New masks

[merimask]

As promised, some pictures of my new masks.

They're not really "new", since I do these all the time.  I have a basic "half-mask" pattern that I trace out on the leather.  Then, with a stylus, I etch a dragon onto one side of the mask (most often with the wing sticking out beyond the edge 'cause I just like it that way), and then I cut out and carve the whole thing.  Usually, I do the mask in black and they look like this:


...but I felt like getting colorful so I did the blue & gold mask above, as well as these two:


I'm curious to see what people think of them.  I'll find out next week in Kalamazoo, I guess.

In other news, I am SO happy that our nation's multi-billion dollar Homeland Security Act has protected us from...Meatwad.  Way to go!  Yeah, I guess if you squint and tilt your head a little, the 'Lite-Brite" display of a Moononite flipping the bird might look like a bomb.  *sigh*  Maybe I'd be more inclined to be outraged by it all if the freaking displays hadn't been out in public for weeks and weeks...I guess they SUDDENLY looked bomb-like on Wednesday (wednesdays will do that to ya...more people don tinfoil hats on wednesdays than on any other day of the week...it's true!).  What's next, exploding Wile E Coyote displays?    Beware packages that look like HUGE anvils with "ACME" printed on the sides!  We need to coin a new term for this phenomenon; "Cartoon-Terrorism".

And OMG if Sessoumaru dies I am going to be monumentally pissed-off.  It'll cause a great disturbance in The Force...almost as if millions of fangirls "squeeee!" all at once, and are silenced.  Takahashi (as I was pointing out last week) has a penchant for using "one word" titles for the chapters where characters are killed off.  "Wind" for Kagura, "Light" for Kikyo, "Void" for poor little Kanna.  I swear if I see that next week's title is something like "Pride" I am just NOT going to read it.  *shakes head*

Comments

[golden-meliades.livejournal.com]

I take my eyes as proof that I am non-conformist right down to my genetics :) Green is the rarest eye colour in the world...and grey is the second rarest, lol.

Yellow. Well...I don't know if I have a 'lacy network', but I do have a lot of what I call 'pear coloured' flecks through the iris. (Though absolutely cannot see them unless you are two inches from the mirror.) They're an almost clear, very pale yellow...like pear flesh, nearly. Kinda...cream. My sister calls them 'crystals' and claims they are responsible for my multi-coloured eyes. (All you have to do is look at a photo of me. My eyes can look pale silver grey, smoke grey, jade, pine, or blue...or any combination in between, including aqua. The only colour they NEVER appear to be is brown.)

I lub a rich purple. It makes my eyes look evergreen. BUT...I am pleased to say that I have never claimed that my colour shifts 'with my mood', which is what a lot of other 'shifty' folks claim. :) That's just not possible! With your clothing or the light around you, yes, but NOT your mood. :/

Green is apparently the colour that looks the most different in different lights. And grey is the lightest eye colour (according to Wikipedia) so it would reflect more colour, too. We're just doomed to be colour-shifty, with a blend like this.

I do my hair 'ultraviolet black'. It'd be awesome if I didn't have to dye it that colour...if it'd just change on it's own...

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Grr, I can't seem to find any pictures of my own that are sharp enough to show what I'm talking about, so have a look at this instead -- see those lighter stringy bits layered over the darker base color? Imagine the stringy bits are spread out a bit more sparsely, and range from a very pale shade like the pear-flesh yellow you describe on the outer bits to a slightly deeper gold where they converge around the pupil, and the base layer underneath is like sage, and you've got the picture.

As for dye, I generally stick with stuff on the red/violet end of the spectrum, which works really well with the eyes and my odd skintone -- when I'm not going for the blatantly unnatural true purples, reds and burgundies can often end up looking more natural, and flattering, than my natural blonde shade ever did. Black just doesn't work, though, much as I wish it would...but boy oh boy, do I hear merimask on the not-fun of light roots! Blue-black with platinum roots is, ah, not an experience I'd care to repeat.

[golden-meliades.livejournal.com]

That looks a fair bit like my sister's eye, with the flame like shape of the colouring...hers are a brownish-yellow green. (hazel, obviously). Mine have no brown at all...and they're lighter than that, by a little, because the grey in my eyes is a very pale grey.

You know what? I DO have a picture of my eye, somewhere...

http://pics.livejournal.com/golden_meliades/gallery/00039q9c

There we go. Only took a minute. :) As you can see...I have nearly white coloured 'flecks', but not like that picture you have. In natural light, the green in my eyes frequently looks rather blue...but I can make them look as green as heck, with the right hair/shirt/lighting. Or they can go pure grey...they're just freaky eyes, that's all, especially since they're slightly oversized. :/

[golden-meliades.livejournal.com]

PS: I have an odd skin tone, too...looks good with almost every colour, even orange. I have very pale skin with a distinctly yellow undertone...not blue or pink. But there is a little of both blue AND pink there...yellow just dominates. Maybe we really ARE twins.

