Review: Mirror Mirror

 This delightful comedy, as you probably already know, is loosely based on the Fairy Tale of Snow White directed by Tarsem. Between you and me I pretty much love everything that man has ever done. Seriously rent The Fall, and shame on you for not seeing The Immortals when it was in theaters. Tarsems movies are gloriously shot, and always magical, just perfect for a movie like this.

The movie starts out with the viewer being told it's the Queens story, and Julie Roberts is an excellent evil stepmother, she's all a once likable and vicious. Frequent readers will know that I do indeed like a good villain. Snow White is on the opposite end of the spectrum, played by the stunningly gorgeous Lily Collins sadly as a bit of a one dimensional character.

My favorite outfit from the entire movie.

That's was expected though, I did like the changes to the story as well as the things they decided to keep for the original Fairy Tale, I adored the Seven Dwarfs and liked that they got to kick a little butt. The Prince wasn't the hero and I never believed he should have been in the Grim Tale in the first place, all he did was kiss a dead woman after all, and suddenly Snow was riding off into the sunset with him, yeah that makes sense.

Costumes were designed by Eiko Ishioka who sadly passed away last January, her talent and whimsy will be sorely missed I can tell you that, she's worked with Tarsem for years and I just don't know if it will be the same without her over the top designs and eye for color. Seriously I'm gonna cry here because look at these dresses and tell me you know someone who can do better.

Second favorite outfit.

Mirror Mirror is beautiful with plenty of wonderful visuals that will have you drooling, the story is a little trite, but the dialogue and fantastic acting by Julia Roberts, Nathan Lane, and Armie Hammer more then makes up for it.

Garden Party Dress

AKA How I turned this...

Into this!

So I've actually got a Regency gown pattern already, but I didn't like it so I looked around for one I liked better and found this Simplicity pattern with a bust shape and sleeves I liked.

I followed the bust pattern pretty closely and added some detail to the middle. I think the only real change I made was to add some soft interfacing to the lining to stiffen it a bit, it's not really needed though.

There are two sizes of sleeve ruffles and I used both of them and sewed the smaller one on top of the other, ruched them and sewed them onto the strap and onto the bust just like the pattern recommended.

For the skirt I shortened and widened each of the pattern pieces for the long and the short skirt. The large ruffle I also had to widen and cut and extra piece of. The short ruffle is not included in the pattern, I just cut a few long thinner strips of fabric. When I sewed the skirt the the bust I lined the shorter skirt up with the darts.

So I hope this is helpful to anyone out there who maybe hasn't started a sewing project because they've been unable to find a pattern that fit's their needs. Altering existing patterns is super easy, particularly with dresses. My dress isn't quite finished, I've got a few small details to add yet so check back.

Heavy Metal Mermaid

My roommates 3 year old niece wanted to be Ariel from the Little Mermaid for Halloween, so I went out and bought the cutest mermaid pattern I could find which was Simplicity pattern 4043. I'm not really fond of Simplicity patterns but included was a pattern for adults as well, so I was like, "yeah, I'll be a mermaid."

I didn't care for the top included in the pattern so I made my own by decorating an old bra with sheer green fabric that I burnt around the edges, black gemstones, pearls, and fun foam seashells that I painted silver and decorated with black glitter. There is now black glitter everywhere by the way.

In the pattern the waist of the tail, is not really meant to be shown, and I could have gotten rid of it, but I kinda liked it so I decorated it with black painted henna patterns, pearls, and black lace. For the fin I hand sewed gemstone trim in theses swirly patterns. I'm really happy with this costume, though it's unfinished since I ran out of monies. I have big plans to make spiked bracelets only the spikes are seashells. Cool right?

On my head I wore Stephen Stegosaurus. He's a headpiece I had leftover from a photo shoot I did last winter. The photos were crap so I never posted them here, and he's not really mer-oriented, but he's so cool and I just wanted to wear him.

Once again I invite you to ignore my horrible faux eyelashes. The primer is Aromaleigh lip and eye primer, with Evil Shades Noir primer on the center of the lid. All eyeshadow colors are Aromaleigh with White Wedding on the lid, over the Noir primer it's goes silvery and it's amazingly sparkly in life. Hades was used to create the black spikes.

Fume is on the inner corner with Hydrangea on the brow bone as a slight purple highlight.

My scales were made by first patting on Ben Nye's Lumiere Lux Powder in LX-1 Ice. It needed a sticky base to go kinda opaque, the good news is I found a use for Sobe Botanicals Mineral Setting Spray. Then I used some fishnet tights to pat on Ben Nye Creme Color CL-25 in Steel Gray. It was not easy, It's a bit of a three person job, one person to get painted, another to hold the fishnet, and another to pat the makeup on. But it was just me and Brenna, she held the fishnet while I patted it on myself, hard to do when you can't see anything.

