spotting

In ballet class yesterday, we were practicing posé turns and pirouettes. I managed a few clean single pirouettes, and a couple of decent doubles. I still had trouble with the posé ones though, as my toe has swollen again, and demi-pointe hurts.

Anyway, spotting. I completely understand the concept. I mean, we've all read countless articles with different strategies, what works best, exercises to help, etc., but it's still something most of us struggle with. I raised my 'concern', if you could call it that, to the teacher, and her advice really helped me.

She told me that everyone is different. Yes, we get told this in all of the articles we read, but does it really sink in? Some people prefer spotting something above their heads, whereas others could prefer to spot themselves in the mirror. Usually, I kind of just zone out, I don't really know if I'm being honest! I just know that when I watch back videos, I don't see my head whipping back around.

So I first tried spotting a poster we have above the mirror. This didn't exactly work for me, the turn just ended up being sloppy and ended with me falling out of it. I tried again, this time spotting myself in the mirror. I don't have any videographic evidence, but I felt a whole lot better about this turn. I landed it, and repeated the whole things a couple of times, each time feeling just as good as the first. I think I'll be trying this again!

life

School is just so demanding. As is sickness, and dance, and keeping fit. It seems like I've had no time to blog in a long time, which I regret a lot. But it's nothing to fret over. Other aspects of my life right now are going okay.


I've gotten the results back from my mock GCSE exams that I sat for the fortnight before Christmas break and the week after. I got 9 A*s, 9 As, 4 Bs and a U (don't even ask about that one!). But I'm mostly pleased about those, and I now know what I need to study more to improve for my actual GCSEs. But before those, I still have my Creative Writing AS mock and more science mocks!


Dance has also gotten pretty busy recently. I'm now at the studio from 11am until 4:30pm every Saturday, for extra rehearsals. In exactly 13 weeks, we'll be dancing at the O2 in London! Eeek I'm so excited! This means I'll get to perform two twelve minute dances and be in the finalé! I can't wait!


I'd also like to talk about general fitness. Before Christmas I decided that I needed to build strength in my core, arms, legs, hips, basically everything, for ballet. Then I thought, why not just start now in the holidays before school starts back?

I'm proud to say that, on day 29, I've seen some progress! I mean, I saw a little bit of toning before, but now I feel even more ready to keep up the work! My stomach has started to see a little bit of toning when I flex, and I'm less bloated than I was before. I can lift my legs higher in developpé for ballet, and I can feel that I'm just stronger.

In addition to all of these daily workouts, I've been eating a lot more fruit and vegetables and drinking almost 2 litres of water a day, which is so much more than I was drinking before. Thanks to these and the exercise, my stomach is less bloated and my skin is so much clearer! I'm beginning to feel like I have more energy too!


Anyway, have a photo I created today. Happy Winnie The Pooh day!

insane core workout

So I saw this insane core workout on Facebook, I think I might try it when I get a little stronger!

Post by Supps R Us.

diy vintage photo effect using gimp

You may have noticed that on Picmonkey, if you want some of the really pretty effects, you have to pay. Which I have nothing against, at all. But sometimes, you just don't have the money to spend on little privileges, especially when you can easily do it yourself with a little effort.

One of my favourite Picmonkey effects is called Shiro. I set it just to see how my image would look.

It looks quite pretty, don't you think? If you would like to achieve this effect on your own images, I'm just about to show you.

Step 1.

Open your image on your editing software. I use Gimp, because it's so quick and easy to use.

Step 2.

You're going to want to head to the Brightness-Contrast option. For this image, I set the brightness to 10 and the contrast to -3. Basically, you just want to make the image lighter and with less contrast. Experiment and find the one you like best.

Step 3.

You could either do this step now or at the very end. Do it now if you feel like you know what you're doing, but you can always readjust if you don't like the final image.

Either way, you'll have to use the Curves tool. I dragged the highlights-counter past the lightest 'bulge' on the histogram to 164. This made the whole image pretty light. Like I said, you could leave this step til last if you like.

Step 4.

For this final step, you need to find the Colorize tool. Because I wanted this to be pretty vintage, I found a brown-ish hue that wasn't too yellow (18), and decreased the saturation right down to 16. Then just to finish I increased the lightness to 7, to lighten the darkness of the leotards and tights.

Here's the final image, and some others in the 'series'.

