Crap.

I was trying to put this off as long as possible, but I'm going to have to take a short hiatus. I'll be back the first Monday in December. Right now my hands look like crap, since I'm moving and our new place is nowhere near ready--every spare moment is spent over there cleaning, or painting, or something, and when I'm home I'm packing, or making things that we need for the new hours, or, like right now, trying to cram in my daily NaNoWriMo word count. Or some combination of the above.

Anyway, I should be back  in a week or so with some new nail art. See you then!

Plague Dots

Initially, I wasn't even going to show you guys this one, but I figured I should, just in the interest of full disclosure.

I love the look of Brash "Green Machine" and S•X•Y "Dreamy Cocoa" together. This isn't the first time I've used this color combination, but I think in this application, it kind of looks like my nails are diseased.

Better luck next time, I guess.

Nail Polish Canada Nail Art Challenge

I got an email about a new challenge being hosted by Nail Polish Canada this week:

Holiday Nail Art Challenge

At Nail Polish Canada we consider ourselves boring people. I mean look at our name, “Nail Polish Canada”, not an ounce of creativity there.  That’s why we want to support your creativity with our first ever Nail Art Challenge! The challenge is all about the holidays, lasts three weeks (one mani per week), and we're giving away nearly $1000 in prizes.

Challenge Themes

We've hidden the three challenge themes far away so nobody gets a head start. We’ll email and post each challenge theme when the week comes around.
Challenge Weeks
Week 1: Nov 19 to Nov 25
Week 2: Nov 26 to Dec 2
Week 3: Dec 3 to Dec 9

For more information about the contest, prizes, or to sign up, check out their website. They're giving away $200 worth of stuff every week, including Zoya Gilty Pleasures, OPI James Bond Minis, plus others by Butter London, Color Club, and many more, with a grand prize worth over $450. So, if you're one of those artistic types, go check it out.

A Nano Post for NaNo Nails

Inspired by National Novel Writing Month, which has eaten my soul (and all of my free time):

Colors used:
Pure Ice "Touch Me Here" (black)
Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure "Ivory Skull" (white)






I know I've said multiple times that I'm swearing off Sally Hansen, but I found this polish on clearance at Target for $4.88. I've kind of been needing a new white polish, and of the three I've tried, this is my favorite so far. It's a slightly thicker formula than the others, and a little more opaque (I still had to use three coats though). The dry time isn't too bad, either.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to get back to my writing.

Fall Fail

Okay, so I lied. I skipped Monday because some real life stuff happened, so now you get a Wednesday post. You can tell, because I forgot to take a picture of this manicure and wore it for a day or two before I managed to get photos. Note the chipping:

For this manicure, I used Sally Hansen "Vivid" for the base and drew little leaves and swirls on it with Essie "Sequined Sash." I think it came out okay, but not great. I would have preferred to use a stamp, but I don't have any fall stamps.

Costumes Part II

So how did you do on the riddle? Did you figure it out yet?

That's right, I went as a Weeping Angel from Doctor Who. For the uninitiated, here's the Wikipedia rundown on what are probably the scariest villains in the Who-verse.

Here's my take:

Obviously, I had some issues with the makeup. I'd never used greasepaint before, and had a horrible time with it (I guess it's supposed to go on over foundation and powder? Anyway, I could tell just from the patch test that it would have made be break out something awful, so I decided to skip it). In the end, I scraped some grey eyeshadow into a dish and mixed it with my moisturizer. Up close it worked pretty well, but the coverage was uneven. From far away, however, it's barely noticeable. It was more of a tint than actual face paint. Once the moisturizer had dried a bit, I took a powder brush and did a second coat of the dry eyeshadow to help even things out.

The outfit is a combination of things. I wore grey leggins and a grey long sleeve shirt (both storebought). The chiton (that would be the Greek-style dress) is some grey suiting material I bout at Joanns. I sewed little X's at the shoulder to hold them in place, but other than that it was stitch-free. The belt is five strands of grey yarn slip knotted together to make a cord.

 

I did use silver hairspray to color my hair--liberally. I had to wash it twice to get it all out--but it's rather difficult to get full coverage on the back of your own head, and my pony tail wasn't really having it. 

In the back of the chiton I took pinking shears and cut a slit for the wings. The wings are sewn, with the feathers done on a regular sewing machine. They're filled with quilt batting and have some 20 gauge jewelry wire running through the tops to hold their shape. In the end, I took some small safety pins and pinned the tops to my shoulders to keep them from flopping around. Since I wore this costume to work, I didn't want big giant wings or pieces that would flop around a lot. 

The wings are tied on  seperately, under the chiton. From the center of the wings there are four more of the slip-knot cords, which I tied in an X formation in front. Since the chiton is open on one side, this was pretty easy to do. I just had to pull back the front, tie the cords in place, then drop the front and arange the open side so I wouldn't flash anyone too much thigh and tie on the belt. While I'm reasonably confident that it would have stayed shut on it's own, I did add two more small safety pins there, just to be safe. Which is good since at one point my outfit caught on a rack and would have torn completely open otherwise. 

I did do my nails for this costume, but they're not all that interesting. Just grey, and then they read "Don't Blink" with one character on each nail and a TARDIS on my left thumb. For the life of me, I could not get a good photo or even a decent one that showed the nail art. I was too pressed for time. 

I leave you with a clip from the episode, which features MY doctor. Because no subsequent Doctor can ever really replace your first Doctor: