Monday Monday - Behind the scenes week

The vast majority of my energy this week went toward finishing my tattoo Wednesday and the subsequent loooooong slow healing process.

I've been using this organic cocoa butter based Redemption stuff for aftercare instead of the usual ointments and this is hands down the fastest heal I have ever experienced.

It's also pretty amazing as a moisturizing butter, so I may get more to use as a cuticle and scar butter down the line, but it is a bit on the spendy side for that.

Courtesy John Lally at Masquerade Tattoo NY
Click through to @jlallyart on instagram for a few detail shots

That made it really hard to move my right arm so I reacted to this by... hanging lots of pictures! I also set up that little Aero garden which has wee bebeh basil seedlings after only three days. Which is good because I could seriously eat all of the basil.

We have a slightly staggering amount of art which has pretty much never seen the light of day and I am resolved to jettisoning the poster tubes and getting it all up. Framing is spendy so for now I'm focusing on the already framed stuff. It'll be a slow process to get it ALL up to be sure, but so worth it to actually see all of the art we've been getting for each other over the years.

We are amassing a serious pile of stuff from Mondo and Angry Blue, especially - I also have the added complication of planning everything around a reprint of an original Frankenstein bus poster which is literally taller than I am (he lives behind the couch).

And I get to tetris it all into our tiny tiny tiny apartment! Hence the 1840s bat plate/Muppet movie melange up there. Whatever, it makes me happy.

Sometimes fancy crafting requires unfancy ingredients.

My other major project this week was to make a PVC lap stand for embroidery! I based it on this design and while my clothes and porch (and probably my lungs) were covered in PVC dust the whole thing took all of $20 and maybe an hour to put together.

I haven't gotten a chance to really test it out yet but I'm very hopeful... if I can keep the kitten from eating the rubber bands currently holding it together! It does have a bit of a tendency to explode.

It's not glued so I can break it down as needed and sub in pieces of different lengths to fit a multitude of other projects. Currently it is set up to hold my usual scroll frame over my lap while I am sitting cross legged but it will also hold a 8x11 Qsnap with a few piece changes.

The Badasscrossstitch yearofstitch project is moving along nicely and this weeks entry Fly Stitch may not be the sexiest but it's still new to me!

What else am I up to?

Edit: this idea has been nixed, everything is all in one place now, Huzzah!

I've looked at what it would take to run a broader topic blog the way I'd like and it basically involves writing my own code. I'm going to stick with Blogger for the time being so this is how I'm breaking it up instead...

I've started up a blog specifically for crafty and more lifestyley stuff:

Click image above to check out the new blog

So that whole plan of having one multi topic space? Completely abandoned for the moment. :(

Maybe someday I'll combine into one lifestyle blog, sadly today is not that day.

This page will continue pretty much as usual: hair, makeup, skin, clothing, accessories.
Other topic pages are linked on that navigation bar on the top of my page.

Lifestyles of The ItsyBitsy

I am a woman of many (many) interests and I'm finding this beauty specific space to be limiting, so I'm working on ways to shake things up.

Basically what I would like to do is set up a few separate topic pages here on The Itsy Bitsy so that I can post what I like when I like, and recast this as a broader lifestyle blog.

A weirder, craftier, fussier, Itsy-er, Bitsy-er, lifestyle blog.

My goal is to make it so that people who want to come look at the blog for a specific topic will be able to find it easily as it will all be archived by topic (beyond just by tagging, that is), but if they are interested in the other stuff I do they won't have to go far.

The beauty stuff will of course stay but I'm really trying to get back into fitness and crafting in a big way and I want to talk about those sides of me without having to maintain a whole passel of separate spaces.

I'll be playing around with page layouts in the coming days but I don't expect this to be terribly intrusive, more as I get things hammered out!

And if you go chasing rabbits...

Sorry I've been MIA lately, it's busy season at my job and I'm moving to a new apartment at the end of this month so I'm a TETCH overwhelmed lately. I have a BUNCH of backlogged pictures and posts I have about two thirds written out, but no time to get it all organized and pretty enough to post.

