Comparison is the thief of joy.

Upon scrolling through every aspect of social media on a lazy sunday morning I couldn't help but realise every picture I saw made me feel bad about myself. I constantly ask myself why I can be so happy for my friends on their achievements whilst at the same time being made to feel lesser a person because of that.

When my friend has lost some weight and is looking amazing, I am so overjoyed for their success especially when I know how much it means to them. Then at the same time I ask myself, how come I haven't lost any weight yet? What's wrong with me?

When my other friend gets an amazing job that pays well and looks perfect, I'm so relieved they are getting settled and things are going in a great direction for them. Why am I suddenly also jealous? I recently just got my dream job a few weeks ago and yet I'm still jealous, why?

On a daily basis I hope I can become less jealous and more confident but there always seems to be something i can compare myself to, to suddenly make my achievements seem like nothing. I am often referring back to this quote 'comparison is the thief of joy' and it resonates so clearly with me. I can be so proud and relieved when i feel like i have achieved a goal of mine whether it is big or small, however within seconds this can be diminished into emptiness when I compare it with the success of somebody else. Everybody is on a different journey and everybody has a variety of goals throughout their life. Some people will achieve them sooner than others but that does not then limit your own chance of success. I know I can lose weight if I truly put my mind and full motivation into it regardless if my friends have lost weight too. 

It's almost embarrassing to admit to being jealous of friends because girls are always told to be supportive and i always love cheering my friends on. Although, nobody can control how they feel and I can't stop myself from feeling jealous. However I want to try to make a conscious effort to change the jealousy into inspiration. Why not be inspired by their weight loss or their dream job or their new house? Why not let their successes jump start you into your motivation in achieving goals? It is important to stop comparing myself with people on my Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and everything else! You need to celebrate your own victories and start applauding yourself for any personal achievements whether big or small. The encouragement and positivity can only push you further. This is going to be my focus for the next month and I want to see how this can positive effect my life and I hope this could inspire others to do the same.

Over and out,

Pale (Abi)Gail

x

Becoming a mermaid

My final piece of work at University for my Musical Theatre degree was a personal study. This allowed me to pick a topic of my choice as long as it related in some way to Musical Theatre as a whole. We could do a written or performance based dissertation and personally i chose to do a portfolio on The art of Make Up. This allowed me to look at a wide range of make up looks from stage or screen. I took inspiration from existing make up looks and recreated my own.As somebody who is obsessed with make up and love having a creative input myself, i had a lot of fun. One of my favourite looks was for The Little Mermaid as the character Ariel. Being my favourite disney princess i couldn't resist going a bit crazy with the makeup and GLITTER. I'll go through steps of the make up look if you want to recreate yourself after all halloween is under 4 months away...

Firstly, hope you're enjoying the cornish pasty hair, i was half way through performing in another show at University whilst doing my portfolio, it comes out soon! These pictures are the first three steps of creating this make up look. Start with a blank canvas as they say, i used a foundation colour which matched my skin tone and covered any blemishes/dark circles as best as it could, obviously not a miracle worker! I associate the turquoise and purple with Ariels colour palette due to her tail and shell bra and wanted to use these bright colours for the eye shadow. I used fairly cheap eyeshadows from the 120 Makeup Full Colour Eyeshadow Palette.I started with the turquoise blue as a base on the eyelid then went in with purple and worked from the outer area of the eye moving in to the crease and shading them together. I chose a strong brow mostly because defined eyebrows are very important on stage as they help emphasise the acting and emotions, normally i'd go for a much softer brow.

Next i added a winged eyeliner drawing the eyes out, giving the 'big disney eye' effect and helping to enhance the lashes when eventually on. I used the purple eyeshadow from before  and mixed it with a shadow based primer with a lot of shimmer. I shaded from my forehead above my brow bone round to my cheeks with the shadows and added turquoise in certain areas. To add a bit more sparkle i began with the glitter, who could resist, with purple and turquoise glitter i put it on top of the shadow using a liquid latex adhesive and applied with an old make up brush. Moreover to add a bit more sparkle to the eyes i added turquoise shadow close to the waterline under my eye and using a silver eyeliner i added MORE GLITTER (why not) to make it more magical and mermaidy. To complete the eyes i wore some outrageous false eyelashes complete with little flowers to give tribute to Ariels love for underwater flowers through the film.

