Nail Art: Black and White and Schmutzed All Over

I wanted to paint my nails white with black polka dots like the super-cute ones I saw as nail stickers somewhere (Target? Ulta? I don't remember, to be honest). I was worried about how steady my hands are (thanks to my migraine medications, they shake all the time) but figured I could come up with something entertaining no matter what. I started by painting my nails the opaque white I'd gotten from Ulta, but it was so opaque and so bright I just wanted to cover it up as much as humanly possible. I let it dry over night and the next day I had very little time to do anything to my nails, but needed the white covered, so quick slashes of Scotch tape diagonally crossing ten fingers later, I used Ulta's "Little Black Dress" for an extremely fast and dramatic manicure. The white was still too bright so I went digging through my glitter sparkle collection and settled on Pink Cookie's gold, thinking it would be the least unclassy. Still, the final result is not classy or pretty or anything I particularly love. And the worst part: even though I let it dry for a really long time, it smudged and moved and squished around hours later so that it ended up looking like total crap on a few fingers before I even got a photo of it! So here are my pictures, but just so you can see what I'm talking about and not because I'm proud of it the way I was proud of my ripples or my cashmere sparkle gradients.

Tap Gala Ripple Nails

This month I attended galas two weekends in a row. My life is awesome. But two different galas meant two different dresses meant two different nail creations. This past Saturday's gala was for the Chicago Tap Theatre and I wore a royal blue slinky dress from Akira. After all my nail art experimentation, I decided on a ripple in blue and silver. I did the ripple with Scotch tape cut by decorative edged scissors. I think it turned out pretty well:

The polishes are Wet n Wild dark blue (don't know the color name, it either fell off the bottle or never existed) and Nicole by OPI's "Look at Me, Look at Me." After I took the photos I added Essie's "No Chips Ahead" topcoat.

The polish looked like it was going to last a long time until I went digging through vats of vintage door knobs.  I've been searching for four identical vintage or antique knobs that are as similar as possible to the one already owned by a client of a client, which has been more difficult than I expected. I may have finally found solutions, but my hunt destroyed my manicure with chips all over.

The chippiness made me mad last night so I took it off and redid my nails in Ulta black and white with Pink Cookie's gold glitter on top. The white is very opaque, which I like, and unbelievably bright, which is good and bad. It's very striking, but it's in no way "pretty." Still, I think I'll have more fun with the black and white combos in the future.
Photos to come.

I really want more decorative edge scissors. There's so much more I could do.

Nailed It! (Sort Of)

I've been neglecting this blog again. Oops. Best thing to do is to jump right back in where I am now.

Latest "crafting" endeavor: nail art! Thanks to the wonders of Pinterest I'm a little obsessed with nails right now. My "Get Nailed" board on Pinterest has 26 pins and 105 followers as of this moment. I'm picky about what I pin, and I want to try or steal or just completely love every set of nails on my board. I've also started following too many nail blogs to count. My next post will probably be a "Great Nail Art Blogs" post, but I'm not there yet.

This post is a "Look At What I Did!" Post. Because I've started doing. First I just got a really fabulous polish from Target.  

It's called (appropriately) "Look at Me, Look at Me" and it's silver with minuscule sparkly glitter flecks of red and blue. I loved the way it looked, so I took a photo and posted it to my Flickr and Pinterest.

Then I was craving pastel blue nails, but neither OPI nor Essie seemed to make a pastel blue polish. Once I was compromising on brand, I figured "Go cheap or go home" and went straight for NYC (New York Color)'s glorious $2 Cashmere Creme. 

Before I had a chance to repaint my nails, I found myself in the Marshalls checkout line staring down some packages of 6-for-$6 nail polishes. After some indecisive hemming and hawing, I went with the glitter overcoats package. The brand is "Pink Cookie," which I'd never heard of, but for $6 I was willing to risk it.

I found on Pinterest all of these manicures with pretty gradients, and I figured I could manage a glitter gradient. Cashmere Creme plus the teal glitter Pink Cookie overcoat and way too much time trying to perfect it and I had myself a successful set of nails:

Unfortunately, the glitter washed off in two days despite my Essie topcoat (should have reapplied).

