How to curl your hair with little to no heat

I wasn't thinking of taking pics & making this into a tutorial when I started doing it so the pictures aren't that informative but its ok & simple to follow. This is using bendy hair rollers. If you do not need to use heat & you have enough rollers you can go to bed with them in your hair & when you take it out in the morning you will have beautiful curls.
What you need:

 Bendy Rollers, some hair clips, bobby pins, sectioning comb.

Products I used in my hair: PPS the ends (cuticle sealer applied after I washed my hair) Heat protector (obviously only if you use heat) Herbal Essences Tousle me Softly spray gel, Moroccan Oil for afterwards.If your hair does not hold curl very well you may want to use a curling cream.



After you have washed your hair, section your hair off. Grab a section of hair within that section (size depends on how you want your curls to turn out) & roll in a bendy roller, starting at the ends & rolling up to your head, folding the ends of the roller to hold the hair.

Please excuse my no makeup face.

 I had to leave a section on the top of my head as I ran out of the rollers. If you managed to roll up all of your hair you may sleep on them. Usually when I do this at night I make the sections a bit bigger so I can use up all of my hair (but to be honest I haven't done this in a while, & it is a lot harder to do with longer hair because its harder to get them to stay in.)

View from the side, if you can see anything lol

 I went off to do some things to let my hair dry a bit on its own, but what I did now was mist my with the heat protector & used my hair dryer to blast the curls. Be careful that you don't cause any of the rollers to fall out. Use the cool setting to set the curls. Then when you feel that its dry enough you can take the rollers out by letting them fall out so the curl keeps its shape. Then coil the curls in your fingers & pin back to the head with bobby pins while you start on the rest of the hair.

Roll up the rest of your hair, I pinned my fringe (or bangs, whatever you want to call them) out of the way because you will need to change the direction & I didn't want to get it mix in with other pieces of hair. (make sense? haha)

& then you pin your fringe but roll it up in the direction you want it to curl in.

Blast dry with your hair dryer again & take out the rollers when they're dry.

Finished look- I brushed out the curls with my fingers, sprayed in the spray gel & scrunched, & added a tiny amount of Moroccan Oil to tame the frizzies.

& then later I was watching tutorials on youtube & came across Lilithedarkmoon. She has some amazing tutorials on braids & different hair styles so I decided to copy one.

Here is the video- but seriously you need to check out all of them!

I hope this is useful to somebody, it seems a lot more complicated because I simply ran out of curlers but it is a great one to do after you have washed your hair at night to sleep in. There are quite a few different techniques to getting curls with no heat.
Thank you for looking!

Why Gold Mining Shares Are Lagging The Gold Price

I've got a post on the corporate blog referencing two articles on the divergence of mining shares to the gold price - and the conclusion is it isn't all the ETF's fault.

Negative Lease Rates

Very good two page analysis of negative lease rates by Pollitt & Co’s John Paul Koning, including central bank activity in this market. Quote:

What sort of “non-banks” might be supplying leased gold to the market-making banks at these extremely negative rates? As we already pointed out, central banks seem willing to lend only at positive rates, which leaves only one other source: the investing public. ...

The public effectively lends gold to banks when they deposit their physical gold in unallocated form at a bank. ... The negative interest rate received by the borrowing bank is probably in the form of client fees or bid-ask spreads. ...

By serving as the cheapest source of lent gold, the investing public has effectively priced central banks out of the gold lending market.


The Perth Mint does a bit of leasing and certainly no one is paying us to borrow metal. However, unallocated accounts at bullion banks do attract an account keeping fee, as Koning notes, and this is effectively paying the bank to use your metal.

Another factor as to why investors may be prepared to pay people to borrow their metal is that it can be cheaper than the costs of storing it (ie Allocated). I do also think the derived negative rates are a theoretical interbank no counterparty risk rate. Once you add in a premium for the counterparty risk the actual rate is positive.

Finally, there is a mathematical relationship/arbitrage between the futures markets and GOFO (and thus lease rates) and this could also have an impact (not something I've been following too closely).

Silver news you won't get anywhere else

Shall we count how many bloggers pick up on this news item Chinese silver imports decline 39% y/y; exports tumble 44% y/y:

Silver imports in China fell by 39% y/y and 16% m/m to 264.7 tonnes, the lowest level since February, while silver exports declined by 44% y/y to 83.5 tonnes, keeping China a net importer of the metal for two consecutive years on a monthly basis.

On a product basis, silver powder, unwrought silver, semi-manufactured silver, and silver jewellery all declined y/y in September with the latter two products suffering the steepest decline and silver powder only falling by 4% y/y. Indeed, silver powder is the only product that has grown for the year-to-date.

And from the "Chinese love paper more than physical" department, see China's gold frenzy gives birth to small bourses:

The emerging exchanges offer a lot size as small as one ounce, which lowers the capital needed to begin trading, even though the margin requirements can be as high as 30 percent. With lot size set at 10 ounces and margins at 20 percent, the initial capital requirement to start trading is about half the amount required by the SGE.

Emerging exchanges claim to trade physical gold, but most investors are not interested in taking physical delivery. Some exchanges make it difficult and expensive to take delivery. ...

"Who would want to take physical gold? People just want to speculate on price moves and make a profit," said a customer service representative at the exchange who gave her last name as Chen.

Analysts compared the gold investment spree to the wave of retail stock market investors in the last decade, who rushed to a bull market with little know-how, only to suffer huge losses during later market turbulence. ...

Although China's central government has vowed to open up the market, and has made progress by allowing more foreign banks access to the two Shanghai exchanges, an open market for retail investors is yet to take shape. ...

But it was unlikely to happen as long as the country's foreign currency exchange remains tightly controlled. Until foreign exchange controls are lifted, Chinese gold bugs would continue to need tables to put down their bets. "The Chinese love gambling," said Hou.

Doesn't sound like China's exchanges are any different from COMEX. If the Chinese Government wanted its people to buy physical gold you'd think all this paper gold would be shut down. I suppose we will have to wait until the much hyped PAGE is up and running [sarcasm].

What the 1 tonne coin tells us about the gold bubble (not)

All weekend I've been getting heaps of google alerts about the 1 tonne coin, over 90 at last count. Interestingly they have all been mainstream media outlets picking up on the few source Australian media reports about it but next to nothing from the gold bloggers. You'd think such a story would get more coverage within the gold community than mainstream. The fact that it hasn't is starting to cement a view I've had for a while that the gold bloggers treat the Perth Mint like the mainstream media treats Ron Paul - don't give em any publicity, unless it is negative.

Anyway, ignoring that paranoid diversion, I've been particularly interested in the comments left to the mainstream media outlet articles on the 1 tonne coin. Lots of funny ones like "where can I order it", a few calling it obscene waste of money (to be fair, you can't expect average person to understand the concept of pooled physical backing unallocated) but most importantly the "gold, what a stupid thing to buy" comments outweigh the pro-gold. Secondly, there aren't many of those anti/pro comments anyway. More proof that we are no where near a gold bubble, if we were then I'd expect it to generate more comments about gold as an investment.

I also love this opportunistic website http://1millioncoin.com/ which was up in a couple of days. Whatever you do don't click on any of its ads, we don't want to encourage these people.

Dramatic Hot Pink & Black Cut Crease-ish

Last Friday night was our local show. The show is pretty much a 2 day carnival with fireworks on the Friday night, rides & sideshow alley & stalls but because it is actually an agricultural show, there are also a lot of things like shearing, wood chopping, caravan displays, Ute competitions etc there is really something for everyone.
Our town is pretty small so they only had about 4 rides- including everyone's favourite the bumper cars hehe. I went on Friday night with DF & met up with some friends for the rides & the "beer tent" & went on Saturday afternoon to have a look at the stalls.

