Crafty Vet

trivialbob replied to your photoset: I wanted to convert my neon yellow nails into a…

Suddenly I’m craving Skittles.

That is what they call a manicure with a different color on each nail. :)

The only candy I remember that is THAT neon is Nerds. Mmmm, Nerds.

I wanted to convert my neon yellow nails into a gradient, but they were starting to chip, so I went with skittles instead. They are all over 2 coats of white.

Thumb - Fingerpaints Warhol Wannabe
Index Orly Melt Your Popsicle
Middle China Glaze Sun Worshiper (bottle pictured)
Ring Orly Glowstick
Pinkie Silkscreen Green

Would you call Sun Worshiper orange or yellow? I would call it orange. I am pretty liberal with the definition of orange and narrow with yellow.

IE - I never call it a “yellow” light. It looks orange to me, like Sun Worshiper or like school buses or Cheetos. I guess school buses lean a little more yellow than Sun Worshiper, but they still seem ORANGE to me.

Oh, if you’re wondering about formula - the pink is opaque in 1 coat over white, the 2 Orlys are opaque in 2 coats over white and have a great formula, the green was a bit runny and took 3 coats over white, and the (light) ORANGE Sun Worshiper was the worst and this is 4 coats and it was very watery.

Random thoughts on a Wednesday. :)

Today’s retina-searing polish… Orly Glowstick. This is 2 coats over 2 coats of white.

The white was starting to chip a tiny bit and I didn’t fix that prior to adding the yellow.

My camera doesn’t like this polish! It kept making my fingers look beet red. They look normal, I promise. :)

These are all the polishes I “culled” from my collection. I had 415, now down to 381.

Many of the 381 are ones I haven’t worn yet. As I get through them, I’ll remove anything I don’t think I’ll wear again.

One of the OPIs at the bottom right is Conquistadorable Color, a nice blue-based red I wore last week. It’s great and has a great formula, but it’s too similar to OPI Red (haha) which is so far my favorite red. I rarely wear red polish, so am I really going to go through 2 full bottles of similar reds? Nah.

4 days ago

Finger Paints Paper Mache

This is 2 coats and you can see it’s still streaky and needs a 3rd.

I’m going to wear it for a day and then use it as a base for a neon manicure, though, so I’m going to leave it at 2 coats.

I had heard that FP made a great black and a great white. White polishes are hard to make with a good formula. I have OPI Alpine Snow and it’s kind of a disaster.

Well, I’d say the FP is no different.

So, still ISO that perfect formula white creme. Supposedly Rescue Beauty Lounge Underwear is great, but I’m not paying $20 plus shipping to find out. I’ve been seriously underwhelmed with the others I have from RBL.

I’m curious to what comments I’ll get regarding the white polish. I’ve not worn a stark white mani before.

I fixed the binding on the quilt!

If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing correctly. My quilts may sometimes suffer because I am a beginner and can’t make certain things perfect.

But that is definitely not an excuse to half-ass things if I can do better.

That awful stitching showing all around the binding would have bothered the hell out of me. I went to all that trouble to learn how to do 2-tone binding. I want it to look good.

It took me about 2.5 hours to fix it. I ripped the binding off (that was easy - I used the seam ripper like a lawnmower and did a snip, rip motion. Since the quilt and the binding are pretty thick and durable, I could rip small portions without damaging them.

Then I picked out the threads from the binding. I had to fix it in a couple of spots because I did not backstitch the horizontal joins between the pieces and they started unraveling.

Then I trimmed all around the quilt. Just 1/8” or less. That trimmed OFF the stay stitching entirely in some areas, which made me nervous, but I knew I was going to fix it right away.

I pinned the binding back on. This was the part that I really didn’t want to do. The quilt is huge (compared to anything I’ve made before) and I hated trying to move it with all the pins in. I was getting stabbed left and right, and sewing on the binding was awful with the stabby thing sitting in my lap.

