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I made a thing and bad makeup choices.

Thursday, March 14th, 2013

1. I made a thing! Nessa went home to her mom in California and wanted an iPod case with a mirror on it so her mom can touch up her lipstick on the go, similar to these:

Conveniently we work in the crafty-beady district of Manhattan, so it wasn’t too difficult to procure all the needed ingredients. Nessa’s mom likes the color red and belly-dancing and therefore we decided to go with a Persian rug look. I glued a whole myriad of plastic-y hoohah and Swarovski crystals all over the back of a chestnut brown case and it turned out pretty great. So, you know, hooray for me.

2. I was walking through Times Square two days ago and there is an enormous ad for Viva Glam by M•A•C Cosmetics. Viva Glam is wonderful and all the money goes to help people with AIDS, and usually their ads are fantastic. But this one, wooo. Nicki looks not good.

It sounds like someone missed the mark on this look! Instead of highlighting her features in a flattering way, the makeup and angles did the opposite. This is why working with top cosmetic manufacturers is essential—they have the expertise to create makeup products that enhance natural beauty, ensuring a polished and balanced result every time. Even with challenges like a long nose or uneven lashes, the right products and techniques can make a world of difference. Take a look at this other photo where her makeup is spot-on—it shows just how much impact the right approach can have.

Now, what she’s advertising is that particular shade of lipstick that she’s wearing. I went on the internet and checked it out. After my copious research, I do not recommend it. On some people, it looks okay. On most everyone else, it does not do them any favors at all.

Kelly Rowland, pretty nice:

Random other chicks, failure:

This one chick, awesome, but she mixed it with other colors so it doesn’t count:

Do you know what I think? I think this is going to be one of those fashion trends that people follow for a season, and then when they have children fifteen, twenty years down the line, the children find photos of of their mothers wearing this lipstick and call them out on it, and the mothers blush embarrassedly and say, “Well, it was the fashion then!” An example:

Not an acceptable answer, ladies. Don’t be a sheep. If something looks like poo, don’t wear it even if it is “in” this year. Poo is poo. Here, I’ll let Oscar Wilde explain it to you.

Posted in Advertising, My Art/Design/Business, New York, Stuff | No Comments »

Some things that have recently been brought to my attention.

Friday, March 8th, 2013

1. I am tired. While I was typing the title above, I wrote, “Some things that have breen to my attention.” Then I looked at it and thought, “That’s not right.” And it took me far too long to figure out what was incorrect. I need a nap.

2. Nowadays when people say something was decimated, they mean totally destroyed. Poof, gone. I just learned, though, that decimated actually means “reduced by a tenth” (deci = ten). That’s not totally destroyed at all. You got a thousand guys attacking a village and one hundred of them die, you still have nine hundred guys! How did this word evolve to this meaning?

3. I was watching The Jeselnik Offensive the other night on Comedy Central, and I think Anthony Jeselnik is a reptile. He says a joke, and then he slooooowwwwwly licks his lips and slooooowwwwwly blinks his eyes like a komodo dragon. I feel like one day I will turn on that show one day and he will be calmly and quietly consuming an entire waterbuck.

4. Speaking of antelopes and antelope-like creatures, did you know there’s a deer with fangs? Imagine a docile, pleasant deer. Now imagine it with those plastic vampire teeth you could wear at Halloween that never fit. That’s a pretty good description. Here, see for yourself:

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdxozpT8T61rlhtaxo1_400.jpg

http://25.media.tumblr.com/3e077b70d57151fb2deef602b1fc46fb/tumblr_mh1ydeKaDx1rmgx38o1_500.jpg

5. I saw The Patriot for the first time recently (Alternate title: Braveheart in the U.S.) and it was good and all that, but every time Jason Isaacs and Mel Gibson had a scene together, this is all I heard:

6. I finished all the frost around the edges of all my leaves! Yay and hooray! The tapestry now looks like this:

Now I will attempt to put extra points of frost extending out from some of the leaves to create the appearance of… more frostiness, I guess that’s what I’d call it. Extreme frostitude. Then Snorth will teach me how to finish the edges and I will have completed a project that has been a bother for well over a decade! So exciting.

