Boutique Baking!

I know the last thing I need is another baking book, but when I heard that one of my favourite bakers was putting out another book, I had to buy it.

The thing I am especially excited about, is that unlike her other books, this isn't focused mostly on decorating, but on the baking aspect of making her delicious treats. As much as I love Peggy's sugarcraft skills, I'm really hankering to learn the secrets behind the fare she sells at her bakery.

Nail & Deco: Let's Make Some Art!

Here are a few tutorials from my increasing collection of nail publications. One is from an issue of Nail Max, one is from Nail Venus, and the other is from the book Nail Super Design Collection. I thought they might offer guidance and inspiration for whoever sees my blog. :D

I am using the actual size of these images so you can see the details. (I have been uploading smaller resolution sizes lately.) Click on the thumbnail for the full size. Enjoy!

Nail & Deco: Bridal Dresses

Nail Max usually features wedding dresses and coordinating nails in their October issue, and sometimes in summer issues too. They also, of course, have tutorials to do your own nails. What I'm focusing on today isn't the nails, however, but the dresses that inspired them. When you think of wedding dresses, most envision something frilly and white...well, leave it to the Japanese to take the concept of a wedding dress and run off to Crazy Town.

I love this one! I would wear it. :)

I also love this one....not to get married in of course, but can you imagine how fun it would be for a costume party? Plus, I love her short gloves, that heart bouquet, and the giant fabric heart on the side.

Liquid Crystals

Finally the internet is back up!
I tried the China Glaze Liquid Crystals from one of my recent posts. :)

Oh, I wish I could get this to photgraph well! It's a silvery-blue base, with blue and purple highlights and multi-colored holographic glitter. It's amazing. I especially like it because so many glitter polishes I have look awesome in the bottle, but they're so sheer it's hard to use them as anything other than an accent coat over a solid color.

However, this is also pretty sheer, but I was able to get a good application with two coats.

This better shows the blue it has in it.

Ergh

So, the Internet is down AGAIN....hence why I haven't posted for the past day or so.

Hopefully it will be back up soon, because uploading pictures from my phone is a pain.

Lemony Goodness

I tried China Glaze's Lemon Fizz once, and it was somewhat streaky and hard to get even. I was impatient and ended up removing it from my nails.

Well, I'm glad I gave it another shot, because it's actually awesome. I just had to take my time and build it up gradually.

I got so excited I took the picture before I even cleaned up my cuticles from the spare polish. Haha. :)

The glitter topcoat is Rainbow In The S-Kylie, and the accent nail is Shell Me The Truth, both from Nicole for OPI.

This makes me think of the first daffodils that come up, a sure sign of spring when everything bursts into life!

Some Goodies

Let me start off this post by showing the fake nails I currently have on. They are pretty and subtle, and only $5. For some reason, I have the worst luck getting fakies to stay on, but they are nice for a weekend. Feels weird to type with them, though....

I picked up some Burt's Bees cuticle cream, because I realized with how much I LOVE nail art and polish, I was embarrassingly not paying enough attention to taking care of my own nails. So, just like how I make sure I moisturize my skin, I will be doing the same for my nails.

Lastly, I picked up a Burt's Bees lipgloss in Strawberry color. It gives a soft boost of color and shine to my lips, which admittedly, are already a nice, natural pink. Plus it is scented like peppermint and makes them tingle! :)

Time to go do some cardio and take a shower. :)

Flower Sound Orchestra Book!

As much as I love Kanon Wakeshima, I can't help but be extremely jealous of her. She's a beautiful singer, she plays the cello, and she's also a great artist?!

Seriously, why is it that some people get so much talent and the rest of us have to muddle through? Sigh.

Flower Sound Orchestra is a mini artbook that was only available in very limited quantities at Con. At only about twenty pages, it was kind of pricey with a $18 price tag, but because I love Kanon and wanted to show my support of her, I bought it. Her art style is cute, feminine, and Gothic Lolita-flavored. It's a nice departure from the many overly-sexual anime and manga art out there.

I love this one especially because I have the album and got to see kanonxkanon perform it in concert. :)

I love Halloween themed images anyway, but this one is especially awesome because it's sweet and doesn't rely on pretty girls in skimpy costumes.

...And a Rant

Of course I couldn't put all of those books without looking at them. That made me start thinking and lamenting over the deterioration of Nail Venus magazines.

This is one of the first volumes of Nail Venus I ever purchased, back in 2006. For several years, Venus was a strong competition to Nail Max for my favorite nail magazine. Though I personally hated---and still do---the stapled spine, as opposed to the perfect-bound spine of Max, the nails are equally beautiful. Or they were. Now, honestly, they bore me.

