Welcome

Welcome to my portfolio! This page is a personal tool for me to keep my goals, record my guild challenges, links, dailies and lots of other stuff. It's also a way for other neopians to get to know me better. Feel free to have a look around, but please don't take anything that isn't yours.

To navigate, please use the links at the top of the page. You should then see a list of sub-sections pop up in the sidebar, which you can click on to see the relevant page.

If you have any problems viewing the page, try zooming in or out (ctrl + or ctrl -)

Dashboard

This week ● Upgrade a trophy ● Beat the Archmagus of Roo ● 20 gold keys in KQ

This month ● Get to level 40 on NQI ● Upgrade three trophies ● Finish all requests

Recently achieved ● Second place at Imperial Exam! ● Third place at Gwyl's Great Escape! ● Keileila to 1,200 HSD

About me

Name: Sarah
Age: 25
Timezone: NST+8
Location: London, England

I'm a journalist/writer from London. I have a degree in English Studies and Art History from Durham University. I now live back home with my mum and brother, and our three cats in a quiet, leafy part of London. I'm a huge nerd, I'd rather curl up in front of the TV or have a chat about philosophy or books over coffee than go out partying, and I actually love science just as much as I do literature. In my spare time I most like to catch up on arts & crafts blogs, go to the theatre, and I do some acting too.

Favourites

• Books: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, A Passage to India by E.M. Forster, the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling


• Music: Bon Iver, Florence and the Machine, Imogen Heap, Laura Marling, Adele, Athlete, The Killers


• Films Little Miss Sunshine, Pan's Labyrinth, Princess Mononoke, Gone with the Wind, Dr. Zhivago, The Harry Potter films, Les Misérables


• TV Forbrydelsen, Borgen, Bones, Game of Thrones, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, House

Likes Reading, cooking, baking & pretty icing, all things scandinavian, cats, drawing, graphics, knitting, coding, philosophy, modern art, instagram, craft blogs, cinema, feminism, autumn, winter clothes.

Dislikes Misuse of statistics, bad science, art/coding theft, clutter, trolls, vanity, being too cold, ignorance.

Blog

22nd Apr

Sorry for the lack of updates! It's been a really busy month for me. I've had two job interviews, and started working in a nursery. The shifts are 8am to 6pm, so on days I work, I pretty much only have an hour or two and I've been even forgetting to do my dailies sometimes! But anyway, good news over at Essence regarding the SOTM at The Spotlight, and I'll be adding more content very soon. I'm also working on my account when I have the time.

24th Mar

Not a great month for me. As most people know, my laptop died about two weeks ago and it was down for like a week and a half, so all I really did was restock and battle for the plot. I did get an article published in the NT and I got a poem held over, but that's it for this month. The good news is that everything is back to normal now. I'm going to be working on Essence and my Aethia challenges for the rest of the month.

Also Keileila finally got to level 250 so I can use the Ninja Training School! It's awesome, so much cheaper and faster than before.

2nd Mar

Well. I would say that this month was a reset fail, buuuut I FINALLY got the Avatar Collector avatar! OMG you guys, this has seriously been my dream for as long as I can remember. I was so giddy and happy when I found out I got it! Then I very quickly remembered I had other stuff to do. You may or may not know, but I'm opening a graphics & request site called Essence. Aaand, it's very nearly ready to go now! I need some affiliates, and some more buttons (making the two I have done took me SO LONG for some reason), but then I'm sorted. I can't wait to open requests!

21st Feb

I'm pretty pleased with how this month has been going so far. I've got quite a few new trophies, some avatars, fed some kads, etc etc. Also I signed up for the plot with THE AWAKENED. I was pretty undecided for a while between them and The Sway (oh so evil), but in the end, I went with the undead/creepy twins factor, plus the "we heard there was cake" quote. Which is just epic. I'm also planning on opening a site soon. I made Turnip a gift button and she said "I really hope Sarah opens a button request site some day!" ;-; I feel so honoured.

16th Feb

Well, new portfolio layout is pretty much done now I'd say. I'm pretty happy with how it all came out! Even though I will miss my beautiful cherry blossom layout, it felt like time for a change and I wanted something a little less pink this time around! Also, I got accepted into the Art Gallery! I seriously don't believe it. I was so happy. It was starting to seem like one of those dreams that would never happen, but I decided to submit the piece for Chia day and suddenly there was my artwork! I'm excited to draw some new stuff soon. So watch this space.

