Living in Singapore, Chinese New Year is obviously one of the biggest celebrations of the year, if not the biggest. I started thinking of all the craziness that goes into preparing for the holiday and how sometimes the kids can be lost in the stress. As a child I was petrified of the lion dance and I thought I’d come up with a project that could get children not to be so scared about it. My dragon puppet, to be fair, looks 50% lion and 50% dragon but it is 100% fun! The project is designed to be made with your children in toe!

 

Let me know if you had fun making this with the kids!

This is a DIY tutorial I created for my Youtube series for Class 95 TV and I have so say, it is one of my favourites. It was so lovely to receive an orchid recently and it didn’t come with a base so I bought a pot from the local florist and some gold leaf. It was so easy that I wanted to cover half of my room with gold leaf!

Hope you enjoy! Happy making!

If there is one thing I have been noticing in my last 2 months of cleansing, being more mindful and sorting out my life, is that a lot of my time is wasted on doing menial tasks around the house. Seriously, my to-do list is huge and the amount of time I could be using to mediate or go for a run is being spent on cleaning the house. This is particularly frustrating when I have a great blog idea or inspiration for a video to produce and get bogged down in house work instead.

But, alas I have found a solution! There is a new way to get rid of this problem and not only is it going to give you more time to do what you love it’s also going to half your stress (which normally comes from booking unreliable cleaners) and we all know how unbelievably harmful stress is for your body.

Image: Swiish by Sally Obermeder

Helpling is a cleaning services easily accessible to all homes in Dubai. Helpling has a standard hourly rate of 35 AED to ensure complete transparency for both the cleaner and client. Much the same way comparative flight sites like match you with the best airfares. Helpling’s online platform simply pairs a cleaning provider with you when you want your place cleaned.

 Image: Who What Wear

All you have to do is go to Helpling.ae and enter your location, select your preferred date and time, enter your voucher code if you have one, and enter your payment details.

From there, the team at Helpling coordinate your booking and – once the job is done – send you an invoice. You will not be charged until the job is completed. This way, you can sit back, relax and enjoy a squeaky-clean home. They even perform background checks before partnering to ensure all cleaners are experienced, trustful and legally engaged in the business. I know when I was based in Dubai this was always a huge concern for me and having to be at the house to ensure the cleaning was done right.

Image: The Coveteur

If you’ve been following me on Instagram, you would have seen that I have been shooting in Singapore like a crazy woman. Many of you may also know I am only 5″1 and 30, this makes it imperative to have some cheat items which make you look taller, thinner and younger. You can apply some of these tips to your social media pictures too.

One I learnt from a photographer on this trip is to stand legs ajar and instead of pushing your butt outwards (like they tell you in beauty pageants), for a more high fashion look, press you pelvis up and under. Here’s a good example:

You can see how flat it makes my tummy look here:

Another must-have are stick on chicken fillets in lightweight foam. Not the silicon ones. Mine are from La Senza. To give cleavage if you’re like me and have none!

As for your face, if you’re wanting to look “high fashion” raise your chin:

To make this lace veil click here.

To look sexy or youthful, chin down works fine!

To make you look taller, the photographer may well shoot you from below. Help the guy out by making as many “s” shapes as you can by bending your leg which faces closest to the camera:

If you are conscious about your arms, have them out and not pressed against you (as below):

Here are some other cool behind-the-scenes shots to show you what goes on:

Every woman should also have a high pair of comfortable and good quality nude shoes (you can see here I use them a lot). You may also need a high pair of black heels. Since getting older, I also use a pair of Spanx skinny britches when shooting evening wear.

I also recommend always bringing your heels in a bag while wearing your flats. You should also have some basic studs in your ears (if your ears are pierced). In the case of the shoot above, few accessories were provided so my crystal studs just made me looked a bit more finished.

I must thank my Singaporean management Fly Entertainment, in particular my publicist Alycia for assisting on these shoots. To my mentor Joey Mead King, hair and make-up artist Greg Oh  and Gnossem, Vikas Dayal and WTF Singapore.

 

 

 

BEFORE

A while ago I fell  in love with Nicole Warne‘s block blue-black hair. I wanted the multi-dimension gone from my hair. I loved it and I knew going back to my natural colour (which is black as you can see in these kid’s pictures of me) would allow my bob to grow into a lob much faster! My hair became so healthy! But as Summer approaches I got frustrated with how much make up I had to wear to make my skin not look so pink. The tone of your hair, can change your skin tone quite dramatically.

