Tag: art

Tuesday Musings – February 2020 Bullet Journal Spread

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I promise, I’m really making an effort to get caught up on these blog posts.

It’s pretty difficult actually trying to wrack my brain to remember how I was thinking/feeling months ago. February 2020 was a vastly different world from December 2020. For context, in case you’re reading this later, in February 2020 the coronavirus was mostly just a far-off news story from China, and in December 2020, the first batches of the coronavirus vaccine have just started being distributed in the US. Lots has changed.

I’m really quite happy with how my February bullet journal spread turned out. Can you believe I actually brought it (and my art supplies — including a small pouch of markers and my erasable pens) along with me all through my winter break travels? I probably didn’t need to do that — in truth, I likely only worked on it once in my AirBnB in Prague. Mostly, it was just extra weight I lugged around.

Unfortunately, I’m at home right now, and I left the bullet journal which contains February, March, and April’s spreads back at my apartment at school, and I have no pictures of my February spread saved. I thought I was smart — I’d learnt my lesson from having unnecessarily carried around my mostly-unused bullet journal through 8 countries! I guess I misjudged again.

I debated whether I should make this post or not without pictures, but having my blog in chronological order is pretty important to me (which is part of the reason why I’m writing about February in December). I figured I’d rather have something incomplete go live in the correct order than wait a month until I’m able to go back to my apartment and then write this blog, messing up the chronological nature of my site.

I’ll go back and add pictures of my February spread later, when I’m able to photograph it, but for now, I’ll describe it: since February 2020 for me was mostly characterized by my Sciences Po winter break travels, I themed it after the places I visited: Frankfurt, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Ljubljana, Venice, and Toledo. Ironically, what visually ties each of these cities together on my title page — and I never once took a train during my travels! We pretty much only took buses, with some Ubers and shuttles and a plane ride or two thrown in. I guess if you count metros or cable cars as trains, then I rode in a few trains?

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life studying abroad in Paris. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Bullet Journal Supplies (with Amazon links)

Bullet journal: The Scribbles that Matter Pro, A5, 

Pens: Pilot Frixion 

Markers:Prismacolor Brush Tip  and Copic Brush Tip

Sunday Musings – January 2020 Bullet Journal Spread

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Ah yes, of course, the most relevant time to be writing about my January bullet journal spread — mid-August.

I’ve vacillated a bit on what to do with my bullet journal posts on this blog — if I should post them more in line with the actual time of year they correspond to, or if I should post them at the same time as my OOTD posts from that month go up — ultimately, I’ve opted for the latter. Hence, this post going up at the same time as my January 2020 OOTD posts, despite the publication date now being August 2020. It’s not ideal, but it’s what I’m going to work with until I get caught up again in my blogs.

January 2020’s theme was an idyllic French kitchen. I drew it up before I left for Paris, so unfortunately, it does not match the actual kitchen I had in my Parisian apartment (though they honestly share the same aesthetic).

I had originally wanted the theme of January 2020’s bullet journal to be Paris in general (think drawings of the Eiffel Tower, cafés, les Champs-Elysées, etc.), but I decided to go with something a little less “on the nose.” I figured that I’d probably get enough of Paris in my daily life; maybe I didn’t need it to feature so prominently in my stationery as well.

I was also afraid to make my bullet journal theme Paris before I’d even arrived in the city in case I didn’t like it after all. That fear, of course, ended up being unwarranted — Paris was a lovely city, and though it took me a little bit to warm up to (as do most places in the world), I was getting to be fairly comfortable in it by the end of January, after I’d been there for about two weeks.

There’s also the chance my opinion is a little tinted by nostalgia now, seven months later, because I miss Paris so much. Looking back at my bullet journal from January literally feels like a lifetime ago. Even though now, as of writing this post, I’m back at Notre Dame again and life feels like it’s slowly picking up the pace into a steady rhythm after several months of semi-isolation at home, it still seems so foreign to me and look at my January calendar spread and see all the trips and meetings I had planned. Pre-COVID Meilin really was .

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life this semester in Paris. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Bullet Journal Supplies (with Amazon links)

Bullet journal: The Scribbles that Matter Pro, A5, 

Pens: Pilot Frixion 

Markers: Prismacolor Brush Tip  and Copic Brush Tip

January 27, 2020 – I’m in Louvre (OOTD #603)

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Yeah, the Louvre was pretty cool. It was so cool I don’t even have any jokes to make about it, beyond the pun-based title of this blog.

