Radioactive

Dear Readers,

I did my hair!!!

I was going to do the roots blue, so I bleached my roots first... and then I like it so much that I decided to put the blue on the bottom instead. I used Splat! Blue Envy, and did it myself in the bathroom between 12am and 2am Saturday night. I am in love with my hair right now. In LOVE. Maybe platonic, maybe heavily sexual. :P You decide.

Both the shirt and the sandals are beautiful hand-me-downs from Queen Maryjean, circa 1980s I think.

The lace skirt I made myself, without a pattern, on the spur of the moment because I was motivated to sew and the fabric I wanted to use for a shirt needed to be washed first. My Bernina wouldn't take to one layer of the lace, so the gathering had to be done by hand. The raw edges are finished with a zig-zag, but it's polyester and I'm not really worried about fraying. The scallops were on both selvedges, the fabric was 60" wide, and I had 2 yards of it, so I cut it in half lengthwise and sewed it together to make 4 yards of fullness, gathered the raw edge by hand, and top-stitched it to a crushed velvet waistband--not the best choice without interfacing, but it was what I had laying around, and it works fine. Plus, it's super comfy and has stretch. I sewed in a flat hook and eye on the waistband, and a set of snaps on the opening in the lace. It could use another snap, but it's not a huge deal. I mean... it's a lace skirt, I'm not exactly worried about people seeing through a tiny opening.

Locket ring from Starlight Jewelry (I think?) on Etsy.

Lying on a fake beach

You'll never get a tan

Baby I'm gonna leave you drowning until you reach for my hand.

In the night your heart is full and by the morning empty

But baby I'm the one who left you, you're not the one who left me.

I love the yellow-blonde of my roots. However, trust me, blonde looks terrible on me as an all-over thing. 

I look crazy pink in the worst of ways. With blue ends? Not so!

When you're around me, I'm radioactive

My blood is burning, radioactive

I'm turning radioactive

My blood is radioactive

My heart is nuclear

Love is all that I fear

I'm turning radioactive

My blood is radioactive

This beautiful black velvet blouse zips up the back, and the neckline is decorated with hand-sewn imitation pearls and rhinestones. I feel like a princess going around in this!

Waiting for the nightfall, for my heart to light up

Oh baby I want you to die for, for you to die for my love.

Thank you for reading, mes amis. 

The lyrics (captions that are not my commentary) are taken from Marina and the Diamonds' song Radioactive. Marina is a wonderful beautiful artist and woman, and that's all I have to say. An added note, don't worry, the lyrics are not descriptive of my relationship right now, although I have in the past connected with this song. Right now, I just really admire her as an artist, and Radioactive seemed an appropriate name for this hair-based outfit post separate from the song. <3

All my love,

Lovely Wednesday

Back to Birds and Flowers

Oh, how I have missed my wardrobe.
Feel free to give me the sarcastic "Oh, poor you, you only had HALF your oversize collection of wearables for the last 9 months. I FEEL SO SORRY FOR YOU."  I get it. I have no right to have missed dressing like this when it's not like I didn't have enough to wear, but I missed it anyway.
In any case, sarcasm or no sarcasm, I'm now back at college and reunited with my more fun clothes, including my bird collection and my socks and tights collection. I may or may not have taken serious advantage of that situation today. Check it out:

A note on tomatoes, since they're in the background here. My roommate keeps putting my tomatoes in the fridge, which is not where they belong. If your wonderful, delicious tomatoes keep going pale and mealy on the inside, it's because you're keeping them in the fridge.

My old birds!!

Got these princessy earrings at the Pasadena City College Swap Meet a few weeks ago for a dollar. This is why I love swap meets.

So the Japanese girls have this nifty trick, this thing called sock glue (or sock-tachi), to keep socks from falling down. I think it was invented specifically for the loose socks trend there, but I need it for when I convert tights into socks, like I did here by meticulously cutting the top of the tights off.

Just kidding, it wasn't meticulous. I was like, SNIP, done.

I don't have sock-tachi, though. What I do have is first-aid tape, so I wrapped the first aid tape (non-sticky side down) real tight around my leg above my calves and below my knees and stuck it to itself, pulled my socks (née tights) up, and pressed it against the tape's sticky side. I didn't know if it would work, but (surprise!) it did.

Ring purchased on etsy. I think it was Starlight Jewelry or something like that.