So I went about researching the best way to slowly get my hair to the new Alexa Chung brown without damaging and over bleaching.

AFTER

So here are the tips my hairdresser gave me which are perfect for Asian girls wanting to reduce their hair from black.

1) It takes time and will happen in stages. You cannot bleach your whole head and then dye over it without damaging your hair a lot. Here we started with strategic foils and over time I will probably get more until my hair can get a rich chocolate semipermanent over all of it.

2) Using a new product called Magma they are able to lighten hair up to 6 shades while colouring at the same time. In one process! This is particularly difficult on artificially coloured hair (which mine was). But the result is silky and smooth hair. Even the ads on the website for this product have Asian models so maybe it was designed for my kind!

3) Tone and tone some more. Asian hair is naturally warm and this means a little orangeness loves to come into our hair when it’s lightened. A good tone, even for 8 minutes, will ensure a lovely and non-brassy finish.

4) Where possible use semi-permanent colours. Semi-permanent colours will give that fabulous shine without the damage of permanent colours. Shiny, shiny shiny!

I think the result is amazing and look, I am not wearing dark lips. I can finally look normal with nude lips! Yeah!

Thankyou so much to Fitria Adi for her outstanding smoky eye! Wearing my new recycled Manning Cartel jumpsuit and DIY Tom Binns necklace. The tutorial is coming soon!

 

Today is my first Australian Father’s Day in Australia in 10 years. The last one I celebrated here in Perth, my father had died 5 months before. I was a mess. In the 10 years that passed, my cousin and best friend lost both her parents within 1 year of eachother and a couple of friends from my childhood lost there fathers and wrote to me asking for advice on how to cope with the loss.

I have often paid tribute to my Dad on social media because being away from home, I felt I needed to anchor myself to the relationship I had with him. I didn’t have his favourite chair or watch or photos around me to comfort me with his existence because I was nowhere near the family home. Now I am typing this sitting in the bed he once shared with my Mother and I do my craft in the room he passed away in. He is everywhere around me and I find great peace in those reminders of him. However, in the first 5 years after his death, I couldn’t think of anything worse than being reminded of his loss every day.

Somewhere, someone will hopefully read this who has just lost their amazing Dad and they will want some sort of guide to know that things get better, that the hurting stops a little less. I want to tell that person, if that’s you, that it gets better and easier but you will never stop missing your Dad. I am 30 now but even writing this reminds me that my father will not see me get married or have a child. It still reduces me to tears. On Father’s Day, well it’s easy to feel the “absence” more.

So here are a few “tips” or words of advice to help you:

If you are suffering from a recent loss, take your time. I rushed to make myself feel better, I was hard on myself in my recovery from the grief. In a very “Asian” way, I told myself you need to “move on faster.” I event continued at Uni and didn’t take a break, I got the best grades of my entire degree the semester my father died. A sure sign that I buried my sadness in my books. So, be kind to yourself and take your time. Allow the wound to heal in its own time and it will.

Talk to people who can empathise about the loss. It’s a profound loss to lose a parent, my mother says it’s only second to the pain of losing a child. I had a lot of people who spoke to me, who “tried” to be nice after Dad died. One girl even said to me “I know exactly how you feel because I lost my running coach and we were really close.” I was overcome with unexpected anger at this. How could she compare the loss of my father to the loss of her coach? I stayed very clear of that girl from then on. So try and shut out the noise and sometimes it’s better to be alone with your thoughts than to have ignorant people chattering away at you.

Pay tribute and enjoy the memories. The best thing about being 10 years on and being home in Perth again is that I can talk about the wonderful things my Dad did without being sad. The sadness has been replaced by a profound gratitude that I had 19 years with a wonderful person. I feel sad for those who were too young to remember their fathers when they passed or who had fathers who walked out. Mine was so present for all the time I knew him. I love looking in the mirror now and seeing my face, an almost female replica of him as a young man. I am so proud to be his daughter. I am so proud of the mark he left on the lives of those around him.