On my cheeks is Aromaleigh Wildflower blush, and on my lips is Clinique lipstick in Cranberry Creme over Aromaleigh lip and eye primer.

Wonder NW

Portlands newest convention is Wonder NW a teeny little con located at the Crown Plaza near the convention center. It encompasses all levels of geek-ocity, from anime to comics, from video games to roleplaying, no nerd-tastic stone was left unturned!

It was also the first convention I went to alone. You heard me, no friends joined me on this little excursion I was left to my own devices at a convention! It's almost unthinkable. But the choice was mine, I haven't been to a convention in awhile and I decided since it was so close and so cheap (6$ for 1 day) I just had to make it out for one day! That day just happened to be the day of the lolita fashion show, and I just happened to be finishing up (but not quite done) with my latest lolita creation.

So I woke up early, got dressed and went down to register for the convention, and then, since I was so close I bullied Gloria and Shannon into having breakfast with me at Vivace.

I guess they don't look too beaten up about it.

Gloria had a mocha, Shannon a chai latte, and I got myself a tropical iced tea, and we shared a french style banana and nutella crepe with whipped cream and slivered almonds.

I also remember to take a picture of my nails which were quite cute even though pictures of them kinda suck. The stickers stayed on well for the most part, but multiple layers of OPIs top coat will to that. In fact only one came off on it's own, and it was some cherries the other hand. The color is Sally Hansens Hard as Nails in Cardinal. Only took one coat too, so impressive.

After breakfast I did a quick walk through the dealers room, my favorite part about this room was all the older toys and comics that you could buy, my problem being I really don't care about buying that stuff.

I managed to snap a few pictures of people in costume. This is Captain Red Coat the leader of PDXYAR! a local pirate group that seemed to be helping run the con.

The Baroness from G. I Joes, looking way to friendly to be a villain.

I don't know what this is from. Still kinda cool though.

After that I found a quite place and called Rose. We talked for about an hour, about how James was doing, and then about how I missed her being here and costuming with me. It's sad, but this small convention could have been a lot more fun with someone else to costume with. Eventually I was discovered by a guy in a Diablo 2 bloodthirsty cow costume named Chris, and feeling. I expect, sorry for me. Dragged me off to meet the group he was with. It was nice of him, but it just wasn't the same.

After a bit, it was time for the lolita fashion show

Again I didn't know anyone at the con so I totally stole all these pictures of me. After looking at these pictures I've decided I need a fluffier petticoat an something for my wrists.

Everyone was doing sweet and elegant poses and stuffs and I was like, I'm gonna be super grumpy!

I think my dress was well liked, I got a big reaction when I told the girls about Spoonflower.com and that you could make and buy your own fabric online. After the lolita show was over the coordinator had prizes to give out, but instead of giving them out she put a bag of prizes on the floor and the lolita fell on it like a hungry pack of hyenas. Which is maybe not a flattering comparison, but that's really what it looked like.

It had items in it ranging from a Baby the Stars Shine Bright head bow, to a cheap plastic lunchbox (I think it was a lunch box at least). Which is kinda lame, if your gonna give out prizes to everyone, everyone should get the same thing. Also lame is that there were a few girls in outfits that were completely brand. The whole dress, wig, blouse, shoes, socks, ect.. put together probably cost like 500$, and of course they got the brand items. Like jeaze, don't you have enough? Let one of the girls in the altered dresses have it, they probably can't afford it and would be more then delighted to acquire their first brand item. Where as you will stuff it in your closet and probably only wear it every now and then.

After the lolita show I didn't stick around for pictures I just took off and got myself the hell out of lolita, even put on a wig. If you didn't look closely there was no way you were gonna recognize me, (which was what I wanted) and then I went to the Costume Contest. Kinda boring actually, no skits and they spent so long getting ready that we kinda saw all the costumes already, they were just along that wall the whole time. They did give out some fabulous prizes, makes me wish I'd have competed, but Bronte wore her Big Sister costume (again) to the contest and was hands down gonna win.

After the contest I left to hang out over at Shannons place for awhile before meeting Jim and Jojo at the Bosavona Ballroom for Geeklesque. Just think your favorite sci-fi and fantasy characters dancing and getting naked, and there you go. The highlight of which was when a girl dressed as Harley Quinn belly danced to the Dresden Dolls song "Missed Me". There were also some triva contests, and I kick myself for not going on stage because I knew most of the answers *sigh*, but what are you gonna do.

In conclusion Wonder NW is not a bad little convention, it could do with some better organization and a larger space but it's just fine for what it is. Not really worth two days though, because there was only one panel going at a time there just wasn't enough interest for me. One was just enough.

