Sunday Night Simpsons

It’s been a long time since my standing Sunday night appointment with The Simpsons, but man, back in the day, I had a real Simpsons problem.  In university when I lived at home with my parents, I’d hog the remote and make them watch two episodes over the dinner hour.  They always laughed, but after the fourth time hearing “Yes, Lisa, a magical animal” (my Dad’s favourite, and frequently uttered, quote) they started feeling a bit of Simpsons fatigue.  I watched a bunch of season 4 episodes this afternoon for the first time in ages, and they were absolutely hilarious – must add more Simpsons to my life, starting with these nails!

Your Face is Good, I’m a Soos!

I think my love of animated Disney television show Gravity Falls has been pretty well documented on this blog, both in my choice of nail art and then just everyday life, where I aim to watch at least one half-hour episode every couple of days (cartoons and chicken fingers for lunch – it’s not just for toddlers!) But when it comes to my nail art at least, I’ve always focused on Mabel, one half of the Mystery Twins duo of 12-year-old Dipper and Mabel Pines. Mabel’s the easy choice – her naturally exuberant personality and flair for knit-based fashion means there’s a near endless wellspring of adorable designs and fun little nail art touches just waiting to be tapped.

And so instead of another Mabel mani, I thought I’d finally do a manicure inspired by my actual favourite character, handyman, journeyman and all around good guy, Soos (Jesus Alzamirano Ramírez to his snoopy abuelita and the Department of Motor Vehicles.)  22-year-old Soos is an unlikely hero.  He’s shaped like a gumdrop, he wears cargo shorts without irony, he sports, in his words, a “sorta mustache,” he lives at home with his grandma and he’s the handyman at a junky curiosity shop by the name of the Mystery Shack run by Dipper and Mabel’s con artist Great Uncle Stan.  Absolutely none of that looks good on paper.

But Soos is also, in Wendy’s words, a “sweet guy with a steady job and a pickup truck.”  He loves his abuelita, who raised him from birth after his mom went MIA and his dad stopped visiting.  Moreover, he loves Stan, who’s not just his employer, but a gruff kind of mentor and father figure as well.  Handy with a socket wrench and a loofah (hey, Stan’s back is not going to exfoliate itself) Soos is willing to do anything for the Pines Family, and he adores the kids (who return his love by fighting in a futuristic gladiatorial battle for the chance to turn back time on Soos’ lonely childhood.  Soos uses the wish instead to fix up Mabel and Dipper’s war wounds, explaining that they fought monsters through time for him, when his own father couldn’t be bothered with him at all.  It’s SO sweet, and I tear up every time I watch it.  He also wishes for a slice of infinity pizza.)  He’s basically just a super sweet, really affable dood, and I really loved painting on his tiny, patchy ‘stache.  Team Soos!

Mabel Manis!

Mabel Pines, spunky animated darling of Disney’s Gravity Falls, is kind of my hero.  Aside from her enviable collection of colourful turtleneck sweaters (12 of which I recreated here in these three manicures) she’s kind and loyal, friendly and thoughtful, but also highly excitable and prone to happiness-induced spaz attacks (when she learns that Soos, the sweet-but-dopey handyman who works at her uncle’s curiosity shop, has successfully set up a date with an actual woman, she goes positively apoplectic with joy and just starts destroying everything within sight.)  She’s also completely devoted to her pet pig, Waddles, rules at mini golf, prefers the company of her dorky twin brother, Dipper, and even dorkier friends to that of most other people, is not the least bit phased by all of the supernatural goings on in Gravity Falls and firmly believes that her summer vacation will bring her her first epic romance (gnomes, mermen, puppeteers and bouffantly coiffed tent revival shysters need not apply, but a tortured teen vampire type would be ideal.)  I actually suspect that Mabel might be living all of our best lives.  She definitely has the best wardrobe, with tons more turtlenecks to come!

Care Bears: A Then and Now Post

So it would seem that the third week of November is apparently the time when a nail blogger’s thoughts turn to Care Bears, because the last time I did a Care Bears manicure – just a few months after launching this blog – it was the third week of November immediately after the year’s first snowstorm, and oh look!  Here we are again.  So much snow and cold today, icicles have already formed on my balcony.  What. the. frig?

