ThisisYuchan

So I turned 23 on Tuesday 14^th October and I went for afternoon tea with my mum to a place called Sketch. She was recommended to go by a friend of hers. Sketch is just off Regent Street on Conduit Street. It is a short walk from Oxford Street and not far from London Charing Cross station. I really wanted to go for some sophisticated afternoon tea and, when my mum showed me this place online I was instantly intrigued. So here is my review of the place.

We decided to book a table for 15:00 as that is a perfect time for afternoon tea. As soon as you arrive at Sketch you enter the big archway hallway. Hop Sketch your way to the front of the place. Someone takes you to the tearoom and, whilst on your way to the tearoom you pass a rather interesting small room. It almost looks like a butterfly house that has blue floral wallpaper. You then arrive at the tearoom that is a very beautiful pink, soft lighting and comfy chairs everywhere. It was like being in a very beautiful retro ballroom. Once you settled down you could choose from three types of afternoon tea sets. We went for the Sketch Afternoon Tea, which consisted of the elegant tower of treats. You can see in the images below of how amazing it all looked. What I loved the most was the really awesome cutlery. It was all commissioned for the tearoom at Sketch; unfortunately you can not buy it anywhere. At the end of the sandwiches and treats came the scones. They were huge and so blooming yummy; you were given clotted cream, strawberry jam and fig jam. I decided to get a regular scone whilst my mum got a fruit scone. You could get your tea topped up all the time, which is simply perfect.

The whole experience was wonderful I really enjoyed it and to be honest the relaxed atmosphere was just bliss. I think it was 100% better then Fortnum and Mason. If you are looking for a place to take a friend on a birthday or just want somewhere to go for afternoon tea then I highly recommend this place. I really felt like I was in an episode of Doctor Who. I had the best time there and everyone is super friendly, you could order more from the tower of treats. I could have stayed there all afternoon and had more. We paid £39 for one person and to be honest you will not be disappointed at all, you can go just for cream tea, which is £10.50. I will leave a link to the menu here.

I did spot Rosie Fortescue with a friend at Sketch so it is a celeb spot, take a look at her Instagram posts here. Link 1 Link 2

I loved my time there and would go back and try out the bar. I really enjoyed writing this review and will be doing more reviews like this in the future. Let me know on Twitter if you liked this post.

Love Akika

xxxx

So I am trying something new on my blogger and that is me reviewing certain online retailers. I shop a lot online and I either find out about them because of YouTube or friends. So the first online retailer review is about Romwe.

Romwe is a website for fashion the company is based in China, they offer things that are street style at a great affordable price. Most items on the site are very quirky and you can find great items that just complete a fantastic look. Everyday new pieces of clothing are added to the site, so there is so much variety. Also browse the 24 hours tab, to find new 24-hour available piece prices.

I came across the website last year because of a YouTuber named CutiePie but I only bothered to start looking at the website last year. Emma Pickles is another YouTuber who receives items from the site I mainly started to buy things because of her recommendations. I have raved about this site several times on my YouTube channel. I have bought a number of items on that site, I mainly buy clothing from that site and I love the styles on there. You can always find something striking which sometimes is hard to find on other sites. I recommend this site to anyone who loves to have clothes that not many people have. Also if you are one for quirky clothing then it is definitely for you. A word of warning when you order from the UK it does take around 2-3 weeks before you receive the item. Unfortunately returning items is a massive pain, as you have to pay for shipping back to China. You can negotiate prices with the company and only get somewhat a payment back then you can pass it on to a friend. So when ordering try to measure yourself and get to know exactly what could fit you. You can find the measurements for the item right next to it on the right hand side. You should mainly be aware of this when you look at tight fitting clothing such as dresses, tops or leggings.

Overall I give this site a rating of 9/10 reason being the website does offer great clothing and is guaranteed to be at an affordable price. The only downside is the expensive shipping when it comes to returning an item. I will link you guys to every single post or video I have made mentioning them so give those a look maybe you will be inclined to purchase some things from them. I hope guys enjoyed this first post of this series. Let me know on my Twitter and see you on my next post.

Link 1  Link 2  Link 3 

Love Akika xxxx

So this is a start of a new kind of blog post on my blogger, I love to draw typography in my spare time. I think it is great practice for whenever I want to scamp up ideas for new projects when it comes to my advertising work. At the end of the month I am going to show you guys the typography work I have done. Each month will be very different and it is just a way for me to practice it a lot more and share with you guys what pen I used for it as well.

This piece I used a Paper Mate black flair pen and I use this for a lot of my typography pieces. I outline the pattern first and then fill it in with the same pen. I love this City typography just the flow of it is really pleasing to the eye. I tried it before doing it and was hard at first but soon got the positioning right.

This piece I used the same pen which was the Paper Mate black flair pen and I used it to make the outline and also to fill it out as well. I was drawn to draw this one because of the detail around the C and was quite interesting. I really like the way the line stops in front of the two ll’s and it really works well.

This piece I used the same pen again as well, used for both outlining and filling out. I tried practicing this typography and was really good fun to try out. I love the flow of the curls at the d at the end and it looks so pleasing at the eye as well. I ran out of space for the curl on the m.

The last piece was used with the same pen for the outlining and filling out. I love the simplicity of this typographic piece and how not much are going on but it just looks so nice to look at. Really pleased at how this turned out and even the curl at the t is so perfect and what I think is pretty is the loop in the f.

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog post, keep an eye out for these each month and let me know what kind of typography you would like to see on here as well on my Twitter.