Last night instead of, say, actually doing real work on my Etsy shop like a productive human being, I watched Bones and Glee on Hulu while I attempted a gazillion versions of basic Scotch tape manicures in three colors on my nails. 

A bit messy, a bit insane, but successful in that I now know how to do a Scotch tape manicure and I know what I did wrong and right.

I'm going to a gala for Chicago Tap Theatre this Saturday night and I'm wearing a dark blue dress, so I think I'm going to go with just two-colored dark blue and silver glittery nails. I may play around more to choose which design to do since I'm not happy with any of the two-color designs I did, so there may be another photo very soon.

Yay nails!

Migraine Day, Migraine Treasury

I'm having a bad migraine day, which is funny because I'm supposed to go meet with a disability lawyer this afternoon and I don't know if I'll make it. I wonder if she gets that a lot. At any rate, my migraininess inspired me to make a migraine treasury:

'Migraine Marches On' by jillhannah

Stupid migraine. I'm on new drugs (again) and you have been slightly better behaved, but still you torment me. It's almost March. I would like to have a good March. Please stay in February.

Out of Order - silh... melaniefavreau $65.00	Custom Pair of Matc... KaraGunter $80.00	vintage primitive i... mightyfinds $22.00	Vintage 70's Sh... Sorocco $48.00
Morning Light 10x15 jamieariela $31.00	Antique Meat Cleave... Modred12 $105.00	Glass Round Pendant... goddessglass10... $7.50	Vintage Humphreys M... Wrecklamation $8.00
Your head on Migrai... goodgosh $3.50	Anti-headache firem... Dongedyframe $27.00	Agony theshadowfarm $55.00	The Imagination of ... KatieLloydPhot... $75.00
PIN CUSHION, PINCUS... IzzyNMe $8.00	MIGRAINE DAY Button... WordForWordGre... $1.50	Migraine Journal- R... Bibliocouture $18.00	Embroidered Sleep M... LadybugsTreasu... $12.00

Treasury tool by Red Row Studio.

I dedicate this to all my fellow migraine sufferers. Though we may have different pictures of pain, I know I find some level of solidarity comforting.

Direct Checkout: Etsy Does a Good Thing Badly

Etsy is unleashing its new direct checkout system. In theory, yay! In practice, ugh!

Direct checkout should be a good thing - no more having to deal with PayPal! Buyers and sellers have been asking for this for years.

Then I read the Direct Checkout FAQs. That's where the "ugh" came in. Here's a rundown of what I think are the important details of Etsy's Direct Checkout:

1) Etsy's fees are in line with PayPal's fees. PayPal charges 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. Etsy will be charging 3% + $0.25 per transaction. So, if you do the algebra, that means Etsy charges less on items under $50 and more for items over $50. If you mostly sell less expensive items, Etsy is the better deal. If you mostly sell more expensive items, PayPal will actually cost you less in fees. Interesting, when you think of Etsy's push towards high quality handmade and putting a high value on yourself.

2) Funds do not become available to sellers until after three days and the seller has marked the item shipped! Why? Etsy says
Even though we've created a way for sellers to accept credit cards directly, Etsy is still very much a marketplace for buyers and sellers to convene. In orde to maintain a balance on our site, we ensure that all parties in a transaction are protected. This includes the seller, buyer, and Etsy. We work hard to create a site where buyers can trust that their items will arrive in a timely manner and that the listing description is an appropriate representation of the item they recive.
What? I still don't get it. This is a terrible idea. As a seller, I no longer have any incentive to send packages faster than three days after the item is sold, and in fact it may be a bad idea to send them right away as I won't know whether or not the payment will clear. So much for fast shipping. So much for piece of mind.

3) If, in a dispute, Etsy determines the seller is in the wrong, and the seller does not issue the refund his or herself for four weeks, Etsy can issue the refund on the seller's behalf, taking the money out of the seller's payment account and refunding it to the buyer. (See Etsy's explanation here.)

4) It works on Etsy mobile! Good thing!

5) After your three day waiting period, you can transfer your funds into your bank account at any time. If you don't transfer your funds yourself, they automatically transfer every Monday.

6) Direct Checkout takes Visa, Mastercard/Eurocard, Discover, and American Express (another good thing!)

