = Potential guests

Hey Everyone! :D

So I've been wanting to do some more artsy stuff, but given that it's the holidays and living in an Asian family. There's a lot of visits to relatives, wedding invites, relatives coming over et. Which is why there has been less activity, and even though I want to do stuff I'm limited because of that.



So I would like to apologise, as I feel like most of my days I'm always apologising or saying I would like to do this and that but don't actually get to do it. It's not like I wanted situations to turn out like this but it has so I guess I'll have to deal with it for now.

I shall catch up with you guys soon, right now I have to get on with other things. But don't let this get you down. I'm not being negative, I'm being productive it may not be with what I want it to be but it is productive in other sense.

I will talk about this more in detail later but for now take care and think positive. I will get back to you soon.

Tarana A beaming star shining with positivity for the world to embrace xoxox

Watercolour Painting! Step-by-Step Tutorial and Writing Event Information.

This Post Includes: A tutorial on how to make a watercolour rose painting. Writing Discussion.

Hey Everyone! :D

So as the title suggests I did a watercolour painting yesterday! I wanted to share it all with you so I decided to do so. I will break down what I've done and explain the pictures to you clearly. After I do so, I will talk to you all about the writing event (or you can just skip all the artsy stuff and go right to the bottomg of the page where I will discuss my writing part to you all! Lets get started :D

So this is the A4 sized Daler Rowney watercolour paper that I used for the painting. I bought this from the artstore but it arrived a two-three weeks later because it was out of stock. The weight of the paper is as shown - 300 g/m2 New Grain. It is a very heavy weighted paper and it's absorbent to the water. This kind of paper requires a lot of water which is very good!

Below is two pictures of the sketch I did of a rose painting. I used two google images pictures and merged them into one and created my own design the main rose was from here and the other small rose buds are from here. To sketch a rose is quite simple. Just follow the outlines of a plain drawing and make your own changes to them as you see fit.

Also I bought my first ever watercolour paints. I've always had watercolour pencils, but no watercolour paints or paper. Which is why this project was really fun for me! This is the Winsor & Newton set of pocket watercolour set. I showed on my precious post some of the arts and craft that I got this was one of them. I was really excited to use them and decided to use them for the painting. I really spent a lot on my arts supply. Honestly saying, you don't need such expensive supplies but I wanted to because I wanted to spoil myself a little. :)

As you can see below I haven't used this set at all until yesterday:

First step: I used Alizerin Crimson mixed with a little bit of Lemon Yellow to add a small and light background to the roses. This gave it a peachy pink effect. As for the background I used Sap Green with a little bit of Lemon Yellow to give it a nice greeny affect.

Step Two: Once the background dries, (Note: this did not take long to dry because the paper absorbed a lot of the water really fast), I used the Alizerin Crimson and a dab of Lemon Yellow and painted with the thick paint the darker outlines of the petals where the shadow would form.

Step Three:  Get rid of the excess paint from the brush on the paint pallette. Then dip the brush into water and dap the excess water onto some tissue. Use the brush to pull out the paint from the dark edges until if it fill the petal. Make sure to know where your light and dark sources are.

Note: Step two and three would be easier to carry out if you use a small, thin round brush rather than a flat brush.

Step Four: You should have something that looks like this:

Step Five: Make sure to do step two and three on the other roses and the rose buds. To have something that looks like this:

Step Six: To finish by completing the leaves, start off by using the Sap Green, and painting in the veins of the leaves. After they are sort of dried, add a little bit of Lemon Yellow to the sap green making a lighter green to paint in the rest of the leaves.

Step Seven (optional): I wanted to make my background a little intense so the rose would really pop out of it. To do so I used the Lemon Yellow with a little but of Sap Green towards the centre of the drawing background giving it a lighter green effect. Then using the Sap Green I darkened the rest of the background to really give the leafy green affect.

Step Eight: Once it is dried make sure to sign it and date it :)

The finished watercolour painting should look like this: Or something similar depending on how you did yours.