5th Feb

Reset didn't go as well as I would have liked. I got an upgrade to gold in Fetch! and I got a gold Typing Terror trophy, which I'm pretty happy about, but I wanted to go for a few more trophies. I'm hoping to get a couple later in the month instead (farming ones mainly).

26th Jan

So I finally finished NQII on Insane. I don't know what came over me, I was just completely obsessed for a couple of weeks. I would like to finish NQI on Insane too but for the moment Halleakola (my NQI pet) is on my side, so it'll have to wait.

Monthly

These are my goals for May. This month, the Aethia challenge focuses on games, which should be lots of fun! I would really like to get some trophies this month. As usual, I'll by trying to earn some NP, although mostly through KQ prizes, Habitarium and restocking rather than playing games.

Neopoints

Ratios will be correct until 28/02

crowd control	petpet catch	faerie's folly	petpet pair-up	shopping spree
assignment 53	attack of marblemen	bruno's breakaway	chia bomber	cooty wars
extreme potato	faerie cloud racers	fashion fever	hot dog hero	island chef
jungle raiders	kass basher	kreludor caves	lost in s.fungus	meerca chase II
mop 'n' bop	maths nightmare	mut. graveyard	nimmo's pond	splat sloth
smug bug	snow wars II	sophie's stew	turmac roll	ultimate bullseye
warf rescue	wild ride	wrath of snowy

Training

Now that Keileila is level 250 and can train at the Secret Ninja Training School, my current training goal is to get her up to 500 even stats. She gained over 100 HSD last month! At that rate she should be up to defeating some of the harder DON opponents soon!

HSD: 1216 / 1500

Neoquest I

This is my fifth or so attempt at completing NQI on Insane difficulty. I'm not particularly looking forward to it, mainly because last time I got to the last boss then died. It was not good. But that WILL NOT happen this time. o_o

Links: Neoquest | Guide | Maps | Boss Levels | NQ Encyclopaedia

Current Stats
Name: Halleakola
Experience: 130,961 103,618 42,618
Location: Techo Mountain Cave #4

Aethia

2013

My yearly goals. They may or may not be realistic.

Avatars [x] Avatar Collector [ ] Snow Wars II [ ] Extreme Potato Counter [ ] NT Star	Trophies [ ] Neoquest Insane [ ] 8 full rows (49/64) [ ] Gold LC/RC/Mystery Pic [ ] Userlookup Spotlight
Pets [ ] Customisations for all pets [ ] Petpets and P3s for all pets on main [ ] Honorary Booktastic Award for Nayliae [ ] Keileila to 1500 HSD (970/1500)	Other [ ] 50 UB restocks (3/50) [ ] 3 'full' stamp pages (0/3) [ ] 200 kads fed (119/200) [ ] 200 neodeck cards (107/200)

Progress

May

• Traded for Shooting Novas!
• Keileila to 1,200 HSD
• Third place at Gwyl's Great Escape!!
• Second place at Imperial Exam!!
• Thieves Guild site theme
• Battleground: Thieves Guild avatar

April

• Keileila to 1,000 HSD
• Tyrannia: Mysterious Obelisk site theme
• Obelisk War Veteran avatar
• Obelisk War: Warmonger (611,642 points)

March

• First featured at Always Connected
• Opened first site:Essence
• Keileila to lvl 250
• Published in NT for 3rd time
• Defeated all faction leaders at the obelisk
• Avatar collector!

February

• Silver Mystery Pic trophy
• 110 kads fed
• Edna avatar
• First Art Gallery win
• 330 stamps
• Keileila to lvl 200
• Raiders of Maraqua avatar
• Published in NT for 2nd time
• Gold Hannah and the Kreludor Caves trophy
• Gold Typing Terror trophy
• Fetch! upgrade to gold

January

• 320 stamps
• 310 stamps
• Keileila to lvl 175
• Gold Neopian Battlefield Legends trophy
• Completed NQII on Insane
• 300 stamps
• Gold Grand Theft Ummagine trophy
• Gold Ruins Rampage trophy
• Bruno's Backwoods Breakaway upgrade to gold
• 100 neodeck cards
• 275 stamps
• Gold Clockwork Codebreaker trophy
• Gold Ugga Drop trophy

Trophies

Trophies are shiny. I use these awesome trophy guides: 1, 2, 3. I've tried to organise these into categories, but uhh I'm not sure how well it worked. Basically the first couple of rows are practice-based trophies for reset night, and the rest are time-consuming trophies which can be gotten any time of the month (although still easier on reset day). There are luck trophies I am aiming for too but the links for those will just go in my dailies.

