Beary, the Jingle Bear

This is Beary, he is Stuart's jingle bear from the game Guild Wars.  Well, in actuality, he is just a polar bear with some bells attached to him.  Stuey and I made him out of regular printer paper with a polar bear papercraft pattern from Canon.  We modified couple places, but they are pretty minimal.  The pictures below show the progress we went through to make Beary.

Last but not least, below is a silly GIF of Beary who tried to drink some of the Wintersday tonics XD

- Mimi

Paper Flowers

Wah, I'm so lazy~  I have not blogged for a while even though I have collected so many topics to blog about.  Anyhow, since various holidays are approaching, I'm doing a tutorial on how to make some beautiful flowers out of construction paper.  These flowers can be used as holiday decorations as well as gifts.

Materials:
- Stiff paper (construction paper, card stock, scrapbooking paper...)
- Glue (I used the regular Elmer's while glue)
  Optional:
- hot glue
- toothpicks
- Glitter
- Wire
- Nail Polish
- Pearl/beads

There are many tutorials on the web, so don't worry if mine isn't very clear >.<;

This is version 1.  It is pretty easy to make, however, you have to release the flower so that it can loosen up a little bit after rolling.  The gluing process might be a little tricky, so it is good to use a toothpick to help apply it.

Once done, you can glue some glitter on to the edges to make it prettier, or even better, just apply some nail polish.  The picture below shows a black flower with pearl nail polish.

There are also a couple of variations to my method by cutting the paper differently:

Version 2 makes flowers with uneven edges (like the one below)

Version 3 makes flowers that also look pretty interesting: (this is made by Stuart)

Here's a comparison of version 1 and version 2:

Below are some that are made from patterned paper with pearls in the middle.  The stem is glued onto the flower with a glue gun.

That's all, enjoy making flowers!!!!!

- Mimi

Shock

Horrible things happen to people... I just learned that one of my best friends in high school was arrested for Involuntary Manslaughter, and I saw him couple days before the incident.  Life is very cruel to some people, and all I can do is hope the best for him.

And that's that...

-Mimi

Black Friday Shopping (or rather...the day after that)

  Black Friday was hectic, I went to the mall around 11am with my mother but the mall was way too crowded for me to buy anything.  So, I went to the mall again today with Stuey.  As expected, Forever 21 opened its door at Southpoint on Black Friday to make money off of poor girls like myself selling stolen brand designs.  Well, I have to say, it's freaking AWESOME!  I love clothing, and the more I can afford the merrier.  But, before I talk about things I hauled from F21, I have to talk about buying shoes for Stuey.
   Stuey doesn't like to buy things, well, not for himself.  He acquires on average one pair of shoes a year and wear until they are unbearable to look at anymore.  I absolutely love shoes and always feel bad for him because he wears the same shoes to death.  Today, when we stepped inside ALDO, I spotted some shoes for men that I really liked and bought it for him.  The first one is the VUTURO in khaki.  I like this pair because it is made out of real leather, stylish but also comfortable.  The same pair of shoes come in navy blue, which I didn't like quite as much because it will blend in with the blue jeans Stuey often wears.  Khaki green on the other hand is great in combination with many autumn colors.

The second pair I bought is the Ordando shoes in Dark Brown.  They were on sale with a 30% off of the original $100 price tag.  I REALLY like this pair of shoes because it is one of the softest men shoes I have ever touched!  XD  According to Stuey, they are extremely comfortable.  However, these shoes are not true to it's size, they run a lot bigger than the other ones.  (Stuart wears a 9.5, but he bought a size 8 because of the discrepancy.)  These shoes are more formal, but comfortable enough for casual wearing.  

Now on to F21.  The Triangle area always had a F21 in Crabtree Valley Mall, however, I have never liked it.  It is big, crowded and hard to find anything in.  The organization of the store made it a complete headache to browse and try on clothes.  The new store in Southpoint is smaller, two stories, and has no men's section.  It is still crowded, but much more organized, and with dressing rooms on both floors, the shopping experience is much less of a headache.  Here are some of my favorites that I took home with me...(well, Stuey bought them for me in return for the shoes >.>):

Heritage 1981 dress in Brick/Mint (This one was on display and I fell in love with it at the window)

Black dress with lace bodice and peterpan collar.

