Monday Monday

In the interest of getting back in the swing of blogging I'm going to try a weekly wrap up thinger.

Spider cocoon by NataliaDrepina
Get it? Wrap up? Get it?

A lot of times I feel like the individual stuff I'm doing doesn't really rate a full blog post but it would probably still be nice to actually mention what the heck I'm doing lately.

So lets see...

I went to a Masquerade Ball on the 30th in Salem MA and apparently I still clean up pretty good.

Here's the full outfit with a necklace swap and also a husband (mine, in case you were wondering).
I owned the leather coat (I'll look up the brand when I get home), the mask and skirt came from Amazon, the boots are from Miz Mooz. The necklace above came from my mom's jewellery stash, the other necklace I have had as costume jewellery since I was a very small child.

The skirt has a big waist bow but it didn't work with this outfit so I left it untied. It was surprisingly nice for an Amazon cheepie skirt - to the extent that I'm seriously considering the black version of the same. I FINALLY broke out our garment steamer (wedding gift) and as a person who kind of hates ironing it was everything I ever dreamed it could be.

My HS bestie and all around amazing person Christa tipped me off to this event in the first place and if you poke around the event pics you'll see she cleans up pretty damn good too. It was a lot of fun and I am totally doing it again next year.

My main crafty project this week was to finish organizing my embroidery floss which is no small task when you do Heaven and Earth Designs cross stitching as they tend to have upward of 90 colours each. I started getting the fabric set up for my next big project and finally got back to stitching on Portrait With a Spiderling.

Oh, uh, I also got a tattoo.

More on that when it has more... on that.
It's at outline stage at the moment, which IS pretty cool, but a) its really hard to take pics of your own arm and b) I don't think pics would do the final design any justice. Also it's peely right now and that's never very pretty.

For now I will say that I am working with John Lally at Masquerade Tattoo in Ridge NY and it's FREAKING AWESOME (but currently very itchy).
John also does amazing fine art and if you poke around his website a bit you might find a familiar face.

What was sundered and undone shall be whole

...The two made one.

By which I mean I finally merged my two main blogs. This blog and my crafting blog will now live here as a broader lifestyle type dealy, hopefully in harmony.

The posts from the craft blog have been merged here (filterable via the Craft Posts Only link on the navigation bar above) and that blog will be going away in short order.

I'm also strongly considering merging my old craft livejournal into this blog as there's a LOT of good stuff in there, but those will be backdated archived posts and will likely be a long term project.

What kind of house doesn't have salt?

So, there's this show called Supernatural.

Perhaps you've heard of it?

I uh, have some *feelings* regarding this show and so when I saw that Incidental Twin not only had SPN themed polishes but one PARTICULARLY FREAKING COOL polish I had to have it.

*cough*andabouteightotherpolisheswhichyouwillbeseeingallingoodtime*cough*

Every time I pick up one of the Incidental Twin polishes I'm not sure how it's going to work out. They're somehow just different from other polishes I've ever used... but at this point I've been impressed with the results EVERY time so I just go with it. I actually have a custom order in the works right now!

I hatched a plan to do a particular manicure for the final episode of season 10 using the Incidental Twin polish, a Supernatural themed stamping plate from Apipila, and Snowed In - a white stamping polish from Hit The Bottle which I bought off of Beautometry.

Those tiny black flecks, that's real CHARCOAL.

The hazy cloudy voids in the design, that's not a camera issue, that's SALT.

If there was ever a mani that needed a macro

A deep translucent charcoal jelly sandwich of protective sigils in a suspension of salt, charcoal, hex glitter in two sizes, and micro glitter "embers".

When I started I was REALLY dubious. I was sure that somehow I was going to mess this up. I was convinced that the polish was not going to layer how I envisioned, and that the stamps would be smeared and too busy, but I stuck with it and I think it came out even more amazing than I had hoped.

It's been a bit of time since I did the pics but I believe the base was CnD Stickey base coat, two coats of Salt And Burn, and a coat each of American Classics Gelous and Poshe topcoat to smoothe it out for stamping. 

I stamped each finger, sealed with Poshe again, put a final layer of Salt and Burn over the top to add depth, and finally smoothed and sealed with the same Gelous-Poshe combination.

I found a neat trick to use hairspray to keep the stamp from smudging From Youtube user Denisejohn65 - Nail Ed which seemed to work great! I'm pretty sure if I had to take this off to fix smeary stamping there would be salt from crying in the mix as well.

I was worried the polish layers wouldn't stick on top of the hairspray but there were no issues with the technique as far as I could tell. I will absolutely be doing this every time I stamp.

A very Supernatural season ender manicure special

I've been sitting on this post for no reason for months but I figured the new season was as good a reason as any to get back on the horse!