That night I wanted to do something with my makeup that would stand out which I can safely say that I think it did since I didn't see anyone else with makeup on that stood out, ha ha. That's what I keep an eye out for :P

Click to see the pics better- BTW I am loving bloggers new way to view photos- very much like facebook but so much better

Flash/ no flash.

When I was doing it I thought of making it a cut crease AFTER I applied the black eyeshadow, so I tried to cut into it with an angled liner brush & black bean, so it kind of formed some definition, especially into the inner of my eye- what do you think?

Products~~
EYES//~
Hot pink e/s from the 120 palette, black e/s from the Stila <3 Barbie trio. Black Bean JEP for eyeliner & lower lash line. Silver e/s on top of black- I think I blended it away whoops- & same silver on lower lashline.
Fyrianne Pixie Epoxy patted on top of pink with finger with NYX pink glitter applied over the top (I used my finger since it is easier to get out of the bottle + it was already sticky from the Epoxy) White Pearl e/s as the highlight, BYS falsies (badly applied- sorry!!)

Cheeks//~
I'm pretty sure I used NYX pinky blush, I also used the about glo bronzer.

Lips//~
I just picked a random colour (wish I went for something nude- oh wells)
I'm pretty sure I used CG lip temptation in kiss & Australis l/s in salsa.

Thanks for looking lovelies!! =) <3

& ohmigosh I almost forgot to include the cutest thing- I was waiting for a friend near the toilets where the lighting wasn't so great, and a little girl came around the corner with her mum & when she saw me she went oohh! I assume she could see the glitter he he. I probably looked like a mannequin waiting there :P

One Tonne Coin

It has been killing me having to keep this under wraps www.1tonnegoldcoin.com

The idea was conceived by Acumen Design as part of their pitch to win the contract to renovate our shop and exhibition. I ran that project until recently and I loved the idea but it was considered impossible (maybe because I wanted it to be 3 tonnes, which would have given it about 1.5m or 5ft diameter). It was our CEO, Ed Harbuz who really got behind it and challenged our guys to work out how to do it, saying that if the Egyptians could make Tutankhamun's gold coffin then surely we could do the same with modern technology.

A few trial runs were made in smaller sizes to get the right mold material and to solve problems dealing with that much molten metal, eg thermal shock. My favorite part of the making video is using a router to cut in the milled edge serrations - if you ever want to "work" pure gold apparently normal wood router bits work just fine.

A silly indulgence to out do the Canadian Mint? Probably, but it will generate some nice publicity and draw tourists to our exhibition and shop so we'll recover the cost of fabrication in time.

Why are there shortages at the Mint

There has been some heavy criticism of the Perth Mint running out of retail size silver bars on the SilverStackers forum. Some good questions, some crap ones and I've tried to address them all. My first comment starts on page four of the thread and I've just posted probably my last response on page eight. Worth reading if you want to get a sense of some of the issues we face.

I'll probably rework those comments along with past posts here and here covering similar material into a more definitive post on the commercial factors the Mint has to face/consider.

Also worth reading is this series of three FT Alphaville posts on oil backwardation: I, II, and III. One would be silly to think that the same strategies aren't employed in the gold market, especially by those with the "the ability to internalise flow and keep it out of the public market (possibly within your own dark pool)".

Feelin' Beachy... Pic Heavy

Yayy its getting warmer! I guess I was inspired by the beach although I had no idea what I was doing when I started this. & the 2-toned lip was something a bit different but i like how it looked.
I don't know why but I felt like with this look I needed to fluff up my hair (which I did, then realized it was waay too big & fluffy in most pics) & take heapps of pics.. it was so hard to choose just these ones haha.
Sorry the pics are quite small... feel free to click on them to make them larger.
Thanks for looking! <3

Different lighting.. doesn't make me look like such a ghost! Even though I am not this tanned.