As I’ve mentioned in my last few blogs, I had quite a lot of time to kill in between my arrival in France and my actual first day of classes. It was around two weeks, actually. About one of those two weeks was devoted to the surprisingly not awful Welcome Programme, and the remaining days I spent exploring my new city.

By some dumb luck, I didn’t start classes until Wednesday the first week of school. My Mondays were clear anyway (though they didn’t remain clear — more on that scheduling nightmare in a later blog), and my Tuesday class got cancelled. That left me with half the week to try to keep myself distracted from the anxiety of starting new school in a whole different country.

Thankfully, it wasn’t too hard. Owing to the absolutely exhausting job of making as many friends as possible during the Welcome Programme, I was invited to spend the afternoon with two students from Boston University after they finished up their morning classes. I gratefully accepted — not only is it always really nice to be included in people’s plans, but it also gave me something to do so I didn’t make myself sick from nerves in anticipation of my first classes.

We actually didn’t even intend to go to the Louvre — in fact, we had planned on going to one of the other super famous French museums, the musée d’Orsay. We’d all gotten to visit the musée d’Orsay very briefly during the Welcome Programme, but it was just a rushed hour-long guided tour, and I think we were able eager to go back and set a more leisurely pace. In fact, I have no pictures from that first visit at all because of how fast it went by.

However, the musée d’Orsay was closed that rainy Monday afternoon, and in wracking our brains for other famous indoor Parisian sites we knew of that we could visit on a Monday, we naturally settled upon the Louvre.

I say “settled” as if it was some great disappointment to visit the Louvre over the d’Orsay. Far from it.

There are some tourist sites that don’t live up to the hype — in fact, I’d say that a lot of famous tourist sites don’t live up to the hype. The Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen is kinda lame. Big Ben in London has never not been completely obscured my construction every time I’ve visited. The Washington Monument in DC is kind of neat from a distance when it pierces the skyline but up close it’s really just a big stick.

The Louvre is awesome. Even if you don’t like art, I think the Louvre is awesome. It was the old palace of the Bourbon family, when the king for wanted to be in Paris to be more connected to political affairs rather than hidden away in his Versailles estate. Even if you think the old paintings are dusty and dull, just wandering the old palace is entertainment enough. I’d liken it to the Vatican Museums in Rome — yeah, the art is neat if you’re into that sort of thing (and I am!) but there’s a lot more to take in as well.

But yes — everything you’ve heard about the Mona Lisa is true. It’s tiny. The room that it’s in is crowded with people (and you have to remember — I was there on a rainy Monday afternoon. In January. In the middle of a massive city-wide transportation strike. It was hardly peak season, and that room was still jam packed. I can’t imagine what it’s like in the summer). As a painting, it’s underwhelming to put it kindly.

My personal favorite work in the gallery was Eugène Delacroix’s “Liberté guidant le peuple,” or “Liberty Leading the People.” For a long time, I wanted a print of it to hang in my bathroom, owing to the fact that it was used for the cover of my favorite Coldplay Album, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. During that time, I also had a pretty intense Les Misérables phase — and so anything French Revolution-themed seemed col to me.

This was my one and only time I got to visit the Louvre. Like the Eiffel Tower, like Versailles, like the musée d’Orsay — I thought I’d go back. It was a given, in my mind: how on earth could I spend four months in Paris and not go back to the Louvre to explore it more thoroughly? As a student of the EU, I even got free admission! It’s the Louvre, arguably the most famous art museum in the world. Of course I’d be back.

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life this semester abroad in the Paris, France. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Sweater: Forever21

Blouse: Banana Republic

Scarf: My Aunt Denise

Trousers: Altar’d State

Wednesday Musings – December 2019 + Year in Review 2019 Bullet Journal Spread

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You know, I think I’m finally becoming a fully-fledged bullet journal girl.

It’s funny — I used to make fun (like, in a friendly way) of the girls in my high school who’d carry around their perfectly laid-out planners. Everyone carried Lilly Pulitzer agendas back then. I thought it was so unnecessary and almost childish; why would you need to write down what you need to do? What are you going to do, forget? How could you forget when your teachers literally remind you every single day of the assignments you have to do?