Thank you for reading this I hope you all enjoyed this tutorial of watercolour painting step by step.
End of Tutorial.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Writing Event Discussion Read Below: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ok so as you all know that I am working on my novel. Yes, I am still working on it. It's going to be a very long process as my mind is exploding with so many new ideas. Sometimes I want to take a break from my own writing and work on something else, which is absolutely fine.

If you feel like you need some inspiration I would suggest you go to Cowrite.Net It's a great place to really open your creative juice and also participate in some writing too. You don't have to be a pro at writing (I'm not as you can see), and the community is very friendly. Once you click that link, you will be taken to the introduction page where it outlines how the website works. I will explain below how it works so you all can get a gist of it. *Declaimer: I have not been paid or told to advertise this website I am doing this of my own accord as I genuinely like the website a lot.*

Brief explaination of how the site works:
1) You will be taken to the Introduction page.
2) You would be given a generated user (which you will see on the left panel of the page, near sign up and login. It will also be shown on the Global chat - on the top right panel of the page)
3) Sign up Process is easy, just enter a username and password and that's it!
4) Once you are logged in (or are just there as a guest) you can participate in current writing tournaments, start your own tournaments, start your own story or even participate in other stories!
5) The way it works is you type in a sentence (in the centre panel noted as the main story interface) live, and people can vote on the sentence (as well as you can vote on others too) and the one with the most vote in the given amount of time would be selected in that story! (If there are two sentences with the same number of votes then it will randomly select a sentence.)
6) Once you are in a story you would see below the global chat the title of the story you are currently on a chat box for it. It will show you who else is online in this story and also the participants.

If you want more understanding speak to @malie129 and he would be able to help you out! You can find him on the site and of course on twitter! :D

Here are a few that I have participated in, this includes tournaments and general story and a demo to understand the gist of it:

My Story: Expect the Unexpected
SunDec21st Tournament
My First Writing and Demo Story

Also every 9pm (GMT) I will be trying to participate in the 9pm tournament :D Hope to you see you there! https://cowrite.net/x?sid=HSMPT3R

Also if you do check out hte website I mentioned, be sure to let them know that Tarana or TaranaBstar sent you there! Thank you! :D

I hope this was a very insightful and useful post stay tuned for more!

That's all for today, happy holidays and have a lovely new year!

Tarana A beaming star shining with positivity for the world to embrace xoxox

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Tags:
#writing #creativewriting #creative #arts #artsandcrafts #watercolour #painting #inspiration #holidays #cowrite

Creative flow coming through!

 Hey Everyone! :D

So I wanted to this a little earlier but I couldn't. I occupied my time with something else. Here is a list of things that I bought and/or had delievered to my house! The first picture is the most recent and things I bought.

As you can see from this picture, I bought a large size canvas, a mini bath set (to pamper myself) Some coloured bubble wrapped envelopes and a loom beads maker which I am sooo excited to make!

These are some things I ordered from ebay to start making air dry clay #charms I got one necklace 6 bracelets and the rolling pin for clays. Still waiting on my blades and eye pins! :D

The picture below shows some of the art supply delivery that I got. The A4 water colour paper was out of stock so it was delievered a little late.

Oil paint set! I can't wait to use them!! I'm sooo excited to try them out. These are the really expensive and quality ones so they are really really good! 

These are some of the other supplies I ordered. Terpentine (two bottles of it) white gesso. 3 canvas board, 2 in the same size. And last but not least two different branded air dry clay! :D

So these are the things that I bought from the artstore.co.uk I love it!! :D I am extremely excited to use my supplies and I can't wait to get started on making my charms!

I will talk to you about more updates tomorrow.
Take care and think positive

Tarana A beaming star shining with positivity for the world to embrace xoxox

Yay 4000 views! :D

Just a quick note! Yay I hit 4,000 views!! :D I can't believe it thank you all for viewing my blog and be sure to keep supporting me! :D

Thank you!! :D

Update: Upcoming news, events, projects etc.