My hairdresser has told me multiple times I'd look great as a blonde but I like being brunette/redhead. I too look horrible in black hair...but lighten it by even one shade, and I'm okay. :)

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Ha, and the freaky skintone is ALMOST but not quite similar as well -- very very pale, with a definite yellow undertone, but a bit of pink as well -- no blue, though, unless veins count. I can wear some warmer tones but anything too far towards yellow/orange shades tends to make me look jaundiced, and before I started dying over the blonde I tended to look quite sallow without makeup.

Separated at birth?

[golden-meliades.livejournal.com]

Blue is my faintest colour, for sure...sometimes I'm not even sure I have it. But I look fine in orange and pale yellow...bright yellow, not so good, because I'm yellow to begin. :)

Is that your eye? It IS a very similar shade to mine :) Very different shape, though, almost Asian-looking.

What does 'smillaraaq' mean? Is it Inuit or something? (I only guess Inuit because it sounds vaguely Inuit and you have a native-looking icon. Um, not the one used immediately above, of course.)

Seems like our colouring is very similar, anyway. I don't suppose you have an oval face with a small 'pixie' chin, large bones, and very long, thin fingers? That'd just be too freaky.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's me, epicanthic fold and uncreased/single upper lid and all. The LJ handle comes from the title character of a novel by Peter Hoeg -- her name is a portmanteau of the Danish "smile" and the Greenlandic Inuit "millaraq" which is said to translate to something like "little humming one". Smilla Jaspersen is an utterly fascinating narrator -- half-Danish/half-Greendlandic and all prickly. As a similarly prickly halfbreed from the other side of the Bering Strait, well, I identify with her on a lot of levels.

And, hmmm, oval face with the predictable native cheekbones to go with the eyes, but unremarkable chin; very broad hipbones and shoulders, but fairly small-boned in the hands and feet...so once again almost but not quite? Cousins, perhaps, if not twins. ;)

[golden-meliades.livejournal.com]

I've got gymnast hips (read: none.) But my shoulders are quite broad, too. But I seem to have very large, dense bones pretty much everywhere...the only 'delicate' looking things on me are my chin, my hands, and my ankles, but that's more due to a lack of flesh in those areas than anything else.

A fascinating narrator? Never heard anyone say that, before. Not a lot of books these days even *have* narrators that I would consider as such... Sounds interesting. :)

Sure, we could be cousins. :) I think my colouring comes from my Black Irish or Welsh blood, but it's hard to be sure. My solid skeleton is probably the mass of German in me, lol. I'm sooo white. Generations and generations of white, white, white people. Very boring.

What colour did you say your hair usually is?

I realized that one image of my eye was so freaky, I had to make it into an icon... My own eyeball is totally weirding me out, lol.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Hrmph. Perhaps that explains why I have enough hips for two people. I suppose that means you got the boobs I was shortchanged on? And the hair is blonde...a really weird streaky blonde, with everything from dark ashy bits to warm honey bits to platinum chunks at the temples that looked like bleached highlights...and even a tiny sprinkling of black and bright red strands for extra weirdness. The bone structure and buildl are definitely from the Indian side, I look like a bleached-out version of all the women on that side

And yes, I really don't remember the last time a first-person narrative just felt as stunningly real and alive to me as Smilla's Sense of Snow. The only thing that's come close for me was An Instance at the Fingerpost, which is rather impressive as it's got four different, distinct, and unreliable narrators. But fabulous as that was, it didn't really hit me where I live the way Smilla does. I have a huge text file of quotes, if you're interested I can throw a smattering on my journal along with the next music dump...

(BORING? Boring, you say, to the girl with a huge collection of Celtic folk music and a downright fetish for Black Irish looks? Bah! I guess the grass really is always greener!)

[golden-meliades.livejournal.com]

Um...yeah. I have big boobs :) (Well, if you consider a D big. To me, it's medium...I used to be considerably bigger.) It's not normal, having a chest measurement two inches bigger than your hip measurement, not for a woman. I generally can't wear pantsuits if they sell the items together, because if I buy for my chest, the pants will be HUGE on me. (My legs are thin.)

Haha, I have a lot of Celtic music, myself. :) I've got a fair blend between 'regular' Irish and Black Irish looks, I'd say. Or possibly I just look Welsh, if there is a way to look Welsh, lol. (My grandfather was born and raised in Wales and he apparently was very close to how they define Black Irish looks.) There are lots of pics of me in the same place as those eye pics were, since that was a sub-gallery of my gallery of pictures of myself in my LJ scrapbook. (I have hundreds of pictures, total...I'm a gardener, too, and obsessed with my camera, since I went to school for photojournalism. Nasty blend.)