Then, when I began at Notre Dame, I caved and got my own Lilly planner. I figured it was university, and it was time I learned to organized and start keeping track of my assignments and schedule. You can even see some of my early attempts at writing in my Lilly planner freshman year here. I tended to doodle a lot, which, looking back, was definitely the precursor to my bullet journal habits now.

I guess the rest is history. I got my first bullet journal June 2018, and, after a few months of writing in it on and off, (I may have skipped bullet journaling from October-December 2018 and again from May-July 2019, oops) I have finally, after over a year of trying, gotten into a habit of doing it semi-consistently. I’ve completed spreads — mood and habit trackers and all — for September, October, November, and December. That’s four consecutive months in a row!

I even made a little year in review spread for 2019 to celebrate the end of the year. I think my favorite panel was the “themes of 2019” section. It’s cute to have little thumbnail sketches of all of the themes I did in the past year in one place. It really shows how much I’ve grown — I started by mostly copying YouTubers like AmandaRachLee, and  I ended by coming up with unique designs of my own.

Anyway, here’s to continued bullet journal success for all in 2020!

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life this winter break in Kentucky. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Bullet Journal Supplies (with Amazon links)

Bullet journal: The Scribbles that Matter Pro, A5, 

Pens: Pilot Frixion 

Markers: Prismacolor Brush Tip  and Copic Brush Tip

Sunday Musings – November 2019 Bullet Journal Spread

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Following up on my successful bout of October bullet journalling, I finished my November bullet journal on time!

I was, however, less successful at posting the blog about my November bullet journal spread on time. It’s January 2020 now, and this is the blog from November 2019, which ideally would have been posted before the month even began. Oops.

I know a lot of bullet journal bloggers and YouTubers like to post their monthly spreads in the week before the new month begins so that other people can get inspiration from their designs as they’re working on their own journals, but I like to show mine off after it’s already been completed. I like to doodle in the calendar as events come up and fully fill out my habit and mood trackers; otherwise, it seems so plain and colorless.

My November spread was themed on jewel-tones and fall fashion. In DC, took until about early November for things to start cooling off, and once it started, it didn’t take long for me to bust out all of my fall and winter layers. I mean, let’s be honest — I was already dressing in fall and winter layers in the dying days of summer, but at least by November, I was comfortable wearing them.

So in honor of my excitement for the coming of fall, I decided to theme my bullet journal around fall fashion. Each of my doodles for my mood tracker represented a different article of fall clothing (hat, scarf, coat, boots, etc.), and my cover spread was meant to represent a closet full of jewel-toned fall clothes. The way I imagined it, you should feel like you’re walking into an Ann Taylor LOFT store in late October.

Not everything I drew was necessarily a piece I own, but they were meant to look like something I would like to own. Some of the doodles were based on accessories/clothes I own, though — for example, the green and tan bag hanging on the clothing rack for the cover spread is actually a messenger bag that I own, which you can see here in the last photo from this old post. The green rain boots are also actually a real possession of mine. Can you spot the others?

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Bullet Journal Supplies (with Amazon links)

Bullet journal: The Scribbles that Matter Pro, A5, 

Pens: Pilot Frixion 

Markers: Prismacolor Brush Tip  and Copic Brush Tip

November 27, 2019 – Familiar Faces (OOTD #586)

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The day before Thanksgiving, I asked off from work so that my good friend, Mariana, could visit me in DC.

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Brookings’ Thanksgiving holiday was only Thursday through Friday, but no one was going to be in on Wednesday anyway, so I simply took off. As it turned out, my roommate from freshman and sophomore year, Mariana, was going to be driving into Baltimore for the holiday, and she offered to meet me for a day in DC before she headed the rest of the way home.

Just as was the case when Jane came and visited a few weeks previous, it was so refreshing to see a friendly face from somewhere other than the DC  cohort. Don’t get me wrong, by late November, I was really starting to feel comfortable with my group of friends and beginning to really enjoy life in the city. But even the friends I did make I had really only known for about two months; in comparison, Mariana I’ve known for two years and Jane I’ve known for nine.

