Knowing your Nose

I've got something a little bit different for you today - my very first ever guest post! The author of today's post is Sam, a fascinating lady who's been globe trotting as long as I've known her, and really should write more often than she does. I've been prodding her to write something for me for a little while, and after having surgery on her nose for sinus issues, she's very kindly put some thoughts together on what her new nose means to her.


Two weeks ago I had surgery on my sinuses and my nose.  As a result I was adorably helpless, and this made me miserable. 

I have never aspired to be a quirky supporting character in the story of a man's life, but rather a walking, breathing person of my own.  But I happen to have been a long-term relationship with a 'real-adult' so while I resent the idea, the quirky supporting character descriptor  may not actually be that far off.  I often feel as if I am not a 'real adult' and that I am faking it.   It's hard to feel fiercely independent when you lived with someone who is so ridiculously capable.  I sometimes think that if I was going to write about my experiences in our relationship I would call it 'Being Lois Lane'. This fear of being a supporting character is something I carry with me most of the time in my everyday life.

Fly Me To The Moon - Introducing Moonstone Polish!

The Australian indie polish scene is absolutely EXPLODING right now, which on the one hand is awesome, but on the other hand is turning out to be really rather unfortunate for my wallet. Happily, the lovely lady behind newcomer Moonstone Polish was kind enough to send me some of her lovely goodies to try!

Moonstone Polish is the brainchild of a very enterprising young lady from the Central Coast, Caitlin Vine. The name of the company is apparently a reference to a commonly used ingredient in potions in the Harry Potter universe, since mixing polish is pretty similar to mixing potions. Caitlin sent me three potions polishes to try, and I'm really very impressed by the quality she's producing right from her very first collection.

Radioactive was the one I pulled out of the package to try first, because I'm always going to be a sucker for a good purple. And this is a VERY good purple. It's described by the creator as a "soft" violet, but to be honest there's nothing soft about this polish to my eyes - and I LOVE it. This is going straight in my "makes me feel like Molly from Neuromancer" pile along with my Color Club holographics.

Three coats alone, in my trusty lightbox

From The Depths - Pretty Serious Crystal Lake Review

I haven't gotten as many Halloween posts in this month as I would like, so let's see how many I can pump out in the next week shall we?

Pretty Serious Cosmetics is run by die-hard horror fans, so I was pretty darn excited to see their Halloween collection this year. As it turns out, they actually went pretty crazy with the Halloween themed polishes this year - there are actually two collections! Till Death Do Us Party is monster/zombie wedding themed, and I'll be showing you one of them later. The other collection is called The Killer Fangirls, inspired by classic slasher film villains, and that's what today's post is all about.

The clever cookies at Pretty Serious chose three images out of a series by artist Leigh Young, created polishes inspired by these awesome images, and have released them with a signed trading card of each image. Leigh drew the logo and all the incidental art for Pretty Serious, and I'm a such a fan of her work I seriously considered buying the whole collection just for the cards.

Image courtesy of Pretty Serious

It's Time To Squash The Bug

(Because a lot of outside material I've used for this post will be triggering in terms of trans phobia, hate speech, and violent threats, I've linked them instead of putting in screenshots. Please don't click through if you feel these links might be harmful to you)

I'm going to get into some pretty heavy feminist politics today, so while I know some of you are tempted to flick past this entry, I'd ask that you stay and hear me out, at least for a little while. This is super important stuff, and the whole point of this post is to try and spread information about some of the heinous shit going on out there in the name of feminism to people who might not be aware.

A lot of my readers will already know a lot of what I'll be writing out here, so consider this a primer that you can link to people who ask what the hell you're on about when you talk about TERF's. But if you're one of those people who tries to stay out of politics, to stay out of "Capital F" Feminism, I'd ask that just this once, you listen for a minute. I promise there will be more pretty pictures later - but today I want to get serious.

