Butterfly Daydreams!

I have a mani with tattoos again.....I am loving this look!

2 coats of a Believe Beauty Purply-Pink....I can't remember the color (long week, sorry!)

I had a bit of bubbling with this-you might be able to see it in this picture-

I had forgotten to take a picture and you can see I had already put a layering polish over my pinkie-woops!

Above, my new polish called What Halo?! In the light box, you can see all the golden shimmer.
Below-under just an Ott light, it looks a bit different.

Butterfly tattoos! They were in the center of the tattoo sheet-otherwise my fingers would have been all a flutter with butterflies!

Below, my right hand-not too bad considering I am right handed, and taking a picture with my left hand is a bugger, lol! Any lefties out there notice all the darn cameras are made for righties?!

This was a really lovely mani that I was sad to remove....so sparkly and cheerful!

Take care and here are two parting picture for kicks and giggles...

This is  my Nova...she brought her ball in on my bed and was determined it wouldn't sneak away on her again! ( I hate this blanket but it was cheap and I needed one!)

Who else has a black pet that is nearly impossible to photograph? GAH!

 

Below, little miss Dove (who is tremendously skittish) found NIRVANA. She made her own bed in my box of hand-carded alpaca fleece, and I didn't have the heart to make her leave it.

 

Take care, all!

 

Spoiled Designated Driver + Flakies!

No, I don't think I am crazy but if you have seen this color in the bottle...you might be giving this post the hairy eyeball...

I walked past the Spoiled display after Christmas and said, "meh" but then I thought I would step out of my comfort zone and get something totally different....check 'er out!

This is like the weirdest/coolest color to me, lol. I couldn't figure it out until I had it on for a few days...it looks like cooked squash! LOL, Now you can call me loony!

Look familiar?! ROFL! I fell in love with this color when I was learning how to spin (make yarn from wool). Same darn color. I just about snorted, I laughed so hard when I realized. You know you have a problem when you are seeing a potential franken in beautiful yarns or thinking of how to make a cool yarn that looks like your favorite polish...GAH, I am a nut!

Above, with 2 coats of FP Asylum.....too FEW flakies for the look I envisioned....

Ah, there we go. I added a nice coat of Golden Rose Scale Effect! I wanted the purplish flakes to jump out more. I Adored how this looked, weird as it might seem. It made me happy. Ah, so distracting driving in the sunlight...

Haunted House Mani (pic heavy)

This has got to be the most Kick-butt mani I have ever done! I have also tagged on some other pics at the end for fun.

On to the nails!! I used 2 coats of a Finger Paints orange frost that has a cool greenish duochrome. I haven't worn it in years, because I have only recently discovered what huge fun nail art can be :0)

After the FP layers, I sponged on Quirius Eggplant from this mani. Then for kicks and giggles, a little China Glaze Frostbite on the tips. After that, I was inspired to slap on a layer of Pure Ice Heart Breaker so it looked like this:

Freaking awesome at this point, in my opinion...almost left it that way!!
BUT.....I had this great idea to use bits and parts of the new Bundlemonster plates. I used the church/house, and parts of the pumpkin/vines and tiny little bats, lol! I used Wet N Wild Black to stamp...
I had to pull out my DSLR to take the next pictures, because the haunted house is hard to see....

I TOTALLY love how this turned out...my thumb and my middle finger have the same designs on both hands---so awesome. I can see this will be very distracting until I am forced to take it off, lol!!

So on to some other pics I wanted to share. I am a really crafty person and I wanted to make a special pincushion out of wool for a family member that is a quilter/sewer/gardener. This is it....so cool I am selling some of them, too!

Also, I was able to go out exploring on some 4-wheelers with my husband on Monday afternoon and talked him into taking a picture of me  It was a fun afternoon, but too short. I love Autumn, but I am still not ready for winter here in the mountains, hehehehe.....

Silver & Purple butterflies! (and other silliness)

The mani I am wearing at the moment turned out awesome! I was in the mood for some more SH Blue Me Away...but my order from Amazon came in- 3 SH Chrome nail polishes! I ordered more, since they are so awesome for stamping and I love metallics.
So "new toy playtime"  won out over the pretty blue *sigh* maybe later this week...

I started with Revlon Silver Dollar, one coat over a base coat...

I figured I could get away with one coat, since I was doing a full nail stamp after.

This is one of the new BundleMonster plates...can't remember the number. I used Sally Hansen Purple Diamond Chrome, and like the last SH Chrome...awesome for stamping...downright frigging awesome!

I thought I would toss this in for JQ from Fripperydigits, who is a weaver. She was actually the inspiration for this mani too, LOL! I had the opportunity to get some wool fleece (plural?!) for just the cost of shearing. Since I am a spinner and can blow $30 pretty fast on a small bag of lovely wool and alpaca fibers, I Jumped at this opportunity. I got the total fleeces from 4 sheep for cheap. Below is the best of the batch, uncleaned but lovely to my eye!