Mariana, like me, is a big fan of plants, so naturally I had to take her to the Smithsonian Botanic Garden. It was my second time there (the first time being with Jane), but it was still just as magical. It’s maybe not quite as spectacular as the University of Copenhagen Botanic Gardens that I saw with Anna over the summer (that one had butterflies), but I loved it all the same.img_1388

Afterwards, we wandered around the National Mall a bit, got lunch at a vegan restaurant, visited a small Christmas market (nothing compared to the one in Munich, but still very cute), and then decided to visit the National Portrait Gallery, something that had been on my bucket list since day one.

And I’m glad I went! I love portraiture; I think in another life, I would have wanted to be a portrait artist for 19th century aristocracy and have exhibitions at art salons and hang around and drink wine and smoke all day. People have always been my favorite subjects to draw. I was a touch disappointed that they didn’t have all of the official Presidential portraits (I guess they hang in all different places — some are in the Presidential Libraries, some are in the White House, etc.), but it was a really neat place anyway.

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My favorite’s is Jimmy Carter’s — one look and you can tell that it’s from the late 70s. The beige aesthetic paired with the retro gadgets on his desk (I think it’s a pager? Or an intercom?) immediately gives it away. But rather than looking tacky or dated, it looks vintage and cool. If I’m ever President, my portrait had better be as cool as his.

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life this semester in Washington, DC. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Turtleneck: Express

Skirt: Forever21

Jacket: Forever21

 

September 14, 2019 – Out (OOTD #563)

Published on by lensembledujour4 Comments

(I hope you don’t mind, but I’m trying to transition from blog posts every day to every other day for now. Every day was a little difficult to keep up with — and besides, now that  I’m only a month and a half behind with my posts compared to three months behind like earlier this year,I’m not as concerned about catching up on a summer’s worth of travels that I might forget)

I love to be out. I don’t so much love to be out late into the night.

I think I’m becoming my parents. They also don’t like to be out late at night, whether it’s at the movies or the mall or a restaurant. It was like pulling teeth sometimes to convince my dad to take me out Black Friday shopping when I was a kid.

But now, I’m the one whose teeth need to be pulled in order to get her to be out past 10pm. I don’t understand what happened. I’m still capable of pulling a late night at the office or the library if I slam coffee, but being out that late for food? Or a drink? That’s going to be a no from me.

Sometimes, though, my body and my brain can be bothered to agree, and I can manage to get myself to go out at night. As was the case here, with the “Art All Night” event in the Shaw neighborhood.

It was a cute idea for an event — basically, a bunch of shops and restaurants kept their doors open later than usual on a Saturday night so that people could come do art-related activities. A gym had a canvas painting station, and a restaurant had some postcards to decorate.

I think what excited me most of all, though, was the plant shop giving out free flower cuttings. There was only one per person, but no one else in the group wanted theirs, so I got to take them all. I was so pleased, that I even bought a succulent that I definitely don’t need.  I guess their marketing techniques worked.

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life this semester in Washington, DC. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Sweater: Vintage (thrifted)

Skirt: Pull and Bear

 

Thursday Musings – October 2019 Bullet Journal Spread

Published on by lensembledujour1 Comment

I think this may be my first time actually completing a whole month’s worth of bullet journal pages?

I believe the closest I’ve ever come before was April 2019 — and I never even posted pictures of that particular spread! Let me know in the comments if that’s something you would like to see; maybe I can do a retrospective or something featuring bullet journal designs that never made it onto my blog!

Apart from this month and last April, though, I often fail to even come close to completing all of the pages in a bullet journal monthly spread. What gets me every time are the habit tracker and mood tracker pages — they’re deceptively difficult to keep up with! You wouldn’t think filling in a square in the grid every time I go for a run would be hard, but apparently, it is, because my habit and mood trackers are almost never up to date. And they almost never get completed.

And that’s why it’s so exciting to have finally almost finished everything that I drew out for myself for October! In comparison, last October, I didn’t even draw up a bullet journal spread — I just pasted it in from a sheet of Halloween-themed stickers that my parents bought me. And despite cutting that corner and getting a fall break (which I didn’t get this year in DC) to work on bullet journaling, I still didn’t get everything filled out — hence, the gap in bullet journal posts on this blog from September 2018 to January 2019.

