Día de la calavera de azúcar muertos uñas. (or... Day of the Dead sugar skull nails.)

My apologies to the entire Spanish speaking population of the world. I used babblefish to translate. I've always had a secret desire to speak Spanish. I love the sound of the words. One day (when I win the lotto) I'm gonna hire America Garcia to teach me everything she knows, and I'm pretty sure I'd get more out of it if I could understand what she was saying. Right now all I can understand is angry spanish. I used to have the sweetest neighbors who would argue in Spanish. They would always translate for me as the went so as not to be rude.
I miss those guys

Still working away. But I did once again manage to find time to do my nails.
:D

These ones are pink and turquoise Martha Stewart glitter mixed into the clear acrylic powder with my own Day of the Dead sugar skulls made from FIMO polymer clay.

I really like this cane and want to do it using different colours.
I added some orange nail polish dots to the smile line then clear coated the works. I'll see if I can find time to do some traditional flowers on there too using the acrylic powder mixed with eyeshadow colours.

Commissions

I've been a busy bee. Unfortunately, I can't post about it just yet. I've been working on some commissions and don't want to spoil the surprise by telling you the details until the works are published. Just wanted to let you know I'll be back in a couple of days with some tutorials and a whole lot of enthusiasm.

In the meantime.....

I found a few spare seconds to make my toes match my fingers.

:D

White French Roses

I am beginning to think that I am the only one who likes the Stiletto nail. I made these simple white french manicure nails and added roses. Just wanted to see if people liked the flat boxy nails better than the sharp pointy ones. Let me know what you think?

Nail Roses......... Improvements?

I'm getting faster at these finicky roses. The more I do the easier they become. I sculpted these out of acrylic liquid and powder onto a practice nail wrapped in tape. I let 'em set up on the practice nail then glued them onto my nails. Makes it much easier to deal with the whole wrong hand issue. It's easy to do them using your dominant hand but the no dominant hand is an issue.
I made my pinkie, pink sparkles and a non stiletto just to change things up a bit.

I used a ball of white powder dipped in pink to make the petals, and a ball pf white powder dipped in green for the leaves.

I'm BEDAZZLED!!!!

Ok..... I know..... Too much bling! But I couldn't help it. Maggie was there eggin me on.

The camera is back!
I have to play with it a bit the blurriness is my fault, not the camera. Working on it.

Despite the excessive cheesiness of these nails, I really like them. Like little disco balls on my fingertips. We'll see how long they last at the day job. I give em about three hours before all the stones are off.

They are the same sparkle tips as last time. I just did a fill with the pink mix I made, removed the lemon slices and added little white flower stickers........ oh and a ton of rhinestones.

Maggs has been trying her steady artistic hand at nail art also. Here are her bedazzled nails. She still chews, but not as often because of the polish.

Her toes match her nails. So cute!


Here are my toes right now. I did them about two weeks ago. The baby toes are acrylic, I don't have toenails there so much as nubbins. The polish is pink insta dry and a white striper polish for the dots and smile lines. The bows are white acrylic with rhinestones embedded in the middle. Yeay, summer toes!
:D

Pavlova Birthday Cake!

We made Pavlova for my youngest daughter's sweet 16th birthday party.
Here are the meringue rounds baking. 250 degrees for an hour and a half, then another half hour in the oven with the heat turned off till they cool.

We piled whipped cream and devon custard and fruit all over it in layers, then lit the candles.

Pretty pleased with the way it turned out. Not as difficult as I thought it was going to be.

We let her cut the cake. No one else wanted to wreck it. It was so pretty. Tasted like it looked. Delicious!
HAPPY 16th BIRTHDAY MAGGS!!!
Love you!
:)

Ice Cream Nails

Wasn't feeling so hot today. Decided to change my nails. Maggs thought she'd help. She did the stripes on the cones and some of the ice cream. She also decided that they all needed rhinestone cherries on top. I love it when she helps me with my nail art.

Still no word on the camera repair. I can't wait to get it back, there is so much to show you. I scanned these.

Trying Extra Hard to Be a Quitter

Day 5 of way less smoking than normal..... hallucinations and mild euphoria have set in. Tears of joy caused by finding strange salt and pepper shakers shaped like cabbage headed aliens. Purchased alien spice dispensers....... they told me I had to take them to my leader.

How cool are these? I love them Way too much! They totally need names.

Made some lemonade nails. Used the lemon canes I made early in the blog. Also mixed my own pink using eyeshadow to tint the acrylic for the nail bed. For the tip I used Staedtler sparkles in white aurora with large hex flakes from Sally's. Made these ones extra sharp too.

Delicious Meatloaf, Bacon, Cheese Monster!