Antipodean Beauties - Avant Garde

This is actually last Monday's theme, but I like to think I made up for my lateness in quality of effort. I was pretty damn excited by the theme for this week - I love avant garde art, and I was determined to try and do something out of my comfort zone, beyond what I would normally assume I am capable of. Avant garde is all about pushing boundaries after all!

I was a little torn as to what exactly to do for this challenge, until I was lucky enough to see Dave McKean's very avant garde performance Nine Lives at the Opera House as part of the Graphic festival. I've been a fan of Dave McKean's artworks since I first saw them on the cover of The Sandman, probably my favourite graphic novel series of all time. I find his obsession with tactile textures, uneven surfaces, shapes that aren't quite right, and images that aren't quite there endlessly fascinating, and in a lot of ways I wish my paintings were more like his.

Space Oddity

I've been reading The Beheld again, which means inevitably, I have far too many thoughts running around in response to Autumn's most recent post to fit in a comment field - which means you guys get them all, you lucky things!

(Incidentally, if you're not reading The Beheld, you really should. It doesn't update as often as it used to because the author is in the middle of writing a book, but it's always worth a look. I don't always agree with Autumn's point of view, but she has the most delicious brains and over thinks everything in the most delightful way)

Autumn's most recent post was about her experiences moving in with a partner; how that's effected her perception of public and private space, and how that in turn has effected her beauty regime. You can read all her thoughts over at the blog, but my thoughts and experiences are so different I felt like they really deserved their own post. I totally agree with her observations that the amount of primping and "beauty work" women do in various spaces is very closely connected to how public or private we consider that space to be. If you're headed somewhere you consider to be public, you're much more likely to, for example, stop and put your hair up or change your shirt. If you're somewhere you consider private, you're less likely to be concerned about how what you're wearing looks, and just go with what's most comfortable.

Of course all women look this cute just bumming around at home.

Are You Scared of the Dark? Pretty Serious Poltergeist Puddle Review

Getting back to my overall Halloween type theme I've got going this month, I wanted to show you a polish from Pretty Serious's last Halloween collection. They do have a new one out this year, and I do have a review coming up, but I wanted to take a little trip back in time and cast some much deserved light on this older collection that is still available, and still well worth getting your mitts on.

Poltergeist Puddle is a really gorgeous purple, with hints of a slight pink duochrome shimmer. It reminds me of a purple version of Galaxy Invader - a colour that seems relatively plain on the surface, but that actually has a lot of depth and a bit of a foily shimmer to it as well.

Hide And Seek

When I started this blog, I intended to do more outfit posts. I'd looked at some of the stuff people were putting up, and while a lot of them were WAY more stylish than anything I ever put together, it seemed simple enough. Put on some nice clothes, take some pictures, list where you got everything, boom, a whole post! Even better, just by being the size I am and putting pictures of my body on the internet, I felt like I was striking a little itty bitty blow for body acceptance every time I did it. I figured even if the pictures that came out weren't the most flattering of me ever taken, that was okay, because I was still contributing to a diversity of image available for women to look at when trying to determine if their body is "okay". Yes, my head told me. This is a Good Thing, and an Easy Thing, and let's do it.

Antipodean Beauties - Red

Hurrah! I managed another AB challenge! I'm pretty proud of myself. The theme this week was "Red", and since I knew that everyone was going to go for red lips, I initially tried to do a red eye look. I hear it's "on trend" or something, but it just make me look like I had a nasty infection, so I scrapped that and went for red lips as well. BUT, for flavour, I decided to do a whole red outfit.

Femme Fatale Cosmetics Presents: Aussie Indie Emporium

I've blogged here before about how awesome the Femme Fatale brand polishes themselves are, and also about the fantastic overseas indies they're now stocking. But did you know they're also stocking a wide range of our lovely Aussie indie polishes as well?

