Hatha Yoga and Bellydancing

A few days ago the hubby and I picked up a bellydancing DVD (I had one a few years ago but it disappeared - it was a good one, too!) and I just got around to giving it the once-over today. Pretty good; I like the idea behind it, but her teaching style leaves a bit to be desired. It's tribal fusion bellydancing (which heretofore I had not heard of) and doesn't seem that dissimilar from the "normal" style you see a lot.

I'm going to try to get into a routine, now...I don't know how well it will go, but at least I threw my body a bone today.

So, I noticed in the warm-up she was doing some form of yoga. I decided that if I was going to do yoga, I'd break out the book my hubby has and do the form he recommended. (He doesn't do it himself, claims not to be flexible enough) So I did, and boy was it invigorating! Now I know why people do it, you seriously can feel the difference in your body even after one try as long as you don't take it as a joke. Now I can't want to find an apartment, I really want my own space and my own time to be able to do it instead of having to work around their schedule and worry that someone will walk in.

It turned out what she did wasn't that different, but where the TV was sitting it was easier to glance at the book than be rushed through the positions.

I wish I could cast off my habits, my cravings, my laziness...I wish I could remember and force myself to take my vitamins, I wish I could get up early and do yoga, and then my bellydancing, I wish I could take away all artificial stuff and oils and preservatives in my food....some day. Some day I'll be natural, some day I'll feel better. I know that what I do to my body affects it.

On another note, I have Nickelback's "Burn it to the ground" stuck in my head. Nickelback is another one of those bands that I don't think people give enough credit to. Yes, I know that two of their songs sounded similar. And if you listen to the lyrics of a lot of them, the guy who writes for the band is a bit of a sleezball. But these days they're making some good music, and the frontman (his name escapes me at the moment...Chad, I think) has an interesting voice.

No pictures today, sorry guys. :P

Been an artsy fool lately

Yeah, so I've spent like every waking moment the last couple of days doing nothing but art. Lol. I'm a bit burnt out, but it was a long time in coming. If you just want to see teh artz, just scroll down and ignore my rambling :P

Lots of stuff happening in the next week or so. This place I interviewed at last week is giving me the runaround, so I get to call them back on Monday...tomorrow the hubby and I have to go look at an apartment, pick up my Magicolor face paints, and visit ANOTHER apartment to hedge our bets. And do something with pistons. Hubby is trying to rebuild my car, so...Iunno, I don't pay that much attention. He knows what he's doing. Back to apartments; since I just found out that my grandmother is coming to visit on July 5th, I'm doubly determined to be out of here before then, and I actually do have a couple of promising leads. Thank God. Aside from that, the kitties get to go to the vet on Tuesday of next week, and on Saturday I'm going to a cat kennel in West Richland that needs part-time help. Well...it's actually less part time and more, like, 5 hours a week, lol, but hey, that's money. Or at least that's the way the lady I talked to made it sound.

I've been all about the music lately, too. Working on my art seems to require music, otherwise I just can't focus. Isn't that weird? Been mostly listening to Korn (Word Up, Twisted Transistor, Make Me Bad), Sum41 (the only songs anyone knows them for :P), Three Days Grace (Pain, Animal I Have Become) and Evanescence (Sweet Sacrafice). I've also discovered this song by Puddle of Mudd, Psycho. Awesomeness. Puddle of Mudd really doesn't get its props, I think. Yeah, they were on MTV for a while and whatnot but I never see anyone listing them as a favorite band. Well, damn it, I'm throwing my beans in with them and I'll officially say I'm a Puddle of Mudd fan, so there! :P

Tattoo finally stopped itching, for the most part. It's almost entirely healed. Which is great, I get to go through the whole process again because it needs to be touched up. When I said, "yeah, the pain is getting pretty intense, we can just touch it up later", I didn't realize I'd be condemning myself to like 6 solid weeks of itching. I might put it off though since I have to do the whole underwater thing before the pools close. They open in June and close in August, how fucked up is that? I guess being in San Diego I got a bit spoiled for that, although it really doesn't make much sense considering it's hot as all get-out long before June, they could easily open them 2-3 months earlier. Oh well.

So here's the new arts (if you want to see bigger versions, go to http://goddessredd.deviantart.com ;

New icon (I'm not sure if the animation will play, but it's really cute :P )

A new pic of Redd and Vegeta, yay :D

Redd's not very subtle.

"If you tell anyone about this, I will gut you like a fish and eat your balls."