Floral dress with mesh sleeves.  The zippers are not great...probably going to break really soon.

Since my waist line is not nearly as nice as these models, the dresses look completely different on me.  They are also not nearly as short on me.  Although there were many dresses in F21, it was not easy finding ones that fit me well.  Here are some that I had no luck with:

Very cute dress on the model, but it was not flattering from the side and the soft fabric made it roll up easily.  

Another dress that I really liked was a white pleated one with lace bodice.  The dress had a fatal mistake where a super hard zipper was paired with soft chiffon fabric and resulted in very awkward behinds.  I couldn't find a picture of it on the internet Q_Q;  Oh well.  Of course there were other things, but since my memory is very limited, these were the only things I remembered.  

Hope all the shopping went well with my readers!!  XD

- Mimi 

Vintage inspired Fall (Thanksgiving!) nails

As promised, here's my Fall-vintage nail tutorial!  (I'm going to wear it for Thanksgiving...so it's my Thanksgiving nails >.>)

Nail polishes used:

OPI Top Coat and Natural Nail Base Coat

ORLY Instant Artist in Solid Gold, Sally Hansen in Sun Kissed, Essie's matte about you, and Sally Hansen's White On

Procedure:

Apply base coat (and make sure you take time to let it dry)

Optional: use tape to block out the places that you don't want to get painted

Two coats of Sally Hansen in Sun Kissed 

Apply matte about you (yes, I jumped on the bandwagon of matte nails.  This is soooo amazing!!!  It dries like how candle solidifies)

Take the tape off and clean the edges.  Then apply top coat only on the areas that are not painted. 

Next step is to make polka dots.  Since I'm cheap and don't want to buy a dotting tool...I just used the back of a round sewing pin.  

Take a piece of paper out and put a little bit of the nail polish on there so that you could dab the pin with it.  I think it's less messy this way.

Add gold line with the super thin tipped ORLY instant artist polish.  

AND you are done!

Enjoy~

- Mimi

Nails :D

Oh I love doing my nails!!  While it is definitely NOT the most relaxing thing in the world, it is lots of fun!!  So here's something I did for a more wintery theme:

Up close, you can see the blue gradating I made.  This is a very easy way to paint your nail, all you need is two kinds of glitter nail polish one in a lighter shade of the color you want and the other in a darker shade.  Apply the lighter shade once on the entire nail, and then a second coat on only half of the nail.  Lastly, put a little bit of the darker glitter on the edge of the nail to make the gradation more prominent.  No mushy diary today because they didn't really grow Q_Q;  However, a vintage-fall themed nail tutorial is coming up!!

P.S. Glitter nail polishes are always hard to get off, so it's good to use MONSTER HAND!! (aka foil- wrapped-nail-polish-remover-cotton-balls.)

-Mimi

Blue Crabs (Explicit content if you are an animal lover >.<)

Ummm...I think it is the season for crabs >.> at least that's what my mother has been telling me.  We paid a visit to Li Ming's Global Mart Saturday to grab some blue crabs for lunch ($2.99/lb).  We did not cook them immediately, instead, we left them out in the garage for one night and cooked them the next day.  Here's our encounter with one of the crabs:

Store-bought BLUE CRAB appeared!

Stuart used HYPNOSIS, but it failed.  

Blue Crab used CRABHAMMER, but Blue Crab missed.

Stuart used CLAMP!

Blue Crab fainted!

and became lunch...

So yeah, basically we steamed them while fresh (note, euphemism.)  

here's the big crab I had

ummm, lots of yummy roes!!!

The cooking process was rather easy, they were steamed for 15min after the water has boiled.  We made a dipping sauce out of rice vinegar, sesame oil, ginger, and sugar.  

Enjoy~

-Mimi