	Buzzer Game game: x no guide needed		Slots Big Losers game: x x no guide needed
	MAGAX: Destroyer 2 game: x guide: x		Mutant Graveyard game: x guide: x
	Castle of Eliv Thade game: x no guide needed		Wrath of the Snowager game: x guide: x

Upgrades

Hrrrrnnnng drool

Accounts to cry over: x x x x x

Avatars

My avatar collection is probably one of the things I'm most proud of about my account. I've currently got 337 avatars, so as you can imagine, most of the ones I still need are either random, very rare or just difficult and annoying. The NT and game ones are the ones I need to focus on.

Game

Random

Misc.

Item

Dream Pets

I would absolutely love to own any of these pets. If you see one UFT or UFA, please let me know! I'm working on trading up to at least one of them eventually.

UC Plushie Tonu

UC Plushie Shoyru

UC Faerie Techo

UC Faerie Draik

Application history

• I'm very lucky to have achieved a lot of my dream pets already. For the longest time I dreamed of owning an UC Faerie Xweetok, so when I saw a board on Charter with Nayliae UFQA, I had to apply. I honestly thought I had no chance. So when her owner mailed me saying she'd chosen me I completely flipped out. I was absolutely over the moon. She transferred her over to me the same day, and Nay has not been away from my main since. She's not going anywhere!


• Myzeri, my Pea Chia, was also adopted. He helped me get the SuAP avatar, of course, but more importantly, I had a clear character in mind for him, and I thought a pea would just be so much fun to draw. As a result he has by far the most art of any of my pets, and a couple of BC trophies to match.


• Bonjourxmuffin was owned by my good friend Claire, and when she decided to down-size her accounts, she offered to let me adopt him. I have very clear plans for him, even if I haven't made a ton of progress yet.

Pets

Nayliae

	Name: Nayliae (no last name) Age: Unknown, ancient Species: Xweetok Color: Faerie Occupation: Guardian of the forest Companion: Li the Faerie Wibreth	To-do [x] Likes/Dislikes [x] Design [x] Personality [x] Petpet [ ] P3
	Likes Trees, seeds, acorns, bluebells, rain, quiet, all living creatures.	Dislikes Pollution, noise, those who disrupt the forest.

Nayliae is a woodland spirit from a bluebell forest outside of Meridell. She is extremely shy, and is rarely seen by other Neopians. She is often suspicious of those who come to the forest, which she is understandably protective of, but she has a kind nature. Nay also has a ghostly quality. Her antennae and mystical markings glow in the moonlight. She uses them to help guide lost souls through the dense forest at night.

She has an innate connection to the spirit world (or otherworld) which can, at times, make her seem threatening or cause people to confuse her with a demon. She's widely misunderstood, and can be extremely lonely, being one of the last of her kind. It's said that she only appears to those who have the deepest respect for the natural world. She can occasionally be mischievous when it comes to travellers who don't treat the forest with care.

Aretya

	Name: Aretya Nakata Age: 14 Species: Kacheek Color: White Occupation: Junior high student Companion: None	To-do [x] Likes/Dislikes [ ] Design [ ] Personality [x] Petpet [ ] P3
	Likes Video games, ice cream, eating, fashion magazines, singing, bonsai trees, cats, cherry blossom, anime, springtime, the beach, Hanso.	Disikes Maths, sports and PE class, scary movies, coffee, bullies, rain, storms.

Aretya is an endlessly upbeat, food-obsessed junior-high student who seems to have endless energy. She grew up in a town about 20 miles outside of the capital city of Shenkuu, close to the university where her father works. Her dream is to be a veterinarian, but she struggles in science class, and can get lazy about it. But she loves to walk in the woods with her friends and watch the animals.

She's terrible at cooking and housework, but she does her best to help out her mum, who runs a bakery. She's also pretty bad at most physical activity, but she loves cheerleading. When she's not rescuing stray animals or having slumber parties with her best friends, she reads fashion magazines, and daydreams about the kind of person she wants to be. Her youthful naïveté and natural curiosity can lead her into trouble, and she can be self-conscious about this. She'd like to be more grown up, but she's still figuring everything out.

Keileila

	Name: Keileila Age: Unknown Species: Aisha Color: Zombie Occupation: Witchdoctor Companion: None	To-do [ ] Paint Zombie [ ] Likes/Dislikes [ ] Design [ ] Personality [ ] Petpet/P3
	Likes Dank caves, her cauldron, the ocean, slime, barnacles, coral, amoebas, treasure, jewels.	Disikes text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text

Working on this.