A couple of weekends ago the most wonderful thing happened. My father’s best mate met my boyfriend. Harry said to Jon: “You would’ve loved Robert, he was a great bloke. Boy did he love his golf. He brought me out to the driving range and tried to teach me.” In that one precious sentence, I learned something new about my Dad. I never knew that he tried to take Harry golfing. I realised a little part of Dad still lives, I am still learning new things about a man who has been gone for 10 years. I realised our fathers do continue to live on. It’s not just something they say to children in Disney movies, my father lives on in memories and when we share those memories everyone benefits.

So don’t do the “Asian” thing like I was told by my Aunties. Pay tribute, talk about your Dad, post about the great things he did on Facebook or how you wish he was here to see something you’ve achieved. That’s how you keep that memory alive and you touch someone else who now gets to see what an amazing man he was.

To the fatherless, on Father’s Day, it absolutely gets easier and better. To our Dads!

 

I have been trying for some time to think about how to broaden the appeal of this DIY blog. I think my craftiness and projects are great. I’ve been devoted to posting original content. I love sharing but somehow the comments have stopped and it’s got me wondering whether I am flogging a dead horse. With the new job here in Australia, I find myself spending more time dreaming of blog posts then getting time to blog them.

I’m spending my weekends labouring over amazing step-by-step tutorials and elaborate shoot locations, only to find myself hardly any time to blog them. Then last weekend I did the #icebucketchallenge. It was rushed, the video quality was bad and it was raw but it got a bigger response than all my gorgeously perfected DIY tutorials in recent months. I started thinking about why that post did so well and began assessing what you guys want to see from me and I realised, you want to see more of my life behind-the-scenes.

My real laugh, my real smile, my real wardrobe and soon to be my real, new apartment. I used to often get asked in Dubai for looks into my wardrobe and what my process was to styling myself or how I came up with my decisions to cut my hair a certain way. I just never had TIME to do it. Now I still don’t have time but I want to at least try.

So you’re going to find a lot more content on this blog from now on in addition to DIY. Things like reflections on my entertainment career and lessons on self-esteem I have learnt, all the way through to new video tutorials. So stay tuned!

So let’s begin with the haircut I got last week that has changed the way I carry myself so much! Here is my old hairstyle:

This is the current hair:

My latest obsession has been my new Alexa Chung hair cut. As always, Alexa was way ahead of the curve on this one, she was rocking this low-maintenance shattered bob back in 2010 when everyone else was obsessed with Lauren Conrad’s barrel curls. I have kinky, thin Eurasian hair like Alexa which helps.

So what do you need to ask your hairdresser to get the perfect fringe?

1)Take in your favourite picture of the style (you can have a look at some of the variations below and maybe use one).

2)Ask them to carefully cut a fringe which is only maximum 4.5cm from your hair line backwards. You don’t want the fringe to start too far up your head.

3)Make sure the fringe is not cut too blunt and the technician cuts into it so it clumps together nicely when styled and actually looks “piece-y”.

4)The hairdresser should also take some pieces from the side of your face so that it frames your face and blends into the side lengths of your hair.

All the tips on how to style this are coming in my video on the weekend.

Getting a fringe can be daunting. I have a really high forehead and was thinking of ways to change up my style while growing it a bit longer in length. It’s probably the best thing to get if you want a change but nothing too drastic.

I have really bad memories of fringes when I was younger. It’s like every mother with an Asian daughter wants to cut her a fringe to make her look more like a China doll. Damn you, Mum! I even cut my own fringe once and cut it too short and it ended up sticking in the air for school the next day. It left me traumatised to say the least.

But I sure am glad I did overcome that fear because come this week’s MTV Video Music Awards and The 2014 Emmys, guess what hairstyle was owning the red carpet!

It look amazing on Taylor Swift and just gave her a bit more rock’n'roll edge. I was sick of seeing those Maggi-noodle curls which reminded me of Chad Kreoger. Go Taylor!

Then at the 2014 Emmys Kristen Wiig (another one of my faves) did it without the fringe but still artfully dishevelled.

The best thing about this cut is how low maintenance it is (I will be recording a video on Saturday showing you how to create a kink in your hair if you have straight hair like mine) and also how the fringe (they call them “bangs” in America) always make you look styled. I can also do a fabulous top knot in it too with a hair donut and some bobby pins, I will have a tutorial on that soon too.

The key to this style is that it’s kind of like the “No Make Up Make Up” look, it actually does require some preparation and tools to look “undone.” Come back on Sunday for that video!

 

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