And there you go, how to get your own 'Shiro' effect from Picmonkey using Gimp! Enjoy :D

pointe shoe padding

I've finally found the perfect padding for my pointe shoes! I've trialed it for four weeks now, and it's working really well.

My shoes, disgustingly gross ouch pouches, and the toy stuffing I use as lamb's wool. I make sure to stuff my pointe shoes with carrier bags (they have to be matching, OCD! ;) ) when I'm not wearing them, so they can force the moisture out and not destroy the glue.

The synthetic stuffing is also working really well! I love using lamb's wool but didn't have my own, so I was resourceful and this works equally as well.

Now, my new favourite thing to do is the blister plaster on my toe. I had a blister here some time ago and it still hurts so much when it rubs on my shoe, so this is really useful and enables me to not feel a thing on it while dancing.

Plaster + tights.

Plaster + tights + ouch pouch + shoe.

Plaster + tights + ouch pouch + shoe + legwarmer.


I can't get over how much I love these leg warmers! They're really cosy and so pretty! Anyway, I hope you liked this post! What's your perfect pointe padding?

think happy | 52/52

I'm so glad it's Sunday now, I've not stopped all week. Welcome to the real world Carys! But seriously, it feels good just to be able to sit down and do my own thing after so many exams.

You may also have noticed that this is the last Think Happy! I've been doing this for a year now, and I'm going to stop these Sunday posts. In return, I feel I'll be able to post more freely about other topics, so hopefully that means more posts! Yay!


1. Last night I went to a joint birthday party two of my friends hosted, and I had an amazing time, except the blisters! Ouch, you shouldn't dance in heels for three hours, I don't envy you uni/college lot who party multiple times a week!

On the other hand, we got a lot of dancing done!

Storm, me and Imi

2. I also really enjoyed dance classes yesterday.

Slightly blurry photo of me in my crazy colours! Normally I wear a black skirt, but I went for red for a change!

In pointe, I decided to film some of the work we did, and watching back the footage has given me more of an idea of what to do to improve. I'll be doing this more often!

3. I figured out the most perfect in-pointe-shoe padding for my feet at the minute! Will be writing about that this week, I found a couple of new tricks that completely take the pain of pointe away for me.

4. I've been working on my splits, although only in dance classes. Monday night consisted of street dance, but I can't remember if we did splits then or not. I think we did. On Tuesday night at contemporary, Becky got out the crash mats again, so everyone could practise their forwards roles. I'm not doing one in our dance, so I just sat by the mirrors stretching out my back and stretching my splits, which felt so fulfilling. Last but not least, in ballet yesterday Kerstin had us doing some splits stretches, and I didn't have to do as many as usual to get my splits, which I was so proud of!

5. Best til last.........

I GOT A CLEAN DOUBLE PIROUETTE ON MY BAD SIDE! Wooo!!!

To make it seem even better, I wasn't exactly trying either, I was attempting a single but ending up just carrying on, and who was I to stop it? Unfortunately, my camera was being a little shit and decided not to record this, or my wonderful pirouette/piqué turns across the room, which more than annoyed me! But at least people saw me do it, and my camera recorded my courus!

new ballet grade?

At ballet last week, all was going fine, until our dance teacher announced, out of the blue, that the IDTA Grade 6 Ballet Exam has been scrapped. Oh, what a thing to tell us so suddenly!

But it turns out, it's kind of been merged with the Intermediate grade, so we're taking that instead. Apparantly, there's a whole batterie section, and a twenty minute pointework section at the end. Wow, I'm going to need some good luck! But, I am actually so excited! All these years of work are going to be put together into new variations and we get new steps!

On another note, is there a way to clean the insides of ouch pouches? Mine are absolutely vile!

think happy | 49/52

You may or may not know that I celebrated my birthday yesterday, so I can easily say that this week has been quite good, to be fair!

1. I turned 16! I feel so old, it's kind of crazy, really, even though I'm not! Just compared to being 14, for example, I definitely feel more mature!

I spent the day with Hannah. We had dance in the morning, which was nice and challenging! The lessons were good and made us sweat and ache and groan, but it's all for a good cause.

In pointe, we also learnt a variation that Hayley, our teacher, made on the spot and I loved it! I think I've really improved with my couru-ing!

Hannah then came home with me and we went on a walk, ate pizza, and messed around on my laptop, whilst eating chocolate! It was a fun day.

2. I finished my yoga socks! Well, I use them for pointework now, and they're so warm and comfy!

3. Maths class on Friday we had a cover lesson. And the teacher we had was so good at teaching. Like, our class actually understood how to transform functions by the end of it!