Hey Everyone! :D

I have not forgotten you all don't worry. I have a lot I want to share with you all (given the title) some parts of this would be shared later on today and others probably the next few days. My art haul will be shared with you soon (by soon I mean most likely today) I have many other things I want to share with you all so stay tuned for more.

Here is a list of things that I would share to you all:
~ Art Haul (Most likely today)
~ Writing event (Most likely today as well)
~ Creative art and crafts projects (probably tomorrow)
~ Changes to this blog (the next few weeks - slow process)
~ Blogging (Should be more regular)
~ Youtube/Filming (Coming soon - hopefully)
~ Story writing (update on this would be shared in a few days)

So as you can see there is a lot of things that I want to tell you all about so look forward to it all. Have a lovely morning, evening, night, day etc.

Take care and think positive

Tarana A beaming star shining with positivity for the world to embrace xoxox

Overcame one obstacle two to go!

Hey Everyone!! :D

So like the title suggests, I have just been through one obstacle and would face another two more soon. One of the obstacle would be tomorrow, it's not really an obstacle just more of a result in waiting. Which if it turns out to be a positive then I have officially past this obstacle, and if not well then I'd have to readjust my life for the next year again. I know what you're all thinking, what on earth is this obstacle she's going on about? Well I would tell you all but first I would like to overcome it and see the result (hence waiting for tomorrow) then I can spill it out all to you as to why I'm not as active as usual. The second obstacle may take a few weeks to take affect but I don't want it to become too much of a stress so I'll just tell you all about that soon (soon meaning proabably tomorrow as well).



Ok now enough about the obstacles and on to some good and exciting news!! So when I told you all I ordered some art supplies on Black Friday, it was finally delivered to me last week Friday!! :D I was soo excited but I had to contain my excite because of the recent happenings in my life. However now that they are over (sort of) I should be able to talk to you all about it.

Now, I order really good and quality acrylic paints, and watercolours and some water colour papers. I noticed that I don't have watercolour paints or papars so I ordered them, I do however have watercolour pencils so I didn't splurge any money on that. I bought mini canvases and other board canvases. I also bought oils paint, the good quality one, I'm a pretty fast learner, so once I observe something I pretty much obsorb everything I can (in most cases) so I'm currently learning about that too. I also bought Turpentine to thin and clean my brushes and oil paints with them. I've done some research on Turpentine and found that you should use it in a well ventalated area and to be careful on using it as it is toxic. Finally, that last thing I bought was AIR DRY CLAY!!!!! I've been overly excited to work with clay!! I know Sculpey is a good baking clay but I wanted to start off with air dry clay. I bought two different brands so I would be using them soon I'm just overly excited with it!! I really can't wait to get stuck in to it. I just need to order a blade and rolling pin for it and I'm good to go because I already have the tools that I bought over a year ago so I'm really excited for it a lot!! :D

I shall show you the pictures of what I got but in my next post as I can't go on typing too much and need to rest up (and calm my hype) and just research and learn more about arts and crafts! :D Please do look forward to upcoming creativity I'll be working on a lot (slowly but surely). Also I apologise for my rambling but I wanted to keep you all updated on my happenings and missed telling you all about things.

Also my creative writing is sort of on a hold because I need to do some Islamic research to see what I can add to my story content without it clashing with the Islamic rulings. So don't worry I shall be on board with it soon (most probably next year - I'M SO SORRY!) but I do really want to put a lot of effort into it and because of my health I can't strain myself too much.

Well I think that's all for now, I will chat to you all in my next post (likely tomorrow) and keep you all updated. Sorry for not making this as positive as I hoped but I shall end on a positive note! Work hard and the result will be a fruiteful success, you may not see it directly dig a little deeper and search for the hidden message because I can almost say for certain it would always end in something good. Take care and think positive Tarana A beaming star shining with positivity for the world to embrace xoxox

#blackfriday and many things to say

Hello Everyone!! :D

I know I was to post about the #ArtCards but honestly say I haven't had the chance for the past few days and the next few weeks I'm going to be busy with appointments and dealing with legal matters and health matters so please bare with me.

