Darkest Winter

2014 Nail Art Challenge #2 - Darkest Winter

A crisp clean semi-ruffian manicure in shades of glass flecked taupe and glittering white.
My aim was to echo and elevate the salt and sand grimed snow which is now blanketing my late January Northeast winter wonderland.

I will also be using this manicure for the Lacquer Legion January theme of Reinvention as this was the THIRD design I had attempted for my winter theme in as many days, and it is about as far from my original plan as you could imagine.

I may show you guys a pic of the first attempt someday, but I wouldn't put money on it. The first step came out absolutely gorgeous, and I should have left it RIGHT there.

A Ruffian manicure involves kind of a "short sheeted" look where the base of the nail shows a different colour from the body. This look was created by the CND team for the 2010 Ruffian show during Fashion Week.

So glittery!

Apparently a proper Ruffian covers the full side, I didn't do that, which was silly of me because it probably would have been WAY easier. The white here is very sheer for this application so it ended up pretty thick, but I think the topcoat smoothed things out pretty well. The taupe covered well in two coats, the white will take at least three for any kind of real coverage.

Please 'scuse the bit of cuticle mess above. This was taken while I was still waiting for this to dry, and it seems taking off navy polish will leave a fair amount of cleanup!

Just a shot which I thought would be neat while I was still doing the base layer.

All other pics here are of the left, here is my right. As you can see I don't do too bad for my off hand.
I did the same ruffian treatment on the ring-finger of my right and it came out pretty okay, but not *quite* as clean as the left. Practice practice, of course.

That taupe colour was INSANELY matte before top coat! I almost wish I could have kept it like that but I knew it was going to be a day in between base and finish and I haven't really tested out the matte topcoat I own.

I recently picked up a bottle of Rimmel's Lasting Finish Pro in Rags to Riches (a cool shimmery olive) and I picture that going REALLY beautifully with this taupe. I am really happy with both the white and the taupe and am falling hard for glassfleck finishes so I fully expect to reach for these bottles again, thought the bottle in the white is a bit tall and narrow and feels tippy.


If you want to play along feel free to jump in at any point!
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My clothes really are quite cool

In order to set up my last post I spent several days looking intently at pics of what I actually wear, and I thought it would be neat to figure out if there was a unifying pattern behind my preferred colours.

This is a small swatch of nearly every non black/white/grey piece of clothing I've shown in pics here so far.

My "favorite" changes every once in a while but I've always been drawn to extremely vivid cool colours. Peacock, turquoise, and aqua have been in regular rotation near the top my whole life, but violet was undisputed Queen of my Tweens. I had a brief peridot green phase in college and a bluish-crimson phase in my late twenties. Purchases in the shades between fuchsia and violet have been very common for me lately - I have three separate shirts, a dress, and a pashmina featuring that orchid on the left and don't get me started on my growing collection of fuchsia shoes. I am noticing that I am *especially* drawn to the combo of a slatey navy + either kelly or orchid right now.

Yes, Pantone Color of the Year for 2014 Radiant Orchid as a matter of fact, but I called it first!

I had been trying to find a colour wheel with a breakdown of how colours are normally paired to see if there were patterns in what I was doing, but there was just something lacking.

RYB color chart from George Field's 1841 Chromatography; or, A treatise on colours and pigments: and of their powers in painting
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I found myself looking at how the colours I wear relate to the primary colours we all learn sometime around preschool (red, yellow, blue) and the rainbow of secondary colours we get from them but I just couldn't work out the pattern. Everything I found looked like the Crayola 8 box to me while my wardrobe looks more like an Easter egg hunt at a saltwater aquarium.

Never understood why it wasn't ROY-G-BIV +1

I started yet another Google search of colour theory images and this time something caught my eye. Here was an image featuring MY colours. Intense scintillating shades of grass green, cobalt, vibrant magenta, lemon, and aqua.

Oh, and red. Red is pretty enough, but I just haven't been into it at all lately.

What's the difference? This more vibrant wheel is is the primary (red blue green) and secondary (cyan, yellow, magenta) set of colours used for colour theory as it pertains to LIGHT. Unlike the strangely blah ROY-G-BIV pigment colours, which are what we typically learn as kids, I am ALL OVER this palette.

Break the blue/green side of this down into tertiaries and you get almost exactly the same palette as the one derived from my clothing above.

What does this mean for how I use colour? I don't know yet, though it is pretty neat!

I feel as a first step I may benefit from having a closer look into my heavy use of analogous colours, which are those next to each other on the colour wheel. I normally think of my jeans as neutral but in given my heavy use of cool tones they are clearly adding to this overall cool feel to my wardrobe.

Due to some revelations I have recently had about my skin tone I have been experimenting with slightly warmer colours in makeup. It may be fun to take this a bit further and seek out other small ways to add some warm pops in, such as with accessories and jewelry. I love stark contrast and this may be a great way to play that up.

It feels very simple in concept, and yet I feel like I've been given a whole new way to look at my wardrobe!

Getting fussy about casual

My office is so casual (how casual is it?)

It is so casual that my boss, who walks past my desk and talks face to face with me approximately a million times a day, took about three days to notice when I did this to my (previously platinum) hair.

This is my favorite way to deal with overgrown roots -  July 2013

The work atmosphere laid back and my coworkers are kind of a hair dye, body art, geek-tee loving bunch. This is great for radical self expression, but not so great for caring much about looking "nice", especially when I have a bad habit of rolling out of bed with half an hour to get to a workplace that is twenty minutes away.

Still, I have been making an effort to choose my clothes ahead of time and throw a bit of effort into my makeup rather than just slapping on some moisturizer and jumping into something that approximates the right size. Even on my ultra casual days I think I've made a noticeable improvement over my previous wardrobe failures and I've gotten a full face of lightly contoured "low makeup" makeup down to five minutes.

Now if only I could figure out a way to instantaneously blow dry my hair. Sadly leaving it natural is NOT an option. I have ultra fine wavy hair with tenacious cowlicks and a talent for bed head, especially now that I'm growing into a slightly longer pixie.

I even accessorized a Batman shirt! 

I am trying to work out ways to change things up without dropping a bunch of cash on new clothing because  it is a pretty repetitive formula; dark wash bootcut jeans + hip length tee + high hip length sweater, + flat or low heeled boot. I do occasionally change it up a bit with a longer V-neck sweater and a scarf per the bottom left. Today for example I'm wearing a black version of that sweater with an orchid pashmina scarf in my usual BT Standard knot.

I love wearing heels and dresses and have gotten some heavyweight tights to make skirts a bit more winter friendly, but the repeated polar vortices we've been experiencing in the Northeast are putting the kibosh on that. Braving the cold is one thing, braving sub-zero temps and knee high snow is another. I also picked up a fist full of skinny faux-leather belts in various neutrals on deep discount from Necessary Clothing the other day. I'm still working out how I prefer to do belting but for less than three dollars apiece I figured I couldn't go too wrong.

It also doesn't help that I'm suffering a touch of post holiday "functional wardrobe shrinkage", but I've been hitting the treadmill in earnest again so that should open up my options with some of the more form fitting items in my closet.

I do feel like I'm getting somewhere. Odds are if you bump into me on a work day or out doing errands I'm going to look rather a lot like one of these pictures, and I think I'm pretty okay with that.