Zombie Apocalypse Etsy Treasuries

With Halloween in mind, two creative Etsians have cooked up a couple of fabulous zombie-themed treasuries.  Both were kind enough to include my Blood-Splattered Pharma Bracelet.

Do you have what it takes to survive the zombie apocalypse?  Find out by viewing these treasuries!

 Come the Zombie Apocalypse I Shall Be Fantastically Kitted Out

Lots of hilarious items here – the zombie repellent soap and eye chart crack me up.

Prepare for the End: Z-day Kit pt.3

Thanks for viewing!

~ Allison ~

Orly Rock the World + Sally Hansen Salon Effects Nail Polish Strips

This is Orly Rock the World, from the Mineral FX collection.  I just found this at my local Sally Beauty Supply 2 weeks ago.  It has a deep plummy red base with some major gold foil, giving it a strong duochrome effect.  This seems to be a close relative to OPI It’s My Year, although it looks like the gold in RTW is much warmer and it could have a darker plum/red base.  I might do a closer comparison later.   I’m wearing Rock the World here with an accent finger of Sally Hansen Salon Effects nail polish strip.  The style is called Laced Up.

This was my first time using the Sally Hansen nail polish strips, even though I’ve amassed quite a little collection of them.  They are very easy to use and last a long time.  Here, I’d been wearing my strip for 4 days.  Aside from a tiny tip wear it looks perfect!  I have a few suggestions to make application easier and neater.  First, hold the strip up to your nail and trim it with scissors before applying.  You want it to be slightly longer than your actual nail, so you have a little extra to wrap underneath the nail for added security.  Also, I found that rubbing the strips between my hands helped warm them up and mold better to my nails.  Get the strip as close to your cuticle as possible, so when your nail grows out you won’t have a giant gap.  You’ll want to add a top coat (I used Seche Vite) because otherwise the strip finish is kind of flat and dull.  Finally, you can easily polish another color on top if you don’t want to remove the strip yet.  I did this and it helped the top layer of polish last extra long.  However, it also made for really frustrating removal!  I used acetone-based remover and soaked each nail briefly to loosen up the tough bedrock layers of polish, then scrub scrub scrubbed with my cotton ball.

I can’t wait to show you more Sally Hansen nail polish strips soon!  Especially the Halloween designs, which I’m flipping over.

~ Allison ~

Two Sinful Colors Greens

Here is a comparison of two greens by Sinful Colors.  I got these at my neighborhood Rite Aid for about $1.99 a bottle.

Show Me the Way

What a stunning color!  Sinful Colors Show Me the Way is a golden green with a glass fleck finish.  It is so alive and glowy!  I used 3 coats here.  Although the nail line is pretty visible in these photos, it wasn’t in real life.

HD Nails

HD Nails is a cooler-toned green pearl. Application was buttery smooth.  This is three coats.

This one really comes alive in bright sunlight.  I added black tips, too, with Wet N Wild Creme Black.

~ Allison ~

Essie Mesmerize

Essie Mesmerize is a deep medium blue creme.  What a great name for a nail polish, although I would imagine a holographic or duochrome nail polish to be more mesmerizing.  Anyway, this baby dried extremely glossy, almost like a jelly.  This works great for both summer and autumn, IMO.  This is two coats.  I’d say the first picture is the most color-accurate.

~ Allison ~

Another Custom Order: Heart Defect Necklace

Tonight I’m bringing you a peek at another custom order I did a few months back.  Forgive my gushing, but my customers are so creative.  I am fascinated with the cool ideas they bring to me.  I’m honored to help make those ideas a reality by creating a completely one of a kind, memorable piece of wearable art.

A woman had emailed me about making a special necklace to honor her young son, who has a very rare congenital heart defect called a vascular ring of the right aortic arch.  The heart’s vascular ring pinches the trachea and esophagus which can inhibit breathing and swallowing.  I understand it’s very rare, with only 1 in 100,000 people suffering from this diagnosis.  Starting with my classic anatomically correct heart, this is what we came up with together.

I don’t know much about anatomy, so it was quite a challenge to match the medical pictures I had found while minding the physical properties and limitations of polymer clay.  Making this necklace also reminded me, yet again, how brilliant and miraculous our bodies are.  At any given moment our bodies are carrying out thousands (millions?) of mind-boggling and invisible processes to keep us alive, and yet we often take this for granted.

To my delight my customer loved it, and I hear her son’s pulmonologist got a kick out of it as well, LOL!  Believe it or not this isn’t my first heart defect piece.  I am glad that this unusual but lovely little niche found me!

Thanks for reading,

~ Allison ~