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!

contemporary choreography

I found this on Facebook earlier, and gosh, it's so beautiful!

Post by Rodrigo Pires.

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

apologies

It appears that year 11 is much tougher than I thought it would be. The exams are more complex and much more frequent. I've started revision for my mock GCSEs, which start on December 10th. On top of all the extra revision, I have more than average amounts of homework, so I've been kept very busy. And it was my brother's birthday on Saturday, so we went out to celebrate in the evening.

Bad quality but oh well ;)

Anyhow, I've not got that much news to share with you guys. Dance has been good; I've got my splits nicely done now, and the routines are coming along nicely. School is just very busy, and staying late twice a week and revising and doing all the homework is pretty stressful.

But I'm going to try to dedicate more time to write on this blog. I have ideas!

Carys x

ouchies

Today was non-uniform day at school to raise money for Children in Need. I wore my new Doc Martens, but even wearing big fluffy socks didn't protect my feet. Right now, I have a number of corns on the sole of my left foot, and a good few blisters on the ball of my right foot.

Wicked Witch of the West - Dorothy won't get these shoes!

I'm really hoping that they start to heal a bit overnight, because it's so painful to walk. Still, I'm going to have to figure out some way to go to dance tomorrow. No pirouettes for me!

Talking of pirouettes, though, I had PE in the sports hall today. We played badminton, and whilst I was waiting to go back to the changing rooms at the end of the lesson, I tried a quick pirouette. In my trainers. But the floor was very smooth, as they often are, so I got a TRIPLE pirouette!

I was so happy! I mean, sure, they weren't the neatest, my foot wasn't in retiré, and my arms probably weren't the neatest they've ever been, but I felt so weightless going around and around. I remember that when I decided to stop - I decided, I didn't fall out of it! - I could just put my foot down and squeeze my bum and then I'd stop.

When turning, I felt so powerful and stable, and it feels so good. I think something that helped was definitely the way I didn't think of prepping and I didn't think of anything other than a nice pirouette. I mean, I only tried for a double. Relaxing helps so much!

think happy | 51/52

Right, so it's once again Sunday, which means that there's only one week of these Sunday posts left now!


1. Street on Monday was 50/50, but I'm putting it in for the good half anyway. Hannah was feeling very down and I couldn't do anything to help her. But, on the plus side, she started to enjoy herself slightly when we got down to actually doing our dance. There's a bit where we have to do sexy walks, and we love that bit ;)

But Danny was taking part in it too, beating the whole lot of us girls at being feminine! He tried to get George to have a laugh with it too, but he just manned-it-up instead.


2. Contemporary was rather enlightening, to be honest. I figured out that I can't do forward rolls from standing - only from the floor, and even then it's barely! It's a good job we have crash mats, because I jump into them more than roll.

But, Jack didn't even say hi before class, let alone give a hug like normal. He later let me know that he was annoyed at something, although I didn't ask what; hm, it seems like everyone is in a bad mood recently! It must be the coming of winter making us all feel so gloomy.


3. This evening, I went out for a meal with my family for the first time in a long time. We went to our favourite Indian restaurant, and we had a great time!


4. Dance yesterday was good yesterday! We had ballet quizzes to fill in for Jade, and Kerstin worked us hard in both ballet and pointe classes!


5. Today is Greg's birthday, happy 17th!! Hope you had a great day, after getting a red card yesterday! Good job you didn't get a ban, that would've been an awful birthday present xD Don't underestimate your tackles xD

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 | 50/52

I intended to write another post this morning about some dance classes I took yesterday, but I've been busy working on my Textiles coursework today. In which case, I'll tell you now.


1. Ballet was so fun; we actually learnt new steps that we can put into our grade, and in pointe we did enchainements (yay, I can't spell French!). Afterwards, I discovered that the toe I had a blister on a couple of months ago had now swollen around the knuckle, which was very painful just to even walk on.

Hannah, myself, and Evie

2. Hannah and I took a taster pole dance class for an hour yesterday afternoon, and that was so much fun! But I really admire professionals now, it takes so much strength that I didn't have, so it kind of failed for me then, and now my stomach and shoulders hurt so bad from it, which I guess is a good indication.

I can't continue to take classes, as they're £10 for a one hour class, once a week for six weeks, and I can't afford that. But Hannah is determined to go, and I'm proud of her! Yay Hannah!

3. I also then went back to Hannah's, where we played The Sims 4! Ohmygosh it was so fun! Expect a YouTube video soon!

Comfy on Hannah's bed

4. I've been using Skype a lot more than normal in the second half of this week, which has been a blessing. My friends are just so nice and they're helping me gain more confidence through using it.


5. My friend Ice from Flourishing Sweetheart has released some amazing news, you go girl! But I'm going to leave that for her to tell you guys, so go follow her; she's awesome!


6. I've just been in a really really good mood all week, if I'm being honest! Creative Writing was fun this week, we were writing from an image, which I loved!



That's all for now everyone, hope this week goes well for you!

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!

think happy | 48/52 | (AND MEETING LUKAS MCFARLANE!)

Hey guys, so I'm super duper happy right now!