On the plus side in less than a month's time I'll be in a place with lots of natural light for pictures and the perfect opportunity to re-organize my stuff so that I can hopefully get more use out of all the neat things I've picked up (and subsequently lost in the various corners of my bathroom).

The big beauty news for me at the moment is that I finally went white!

I absolutely adore it and I'm planning to keep it up for as long as I possibly can.

clicky this picture for detail

It took about four lightenings (well, three and a half technically) a lot of toning experiments (which is where that half comes in), a cast iron scalp, and an exceedingly committed stylist to get here; but it's PERFECT.

I'm currently looking for a discussion board of some sort for people with dyed white hair because I want to make sure I can keep this in tip-top shape. If you have a link please drop it here.

My sagging what?!?!

Taking a spin through Groupon a little while ago and I saw this product and my first reaction was

"Really!?!?! Ear perfect? Ear lifts??? Now I supposedly have to worry about how my EARS are aging???"

Thankfully I clicked through to take a closer look because it gave me a fair amount of food for thought.

180 Count of Ear Perfect Instant Ear Lift Patches

The first note on the box and item description is "Designed for stretched or torn earlobes". WHEW!

I don't have a problem with the idea of self improvement or modification, but I do have a problem with products which make bank by making people feel bad about perfectly normal aspects of humanity like aging. Sadly this is pretty much the base purpose of advertising so a bit hard to avoid entirely, but nonetheless it's important to know what forces are being leveraged against one's happiness and/or health (for a frank but fantastic example of this have a look into the modern history of my favorite insult - douche). 

I've had my ears pierced since I was very young and torn earlobes are DEFINITELY one of my lizard brain fears. For just about as long as I can remember I have been wearing the same style of tiny hoop earrings which release easily if they get caught on things. I actually feel like my face looks kind of wrong if I wear other styles of earring.

Earception earrings (click this caption for source)

It's pretty cool to know that here are alternatives to plastic surgery if you have torn lobes and want to wear regular earrings. I imagine these patches would also be helpful for anyone who is not used to the weight of really heavy earrings.

And of course not forgetting the number of people currently running around with intentionally stretched earlobes who can use these stickies to expand the number of earring styles they can wear.

It's funny when you think of the ripple effects that different fashion choices may have years down the line. Growing up in a fairly conservative home I was always warned against permanent mods because of the effects they may have on my future, but at this point tattoos and piercings have become so ubiquitous the job market is pretty much going to HAVE to accept altered individuals.

I expect we're going to start seeing more stuff like this in regular rotation. It makes me wonder what other body mod friendly products we are going to start seeing - not necessarily hiding the mods - but adjusting to a life where they are commonplace.

Cheese plate update

I'm trying this "occasional blogging about cheese" thing out because frankly, I love cheese. I think I eat more cheese than anyone else I know, which might very well be saying something.

I'm not an expert, just a REALLY REALLY REALLY enthusiastic amateur.

Wallace And Gromit know where it's at

Ironically, I'm also lactose intolerant. Thankfully my supply of Lactase enzyme is usually prodigious enough to keep up with my adventurous palate, though there was that time I had Lactaid overnighted to my hotel at Disney because I didn't pack enough and they apparently don't sell it on site?!?

Anyway, it's one of my great loves and I'm sharing it because this is my blog and that's my life!

I'm going to try to make this a semi regular round-up post though I'm not sure what kind of time frame I will leave between posts.

I bought some cheese for myself to have a nice snack for my holiday week staycation. Then I got an ASTOUNDING amount of cheese from my In-Laws for Christmas (left side of the pic above was my fridge on Christmas night).THEN I got a C'est Cheese Cheese of the month club subscription from my Husband for my birthday the week after (right side of the pic above was January's picks)  so there's a bit more than usual to talk about right at this moment! Due to the sheer volume of cheese I ended up eating a lot of the fresher cheeses first and leaving the aged cheeses for later.

I'm not really going to talk about what I use as a vehicle for the cheese because honestly I eat it with what I have around. If I happen to use something interesting I'll mention it.

After the jump I'm going to start off with some particularly notable ones I've had in the last several weeks and fill in the gaps from there in future posts.