There are approximately 3,000 different Care Bears, once you start factoring in Cousins, friends and casual acquaintances, but for this updated manicure of an earlier design, I went with four of the originals, Grumpy Bear, Love-a-Lot Bear, Good Luck Bear and Funshine Bear, the Care Bear I was pretending to be when I inadvertently got my tongue stuck to a frozen metal well cover when I was a kid (and I know I’ve mentioned this incident before, but getting your tongue stuck to a dirty old metal well cover – face down in the snow, you guys – tends to be one of those formative life experiences, you know?!)  Silly old Bear.

Saturday Morning Cartoons

Never having been one for ultra sugary, rainbow-hued cereals, MY complete breakfasts – even ones accompanying Saturday morning cartoon-a-thons – have never included anything bearing the suffix -ebbles, -arms or –ix.  I was totally that kid that willingly ate – and really enjoyed! – Grape Nuts and Fruit ‘N Fiber (miss you, Blueberry F’NF.)

But that hasn’t precluded me from scenting my home like those cereals.  Although…sense of scent and sense of taste being so closely linked, I’m not surprised that I’m really not all that fond of cereal scents.  To me, there’s an irritating note – literally; it kind of tickles my nose – that I presume is meant to mimic the sugary crunch of those high fructose cereals, and it’s not my absolute favourite.  But I received a number of cereal-scented wax chunks in some Rosegirls samplers I purchased this year, and even if they’re not my particular bag, they still smell pretty great.  Particularly when you tart ’em up a bit with the addition of some Mini Melters, for the ultimate in scent customization.

So what creations did I cobble together?  And did I actually overflow that one melter?  I did not, but hoo baby, it was close!

Top left: Fruity Pebbles blended with Strawberry Jam.  This one was pretty darn delicious, even before the addition of half of one of Rosegirls’ precious Strawberry Jam berries. It’s really just a whole lot of delicious citrus, with that tingly note well buried under layers of luscious lemon.

Top right: Strawberry Frankenberry, straight up.  Mr. Finger Candy, an actual Frankenberry-lover, asked me to leave this guy un-modded.  It was a pretty pleasant strawberry scent; quite true to the cereal in both scent and alarming pink hue.

Bottom left: Boo’s Spooky Castle blended with Berry Creme Brulee.  Boo’s Spooky Castle, a blend of Boo Berry, Vanilla Crunch Donuts and Monster Cookie (oh, I know with these names, right?) is a favourite of seemingly everyone but me.  I find it overwhelmingly cereal-y.  So I added a couple of Mini Melters in Berry Creme Brulee, a super strong, rich, warm, berry bubblegum kind of scent, and just about overflowed the melter.  But oh, it would have been a dee-licious-smelling calamity – the two went together really quite well, the butteriness of the berry brulee sweetly smothering the crunchy Boo (that was like some weird, Dada-esque poetry.)

Bottom right: Are You Cereal? blended with Raspberry Sauce.  I could pair Rosegirls’ sweet-tart Raspberry Sauce with just about anything.  And I often do, such as here alongside Are You Cereal?, a blend of lemony Froot Loops and Crunch Berries.  The wax pool here is so cool, and the Raspberry Sauce really punched up the mild lemon of the Loops.

Ha, Batman crouched protectively over the slice of Strawberry Frankenberry – seems he’s a fan!

But on that note, with regards to the header photo, MY childhood Saturday morning cartoon ritual never included The Simpsons, Hello Kitty OR any Arkham-oriented version of the Dark Knight, but kids these days, amirite?!  Also, I didn’t have my Care Bears figurines or big box o’ My Little Ponys immediately at hand, although they were definitely more my particular cartoon speed (and yet I, a woman of a certain age, DO have a can of Buzz Cola, a plush Hello Kitty and an Arkham Batman figurine right in my apartment, go figure.)

Jem!

Is truly outrageous, truly, truly, truly outrageous!

So I’ve noted on more than a few occasions that I’m total crap at drawing stars.  Always have been – it’s one of those odd little mental blocks that decades of practice have failed to rectify.  So I thought to myself, “Self, why not jump head-first into the starry abyss and do a manicure that’s practically nothing but stars?  And completely inspired by Jem and the Holograms, which you never watched because you thought it was stupid, but pink and guitars, yay!  And that will also take you about two hours, because stars are still not your thing, even when you go super slowly and carefully?”  Okay, so I said that last part to myself after the fact – two hours after the fact, actually.  What can I say, myself and I both have a lot to say for ourselves. 😉

So there’s a lot going on in these nails, right?  I see the gradient here from Jem’s yellow star-topped band logo, the yellow stars themselves, the pinky-purple sparkle dust that seemed to accompany every toss of her platinum-pink hair, the little pink guitars that I assume at least one of the Holograms actually played, plus Jem’s magic-and-music-making red star earrings (again with the freakin’ stars!)  Cute, although I’m not sure I’d call them truly, truly, truly outrageous.  Maybe just one truly.