Look at these nails from the above 2006 issue:

Pretty! Unusual! A little extravagant on a couple but still very lovely and wearable.

Now, look at the Spring 2012 issue:

Well, the cover is nice. How are the contents?

YAWN.

I have noticed the shift in nails for the past year or so, and because of that have stopped buying pretty much all Nail Venus issues. The fact that Max continues to improve and showcase more beautiful nails with each issue keeps me content. Now, I know there's been a change in fashion from the more outrageous nails to simpler ones, but it doesn't explain how Venus's nails have started to bore me while new issues of Nail Max have simpler nails, but are still very exciting. It's disappointing, and frustrating. The only plus side to this is the fact that my wallet doesn't have to shell out money to buy two series' worth of issues.

Note: The Nail Venus Bibles, released once a year and very similar to Nail Max Collections, are still quite nice, though the 2012 edition wasn't up to par with the ones in years past. Still, I'm much more likely to buy one of those, than the regular issues.

A Bookcase

My bookcase is finally put together, and I was so excited that I started moving books into it before work. :D

I need to do some fiddling, though, because the shelves are giving me trouble. They have a lip, so I have to make sure I have enough space or the tops of my beloved books get caught and removing one to look at becomes a chore. Definitely not how a bookcase should be.

I also need to re-think some of the titles I put up....I put my artbooks (the heaviest ones) on the bottom shelf for obvious reasons. But, I don't always look at all of them. I might have to put some in storage and put only the books I look at a lot up. Also, I'm trying to put books up that I would want to take with me to California, which narrows it down to my nail books/magazines, cookbooks, some art technique books, a few fashion books...and a couple art books I really, really like, like the Green Glass volume.

Yep.

What Am I Doing?

I'm not sure what I was trying to accomplish with this. Originally it was supposed to be a black basecoat with my new polish on the tips, but I didn't like how it looked just on the tips so I ended up putting it all over. I guess it looks neater in person. I'm still not very satisfied with it.

Off-topic: I'm using a new fast dry topcoat by Sally Hansen. I loved the Seche Vite, until I read the label and saw it had a warning for a chemical that could cause birth defects and other reproductive harm.
Um, no.

It's times like this that make me realize I need to practice even more on my technique.

I want to someday have a giant bookcase. Maybe twelve feet tall or so and six feet wide. OR a room I can turn into a private library. I'll have a special key made for it and it will be my personal sanctuary that is mine and mine alone. 

Also I think I'm going to paint my bedroom pink.

The Unicorn & The Poad

This is a rather weird little story. I was browsing eBay a couple weeks ago and found this:

Now, I had had a couple of unicorn suncatchers when I was growing up in the late 80's-early 90's, so it made me feel nostalgic. I bought it, and a week or so later, got my package.

I was a bit confused when I saw the size of the box, which seemed much too big for a suncatcher that was at most, five inches tall.

Imagine my further surprise when I found this:

This odd little creature is called a Poad, a fantasy animal invented by the talented people at Windstone. Windstone sculptures are usually fantasy based. They have unicorns, dragons, kirin, winged cats....you get the idea. Sometimes, they will offer for sale special "artist paint" versions. These sculptures are hand-painted by artists and are usually one-of-a-kind. They are extremely collectible, easily going for several hundred dollars! This poad, despite his tiny size (I have small girly hands if that tells you anything) probably sold for around $200. Yikes!

He was very cute---odd, but cute--- and I wanted to keep him. I knew that I couldn't; someone had paid a lot for him. So I contacted the seller, she realized she had switched the shipping labels, and the poad-owner and I forwarded the packages to each other, while the seller reimbursed us for the shipping cost.

I couldn't resist taking a picture of him first before I carefully packed him up to go to his rightful home. Having been a fan of Windstone for several years, it was exciting for me to see and hold one in person!

The kicker was the fact that the buyer of the poad lives in a city only about 45 minutes away from me! XD Small world.

So I have my unicorn now....but man, if I ever have the funds, I think I might have to get a poad of my own.

Nail & Deco: Eriko's Gel Nail Book

I was incredibly excited when I looked at the title and realized this was another book by my idol, Eriko Kurosaki. She and her studios have done acrylic nails for a long time and I'm glad to see her put out a book for gel nails. The instructions are very clear, and at 126 pages, this book is quite a bit longer than her usual 80-90 page books.

I might be partial to this book in part because I had to go through several steps to get it. I was originally going to order it through YA, but it went out of stock before I could. Since it was published in 2010, I had hope it would become available again, but it seems books in Japan tend to go out of print quite suddenly, so time is of the essence.

