Sunday Summary: First Week In School

This week, I went back to school! It was the first week of a brand new semester. New modules, new classmates and new teachers. A fresh start. So here is my Sunday Summary for this week.


♥ My predictions for this semester are that I will love Photography, Web Graphics and Written Communications. Location Production sounds like just a little bit of a drag. I'm not really into movie making anyway. And Media in Society is so dry I just can't even.

♥  I wore this on my first day of school. So like first day of school ootd :)

♥ I learnt how to use the basics of photoshop. Besides making a GIF, I have yet to teach myself much about photoshop so I am so excited. My photoshop (web graphics) teacher is also really good. Last semester, we learnt Adobe Illustrator and my teacher basically just barrelled through it all without caring if we understood or not. So I felt like I only got like 40% of what I was supposed to get out of the whole thing. My photoshop teacher goes step by step and makes sure that every single person in the class can follow before he moves on. Anyway this is what I made in my first class:

♥ I have Rock Climbing for my sports class this semester and I actually think that might be pretty cool. I start tomorrow and my biggest worry is that someone might see my underwear if I'm climbing and they look up (oh you know what I mean).

♥  I haven't really been feeling too well this week. Even as I write this, I'm feeling pretty crappy and I'm in a lot of pain.

♥ I finished reading 'Shopaholic Ties The Knot' this week and I started 'Shopaholic & Sister' today. So far I think 'Shopaholic & Sister' is my favourite because it's been so hilarious. I love how she ran across hot coals in the middle of yoga class to get to that merchant selling necklaces. Major LOL moment.

♥ I'm desperately trying to come up with a monthly favourites post for this month but I don't know. It's just not happening and I still haven't had time to take any pictures. I might only manage a music favourites again. Hopefully I'll be able to put something together by the end of the month.

♥ Quite honestly, I've got work to do but I'm procrastinating.

♥ I restarted my previously inactive ask.fm. You can ask me questions through the link here.

♥ I just finished my first photoshop mini assignment which was to create a collage that included pictures of yourself surrounded by the things you love. I actually really like the finished product. I think it's really me.

How To: Create An Instagram Fan Page {Part 3}

Welcome back to part 3 of my guide to creating an Instagram fan page. If you haven't seen the last two parts,

So in my last 2 posts, I taught you guys the basic Instagram acronyms and I gave you 3 tips for setting up what you will need. In this part, I will be helping you further as well as answering the questions I received on part 2.

1) Shoutouts 

I started @obsessedwithvamps from the ground up. Meaning at one point in my Instagram journey, I legit had 0 followers. It's hard to gain followers when you have like 10 followers because it's hard to find people who want to do shout outs with you. It's actually a cycle. The more followers you have, the more people with more followers want to do shout outs with you and you gain faster. (Did I just make sense? I don't even know omg)

Anyway, the key to overcoming this (and its something you should carry with you throughout your Instagram journey) is simply to do shout outs with people who have about the same number of followers that you do. If you have 10 followers, don't ask people with 1k and above to do shout outs with you. It's not fair to them and also the chances that you will get rejected is very high.

As you gain more followers, like if you have 6k, its okay to ask a person with 8 or 9k for shout outs. That's because its still considered a lot. 

(This was a question posted to me on part 2)

2) Editing Apps

I was asked in my last post to recommend good iPhone editing apps. I have always edited my photos on my phone and I am only just starting to learn how to use Photoshop CS6 to edit. So far I've only been able to teach myself how to make GIFs (lol)

I like to teach myself how to do things. I taught myself how to make GIFs on Photoshop. I taught myself how to use Final Cut Pro in a day (the basics at least). I taught myself how to edit on the iPhone and I'm working towards learning to edit on Photoshop CS6. So I really really can't stand it when people can't be bothered to learn things themselves. 

I absolutely hate it when people comment on my edits asking what apps I used to make it and what filters I used and what fonts I used. It annoys me so much. I always tell people in fact, that I don't give these things out. I'm a fan page. I'm not a 'How To Edit Page'.

The reason why accounts don't give out apps, filters and fonts is simply because that is their unique style. Would an magician give away his trick? No. Why? Because that's what makes them unique and special. That is exactly the same for an editor.

There are a lot of editing apps out there in the app store. Millions in fact. I found the apps that I currently use mostly by trial and error. I like to download a whole lot of apps at one go and then go through them one by one, testing them and seeing if they are any good. Then I will delete the ones that aren't good or aren't what I want and keep the rest to use for my edits.

Bottom line: To find good editing apps and styles, trial and error plus a passion to learn is critical. 

3) Knowing Your Followers

What does it mean to know your followers? In fact, how do you know your followers? With 6300 followers, you can't expect me to know every single one of my followers. That's crazy. So what I mean with this point is to observe your follower trends. 

The first and most basic step to knowing your followers is knowing when they are mostly online. For me, I learnt that my followers are mostly active at about 10pm-1am (Singapore time: SGT). This means that if I post something during that window, I will be able to get the most likes. It's also why I do majority of my shout outs during that time. I found this out again, by trial and error. It's just something you will learn after having your account for some time. 

TIP: Everyone wants followers who are active 24/7. But that's obviously impossible. What you can do however is do shout outs during the whole day (THIS SHOULD ONLY BE DONE FOR A SHORT TIME LIKE 1 OR 2 DAYS). This will make sure that you have followers from different timezones and so you have active followers all through the day basically.

The second thing to do to know your followers is to know what kind of stuff they like. This is done by checking how many likes you get on a photo. If you get 300 likes on a cast photo, you know they like it. If you get 150 likes on an edit, you know they may not like it very much. 

While this should aid you in knowing what to post, always remember that it is ultimately your account and if you aren't comfortable posting something, even if your followers are crazy about it, don't post it.

Well that's all for part 3. Stay tuned for part 4 which will come out (as usual) when this post hits 100 views.

 If you have any questions you want answered, please COMMENT HERE. A lot of you have been directing your comments to my Instagram and while that's okay, it is easier for me if you comment directly here.

(P.S. Check out my other posts. They're just as good (I hope) There's even a TFIOS review up)