I'm baaaack

Greetings Children of the Night and Welcome to Spring!

Here in sunny Florida we really didn't have a winter to speak of so it actually feels more like summer here. I'm sorry I've been away so long, it feels like I've missed so much. I missed last week's episode of Monster Man (which I promise to catch up on soon) and after my bacon nails I had to abandon my latest project.

April is Autism Awareness Month and April 2nd is World Autism Awareness Day and Light It Up Blue Day. On April 2nd all over the world people light up blue to shine a light on Autism Awareness and Research. More than 1000 structures in over 180 U.S. cities and 30 countries joined Autism Speaks. Iconic landmarks around the world – including the Empire State Building and the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City, Universal Studios in Hollywood and Orlando, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, along with the Niagara Falls and CN Tower in Canada, Gano Bhabon, the Official Residence of the Prime Minister and hundreds of other buildings in Bangladesh, Christ the Redeemer Statue in Brazil and the Sydney Opera House in Australia – as well as people's own homes lit it up blue.

Great Buddha of Hyogo Kobe, Japan (image source)

Empire State Building New York, New York (image source)

Christ the Redeemer Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (image source)

Sydney Opera House Sydney, Australia (image source)

Niagara Falls, Canada (image source)

 Well today I'm going to do something a little different. I was going to participate in the Blue Nails for Autism for April but I quickly realized I only had two bottles of blue so that wasn't going to work. However I did do one mani for Autism Awareness month. This is one coat of nail Life Gripper, two coats of Wet n' Wild Denim Chrome and Sally Hansen Super Shiny. I then drew a puzzle piece in white on the ring finger.

For more information or to join the cause you can go to Autism Speaks. Every post during April I will start with one Autism Fact.

Hope these motivates you to go out and fight for the cause. Do any of you know someone with Autism? I'd love to hear your stories.

Thank you for reading.

It's not forever

Greetings Children of the Night. I'm afraid I'm going to have to take a little break for awhile. No more than a week, I swear! 

Thank you for hanging in there with me!

What's That Say? I Can't Read!

Greetings Children of the Night! Well here is my first post in a series all about food! OK, I admit it, I'm *obsessed* with food. Well, maybe not obsessed. It's more of a love/hate relationship really. However, I'm not about to get into my food issues here and now. On the up side though there is one food I will always love, bacon.

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 This is my homage to bacon. Please tell me *someone* else actually sees the bacon in this? I'll be honest, this mani was a total pain in my @$$! I didn't have a brown red so I mixed one drop of Sally Hansen Cherry Charisma with two drops of Finger Paints Sketchy Character (the bottle in the picture). In the light, it came out a smidge too red for me. The lighter meat color was an ancient bottle of Cutex Beige and the white "fatty" base color is Sinful Colors Snow Me White. So it's one coat of Nail Life Gripper, two coats of Snow Me White, and then the stripes.

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 For those of you who don't get the title of this post, here is a little reminder of the Beggin' Strips ad.

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Hope y'all enjoyed my bacon. I'm going to try water marbling again for an event this weekend, then food number two! Thanks for reading.

Monster Man Cometh

Greetings Children of the Night. At the urging of a reader, I am going to replace my usual weekly Face Off post with a little run down of this week's episode of Monster Man.

Last night was episode two of Monster Man and I...am...hooked! The personalities are great and nothing beats good old fashioned, hand crafted monsters. Another upside of this show, is it highlights all kinds of fun indie films I'm now going to have to try and track down and see.

Each episode seems to focus on two different films and two different projects for Cleve Hall, his daughter Constance, and the rest of the team at SOTA FX. This week's projects were a practical werewolf for Hallow Pointe, directed by Thomas J. Churchill and Princess Polly for Forbidden Zone 2.

Cleve and Constance Hall (image source)

“Hallow Pointe” is a chilling story about love, life and what lengths you go through to try and save someone; all told within the classic horror staple, a creature feature.  The filmmakers’ vision for the film is to bring back the feel of old school 80's horror (ie: “The Howling,” “American Werewolf in London”) giving fans something movies today are lacking – great creature development with hard core visual FX. - PRLOG

Constance's Sketch (image source)

 It's incredible the lengths this team goes to, to hand create these monsters; to make them seem real. I love the fact that some movies are moving back to practical effects and away from CGI. Constance did the sketch and they showed the actual process of moving from a ho-hum sketch to something spectacular. The team even took a field trip to an attack dog school (complete with Cleve in a bite suit) so they could all actually see the mechanics of a dog bite in action.

Muscle Suit covered in fur (image source)

For a peek at the teaser trailer, click here. This teaser trailer is what we got to watch being filmed on Monster Man.The landing site for Hallow Pointe isn't much yet, but you can find it here.

Final werewolf (image source)

The second film is something that I'm going to be excited to see. In 1982 Richard "Rick" Elfman, brother to Danny Elfman, made a cult classic film called Forbidden Zone. For those of you who haven't seen it, for shame! *wags finger* However, here is the website for you to catch up. It seems that Mr. Elfman is at it again and there is going to be a Forbidden Zone 2. Cleve and his team made a disgusting mask for the Princess Polly Character. I'm excited to see what they do with the newest installment. Besides, Danny Elfman is doing the music and that makes me a happy zombie.