I put in the serial number on a whim, and it was in stock on the Kinokuniya website! The price, with shipping, came out to only about fifty cents more than it would have been if I had gotten it from the original source I looked at. Plus, since it shipped from a US-based Kinokuniya store, it arrived by FedEx in only three days. I had the choice of requesting it to be shipped from a few Kinokuniyas here in the US, but chose the LA store simply because it's the one I've visited before and I was impressed with it a lot.  :)

If I was living in LA, I could have done one better and simply had them hold a copy for me and picked it up at the store myself. *sigh* One day, one day.

Anyway, the book is beautiful, which of course I expect of Eriko and her team. Her work is so perfect that I know I can buy her books blindly (no preview of the inside contents) and not be disappointed.

P.S. From now on I'm putting up small-sized thumbnails instead of medium, to cut back on the space these posts take up. Clicking on the thumbnail will still take you to the full-sized picture, of course.

e.l.f. Eyeliner

As a general rule, I don't wear that much makeup, if any at all. I feel cuter and (of course) more natural without. However, that doesn't mean I don't enjoy dabbling in it sometimes.
A girl I work with always has fabulous-looking eyeliner on her upper lid, which I have never been able to do well. When I asked her about it, she told me to try out liquid eyeliner. Of course I've heard of it, but since I don't wear much makeup I haven't actually purchased it before.

I found this tube of e.l.f. brand eyeliner for only a dollar. At that price, I figured why not; if I don't like it it's not as though I dropped $8 on a tube I'll just put in a drawer and never use again.

I did a sweep following the natural curve of my eye, with a small flip at the end, which I feel highlights the shape of my eye as well as the curve of my outer eyelashes. Because it's liquid, I had to wait a couple minutes for it to dry. I was pretty happy with how well I did on both eyes, considering it was my first try. Maybe it has to do with the fact I paint and am therefore used to brushes....

My waterline (AKA my lower eyelid) was done using a regular eyeliner pencil, because I'm not quite ready to try the liquid version there. My lower eyelids tend to be senstive.

All in all, I think it's a nice, fairly subtle enhancement to my eyes that looks a lot better than piling on gobs of eyeshadow. I will see how it lasts throughout the day. If it does well I might make this my go-to thing for when I'm going out and want a little extra pop.

Nail & Deco: Nail Max, Pt. 2

Today I thought I would share some more spring-y nails, this time from my older Feburary 2009 Nail Max.

Specifically, I'm going to show some nails done by the salons named Créateur Reveal. From what I have seen, they release new salon art samples for the Feburary or April issues of Nail Max. (I'm actually disappointed that they haven't done so for this year yet.)

Oh, and by the way, that happens to be the line of salons that Eriko Kurosaki founded....so I think my love for it is a bit understandable if you've read my previous posts. ;) Enjoy!

I love the floral print ones with the bow in the righthand corner! <3

Easter Sunday

Mom still insists on giving me an "Easter basket" every year, though I have grown up long ago, and no longer celebrate Easter.

How cute are those cookie cutters?! She has also gotten me several other kitchen items she says I should put in my hope chest for when I have my own place or get married...the funny thing is, she doesn't seem too thrilled that T and I want to get married. She's either being supportive in a roundabout way, or hoping I marry someone else at the last minute. XD

Actually, the funniest thing of all is the fact I don't even OWN a hope chest.

I also find it funny how she rolls her eyes when I come home with another cookbook, but proceeds to buy me MORE cookbooks. Those brightly-colored iced cookies look like the ideal thing to try my new cookie cutters on.

Ditto nail polish. She did a good job on this one because it's a color I've been eyeing for awhile, and she was lucky and got the last bottle of it.

We went over to my aunt's house today to see the cousins for a bit. I brought some colored bubbles and we had some fun in the yard/parking lot behind her house. By the time it was done, our hands were stained blue, pink, green, and orange; my younger cousin O got some on his face courtesy of his older brother. Hahahaha. We gave up on the colored ones and switched to the usual clear bubbles and ran around in circles. (Okay, the boys did a lot more running than my mom and I did)

It was a beautiful, sunny day. The temperature was cool enough that no one roasted in the sun, but the sun itself kept us warm enough to be comfortable wearing capris. A perfect Easter Sunday.

My cousin M in the middle of blowing bubbles and trying to catch them. I think his brother O was looking at a caterpillar. :)

I love this picture of mom and I! Look at the sun shining in our hair and our nice smiles! *SHING*