5 days, 5 stories, 5 photos. Day 5

On Sunday I, like one well-known deity, rested ;P That basically means I played on the computer for the whole day. My chosen game of the day was Banished, a simulation game where you build and manage a medieval settlement.

There's only two pictures because the rest would have looked very similar and been boring ;D So just a loading screen and cows in the rain.

5 days, 5 stories, 5 photos. Day 4

I wanted to sleep in, but Nivek the kitty disagreed and kept patting my face with his paw until I got up and gave him food. Sneakily I went back to bed afterwards, to just enjoy not being in a hurry and chat with my other half.

For breakfast my other half made banana pancakes, delicious! This was a first try, so they crumbled a bit, but the taste was excellent. Especially with whipped cream on top ;P I think our poor blender got fried, it made weird noises and started to smell like burning. That still didn't stop the pancakes from happening!

The cats would have wanted some bananas too.

I went out to visit a flea market, because I was still searching for a back-up dress or a top for the gala on Tuesday, just in case the dress I ordered from the UK didn't arrive in time. This time I was in luck, I bough two purple tops that look like they can work well with most of my skirts. I also bought a worn down black box for my other half. He had mentioned in the morning that he liked the way Adam's house in the movie Only Lovers Left Alive was decorated, and the box looked like it would fit into Adam's house great.

A box that could be Adam's and two kitties trying to decide whose turn it is to sit in it.

Back home I stopped by the attic to get some table legs so I could set up a table for some crafty business. Laura and Niina came to help with the decorations for next week's Bella Morte. We cut out plenty of bats to hang on the walls of the venue and checked that all the electric candles had full batteries. Afterwards we has some tea and found ourselves feeling a little hungry.

Bats and more bats.

After asking if another friend wanted to join we headed out for a meal at a tex mex restaurant. I was thinking of taking a picture of my fried tofu with barbecue vegetables, sweet potato purée and blue cheese dip, but accidentally ate it all before remembering to take out the camera phone. I guess it proves it was delicious ;P

Then I played a little, since Godus has an update. Sadly it caused the game to crash, so I didn't try it out for long. Guess I should restart it once again. To prep myself for bed, I watched the newest episode of Game of Thrones and then headed to bed.

5 days, 5 stories, 5 photos. Day 3

On Friday I worked from home again to continue on reading. Because I'm an adult I could indulge in eating a huge chocolate chip muffin for breakfast.

Reading is much better with cats. They keep you warm. Or steal your seat when you turn your back.

I spent my lunch hour shopping, because the department store right next to our home has a huge sale. I bought some cheese, movie tickets, hair spray and chocolate kisses.

Right when my work day ended, the delivery guy came to deliver a package from Zooplus. My other half ordered to new litter boxes for the kitties, so the box was huge which excited the kitties to no end.

HUGE box. Soon full of cats.

I popped out to go to H&M and a few other shops, because I had hoped the postman would bring my new dress but he didn't. There's a gala next week with a tricky dress code, I spent ages trying to find a suitable dress, and now if it doesn't arrive on Monday, I have to come up with something else to wear. Sadly I found nothing I liked.

Back home I ate and read some blogs. I wrote a few pages for an essay that's due on Monday and looked at my thesis essay but decided to read more before working on it.

Me after finally finding some popcorn. I was afraid the place didn't have any left,
and seeing a movie in a theatre simply needs popcorn.

In the evening my other half and I went out to see Only Lovers Left Alive. The theatre was almost empty, apparently late shows don't draw much people. I really liked the film, it was pretty and didn't explain the world or the characters too much, there was lots of room for imagination. We walked home after midnight and headed to bed.

5 days, 5 stories, 5 photos. Day 2

Thursday. I was working from home since there weren't many people at the office. There's a flu going around. My current task is to study for the next step, since it's a thing I don't have previous experience on, so I'm working my way through a 700-page book on the subject. Reading is best done at home, where I can reward myself with ice cream for good progress and lounge on the sofa ;P

The postman came and brought my new hair brush and a packet with gold toned jewellery parts. The golden pieces are for the burlesque jewellery I'm making from two Indian wedding jewellery sets. I usually work with silver toned stuff, so I had to order the parts to match the rich gold shade of this work.

Doesn't the hair brush packet look a bit like something that could be tattooed in the lower back area? ;D

Rafael asked me to share a link to his and Arttu's podcast, since they are featured on a page called Beards & Bullshit, go on and click to listen to their stuff!