Art

This page assumes that I will actually get around to working on my art at some point. Which is not that likely. But oh well. I decided the best way to do this is to set myself mini challenges for working on art. Challenges are below, and artwork will follow, if I get around to doing any :3

Challenges

Practice drawing rocks & trees Draw a doodle/sketch of a neoitem Draw a forest background Practice faces and moods Draw a realistic rose Draw a snowy outdoor scene Attempt a two-colour artwork

Art of a character from here or here Draw any kind of painted neopet Pixel art - cupcakes! tea! Chibi version of yourself Quick sketch of Katniss w/bow Sketch of a Harry Potter character Finish design of Myzeri (anthro) Laboratoy/hospital background

Past works

I never thought I'd have this section. But this is where my Art Gallery and Beauty contest wins will go.

Customisation

Links

wishes & trades

neocash chat

enter spotlight

Lookbook

Ideas

Aethia

Links

guild home

team page

link directory

Aethia is an account improvement themed guild which is based on a system of challenges, some of which are set by the council members, and others by the members themselves. Completing challenges allows you to earn guild avatars and trophies, as well as improving your account.

Current Challenges

Slorg: Earn 1 million NP Progress: Done Tangerine: Gift two buttons Progress: 2/2 Bunny: Draw art for a pet you rarely draw Progress: 0

Plushie: 3 spotlight submissions to any spotlight Progress: 0/3 Personal: Get to 350 stamps Progress: 332/350 Monthly: Gold Progress: Done

Duel: First to 5 WC pieces (vs. Emziie) Progress: 6/5 Thief: Submit an article to the NT Progress: -

Rewards

x5 x2 x2 x3 x1 x5 x1

x2

Studio

Studio is a Neo-related, GOAL-ORIENTED guild that is home to a group of mature, semi-literate site-makers of the Neopian site community. Through Studio, we help each other accomplish site goals and create and maintain sites that benefit users across Neopia. By working together as a family, we hope to promote the spread of high-quality services through creativity, innovation, integrity, and professionalism.

I hope to join Studio when applications re-open. Not only is it run by three of my most awesome friends on Neopets, but I've already met some wonderful site makers just through the recruitment boards. I hope one day I can live up to the ideals which Studio promotes.

Essence

Essence is my very first site. It's a graphics site which offers requests, and eventually will have a range of resources and ready-made graphics (icons, banners etc). My aim is to offer excellent service, while also learning and improving as I go.

Goals ● Get laptop fixed ● Finish BOTH layout requests ● Add at least 3 2 more Extras ● Revamp request pages ● New layout in June

Messages

Accepted requet Dear NAME, your request at Essence has been accepted! Please allow one week for button and banner requests, or 14 days for layouts. I will mail you again when your request is completed with a link where you can pick it up. If you have any questions, or you need to edit your request, please let me know ASAP. Thank you for choosing Essence! ~ Sarah @ Essence (/~aretya)

Completed request Dear NAME, your request is completed ready to be picked up! Feel free to grab it from neopets.com/~aretya#pickup. Your graphic will be moved to the portfolio after one week, so if you can't find it, remember to check there! If for any reason you are not 100% happy with the result, please let me know so that I can fix it for you! Thanks again! ~ Sarah @ Essence (/~aretya)

Request rejected Dear NAME, unfortunately your request at Essence was not accepted this time. Please check that you filled out your form correctly, and that you read all the rules. You may, of course, re-submit your request when requests are open again. Thank you for visiting ~ Sarah @ Essence (/~aretya)

Affiliate request Hi, NAME! I'm Sarah and I recently visited your site, ____. I run a graphic request site called Essence (/~aretya), and I was wondering if you'd be interested in being affiliates! I would love to swap links with your site. Congrats on running a wonderful site! ~ Sarah @ Essence (/~aretya)

Improvement

This is where I want to track how I'm improving with making graphics. My buttons especially need to get better, I think, but I can definitely improve all aspects of my work.

Resources

Review Sites Deep Pink Frequent Flyer Petticoat Regalis Review High Review Picnic Soar Supplement Sweeter's Cafe Those Thoughts

Contests & Rankings Asura Demure Echelon Karma Plaudits Trifle Whisper Wisteria

Images Charly's SWFs Background Bonanza Zel's Shopkeepers Caption Contest

Wishlist

This is my list of general wishes - i.e. things to eventually add to my gallery etc. I have a separate page for my wishlists of gourmet foods, stamps, booktastic books and neodeck cards, and another with my NC WL/TL.