I guess Aia isn't very subtle either. xD

Redd's new design! I'm gonna change the bodysuit though, it actually came out a little TOO revealing.

Design for a demon.

Design for one of the twins Redd had with Virgil, and below him, another demon.

The poor woman's corset and other tales

So I am in the process of making what I've dubbed the "poor woman's corset". I found some cheap material at a local Joann's Craft Store that is closing and decided, hey, why not, let's learn how to make a corset. NOT AS EASY AS IT SOUNDS. Lol. Since I'm still not all that great at sewing I decided instead of wasting material, I'd just cut up some old jeans, spray it with hairspray and elmer's glue, shove some wire in it and see if I can't make it work. I do eventually want to learn how to make a corset the right way, but I'm also ridiculously lazy.

Well, laziness isn't entirely the reason. Even after looking at patterns and online tutorials for hours, the physics of it still confuses me. So I figured I'd make a throwaway one so I could get a feel for how it all works, then make a real one. It's drying right now (and the house stinks like hairspray, blech), but I suspect I need a higher grade of steel, something thicker that won't bend as easily, since the wire I used buckled when I tried it on and made nasty wrinkles. Not good.

In other news, it's coming down to the wire (er, no pun intended)...less than two weeks left and the hubby and I still don't have an apartment. I'm starting to panic a little. I really don't want to have to stay here much longer. He and I and the cats are crammed into one and a half rooms (the half-room being used as storage for things that would normally go in the kitchen, living room, etc) and it's getting pretty tiresome. Oh there's lots of apartments available, don't get me wrong. But very, very few of them want to allow a tenant with three animals. For some reason the general limit in this area is two. Go figure. As much as I'd love to get rid of Little Stink, I doubt anyone would want her, and she'd probably have to be put down. And I'm not going to kill that cat just to get an apartment, no sirree.

Other than that, not much going on. A little starved for human contact; I've had the voracious urge to do a photoshoot recently, but with the tat still healing I need to wait at least another week before I can get in the pool with it.

Oh crap, that reminds me, I'd better email Adrienne and Danielle and set a date for the betta fish shoot!

No pics today, sowwy. I'm lazy. :P

Tiger makeup experiment

Today was pretty boring...except that I got some new makeup, the Revlon Colorstay Liquid Eyeliner Pen, and I tried it out on an idea I had yesterday; makeup based off of a tiger. I'm really happy with it, actually! Here's some photos from today.

In progress;

And final;

Well here I am

I've tried various blogging utilities over the years but now that I've officially uninstalled Trillian with the promise to myself never to reinstall, I need some sort of outlet.

This will mostly be a braindump for everything that makes up my life - that's why I called it, "IMHO".

So! I'd better get right into it.

I got my makeup brushes today - I ordered (apparently from Hong Kong which explains why it took so long to get here) them a couple weeks ago to help my new interest in learning makeup artistry. They were pretty cheap (like $7-$9, I don't remember exactly) so I'm surprised at the product I got. They're really, really soft, they look sturdy, and I like the sort of carmelized crimson color of the handle. I don't know much about makeup brushes, so I have no idea if what I got is actually good or not, but we'll see. I also have no idea how to use them...but that's what the internet is for!


Speaking of makeup, I've been doing it on myself for years (only recently have I gotten any good though), but I never really had the chance to play with it on another human. Until yesterday! I met this girl, Adrienne, through Craigslist I think, she's a local teen who wants to model, weeks ago, and we finally got around to meeting yesterday. A local hairstylist was supposed to show up as well but she bailed. We were gonna set up for an underwater shoot I want to do soon (can't for the next few weeks due to my new tat, which needs to heal and STOP ITCHING), and I wanted to finalize the hair and makeup for it.


It. Was. A. Rush. Omg. I love doing makeup on other people. It came out pretty cool, but I still need practice.

I don't think I can use actual eyeshadow on her though; in the pool it would just melt. So I'm gonna go out today (after I'm done with this post actually) and go pick up some Ben Nye Magicolor bodypaint that I saw at a local party store. I also need to get veggies for the hubby, but that's beside the point.

Here is a picture of the makeup brushes;




















This is the makeup design (still a little amateurish, but the lighting killed a lot of the detail and I didn't want to use the flash...I'm photographer first :P), on Adrienne;





















Just another shot of the beautiful Adrienne :D;



















Aaaaaand a kitty to round off the pics. Kito was being so cute, and as soon as he saw my camera come out, he decided that it was time for a bath. How typical.;