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Movie and Book Reviews. Possibly With Spoilers., My Art/Design/Business, Nature, Stuff, The Telly | No Comments »

Unrelated things.

Monday, January 28th, 2013

1. I went to a cowboy-related bachelorette party. All the other ladies tried really hard to remain lovely and feminine. I did nothing of the sort and put on a Tom Selleck mustache without haste. I think me and my hot-pink leggings look dope.

2. I finished frost-embroidering five of my leaves. That’s all the silver stitchery around the edges of each leaf. My journey to finish this tapestry in the next 300-odd days is well underway. Five more leaves to go and then I do extended frosty pointy thingies. I know that doesn’t really make sense, but when I do it I will take pictures and perhaps that will be clearer.

3. I was riding the ole Metro-North the other day and I saw a poster for The Americans. Now, it’s not just me on this – look at Keri Russell’s neck. It’s, like, crazy-long, right? Is she a member of that tribe in Burma that puts the rings around their neck and compresses their collarbones? It seems like a weird choice. Good poster design otherwise.

Addendum: I did a little photographic research, and my girl Keri does indeed have a long neck, but she is not an ostrich. Definitely some Photoshop in play.

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My resolution and some killer cookies.

Friday, January 4th, 2013

Happy New Year everybody! Did you have a nice celebratory time? I had a moderately good holiday season. I was supposed to go to Publicis’ annual holiday party where there is food and drink and music and merriment, but there was a pitch the next day so I was not allowed to go. It’s probably for the best. I make myself all fancy, all dressed up and get my hair did and put on fake lashes and I think I look like this:

But honestly, I usually look more like this:

Cricket went to Honduras with his sister Mishi to scuba-dive and left me all on my lonesome for New Year’s, so I made a really sad face and finally my friend JR included me in his plans. So I accompanied him and his preggers wife to a fabulous party where they had set up a photo booth. Here is a photo of the three of us.

On New Year’s I like to make super-basic, easily attainable resolutions if I’m going to make any at all. Last year I decided to learn to drink coffee. I now occasionally drink coffee. Hooray for me! This year I decided that come hell or high water, I am finishing that stupid leaf tapestry I started in the paleolithic era. It’s enough already. This year, it’s gettin’ done. I think I first designed it over twelve years ago. I blogged about it four years ago. You’re starting to see the glacial slowness with which I have progressed on this damned thing.

https://design-newyork.com.fwtrading.x10host.com/wp/2008/12/26/stuff-ive-been-making-recently/

I finished all the leaves and now I’m starting the frost. I’m using a silver foil thread which is troublesome because it tends to snag on the fabric and other threads and molecules in the air. But it’s creating the look I’m going for.

In completely unrelated news, I was looking at the various blogs I look at every day and I saw some seriously cool cookies. First, on dessertgirl.blogspot.com, there are adorable, Asian-inspired animal cookies. They are so effin’ sweet.

And then on semisweetdesigns.com, there are amazing steampunk cookies. These look fantastic. Be sure to go to her website and see some of her other designs, like the ambigram Halloween cookies.

Posted in My Art/Design/Business, Tasty 'n' Delicious, Teh Intarwebz | No Comments »

Santacon 2012.

Wednesday, December 19th, 2012

Since I don’t appreciate bar culture and didn’t start drinking until I was in my late twenties, I’ve never participated in any kind of alcohol-related festivity, like St. Patrick’s Day for example. However, my co-worker Nessa told me she was going to Santacon and I should join her. I figured, hey, I would have friends around me as a human shield to protect me from the inebriated masses and I could dress up like an idiot, so I decided to participate.

I wanted to look slutty (not sexy, like a sexy elf or sexy reindeer, slutty, there’s a difference), but it’s cold out, so I decided to clearly delineate precisely where my primary and secondary sexual organs are via the use of brightly colored fabric. I bought a red shirt and used green glitter glue to stick sequins in heart shapes over my bosomy parts. Then, I took a sparkly Santa hat, cut it apart, and made myself a loincloth of sorts with felty green poofs stuck on it. This way, I was still trashy while still wearing leggings, pants and a sweater. I called myself The Christmas Flasher. Please to also notice the “hot holiday mess” makeup and the antler headband.