It was also very entertaining. I was part of a conversation with Saffron, Ella and Taisir about one of Saffron's many hilarious stories, one of which I've never heard before. And considering I sat next to her for maths at the end of last year, that was surprising. She can talk for England!

4. I got an A* in my mid-unit Restless Earth geography paper this week, which I'm so pleased with! I only dropped 2 marks, and they were silly mistakes, so I know how to correct that next time.

5. I watched the entire first season of Sherlock today. I got the box set of all three seasons so far yesterday from my parents, so I spent four and a half hours today watching it. Wow, it's so good!

I think that's all for now anyway, actually. I hope you have a good Monday, I'll see you on Tuesday!

improving

Earlier this morning I was browsing through the photos I took when I was on holiday, and they included a set of photos my mum took of me on the beach. What was I doing in those photos? Dancing. If there's one thing you have to do on the beach, it is to dance, whether you have nice weather or not. Especially when there are at least half a dozen people wondering what on earth you're doing.

Anyway, we took some shots of leaps, attempted scorpion leaps and and arabesques.

The photo on the left was taken at the end of August last year, and the one on the right was taken last Thursday. Oh how miserable the weather has been this year! But I really wanted to make this comparison, as I've seen improvements in class, and now I can see even more clearly here.

I'm happy with the amount that I've improved. Really happy. I think what I need to work on now is strengthening my back and really trying to get it more flexible, because my lines aren't all that pretty. I've been doing the cobra stretch a bit recently, and I can definitely feel it the following day, so I'd like to think it's working. Anyway, I shall continue with that.

Also, if you look at this photo of me back in March at our production of Cats the Musical, you can see my arabesque from five months ago.

I've improved a little since then, although the progress isn't as clear. I had a lot of work to do for this show. I mean, I didn't have my flat splits before I performed, and I was working right up until the show nights trying to get them as flat as I could. Typically, on the one night my family watched the show, I wobbled like heck in the arabesque. At least it wasn't our first or last night!

Since the show, I have slacked off a lot, in terms of splits. I spent some time before our summer break trying (and succeeding!) to get them, although I dread to think what they look like now after a month off from dance!

Anyway, enjoy the rest of your day! I'm off to go do a performance in our local park for charity, bye!

think happy | 46/52

Hey guys, I'm officially back from my holiday and slightly more recovered! I've had stomach pains over this weekend, but now they seem to be coming to an end, so I'm feeling slightly more optimistic about everything.


1. I had a mini photoshoot on the beach! It was incredibly cold and windy, but I bravely ditched my hoodie to get this shot, among others. I'm hoping to write up a post on all of the shots, so here's one.

2. I had so many nice meals out with my family, and I'll be showing pictures over the course of this week.


3. I play a game called Ace of Spades, and within this game I'm part of a clan called the Lime Party. There was recently a competition between teams from different clans, the Ace of Spades World Cup, and Lime Party won! Although I didn't compete, it feels great, since our clan is probably one of the least competitive clans out there! Go team!


4. Hannah came back from Italy! Missed her so much!


5. Also related to Ace of Spades, I use this awesome software/program/Idon'tknowwhattocallit called TeamSpeak, and over this week I've been using it so much to talk to my fellow teammates and friends!

think happy | 44/52

So this week has probably been the most productive one I've had in a while. I managed to get some things done, so much so that I forgot to write this yesterday! Anyhow, I'm writing this today instead.


1. I met up with friends on Saturday, at the festival, and had a great time! Don't have any pictures with them, shame! It was awesome.


2. My photo got on the popular page of 365 Project!

3. There's been some good tv this week, actually. The Great British Bake Off was on on Wednesday, Tumble was on on Saturday and Got To Dance was on on Saturday and Sunday, although I didn't watch it.


4. I had contemporary on Tuesday, which was great. We finished our first troupe dance, and I got to test out my new leotard. I also got offered a solo, so I've found some music out for that!

Think Happy...42/52...(and the t20!!)

Good evening everyone, or morning, or afternoon! This week I've  been enjoying a week off from school!


1. Last night I attempted some levitation photography with my brothers. Eben took this one of me:

I think it's pretty realistic! Then I took these of Gabriel:

Getting sucked into the bin!

This took so many attempts, but we got there in the end!

This is a blooper, but it looks like he's doing pointework, which I find highly amusing!