Love Akika xxxx

So I love to stay inspired by art and design, a lot of the time before I start working on a new project I look online for inspirational things to save. This blog post is designed to help you if you want to find out great ways to stay inspired online in regards to art and design. I have come across a lot of sites that can help you do so, so here are my favourite sites. This type of blog post is very new to my blogger so I hope you guys enjoy reading it.

Pinterest is a site, which I use for a lot of things to keep me inspired, to be honest I use it mainly for design and typography. If you are new to Pinterest, you will want to start a new board to keep things nice an organised for everything you would like to pin on your Pinterest. So as soon as you start a new board, search the term you would like the board to be about in the search bar. As soon as you find a great picture you like then click on the Pin icon on the top left of the image. I currently have 16 boards, and the great thing with Pinterest is that you can add as many pictures to the folder. I find this site a better alternative then downloading the images to your laptop, this site does not take up any space on your laptop. I like following a lot of relevant boards that I think contain good pins, this way when you open Pinterest and see your home feed you can easily pin things that you like. I have Google chrome as web browser and you can add on an extension that basically gives you option to pin any image you find on the internet, this can be good if you randomly find something you like. Pinterest is just one of the sites that I think is a great way to stay inspired, I sometimes go on it when I have a minute or two to spare, always a great boredom killer, why not just start a few more boards. Also why not pin on the move when you are in the car or even stuck on a busy train, download the app from the App Store and GooglePlay. I have the app and I find it really useful if I am with friends and want to show them something inspirational or cute.

Tumblr is a website where I spend far too much time procrastinating on, I don’t usually use it as a way to find inspiration, sometimes you come across things that are well drawn or look really good. I generally just reblog it or like it if I do see something I really like, you could start a Tumblr solely just for inspirational things. The only problem is that it can be hard to find things you liked or reblogged. If you want to look for things specific just like on Pinterest then search in the tags bar for something you want to reblog. Another way that may help is to follow some blogs that are specific to what you want to be inspired by. It can be a great way to see what other people like and you may never know you may find something that may really kick your dry spell of creativity. Procrastinate on the move as well; download the app from the App Store and Google Play. I love this app and it is really great for when I am bored or just stuck on a boring train ride home.

Designspiration is a fantastic website, and it mainly used for design related images. A lot of the things on this website are really well done and they do inspire me to make excellent work. I use Pinterest in conjunction with this site, the chrome extension I have comes in handy for me on this site in particular. Popular items appear on the home page of this website, and if you want to find something specific then click on the search button and type in what you would like to discover. Think of Designspiration as the more refined Google search for everything design related. I use this site if I have given up looking for something on Pinterest. I found it way back when I went to UNI and even was told to use it when I went to a work placement not long ago. I do not have an account with Designspiration but you can start one and it is run very similarly to Pinterest and can be easily organised. Overall I think this website is truly amazing and always a go to place for inspiration. Unfortunately this is just a website and not available as an app.

I hope these sites might help you and do not hesitate to let me know if it did work for you. Come and follow me on Pinterest and Tumblr by clicking on the links. Also all my social media sites are in the top bar of my blog so say hello to me there and I am happy to help with anything inspirational as well.

Love Akika

xxxx

Hey guys, so it has been a while since I caught you guys up on what I have been doing on my YouTube channel, I thought I would tell you guys on what projects I have been working on and just what I maybe doing in the next couple of months. So lets get on with this blog post then shall we.

Since June I have started a brand new project on my channel, which is called Memory Box, it is a project that highlights the best bits of my month and is a great way for me to share and remember the important moments. I have recently uploaded the August edition of Memory Box, and it has been my favourite one to film. I really enjoyed editing totally differently then the one before. I was inspired to do this new project all because I was watching Sammy Pauls project on his side channel called PMS (Pretentious MonthlyScrapbook) much like mine he compiles the best bits of his month and each one is very different. I was quite repetitive on how I edited June and July but I want to now make each one as unique as possible. This project gives me an opportunity to vlog a lot more as well, as I don’t think I would feel the need to do so as much without it. This project will carry on until December; I may carry it on in 2015 not really made a decision on it just yet. I will keep you guys posted on my decision soon.

So since I started a new project and I am actually enjoying it, I am always thinking of ways to improve my channel. Something that a lot of successful YouTubers do is collaborating and it is something I want to do more of on my channel. I am going to see a YouTube friend of mine next week and we want to film a video together, which is rather exciting. I would love to film a few videos together when we do meet, maybe a more conversational video and maybe a silly challenge one together. Hopefully we can do more collaborating in the near future and I would love to collaborate with more people as well. In terms of other projects apart from that I have always wanted to start making conversational videos.  So for example, I would pick a topic and then ask people on their opinions, it necessarily does not have to be someone with a YouTube channel it could be with friends or family (those who are okay with being filmed) I see a lot of these conversational videos and they are always really interesting and I always seem to want to make a video after watching them. I tend to discuss all manor of things either with friends or family so I could simply place a camera in front of us and it could make for some great content.

The last time I made a post like this was way back in February and I had a look at the post and I had 58 subscribes when I wrote it and I am so proud of how quickly my channel has grown. My goal this year was to get 100 subscribers and I managed to surpass that a couple of months ago and I now have 261. So my brand new goal for this year is to get 300 subscribers this would really make me so happy. Along the way I have made a few more YouTube friends which, is so awesome and hopefully soon you will see me collaborating with them.

That is it for the YouTube catch up blog post; I hope you guys enjoyed reading this. I will aim to write a catch up blog post maybe every 6 months so that you get a whole bundle of information about new projects and other things. Links to where you can find me on social media are in the giant banner at the top of the page. Come follow me and say hello because I always reply =]

Love Akika xxxx