My new tattoo!

Hi guys! Sorry again for not posting for a while, but I've had some stuff happen in the past few weeks. Basically, I hurt my knee (for the second time...) and I'm still in the process of healing, so I don't really feel like doing anything. Also, I went to Helsinki for a week and got back this Tuesday. Hopefully my knee will be okay soon and I can get back to normal. Walking around with crutches gets actually quite tiring after some time. Anyway, that's not what this post is about. It's about my new tattoo!

So I got my second tattoo on Wednesday, two days ago. I wanted to get an Evenstar on the right side of my rib cage. If you don't know what an Evenstar is, it's basically like a symbol of love and promise from the Lord of the Rings, the necklace that Arwen gives to Aragorn. Ever since I was little I've always been a huge fan of the Lord of the Rings and I really wanted to not only show my love for the amazing story, but also get something that I thought was beautiful and had some meaning to me. Originally I was supposed to get a quote from the book in Tengwar font, but unfortunately I didn't have enough money when I went to the studio to book my appointment in July. So we decided to do the Evenstar first, and then maybe at some point when I've saved up enough money, I'll get the text under the Evenstar. Here are some of the reference pictures that I showed to my tattoo artist:  

 

I decided to get the tattoo on my ribs for two reasons: the text that I originally was supposed to get would sit nicely on there, and also just because I've always wanted a tattoo on  my ribs :D Yes, I've heard that it's one of the most painful places to get tattooed, but I didn't really care too much - the outcome of the tattoo was more important. If you really want something on there, you're just going to have to deal with the pain. Remember: the pain is only temporary.

So I went back to the studio with my sister (I needed some mental support ) on Wednesday, the 19th of August. The whole process of going in and leaving with the finished tattoo took about two hours in total. First we waited for the artist to draw the design, put the stencil on me and get everything ready to go. 

        

                  

After we got the stencil on perfectly, it was time to start tattooing. I was quite nervous and had been panicking about the tattoo for almost 24 hours so I was ready to get going. 

Me right before starting, looking terrified 

I laid on my side, a little on my back for the process. It was comfortable except for the moment that my left foot fell asleep :D Luckily it went away when I wiggled my toes for a bit. 

The number one question that I've been getting now for the past two days is: Did it hurt? 

Well, yes it did. But: for most part it was really quite okay, and for the lower parts of the tattoo, like the last loop, I couldn't really feel anything at all! The parts that hurt the most were obviously the upper loop and the wing-like shapes on the sides. When it really hurt, I got the feeling you get when you get shivers and goosebumps, going from the ribs towards my arms and legs, it was quite strange, like mini-electric shocks :D So I'd say that the hour that I spent laying on my side was 70% fine and 30% ouch. Luckily my tattoo artist was extremely nice and we talked a lot during the session, which really helped me relax. I would do it again if I had to, I didn't get any traumas and will most likely get more tattoos in the future. Since the Evenstar only took an hour to do and it doesn't have any shading, the pain was tolerable. But I could imagine it being horrible if you're getting tattooed for multiple hours with shading and different colors and all that fun stuff. But here's the end result:                        

                              

I'm so happy about how it came out! Definitely worth the pain. I took some more photos when I got home, washed and moisturized it: 

Here's how my tattoo looks today, two days after I got it: 

It hasn't really started peeling of itching yet, but I expect that to start happening in a few days. The skin is still sore and I try to avoid touching it if I'm not washing or moisturizing it. 

For aftercare I use these two products: Bepanthen and Lactoline. Lactoline is a mild, unscented and uncolored soap. I wash my tattoo three times a day and moisturize afterwards with Bepanthen. The cream is quite thick, so you don't need a lot of it, just keep the tattoo nice and moist. I put a little bit more on before going to bed, just in case my sheets touch the tattoo it won't pull out any ink. 

