Mickey’s Hidden Agenda

Hidden Mickeys are a Disney thing.  Hunting them all down – and there are over 1,000 of them in Disney World alone – is like an unofficial, parks-wide scavenger hunt for three circles in the shape of Mickey Mouse in a place where you would not normally find them – a little cluster of stones on the lobby floor of one of the resorts, the profile of three logs stacked together in a fireplace, this artfully arranged pile of leaves.

Anyhow, whilst recently cleaning up my nail art supplies, I ran across this KB Shimmer polish, Hidden Agenda, a neat thermal colour-changer that morphs from a peachy-grey blush to a steely metallic blue.  I thought it would be fun to dot Hidden Agenda onto a nude base in the shape of Mickey’s head – presumably the hidden Mickeys would stay hidden as against the nude background, only to emerge in glorious icy blue when exposed to the cold.

Of course, that presumed that Hidden Agenda was the same colour as the base I chose, which, as you can see, it most definitely was not.  I remember it being much peachier than it’s showing here, but the effect still mostly stands.  Cute.

I haven’t been talking about Disney much lately, because…well, because the world is completely screwed up, and that includes Disney.  There’s some curious shenanigans going on at the executive level, to say nothing of the worldwide park closures (I’ve no idea if this is true or not – the House of Mouse is notoriously guarded when it comes to its official numbers – but I read the other day that for every day the parks are closed, Disney loses $30 million.)

I’m sad that my favourite place on Earth is well shut up behind padlocked gates, and I’ve no idea when I’ll get see it again.  I’m upset that 35,000 cast members have lost their jobs.  I’m tired of the Disney bloggers and the vloggers who can’t respect a stay-at-home order to save their own lives, let alone mine.  And I’m mad at the guests who could not see well enough to stay the hell home in the days leading up to the closures.  You actively prolonged this entire situation.  Hope you enjoyed your vacations.

I’ve also always viewed Disney’s as a kind of barometer of how well my own life is going.  Do I have the financial means to take a Disney vacation this year?  Is my passport up to date?  Am I feeling fit enough to tackle a Disney vacation?  And if the answer to all those questions is yes, then I dare say I’m doing okay, life-wise.  I might just sort of have my shit together.

But Disney’s hurting right now, and I’m hurting, too.  There’s no fun there right now, just gigantic neon question marks over a fog-shrouded future.

Wow, okay, so now that I’ve bummed everybody out, it’s time to get on with the day and stop dwelling on the negative.  Disney – indeed, life – will “open up” once again.  We’ll be able to go back to the people and the things that we love.  That much doesn’t need to stay hidden, even if for the next little while, we might.  Stay safe and stay home, friends.

A Pattern of Behaviour (31DC2014)

Day 26’s theme in the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge called for nails inspired by a pattern. There are a near-limitless number of patterns in the Disneyverse, 6,527 of them belonging to Elsa and Anna’s winter wardrobes alone, so where to start? Well, like most good things, at home. In my case, it was as easy as reaching into my bedside table and pulling out my journal, a matte black leather bound book covered in embossed Mickey heads. The interlocking Mickeys certainly qualify as a pattern, and one fairly easily achieved through a few freehanded Mickey heads in a black textured polish, Nails Inc.’s Leather Effect in Noho, over top of a simple matte black base. The tone-on-tone colour scheme can obscure the fun details in this mani at some angles and in certain kinds of light (usually only when I’m trying to take a photo to share on this blog, but isn’t that always the case?), but the switch-up in textures shines through, flashing glimpses of nearly hidden Mickeys in this more-sophisticated-than-usual Disney nail art design.

Manatee Mani (31DC2014)

The general consensus on water marbling, the aggravatingly hit-or-miss nail art technique, is that it sucks, so take pity on the poor nail artist in your life who is soldiering away at the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge right now, because today’s theme is water marbling. The hows and whys of its suckage are vast and varied (it’s messy, time consuming, wasteful and fussy) and unless you’re preternaturally gifted at the art of coaxing intricate designs out of nail polish floating on the surface of water, a crazy act in and of itself, nine times out of 10 you’re going to have major difficulty.

So recognizing my own limitations when it comes to water marbling, I decided to forgo the struggle and make what I knew was going to be a flawed effort work for me. I started off thinking that I’d like my water marble to indeed look quite watery. The free form nature of tides and waves is a perfect fit for my highly imprecise water marbling skills, and the occasional tiny bubble, the result of insufficiently “quiet” water (really), just adds to the underwater effect. Using similarly toned colours in a few different finishes (here I’ve got a turquoise-hued duochrome and a shimmery frost over a sea blue metallic) also made things easier, as the polishes almost bleed into one another, blurring any harsh edges or glaring imperfections. Finally, in keeping with my Disney mani sub-challenge, I chose a favourite water-based Disney attraction, The Living Seas at Epcot, to inspire a bit of nail art in the form of one deranged looking manatee on my ring finger. I also added one well camouflaged hidden Mickey somewhere amongst that watery looking water marble, just to keep things squarely on the right side of my Disneyfied, make-work-for-myself sub-challenge.

A word about The Living Seas, which since the last time I visited has been rebranded as The Seas with Nemo and Friends: It’s awesome, and one of the loveliest, coolest, quietest places in the whole park to unwind as you watch fat, farting manatees for an hour and a half, much like my husband and I did on our honeymoon. Burnt out from a solid week of theme parking and finding ourselves on the wrong side of the safety warnings on Mission to Mars (actually, that was just me; my husband was fine, but I came ever so close to having to use the on-ride vomit bag – a first), we weren’t up for much more than just sitting quietly before the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked into the manatee area, calmly watching one old, heavily scarred manatee and his buddy contentedly toot and float and otherwise act like the most adorable, gentle sweeethearts in the seas. It’s one of my favourite memories from our honeymoon, actually. That and the Night of the Banging Geckos, but that’s a perverted animal story for another time. 🙂

Disney Girl Challenge: Gisele (31DC2014)

I’ve had the idea for these nails, inspired by the second dress Gisele widgets out of linens in the movie Enchanted, on the back burner for quite some time, so when today’s prompt in the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge called for flowers, I knew its time had come! I’m not sure how successful I really was in recreating that dress’s ultra tiny and incredibly detailed pattern, although it’s a close enough match that I won’t quibble too much. I love how soft the pastel flowers and swirls look against the slightly off-white background, and you know Gisele would approve of the last minute addition of that acrylic bow.

And just so I stayed on the right side of my self-imposed Disney sub-challenge, I added one not-so-hidden Mickey (hint: it’s on my thumb!) 😉