Lumpy Space

Oh my glob, looks like it’s time for another Adventure Time manicure, this one a nail art design heavily influenced AND inspired by Sarah Waite of Chalkboard Nails. Lumpy Space, for the uninformed, is the pastel cloud-covered kingdom of the Lumpy Space Princess, a giant purple blob with a speech impediment and a raging diva attitude. She’s one of something like 50-odd (VERY odd) sovereigns in Adventure Time, and her fluffy cloud kingdom (think Care-a-Lot, but dark, and with a heavy emphasis on purple) is pretty spectacular.

So spectacular, actually, that back in June of 2014 Sarah did an awesome Lumpy Space manicure, and one I’ve admired right from the get-go. Perhaps it’s the not-so-basic background of dark purple and magenta dots, or maybe it’s the bright pastels of the lush, plush clouds, or perhaps it’s the matte finish, but whatever “it” is, I just love this manicure, and so I decided to finally recreate it, Finger Candy-style. Not a bad likeness either, although I think I prefer the colours Sarah used – a little closer to the original.

Disney Girl Challenge: Mabel Pines

A few years ago I spent a number of months suffering from insomnia, night terrors and, in one extra startling incident, my first (and so far only) episode of sleepwalking. It was an odd year. And although there were a number of early morning hours where I sat in the dark, wide awake, contemplating creating a hotter, sexier, more imaginary version of myself to go out into the world and reclaim my manhood through random acts of anarchy (that’s how that movie went, right?) I mostly just watched a lot of television, stared at a lot of blogs and listened to a lot of music by myself in the dark.

One of the TV shows I found myself watching one bleary-eyed Saturday morning ’round about the cartooning hour was Gravity Falls, a not-quite-Disney-ish Disney cartoon about twin siblings, Mabel and Dipper Pines, and the summer they spend in Gravity Falls, Oregon with their weirdo Uncle Stan. Stan runs an oddities shop/museum called the Mystery Shack, which is quite fitting, as Gravity Falls, site of many a supernatural happening, is most likely haunted, and the weird things need a central spot on which to congregate. Call it the Gravity Falls Hell Mouth.

I did an Adventure Time manicure last week in which I said I have a hard time getting on board with the show because it makes me feel kind of dumb, like I’m not cool enough to get the joke. Gravity Falls, perhaps being a Disney property, but most likely just because its humour doesn’t skew that way, does not suffer from that problem – it’s FUNNY, with just a touch of that manic, winking cartoon humour most reminiscent of Animaniacs or SpongeBob.

And a huge part of the show’s charm is Mabel, a super upbeat, cute animal-and-boy crazy 12-year-old with a fondness for printed turtleneck sweaters. I think Mabel’s awesome – she’s convinced her summer in Gravity Falls will bring her her first epic romance, and when she’s not thinking about boys or making plans for Summerween, which is exactly what you think it is, she’s reenacting Tarantino-esque tableaus with her pet pig, Waddles, and wearing an endless assortment of adorable, multi-coloured turtlenecks. Here I’ve shown four of her cutest sweaters, but there have got to be at least another 20 back in the Mystery Shack’s closet – girlfriend has a seriously enviable wardrobe for a 12-year-old.

Powerpuff Girls!

I actually never watched the Powerpuff Girls, a Cartoon Network show about three super powered little girls who routinely save the world from evildoing, with any regularity. I was a little beyond their target audience by the time they achieved peak saturation (I’m more of the Sailor Moon generation when it comes to acid trip cartoon preferences.) But I do remember catching one fabulous episode where the Girls, Bubbles, Blossom and Buttercup, fly too close to the sun and suffer epic, nth degree sunburns. They spend the remainder of the episode wallowing in calamine-ice baths, and in one hilarious sequence that goes on for an entire minute, struggle to spring into evil-busting action, cringing and grimacing and crunching as they haul themselves up out of their baths. One of those fantastic TV bits that’s always stuck with me. 🙂