Products: Eyes//~
Nyx Yoghurt + Milk JEP (yoghurt on lid, milk in crease + lower lashline)
UD sin on lid
120 palette (colours circled) Lightest blue in crease + lower lash line, purple & darker blue in outer corner for definition
Maybelline Eye Studio Eyeliner
about 4 different mascaras haha

Cheeks//~
Top Shop cream blush in Head Over Heels, with Bourjois peach blush over the top
Lips//~
Mac hue l/s on the inside with Top Shop l/s in Show off on the outside.

Tweet this!

Gold Symposium

A bit remiss of me not to mention that I will be attending the Gold Symposium in Sydney, November 14 and 15. If you are in Sydney it is really a must go to event considering the speakers: Ben Davies, Dan Denning, David Evans, Egon von Greyerz, Eric Sprott and John Embry, Kris Sayce, and Louis Boulanger.

Remiss because Friday is the last day to get tickets at $199, after which they go up to $299. There is a draw for a natural nugget worth $2000 from Focus Minerals and the Mint is also throwing in a 25th Anniversary 1oz Proof coin as well. This isn't going to have thousands of attendees so good odds on winning.

Let me know if you are going, would look forward to catching up with you at the end of each day for drinks.

Something different... Clubbing FOTN

Firstly, who here watches Australia's next top model!? Probably no one haha, but I am soo happy of the final 3 & I think i will vote for my favourite a hundred times hehe.
Anyway, here is just another run of the mill (did I say that right lol) clubbing look, complete with contouring which I have not done in foreverrr. Excuse the daggy singlet, I did not get any pics in my outfit for that night but oh well. Products after pics! Thanks for looking lovelies =)

Natural light... so yall can see the contouring. This is as much of my profile that i will show off haha

After I did my hair.. didn't do much, just straightened the top layers a little bit.

Lol pic, coz I like the way the lashes look :P

Products:
Eyes//~
Too Faced e/s duo in Ooh & Aah (Silver & Black sparkly) on top of a silver shade stick. (loove the silver in the duo!! totally gorgeous) MAC satin taupe in the crease. Nyx Black Bean JEP for eyeliner. I'm pretty sure I used NYX white pearl as a highlighter but it did not show up, oh well. Lashes are by BYS (I have had them for over 2 years & this was the first time I have used them lol). I would think that its pointless to name the mascara, haha :P

Cheeks/ Contouring//~
All About Glo loose powder bronzer on my cheekbones & forehead & lightly on nose & jaw. I didn't use a proper contouring brush so its not precise. A hint of Nars Orgasm blush.

Lips//~
Nyx Iris l/s with a sportsgirl light up lip gloss (pretty nude colour) over the top.

Once again thanks for looking & I hope everyone has a good week =)

Liebster Blog Award :)

Firstly a big thank you to OohLaLashes for this blog award, which recognizes blogs with followers under 200 who deserve more!
 I was very grateful to receive this award from her, as I have had my blog for over a year now but find its hard to pick up more followers at a higher rate, but I can only blame myself for not posting as consistently as what I would like.

So by nominating 5 fellow bloggers we can help get their names out there, especially when they derserve to have more followers!

My nominations in no order:

3 Girls Ramblings

A Cacophony of Colors

Shameless- Fripperies

FoxyAries

Make-Me-Up

Recently Bought Items

Ughh guys, I am so sorry for being so boring lately. :(
I don't have much time to do my makeup too exciting lately let alone take pics... I also haven't bought too much stuff lately.. but here's some things I have bought over the last 2 months

 Chemist Haul (sorry for the bad pic!)... Lady Jayne Bristle brush, Lady Jayne small plastic hair ties, Swisspers Day Cream with SPF (I need a new day cream & this one smelt lovely, I'm liking it so far) & my HG Makeup remover wipes by Garnier.