I added the red lip to complete the Ariel look with some high beam on the cheek area to give an extra glow. This really helps enhance the makeup look on stage but still looks great for a fancy dress party or any other event where one might require to be a mermaid! This really was such a simple make up look even though it looks a teeensy bit complicated. 

 

Let me know what you think about the look and if you recreate it! Mermaids love a selfie, who knew.

Over and out,

Pale (Abi) Gail

x

Travelling Europe: All about Berlin

A previously mentioned in my last post i have just got back from a 5 week trip around Europe! Honestly, one of the most amazing and extremely busy experiences in my life so far. Travelling around on trains every 2 to 3 days and ending up in a different country most of the time was mind blowing. The whole trip went so fast and it never truly sunk in each time we arrived at a new destination, where we were. In preparation for the trip i kept trying to stumble across tips and advised places to go from people who had already travelled Europe. Of course, there was so much and everyone's opinions were hugely different. I wanted to shed a light on my personal opinion on the places i visited and am going to start with my first stop Berlin...

Fat Tire Bike Tour 

 Berlin was our first stop and it was a shock to the system to say the least. After getting off the flight and eventually finding the train station closest to the Schonenfeld airport(a 5 minute walk) we hit our first hurdle. As it was late at night there were no staff to help us figure out which train we had to get on and we could not find any heading for Alexanderplatz, despite it being the main area of Berlin or so we'd heard. Finally, we asked a man for some help and he put our destination into his phone and showed us which train we needed, hallelooooo. If you're thinking of going to Berlin, try to figure out the trains in advance(like we should have done). Upon eventually arriving at our hostel with more chaos following the poorly written directions we stumbled into our room at 11pm. To greet us was 6 sleeping people who weren't too happy with us scrambling around attempting to make our beds with an iphone light. After a few minutes and a man declaring we had 'already woken everybody up' we turned on the lights, said our hello's, made the beds then went off for a well deserved beer! 

Memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe

We only had one full day in Berlin and had planned to do the Fat Tire Bike Tour which lasts around 5 hours with a stop in the beer garten half way through for drinks and food (well deserved may i say). Now i am not the fittest person in the world, although i have always danced i was a bit worried about the prospect of a 5 hour bike ride. However i was very pleasantly surprised. It was a light bike ride on the roads of which the cars are all very respectful of riders, plenty of stops to look at main sights and the longest period of cycling was around 10 minutes. Perfecto. I thoroughly enjoyed the bike ride, stopping off to see lots of sights and the tour guide, i forgot his name :(, but he was American and lovely! Much of Berlin had been destroyed in the war so there were a lot of rebuilt buildings and a lot more concrete than i had imagined. Cycling around we heard a lot about the history of the Berlin Wall and the second World War and for me not being much of an intellectual, i actually found it so interesting. I could write so much about what i saw and learnt but i wouldn't want to ruin it for any future bike riders! Just know, it was well worth the money.

World Clock in Berlin

A major downside to Berlin for me and my friend was the location of our hostel. We hadn't realised but we were on the complete opposite side to where all the bars, east side gallery and quite frankly all the fun was. Although we enjoyed the bike tour we just weren't too struck by what we had seen of Berlin in the day. It was only on returning to our hostel where we met two Americans that they explained where the east side gallery was and how it was so much more of a hub around that area. With that knowledge in hand and not wanting to miss out on a huge part of Berlin we headed over for the evening. We walked along the East Side Gallery, the stretch of the Berlin Wall with all of the amazing graffiti art work. It was amazing to see this after seeing many pictures online before, it was especially beautiful at night. We had some drinks around this area and then headed for a club to dance the night away. Some of the clubs in Berlin were quite strict and my friend not being 21 yet we could not go into the one we had wanted. However we did end up in Matrix which is beneath the underground and met some friendly faces and ended up having a decent first night. 

East Side Gallery

East Side Gallery posing

It was so lucky we had been advised by the hostel roomies to visit this side of Berlin otherwise we would have left feeling much more disappointed by the city. I would love to revisit here again and stay in the right area this time as it just seemed a hive for quirky bars and clubs with interesting people on every corner. I'd say it was so much bigger than i thought it would be and location is absolutely key if you are planning to visit. It was fairly affordable and had we had more time there we may have seen a lot more.

Hope this helps any budding travellers out there!

Over and out,

Pale (Abi)Gail

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