slr2moons

Better late than never! Here is my latest natural nail mani, from early December '20. I used the jelly sandwich method to give depth to the lower snowflakes. With this method, you paint over the art you want to appear less clearly using a transparent polish--known as a jelly polish. Then you paint the next layer of art on top of the dried jelly layer. Continue until you're satisfied!

Polish used, right hand: base is Sally Hansen gel polish "wine not", jelly polish is Essie "Knotty or Nice", white base and art is OPI polish "Alpine Snow", green art: see left hand.
Polish used, left hand: base is OPI polish "AmazON, AmazOFF", jelly polish is Pacifica "Mermaid", white art and red art is same as right hand.

( Nail art below cut! )

As the subject says, I survived.

I've been sleeping a great deal this weekend, no doubt to make up for the continuous stress I've been under for the month before the trip, and the work-week immediately after, when I had three deadlines due on the 26th. Speaking of, Seraph vol 4 is completely finished, Skip vol 34's first draft is done, and so is the first volume of Requiem.

( Lots of words and some pics! below the cut )

Today started off pretty good. I took the day off running, since on Monday I increased the intensity (up to 2.5 minutes running to 1 of walking for the first half, then 2 minutes run to 1 walk for the 2nd, from 2 min run/1 walk for the entire 50 min) and I could feel it. I decided to do a little housework. Vacuumed, disassembled my bed, laundry, reassembled bed with more blankets--including the electric one, since last night I didn't sleep well because I couldn't stay warm. Cats make intermittent bed warmers. :P

Then I cooked breakfast while I finished reading the wonderful manga House of Five Leaves, by Natsume Ono. Guys, I was bawling at the end. It's that good. I'm going to make a list of my personal manga top ten best, and House5 is definitely going to be included. I even sent Clay Editor 2 a gushy fan letter, thanking her for her role in bringing the title to Viz, because I probably never would have read it if she hadn't needed me to pinch-hit those early two chapters. I'm so glad I could contribute to this wonderful manga! T.T I will try to make a dedicated post about it, and why I love it so much.

It's also on my wishlist of Yuletide fics, and I'm offering to write it for someone else. So far, I'm the only House5 requester, but someone else is willing to write it, too! *has sparkly eyes*

I'm now painting the South Park bros pic. Had several false starts with the background, but I think I got it. Started on the boys' skin tone, and Photoshop decided to be difficult. The brushes palette has always been buggy for me, and somehow my newly made brush ended up painting with both foreground and background colors together. I finally fixed it. I think. Ugh. Things were just not going well, so I threw in the towel and decided to relax for a couple hours before bed.

Tomorrow will be my second anime night with saladbats and winnett at winnett's place. The first one was fun, and definitely worth the hour and forty-five minutes I was stuck in rush-hour traffic to get there. *facepalm* I'm leaving later tomorrow, at the tail end of rush hour. Hopefully it won't take more than an hour this time. Winnett lives across the river in Washington, so public transportation isn't an efficient option.

Oh yeah, I went to a YA panel on Sunday, with my fave YA author Sarah Rees Brennan in attendance. It was fun, Sarah was awesome, and she gave me a hug and let me have my picture taken with her!! (I look so short!) I gotta post that so you guys can see. :D

I just finished the first pass of Clay 22, right on time. ^^ I also did a little experiment with the pdf. Those of you who have no interest in lettering or publishing can skip this part. Here, I'll put it behind a cut. ( PDF crunchings! A comparison by s2m )

In other work news, for Skip fans who have hard-copy vol 29, you might have noticed the white margin around almost all the pages. This is because the page files we were sent from Japan were actually cropped across the width smaller than normal. To preserve as much artwork as possible, the pages were set up by Viz for printing without full bleeds. Thus, the white margins almost everywhere. I'm glad Viz was willing to show the white around the margins, so readers can see all the available art! And thankfully, Skip 30's pages were sent at a nice, fat size. In fact, the largest of the three sizes Skip has come in so far. C: Yay!