If you have any more questions about my tattoo or aftercare, let me know! Have a great weekend :)

Dark festival makeup tutorial

Hey! I'll continue the Dubrovnik travelling posts next week, because I'm going to a rock festival called Kuopiorock this weekend. Since my style is quite rock-ish,  the festival is a perfect opportunity for me to dress up and really take some time getting ready. This is actually a recreation of the look that I wore to see Nightwish on the 6th of June, but a little bit darker since I used a dark base instead of a white one this time. I might do the original version tomorrow, I haven't really decided yet but here's some dark rock'n'roll appropriate makeup for you guys ;) Oh and one more thing - I'm sorry about the quality of the pictures since I did this tutorial in the evening and there wasn't a lot of natural light available anymore, (not such a good idea..) but I hope you can still follow the tutorial :D

Products used:
- i-Divine "au naturel"-palette by Sleek MakeUP
- Beauty Base Eyeshadow Primer by Lumene
- Mega Liner "Black Sparkle" by WetnWild
- Black Gel Eyeliner by Maybelline
- 5-in-1 Wonder Lash Mascara by Oriflame

                                               This is the original look I did with a lighter inner corner

               - Start by applying a primer to the lids and put some translucent powder over it.

 - Then continue by applying "Nubuck" to the crease with a fluffy blending brush to help fade the           colors later.

- Cover your entire lid up to the crease with a creamy black eyeliner and also extend it out to a cat-eye-shape in the outer corner. 

- Then apply "Conker" mostly on the center of the lid, leaving a bit of space in the inner corner and outer corner. After that put "Noir" in the outer corner and up to the crease.

- Time to blend! Take a clean blending brush and take your time blending up and out. At this point the "Nubuck" you applied earlier should help you make the gradient smooth. After you're done blending, use a matte cream shade like "Nougat" and apply under the brow to highlight.

- Take the same creamy eyeliner you used as a base for the shadows and apply it on the lower lash line as close to the lashes as you can, connecting to the cat-eye-shape in the outer corner. Then blend out the eyeliner using "Noir" and "Nubuck".

- Highlight the inner corner with some white eyeliner and silver shadow, blend into the black under the lashes. For some extra sparkle use a silver glitter liquid eyeliner.

- Apply the black gel eyeliner on the top and bottom waterline. It makes the lashes look thicker and sort of brings the look together. Also do a thin line of black liquid eyeliner on the upper lash line and winged it out a bit, then apply two coats of mascara. Don't forget to define your eyebrows!

- This picture is with flash so you could see the shimmery goodness of "Conker" since it doesn't really show up in the other pictures. I just thought it looked cool :D

- I added some false lashes just for fun and here's the finished look! 

I'll make sure to take some pictures tomorrow before the festival after I'm done with my makeup and outfit so you can see how it all turned out :) Have a great weekend guys!

A week in Dubrovnik, Croatia: Day 1

Hi! In the few upcoming posts I'll tell you all about my experience in Dubrovnik. Me and my two cousins flew from Finland to Croatia on the 18th of May and came back on the 22nd, so we had about five days to explore the city.

Day 1.

- We landed in Dubrovnik around 10-11 in the morning. Instead of a hotel, we had made a reservation to stay at a private apartment which turned out to be great. Our apartment was located on a very high hill, so you could see basically all of the famous Old Town from our balcony. The view was breathtaking.

                                                   The view from the balcony of our apartment.

After settling in we decided to head straight to the Old Town. The first day was definitely the warmest, around +27 degrees Celsius. First we walked down the insane amount of stairs to get to the Old Town (seriously, I've never walked so many stairs in one go, and we had to go up and down multiple times during our stay - it was some good exercise though...). Once we got inside the walls, we had some lunch at a restaurant near the entrance to the Old Town. In the picture above you can see the big city wall that goes all around the Old Town. If there's one thing you absolutely have to do in Dubrovnik, it's to walk the city walls. We bought tickets and climbed up the stairs to the wall. With the same ticket you can also visit the fortress of Lovrijenac. I think it took about an hour or so to complete the tour, but we took our time and walked slowly. Here are a few pictures:

                                                           Here you can see the main street, Stradun. 

