NOTD: Born Pretty Store nail wraps!

Hahahahahaha, ok, I'm really glad that I decided that I'm not going to try to hold myself to any kind of posting schedule, because whatever that schedule would have been obviously I failed it. Whoops! It's not that I haven't been doing nail art (I even did two more Hanukkah manis), but I've had some IRL drama, particularly a bad computer crash that didn't allow me to even edit posts for a while. So I have a bit of a backlog to work through. I'm always active on Instagram though, so check me out there @fedoraharp if you want more regular updates and shop stuff like cool discounts!

Anyway, I got a tooooooon of really nice wraps from the Born Pretty Store for Black Friday, and I'm gonna start wearing them!

Polishes Used:
Ga-de- Rose Fiction (pinky)
Ga-de- Mint Green (index finger)
Color Club- French tip (white base for decals)

31DC2014 catchup- Day 16-17-18

Catchup part one! I'm not going to get  overly wordy today, on to nails!

Day 16- Geometric

Day 17- Glitter

(quick explanation: Hanukkah is a long way off, but I made this glitter for my Hanukkah collection of my indie brand that hasn't launched yet, it's called Topsy Turvy and it's Dreidel themed. I was gonna make a bigger deal of it but I'll discuss this more later!)

Day 18- Half Moons

Next four tomorrow!

An InLinkz Link-up

I'm back, baby!

After two months of almost no posting (eep!) I am officially back in the game! September begins in just a few days, which means 31DC! For the uninitiated, that means I will be participating in a group challenge along with a lot of other nail bloggers, nail art every single day of September. Last year I almost completed the whole thing, I ended up falling off posting around the 25th. This year I hope to finish the entire thing!

In the meantime, here are a couple of things I did to my nails recently:

In other news, I have decided that I really need to rethink my watermark. Not that I don't love it, it's just really time consuming to do, especially as someone with focusing problems. Often it has made the difference between writing a post and avoiding one out of laziness. I may watermark over the month, and I may not. I guess I'll take it one post at a time.

NOTD: Ruffians and Rhinestones

AAAAAAAAAACK it has been over a week since I posted! Fail! I'm not going to try to translate this, for the same reason I haven't been posting- I've been overworked and exhausted, and something had to give. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up a bit more this week.

This is actually an "emergency backup" mani- I wore this a good while ago, but hadn't had the opportunity to post it. Since I don't have anything to post right now, here it is! I've actually got three large-scale posts in progress- all three things I've never really done on this blog before, and while working on them I let my regular ol' nail art slip a bit.

Polishes used:

Chic Metalix- Citrine Gold

Chic Metalix- Peacock

BornPrettyStore Matte topcoat

Quick Update:

Regarding the last bit of 31DC, I'll have a last post up soon with all the days I need to catch up on. I've had a crazy time keeping  up because of the combination of holiday + new (violent) cat + convention. I'm going to do a convention post too!

I hit a snag- one of my nails broke off all the way down to the end of the free edge, so I am now back down to nubs. It's much harder to do art on these :( I have my pattern and my flag themed art ready, I just need to do the tutorial and the honor nails one.

Han also has a bunch of photos for me, so I'm gonna do her stuff in a separate post. She's also thinking of starting her own blog, and I'm going to enable the heck out of her :D

31 Days Challenge 2013: Day one- Red

So with some trepidation, I've decided to try to do #31DC2013.

And of course, on day one I left my camera at work. How predictable.

Still, not to leave anyone hanging, I have some pictures anyway! First of all, my friend Hannah has decided to participate with me, and since she doesn't have a blog I'll be posting her stuff alongside mine. She still has some improving to do with her photography, but her freehand is incredible:

And then there's me, who left my camera at work, so I'm going to have to post a rerun for today (oh this is going to go so very well, I can feel it in my bones)

And yes, your eyes do not deceive you: I put in a watermark! I've been meaning to do that for a while. I'm still pretty amateur at it, so if anyone has suggestions on how to make it more aesthetically pleasing, I'm all ears.

Tomorrow will hopefully bring some slightly more successful art. Hopefully. Then again, it's orange, which is a color I generally do *not* get along with. Wish me luck! To see who else is participating, hit the jump!

Seriously intimidating

Feel free to ignore this post, it's basically just me whining

It's been over a week since I updated. And this isn't even a photo post!

