31st July; Derby Museum and stationary shopping haul!

So then, I recently got paid which meant that I was able to finally go and do some shopping for workbooks for university and start visiting galleries and museums for the beginning of the project at University.
I am trying to be as prepared as humanly possibly at the moment, and with that comes a lot of university updates!

Since Derby University wants me too visit three galleries/museums, it was the perfect excuse to spend the day out with my little sister and get some shopping done. Unfortunately I had only just been paid, and I borderline regretting the shopping part of the day. We only visited one gallery and museum, and that was Derby Museum which is right in the city centre. If your in or around Derby, I would definitely recommend it; I only live half an hour away and I`ve only just been! I never knew someone where that was close by would have mummies over the age of 2,300 years old! I was rather impressed.

We only have one small museum in Ilkeston, so seeing mummies and taxidermy animals will impress someone like me quite quickly; aswell as the museum area, they also had a range of different styled paintings that where in their own separate exhibition space. Some of them where seriously detailed and looked amazing! Whilst others where only little drawings, still impressive but it didn`t have the !wow! factor I was looking for. My younger sister, Georgina, instantly fell in love with a painting of a horse. I ended up falling in love with some of the blotchy paintings that created quick paintings that still had plenty of movement and detail; I`ve always wanted to be able to paint like that, but I lack the skills and the patience to even be attempting a painting like it. I think I ended up getting most of my inspiration and breath taking moments from the museum section of the building.

I had to grab a picture offline

since mine had a reflection in it

and was quite dark.

On the ground floor, there are tea rooms which are full of old statues and pottery; which was very relaxing to sit amongst. Then the rest of the building is dedicated to the museum and gallery, and it was nice how the modern paintings merged into old fashioned ones from the 1700`s. There`s a small set of stairs that lead in too a large open room that`s full of extremely detailed paintings of upper class people living in the past; Unfortunately I walked in as a man was currently talking about the exhibition and missed almost all of the information on the paintings... Great.
The taxidermy area was quite good to say it was quite small; I would put that down too having a wide range of animals. Usually when you go to museums they`ll have areas of taxidermy, but it could be all birds or all mice or something like that. In Derby however, they had one of each animal so it wasn`t repetitive or the same as every other museum you went too. The wide range of animals actually surprised me, and I even saw some taxidermied animals that I had never seen before, like; Armadillos, Bush babies, huge parrots, fossils and a small bats that we stumbled across in a different part of the museum.
I lovedddddd the mummies! I had no idea that there where Mummies in Derby?! I know that probably sounds quite stupid, but I thought that mummies would be saved for bigger museums; like down in London, Birmingham, Manchester and stuff like that. There where three mummies overall and the one who's face, feet and hands where visible creeped out my younger sister quite a bit.


So overall, the museum was great and I kind of want to go there again but with my mum or something; she liked museums and nerdy old stuff, but she was at work all day so she couldn`t come with us.

The main shops I went too where Tiger, Rymans, Asylum and Primark; I did go into a bunch of other shops, but ended up not buying that much that would actually be interesting. My two university books arrived and I bought loads of new sketchbooks for when I head University, like, I`m trying to be as prepared as possible and I still don`t know what to expect at the moment.
I bought for books from Tiger, A soft cover red book with lines for note taking, a small set of watercolours, a book filled with graph paper inside and another little black and white notebook with lines in to it aswell. Then there`s a slightly bigger blue notebook (A4) that`s full with lines, so I`m planning on taking a lot of notes to start off with. Since I haven`t got a proper pencil case, that only has pencils in it (I like to keep organized), I also bought a small pink case from Tiger. Everything I bought from Tiger ranged from about £1 to £4.

I couldn`t find a precise sketchbook; Derby wants a sketchbook that isn`t spiral bound, A4, with plain pages inside so we can begin documenting our museum and gallery trips.

Unfortunately, Tiger didn`t have what I was looking for, so I popped to Rymans and bought an A4, softcover, black sketchbook. Then a range of  H and B pencils, along with a small fold up ruler to pop in the case. The sketchbook was £6.99, the pack of 14 sketching pencils was £3.99 and the folding ruler was only £1.49.


I`m actually thinking about making another update that includes all of the clothes I bought whilst I was out shopping aswell; feel like it might be about time for me to start being a bit more girly!
Hopefully I`ll be updating a bit more now I`ve done some work over the holidays and that I`ve been able to go out a bit and have some nice days out.

I`ll be back soon with another update!

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18th, July; University Coursework, And Days Out!

And once again, we are back with another quite plain update! It`s been ten days since my last update on the live diary blog; and I`ve been quite the busy bee.

For starts, in my last update I spoke about how I was excited to now be an Avon representative... However, after trying it out, there is absolutely no one possible that I can actually make money from something like Avon.

To begin with, the roads I was assigned have been pinched by two other local woman, and one who is quite aggressive has been shouting things across the street at me; making me feel rather uncomfortable. Then there`s actually receiving orders from people, no one who took a catalogue actually ordered anything! So when I did eventually find people who didn`t already have one, they didn`t want one anyway! Also, the amount of doors that where slammed in my face and some of the verbal abuse I received when I was knocking on doors, was absolutely disgusting... Like seriously disgusting. Then when I tried to order some products for one lady, they wanted me too pay full price straight away for her product, and because the order was under £15 I would have to pay extra for delivery and I wouldn`t be paid any kind of commission price for selling products.

In other words; you`re wasting your money on products, when you`re not guaranteed money from your customers, you end up working for Avon for free and you get a lot of abuse off of disgusting people who have absolutely no manners or respect for anyone whatsoever.
So in other words, f*ck you Avon.