A bunch of polishes I don't remember under Sally Hansen white crackle. I was not really happy with the white crackle, as it's somewhat transparent (and two coats are not an option), and it separated more into strings/strands than chips. Oh well. :P

I'll see y'all later, I'ma go catch up on Project Runway with my friend Ethan. Yay!

<3 LW

Nailed It!

The following are some of the more recent nail designs I have done. Two are on my stepmom (who always comes up with the most interesting suggestions--in the past she's requested salad, Jewish fish, and Lady Slippers, for example), one is on my friend the Fairy Girl, and one is on my stepsister.

Hummingbird Nails

This hummingbird design was requested by my stepmom a week or two ago, and we kept just barely running out of time to do it. Last night, I was finally able to do her hummingbird nails. This is probably the most difficult design I've ever done on someone else, because hummingbirds need a lot of detail to be recognizable as hummingbirds and not some other unidentified flying object, and because they need to be pretty small to fit on a nail (sometimes two to a nail). I painted out a lot of really bad hummingbirds on paper before I finally found a way to do one that I was happy with, and then came the pressure of painting twenty-something of them on someone else's moving body parts (no matter how still you think you're being, I promise you that you are moving), and we actually did half of them before dinner and the other hand after dinner because it was so time-consuming. Hand Two, though, went much faster as I had kind of gotten into a groove with it. I was actually really amazed with myself that I was happy with all the hummingbirds when it was done (I did do an experiment with a lily flower on one of the nails in white, but wiped it off with nail polish remover and patched the pink polish right after I decided I hated it).

This design is painted with red, black, and white acrylic paint on top of a weirdly cool pink polish that I don't know the name of (I think it says Paris on it and came from Marshall's, but no guarantees) from some set I know nothing about except that it was a good deal and had three awesome colors in it (a pastel pink, a pale blue, and a black/red metallic kind of thing).

Pink Leopard 

This design was for Fairy Girl (Can you see why we call her that? She's aDORable!!), and while kind of time consuming because of the crazy amount of layers involved was actually really easy. I've done this before in blue without glitter, which makes this one of only two designs I've ever done twice (although I've actually done this one now three times as Fairy Girl requested this exact thing done to her again two weeks later for a party; the other design I did twice was an under the sea sort of thing, although the two versions were pretty different from each other and the first version was, in my opinion, better). She couldn't possibly have been happier with it. Seriously, you should have seen her face. Oh, wait--it's right there, you can see it. :D

Seriously, that's the best part of doing these, is seeing how thrilled people are to have little artworks on their fingernails. People are fascinated and impressed and excited, and it thrills me to make them feel that way, which is why, although I request a donation to do the nails of people I don't really know and offer nail jobs as trades for rides and cooking ingredients, I also paint the nails of anyone who'll sit still long enough when I'm inspired.

The Pink Leopard is two coats of a color called Zippy by who-knows-who-made-it, a coat of purple glitter by some-company-or-other (Sorry, I should write this sort of thing when my nail polish and I are in the same house!), a 99-cent topcoat, silver foil from dollarnailart.com (applied with their foil glue), and black acrylic paint, plus two more topcoats.

Habanero Nails

My stepmom requested these because she and my dad (and myself, for that matter, and my brother's assimilating) are crazy about hot peppers. We basically buy Albertson's out of their habanero stock whenever we go there, and our front porch is now a jungle of exotic hot peppers (you can see them in Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock). Point being, habaneros are a big, important thing at our house (we cut up four or five of them each night for dinner between us), so I was expecting her to request habanero nails sooner or later. :)

These pictures were taken almost a week and a half after the nails were painted, so there has been some chipping at the tips, but they held up quite well overall. The gray is I think called "concrete," and it's by NYC if my memory serves me well. The silver overlay on the ring fingers is by Sinful Colors, and I don't know what it's called. Sorry. The yellow-and-green vines and the orange-and yellow peppers are mixed from my yellow, blue, and red acrylic paints. I topcoated twice, of course.

Graduation Flower Fix

My stepsister had regular French acrylics done at a nail salon near her boarding school in Arizona the day before her graduation, and despite her being very clear with the nail tech about precisely what she did and did not want, the nail tech did pretty much exactly what she didn't want. While I don't have the supplies or the know-how to do or fix acrylics, I could at least do some patchwork to distract from the too-low tip-placement. I tried two other simple black designs on her nails before I came up with something she was happy with. I cannot tell you how relieved I was that she loved the flowers idea as much as I did, because it turns out I'm much better at nail art than I am at customer service. In any case, we finally came up with a solution everyone was happy with, and she was thrilled with how it looked, and how well it distracted from the shitty acrylics (pardon my French).

