still here

Just hanging out with horses in the middle of nowhere

Ocular Fixation

My latest crafting endeavor was inspired by a post I saw on making eyes with glass pieces. Found here! I've been using eyes with the rings I make, but I purchased those separately as individual pieces. I honestly never thought to attempt making my own, but after reading through that post I figured it was worth a try. Only I had to use resin, because a glass piece would be too big for what I wanted them for: a bracelet!

This is what my little work space has looked like for the past couple weeks. There's always a period of trial and error when I try to recreate something I've made for myself, to sell to someone else. I had such great feedback with my bracelet I figured it wouldn't hurt to put a few up in my shop. This part is really frustrating, because for every couple pair of good eyes that I make, there's always a couple duds right behind them. It makes the process a lot longer than I would like it to be.

A good set of eyes!

...and the duds :/ I've retraced my steps while trying to recreate the first flawless set I made, but it seems that there's always a few from each batch that will get thrown out.

Some of these have too many random bubbles for my liking. I'll probably keep them and use them on a later project.

This is how they SHOULD look and WILL look when I add them to my shop.

Vassen Cocoro Gray

Quick shot of my new lenses! I love them a lot. The crystallized pattern reminds me of my other favorite lenses, the old Adult series from EOS, only these are three? four? tone and look a bit more natural which is always a plus in my book!

my love affair with circle lenses: photographic evidence of my dearly departed lenses

Very, very long wait for the continuation to my previous post on circle lenses. In September of 2010 I took the plunge and bought my first pair of circle lenses. There are soooooo many different varieties to choose from. You have different brands, different colors, different patterns, different diamaters...it can be very overwhelming. Lenses aren't going to look on the same everyone, especially since they're manufactured for consumers who have darker eyes. It's been a journey to see what looks best with my own eyes!

I should preface this entire post by giving you a disclaimer in the fact that I'm pretty boring when it comes to lenses. I don't like crazy and outrageous colors and patterns, and tend to favor lenses that will compliment my medium brown eyes. As I mentioned before, circle lenses are mostly worn in Asian countries. In my trials with these lenses, I've learned that many lenses look best on a dark eye. I've purchased lenses, thinking they would look so amazing, but it turned out that my brown eyes were too light to see some of the patterns! They just look bigger and muddy, but not as cool as I was hoping they'd be :(

For example, many lenses give me the appearance of having a peep hole in my eyes. Which I don't like. When your eyes are dilated in low light you don't notice it as much, but if you're inside with bright lights you can normally see parts of your iris (in my case the brown part) in the small pupil hole. The darker your eyes are, the less noticeable this is, but it's always been something that bothers me when I'm wearing lenses.

Here's my "peep hole" with a pair of Fresh Look color contacts. Regular color contacts usually look fine because they tend to have a translucent color towards the edge, so it's not so obvious. With that out of the way, it helps to better describe why I prefer one lens over another, though they might have the same color and similar patterns. I try to avoid that scary vacant stare at all costs.

Now on to the lenses! 

Swamp Queen Hair

Attaining green hair has always been a goal of mine, but for reasons I will not write here, I cannot have the hair of my dreams. Fortunately, I stumbled upon an assortment of make your own wig tutorials and came up with the next best thing. A WIG THAT RESEMBLES THE COLOR OF GREEN ALGAE! The kind you often see on the surface of a swamp land, or nasty pools that need to be hit with some chlorine.

My perfect shade!

My perfect shade in yarn!

I didn't have a pool of my own to reference when dyeing hair, but I did look to the image above. Most of the dyes I looked at were too bright for my liking, or they had too much blue making it more of a teal green, which I did not want. 

While I've had wonderful results with the Adore dye that I use on my own hair, in Violet Gem, their Forest green was still too light when I went searching for pictures on how it actually looks on hair, not just going by the hair swatch provided at the beauty store. So I settled for what I already had: Adore Blue Indigo and Adore Sunny Yellow, which I'd previously mixed for a nice soft shade of green to go with my blonde hair that I had last year.

Here's what came out of that combination:

Blue Indigo over a pack of yellow hair, and the Blue Indigo and Sunny Yellow over a pack of honey blonde hair. The yellow hair is the splotchier hair on the left. I didn't mind that it came out that way, because it will look nice when it's curled.

I ended up having to sew each weft to three different wig caps, because it was my first time trying to make a wig and the third time was a charm. The first two were on wig caps that were too small for me once all of the hair was sewn on :( But I finally got it right and this is how it turned out:

Not completely done, but you get the picture. Swamp Queen, here I come!

magical girl hair

Dyed some hair that will be added to a wig I'm creating. Originally inspired by some of the hydrangeas in my yard and read a wonder tutorial for shades of pastel hair over on Bobby Pin Blog. Threw in some teal that washed out to a beautiful sea foam green! I can't wait to see how it's going to come out!

My Inspiration:

and the wonderful, CREAMY MAMI!

Jeepers Creepers Ring

Have I posted this? CAUSE I MADE IT! 

After years of crafting I finally opened an Etsy account and started selling a few of my crafts. Mostly hairpins and fun little do dad rings like the one pictured above. My shop can be found here.