    The fortress of Lovrijenac, which can be entered from the area of Lapad, right

 next to the Old Town.

                                                                Aaaand here's Lapad :D

                           We figured that you can actually rent a boat and go kayaking. There were multiple different                           routes from Lapad and some of those went to a nearby island called Lokrum, which we visited on the third day.

                             On the right you can see Banje Beach, which is the nearest beach around the Old Town.

                             This was taken from a tower near the end of the tour, and it was the highest place on the wall. 
                                                                                          All those red roofs...

After walking the walls, we just walked around the streets and had some coffee. I had read in a tourist guide book that it's not easy to get ice-coffee in Dubrovnik, but luckily I managed to get one in every café. Later we had dinner in a restaurant called Taj Mahal, located in the middle of the Old Town. We decided to try a traditional local dish, "cevapi". It wasn't bad, but not exactly the kind of dish I would have wanted on a boiling hot day. It was basically some bread-shaped dough along with meat sticks, red onion and some cheese on the side - no vegetables besides the onion. I'm sure that the dish would be a success with men, but we didn't like it that much and only managed to eat about half of it. Whoops. Luckily the appetizer we had was good.

After dinner we wanted to check out Banje Beach. Now let me tell you something - for some reason I have extremely sensitive feet, and if I have to walk on a surface that is not just stable ground, I will get horrible cramps on my toes and on the bottoms of my feet. Not very fun. If you're looking for sandy beaches, I'm sorry but you won't really find any in Dubrovnik. Almost all the beaches are full of stones. Don't get me wrong, the stones are very smooth and nice and they won't scratch you but they killed my feet, so I had a really hard time walking around the beach, not to mention actually going into the sea to swim. Stupid cramps. Some places sold shoes for swimming but I didn't feel like spending my money on getting a pair, so I just had to suck up the pain.

                                                               My worst enemy.

                                                                  You can see the island of Lokrum from Banje Beach.

After Banje Beach we went shopping for some groceries since we had to prepare the breakfast ourselves. The currency in Croatia is called "kuna", and one kuna is about 7,59 euros. I suck at math so the calculator in my phone really came in handy during my trip. Anyways, after shopping we were exhausted and headed back to our apartment. For the rest of the night we just relaxed, had some drinks on the balcony and planned what we would do the next day. The Old Town looked amazing at night when all the lights lit up, but unfortunately it was impossible to capture the view on camera without it looking quite crappy - but I'll share the photo with you anyways.

                                       
So, that was our first day! The next post will probably be days 2&3 , and then 4&5. Thanks for reading and have a great day!

Where have I been?

Oops, I did it again. As you can probably tell by the amount of time passed between my posts, I'm so bad at keeping them coming regularly. Hopefully I'll be able to change this habit - because I really do like blogging, I'm just....lazy :D

During the past three months a lot of things have happened. Awesome things, to be exact:

1. I traveled to Croatia
2. I GRADUATED HIGH SCHOOL!!!
3. I moved in together with my boyfriend

- Me and my two cousins went to Croatia in May. We stayed at the beautiful, historical city of Dubrovnik. Let me just say - it was amazing and I completely fell in love with the place. I think I'll be doing a more detailed post about my week in Dubrovnik, so this picture is all I'm going to share for now, sorry :D

                                            The breathtaking view from the balcony of our apartment

- A week after I got home from Croatia, I graduated! The past three years have been exhausting, but at the same time, they were also some of the best years of my life. I grew so much as a person, made some new friends and also got reunited with some old ones. Also, I learned to let go of my fears and conquered my anxiety almost completely. Needless to say, the day of my graduation was quite emotional and amazing and it's still hard to think that I won't be going back to the same school in August. But life goes on, right?

