Heart of the ocean...?

I'm all bizarrely into this one shade of blue-green lately... it's hard to name in particular, word-wise. (Is it... dark... teal...?) Also Pantone-wise, I can't officially place it, because monitors all look different. I can't really link that with confidence that it's the color my eye really wants to see... but you get it the gist, right? It's a shade of blue tinged with green, but not so much you'd see it and think, "That's green!"

And it's hard to find out in the world, in terms of clothes or -- as pictured -- nail polish. It's really easy for the color to be a touch too green and wind up looking like some cheap dark green vinyl restaurant tabletop, as that Nuance polish is. (I'll still use it -- dark nail polish suits me best.) I think I'm going to try mixing in that blue Orly shade (I've had it for years and it's one of my favorites!!), but the Wet n Wild one, I thought maybe ombre nails or something...!

The other week I scoured the fabric racks at the craft store for a shade that was right, but they were all too green or just plain ol' blue. So I went to the embroidery floss. I picked out some, but then just got carried away and picked out more and more because I got inspired to do some embroidery! Hopefully that'll be my next project. This kind of color doesn't go in my room at all, but I gotta follow my bliss.

Don't mind Fey. She's part of the blue-green obsession currently. Another thing I can't get enough of right now is this OGX argan oil conditioner. (Oh, excuse me, "hair butter.") I use the other deep conditioner, too, because my poor bleached hair really needs the extra help now and again. Leave-in conditioner is a completely new experience for me...

Basically, these pictures are representing the mental color shrine I'm slowly building. Maybe I'll even clear off one of my shelves and create a tableau. I've done it before.

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Just so typically me.

I made this little pink deer hat for a trade -- white/frost hats aside, I usually make these hats in variegated yarn, I think it looks better that way. But! I love pink, so I like how this looks. Not so much in pictures, but in person it looks soooo bubblegummy and nice. I'm making myself one out of the rest of the skein and I think I'm gonna froof it up ridiculously. Beading? Applique? Yes?!?!

Today I painted an embroidery hoop for that Lemongrab piece I did. I painted it gold, since the fabric has those gold triangles on it. This scrap of cardboard has been my palette for projects the past few years... I think you can tell that I like to paint things pink and gold.

Yep. "It me." I'm not saying that if I could start with a completely empty room like in The Sims and decorate it to my whims that it would look like that palette, but... it probably would. I'll let you know when I find a place for that Lemongrab piece. There's too much stuff on my walls already.

Here's one of the garlands (yes, plural) I made the other week hanging over my mirror -- this one doesn't have green, just pink, white, pink/white, and neutral goldish/white. It's highly unnecessary. Like, my room just plain does not need this.

(But doesn't my Enid Collins mouse box bag just ~go~ in my space? It's crazy. Also, those leis are left over from my birthday... not sure what to do with 'em. But they're not usually there. The bunny ears, however... yes. Always there.)

Oh, to close out this entry, I wanted to post about Mallow's dress. I never mentioned this dress in a haul or anything, but I snagged a House of Pinku dress last year (LAST YEAR!!!) and Mallow has been wearing it ever since. It's got this sweet heart beading on the bodice! It's presh to death. House of Pinku makes dresses I adore, but I never seem to catch them, and they are technically beyond my Blythe budget. I'm very good at sticking to that budget and am rarely tempted by things that bust it, but I don't mind going over it every now and again if it's for something I really love like this dress.

Underneath it is a MINI JIJO tutu skirt thing, and of course, Mallow was my helper model for the pink hat. With all this pink on, she looks like a blonde.

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e.c. mini (my bag, baby)

Happy Friday the 13th! I'm getting good vibes off this day.

Last weekend was the ol' b-day, and I don't mind telling you it was a prosperous one. I got hella gifted! It was a pleasant surprise. I kind of dread birthdays, for every conceivable reason. I'm getting older? I have to socialize?? I have to think about my life whilst feeling it run out like so much sand in the hour glass and reminisce and wind up feeling existentially horrible?

I am not a hugely material person (although I know my propensity for going "yay!" here and taking pictures of things I've recently gotten doesn't make it seem such; I appreciate stuff, of course. I am a Taurus) but get truly touched at the notion of anyone thinking of me in particular. Being known as a person is just nice, and I got a few gifts this year that made me go, "Wow, this person really knows me and my whole steeze." My best friend K sent me a package with lots of stuff in it, but I wanted to take pictures of this item in particular just because it's so stinking cute??

It is a wooden box bag from the 60s, made by Enid Collins, and it has a pink mouse (!!) on it! In person it looks extremely good, too -- the eye doesn't catch the imperfections that the camera lens does. It is so buttery in person. I love vintage as much as the next Beatrix, but it also it tends not to suit my personal style, but this is PERFECTION!

K and her mom both collect these box bags, which can be carried as a purse or just displayed. She called it "mid-century Etsy" in style, and she's delightfully right. But more than that, UUGHHH!! She said that she thought of me when she saw this design and hunted one down for me, and it really is perfect. It totally just goes with me.

I can probably fit my phone, a pack of gum, a tube of lip balm, and a small card-holder situation in here if I want to really carry it. It has this gigantic mirror in the lid!

Right now it's just on display hanging from the toadstool hook by my mirror. Looks so cute!!

(Oh, and for posterity, I found a couple of "this looks like it belongs in my room" tissue paper sets in the dollar section of Target and have been making these little tassel garlands out of them. My room absolutely doesn't need this going on, in retrospect.)

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"You made me!"

As I mentioned, I've been keen to embroider, although I've been waiting on some fabric from my sister to really let it rip. But I wanted to do something in the meantime.

It's sort of a given these days to do pop culture embroidery -- it makes what most people think of as an old-fashioned granny thing relevant and hip. So many 30 Rock and Arrested Development quotes on hoops out there. Not that there's anything wrong with that! I'm guilty of worse. Also, I like embroidering text. There's something satisfying about it. But I didn't really want to do something that was pithy that I wouldn't actually want to display somewhere after making it.

I decided to do this go-to phrase from Adventure Time. Adventure Time in general is a go-to for me and this isn't even the first creative project I've done this year with AT characters. I actually quite feel like the Earl of Lemongrab on a deep level. He struggles to relate and to know his purpose, and so do I. He's high-strung, ridiculous, and annoying, and so am I.

I didn't really plan out anything, as I just did the first thing that came to mind, but applique became part of the process almost immediately. I used to do tons of applique with felt, and now I rarely do (the last time was when I was stitching felt lollipops onto tulle for my Princess Lolly Halloween costume), but I knew I could do a better job actually constructing Lemongrab out of felt than I could embroidering him. So he's both embroidered and appliqued, with the exception of his nose, which is just glued on.

I just kicked back and worked on it while listening to Daft Punk, going from start to finish in a few hours.

But look, a little rainbow fell across him as I was taking pictures. Acceptable!!

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