2. Dance this week has been good. In street we added to our dance, and it's turning out awesome. In ballet we were worked hard by one of the student teachers, Jade. I still ache now!


3. Contemporary was so good on Tuesday! We've almost finished the dance we're doing now, and it's so pretty, and I'm getting used to this different style of dancing. We were also getting hyped up about all of the competitions we're going to be doing! We're allowed to do either two troupe dances, or a troupe dance and a solo/duet/trio. I'm really hoping to do a troupe and a solo!


4. On Wednesday I danced at the T20 that was aired on Sky Sports 2! I don't know if our dance was actually shown on TV, but we were on the big screen in the stadium!

Selfie in front of the pitch!

Afterwards with Holly and Amber

5. I got the Sims 2 Ultimate Edition! Which means you get the base game and all 18 expansion packs for free, until the end of the month!


6. I got my dvd of this year's dance show! I've now been able to watch all of my dances back, and my friends' and my little ballet class'! So good!


7. I was gaming on a server yesterday and this dude was being ever so racist, so I kicked him out; it felt so good!


8. Did a mini photoshoot with Eben!

9. I ordered a new leotard, finally!


10. I made a new friend called Никита, I think, or Nikita. He's Russian :)

Think Happy...41/52...

So this week has been outstanding for me! Let's begin!


1. Did my hair and makeup! Cat's eyes and bun with bandana :D

2. Dancing has been fun this week. In street on Monday I was on my own but I got to show off my epic tricks, which was cool. Contemporary was better, although, again, I was on my own. Becky (our new teacher) put us in a really cool looking formation. And ballet and pointe was good yesterday, painful, but good!


3. I made three Bower Birds, see here for the first one!

4. Found an awesome new ballet and stretching YouTube channel!


5. Found out that I'm taking an AS level along with my GCSEs next year!


6. Last week at school!


7. Saw my cousin instead of my cinema trip today, which was sadly cancelled :(


8. Got a summery feeling!!



That's all I can think of for now, but watch out for these next six weeks. Lots more posts!

Think Happy...40/52...

I've had such a long day today, which means I'm shattered now, and I can feel my eyes closing as I type this. I went up to the Peak District today with my parents and one of my brothers, and we did so much walking. I took hundreds of photos, but I'll save them for another day.


1. PEAK DISTRICT! I had an amazing time, here's a selfie!

2. This week was pretty cool. I had a full street dance class on Monday night because I didn't have to go out and practise a performance dance with Shanice, Mia and Hannah. It was also pretty cool because a guy called Luke was there. We were in the same class in year 7, but then he moved to Hannah's school and became close friends with my cousin, Jasmine. It was awesome to see him and dance with him for the first time in over three years!


3. Contemporary was different on Tuesday. Not necessarily a bad different, just weird different. For a start, we had a new teacher, a girl called Becky instead of Tanveer. I dance with her anyway in other classes and she's covered contemporary before, but her dance style is very different to Tan's. Tan's are/were very physical, maybe that's because he's a guy, and I love them so much. Becky's, however, is very slow and lyrical, which explains her song choice. It's different, and it's challenging me to use emotions more in my dance!


4. Erm, what else happened this week that was good. Oh, we had sports day on Thursday. What made it good was that I didn't compete, so I sat in the sun for two hours and tried to get a tan. Like that was going to happen! What sucked is that my form came third (out of our year group). We had won the cup three years running, and this year the girls won all of the finals, but the boys didn't even make it to any finals, causing us to lose the crown. But still, it was fun missing two lessons.


5. Dance yesterday was pretty good, actually. We did more stretching and strengthening, and Hannah and I took some photos.

6. On both Wednesday and yesterday I went to my friend Katie's house and helped her practice her flips and front hand springs. And I discovered how amazing the shutter speed changing mode on my camera is :D

7. I bought a new rubber ball, so now I can actually roll my feet out before ballet - score!!


And I think that's all for now, to be honest. This morning I had a bit of a relationship malfunction, but you know, you just get on with it. Have a good Monday!

Think Happy...39/52...

I believe this is the first time I've missed the deadline for one of these posts, which is surprising, but inevitable. Yesterday I had to write an entire essay, which took all day, so it could be ready for school today. Oh well, the post is here now!


1. On Saturday at dance, Hannah and I had a mini spur-of-the-moment photoshoot. My favourite shot from the shoot is this one.