This might seem kind of redundant, until you take a look at just how much postage costs even with Australia. Australia Post, kind and generous souls that they are, charge a minimum of $7 per parcel, which doesn't seem like much until you start ordering from a couple of places at once. I, for example, being the Aussie indie junkie that I am, will often order from three different brands. I only pay 7-8 dollars postage to each one, but it adds up to nearly $25 all up just to get the damn polish to me. Femme Fatale, however, have come up with a solution to this annoying conundrum, by stocking a huge variety of popular Aussie indies all in the one place. This means you can throw them in with all the other lovelies from Femme Fatale, without incurring a chunk of postage for every bottle. I think it's a brilliant idea, and Femme Fatale were kind enough to provide me with some sample of the Aussie indies they're currently stocking.

Rocky Horror Nail Show Part 3 - Loki's Lacquer Science Fiction Double Feature Collection

At last, we come to the last part of my little showcase for Loki's Lacquer's Rocky Horror themed indie polish collection, Science Fiction Double Feature. I've only got two polishes left to show you, so I'll just have to make up the extra space with extra anecdotes - which I'm sure you'll all just HATE.

Time Warp and Science Fiction Double Feature

Rocky Horror Nail Show Part 2 - Loki's Lacquer Science Fiction Double Feature Collection

Welcome to the second installment of my little fanfest dedicated to Rocky Horror and Loki's Lacquer!
Here are the three polishes we'll be looking at in between my rambling reminiscing.

From left to right, we have 274306 (cookies for anyone who knows this reference off the top of their head), Even Smiling Makes My Face Ache, and Say Hello to Oblivion.

Rocky Horror Nail Show Part 1 - Loki's Lacquer Science Fiction Double Feature Collection

I am so SUPER, totally excited to show you guys this collection. I actually "used my connections" for the first time ever and bullied  begged Tara from Loki's Lacquer to sell me a set before they were officially released just so I could get my hands on them sooner. You see, I am what they call a Rocky Tragic.

You've probably seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show, or at least heard of it. It's had the longest continuous release in history, largely due to good old fashioned midnight screenings where fans show up in costume and shout agreed upon funny lines at the screen in between (and over) dialogue. At some screenings, they have a cast of people acting out the movie as well, and I was part of one of these casts for three years. Every single Friday night I would put on my neon satin button up shirt and bow tie, I would sing and scream and do The Time Warp, and I fucking LOVED IT. I met wonderful, weird, amazing people and gained so much confidence that I don't think I ever would have gotten any other way.

Funny thing is, being a part of something like that never really leaves you. I was showing these polishes to a friend who was also in the cast, and between us we just started reciting great chunks of the movie and callbacks. We just can't help ourselves. Whenever I see people doing the Time Warp the "wrong" way (there is a dance that was popular in clubs, and the dance they actually do on the screen, and they are actually quite different) I get all twitchy. I can't watch the movie without muttering the callbacks under my breath, and despite having seen the movie so many times I've seriously lost count, there are sections of dialogue and lyrics I don't actually know the original words for because I always shouted callbacks over them.

Needless to say, I have a lot of feelings about Rocky Horror. So I'm going to regale you with tales of my multicoloured, cross dressing past, in between the pretty pictures. Science Fiction Double Feature is a collection of 8, so to stop the length of this post spiralling wildly out of control, I'm going to split it into three posts - which I guess is a way of saying if you don't give a damn about Rocky Horror at all, maybe go somewhere else this week.

Cuticle Balm Showdown - Powder Perfect versus Rainbow Honey

As I mentioned in my last post, the lovely people at Femme Fatale Cosmetics sent me a delightful little package of goodies to review for them. As well as a selection of foreign and local indie polishes, they also sent me a cuticle balm from Rainbow Honey to try. I was pretty darn pleased with this, because I've heard all sorts of good things about it, and since I got another cuticle balm from Powder Perfect recently, I've been doing a side by side comparison. The most obvious difference between these two is that one is a stick, and the other is in a little pot. For some people, a stick is FAR more convenient, especially if they have long nails and don't want to end up with a ton of product under your nails from trying to get it out of a pot. However, I personally tend to put on cuticle balm with a little eyeliner brush or a cotton bud, so the packaging actually doesn't make that much difference to me. So I decided to take a closer look at the ingredients, side by side, to try and determine which is superior.