But I’ve been on the grind for all of September and October, and I’m hoping to keep that trend going. I love bullet journaling as a way to keep my life organized in the present, to provide a record of past events in my life for the future, and to give me an avenue to practice my art skills even if I haven’t been in an art class for over a year. To be honest, I don’t know if I can rightfully say I have a better quality of life when I keep up with my journaling…but it makes me feel put together even if I’m not.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Bullet Journal Supplies (with Amazon links)

Bullet journal: The Scribbles that Matter Pro, A5, 

Pens: Pilot Frixion 

Markers: Prismacolor Brush Tip  and Copic Brush Tip

August 31, 2019 – A Monumental Semester (OOTD #558)

Published on by lensembledujour2 Comments

Blog title courtesy of Notre Dame’s Washington Program tagline.

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Say what you will about Washington DC being a fake city consisting of nothing but tourists and glorified temps who come and go with every election (in fact, I’d probably half agree with you), but I like the monuments and memorials.

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I don’t know, I just think they’re cool. With the exception of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (which is my favorite) and maybe to a lesser extent the Korean War Veterans Memorial, none of them are super provocative, which to me is what makes a good memorial.  However, they’re still fun to look at. No, there’s nothing emotive or honestly really even that controversial about the Lincoln Memorial. In the end, it’s just a giant statue of a guy in a chair. But you can still marvel at the artistry and technique that went into creating the giant statue of a guy in a chair.

I think, for me, that’s what makes the difference between a cool statue and a memorial — a memorial should have some form of impact for the viewer. And that doesn’t have to be in the form of controversy in its creation or design, as was the case with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (though I do find the story behind its design to be fascinating).

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A memorial should make you think or reflect on something — in the case of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, it’s to make you reflect on how terrible war is for just about everyone involved. It’s an ugly wall for an ugly war. To compare, the National World War II Memorial may have a flashy fountain and beautiful sculptures of eagles, but it doesn’t really make you think about anything but how flashy the fountain is and how beautiful the sculptures of the eagles are. For that reason, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is the better memorial — even if it’s the uglier “statue.”

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Like I said, though, that’s not to say that some of the “big statue” memorials, like Lincoln or Washington or Jefferson, aren’t still fun to see. They’re just not provocative to see. Comparing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to the Lincoln Memorial is like comparing a Francis Bacon to a Pier1 Imports painting of a fruit bowl — yes, Lincoln is pretty to look at and an impressive display of technique, but what did it really make you think about? We all already know what a fruit bowl looks like, and we all already know that Lincon was a good president.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the monuments and memorials in DC that you didn’t ask for. One last opinion for the road — how long until a woman gets a memorial on the National Mall of the scale of Lincoln or Jefferson? And who do I have to know in order to get to design it?

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life this semester in Washington, DC. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Top: H&M

Skirt: Forever21

August 18, 2019 – Fair Weather Friends (OOTD #551)

Published on by lensembledujour1 Comment

Ironically, this post features neither “fair weather” nor any “friends.” It does have kind-of  gross, muggy late-August Kentucky weather and my family, though.

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I consider myself something of an expert in overcoming jet lag — I haven’t struggled with it really since my 2018 trip to Nepal, and that was over a year ago. Perhaps it stems from being a college student and never having a regular sleep schedule to begin with and ignoring my circadian rhythms on the daily.

My trick is to try as much as possible to use my time on the plane ride to get myself into the wake-sleep schedule of whatever my destination is. If I arrive in the morning, I try to stay awake the day/night before so I can sleep on the plane. If I’m arriving in the evening, I try to nap before the plane ride so I can then stay awake for the duration of the plane. The former is typically the easier option — I’m normally stressed before plane rides, so once I’ve finally made it onto the plane, I’m able to relax and get some sleep.

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After I’ve arrived at my destination, it’s then imperative to try to stay awake for the duration of the next full day. This is hard, especially when you’re home alone with nothing to do because there’s nothing to stop you from just crawling back into bed for your fourth nap of the day. The solution, then, is to go out and do something with friends.

Since I don’t have any of those (contrary to what this blog title might suggestion), I went out with my family to a local art fair — one of my favorite summer outing opportunities. I’m typically not big into summer-themed activities, but I must admit I love a good art fair.

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life this summer. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Top: Akira (thrift, my dorm room’s laundry room)

Skirt: A Pull and Bear in Zagreb