Molding of Princess Polly (image source)

Final Princess Polly (image source)

 Here is the scene we got to watch being filmed on the Monster Man episode. It was also very interesting to watch the team trouble shoot. The Princess Started out in a gold bikini, but it was far too reflective to use in front of green screen. Now the princess wears royal purple.

On a random side note, in the 1980s there was an American New Wave band called Oingo Boingo, who were responsible for songs like Dead Man's Party and Weird Science. This band was fronted by the Elfman Brothers. It's funny to me to think of Danny Elfman writing 'real' music and not movie scores (even if the song Weird Science does blur that line).

I hope everyone enjoyed my Monster Man post and thank you for reading. I have a great idea for a new nail series that I'm hoping to start this week. I went to strip my ruffian last night and The Boy looked at me and said, "you're doing your nails again?! You're addicted." I didn't have the heart to tell him that most nail bloggers spend hours swatching new colors. :-) So needless to say, I'm a little behind in my new designs. I'm hoping to do my first one today.

Have a great afternoon!

Ruffian? What is this?

Greetings Children of the Night and Happy Hump Day.

Hope y'all have had an exciting, or at least  productive week thus far. The Vuppy, (vampire puppy. It's the nickname I've given to the teething chihuahua puppy) The Boy, and I are all awaiting the newest episode of Monster Man tonight. While I miss my Face Off, this show rocks! If you haven't seen it check it out tonight. It's in the Face Off time slot (10pm) on SyFy.

Gratuitous Vuppy Picture

Anyway, in my journey to find a new project I ran across many pictures of what is being called the Ruffian manicure. I know for many nail bloggers this is old news as it first appeared on the runway for Fall 2010, but seeing as how I'm new to the nail world, I had never seen this before. In fact, the idea of watching fashion shows for the latest nail craze and the fact that polish companies like China Glaze and O.P.I have seasons is all news to me. Shoot, I just discovered companies like Butter LONDON and Deborah Lippmann!

I figured while I was giving the water marbling a break I would try this. Now keep in mind I *bite* at doing a free hand french tip so I was very very tempted to break out the guides and not attempt to do this free hand. However Laquerized provided an amazing how to so I figured I would give her directions a go and*voila* perfect (well nearly perfect) Ruffian.

I'm also calling this the coffee mani. I did one coat of Nail Life Gripper, one thick coat of Sally Hansen Mochachino, then two thin coats of Sally Hansen Insta-Dry Expresso. While staring at my nails I was moved to add a little something more... SPOTS!

Using Sally Hansen Hard as Diamonds Amethyst Diamond I put random shaped blobs of color and partially outlined them with my Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen. A final layer of Sally Hansen Super Shiny and I am more than happy with the results.

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I was very sad to find out that Mochachino (the bottle in the pictures) is a discontinued color. I love the shimmer, almost metallic, quality of this polish. I also love how close Amethyst Diamond and Expresso are in shade. The spots just take on a shimmery quality without actually changing the color. At this angle I think you get a really good view of the contrast.

So how many of you follow the latest nail trends? Anything y'all would like to see me attempt from this year's spring collections?

Water Marbling, my new foe

Greetings Children of the Night and a big hello to my new followers! Thanks for reading.

As I'm sure most bloggers are, I'm a junkie for other blogs. Eventually I'll get around to posting some of my favorites on here. I've been seeing a lot of buzz lately for water marbling. It seems to be the new 'it' thing on nail blogs everywhere. I read up on it, watched *tons*of YouTube videos and thought to myself, "hey self, that is a really cool effect and looks really easy. Let's try it!" So I did. *snorts* Easy it is not!

  I figured I would do peacock colors. I picked out a dark navy chrome, a purple shimmer, creme teal, shimmering green, and a really pretty deep metallic gold. I used many different brands (maybe that was my problem?) but it was the Finger Paints that refused to spread. My water may have been *slightly* too warm.

Left (non-dominate) hand

I love the way my pinky came out here. You can really see the green and gold.  Even the thumb looks OK.

left thumb

My polish wouldn't spread, it dried way too fast and then I ended up with some really muddy marbling.On this hand though, you can see all the muddy-ness and the air bubbles. Again though, the ring finger and pinky came out pretty good.

right hand

right hand

Over all, it came out *ok* for a first attempt. I'm not giving up though. I will win! *brandishing fist* Ahem, yeah enough of that. Have any of you tried water marbling? How did yours come out?

Irish Toes are Smiling

Greetings Children of the Night and Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I usually wouldn't think of posting a picture of my toes seeing as how I know it can just weird some people out. Well, that and I haven't had a proper pedicure in *years*. However I was struck for an idea for this skittle pedi and after the Boy's reaction to it I felt it should be shared with everyone. When he saw my toes, he blurted out, "why can't you just get drunk on St. Patty's Day like a normal person?!" Personally I like the end result.

 It's one coat of Nail Life Gripper and one coat of Sinful Colors Snow Me White. After that I put a second coat of color on each nail; the green is Sketch n Etch (Finger Paints), the orange is Wet n' Wild Fantasy Orange. The big toe is just a taped off stripes (I use blue painter's tape) to resemble the Irish Flag.

Simple but a fun effect. The Boy can't wait for me to take it off. He likes it when my fingers and toes match. What did you guys do for St Patty's Day? Leave me a comment and share.