1. Today I met Lukas McFarlane, the winner of Got To Dance 2013! I'm so excited to tell you about it!!

Alice and Lukas (left), myself and Lukas (right), and both of us with him (centre)

I had a two hour dance workshop with him, and we danced, took photos and had autographs, and sat down and had a chat (q+a). He's such a lovely guy! Besides the photos, he also held me hand and walked me up to the front of the studio to dance, another time he patted my head, and another he held my arm and took me to a new space before we started dancing again.

Also, when I went up to him for my photo, he said to me something along the lines of: "Hey sweetie, you danced really well today!" Like, oh my god, did he really just say that to me?! I felt like I could burst into tears of joy right then!

These are my signed things! First I got him to sign my ballet shoe, because I stupidly forgot my dead pointe shoes! So I took the left shoe off my foot and asked him to sign it. The reason I chose my left shoe was because on the Got To Dance stage, he always wore his left sock becuase that's his turning foot. And the reason he wears a sock is because for the audition, he forgot his foot thong, and the one-sock just became his thing!

Just before leaving, I went back up to him, after everyone else had had their photos taken and asked him to sign my autograph book, because why not? I doubt I'll have another chance! He asked what my name is and after I spelled it out to him, he said: "That's a cool name". Yet again, I felt so happy! Eek! Best day ever!


2. After the masterclass, we had a dance performance at a charity event in aid of Macmillan, which was pretty fun! The weather was perfect for it too!


3. Contemporary class was really good on Tuesday; Becky taught us a dance I'd already learnt and enjoyed so much!


4. The AS level English Creative Writing classes I've been taking at school have been quite enjoyable last week, We did a lot of writing, and it was a nice calm environment.


5. I survived the first week of school! Yay!

dancing derp faces

It's one thing to be a mum, and it's another to be a photographer. Unless you are both. Unfortunately, my mother is not! I mean, she can take some good photos, but, no offence mum, not action shots.

I don't actually mind the one in the bottom-left, my eyes are just closed!

If you think you've stumbled across a gem just there, then wait until you see my personal favourites!

Why do I always grimace when I dance? Haha these are just gold!

But I must be fair to my mum. She can take some lovely photos when she tries!

See, she's not so bad after all! I love the group photo especially! Do you have any derpy action shots? Why not post them and leave a link in the comments? I'd love to see ;D

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!

Today Will Go Down In My Diary, That's For Sure...

You may have read here that my town had a music festival today. I went with my dance school to perform two dances, one at 12, then one at 3:35.

After the first dance I went on the waltzers, since there were loads of big rides at the festival, as well as food stands. It's the fastest fairground ride I've ever been on in my life, so much so that my neck ended up almost snapping backwards and now still really hurts, yay for whiplash! But it was so fun at the same time, and Imi and I (who I shared a car with), screamed so much and had no hands for most of it. Our friend Katie was watching because she hates that ride, and now I know why!

Then I proposed that we go see our school friend Eve singing in the acoustic tent, but Katie didn't want to, so Imi and I went to watch by ourselves. Towards the end of the set my friend Dan turned up and watched with us. We've been talking for only three days, but it was so great to actually meet him!

After Eve's set we went to find Katie, and ended up just standing around talking for a bit, while she tried to rub off the glitter on my shoes. That failed.

Katie dislikes the glitter xD

Then Lydia and Sacha, more of our friends, went on a ride and we watched for a while. Dan and I decided to get away from the noisy fairground for a bit, so we went and sat in the park in the middle of town. We had so much fun!

The girls were in the car on the right

Then he walked me back to the festival and went home, so I had to be sneaky and sneak past the people collecting money for charity on the gate! I was five minutes late to where we were supposed to meet before our dance, so it was a bit awkward walking up to everyone, but oh well! I'd rather have a good time with my friends!

Anyway we danced our last Sadler's dance, I saw a girl I know called Ashleigh, then I had an ice cream with my mum and went home. That was today! Let's just say that it wasn't just the waltzers that made me feel funny!

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...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

Think Happy...36/52...

Hi guys, I have had quite a good week, and it's gone so quickly! I wish time could pass more slowly at times like these, when I'm having good days and looking forward to things it almost feels like I'm wishing my life away. But then again, we all just want to have the good things and reject the bad, so I guess it's only natural.

1. I've made some friendship bracelets, both for myself and some friends. I made the green one for Jack, and the rainbow one for a little girl I teach called Amber. Mine are not pictured.

2. My brother made a yummy 'trifle cheescake' at school this week, with fresh strawberries, custard, cream and biscuit. It tasted so good!

3. On Friday I got the opportunity to dance at a large cricket stadium 40 minutes away from where I live. I danced with my dance school, and it was such an amazing experience! We're dancing there again on 23rd July. There were videos taken, but they were so blurry it's unreal, as the pitch was huge! I'm going to get someone to record our next one on my big camera for better quality footage.

4. Yesterday we did another performance, this time at a fundraiser in a nearby town, and I have better videos of that. I've put them on YouTube for you to see, but as unlisted. We danced them back-to-back, so ten minutes of solid dancing.

The links are HERE and HERE!


5. I'm going blonde again! Yay for summer!

So anyhow, that's my week, I hope you enjoyed the videos and photos!