I can't wait to get this washed and carded and start making yarn out of it. This fleece was SO soft, even in this state (off the sheep less than 48 hours). You can dye wool and people hair with Kool-Aid drink mixes and it's pretty darn fun, actually! Have a great day and please leave a comment if you visit!

Twisted Pink with flowers and other craziness

This mani is actually from last Monday (6/20) and I got sick with the flu during the night...so that explains, what for me...is unusual. I put this great and wild pink on and didn't do anything else with it!
The color is called Twisted Pink From Sally Hansen and these Xtreme Wear polishes continue to surprise and impress me.

This is the color and if you click on the pic, you might be able to see these subtle pinkish-gold shimmers. They are really amazing, imo. Sneaky little shimmers come out when you least expect it!

So I put 2 coats on Monday night and felt not so hot....duh-FLU!?... and left it at that.

Wednesday night, I felt much better and put one more coat on and dressed it up a wee bit with some flowers and some glitter.

 Three coats took care of the VNL and made the shimmer MORE visible! Yay!...I love polishes like this. I know I have said before I am not a pink girl...but you would not believe the compliments I received on this mani! I might have to become a bit of a pink girl...maybe....

The impressive part about this was that this mani stayed good, and I mean GOOD until the following Monday night. And not over a wimpy weekend, either. I was putting beehives together,

and welcoming 2 new "family" members in the form of baby Alpacas named Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn (Google "Mark Twain"  if these names don't ring a bell-not his best book, but an American classic).

OMG!...these little guys are cute in an ugly/weird way...and my fave, Huck, is a drooler and a whiner LOL! My mother-in-law got them for their fleece, since we both spin and Alpaca wool is amazingly soft!

Well...I'm off for the night to finish my toes! they have been wearing the same colors (orange with yellow and burgundy sponged on) for 3 weeks and it is getting OLD!

Just a preview

I thought I would take a few quick picks of some of my finished yarn. These are pics of 2-ply yarn I made a few months ago right after I learned how to spin yarn The pink/mauve yarn is from a blend I bought at the yarn/fiber store. It has merino wool and silk blended together and Ashford sells it.
The yellow/squash color is also from the same store, but cost less and was just different to work with. It is from Corriedale sheep, apparently..I love the color....makes me think of Thanksgiving dinner and squash-Num!

Still pretty chunky yarn, I know, but I am much better at skinny yarn now. The merino/silk was very fluffy and hard to spin into thinner yarn. I had an Ashford blend called "Ocean" that I made a hat for one of my daughters out of...very cool and pretty color.

Spinning (aka making yarn)

So I admit to being hopelessly obsessed with just about any craft. My awesome mom-in-law was going to take a spinning class and I was trying to be good and NOT try this craft. My wonderful hubby suggested I go with her, so I caved in. OMG-didn't think I would like this, because it seemed like a LOT of work, but I loved it. Hopelessly hooked-again. It is very soothing for me and wonderful to hold and make these soft fibers into yarn. I can crochet pretty good and do basic knitting, so of course I had to amp up my skills to use the yarn I make! Here are some pics if you don't know what the heck spinning is in the craft world.

The white yarn is a project I am working on made out of Merino wool fiber and I still need to make some more (Darn nail polish addiction!) and the other picture is silk sari waste fibers I bought cheap on e-bay. I was mixing those in with the merino wool, but what a PIA! so I decided I was going to ply one strand of plain merino with the silk/wild mixture and see what happened! when I get that done, I will post a picture. Oh, and 3 CHEERS for the hubby that bought me a spinning wheel for Christmas (after trying to make one proved too tricky)!!

Spring, really?!

Wow...just went for a quick walk up the mountainside  with Nova and it is chilly but gorgeous out. I am sure the huge pawprint I saw was a young bear. The snow is almost gone except for some plowed piles, and there are buds on the bushes. Even the birds are getting rowdy.

Have to decide what craft to work on today....Do I wash more fleece so I can eventually spin it? Or do I start carding some of the new colors I just finished dying? I have 2 large/whole sheep fleece given to me by a very nice lady. We bought a snowmobile from her husband and I was drooling over her sheep. Turned out she had some fleece from last year she didn't know what to do with. So I took a chance and brought the stinky guys home. I spread a big flat sheet out in my living room and brought one bag in. Darn thing filled up my tiny living room when I spread it out! At any rate, I skirted it as best I knew how and got rid of the nastier stuff. Our cat, Goliath thought it was nummy, and Nova, (our lab/border collie cross) was in doggie heaven, cause I let her sniff away. It actually wasn't THAT stinky....

I think I will wash some more, but here are some of the colors I have made so far with miscellaneous dyes. Can you guess which ones I used Kool-Aid on?!