We had a lovely brunch in Astoria and then got on the train to Midtown. Nessa had bought a pair of fairy wings that I painted in festive red and green, so she was a jaunty fairy elf.

When we got to Manhattan, there was a million billion Santas everywhere. On the corners, in the buildings, everywhere.

Most of them were wearing basic Santa costumes, but some people got very creative.

This man was dressed as a Squid Santa. I was super-excited about that. Him, less so.

There was a Santa that was 7’1″. He was an easy guy to find.

This is a nice picture, but the photobomb behind it makes it even better.

Nessa took this in an attempt to have street cred.

While I had a nice time all day, it was not my ideal social event. I don’t really appreciate standing around for five hours slowly sipping various alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. I danced for a while, but other than that, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Luckily, as the other Santas got more and more bombed, they provided me with entertainment. I got to see something I had only heard about as lore. Two young men who were relatively short and therefore compensated by working out too much, attempting to fight but, being challenged by all kinds of gravity, looked like they were slow-dancing to oddly tempo-ed music. And the entire time both of them are slurring, “I love you, man!” “No, I love you, man!” I snapped one photo of them as their equally loaded friend tried to break them up.

Now that I have had this experience, I don’t really feel the need to go again, but if I would be going to super-cool dancing facilities or something next Santacon, I would make myself a big red cape festooned with holiday goodness that I could wear over my clothes and not be cold. Consider that as an option if you go.

Additional niblet: I was outside a Broadway theater when Dan Stevens came out! Teh Hottnezz from Downton Abbey! I posed with him for a photo and promptly stabbed him in the face with my antlers. Luckily he wasn’t mad and I took a photo with him without my antlers robbing him of one of his greatest assets.

Posted in My Art/Design/Business, New York, Random Art Bloggery, Stuff | No Comments »

A panoply of things.

Wednesday, December 12th, 2012

1. Nessa, my co-worker, had a party for Halloween. It was the one and only time I got to wear my Ocean Reef costume. Normally, I would have worn it to the company Halloween party, but that was cancelled due to Sandy and her holiday-ruining rain. So here is a picture of me in my costume in Nessa’s apartment, complete with masquerade ball masks available at Abracadabra NYC.

Nessa went as She-Ra, but she couldn’t find an appropriate sword. She bought some kind of Marauding-Horde-of-the-Rings sword, but it totally didn’t work for She-Ra. It looked like this:

Totally wrong. I took it home, cut off all the points on the sides of the blade as well as the handlebar bits, and tried to shape it more like a diamond. Then I sawed slits in the sides, shoved Bristol board in there and wrapped it in wire to hold it all together.

The next day, I paper-mached over all that goodnees.

And the day after that, I painted it silver with black accents and glued two giant resin turquoise blobs on either side. Perfect? Far from it. But it totally did the job.

She looked great. Some might attribute that to good genes or the fact that she works out all the time, but I say it’s the sword that I modified.

2. I saw this while walking through Koreatown. I… I don’t think that’s how you want to phrase that.

“Enjoy your black time!”

3. So, every day I walk past a sign for a necklace that is supposed to be an artistic interpretation of a teddy bear. However, whenever I look at it, all I can think about is Coco’s shoulders, torso and rump. Are you familiar with Coco, Ice-T’s wife? She is a cartoon character of a human being. See for yourself. NSFW in most places, like Earth.

http://www.cocosworld.com/new/

Here is the picture of the advert for the necklace.

And here’s what I see every time I look at it.

4. I love this. I want a flabby mirrorball. In related news, if I were to become a burlesque performer, “Flabby Mirrorball” isn’t the worst name I could pick.

5. Today in Grand Central Terminal a news team was doing a piece on a sniffy dog. I played tourist and took a bunch of pictures. I liked the dog’s expression. “I can smell all kinds of stuff! Do you want me to smell something right now? Because I could.”

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A new purse, finally. And other things.

