I Still Wish It Was Supanova Every Day - Part 2

Hope you all enjoyed the massive block of photos yesterday! Today I've just got a few more for you - my own cosplay pictures! I further tweaked my classic Catwoman outfit from Melbourne, and found the absolute perfect little ankle boots to complete it - unfortunately, and perhaps inevitably, I didn't actually end up getting any photos of the boots, but trust me, they were perfect.

In case you haven't seen it, this is the Catwoman costume I was going for - with slightly less leg, obviously.

Annoyingly, while a couple of people took my photo I've only been able to find one online, at the Costume Box Facebook page.

I Still Wish It Was Supanova Every Day - Part 1

Some of you might remember my mammoth post-a-thon around my trip to Supanova at Melbourne - well, strap yourselves in kids, cause I'm at it again!

Last weekend nerds, geeks, and fans of all shapes, shades and creeds took over the Olympic Showgrounds for the Sydney leg of the Supanova Pop Culture Expo. The Showgrounds are annoyingly difficult to get to, since the only train out there runs off a special loop that only departs from one particular station, but if you're taking public transport on the day there is an easy to way to make sure you're going the right way - look for the cosplayers! There's something endlessly amusing to me about how my fellow passengers slowly become more and more oddly outfitted the closer we get to the venue. Leaving Marrickville the Boy and I are often the only ones in cosplay, but when we change at Redfern we're usually joined by a couple of dozen more. By the time you get to the special Showground train it's cosplayers wall to wall, and it's magnificent!

Imagine you're just on your way to work, and this is suddenly your train station.
MARVELOUS.

World Falls Down - MckFresh Nail Attire Labyrinth Collection Review

 Welcome to the fourth post in my Week (and a bit) of Geek!

Today I have some delightfully geeky polishes to show you from Australian indie label MckFresh Nail Attire, inspired by the classic movie The Labyrinth. Jennifer Connelly's bookish,shy Sarah gave hope to millions of girls like me that one day we might be rescued from our tedious, ordinary lives and whisked away somewhere magical, where Goblin Kings did contact juggling for our amusement and everything is alive. That's before we even get into the confusing feelings David Bowie's giant codpiece as the sparkly Goblin King gave girls like me, that would take me YEARS to untangle. I STILL have a weakness for contact jugglers and boys with long hair.

This was MckFresh's first major collection and was quite a large debut, with 11 polishes in all; I'm just going to show you three so we're not here all week, but if you'd like to see the rest they are all available at the Etsy store. 

Janeway Has A Posse

Since we got together some four years ago now, Mr. Reluctant Femme and I have been working on converting each other to all the pop culture that the other previously didn’t like. He turned me around almost completely on Batman, taking me from a point of view where I thought the whole thing was quite ridiculous to a place where I not only know there was more than one Batgirl but I also have a favourite. I, in my turn, have turned him on to the awesomeness of (parts of) the X-Men comics through my unwavering and perhaps irrational loyalty to them through good and dreadful writers.

Art by Eddy-Swan on DeviantArt
Yes, I like Wolverine. No, I don't care what you think about that.

Loki's Lacquer Giveaway - THE WINNER

So I pushed the button to make Rafflecopter pull a name out of it's virtual hat, and the winner is.....

Sílvia Ferreira Carvalho!

Thanks SO much to everyone who entered - I really wish I could give you ALL a prize, which is probably why I shouldn't run competitions too often. The response to this has been absolutely overwhelming, and I hope you'll stick around even though I can't give you ALL free stuff.


 

Let's Talk Geek Chic Cosmetics

Welcome to the second installment of my Week of Geek!

Today I've got some exciting stuff for you from Geek Chic Cosmetics, who are an indie cosmetics company based in the US. Their cosmetics are all inspired by geektacular sources like Farscape. Star Trek, and Mass Effect, which is enough of a hook to get me on board. However, their products are also entirely cruelty free, and a large selection are vegan as well. Did I mention they're also really pretty? Because they are SUPER pretty. I've done a little review of the products I ordered from them for you, but first I thought you might like to get to know the people behind the products.

Geek Chic Cosmetics is run by a talented trio of geeks, Chantal, Deb, and Phil, and after being interviewed by sites like Kotaku and WoW.com they've been kind enough to give me a few minutes of their time.

Geek + Femme = Geektacular

It's coming up to the time of year when my geekiness burst forth full force - it's nearly time for the Supanova Expo in Sydney! As you might have gathered from my post about the Melbourne Supanova Expo, I get pretty darn excited about these pop culture expos. It's a chance to spend a couple of days in the company of people who get my jokes and like the same things I do, regardless of whether we actually know each other or not. For someone who is used to being regarded as the "weird" one, it's a blessed relief I look forward to every year. What does this mean for you, my dear readers? It means this is the start of a WEEK OF GEEK here at The Reluctant Femme!