A not so nice part of pointe class, however, was that I forgot my ouch pouches, and dancing without them for fifteen minutes resulted in some pretty nasty blisters (my first ones from pointe in over a year though, so not bad going!).


2. Mural painting on Friday was a good substitute for lessons, and although the people I was with sucked more than a little bit, my friend Shane walked in to take photos so he made me smile a bit, thankfully. You've got to love the kind of people who can make you smile just by walking into a room.


3. My old school had its summer fete on Thursday and the squads from my dance school were performing, so I went to have a bit of fun with my friends and watch my other friends dance. I took a load of pictures, but I can't really show them because of child protection. One of my friends took this cute picture tho!

4. On Friday, I did a performance at Hannah's old junior school, which turned out great! She couldn't make it as she had had a terrible migraine all day, so I got a solo ;)

5. On Saturday I also danced at a carnival nearby, and it was awesome!

I think that's all for now! Hope you have a great week :D

Think Happy...38/52...

I'd say this week has been awesome, to be honest. A few minor arguments with someone special and a few lessons have been learnt, but it's nothing major.

1. This week I completed a dress I was making in school. It's made out of pillowcases, and we're going to send them off to a school in Zambia. I'm so happy with mine, it's only really the second thing I've ever sewn!

2. I had a great time when I went to see Macbeth the other evening with around 60 people in my year at school. We had a picnic, my friend had brought the most delicious sandwiches (she's Romanian, so she knows all about great food!) and one of the others brought toffee popcorn for us all.

Left to right - me, Katie, Jasmine and Ioana

3. Ballet has made me super motivated now, and I just read this post which has boosted my mood even more!! And Hannah and I started rehearsing for our YouTube channel!

4. In street dance on Monday, Hannah and I were asked to perform at her old school's fete on Friday 4th July, so that should be great - there will only be four of us dancing!


5. In contemporary on Tuesday, Tan had changed the ending of the dance (I couldn't get the hang of it at all last week), and I could actually do it this week, so I love the new version! Also, Joel Tolhurst (a famous dancer who occasionally teaches street dance at our school) stopped in our lesson and joined in, which was absolutely incredible!


6. Yesterday I also performed at a local primary school with the London crew, which was pretty cool, it even stopped raining for ten minutes for us to perform!

I'm on the back right, with my arm in the air. I'm standing next to my friends Katie (sticking out on the right) and George.


Well I think that's all for now. I hope your week has been good, see you soon!

Oversplits and Sneak Peak Video...

I guess my mood has changed right around since this time last week! It's funny how one day can change everything, really. Today really has been great, well, except the weather, which was downright dreadful, but we can gloss right over that.

I've really been enjoying my normal ballet class at the minute, because we've been working on stretching and strengthening, and these are things I really enjoy. I love that I can continue to improve my body, and although it is slow-going, you can really glow and feel such accomplishment when you can finally do a trick or something after a lot of hard work.

Today, we did very basic splits stretches (butterfly, pigeon, straddle with a partner, centre splits on a wall) and then went into splits. I can say that I didn't get very far in those proceedings. I then got a baby chair for both Hannah and myself, and we did oversplits with our front leg on a chair. I was able to push into flat splits from here, and this is something I do in contemporary class on a Tuesday too.

Hannah abandoned this effort pretty soon to work on her leg holds. I borrowed her chair and did oversplits with a leg on each chair.I haven't tried this for a long time and it gave me such a great stretch. I did this firstly by touching the ground with my hands, to get my bearings. Then I let go and sat in it, which made my legs shake. I was putting my entire (very heavy!) weight on it and I got just over 180° in my left leg splits! I didn't have time to do my right leg this way, since I wanted to try splits on the ground straight away, which I got flat! It's amazing, the difference you can get by just oversplitting.

This is the result of my stretching, Hannah had this awesome idea for a photo. I'd brought my camera, so I put it on a timer and took this.

After this class, Hannah and I used a spare studio to learn some new choreography, for a dance that we'll be uploading to our YouTube channel! The quality isn't the greatest and we have a lot to clean up on it, but here you go!

I hope you enjoy this sneak peak! Apart from Facebook, if you have me on that, this is the only place you'll see it, so enjoy, my exclusive audience!

But in other news, we had a dance performance at a local school this afternoon, from our London dance crew, and luckily the weather held up for us. I went wrong in the second dance, but I guess I deserve it for not thinking about it for a fortnight!

Thanks for reading this lengthy post, I hope you enjoyed it :D