After work was finished, my other half and I cleaned the hydroponic system we have for growing chillis. It had been waiting for some time to get attention, the lamp frames had decayed and broken, so the only plant growing there didn't get much light. We moved the system to the window sill to have some natural light and planted new seeds. The seeds themselves were a gift from a friend in Helsinki, whose birthday party we visited a few weeks ago. Thank again Johanna, I'm eager to see how the seeds grow!

I made the name tags with a Dymo machine and plastic cut from the hair brush package.
These are Hungarian Hot Wax and Demon Red varieties.

In the evening I went out with Nina. We usually go out for a beer every week, but it's been so busy that there's been a pause in our beer-drinking-schedule. This time we unusually went to Klubi for an event, because they had a few burlesque performances for a very reasonable price of two euros.

Me and my beer.

Other friends has also come to see the performances, so we had a larger party. Good thing we came early and got a table with a nice view to the stage!

This is Claudia A. Noire, it was her first performance ever and went great! Lovely moves and a lovely lady :)

There would have been a band playing after the performances, but both Nina and me had work in the morning, so we headed home. I went straight to bed with only a tiny stop at the computer to check Facebook.

An extra picture of Möttönen on the couch!

5 days, 5 stories, 5 photos. Day 1

Jenni challenged me to post five stories about five consecutive days with five pictures, what a fun challenge! I modified it a bit, since I like pictures more than text. Here's day number one, Wednesday.

Woke up. Put on mascara. Went to work. Came home to quickly snack on a delicious muffin before heading out to do the final check on the venue of Club Bella Morte that's happening on the 18th day. I counted how many bats I need to decorate the walls and how many tables there are so I can check the batteries of the trusted electric candles in my stash.

This us at Doris!

I used a picture of a stone angel I took at the Südfriedhof in Leipzig for the poster.

Cat feeding time!

Headed back home to take photos of bones for the clothing print design project with Rogue by Tiina Ulkuniemi. Took photos, shooed cats away from bones. Then some work with Photoshop for a few hours. When I get into the flow I can stay glued to the screen for hours, so I'm glad I live with an excellent cook who takes care that everyone in the apartment gets to eat. My other half served a delicious steak meal which I ate while writing a blog post on the print designs.

Mörkö was very interested in the lamp I took home to wait for the club.

Bones.

After writing the blog post I brewed some tea and headed to bed afterwards. Nana slept under the blanket with me, until she deemed my other half's side better and crawled there.

Working on Print Designs

I've been brewing ideas for the prints for Rogue I mentioned in a previous post about my current projects. Today, I finally had the time to try out a technique I had been pondering on using, and in my opinion it worked wonders! I'm really pleased with the results.

Bambi & Kitty Kat are my working titles for these two ;P

Here's how they came to be:

I took a large sketch pad with a black cover (which I thought I had protected from cat hair but at which I had miserably failed) and collected all the bones and skulls I have. There's a box of chicken bones I had cleaned up thinking I'd make jewellery from them. So far I've only made spine earrings for myself and the other bones have been sitting in the box. The deer horns are from a Lithuanian seller on eBay. I got a batch of three to use as props when taking photos of jewellery and to use in a Halloween costume a few years ago. The cat skull is actually made of resin, and not a real thing. Nevertheless, the cats apparently disagreed and dropped it from my desk last night, breaking one of its eye sockets, which I had to fix later in Photoshop. 

I arranged the bones, skulls and horns into sort of still lifes and took photos directly above, all the while keeping the cats away with my foot ;P They were pretty interested in the chicken bones!

The last step was to work some magic in Photoshop, and after a few hours the print designs started to take form. The silhouette on the Bambi design is a cutout I did when I was testing how to use shrink plastic in my jewellery. After cutting it out I understood that I can never get such detail in the frail plastic which tends to split when cut into small shapes. I still kept the cutout since it was pretty, and now finally there was a use for it! Since it was cut by hand it has a lovely quality of not being absolutely symmetric, which I think fits the style well. After all, the bones are mismatched and there isn't a deer on earth with symmetric horns. I wanted to keep this irregularity as a part of the designs instead of mirroring parts to keep them matching.

Although the prints are quite ready, I'm still hoping to get some feedback and plan on working on them still. The set should have one more design, which would fit a mini skirt, so it will be of different proportions than these two. I'm very pleased with these ones currently, but I always sleep on things before I finally deem them finished or not. A good night's sleep gives a new perspective on things!

Femme Fatale and Swept Bangs Look

My make-up look from the weekend. I wore Femme Fatale shadows, black liner in a fish-tail shape and bright red long-lasting lipstick by Manhattan. I'm starting to like the swept bangs, I'm not sure if I should cut them back to the straight cut I usually have. What do you think? I have a hair dresser's appointment next week so I'm open for suggestions!