Painter's Tape Manicure

I've discovered something wonderful: painter's tape. The blue stuff is much more expensive than regular old Scotch tape, but it is a miracle product for manicures.

I was recently at Walgreens and picked up Wet n Wild's "Through the Grapevine," which is a fabulous cheap magenta. I love Wet n Wild's new fat brushes and their colors really pop. It was a great hue, but I was getting nail-art restless after a few days. I'd also recently found my zigzag scissors in my car (welcome to the disorganization of my life) and was itching to use them. When I bought "Through the Grapevine," it was sitting next to "I Need a Refersh-Mint"--a color I already owned and loved. I liked the combination (reminded me of the 80s), so I knew what I had to do.

I'd heard about painter's tape on a few nail blogs, but actually using the stuff was amazing. It cuts much more cleanly and easily than Scotch tape and makes cleaner lines. Here is a photo of my nails all taped up and the "I Need a Refersh-Mint" painted over them:

And when I took the tape off, voila! Gorgeousness! This manicure made me happy until it chipped and peeled a horrible death a few days later (I never got a chance to put on a topcoat and, after all, it was Wet n Wild).

Note: I touched up the areas around the cuticles a bit with Photoshop because they looked like crap when I took the picture and I didn't take another photo after I retouched my actual nails.

My Camera's Got the Blues

I'm already a Photoshop addict; mindless snapshots of my friends at the Chinese New Year's parade are subjected to at least cropping and curves before I'll post them on Facebook. But today's batch of pictures were like a germaphobe finding a booger on his coffee cup.
I know my camera has trouble with purple. It thinks purple is blue. I heard a rumor that Canons in general don't like purple, so maybe Grimace screwed them on a modeling contract and this is their revenge.

Today I was not photographing purple, I was photographing the hats I got at the auction last week until my camera battery died. One of the hats is green, and while it came out green, the hat on the screen was significantly bluer than the hat in reality. I ended up color correcting every single shot. I always feel weird when I have to doctor photographs to make them look more like the real thing.
So purple is blue, green is blue. Camera, do you have the blues? Because these color identity crises are wearing thin, and for as much as I love Photoshop, all that extra work kind of...blew.

Color Decision!

My internet is being fussy and flaking out on all sorts of things so I can't post the post I was going to post.

Instead:

These are my colors. I'm making a decision. Time to get my stamp made and design myself some business cards and start filling the shop!

(other post was about moving and condo, AKA 99.9% of my brain space right now. Hopefully postable tomorrow.)

Searching for Gold

I close on my condo tomorrow. I had a wonderful time choosing my paint colors once I came to the conclusion that it was my condo and I could do what I wanted and I really do have a good sense of color so my choices wouldn't be psycho or anything so I should trust myself and go for it.

Apparently, it's all done. All, except for the gold paint on the barrel vaulted ceiling of the dining room. The store didn't have the paint. The seller's Realtor called me, knowing I work from home, and asked if there was any way I could pick up two gallons of the gold paint from another Benjamin Moore store. This is such an extra thing for me to do, but if I want to walk into my condo post-closing with my keys in hand and see my awesome gold ceiling, this is the way. And I want to. Holy damn I want to. So I search for gold.

Color Thought

Color by COLOURlovers

Far from perfect, but I was reading How Color Choices in Stores Can Influence Your Shopping Decisions (again, found through COLOURlovers.com) and I'm thinking I want a combination of light and dark greens accented with something bright in the yellow/orange/red area for subliminal messaging purposes (placating and wealthy but fun and active!) except just those colors looked ugly so I played with them until I got this thing which I could live with.

Other potential favorite:

Color by COLOURlovers

If I go with the yellow "optimism" concept instead:

Color by COLOURlovers

thoughts?

Also, I have an econ post coming as soon as I write it...must...write...it...

Color Perfect Me

Photo by Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee available for sale at rhrurbannature.etsy.com or check out his website of amazingness at www.hodgsonrigsbee.com

I have crappy vision, but apparently perfect color vision. I just took the FM 100 Hue Test and got a perfect score. It asks you to put four rows of 20 colorful squares in "hue order," giving you the start and end color of each row and keeping each row of squares separate so you don't have to worry about all 80, just 20 at a time. I've always been "good at color" and pretty good at remembering colors, but I had a little trouble being sure with a few of the blue/greens. Apparently, I was right because I am perfect. Perfect perfect perfect. Somebody give me a cookie.

Hey, baby, what's your color?

So obviously I've spent most of my not-in-bed-with-terrible-migraine time today on COLOURlovers.com coming up with a palette to exactly match the colors in my rug, then stalking all the other color palettes and Pantone trends and whatnot for ideas.

In my COLOURlovers forum lurking, I discovered Colourism. It's like numerology but with color. You input your first and last names, birthday, and VOILA! It tells you what your unique color is! Here's mine:

I think it suits me quite well, actually. It's not my favorite color, but it's a good description of me, somehow.

And mycompanion color:


Color by COLOURlovers

Which I don't love, particularly with "my" color, but it is the sort of pink that, by itself, I can almost stand. The mauvey pink.

So what's your color?

more awesome

BeanSproutStudio Amy is awesome. Awesome awesome awesome. I still have to pick my color scheme if it's going to be branding my universe. I like the orang a lot, but maybe something other than the light blue? I usually gravitate towards red and purple, but I'm flexible, especially since I'm really liking these colors but I might get sick of them together long-term.

Perhaps I'll spend a few hours on COLOURlovers.com. It's one of my favorite time sucks already. You can create/discover your own, rate, and comment on other people's colors, then use those colors to create palettes and use palettes to create patterns. Basically, it's a celebration of color and color in contrast with other color and using those colors as design elements.

From their about page:

COLOURlovers™ is a resource that monitors and influences color trends. COLOURlovers gives the people who use color - whether for ad campaigns, product design, or even in architectural specification - a place to check out a world of color, compare color palettes, submit news and comments, and read color related articles and interviews.

You get the idea. Anyway, I'll probably be using it already to choose paint colors for the condo I bought today, so why not?