Tuesday, October 9th, 2012

The last time I painted a purse was over a year ago and since I was working on many other projects I never got around to making a new one and the jelly one was decomposing like a mummy in a horror film. This one:

The metal tab things had ripped off and I had spilled all kinds of delicious foods on it and the strap was totally frayed, etc. The time had come, and gone, and circled back around again, and I couldn’t keep carrying it because my lip gloss kept falling out of the holes. They discontinued this particular style purse, but before they did I bought the last fifty the factory had. Alas, about ten are gray, but the rest are this appalling Pepto pink. So now I have a stack of revolting pink purses in my closet. I took one and dyed it so it was a grayish lavender. Then I drew a horned beetle on it and used Pantone markers to give the impression of a shadow in rich blues. It looks adorbs.

Two other things: there’s this thing in fashion in the last few years where you rip t-shirts in intricate patterns and then you tie up the shreds with complex knots. It looks a bit like the lanyard bracelets you made at summer camp. I was pretty meh about the whole thing until I was walking through Times Square the other day and this chick had this neat skull ripped in the back of her shirt. That was pretty cool.

The third thing: Publicis New York merged with another agency, Kaplan Thaler Group and now it’s Publicis Kaplan Thaler. In 2013 we will be joining up in a building on Broadway and 52nd, and recently I went there. It’s a nice enough office building, but something in the elevator bay is going to bother me each and every day when I work there.

Uuuugh all the letters are mashed together and then there’s that giant gap why why??? It’s so crappy. One late night I may snap and go out there with an X-acto knife and handle my business (and get fired, but at least the letter spacing will be corrected).

Posted in Advertising, Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, My Art/Design/Business, Nature, New York, Random Art Bloggery, Stuff | No Comments »

Burning Man costume, part DONE.

Wednesday, August 29th, 2012

I am DONE. Finished. I made it. I made my deadline. I know making the costume and setting a deadline is completely arbitrary and totally fabricated, but I like setting goals for myself and then achieving them. The Moomins came over and helped me pack, and bonus, everything except the umbrella fits in the suitcase. And in six hours I crawl out of my bed in the dark and board a plane to Reno, where Cricket and I will pick up our rented mom-van and trek out into the dusty wilderness to experience unbridled creativity (I hope).

I plan to take as many pictures as my 32 gig camera card will hold, so I anticipate many a tale upon my return. See y’all on Tuesday.

And here’s some reading about some other people who also spent a whole lot of time and money on fantastic creations:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/27/burning-man-2012_n_1834494.html

Posted in Burning Man, My Art/Design/Business, Travels - I Has Them | No Comments »

Burning Man costume part 11 (just kill me now).

Monday, August 20th, 2012

So close to the finish line. Must hold on…

I am so tired of this. I mean, I love it and I’m going to wear it every day for the rest of forever, but I don’t want to work on it anymore. Thankfully, I am almost finished and Burning Man is in a little over a week, so then I’m good. Done. No more fussery. I must say, it looks amazing. I know it is gauche to compliment your own work, but it’s fantastic, so there you are. Check it out. Here it is from the left with the crab attached.

And here it is from the right.

I made that ropey thing as additional ocean detritus. It has transparent circle things and dangly gold beads and sparkly blue and lavender plastic beads (because The Moomins said I lacked blue and purple in that quandrant). It adds a nice bit of texture. And it sparkles but my camera is emo and won’t show sparkliness. I’ve complained about this before. I’m not going to get a rage-headache talking about it again.

Here is the costume from the back.

I took the pinbacks off of the seastars because they looked stupid and stuck out too far and sewed them directly onto the jacket, which looked awesome. I also sewed all of those little cuppy things onto various places all over. Here’s a close-up of those.

They’re generic ocean things. You want them to be seaweed? Then they’re seaweed. You want them to be coral? Okay. How about ginormous plankton? Fine by me.

Now, some of you may call me crazy, but hear me out. I was struggling with the corset and I decided to kill the corset, cut the scales off of it, and attach the scales to a tank top instead. It solves a bunch of problems. I cannot put the corset without assistance, it mashed my skirt in a weird way and stuck out oddly on top due to my lack of boobage, I can’t really sit down when I’m wearing it, etc. The tank top solves all those problems. I can now put on the whole costume by myself, it’s not crushing my midsection or my skirt or protruding like a giant colander where my chest should be. The only problem now is that my belly sticks out, so I’ll have to put on my Spanx – no biggie. That’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. So I bought a tank top and painted it bronze and peacock green.

