Orange Fire

I went back to the drawing board, trying to create a juicy summer orange, and had another fail. I do like this color better, but it screams “autumn” to me, which is what I was trying to avoid. Oh well, since there’s no seasons here, I’ll give myself a pass. It will be strange to wear the same clothes all year round and I’ll miss the changes of the seasons. That being said, if I have to live one season all year, summer is definitely my first choice!

I mixed up a franken from MAC Orange pigment (not terribly creative on the naming there, guys!) and China Glaze Luxe and Lush.

Matte pigments tend to be chalky, and they do not always play well with others. This was no exception. I recommend pigments with a little pearl or shimmer in them, since they mix more readily. Also, when the pigment got moistened, it looked exactly like blood. Eerily so…it brought back flashes of the Mangosteen Incident!

I like the color, just not for summer. The tone is too deep and it reminds me of long fall days and crispy nights. I will be headed to Tokyo for the 2012 International Nail Expo sometime in November, so I can get my fill of fall then. I’m also going to shop till I drop and maybe hit the hot springs up north. I do miss Japan a lot, though Singapore is lovely, it’s just…different.

I think I’m going to get off my orange kick and try some other colors. I don’t have my full stash of goodies here- it’s scattered between Japan, here, and the US. When I left Japan at the end of March, I literally had no idea where in the world I was relocating, so I sent most of my stash to the US to be safe.  So, that means I need to go on a local buying spree, right?

Orange Meh

I’m now healed up from my mangosteen injury so that polish remover in the cut won’t send me into a fit of howling pain. I don’t think it’ll leave a scar, but the mangosteen definitely won that round.

I’ve been on the lookout for a good summer orange- not a neon, but a bright, fresh iced-OJ-on-a-hot-day kind or orange. Something inviting and icy and juicy. (Guess who’s thirsty?)

Unfortunately, when I mixed Nubar Opulent Pearl and MAC Acid Orange pigment, I got a frosty orange fail. The Nubar has some flakies in it, which did not play well with the pigment.

Here’s what I got:

It’s not an awful color, just kind of washed out and not the icy orange I’d hoped for. It was also on the thick side since the flakies in the Nubar didn’t lay flat after they got mixed with the pigment.

So, I did what I always do with colors I don’t like: added stuff onto it!

I painted some orange and orange glitter stripes on the tips and added a 3-D orange and some painted leaves. The Color Club Art Club striping polishes are pretty nice, if you can find them. I got mine online. They have a thin brush for detail work that is one of the easier ones to use. Also vegan and cruelty-free!

I’ll be getting a lightbox soon for better photos. I do miss my good old kitchen light from my Tokyo apartment that worked really well for photos, unlike these kind of blurry shots here.

The quest for the perfect juicy summer orange continues!

Mangosteen’s Revenge

Mangosteens (not to be confused with mangoes) are a wonderfully tasty tropical fruit that also happen to be pretty darn cheap in Southeast Asia, so I got a big bag of them at the grocery store. Unfortunately, as I was slicing one open, the mangosteen pulled some kung-fu kind of maneuver and got out of the way of my knife and I cut myself instead.

Here’s the mangosteen in question:

I probably should have known better than to mess with a piece of fruit that looked like that. Alas, I have given myself a nice cut right skipping across my middle finger and all the way across the ring finger, right across the entire joint the joint so I can’t actually bend it.  I never appreciated my right ring fingertip. Now I do.  At least it’s not my painting hand!

Since I’m out of painting commission for a couple of days, I’ve been trying to get my hobby room together. Besides nails, I also like to paint and do beady-type wire stuff, so I’m going to try to store everything together. I’m going to get some wire shelves over the desk and hang baskets from them, I think. That should allow me to store a lot of little things and keep them organized. We’ll see how it develops from there!

Not exactly luxurious but it will be a fun place to hang out and do crafty type stuff. Luckily, I am comfortable in small places after my time in Japan.

Settling In

Well, I’m mostly moved in, though the bulk of my furniture has yet to be delivered,  one of the toilets has a mysterious leak, and I’m still painting at my dining room table. Luckily, there is a gorgeous pool here with lovely tropical landscaping here, which has relieved some of my crabbiness at the slow furniture delivery and plumbing goblins.

At least my Internet got installed without a hitch!

Here’s the future nail cave/glitter storage/hobby room:

It’s a bit bigger than a large closet, but I’d like to think of it as “cozy.” The somewhat sad thing is, this is the maid’s room. Maids actually live in these. When the real estate agent told me that was the purpose, I felt really depressed. It’s separated from the living space, behind the kitchen and laundry room. It does have its own bathroom at least.  I can fit myself, a desk, and some storage shelves. If it’s photo-worthy when I’m done, then I’ll post After pictures to go with the Before shot.

I’ve never worked in a space quite this small, but after living in Japan for as long as I did, I’m pretty sure I don’t have claustrophobia. I guess I’ll find out!

Woo hoo! Moving Day!

Yay! Today I’m moving out of this crummy hotel and into my new place. I can finally spread out my nail polishes and sparkles and goodies after a very long time out of living out of my suitcase!

I hope to be back up and running normally. The new place has seems to have nice natural light, so I’m looking forward to making and photographing a lot of looks I’ve had rattling around in my mind for the last few weeks.

I’m so happy to move that I don’t even mind that Mr. NTMG stuck me with moving 4 suitcases, 2 giant backpacks and a huge duffle bag. Hmmm…sometimes it really is easier to go to work, isn’t it?

Snow White Evil Queen Nail Art

I did this Snow White themed nail art for Temptalia’s nail art contest. I am sitting in a tiny hotel room, which is not exactly great for painting, but since the theme was Disney villains, it was too fun to pass up!

The nails show the poison apple and the transformation of the Evil Queen into an old hag. As a kid, I was pretty transfixed by the part of the story where she mixed up her magic spell to turn herself into an ugly old hag. That and the apple were the two big standouts for me. Heck, I didn’t even remember what happened to Snow White, who, quite frankly, was kind of a simp. “Magic wishing apple?” ::flutters eyelashes::

The thumb is a rhinestone poison apple, complete with glitter.

Besides for some good ol’ villainous nail art, I’ve been apartment hunting. It is not going particularly well, but I’ll move almost anywhere to get out of my current ho-tel. The first couple places we saw looked like morgues, complete with tile floors and walls and the crud of the ages. There were claw marks in the tile. How the heck does wall tile get really deep black scratches on it? Mysterious.

A Few New Layout Changes

Since I can’t really paint much in this tiny hotel room, I’ve decided to do some admin-type stuff with the blog, sort out some photos after the Great Hard Drive Crash of ’12, and lay some framework for an NTMG website. That’s a rather ambitious project, but I now own the domain name after waiting for it for several years.

I’ve cleaned up some dead links, refined some categories, and added some updated information about cruelty-free products on a new page so it’s more easily accessible.

Any other suggestions or things you want to see? Let me know in the comments!