A Letter To My Present Self

The Month of July was supposed to be 'A Letter To Myself' Month according to our schedule, however there are times when schedules don't quite work out the way they are supposed to. Nontheless I decided to write a letter to myself, not only for the purpose of letting you all know that we haven't forgotten about this blog, but also because I though it was rather appropriate to do it for myself.

These kinds of posts (or at least the ones I have read so far) are usually writting from the present perspective addressing a past self and giving advise on problems you faced as your past self. Now I believe that it can be extremely helpful to do this, however I thought for me right now it would be best to place myself in the future and write a letter to my present self in my current situation and think what I would say to myself, so here goes:


Dear Magdalena,

Surreal Photography

One of my favourite art mediums is photography. I like taking photos, I like looking at photos and yes, I rather enjoy being the centre of attention in photos. I've done a few shoots with photographer friends in the past and would love to do more and really get into fashion blogging, but my favourite type of photography is surreal, fantasy-style photography. Think creepy-yet-beautiful fairy tales in the woods and the likes. I'm not such a fan on how much photoshop is used in this type of photography these days though. While some might say that photoshop in itself is an art form, I like the extra creativity, patience and thought that goes into creating fantasy style photographs without altering them on a computer, so I thought I'd share two of my favourite non-photoshopped, totally amazing photography collections with you today. I promise they will blow your mind!

Katerina Plotnikova

Yes, those are real animals in those photos, and as I mentioned before, they are not photoshopped in. Katerina had two animal trainers help her with this amazing shoot. If you like these photos, do check out her other work. I can promise it is equally as beautiful and surreal as what you see above (plus there is a picture involving baby hedgehogs that is too adorable not to see!)

JeeYoung Lee

The most amazing thing about Korean artist, JeeYoung Lee is that she creates all of her dream-like settings by hand before inserting herself somewhere in the photograph. Some of the photograph represent her own dreams, experiences and memories and some are based on traditional Korean folk tales. All possess a certain magic that photoshop just can't reproduce, don't you think? See more here.

Do you know of any other fantasy photographers who don't rely on photoshop? I'd love to find more!

Garden Lilies

It's been all about the garden at home for me in the last couple of months, with the project of trying to turn a plain grassed area into a place I'd love to spend lazy summer days with my family.  I want plants everywhere - it's the first house I've owned, so when we moved in I went a little mad with the walls and painted every room a different colour (something you can't easily get away with when renting).  Now I'm doing the same with the garden, so it's made me happy to see lots of stores I wasn't expecting to be selling garden related items.  

Beauty UK NEC 2014

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Friendly Faces: Cocktails in Teacups

You may have seen this interview in our April edition of Fellowship Magazine but we think Amy deserves to be featured more than once! We did a fun interview with Amy from Cocktails in Teacups about her blog and her life.
Don't forget to pop over to her lovely blog and say a quick hello.

Art Month: A Day in the Life of Lucie

Art Month is a pretty broad category so this month we've tried to bring you as many forms of art as possible. And my personal favourite is interactive art. The biggest form of interactive art, in my opinion, is the radio because the presenters are literally putting on a show for you and there are tons of different ways to interact with that show. So we asked Lucie to give us a bit of insight into a day on her radio show.

I’ve been interested in the radio industry for many years, Radio 1 DJs such as Zane Lowe, Huw Stephens and Greg James (who I listened to religiously at one point) moulded 14 year old Lucy's music taste and made me love it so much I began considering it as a career. I’m now in my last year of college and planning to study Journalism at University, I'm still quite unsure about what I want to do, but I thought I would give this radio thing a shot.

After about a year of trying to find experience, I stumbled across the community station Salford City Radio. Which conveniently is based 5 minutes from my house (by car) I'm not that stupid, to have ignored something so close to where I live! I’ve been at Salford City Radio since June 2012, they trained me up and gave me the creative freedom I didn’t think I’d get so early in the industry.

Starting college, I was shoved in a Media class with nobody I knew except for a lad that slept through every lesson. I ended up sitting next to a girl called Beth and found out that she was also interested in Radio - I was mega shocked as I’d never met anyone who had this similar interest to me. So, I invited her to help me present the radio show.

Since January 2013, Beth and I have been presenting a weekly radio show that goes out Thursdays 8-9pm on 94.4fm as well as online. We both present and produce, most of the time I create the playlist as Beth does have rather odd music taste ranging from One Direction, to Blink 182. We create new segments for the show and plan interviews.

Lots of opportunities have come our way since starting the show, we were recently invited to report on Birmingham International Fashion Week where we interviewed designers, watched fashion shows and drank lots of champagne. We also had District 3 come into the studio for an interview last summer (that boy band from last series' X Factor, not Union J. The other one!) They were lovely and seemed quite shocked that they were being interviewed by 17 year old girls.

We hope to start a live show over the summer, but at the moment due to college restricting our time, we pre-record the show on a Friday afternoon. We probably should prepare the show in advance, and every week we say we’re going to. But most shows we walk in clueless of what’s going to happen, we like it that way. Most shows include new music that we’ve loved recently, reviews of each other’s song choices and general chit chat.

Controlling the desk in a radio studio is easy; there are a few knobs to fiddle about with when first going into the studio. These change the level of your voice and the sensitivity of the mics, songs, CDs and Jingles. This is probably the most tedious job of them all, but if you don’t do it your show won’t sound comfortable to listen to, the audio will be all over the place. The rest is simple. You play music, you chat and make up little games to make the show as interactive as possible.

If you’re interested in the radio industry, use the internet. Google how to get experience, it’s out there. Whether its hospital radio, a community station or internet radio shows. If you have any questions, tweet me at @lucyrebeccca and I’ll try to use my limited knowledge to help!

Listen to the show - Thursdays 8-9pm 94.4pm (in Salford)

Art Month Giveaway: Canvas Print

We have some exciting news! We're hosting our very first giveaway in honour of Art Month here on FOTB.

Unfortunately I am one of those people who takes so many photos that my external hard drive groans when it sees me walking out the door with my camera! But I never get them printed. Sure, it's lovely to have them on my blog, as a screen saver or even as a digital wallpaper but wouldn't they be even better on my wall? The lovely people over at HelloCanvas thought so too and they gave us a 16x24inch (40x60cm) canvas print valued at £32 to give to one of our lucky readers!
You can have any image printed onto your canvas and delivered for free to your door within the UK.

HelloCanvas is the biggest UK website for canvas printing so they know a thing or two about making your images look fantastic. There's an amazing variety of canvas sizes on the site, starting at 8x8inch for £8 and going up to 36x56inch for only £89. The site is easy to use and so straight forward, making it a real pleasure to use whether you win or not.
So if you'd like to make your home a little prettier, go ahead and put your name in the draw! You can enter up to 6 times a day, those are good odds.

This giveaway will run from 1st May 2014 to 15th May 2014 (ending 12:00 GMT). A winner will be drawn on the 16th May 2014 and contacted within 48 hours.
a Rafflecopter giveaway


Terms and Conditions:
1. This competition is open to UK residents only.
2. The winner will be determined by random.org and the decision is final.
3. If selected as a winner, you will be required to respond to our email within 24 hours of it being sent otherwise we will draw again.
4. The winner who responds will have their information passed along to HelloCanvas who will then deal with distribution of the prize.
5. FOTB accepts no liability or responsibility for prizes being delivered to the winner.
6. FOTB accepts no liability or responsibility for prizes being damaged when delivered.
7. This prize has been sponsored solely by HelloCanvas. FOTB was not compensated for running this giveaway and only the prize was supplied free of charge to FOTB.
8. Terms and conditions are subject to change at any time without prior notice.