I tried using those binding clips that look like hair pins, but they don’t grip tightly enough. I need a different solution. Maybe I should just pin the opposite way. As a lefty I generally have them facing out.

Anyway I used the binder clips and just let them slip a bit. That meant I had to re-adjust as I sewed, but it was fine.

I had to redo the join in the binding since it was already a smidge loose and I’d trimmed off part of the quilt. That was actually good, because the new join was more precise than the original one.

The quilt looks really good right now. All the stitching that was showing is gone now and the edge looks crisp. I hope the binding will look good as I hand-finish it. I’m going to work on it this week at work. :)

It was SO WORTH IT to fix the binding. I’m happy now! :)

I FINALLY got the 2 tone binding thing going. What you are looking at here is the front of the quilt. I machine-stitched the binding to the front and flipped it back. So you would fold over the blue part and tack it down with hand stitching, leaving the purple binding on the front and the blue showing on the back.

First, you cut the front binding at 1” wide and sew all the strips together. I did straight joins.

Then the back binding at 2” wide and sew those strips together.

Then sew the 1” to 2” strips lengthwise, and press the seams open.

Then fold in half and press wrong sides together.

Pin and attach, mitering corners as usual. You can use 1/4” to 3/8” seam allowance. I wanted mine to fit tightly so I used 3/8”.

Well… problem… Look where the green is and above. The purple is the front binding part (the 1”). You can see the stay stitching around the outside of the trimmed quilt. This happened in many places.

I was going to leave it but I think what I need to do is rip out the WHOLE BINDING and trim the quilt smaller, then reattach.

I can’t just take a larger seam allowance because I’ll lose too much of the binding.

I can’t leave it, can I?

:(

So close to the hand-sewing part! So close! I really don’t feel like ripping the binding off. :(

I’m not happy with how they fixed the Juki. It still has a problem.

The guy I spoke with told me that the walking foot was grinding because the needle bar was askew. They put the needle bar back correctly and told me everything was fine, and gave me a new walking foot (this is the foot that comes with the machine - it’s not generic.

Well, first I noticed that the hook on the walking foot still moves quite a bit side to side. It won’t stay in one place on the bar.

When sewing slowly, everything seems okay. But when I speed up my sewing speed (possibly faster than they were able to sew on the small sample pieces of fabric that were still sitting on the machine when it came back to me) the walking foot starts to make a loud clanking sound.

Previously, the sound was more squeaky, but I think it’s the same problem - the hook on the foot is rattling all around the needle bar.

I tried increasing the presser foot pressure, which had no effect.

I’m going to call the store again on Monday, but I’m not sure what to do.

Finger Paints Warhol Wannabe (left foot) over white and Finger Paints Paper Mache on right foot.

Oh I hate doing pedicures. It’s hard enough pretzeling myself to reach my toes, but every toe except my big toe is so tiny that really I should only do pedis with Essie (Essie has a tiny brush).

Then again, I bought 13 polishes today for less than the cost of one pedicure at the mid-priced salon that I’ve gone to in the past.

I like getting a pedicure done by a pro, but I’m cheap and I am terrified of getting a fungal infection.

My feet are on one of my plastic shoeboxes that hold my collection. I’m going through and pulling out polishes to give away. I’m terrible about hanging onto ones I know I’ll never wear again. I already pulled 13, so I’m “even.” Haha!

Today’s manicure.

Julie Blueberry Fizz (textured polish, no top coat) and Wet N Wild 2% Milk (2 coats).

The Julie is kind of silver-blue and not annoyingly gritty. I really like it. It seemed like the type of thing that would dry quickly but it really doesn’t.

I was going to just try out a few polishes I got today but I liked how these 2 looked together so I made it a whole mani. (Other hand is done opposite). From far away it will probably look like I just didn’t polish half my nails, though. Oh, well.

Weird left hand pic! (Usually I photo my right hand since I’m left-handed, but my right index finger is looking ragged right now).