                                                                Me on the day of my graduation

- So, the latest thing that has happened is that I moved in together with my boyfriend. It was something that we had been talking about seriously for a long time, and now that it has finally become a reality, I couldn't be happier. We've been staying at our new place for about a week now, and I love it! It feels like home here. The only thing still missing are my dear cats, that will be moving here with us next week. I hope from the bottom of my heart that they will be able to adjust to the new house. Maybe I'll give you an update on that also in a few weeks. :)

Next week I'll be celebrating my 19th birthday, yay! Hopefully I'll come up with a nice birthday makeup-tutorial or something to post here, it's been so long since I last did one.

One last thing: if you'd like to see more stuff about my daily life, check out my Instagram @pauliinapur. I mostly post pictures about my nail art and food :D And this time I promise: there will be more posts, more frequently. This 3-month-gap was disgraceful and I feel bad about it. Have a great week! 

The Liebster Award

I got tagged by my friend Rosa to do the Liebster Award tag. The idea is that you answer to 11 questions made by the person who tagged you, then it's your turn to come up with new questions and pass the tag on to other bloggers. I'm not sure if I'll pass this tag on to anyone, but I still really want to do it :D



1) Do you have any hobbies/have you had any hobbies?   
- Yes. As you can probably guess by now,  my current hobbies include nail art, doing makeup and pretty much anything to do with beauty. Oh, and baking also! I tried a few different activities when I was younger, such as judo, floorball, and scouting but I eventually quit them all. Sadly, doing sports isn't really my thing :D

2) Which countries have you visited?
- So far, I've visited five different countries: Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, the UK and Majorca (which is a part of Spain). I'd love to travel more, but unfortunately I can't that often due to lack of money. Luckily, I'll be travelling to Croatia next month and I'm reeeeaaalllyyy excited! I'll be in Dubrovnik for a week, which is super awesome since I'm also a big fan of Game of Thrones, and Dubrovnik is "King's Landing" from GOT ;) Maybe I'll spot some of the Lannisters...

3) Do you consider yourself as a pessimist, a realist or an optimist?
- Definitely a pessimist. No matter how hard I try, it's always extremely difficult for me to see the bright side, no matter what I'm dealing with. But I can proudly say that I'm constantly becoming more optimistic and slowly overcoming my pessimism. Because seriously, who wants to sit around worrying all day for things that might not even happen if you decide to do something about them?

4) What kind of music do you like to listen to?
- Easy question: rock or metal. I've always loved heavy songs and the way that listening to them makes me feel. Some might say that the music I listen to feels depressing, but actually it makes me really happy and not at all sad! Of course I do listen to some mainstream hits occasionally, but mainly I stick to heavier music. Here are some of my current favorite songs:

5) One thing that you're proud of in your life?
- Well that's difficult.. I don't really know, but maybe just the fact that I've been able to overcome some hard situations, like being bullied. Even though that time in my life totally sucked, I'm stronger now because of it.

6) What is your morning routine like?
- At the moment since I don't have school anymore, my mornings are a lot more relaxed. I wake up anytime after 9am, say hello to my lovely cats (one of them likes to jump on me and walk around until I get up..) and then go to the kitchen. I have some breakfast, like banana pancakes or a couple of peaces of rye bread and berries. Then I change my clothes, open my computer and that's about it :D If I'm going somewhere that day, I'll wash my face and do my makeup after breakfast. Yup, my mornings are quite boring.

7) What's your favorite animal?
- Cat - enough said. I also adore pandas.

8) Where do you see yourself in five years time?
- Hopefully I'll have a degree in beauty/makeup by then, and also a place to work at. Also, I'm hoping to live together with my boyfriend by then :D

9) What skill would you like to learn?
- I'd love to be able to speak Quenya (the elvish language from the Lord of the Rings) :D Or something a bit more realistic, like Japanese. Doing winged eyeliner without any mistakes would also be great...

