Late again!

This post is late. Not because I didn't think of it, but because... Well...

I had a good day at the studio. J. informed me that, should I still need a job by the end of the month, I'd be hired as official studio slave. This would mean having actual health insurance. Enough income to survive on. Wowee.

Buoyed by this assurance, I worked on some fake nails. And some more. The detail brush was doing everything I wanted it to. Not all of the colors did, but that was because I didn't get suspicious of gel that turned from brown into green when worked on too long. I had gotten some fake nail tips for the fake finger (tips which didn't actually agree with the finger, but heck, what's life without a piece of plastic filed to a point catapulting itself at your face from time to time?) and something called 'filing protection'. The last is a thick, aerated tape that adheres to itself. There's no glue on it, but it's really wavy and bumpy, so I think it's more of a purely physical cohesion-adhesion thing that makes that happen. It's amazing. First of all, it spares my poor, banged up nails any more abuse. Second of all, you notice when you file on it. It takes the wind right out of your sails. Oh, and I used it to put a pattern on a fingernail by wrapping it around the back of my brush and applying gel with that. My sponge was soaked in cleaner and not co-operating. It worked.

Then I got this brilliant idea of making animal heads at the tip of nails. Okay, I'd seen it before on the internet, but not in the studio. It had to be worth a shot with gel, right? So I made a cute little ducky that made everyone laugh and a bunny rabbit that "looked like pikachu". J.'s comment on both of them was that they looked good, could I do a Super Mario?

Erm... I supposed. Except all images of Mario had flown right out of my head to be replaced by a pixelated, two-tone side view. Boo.

I had to wait for Boyfriend to come along to pick up his Wii which had arrived, demand he show me a Mario on his phone and then be faced with the problem of Boyfriend not being done with work yet. I had ten minutes to burn the image of Mario in my mind.

My recreation wasn't as detailed as the 3D image on Boyfriend's phone, but it was definitely Mario. It lacked a few features, but I'd done an extreme closeup of his face. I could pretend there was no room for sideburns and ears and a detailed moustache. And it's gel, not airbrushing. I can't do shadows.

Then I stuck around a bit. Sticking around paid off.

You see, S. had broken a nail. I don't know how S. and I. do it, but they seem to break nails the way I go through potato chips (when I have them). Maybe they have a competition going on, I don't know. She'd found time to file her nail down and put a tip on, but not to actually finish the nail. So when I commented on it and she said 'yeah, I should get started on that', I asked if I could try it. I knew the theory of all the steps, since she just had a pink tip with a stamp on it.

There was a moment of silence, but in the end she said 'sure'.

My filing has improved. Sort of. I didn't hit skin once, but S. kept telling me I was allowed to put some pressure on the file.

Gelling her up went quite easy. I got a bit of gel on her cuticles, but not irrepairably so. And she pointed it out to me before it was stuck in the machine. We discussed the merits of starting at the top or the bottom when painting on a colored tip. S. likes starting at the top, I end up going way too far when I do. So I draw on the bottom and color it in like a toddler, because that works for me and J. taught me that way.

The stamp was surprisingly easy, except S. didn't get it when I asked if she'd used the stamp vertically or horizontally. I checked with Boyfriend later, and I'd used real German words. For once, the fault lay not with me. But we figured it out, I put the polish on the stamping pad, scraped and BAM, perfect from the first time. Wait ten seconds to make sure it's really dry, top coat, harden, wipe, done.

J. would have taken maybe fifteen minutes in doing this. I took half an hour. The end result got valued as 'super' by J. and S. said, in all seriousness, that I could repair nails if necessary. Wowee.

When I got home, high on my victories of the day (Also, J. asked if I lost weight. I don't have scales, but maybe I have. Positive thinking!), the living room was covered in boxes and wires and games. Someone other than me had installed his Wii. Iggy doesn't have opposable thumbs. But I'm not naming names here.

On my desk, there was a case of Pokémon White. I'm not a big gamer, but I love the Pokémon Gameboy games. Boyfriend had managed to get it cheap and no longer needed his normal-sized 3DS, so... Yeah. I may have gone all sparkly-eyed at the prospect of catching me some pokemans.

I had, however, a splitting headache. So after quick dinner, I took a nap. I was rested after two hours, but I made the mistake of not putting on pajamas. The bedroom has been ice cold since the sunny days are over. I, in all my wisdom, had forgotten to close the window as well. I didn't come out until the temperature had risen enough for me to risk poking out my fingers, snatching my robe and bundling up before fleeing to the warmer living room. I had a blog to fill out.

Except... Pokémon. It wouldn't hurt to get just one badge, would it? No, of course not. It couldn't possibly. I found a walkthrough, put on some videos for the boring 'train until you drop' parts and started playing.

Then it was suddenly four in the morning and going to bed seemed like a better idea than blogging. I was late anyway.