Lest I sound disrespectful to the nail tech, I'd like to elaborate: even if the aesthetics of the tip placement, the too-shirt filing job, and the use of white tips instead of clear ones (clear tips with a more natural-looking French paint job were explicitly requested) were satisfactory and in accordance with my sister's requests, the acrylics were simply done wrong. The tips used were too big for her nails, so were painful when everything dried. The nail tech cut my sister's nails too short so that the nail glue attached to her fingers instead of just her nails, causing more discomfort. Furthermore, too much acrylic was applied on top of the nails and tips, and it was applied unevenly and overly thickly, so instead of looking like part of her nail they looked like they were sitting on top of her nails. My sister did still pay the full price, although, to be honest, I would not have.

My patch was just black acrylic paint and topcoat. To be fair, though, it is still looking good a week later. :)

Woo! Now you're up-to-date on all my nail adventures (how did you ever manage without knowing?)! :P

That's all for now.

<3 Lovely

'Tis Green!!

Finally.

Inspiration:
My university "family" threw a Christmas costume party, and I went as a Christmas tree. I wore a green plaid taffeta bubble skirt dress, brown tights, brown snakeskin Betsey Johnson heels, made construction paper presents to tape to my legs, sprayed my hair green (actually, my friend Ethan did the spraying for me), and clipped in a giant gold star I'd made.
I was amazed and pleasantly surprised to find out that the green actually looked good on me, which was confirmed by the onslaught of, "Dude-you-could-actually-pull-that-off"s, and that was when I finally settled on what color I was going to dye my hair.
After jillions of hours of google-imaging, I decided I wanted something that reminded my of the green letters on the black screens of old computers, slash something that could have been on the cover of the Half Blood Prince, slash kelly green only darker and prettier. Turns out, Special Effects makes EXACTLY that color, so I guess I'm not the only one. Cool.

Process:
My dear friend Emma Dahling and her wonderful mother helped me do this (aka did this for me).
'Twas done by lightening my natural hair color with 30 volume bleach, and then steeping it in Special Effects Iguana Green for... 1, 2, 3, 4...
...roughly 16 hours.
It probably would look the same now if I'd only left it in a couple hours, but I'm told that leaving it in so much longer will help it hold up better, and that since Special Effects dyes are vegetable-based, Leaving it in super long would not damage my hair. I'm incredibly excited.
Really.

Look at This Stuff!

Isn't it neat?

Just in case you don't watch enough classic Disney to get the reference, I was a mermaid today.

Chronic Bitchface sold separately. 

I really am sorry about this. I wasn't really happy with any of the full-body shots I got, and I would have taken more but my camera ran completely out of battery and I was too lazy to find more and switch them out. So.

I made this fabulous green mermaid skirt (yeah, it is green) for sewing class last semester, and have worn it way too many times since then. What can I say, I love it. I'm pretty sure it's Butterick... it's a late Victorian pattern for two skirts and a jacket. You can figure it out if you really want to make it. ;)

The wonderful silk velvet jacket is a re-pieced vintage item from Buffalo Exchange, given to me by Emma Dahling.

To commemorate my mermaidification, for which I've been waiting my whole life (I was a mermaid for Halloween when I was two. Not kidding. And then again when I was 7ish and again when I was 13ish. I've really been quite looking forward to this.), I wore lots of jewelry, including a shell necklace, some other cool crap, and two glass-beaded necklaces I made myself.

One of the necklaces I made has a fish on it!

Skull ring from Oriental Trading Company (this is embarrassing :P),

Koi ring from Forever21,

Coral and Silver ring from some roadside stand in Arizona.

I know, my Pokemon nails go great with this whole mermaid thing. <3

Abalone bangle from Target, faux pearl bracelet... no idea.

Vintage burst ring, Floral stacking rings from Forever21.

Seahorse barrette from StarrlightJewelry on Etsy.

I also learned how to fishtail braid this morning! I tried it, like, three times, because I kept thinking I was doing it wrong, but then I realized that I just couldn't see it and I actually had been doing it right. Heh... heh... heh.