Toga

So, after much research, and fabric testing... I made my toga out of a sheet set. I am the Mcgyver of cosplay!

I had a few ideas that I liked, but ended up going with the sort of poofy bag look that I thought was fairly authentic.

There was some lace detail on the top of the sheet that I left in place, you can kinda see it in this picture.

Makeup was kept fairly simple. Peaches n' Cream finishing powder, Corset blush, and Roses n' Violets lipstick.

Eyeshadow is Aromaleigh White Wedding on the inner corner, Zeus under the eye, and Wonder over the lid. I am so glad I bought Wonder from Peace, Love, and Sparkles. It's such a great all over color for me.

It's much more rosy in real life. And sooo pretty!

Editorial Photoshoot

Yay look it says I'm a model! I'm always very cautious about that word, there are a lot of connotations that come with it like, glamorous, and professional, and TALL! There were 3 other girls at the shoot and they were all like a ft. taller then me. I felt a little awkward, but they were all very nice girls and I enjoyed meeting them, in fact I'm having lunch with one of them soon.

I've got a ton of photoshoots lined up this month and I'm looking forward to sharing them all with you. This was the first photoshoot I'd done for awhile after the mostly disastrous last one, editorials aren't really my thing but I wanted to get back into the swing of things. There were two photographers so hopefully I'll be getting more photos back later from the other photographer.

Interesting note, I am wearing exactly the same makeup and giant false eyelashes in all of these pictures. So I can't understand why it doesn't look like I'm wearing them until I've put the wigs on. It makes no sense.

That sunflower is made of chocolate, dad gave it to me on Thanksgiving and it smelled just awful! It was cute though, I had been saving it for a shoot, it looks super cute.

These last two images are my favorites from the shoot so far! Although I don't care for my feet, but then I dislike feet.

Please check out more of Jerrys work at his Model Mayhem account.

Happy Valentines!

I was trying to figure out something Heather and I could do for Valentines Day, and it hit me, let's hand out Valentine cards to people! We bought 13 boxes of those tiny Valentine cards that Elementary students hand out, filled them out with things like, "to an awesome Portlander," from "two cute girls", and placed them in a basket.

See that basket, we had that filled to the brim. The basket belongs to Heathers mom and I decorated it with some silk flowers I had leftover from other projects.

Heather dressed herself, she was very cold this day.... I did warn her.

Here she is with the basket! I spent most of the time standing with the basket and our stuff in the center of Pioneer Square while Heather ran back and forth handing out Valentines on the street. Not a great idea, you won't believe how many people think your selling stuff when you do that.

Despite that we were out of Valentines in under two hours. There were about 200 of them give or take, so I hope we made some people happy. We're hoping to do this again next year. I want more valentines and a sign that says 'Free Valentines' on it so people know what were about and stop asking things like "is it a cupon?"

Pretending to hand out a the valentines we were technically out of by this point. I got interviewed by a reporter this day and was on the news that evening. I haven't been able to find the video anywhere but if I do I'll post it.

Enjoying an ice cream sandwich after a long hard day.

Daily Wear: Arika

My personal theme this year was peppermint candy. Rose found the peppermint candy I've attached to my Santa hat, it's a round of soap that I glued to a hair clip, it was very heavy. The original design for the dress was way different then what I ended up with because I ran out of money I decided to rip up an old bridesmaid dress that Rose gave me.

This dress in fact, from Davids Bridal. Rose had another one in the same color she used for her Christmas outfit last year. My main goal was to try to make my outfit as different from Rose's as possible while still keeping with the peppermint theme. Candy Cane seemed like a natural way to go.

It was quite easy to make, to be fair I was much more excited over everyone elses costumes. The big strips were made using lace from a wedding dress a friend of mine ripped up to make a Princess Vespa dress. They looked much more swirly on the mannequin. It looks like a costume out of White Christmas, very romantic and old Hollywood, terrible to move around in though.

Because I knew I wanted a bright red lip I kept the rest of my makeup simple. Tarantellegra all over the lid with Dandelion highlighting the brown and inner corner. I used Drama Queen liner Topaz, I feel I should have made a thicker line but I'm terrible with eyeliner.

This powder eyeliner stays on better then my liquid or stick liner but it still comes off on my lid sometimes.

I'm a Root Beer ad in this picture. Would you buy it? I guess I don't look like I'm enjoying it so you probably wouldn't.

My cake from Papa Hayden the Passion, I do love it, so tangy and tropical.

Had to re-apply my lip stick several times that day. I like doing it in public, I think it's romantic. I'm sure some people consider it trashy, but who cares what other people think, right? It's not like I'm doing something gross.

Despite my limited ability to move I had a great time. I'm so sad we probably won't be doing it again, but I look forward to the future.