LokisLacquerPalooza!

Today is the day! My blog namesake indie polish The Reluctant Femme has gone on sale today, and these little bottles of magic are selling fast, which makes me so incredibly proud I could just burst. I'm going to go ahead and assume you all want one - I mean, look at this, why wouldn't you?

Primed and Ready

I'd apologise for the terrible pun in the title, but I'm not sorry at all. I ADORE puns, the worse the better.

As you may have guessed, I've decided to do a little comparison post of some eye primers. I'm still not entirely convinced that a face primer under makeup is really necessary (especially since I almost always use BB cream rather than foundation) but since my little obsession with loose eyeshadow has started up I've discovered that under loose eyeshadow at least, primer is a must.

The Fifth Element - Emily de Molly polish and movie review

It's time again to talk about two of my favourite things at once - beautiful polish and awesome movies!

The Fifth Element is a captivating creation from Australian indie creator Emily de Molly, who has been criminally underrepresented in this blog so far. She releases so many breathtaking polishes that I've decided to make a conscious effort to showcase more of them. The Fifth Element is a great example of how unique a lot of Emily de Molly polishes are - there are a lot of indie polishes around that look similar to each other, or mainstream brands because realistically there are only so many ways base and pigments can be put together. But I've never seen anything like this, and when I first saw it I honestly wasn't sure it would really work. Somehow she's managed to balance the turquoise and the red absolutely perfectly so it comes together beautifully.

A very quick update

Firstly, thank you SO much for the absolutely overwhelming response to my little competition! I'm thrilled so many of you want to be a part of it, and I'm loving all your ideas for custom polishes.

I'd also like to offer a warm welcome to all my new followers - I know some of you will drop off after the competition is over, but I hope some of you stick around. I've been pretty quiet this week because I normally catch up on posts over the weekend, and last weekend I was down with a hideous flu. But I have a bunch of exciting ideas all lined up, so I will hopefully be able to get back up to speed soon.

Finally, just one more reminder about my limited edition polish coming soon from Loki's Lacquer, and then I promise I'll shut up about it for a little while. Due to the pre sale interest we've gotten, Tara has decided to make The Reluctant Femme available for 15 days, starting from the 15th of June. Each bottle will be numbered, and come the 30th it will be gone FOREVER.

And with that, I'm going to get back to putting together some posts of substance!

A Very Special Post

I've been sitting on the news I'm about to reveal in this post for over a week now, and I gotta tell you, it's been KILLING me. I'm SO excited to tell you about the two incredibly exciting things I have for you today, I hardly know where to start.

You might have noticed that I'm a big fan of Australian indie nail polish label Loki's Lacquer - I've posted about their polishes a few times here before. A little while ago they released an extremely limited run of some amazing duochrome polishes with scattered holographic particles in them, and I was lucky enough to get my hands on two of them before they sold out. As far as I know, Loki's Lacquer is not planning on ever doing another run of these.

Flakie Frenzy!

Because Australia lags horribly behind on cosmetics releases sometimes, we only got the Revlon Moon Candy polishes in stores very recently. If you haven't heard of them, they're a neat little idea - two little bottles in one tube, where one is the plain base colour and the other is pretty foily flakies to go over the top. I think they're stretching a bit to call it "nail art" as they do on the packaging, but I'm aware my definition of what constitutes "nail art" is probably skewed by all the amazing nail artists I follow online. Regardless, they're still quite pretty, and very easy to use.

Girls On Film

I watch a lot of TV. Like…a lot. It’s not the ONLY thing I do at home, but compared to other hobbies, I do put a LOT of hours into it. According to a Roy Morgan survey done on behalf of Free TV Australia (the body that represents all the free to air stations in Australia), on average my fellow Australians are watching 20 hours a week.

Loose Eyeshadow for Absolute Beginners

Since showing off how stunning the Femme Fatale Cosmetics loose eyeshadows are, I've had a couple of people ask me for a tutorial on how to use them. Since these were the first loose eyeshadows I ever used myself, it's taken me a little while to smooth out the kinks in my technique to the point where I feel comfortable giving advice, but now I think I can at least offer something.

I've taken a HUGE step for me and actually made a little video showing exactly how I put my eyeshadow on, step by step. This was...nervewracking to say the least. But there are little things like how to smoosh on the eyeshadow that I feel don't really come across in pictures, so I gave it a shot.