10) What's your favorite perfume?
- "Love Generation Pink" by Jeanne Arthes. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find it anywhere in Finland for the past couple of years :(

11) Have you ever climbed trees?
- YES! That was my favorite thing to do as a child :D I'd be outside climbing for a few hours and then come home with my clothes all dirty and ripped (my mom wasn't too happy about that..). Anyways, I loved climbing when I was younger. Luckily I never injured myself :D

I hope you found my answers interesting..or amusing. This was so much fun to do, thanks Rosa! If any of you would like to answer these questions, feel free to do so! :)

Nail care routine

Yay, a post about nails! Nail care is essential if you want to grow your nails longer and keep the lenght. I started concentrating more on my nails when I was about 13 or 14 years old. Before that I was a severe nail biter - yes. I found it very hard not to bite or rip of the tip of the nail when it grew out, so to keep myself from destroying the nails I started doing nail art. If I spent three or more hours doing my nails, I wouldn't just want to throw out all my hard work and mess up the design. So, nail art is the thing that stopped me from biting my nails.

I usually do a new design once or twice a week, but before I start painting, I like to do a nail care routine and give my nails some TLC. The routine helps a lot with growing the nails, and also provides a nice canvas to paint the nail art on.

Here are the tools I use:

- nail polish remover (preferably acetone free, it's more gentle to the nails)
- buffer block
- cuticle oil
- hand cream
- orange wood stick/something to push back your cuticles
- a good quality nail file
- nail brush
- cuticle scrub (optional)

So here's the starting situation: one week old manicure. Ugh. As you can see, I'm still really talented at peeling the polish off during the week..and I'm not proud of it :D Let's get rid of these, shall we?

I removed the designs using cotton pads soaked in acetone free polish remover. I also used the cuticle scrub, and after that, rinsed my hands with warm water and used the big nail brush to get rid off the polish remover that might be left on my nails. To get rid off rough edges, use a nail file. My nails tend to peel a little, so I like to buff them so that they're smooth and the finished nail art lasts longer.
Here are my natural nails cleaned, buffed and filed:

After shaping my nails I like to moisturize them properly. I applied some cuticle oil on each nail along with hand cream.

I waited about 5 minutes to let the oil and cream soak in, and then pushed back the cuticles. Be very careful and most importantly, gentle when doing this. If you use cuticle oil a couple of times each day, your cuticles will become a lot softer and easier to push back. Pushing them back makes the nails look neater and gives you a bit more space for doing nail art.

Now it's time to choose a desired nail design! If I'm lacking inspiration, I like to go on Google and search, for example "colorful nail art". There are thousands and thousands of pictures to draw inspiration from. I chose a design that looked interesting and and modified it slightly. Before doing nail art, always apply a base coat! It will protect your nails from staining and help other polishes to adhere better. Here are the polishes I used:

- Konad Hardner as a base coat
- Dermosil "Snow"
- Color Club "All That Razz"
- Black polish from a local clothing store
- Amazing Shine non-yellowing top coat

                                                                     After base coat

                               I applied two coats of "Snow" and painted the sides with "All that Razz"

                                             I did the black details with this small nail art brush

         
And there's the finished design! I hope this nail care routine was helpful to any of you wondering how to take care or your nails :) Just a few more tips for growing your nails:

- Dry your hands and nails thoroughly after washing them.

- It takes time for your nails to recover from damage, so if you've been using fake nails for a long time, your nails might grow a bit slower. It's worth the wait, though.

- Use cuticle oil or balm multiple times each day! It really helps to keep your nails stronger and prevents you from peeling dry cuticles. Keep a small pot of cuticle moisturizer of your choice with you at all times. Whenever you feel the urge to pick at your cuticles, apply some oil on them. Also, don't forget to use hand cream.

- Be gentle on them. No biting or peeling. If your nail suddenly breaks, file the ragged edge as soon as you can so you won't be tempted to peel the whole tip off. It's best to keep a small nail file with you just in case this happens.

- Experiment with different shapes to find out what suites you best. Nowadays I prefer having the tips almost square, rather than round.

Take good care of your nails, guys! Have a great week.