I need to get a new camera- I've been using my flatmate's camera, and I'm hesitant to bring it to work, which is the only way I'd be able to take photos in sunlight. Hopefully I'll be able to make a proper photo post tomorrow, since it's the weekend. I'll try to take enough photos that I'll have stuff to post all week.

But oh my GOD am I feeling insecure lately. I've been trying to make forays into the world of Israeli polish bloggers, but while my spoken Hebrew is fine, my reading/writing level is... not enough to feel comfortable. So I keep avoiding the all-Hebrew blogs. I should really read more, and I should really be making my posts both in Hebrew and English, but I've been procrastinating on it.

There's all of these quality blogs with their quality photos and quality products and I just... don't think I can compete? I know I made this blog basically for my own enjoyment, and it's not like it's a chore (not at all!) but I want to be consistent and I want to be good at it.

Should I expand the blog? If it's just text updates it's much easier for me, even if there's more content involved. Should I start writing about life stuff and opinions and things? Somehow I don't really see that meshing with this style blog. Maybe I'll open a parallel blog...

When can my ADHD go away already?

*sigh*

NOTD: Blue to green glitter gradient

Aw, darn. I had such a great streak going- two or three posts a week! And then I let it slip. I have been trying to make a swatch post, but since those are much longer, I keep procrastinating. In the meantime, have my latest NOTD:

Colors used:
Chic Metalix- Green Olive (905)
Chic Metalix- Peacock (906)
Chic Metalix- Smashing Blue (907)
Wow Cosmetics 350- (white cream base)

I don't think I will ever stop loving this particular collection. It's been out for more than a year, and I still find myself coming back to these colors again and again. They're not all identical- here, for example, Peacock and Smashing Blue are silver particles in a colored jelly base, while Green Olive is a clear base with the particles themselves being green (that's why it's so much more sheer). But they all complement each other really well, and they're vibrant, easy to work with, and don't stain. Basically, the polish jackpot.

I will try not to take accidental two-week hiatuses in the future!

Haul of Shame swatch spam

Look look swatches!

Dear readers,

I have been a terrible blogger these days. I know this in the depths of my soul. Case in point: I committed a massive haul of shame about two weeks ago, and I haven't even mentioned it on here yet! Nor have I edited my third vlog (which I have recorded, and it sits there on my desk top staring at me accusingly). Also I am doing a convention this Wednesday and Thursday, and you've heard nary a whisper of that.

By way of apology, I've swatched five of the 22 (!) polishes I picked up in my protracted haul, which took place over several days.

Click the jump for closeups and reviews.

Vlog!

So, does anyone remember a while back I mentioned that I got a video camera and I wanted to start doing a vlog? Well, I made one!

When I first thought about doing vlogs, I had no idea what kind of theme I wanted. I knew that I definitely wanted to incorporate harp videos, but it didn't have to be a central focus. Once I started pursuing a diagnosis, I realized that having an adult voice on the internet for motivational disorders was a pretty important goal. There are so many of us out there, and not many people to speak for us. So here I am.

The video speaks for itself (literally!) so I don't have much to add, but a few general questions are in order:

How often do you guys think I should try to update? Should I even have any kind of rigid schedule, or should I just post when I have something to say?
What topics do you want me to talk about?
What things should I put up to decorate my wall? (I don't have any posters, so I'm really open to suggestions)
Is this the kind of thing you would watch on a regular basis?

Thanks for watching!

I also put up a nail art post today, you can find it over here :)

Quick post for the weekend

I have really awesome nails right now, but again with the mediocre-at-stills camera situation. Plus it's been raining here like there's no tomorrow, so I can't take proper daylight pictures. I've grabbed an indoor light picture, but it's not that great. If by some miracle my mani survive's tomorrow's 10 hour shift, I'll be able to get a daylight image on Monday morning. If not, I'll post what I have, crappy quality or not!

In the meantime have a gif of a cute kitten.

ETA: It lasted the day, and my friend is bringing her HQ camera when she comes to visit tomorrow so there may be actual photos taken! Now all that remains to be seen is if there's any sun (doubtful).

I haven't died, I promise!

...I just have no time frame in which to take pictures these days. And my manis generally don't last very long because of my job. I'm usually working 6 AM- 3 PM these days, and by the time I get home it's too dark to properly take photos.

Hopefully some time soon I will have at least one of the following: A job that is not minimum wage, a job that does not ruin my nails, a job that pays enough for me to buy a camera which takes good quality macro shots, or all of the above.