I managed to have the chance of writing to you guys so I thought I might as well do it now...before I go to sleep...past mid night..well in my defence I am not sleeping as late as usual and I am working on my sleep :)

Anyways, my younger brother told me about Black Friday as I am such a clueless person. I gathered that it's like a big shopping sale that's happens in US and has become a worldwide thing, and now has been brought to UK!! Well I think it's wonderful!!!! I did some shopping online and I'm getting really excited for when the items arrived!! I went all out of art supplies! So look forward to a very artsy week (in about 2-3 weeks time) I'm so excited!! It's really interesting and a little addictive I must say.

Also I've followed various writing related twitters one in particular that caught my interest was #nanowrimo which stands for National Novel Writing Month. It gave me the idea of starting something like that on my expressive writing blog (which I shall discuss on my other blog in more detail in the near future) I think it's a great way to motivate each other and very great way to continue your writing.

That's it for now I will get back to you all very soon please be patient with me I hope after the next two weeks my life should be a little calmer then usual.

Take care and think positive Tarana A beaming star shining with positivity for the world to embrace xoxox

It's ok to take a break

Hey Everyone! :D

So I have been not feeling well today and yesterday, and for two days (yesterday and the day before) I wasn't feeling up for going on my laptop. So I thought I would blog about it today since I haven't done so in a while.



Firstly, I think I need a break, and before you freak out let me explain. I'm not saying that I won't be doing what I'm doing right now. I'm just going to take it a little at a time. For some reason if I do even a little my health acts up so I don't want to cause any more harm on my health because then I might not be able to do anything at all.

I do apologise for not doing as much as I hoped to but I really want to work on my health because that way I will be able to work on other things such as my reading, writing craft work my Islamic life too. So don't feel like I'm abandoning anything because I'm not. I'm still here, and I will continue to keep bloggin about my life regularly as I am doing so right now. :)

So creatively, I haven't done anything much because I've been preoccupied with my reading and I have to say after I finish this recent book I will be writing reviews on all seven of the books, individually (they will be found my writing blog). I'm really looking forward to that.

The changes to this blog is going to be happening slowly as I stated previously, so I hope to have something up.

My Art Cards will be up sometime this week so do look forward to that :) I will do as much work as I possibly can (without straining my health of course).

Well that's all I have to say for now until my next post :) Take care all and always think positive TaranaBStar A beaming star shining with positivity for the world embrace xoxox

Opportunities Await!

Hey everyone! :D

So it's been a few days since my last blog post and I thought to myself I should start to blog again. I wanted to post for you yesterday but I didn't - it slipped my mind completely. So I thought I would do so today.



Firstly, I wanted to say that I am really excited about this course that I am taking. I enjoy learning new things and this is something too. Learning Adobe illustrator will help me construct a foundation on my digital art side of things. It's such a versertile opportunity and I feel like I'm learning a lot now as well. The class is on every Tuesday evening and I love what I'm learning. Hopefully when I become better at the digital art I can create different avenues for clients. I'm feeling excited and optimistic about it.

Secondly, I have been doing my writing recently, but it's not anything new it's more like I'm trying to catch up on what I have not written. Then I can continue from where I left off. I love writing, as you all are probably aware. I aspire to be a good author in the future, I'm still hoping for this dream and feel like I can begin to take a step towards this goal.

Thirdly, I am currently still reading the book I've been obsessing about and I love it so much!!! I'm a hopeless romantic and that's why I love the romantic aspect of things a lot along side comedy as well! I mean who doesn't like a good laugh?

Finally, I did some artwork that I'd like to share with you all and one of them gave me an idea for Art Cards (which I haven't forgotten) so that should be coming to you all very soon!! :D

This completes the last few days worth of blogging. I hope this was interesting, and I hope you like my artwork!

Take Care and think positive TaranaBstar A beaming star shining with positivity for the world to embrace xoxox (I know I didn't write this on my last post so I added it on here now lol I'll try and remember to add this).