 On this website a while ago, http://www.catchoftheday.com.au/ they were having a huge sale for cosmetics, Revlon, Maybelline, L'oreal etc, they had some big bargains. I got this bronzing stuff, All About Glo for $19 instead of I think $39? Anyway I thought I had better stock up for summer, & also they were sold out of pretty much everything else haha) & in the spray bottle is "Rock Chick Wave  Spray"

 Top- Pressed Bronzing Powder, Under that in that gold thing is loose bronzing powder.. which sounds scary haha, & then the next 2 are both called Mini Bronzing Brush. They are pretty much all the same but in different bottles. oh well, I will be ready to be warmed up for summer!

Rock Chick Wave spray, it has the same effect as a salt spray.

Cute Packaging!!

My Topshop products that I won from Heather Does Makeup Giveaway :D Lipstick in Showoff & Cream Blush in Head Over Heels. I still have to do a look that I like enough to post with these products!

Madd Style Cosmetics Drop Dead Fred Collection... took a little while to get here but I won these from Being Your Own Beauty, I have done a few looks with these yet to post but they are the most prettiest colours! Go here to see swatches done by Kristina

 

Something that I have wanted for a long time is a clip-less curling iron. I got this from Target for about $60, however when I bought it I didn't look at the shape or the name properly (Wave Magic... hmmm) but I like to make waves, & I've used it a few times since I've bought it & really like it!
It comes with a heat protective glove which I find makes it more difficult to use, and I always accidentally turn the little on/off button off so I have to select my heat again which is frustrating.But apart from that, no problems so far.

So that's about it,  apart from a few other things but I have had this post sitting as a draft for a while... not sure if I wanted to post it. ohwell!

Hope everyone had a good weekend, and I hope to get back on soon!!
<33

US manipulating the gold price up

Very funny to read this from Reuters where Iran claims that its enemies were deliberately causing the price of gold and foreign exchange to rise in a bid to undermine the Islamic Republic's economy. "The enemies and ill-wishers want to make a fuss and present wrong information to provoke and deviate the market," Ahmadinejad told a crowd in a town in the western province of Hamadan, where he was on one of his frequent provincial visits. "In order to disturb the market they buy a lot of gold coins with their huge amount of money ...

Seriously, this should be read in context of Vietnam's issues with its citizens buying gold as an inflation hedge/savings, which I've blogged about in the past. We are seeing how politicians respond to high inflation. In Vietnam's case, try to ban/restrict gold or in Iran's case, blame outsiders. In neither case take responsibility. Don't expect it to be any different in Western countries.

I also note DGC Magazine's pick up of expansion of reporting (in USA) of export/import of physical money to prepaid access/stored value card products. Of course all about preventing the "transfer of money obtained through illicit activity". I wonder how long before the movement of money between states within a country has to be reported. They may as well get it over and done with and tell us fuck your privacy and just ban all forms of physical money/value and tell us we have to have one government issued credit/debit card we have to use for any transaction.

Finally, I recommend reading Unqualified Reservations blog post on maturity transformation, on which he has written about before. His argument is that borrowing short and lending long is at the heart of our banking problems and cause of the business cycle. Quote:

The genius of Professor Krugman is that he goes so near the truth that he makes it obvious even to his commenters - who typically are both idiots and fools, but several of whom spontaneously exhibit the same insight themselves: Why can't we regulate or even ban the maturity mismatch? Savers would have to make the maturity choice themselves and it would be transparent. Currently, the savers don't understand the huge run risks that the banks have by funding with demand deposits and lending long. It's hiding the risk.

Fekete on Sprott and Silver

I missed this piece dated 6 September 140 Year of Silver Volatility where Fekete picks up on Bob Moriarty's Facts on Silver from 25 April with this cutting comment: "Beware of the fund manager, crying from his rooftop that the paper silver market is a joke, while down there under the roof he is selling paper silver at a 25% mark-up."