Now that work is done until Natsume 14 or a new title arrives, it's back to artwork for me! I'm still working on the bday present for Star-chan, but she kindly said she doesn't mind if I put her pic on pause so I can finish the bros calendar pic for this year. The official deadline is the 15th, in four days. All I have is a rough sketch. *has huuuuuge sweatdrop* I know, I know!! >< Thankfully ensuing knows I'll probably be a little late. I'm going to work on the pic full-time until it's done.

I've waited too long to make an LJ post. I keep thinking of all sorts of topics to babble about, but I don't want to post a novel here. :B I'll save them for the next few days!! I'd like to post more often again.

Time for me to upload those pdfs to Clay Editor 4 and then fire up the bros calendar pic again. Busy busy busy!!

My current daily To-Do List:

1. letter Clay 22
2. write on my Skip Beat! fandom summary for crack_van. It's my turn to rec fics in the anime category next month. Character descriptions and arc summaries from all 30 volumes so far. Oh my...
3. birthday present for my BFF, stariceling
4. pic for the 3rd bromance calendar orchestrated by ensuing. This year, I'm doing the four boys from South Park. Can we say DA and Tumblr bait?? :3 *is shameless*
5. exercise
6. convert 3 of my recs to spreadsheet format
7. beta current WIP chapter for the aforementioned BFF
8. read at least two chapters for my Toriko catchup. Alllmost ready for Shonen Jump Alpha!

That's some list, huh? ^^; But I DID finish my Het Big Bang' 12 pic on time! I forgot that the premiere date for the BB wasn't Sunday, like I mentioned in my previous post. Sorry guys! You can see it (and why I was ranting about masonry...) on the first. :B

A bunch of blondes with swords are eyeing my expectantly from Shetan's monitors. I'd best get to work, huh?

Artist's claiming on my first of two Big Bangs this year happens on the 20th. A mandatory author's check-in poll is happening right now, and I'm stalking it for possible stories to claim. Making a list and everything!

( I know there are a lot of writers on my flist. You might be curious to see how an artist approaches a BB! )

Yes, I am taking this very seriously. Fanart is great for traffic, you know! My Journey Big Bang pic from last year, the Sleeping Beauty/Last Unicorn crossover, is my most popular pic on DA. Heh. Gotta find another good one for my Big Bang #3!

asdfghjkl; *points to subject*

Candi, a cute webcomic about life in college. My guest comic is SFW, the rest of the comic occasionally not so much.

It was fun making faces in my desktop mirror and drawing them, but the best part was the "old art". I made a few deliberate mistakes, extra anime-fanart-ed the eyes, and didn't clean up my rough sketch too much. :D All together, I spent about 10 hours on it from first sketch to final tweaks.

YOU GAIZ, the comic has been up for only about an hour, and I already have one new follower on Tumblr, a new watch on DA, and 50 hits on my DA!!! Everyone's looking at me OMG!

I know, I know, that kinda was the point, but still. I need time to get used to the idea! *entertains a daydream where some very well-known webcomickers ask her to draw them guest comics, too*

Heeeee. :3

I've been quite sociable the past two weeks! (Shocking, right?) Saturday the 19th I helped knastymike with the heavy lifting part of his move into a new apartment. It wasn't that bad...except the leather recliner. That thing was SO HEAVY OMG. >< I was sore for two days! Small price to pay for good company, though. And Mike boughtinkytwist (who tackled packing and unpacking the kitchen...YEEK!) and me food at Old Chicago Pizza (OM NOM NOM), and frozen yogurt after we saw the Avengers.

Speaking of which, fun film! Even with me not knowing much Avengers canon at all. :B I do know enough to want a Loki movie, where he can be badass and awesome and crack that smile and wear more tuxedos. :3

The next day, I drove down to Salem to meet up with one of my Sci-Fi book club buds, Acacia, and we went to see Battleship. It was fun! I liked it more than Avengers, too. *dodges tomatoes* It's true! Even if they killed off the actor we went to see the film for. :P~~~ At least he took his shirt off at one point. ^///^ And yes, he also appeared on-screen in uniform, which is what we bought our tickets for in the first place. This was Alexander Skaarsgard, BTW. Best-known as Eric Northman, sexy Viking vampire in True Blood. Rowr! We ate at an El Salvadorian place. It was very tasty. :9