Then I sadly cut the scales off my corset and spent a good chunk of the weekend sewing the scales onto this new garment. It looks great and it is not cumbersome to wear. Hoo-ray.

Posted in Burning Man, My Art/Design/Business, Nature | 2 Comments »

Random stuff n’ things.

Thursday, August 9th, 2012

1. I am so sick of sewing. I’ve been sewing this damned costume since November and I am totally running out of steam. I didn’t graduate with a degree in Costume Arts for a reason! Luckily, Burning Man is at the end of this month so that will be the end of that. I miss drawing stuff. I haven’t been able to draw anything since I started this project. It will be nice to get back to that. I want to make a portrait of a jumping spider and I have a co-worker with a cool last name that sounds like a dinosaur, so I want to make a drawing of her as a dinosaur. Being my friend has its benefits (like dinosaur drawings of yourself).

2. The security guard at my job told me that if you mix Cherry Pepsi with the new Marshmallow Smirnoff Vodka, it makes a drink that tastes exactly like birthday cake. If I drank soda or vodka, that would be useful to me, but I do not. However, that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t share that vital information with you. Also, the IT guy says if you put a small amount of good-quality balsamic vinegar into Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, it tastes delicious, but more importantly, the drink has a sassy name (The Hipster Douche). What I have learned from this: the people I work with drink weird things.

3. I’m watching the Olympics like a crazy person. Cricket finds it endlessly amusing that I, the least sports-oriented human being ever, am obsessed with an entirely sports-related thing, but I think I figured out why I like it so much. I like to watch people who are the best at something do that thing. Everyone there works very, very hard and is very, very good at this thing, and I like to see them do that thing even if that thing is, in my opinion, kind of stupid (“I’m going to jump over this stick better than anyone’s ever jumped over this stick before!”).

4. In a related Olympics note, did you know that the divers who are jumping from a great height hit the water with their hands flat against the water, as opposed to pointing them as you would expect? That’s so their hands punch a hole for their bodies to go through which minimizes splash. Huh. Good to know.

5. Movies I Have Seen Lately:

Black Swan. What the hell was that? No, seriously. That chick needed a sandwich and a anti-anxiety drug regimen STAT. Also, fun fact, almost that entire movie was filmed at my college, SUNY Purchase, in the theaters and the cement tunnels that connect them. When she’s in the dressing rooms and the utterly depressing cement tunnels? I lived in there like a star-nosed mole rat for four years. Four years, people! Two fun stories about my college-theater experience there. One winter day I went into the tunnels and before the sun had risen. I came out later after the sun had gone down. People talked about the day and I had no knowledge of this “day” everyone had spoken about. The tunnels are like a casino. There’s no windows. Time becomes a foreign concept. The other story is when we all went into the theater before the sun had risen and we came out around 2:00 in the afternoon when the sun was a-shinin’. We reacted like vampires (hissing, covering our faces) and someone said, “The gods are angry, they have set the moon on fire!” To this day, I use that phrase. Use it yourself, it’s very handy.

Cedar Rapids. I really liked this movie. It’s a small-budget film, and it has a sweet small-budget vibe. I did not care for The Hangover and I don’t watch The Office, so this was my first real exposure to Ed Helms and I loved him. He’s a great actor and apparently a great banjo player, so that’s nice.

Bridesmaids. I truly, truly hate bodily function jokes in movies, so that one scene was rough for me. A lot of pooping, a lot of barfing.  But other than that, I liked it a great deal. I have always loved Kristen Wiig, and not just because she has two “i”s in her name. She is a hoot. The airplane scene hit home for me. I have also taken medication to fly, and it has also worked out not-so-well for me. I wasn’t escorted off the plane in Wyoming or anything, but I probably made some enemies for life. It also looked like the actors were having a great time, which is always a pleasure to see.

Posted in Advertising, Burning Man, Movie and Book Reviews. Possibly With Spoilers., My Art/Design/Business, Tasty 'n' Delicious, The Telly | 2 Comments »

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