I don't read much that isn't fantasy...Tolkien ruined me for life...but it does sound interesting. :)

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Right. Clearly YOU got my visit from the Boob Fairy and I got your share of the Butt Fairy. I learned to sew in part because anything that fit around the hips and ass and shoulders was inevitably way too big around the chest and waist. Now, if you tell me you also have a self-designed Tengwar tattoo, I will start looking for hidden cameras...

[golden-meliades.livejournal.com]

Haha! No, no tattoos...I'm too easily bored for any kind of *permanent* body art. Hence why I dye my hair a different colour almost every time...I've only lately started sticking to Ultraviolet Black (which is really a VERY dark purple-brown.)

Tengwar...er...does this mean you've read The Silmarillion? Because I've always loved the Sil even more than I love LotR. And though I have no tat, I have always yearned for my own signature stamp similar to Tolkien's symbol printed in gold on the front of the centennial hardcover version (illustrated by Alan Lee) of LotR...the one with his initials overlapping in sharp, sharp tipped font, so that the whole looks like a very complex Kanji. The T and the J blend and the R's stick out to either side...wait, here it is: http://www.valaquenta.com/sigil-large.php I want one of those so bad! WAAAHHH I can't draw. :(

But...you make jewellery. This is mildly creepy. I make jewellery too. (My favourite stuff is Celtic in metal, and anything that looks 'fairyish' or like a dryad or fairy would wear it...big leaves and things.) I don't think I'm as good as you...I stick mainly to hairsticks. Let's see...

Here's a necklace: http://pics.livejournal.com/golden_meliades/pic/0001dha4/g12
and another: http://pics.livejournal.com/golden_meliades/pic/00026d53/g12
That one only looks good on people with prominent collar bones and straight shoulders like mine, but I'm just not as good as you, if the few pics I saw are any indication.

And what I'm better at, hairsticks (This is the first one I ever made): http://pics.livejournal.com/golden_meliades/pic/00028ft1/g17

And I occasionally try experiments like this: http://pics.livejournal.com/golden_meliades/pic/000b04d5/g12

Told you...hundreds of pics in my LJ scrapbook, lol.

I want to try doing wooden jewellery next, I think, I've got a tentative idea for a necklace. And you know what's weird? I love that 'charm' look of the 'ringing in your ears'...and I THINK I used similar beads to some of those in there in one of my hairsticks, here: http://pics.livejournal.com/golden_meliades/pic/000kaz47/g16

I swear, this is very odd. It's like you've got a piece of my brain...or perhaps I have a piece of yours? Whichever of us is dumber must have donated the extra bit, lol.

Weird, weird. I'm going to go back and look at your stuff a bit more...

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Silmarillion, oh yeah, got the first edition as a b-day present as a child (dating myself here) and got hooked. I love all the high tragedy of the Feanorians, and the Narn I Hin Hurin retelling of Kullervo. Now tell me I'm not the only one so pathetically geeky as to have all twelve volumes of HOME in hardcover? I mean, studying Tengwar, well that's just an offshoot of my calligraphy, but those books are DEEP NERDING OUT.

And nice colors...sodalite, lapis, silver knotwork, I like! You're working on tigertail? Much much faster for sure, I've tried it but prefer the knotting as silk drapes better (and if your necklace should break, you're less likely to lose the beads!). It's not that hard, really, and still really quick going compared to the seed bead work that I learned as a child...you've got a good eye for color and pattern and that's much harder to teach than technique!

(I'm a bit embarassed by the praise, though, as this is in no way whatsoever a showcase of my best work...it's just a record of those few pieces I've kept. I'm a fine example of the cobbler's-children-have-no-shoes syndrome, all of my biggest, most ambitious pieces have been done as gifts and gone unrecorded, and I'm lucky I've managed to hang on to these scraps! I can do better work, honest. Well, at least as so far as beading and embroidery goes -- those crappy sketches are as not-good as I can get for works on paper. Frustrating since I finally have an idea for a second tattoo which I desperately want...but it's non-calligraphic and thus beyond my skill, boo hoo.)

As for the hairstick/charms...not quite identical, as the larger of the glass beads on this have an odd opaque white core -- but the smaller aqua beads are awfully close to the ones you used there.

Weird, weird, weird. Here, let me friend you so poor merimask doesn't have to yell at us for taking over her journal!