Anyways, enough of ranting at how stupid being an Avon representative was!

The other day, I got back from buying some amazingly cute fabrics, and there was a letter from Derby University. Naturally, I got seriously excited and opened it up right away; the letter was from my course leader, Carl.
It basically just said to check my e-mails for the coursework that they want me to begin over the summer holidays, and then to e-mail him back just to confirm that I had received the work for Summer. It does look pretty interesting at the moment, and very different to what I`m used to doing at sixth form.
At the moment, I need to buy a brand new sketchbook for writing down Ideas and thoughts, but too do that, I also need to buy one of three books that they want us to read through and analyse? I think it was too analyse and annotate really. The very last thing that they wanted us to do was too find three everyday objects to bring in (as a starting point), and these objects are going to be taken apart and smashed up... I still can`t think of anything that I could take in, I was thinking of just starting with something quite basic, like hugeee light bulbs that have got all of the wires inside for me to draw out or cut up.
I still feel a bit unsure about everything, I`m going to wait until my next payday to decide on what to buy; it might be a job of going in certain charity shops and finding old items, obviously charity shops will be cheap and you can find some very vintage looking items in them. It`s just finding the time aswell, since I`ve got even more shifts to be doing during August!

As for days out; my mum, little sister, nephew and I all had a lovely day out at Shipley Park fun day. It was seriously cute!
it was all in support of guide dogs, and dog training; so naturally we took our little dog Seams with us and he loved it more than us! There was tons of stalls selling some of the cutest doggy supplies, hand made treats, hand crafted collars and coats. Naturally, sweet stalls for the little ones, hand crafted gifts, hand made bags, donut stands and hot dog stands. They even had some of their training guide dog puppies for people to meet, little sessions where you would be blind folded and the dog would guide you around crowds of people, dog training events where the dogs would dance with their owners; also, some competitions for owners and their dogs to take part in, like the waggiest tail, the fluffiest dog, and so on.
It was fun, and it was seriously hot... Meaning that I`ve got seriously sunburnt shoulders and back; so when I went to work today, it felt like my work uniform had suddenly turned into Sandpaper and it`s been killing me all day!
I have been coating myself in aftersun since I got back form work this afternoon, but it`s just gotten even redder now. I`ve got my little USB fan on whilst I`m on my laptop and I`m going to sleep with my window open so I can try and get some air to my back.

I`ll remember some form of sunscreen next time...


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8th, July; Avon Jobs!

Raspberry still lemonade with a slice of Lemon...

GORGEOUS!

So then guys, I`ve had a small break from blogging on here; not as big as usual as nothing really happens to me anymore... How boring! I`ll get to the Avon update in a few minutes, a quick recap of what I`ve attempted to do the past week or so.

I`ve been at work and I got paid! But then spent almost all of my wages on an amazing sale in Primark! Even though it was a sale, I still spent a ridiculous amount of money, I think I went over the top since everything was so cheap... Starting to think that someone should take my bank card off of me!

In all fairness, some of the stuff I got was actually quite nice, I don`t go there too often since some of the clothing can feel quite cheap and uncomfortable; I`ve got very, very sensitive skin that gets irritated and peels off easily, which means that some items of Primark clothing can make my skin feel kind of itchy and sore. Since my skin is getting better, and it`s coming up to summer; I thought I would try and treat myself to some clothes, and really did go overboard..
I might do some sort of small update on the clothes that I did buy, I`m not too sure yet. I`ll see when the weather gets nicer and I can actually take some summery looking photos.


After the shopping, which was actually on Saturday and not today, I met up with Dan and we grabbed something to eat at ASKItalian in Derby. I`ve never been there before, but it was adorable and I got spaghetti all over my face... How very ladylike of me.
Then I had the most amazing Italian styled cheesecake and Raspberry sorbet, with extra raspberries. It was seriously good, and I`m definitely going back there when I`m next in Derby... Probably just for the cheesecake actually, that was just absolutely gorgeous! Even though I`m heading to Derby University in September, I still don`t know my way around that much; so Dan is being really helpful and he`s shown me all of the must-go-to places around.
This is my must-go-to place for cheesecake now...

Anyways, now too Avon!

So Avon Representatives where going around door to door, and they where wondering if people would like to sign up and become new representatives in their area. When I was looking for jobs around Ilkeston, Avon did come up; but I didn`t want to work for them since there's a woman around the corner who covers the whole estate and to be honest... She isn`t very nice. Like, REALLY isn`t nice.
Hopefully, the area manager will give me somewhere nearby where the woman around the corner doesn`t cover... I hope so anyways. I genuinely think that was the only thing that was putting me off. But when she signed me up I was ridiculously excited and I`m really happy since she`s coming around tomorrow to come and finish off the paperwork with me.

I`m slightly nervous; obviously I`ll be going door to door and meeting a lot of new people, and you can even host Avon parties which would be seriously fun to do. I guess you could say that I know have two jobs aswell, I`m working at Bramble Lodge and I`ll be helping them with their new wall art projects aswell as my normal shifts, then I`ll be starting to work towards being an Avon Representative in my spare time.

It should be quite fun, I know a lot of people from work who order from Avon; but unfortunately another woman at work now does it, and I obviously don`t want to go in and steal customers from her, she was there before me so I`m not going to be rude and invade.
I do seriously hope that I`m given somewhere quite close by since I`ll have to walk to hand out the catalogues to customers and then walk to collect the orders back in. This will also help me gain a little bit of extra money before University, which means that It`ll be easier for me to save up for expensive equipment.

Seems like I`m going to have a lot going on over the summer holidays!


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