This December has been "greenicure month" for me, I've been wearing nothing but green. I might make this an annual thing :). To be fair, mostly it's just plain polish, no designs, since I have to replace it pretty much every day. But this week I did a marble and managed to stretch it for two days before it chipped off! And tonight I'm doing newspaper nails. There's even a minute chance that I'll have time to grab a sunlight photo before work, since I'm starting a little later tomorrow.

Anyhow, since I've done nothing in this post but complain, I'm going to wrap it up here. Hope to be blogging more frequently soon!

Well, I just made a breathtakingly bad life choice!

Hi there, my darling nonreaders.

Let's skip over the "omg I haven't posted in aaaaages!!!1!!one!" formality and conclude universally that I'm a lazy failure at life, without the pretty words.

I might post some swatch pictures I have archived tonight. I might not. I hope so though. But that's not why I'm here right now (also I'm at work, so no access to those pictures anyway).

I bought a camera today. You see, apparently my credit card company was supposed to have been offering me all these deals for the past six years, but somehow I slipped through their cracks and never got any of the discounted crap they are constantly bugging their other customers about. So now all of a sudden they woke up and realized hey, in six years people rack up a HUGE amount of points even if they have pretty modest spending habits! And woah, most of those points are expiring soon! We'd better offer her something fast!

So offer they did. And stupidly, I accepted. Most of their potential offers were boring but practical things like towels and vaccum cleaners, but the camera was something else. I've always kind of wished I'd gotten in early on the whole youtube vlog thing, because back when that kind of thing was just starting out, I actually had an interesting life. It could have been a fun diversion.

Now? Now I'm almost 25 and I've done virtually nothing interesting with my life whatsoever. On the surface it seems like I should be cool: I have a harp, I make jewelry, I do nail art (even geeky nail art!), and I'm a geek, which is apparently what the cool kids are these days. But in practice I'm about as boring as dirt, because I get lazy or depressed and spend most of my time derping on the internet looking at all the interesting stuff other people do, instead of doing it on my own.

A camera could change that though. If I learn how to trick my own psyche well enough, I could actually guilt trip myself into having a life. I could start a vlog! Then if I actually stick with the commitment of posting once per (???) I'd have to actually do stuff worth talking about on camera. If all I have to say is "well, I got home today and read some fanfiction, then I scrolled through tumblr for a while, then I prepared some frozen shnitzel for dinner and went to sleep" then I won't be able to make a vlog. And if I don't make a vlog, then the money I spent on my camera will have been wasted. And that is just sad, considering it's A- a really good camera, and B- a really expensive camera. ($1,125 before the discount, $460 after. No I could not afford that even post mega-discount. At least it's in installments...)

Alternatively, I could guilt trip myself in practicing harp frequently enough to occasionally record and upload music. Or do tutorials in something, meaning I'd actually have to clean my room.

What I guess I'm trying to say here is: This blog will no longer be solely for nail polish and jewelry.

"But Leah," none of you say, "Don't you already have a personal blog?"

You're absolutely right, nobody! I do have a personal blog. But consider the fact that it is embarrasingly derpy and fangirly, and I'd like this one to be more of a thinking blog. Or at least a derping eloquently blog (fat chance). I might crosspost things now and then, if it's pertinent to both blogs.

It's entirely possible that this project will be abandoned within a week. Or a day. I can tell you that not having a life is freakisly boring, but it's so easy! I don't know if I have the willpower to stop being boring. But I'm sure as hell gonna try, or at least convince myself for the next few hours that I'm going to try. It usually goes right out the window the second I get home (fandom is really difficult to pull away from, you guys).

I have to stop rambling now. It's long over time.

Hey you! If you actually read this entire thing you are my new best friend. Have a cookie!

Delusions of grandeur

Hehe, here I was innocently thinking that by now I'd be so accomplished: I'd send out my Etsy orders, I'd make my post about the Olamot booth, I'd have lunch prepared for tomorrow, anything.

You know what I've done? I've finally put together an RSS feed for the polish blogs that I've been following for months anyway. So productive of me, huh? It's 3 AM and I need to make at least one bracelet by tonight becuase I've reached the deadline of when I can ship to her. I think that's all I'll do for tonight.

I already have at least six posts in mind to do "when I have time" which is basically going to be never. Not even counting the gajillions of swatches I want to post of all the Israeli brand polishes I have!