Also worth reading Bob's article with these five facts on silver:

1. When charts go parabolic, it ends badly.
2. The actual ratio of silver to gold in the earth's crust is not 16 to 1.
3. There is no shortage of silver. There never has been a shortage of silver. Until the laws of supply and demand are repealed, there never will be a shortage of silver.
4. The most illogical thinking and worst use of "facts" is common among the silver uberbulls and the parrots that follow them.
5. There cannot be a run on Comex. The rules do not allow the chance for a run.

By the way, Bob is certainly in the "Repeat of 1980" category with comments like "You can't profit if you don't sell and all the permabulls are screaming "Buy, buy, buy." As they will at every top."

PS I missed the Schoon and Morairty posts because those sites don't run RSS feeds, which I think are essential. I've got around 100 feeds giving approx 250 posts a day to get through, just not possible to include manual site visits in that.

Classification matrix for PM blogs

Perth Mint is doing some strategic planning sessions at the moment and I was looking for a way to discuss what is going on in the precious metal blogosphere. Nothing like a matrix to oversimplify things (since when does just two dimensions fully describe anything), here is my attempt.

My two dimensions are to what extent does the blog deal in facts or lies including misunderstanding of how things work (the x-axis or What?) and to what extent does the blog attempt to explain and get to the bottom of what is going on compared to just accepting things as they are (the y-axis or Why?).

The resulting categories are:

• Truth Seekers: these commit to using facts and try and explain, they might not get it right, but the intention is there.
• Technical Analysis: just focuses on the facts (price) but doesn't care about the fundamentals or why the price is moving as it does.
• Tabloid Entertainers: doesn't let the facts get in the way of a good story or clicks and doesn't get too deep as that may over tax the brains of its readers.
• Propaganda Merchants: conscious misinformation and false explanations to push an agenda and/or clicks.

Let me know what you think. Are there some better dimensions I can use? And if you can come up with a word beginning with "T" for Propaganda Merchants box then that would be great as I can call it the Four Ts Matrix, which would be cool.

The fun part is working out where to place all the precious metal bloggers. But lets get the dimensions and categories set first.

Rock Chick Glam FOTN + OOTN + Nails

 On the weekend my friend came down & it had been a while since I had seen her, so we planned a night of drinking & dancing.
I had been wanting to do just a full on smokey eye look for a while now but didn't have anywhere to wear it, and didn't want to wear it during the day haha. I added some glitter under the lower lashline & falsies to make it look more "glam". It was also meant to be more black then silver but I used slate JEP when I should have used black bean.

Something is missing... can you spot it lol

Emma (friends SIL/ one of my bosses) did my hair & I put on my falsies at her place. I usually have to get ready by myself so it was nice to have someone else do my hair :)

Products::
Eyes; Slate JEP, an array of black eyeshadows, smoked out with a bit of satin taupe. Nyx glitter liner in disco? on lash line with Fyrianne Immortality over the top (hint of glitter), White pearl to highlight.
Nyx silver glitter on the lower lash line (doesn't show up well in pics) JEP black bean for eyeliner, random ebay false eyelashes.
Cheeks: ELF fuchsia fusion
Lips: didn't look nice, but I don't mind since they wear off easily, Revlon Nude Attitude with CG lip perfection in kiss
OOTN: one shoulder dress with a ruffle on the front plus a waist belt & tights that I took off before we hit the pub.  Also wearing laced peep toe booties (can't see the details though oh well)

bonus pic with Lily, my aunties dog.

 Nails: they look a lot better from far away but its just a sparkly red nail polish with glitter black as a gradient. I had seen pics of blackened nail polish that look gorgeous but didn't know how to do it, but this turned out nicely.

Bonus pics:

 Glasses sitting on table (love them!! I wanted to steal them haha) Of course I had to take a snap with them on.

 uhh random pic i took haha... makeup looks nice here :)

With my lovely girl Nan in the nightclub

 

Sometimes my hair looked redder, I think its the flash, it also makes me look like a ghost :( lol

Anyway as always thanks for looking!
MWA xxx