Any other questions you might have should be answered in the FAQs and the Etsy Forum about Direct Checkout.

Etsy Apple Store Panel and My Chronic Illness: A Very Personal Post

Today I cried in public.

I went to the Etsy panel at the Chicago Michigan Avenue (Magnificent Mile) Apple Store. Upon arrival, the Geniuses lead me upstairs to the auditorium which was already packed ten minutes before the event was scheduled to begin. By the time they started, people were sitting and standing in the aisles.

Randy, the Etsy Creative Director, moderated the panel. Four Chicago artists - Jack of Ethically Engineered, Kara of Secret Safe Books, Vana of Le Papier Studio, and Amanda of Mojo Spa and Mojo Spa Style. It was a lively, informative discussion and Q & A session, largely focusing on social media and getting started on Etsy. They touched on topics like the future of Pinterest (best described by Kara as a "virtual cork board," all agreed there is definitely a future in the site), having to scale and grow as a business, "putting heart back into commerce," (Randy's quote), and the importance of good photography.

But it was Amanda's story that made me seek her out after the panel ended. She, too, started her business out of the necessity brought on by chronic illness. Hers started 12 years ago and she was sick for seven years. I only fully dropped out of society with my chronic migraines a little over four years ago, so I have time. During the panel discussion she only grazed the topic of her disease, but when I found her afterward, she talked to me extensively about how to run a business around being sick, and more importantly, how to allow yourself to be sick in order to get better. She talked about her friends and family's incredible helpfulness, her sister actually moving to Chicago to take care of her and her friends stepping in to run her business and her life when she was unable to. Her friends even ran her craft fair booths with her and for her when she couldn't. That's huge.

Hearing about the generosity of her support system, taking in suggestions for being better to myself as I run my Etsy shop, talking about both of our illnesses and the frustration and guilt and helplessness that accompany year after year of a chronic condition, I started crying. I couldn't help it. Right there in the Apple Store, my face was leaking and I couldn't make it stop. I cried for the beauty of generosity, I cried from my own frustrations, I cried because someone else on earth not just knew what I was going trough but had seen the other side and found herself a successful and productive human being once again.

It terrifies me that there is no other side, and perhaps I've lost faith in the possibility of getting better, though I'm always looking to try something new and different to help alleviate my pain in a real and permanent way. Since the first of the year I've been on a gluten-free diet and it hasn't seemed to do anything. I just got the name of a homeopathic doctor in Skokie. After talking to Amanda I think I'm going to go back to biofeedback and be more vigilant with my daily relaxation exercises. And maybe there is hope that I will get better. Maybe someday I'll be the one up on that stage, telling my Etsy success story instead of crying in the aisle.

Thank you, Amanda. Thank you, Etsy.

Etsy Chicago Meet n Greet

Last night I went to the Etsy "Meet n Greet" in Chicago at Vecco Studio. They served wine, Fat Tire beer, fruit, vegetables, cheese, and a healthy dose of conversational networking. I had an absolutely wonderful time chatting the night away with Etsy Admins Morgan, Randy, Kimm, and Leland, and many Etsians. Worlds collided when Morgan and I introduced my

two team leaders to one another. Ashley of OneInTheHand currently captains Chicago Style Crafters, and Martha of OpenDoorStudio created and captains the Vintage Etsy Society Team (VestiesTeam), and we all had plenty to talk about!

Other people I talked to during the night included Vanessa of Little Lady Company, Paula of Eganaise, Karen of Will Oaks Studio, and Kim of Kim Holmes.

After the Meet n Greet, Martha wrangled a number of the vintage sellers together to go out to dinner. The Etsy Admins were nice enough to give Martha the leftover wine, so we found a sushi restaurant (Sai Cafe) that was more-or-less BYOB ($10 corking fee per bottle). Thanks to good company and the several glasses of wine we all already had in us, we had ourselves a fantastic and lively meal. The attendees were: Martha, Lisa from A Blast from the Past, Tanya and Lisa from Bunny's Trunk Show, Gwen from Chloe's Window, and Sarah from Zzouzi.

Yay networking!

Top photo of (from left to right) Martha of OpenDoorStudio, Me, and Creative Director Randy. By EtsyLabs on Flickr.

Dress photo from Zzouzi's shop.