This is the most delicious meatloaf ever!
We've only ever made the one. We made it a while back and documented it because it was ridiculous! We promised ourselves we would only make it once a year.
Here's how we did it.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

First you need to purchase 2, 2 pound packages of ground beef meduim, not lean.
One large brick of cheddar cheese. I think it's the one pound block.
One pound of extra thick cut bacon. (We used the President's Choice thick cut bacon)
Make meatloaf mixture as per usual. We added onions, eggs, breadcrumbs, Maggie sauce, garlic and seasonings.

Wrap the meatloaf mixture around the cheese block. Don't cut the cheese (giggle) or make it smaller, just wrap that seasoned and mixed up ground beef around the cheese log.
Then you wanna make a lattice work of bacon that goes all over the loaf of delicious meat.
We put the whole thing right onto some parchment paper on a baking sheet. Makes less of a mess.

This is the loaf after about 20 minutes of cooking. It was driving us crazy! We could smell it all over the house.

This is after 45 minutes. We had to check the middle to see if it was done. (Don't own a meat thermometer)
We cut right on through there........
AND A RIVER OF CHEESE CAME OUT!

Looking right down into the depths of the cheesy bacon meaty goodness.
Hypnotizing isn't it?

On the plate it looks a bit less greasy. I think it's because we added some cute little carrot balls to the side. The mashed potatoes sucked up some of the residual grease.

Maggs wasn't sure at first. But eventually decided it was pretty good meatloaf.

I managed to tuck into quite a respectably sized piece. Finished it all too.

Mr. Jimmy enjoying his once a year treat.

We all napped after the dishes were done.

BRAINZ!!!! Brain Prosthetic Appliance.

This was Mr. Jimmy's costume last year. We were going for a retro style comic book Brainiac and I think we got it!

We made a cast of his head so the prosthetic would fit him exactly.
He just got off a long shift at work and is almost asleep here. We do most of our plaster work in the garage / cottage / studio so the mess can be contained.

Three layers of plaster bandage and twenty minutes is all it takes. If you have hair it gets more complicated. You have to wrap your head in a scull cap or use seran wrap to cover your hair first. Mr. Jimmy is shaved clean so it wasn't a problem to slather plaster on his head. I gave him an old towel so any excess water and plaster goo wouldn't go down his shirt.

This is the original sculpt of the brain. We tried to make a two part mold of this and it got stuck. We ended up ruining this sculpt and not being able to do the two part mold for this project.

Here it is from another angle so you can get the idea of what we did. I think there was too much suction because of the fabulously round ball shapedness of his head. It ended up turning out better because we didn't use this sculpt. I like the end result much better than this idea.

The finished prosthetic. We ended up coiling plasticine into worm shapes and laying them on his head positive. We put a thick band of plasticine around the bottom of the brain so it would look like it was holding the skin up.

Instead of making a mold for the prosthetic, we simply just painted layers of latex and toilet paper onto the sculpt. there were about twenty layers in all. we kept the layers thin so they would dry completely.

We painted the brain and band with acrylic paint mixed with Golden acrylic medium for fabric to keep it from cracking. Lots of dry brushing and a coat of gloss on top to make it look gooey.

Finally we went to The Source and with the help of our trusty computer friend Bill (Hi Bill!) we got the stuff we needed to wire some lights into the brain. You can see the batteries bulging in behind the gold band on the finished piece.

I sprayed poor Mr. Jimmy in the face with some dollar store green hairspray. It's PERFECT! However in retrospect. I should have given him more breaks and time to breath. He got a bit woozie. Probably not the best idea to spray people in the face with aerosol products.

He's afraid to move here. Dizzy as all get out. Poor guy. But doesn't he look the most perfect shade of green?

I had just gotten a hair cut (Thanks Claude!) and we saved some of the hair to use for Mr. Jimmy's evil Genius beard. I glued it on with spirit gum. Had to be careful not to smudge off the glorious coat of green from his chin. It was tricky business.

You can see the wet spirit gum here. It dries pretty clear but remains shiny. I also had to add one more strand of hair to the center of the beard. He's looking pretty maniacal already.

Here he is in all his nerdy comic book glory. One of our best efforts I think.

We made the purple lab coat from scratch. We couldn't find a pattern so we had to alter a priests habit pattern. It was pretty tricky. The gloves we spray painted black. We couldn't find any black rubber gloves at the hardware store and left it till the last minute. He wore big black rubber boots also. Can't wait to start working on this years costumes.
:D
Here we are totally enjoying ourselves at The Pete and CJ Halloween Bash! I was Harley Quin Bought the costume from E Bay and had to totally alter it. Stretch velveteen onsies never fit right.
Happy Villains! Love the Holidays.