Well, practice makes perfect. Or, practice makes permanent. But, it was good practice, so... you conclude what you will.

Got on a Revlon Colorstay lipgloss (Gosh, are practically all of my lip products Revlon Colorstay? I don't know. BUT, in my experience, the whole line is not of equal quality--some things a fabulous, some are okay (like this gloss), and some are absolute crap.), MAC Metalrush pigment and some bronze liquid liner from I-don't-remember (on eyes, and as scales). Plus, some dark shadow on my brows, whatever it was.

I'm gonna try and make these next two pictures as non-awkward as boob shots can be, because I want y'all to see the gorgeous beaded detailing on this fabulous mermaid top I made for my most recent mermaid Halloween (I think it was 8th grade...but I might have been in high school. I really don't know.).

I used this same orange fabric for curtains in my room at home. I'm literally in love with the color. It's silk dupioni, I found it at Michael Levine, and the glass beads I bought at Michaels. They're hand-sewn onto the nude stretch fabric which is basically a tube top sewn to a strapless bra. The most important thing in making this was the fit of the bra, because it is a strapless top, so... you do the math.

It doesn't look like that much beading, but this took HOURS. Like, I don't even know.

The rhinestone barrette on my part is from Target (long ago).

Earrings were a vintage gift from Queen Mary Jean.

Wouldn't you think my collection's complete?
Ah, but the fashion-addicted shall never recover. Uy.
<3Lovely

Pony Express

I brought my beautiful, leather-bound world atlas to university my first semester because I thought it would make me look scholarly to have it on my bookshelf. Also, I'm perfectly horrid at geography, so I thought I might actually use it. The first time I've used it between August 2010 and October 2011 is just today, to take these pictures. 

Moral of the story: atlases make good photo props, but are otherwise useless in a world with google maps.

I was inspired today by the fact that I haven't worn this gorgeous shirt since I made it, and was about damn time. Therefore, this happened.

This red eyeshadow (Siren by Lime Crime) came in the mail  yesterday and I was so excited to wear it! I bought it with their Candy-eyed Eyeshadow Helper in their recent sale with the earnings from an art commission I did for the Celestial Opera Company's next production (I'll show you soon, promise!). I'm REALLY happy with both the products, the primer is actually kind of amazing. The eyeshadow kept transferring to my top lid, so I hairsprayed my face. I'll let you know how bad of an idea that was depending on how bad I break out tonight, but it seems to have worked. 

Incidentally, I've also got on a yellow-gold shadow and a peach-iridescent shadow above Siren, from a palette my mom had back in high school. Woe betide me when the palette runs out!

I made the hairbow with a barette finding from JoAnn Fabrics, some scrap fabric I had lying around, some string, and hot glue. High-tech, I know.

A standing picture, yay.

Belt borrowed from my mom's closet. Can't remember whether I told her I was taking it this semester, but she has plenty other Western-style belts, so no worries there. Phew!

I think it's kind of awesome, btw.

Character shoes from Danny's Dance Warehouse in LA.

Tights-like socks from Charlotte Russe.

I love the print on this heavy cotton skirt my maternal grandmother gave me. Isn't it great?

As for the Gibson Girl blouse, this was the progeny of my shirt project in Sewing I last semester. 

It was... a labour of love, in the truest sense of the phrase.

I started with GREAT fabric, a butternut-colored Swiss Dot of very light cotton, and two types of lace (only one of which shows in these pictures).

All the pin-tucks and set-in lace had to be done before the pieces could be sewn together, and some even before the piece could be completely cut out, like on the front yoke.

Sewing on the Swiss Dot was a bitch--to keep the machine from spazzing out all the time, I had to sew over a sheet of wax paper--I spent at least twice as much time pulling out little bits of wax paper from the seams than I spent actually sewing the lace in. Plus each seam sewing lace in had to be done twice--once to sew it to the fabric, and once to sew the cut-away edges of the fabric to the remaining edges so you can see through the lace. Not to mention that I bought the fabric and lace in downtown LA and ran out of lace halfway through--in Waco, Texas. AAAAAAAGGGHHH!!! That's why I'm done now.

The pattern I used was Gibson Girl Blouse by Folkwear Pattern Company.

It happened.

And now there are pretty pintucks down the front. :)

I <3 U

Then, I went sepia-happy... 

All the best to you, my lovely friends and readers!

<3LW