After that, I scrambled like mad to finish Naruto 59 and Skip 29 on time, which I did manage. ^^ Skip is now completely in the can, still awaiting corrections on Naruto. Clay 21 is almost done, I'm waiting for either more corrections or the go-ahead to upload. Now I'm powering along with Natsume 13! And this volume is making my BL-loving heart just pitter-pat. *giggles like she's 14*

Then this weekend, I lost my beloved pocketknife on Friday morning, during my usual run. I didn't notice it was gone until I was emptying my pockets after finishing, and the knife wasn't there. I immediately retraced my entire 3.5 mile loop, and no knife. T.T As much foot traffic as this area has, it could have been on the ground as short as 20 seconds before someone scooped it up.

I've had that knife since 1998, when my Dad gave it to me before I headed off to art school. *cries* I keep telling myself it's just an object, and if someone decides to commit murder with it, that they'll wipe my fingerprints off it, too. >< My mom says Dad will have fun shopping for a replacement for me. This gives me something to anticipate, at least. I feel naked when I go outside without my knife. I alllways carried that knife with me everywhere. *sniffle*

On Friday evening, knastymike and inkytwist sent me an impromptu invite to Mongolian grill, after they finished cleaning up knastymike's old apartment. I'd just eaten dinner, so I had ice cream while they had real food. Good company and conversation!

And on Monday, it was saladbats' birthday! I headed out to a Doctor Who-themed room inside a fish-and-chips place in the NE of Portland. Only took me 15 minutes to drive! I could have ridden the Max, but by the time I realized how simple it would have been, it was already too late to make it that way. :P No matter, driving was fun! I made a new friend,winnett, sawsnottygirl again, and hope to hang out with all of them more, soon! We are all writers or appreciators of same, and the whole lot of us are complete geeks. FUN! XD Even if all the Doctor Who themed stuff was wasted on me. *makes flyby noise*

Oho, and I ordered a Scottish soda. "Irn Bru". Tastes like bubblegum. I liked it, though I couldn't drink it every day. Far too sweet!

One of the webcomics I enjoy every week, Candi, is asking for guest strips. I'm going for it! OMG SO EXCITING!! XD I'm going to try to finish it before the 1st. KYAAA!! It will be my first guest webcomic strip, the first of many I hope! :D

And finally, I have a dreamwidth account. Not sure how much I'll use it, but it's there if I need it! I'm slr2moons there too, of course. ^^ 

Stumptown 2012 was as fun and amazing as 2011 was not. Last year I was so stressed and drowning with work that I only had time to join Shoujo Editor 2 for dinner both nights, and a little hanging out with my Portland friends. But this year, I scheduled the 3 days off months in advance, and it was worth it. :D

( More on Stumptown! )

One of my favorite aspects of this weekend was on Sunday afternoon while waiting to head out for food-cart dinner. I was able to chat with J and watch her do a little work in digital painting. She has some amazing Photoshop brushes I'd never seen before! I had no idea Photoshop brushes could do all that stuff! *has been edumacated* She kindly sent me the whole batch, and now I have 100+ megs of new brushes and NO CLUE how to use them. Whee!! XD I need to turn my hand to more color work, and thus begin learning how best to apply these fancy thingamabobs to maybe turn out some shiny pics.

To that end, I've signed up once again for the het_bigbang, for fanart brings in page views! The hot fandom this year seem to be Game of Thrones. Hmmmm.

To finish this post with random fun, I updated my beloved ficrecs site today, and added Google Analytics to it. For I have always been obsessive about my hits. More information on them will be so fascinating!!!

...

(F5 F5 F5 F5 F5...)

OMG you guys! I just made my first candle! XD

I'm a candle burner. If you give me a candle, I WILL light that baby on fire. I don't care how pretty it is, it's gonna burn. I've been saving the wax from my victims for quite some time, with the thought of using it to make my own candles. And this morning, I did!

( All the glorious details and future plans! )

So hey! If any of you have old candles or leftover wax laying around, don't throw it away! Give it to me, and I'll put it to good use. ^^ I can give you a candle made out of it too, if you want. :D