[golden-meliades.livejournal.com]

Okay, you're friended :) (Too much odd coincidences going on not to friend you, lol, though I have to confess to being very hermity, with a tendency to retreat even from LJ, every once in a while.) I saw after I clicked on your pic to make it bigger that the beads you used weren't flat like mine, but they are very similar looking in the smaller image.

I've given away most of my best sticks, too. I've made about fifty but I only have twenty or so actually with me, now...I sold a few, too. I take pictures of ALL my stuff though, before I let anyone have it :)

Yeah, I feel bad for rambling in Meri's journal...she'll check her email and see a million messages and none of them will be aimed at *her*.

I'm very bad as an artist, not because I don't have the potential, but because I am lazy and entirely self-taught. I often don't even research stuff...I had to look up 'tigertail' just now to make sure I knew what I was talking about. Yep, that's what I put those on :) I've never seen silk thread available in the store I shop at, but I'm sure they must have it somewhere. Though wouldn't you have to knot it an awful lot to get the beads to stay in place if the hole is large? My Celtic Dryad...the silver beads have quite large holes.

I can sew, too...but as evidence of my laziness, I've never studied it or taken real lessons...I just decided I wanted to make my mother a winter coat for her anniversary, so I got a pattern and did it. It looked awesome, but because I didn't know enough, I got an inappropriate type of fabric that wrinkles if you so much as breathe on it. :/ Otherwise a success, though, even the lining. But I sabotage myself, being lazy in the beginning and not doing a lot of research on material and technique.

Got to confess, at first I thought the charm bracelet was an earring-nosering linked thingy (don't know what they're called) because I thought the pin on the end was a stud earring. I wondered how the heck you could stand to have something so heavy attached to your nose, lol.

I only have...I think three of the HOME books. I did actually read them, though...but only once through. You know what bugs the heck out of me? I once read in one of my books Tolkien's reply to some fan's questioning of Legolas' masculinity, wherein Tolkien got annoyed that they perceived Legolas as a fairy-boy, and he protested that Legolas was as strong as a young sapling or something like that...and I have NEVER been able to find that passage again! It might have been in his Letters, but I haven't found it.

The guy who worked on LotR (the movie of course) on languages...I'm pretty sure I knew him at a (Tolkien) newsgroup in 1997. Semi-related factoid there, not of much interest but I gaped when I saw his name on the credits for the movie. HE was a super Tolkien nerd, lol...I don't think anyone could beat him. He went so far as to make MONEY off his fanboyism. :D David Salo...I'm not sure, but I really think that was him. The guy I argued with about Balrogs on the newsgroup, whose specialty was language, his name was David, and someone named David Salo worked as a consultant for language on the film. I really think they are the same person. It'd be cool, anyway. :) (Everyone was always asking him to make sentences and stuff for them, lol. Poor guy, but he loved it.)

I have GOT to stop talking. (PS: you might not be that much older than me, since the Sil was first published in 1977, I think...I'll be 29 at the end of May.)

Also...I suck at calligraphy. Horribly. My handwriting bites, too.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

The aqua beads are from two different lots, and the smaller lot are flat and completely clear, like yours. And silk beading cord comes in wide range of thicknesses, from super-fine stuff for pearls to fairly heavy twists. ;)

I believe this bit from Book of Lost Tales is the quote you're looking for:

_{"He was tall as a young tree, lithe, immensely strong, able swiftly to draw a great war-bow and shoot down a Nazgûl, endowed with the remendous vitality of Elvish bodies, so hard and resistant to hurt that he went only in light shoes over rock or through snow, the most tireless of all the Fellowship."}

And yeah, David Salo was a regular on the newsgroups (may still be, I've not checked in there for a while.)

More self-taught laziness here, surprise surprise. But, ah, a bit older than you. HEY YOU DANG KIDS GET OFFA MY LAWN!!!

Ah well, I've already offered Meri some musical goodness, perhaps extra downloads will suffice for penance?

[golden-meliades.livejournal.com]

I haven't been back to a newsgroup since I was in college. Had a few bouts on messageboards, but gave them up, too, after Too Much Drama.

Your eye doesn't look very old...no wrinkles :) (hehe, sounds silly, doesn't it?)

Damn, I HAVE that book, AND I checked it...why couldn't I find that? Grr...I KNEW I remembered it!

PS: I'm sorry, Meri. I'm going to be quiet, now.

[merimask.livejournal.com]

lol! No no...it's so cute that you guys get along. :-) I knew there was something about Smilla that it liked; she kind of reminds me of you, Goldie.

Talk away...holy crap I've never had this much activitiy in my LJ. *feels the need to redecorate or bake a cake or order a tray of pizza fingers*

[golden-meliades.livejournal.com]

Cake, pleasey. Cake would be awesome. But only if no one sees me eat it. <.< >.>