{neocash} {other wishes}

Always seeking

Gallery wishlist

Advanced Kreludan Physics	Ancient Book	Anubis Toxicology Reports (Abridged)	Atlas of Neopia	Book of Evil Schemes
Book of Scarabs	Book of Vision	Brain Tree Solutions	Build Your Own Telescope	Chianatomy
Crypt Days	Elkies Secret Message	Fashionable Aisha Glasses	Fun Tree Facts	Gelert A to Z
Get Organised Stay Organised	Glowing Book	Guide to Brucicles	Haunted Woods Inhabitants	Hobans Map Book
How to be Roothless	Ixi A-Z	Laser Energy	Learning Your ABCs and 123s	Made of Stars
Mapping a Mystery	Modern Shenkuu	Mollusk Magazine	Mythical Kyriis	Neopian Atlas
Neovian Genealogy	Nimmo Genealogy	Petpetpet Growth Patterns	Qasalan Royal Lineage	Quantum Physics
Robot Mynci Mechanical Guide	Scarab Tablet	School Books with Strap	Secrets of Dirigible Construction	Seeing Stars
Shades of Grey	Shenkuu Art	Shenkuu Hiking	Snarkie Answers to Stupid Questions	Spotting Seaweed
Star Gazing	Telescope Lens	The Annals of Insanity	The Korbat Researcher	The Lost Desert Dictionary
The Lost Lost Desert Journals	The Technical Mind of the Robot JubJub	Time Travel

Links

Dailies

advervideo | interest | slime | knowledge | tombola | fruit | anchor | shore | coltzan | tdmbgpop | ninja | academy | kadoatery | quests | stocks | wish | food club | bets | mp comps | strength | cheeseroller | wise | grumpy | gormball | tyranu | brain tree | esophagor | bluff | brucey slots | slots

Favourites

Stalk

A Guild Story

The Neo Project was maybe the second or third guild I've ever been in. I was initially attracted to it because of the idea of portfolios, which I thought was ingenius. I quickly threw together a hand-coded portfolio and applied, and lucky for me standards were a bit lower then and I was accepted.

I quickly realised that TNP has something special. There was always some madness, mayhem and general merriment to be had on the recruiting boards, there was always somebody willing to help you out, and there's no time to feel uninspired because there are so many blocs and activities to sink your teeth into.

A month after I joined, I took over events and activities at the guild, a job I held for almost a year. Eventually, after quite a bit of upheaval, I was the longest-serving and most active council member left, and was asked to take over as leader, as the owner didn't have time to run the guild. I had the privilege of holding that position for about 5 months. It was a stressful job at times, but I had so much support, and the guild really became a collaborative effort. The ideas and features that made it special were created and maintained by dedicated members, not just me.

Sadly, on Christmas Day 2012, I was forced out by the guild owner, who decided to make the guild public, against the wishes of almost all the members, who quickly made their feelings known and had their comments deleted. Finally, most of the members left, the guild was deleted and re-made, and everything that made it special in my eyes was lost. TNP will never be what it was. But the community of members who made it special are still around, in new guilds, and we'll never forget.

Memories

My Awards

(drag to address bar for full size)

Sitely

Link Back?

Buttons are linked to their makers.

<a href="/~keileila"><img src="http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/4227/portfoliobutton.gif"></a>

<a href="/~keileila"><img src="http://i498.photobucket.com/albums/rr350/superbubblet/88BY31/sarahsport.gif" border="0"></a>

<a href="/~keileila"><img src="http://i498.photobucket.com/albums/rr350/superbubblet/88BY31/sarahsport_2.gif" border="0"></a>

<a href="/~keileila"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/3FFJCux.gif" border="0"></a>

Credits

• Layout, coding and content by Sarah (plasticrose) for my use only.
• Image class code by Orgrimmar
• CSS condensed by Clean CSS
• Images from: Neopets, Dr. Sloth's Image Emporium, DeviantArt, Background Bonanza
• Font in layout: 'Bebas' from DaFont
• Bullets and dividers by The Lunch Box
• Sushi adoptable by Maryann
• Counter base and mail pixel by Zeal
• Button placeholder from Euphoric
• Inspiration from Anh, Mellie and Kate
• Stat counter by BoingDragon

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