Summer

My name is Anna and I have just finished my first year of studying Make-up and Hair design at Southampton Solent University. So now that I have passed my first year it feels like a good time to look back on my first year of university. There have been many high and low points of my first year. So hopefully I will remember the highs and look back on the lows as part of the learning experience. After all if we were perfect and knew everything about our subject there wouldn't be much point in doing the course would there.

 Writing about myself is something that I don’t particularly enjoy, don’t get me wrong I understand how useful looking back on events in your life can be. However sometimes it’s easier not to so  we don’t have to be reminded of the emotions we went through, after all it was bad enough when it first happened so why would we want to relive it. Well one reason might be to help us in the future so we know how to cope with similar situations or to help others who are going through the same experiences as us.

Although at the time low moments in our life can be upsetting, frustrating and cause us many problems the fact that we manage to over come these times I think shows how strong we can be. Also knowing what I have overcome in the past gives me some reassurance that when inevitability things go a bit wrong in the future it will be ok in the end so long as I don’t give up. 

An important thing that I learned last year is that having a go, trying and failing is better than not attempting something at all out of fear of failure. At least if you give something a go and it didn’t work out you know that it wasn’t meant to be and you can move on and hopefully find something else that does work out for you.

Summer

So deadlines have been reached, all my work has been submitted and now there is nothing more I can do but wait for the goddesses of hair and make-up that are my uni lecturers' to decide my fate and weather I can carry on into second year.

I've managed to do quite a lot of things over the summer so here are some of my highlights:

Cardiff:

I visited a friend from school at her university halls in Cardiff and she took me to some of the sights Cardiff has to offer. This included the castle, the bay, the shopping centres and the nightclubs. 

One of the best wallpaper designs I've ever seen

Credit to the following pieces of writing and art work go to the artists and curators represented by National Museum Cardiff who kindly allowed photographs to be taken of their work.

National Museum Cardiff

York:

I went to visit my Grandma who lives near York and enjoyed the time catching up with her and just relaxing mostly going for walks and shopping. Also we visited a Quilt Museum where the work contained many different textures, styles and colours that were very inspiring and would make good colour palettes in the future.

The following work is credited to Kaffe Fassett and The Quilters Guild Collection who very kindly allowed photographs to be taken of their work.

Italy:

Milan

Marlow and London:

At the V&A museum there was an exhinition of many different types of foot wear from all over the world, some modern styles and some vintage. There were shoes from films and shows such as Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood. Shoes from Celebrities such as Lady Gaga, Dita Von Tease and Kyle. Designers such as Givenchy, Gucci and Louboutin.

The Lion King had bold colourful make-up mostly in the style of face paint which was very detailed and helped represent the different animals in the story. The hair was mainly covered by headpieces shaped like animals and the costumes were either designed to look like the animals or to look like traditional African outfits.

Priscilla Queen Of The Desert

The costumes were very flamboyant with lots of bright colours and glitter as you would expect from drag queen costumes. The make-up was really bold with lots of smoky eyes, bright lips and extreme contouring and the wigs and headpieces were immaculately styled with lots of volume.