Making the Hollywood style vanity mirror

Making the Hollywood style vanity mirror

  

My room is naturally dark and 

with the bookshelves set next to it to separate the bed area made it even worse.

The cheapest vanity mirror with lights I found was $300.

Not being able to afford it, I decided to make it myself.

It costed me about $80 including the mirror.

I did not have a mirror with frame nor the tool to drill holes around the frame.

So I went with the vanity strips.

There are many you-tube videos out there but

even after watching them I still went through trials and errors.

I think my blog post still has something to contribute.

I hope it helps someone!

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First, I got the frameless mirror from IKEA for $10. It is 24'x24' I believe...

And the white table also from IKEA which was actually a tv stand.

I got two sets of vanity strips for $20 each from Amazon.

There are 3 light vanity strips but I got 4 light strips because they were 24' long which is the same height as my mirror.

Up to 100 watts can go on one socket.

It has to be medium base and G type.

I am only going to use 6 sockets.

I bought 6 Light bulbs that can go on the strips FOR $15 from Amazon.

First, I got 6 of 100 watts, warm white or soft white as pictured. 

However, they were making really annoying noises and got extremely hot. 

So I exchanged them to 25 watts. The noise stopped but they still got really hot.

Besides the color, warm white was too yellow.

The blush still went too strong on my cheeks.

They looked super pretty on the strips though....

So I had to pay a little more to get LED lights. 

They were $19 for six of them from Amazon.

They are much smaller than the previous ones.

The color is white, daylight.

Awesome thing about LED lights is that this one is as bright as 25 Watts

but only uses 3 each which means the 6 of them all together uses 18 w.

These caps come with the strips. 

You will need them to cover the wires later.

I got two extension cords for $6 or 8 from Home Depot.

I also got the dimmer which I ended up using it for something else.

To use dimmer, you need dimmable bulbs.

Now open up the light strips. 

Find these two wires that are already cut.

Pull them off.

You are going to connect the extension cord to the strips so you have the plug for the outlet.

Cut the end.

Cut in the middle just a little bit 

Cut around the rubber be careful not to cut the wire.

Pull it out.

You need to pair up the wires.

Black is hot, hot is smooth.

Feel the extension cord to find which is smooth and 

pair that up with the black from the strip.

Solid side is for the white.

Close the strips and put the light bulbs on.

You can plug it right away or use dimmer if you want. 

The bulbs were round and big really pretty. However because of

the noise, hotness, and the yellow color, I had to return the both 100, 25 w.

This is with the new lights I got.

Daylight, LED.

 

Jahnmyungloo Tulip Bookmark

I recently learned how to make these cute bookmarks. 

JahngMyungLoo is the braided thread. It's a Korean traditional bracelet which was made for children hoping for their well-being. JahngMyungLoo is made by weaving OhBahngSek. 

OhBahngSek is the five Korean traditional colors of white, black, blue, yellow and red which represent five cardinal directions. 

 So this bookmark is made of JahngMyungLoo and a little tulip on the tip. 

Read books and live ablong healthy life! :D

More about names

 Yesterday, I wrote about baby and pet names, and today I want to talk more about names since I came across one very interesting post about Korean names. Here's the link to it. http://blog.naver.com/kfaction/140119160743

here's the summary of the beginning of the post.

 He found some pure Korean names that were used around the 7th century like Choomo, DahWooHwahnNo, SahSooRoo, MahRi etc. But because China was in power back then the government started to change the position names and the names of places to Chinese influenced names after Unified Silla (668-935 A.D.).

  However, people kept their Korean names all the way up to the end of  Joseon dynasty (1392-1897) .  These are some examples of Korean names, Ilsoni, Nagne, NeutDongE, which means Helping hand, Wanderer, Late child respectively.

 So to help you understand what he's getting at, this is how Chinese influenced names work.
This example is one of the common names in maybe my mom's generation '김 미 화 [Kim Mi Hwah]'
Kim is the family name and Mihwah is the first name.




 'Beauty' in Korean is '아름다움[Ah Reum Dah Woom]'. You may have seen this makeup shop when you were in Korea. '아리따움 [Aritaum]' is the same meaning as 'Beauty'.

美 This Chinese character has a meaning and a sound to it. The meaning is 'beauty'. I don't know how it's read in Chinese but in Korean it's read as 'Mi' and if we write that down in Korean, it's written as '미'.

And  'flower' in Korean is '꽃[GGoht]' 

Park in Buchoen, Korea. (http://blog.naver.com/wkduddl0917/220364664527)

花 This Chinese character means 'flower'. Koreans read it as 'Hwah' and that sound is written as '화' in Korean.

 So if you put those two characters next to each other it becomes 美花. Koreans read is as 'Mi Hwah' and the sound is written in Korean as '미화' which means 'Beautiful flower'.

 Although 'Beautiful flower' in Korean is actually '아름다운 꽃[Ah Reum Dah Woon GGoht]' which could have been our name a long time ago along with '일손이[Ilsoni] (Helping hand)', '나그네[Nageune] (Wanderer)', '늦동이[NeutdongE] (Late child)'. Instead, our names were changed to Chinese influenced names, so it's hard to tell what our names mean if we don't know the Chinese characters used in names.

 Since the 1980s though It became popular to name a child with a Korean name without Chinese characters and meaning mainly because it was encouraged by the government and they sound more pleasant to many Korean parents.

 The blog writer argues that our name should show right away what it means as it is our identity like our ancestors' names did. The writer then tried changing his name, his friends' names and our former presidents' names into Korean names like the old times based on their Chinese characters. And we could see it sounded a bit or very awkward as he changed them. So he continues to try to make a point that it sounds awkward because we changed Chinese to Korean, so we should name our children more and more with Korean names that means something from the start. 

 It was interesting to see the names I know changed into Korean names because it reminded me of Indian names like 'speaks a lot', 'little one', 'walks as a bear' etc.

 My mom wanted to name me '하늘[HahNeul]' which is a Korean word for 'sky'. But as still to these days, a lot of Korean parents have very little say on naming their own children but the grandparents do. My mom also had no choice but to name me after what my grandparents chose. My grandmother said she went to a naming place and paid for my name too. I guess people can be very superstitious when it comes to names.

I never really liked my Korean name, and I've been called by my English name for so long now even by my mom that it feels almost weird to hear someone calling me by my Korean name. Oh btw, my Chinese influenced expensive Korean name means 'mediator who's warm and gentle'.