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.

Rockin’ the Birthday Dots

Mickey Mouse turned 90 years old this year, and all across the Walt Disney World Resort, where I was lucky enough to enjoy a recent lovely vacation, there were tons of opportunities to meet Mickey and Minnie in their birthday wear (not to be confused with birthday suits, which would be an entirely different and altogether terrifying experience.)  Both Mickey and Minnie are sporting some fly new threads for the occasion, a white suit for Mickey and a white sundress for Minnie, both liberally sprinkled with multi-coloured dots.  There are also some black Minnie ears available in the shops, likewise adorned with rainbow-hued polka dots, because this is Disney, and of course there are.

We get asked all the time if we’ve met the park OGs, Mickey and Minnie, and the answer is no, never, not a once.  My husband and I go to Disney World and we meet Kylo Ren, Chewbacca and BB-8.  We stand in a two and a half hour long lineup to meet Jack and Sally of The Nightmare Before Christmas (worth every one of those 9,000 seconds!)  We hang out with Wreck-It-Ralph and Vanellope Von Schweetz, dine with the Beast and rawk out with Vampirina.  And I once nearly overturned a tavern table in my zest for sprinting outside and directly into the bulgy, waiting arms of Gaston.

But Mick and Min have remained elusive.  Something to rectify on our next trip.  For now I’ll just have to satisfy myself with these nails that rock both Mickey and Minnie’s birthday dots.  To the next 90, young mouse(s)!

You’re a Sorcerer, Mickey!

Here’s a fun manicure memorializing the main magical mouse, Mickey, and an even funner video I made for our YouTube channel showcasing one of our favourite related games to play when we’re at Disney, Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom.

I’ve spoken about Sorcerers before – it’s the free-to-play, card-collecting, interactive scavenger hunt you can only play at the Magic Kingdom, and Mr. Finger Candy is completely obsessed.  No trip is complete without finishing off at least a couple of games of Sorcerers, and more than a couple of visits to the Firehouse on Main Street USA.

Sorcerers is a cute, not-so-little diversion (no joke, you will walk for MILES completing a single game) that always provides tons of fun while we’re bounding about the Magic Kingdom.  If you’d like to join in on the RFID-enabled scavengering and hunting, please watch this video I recently made for our YouTube channel, Park or Perish!, featuring fun tips on making the most of your magical Mickey.  Thank you so much for watching, and happy spellcasting!

Cherry Blossom Mickey

Again with the Disney stuff, I know!  Yeah, yeah, I’m a broken record.  But a busted clock is right twice a day, or something like that.  Besides, our little customized vacation booklet (for our vacation in six months’ time; Disney are masters of the slow jam tease) arrived today and I’m getting ex-ci-ted!  We made up a list this week of all of the food items/experiences we’d like to try on our next trip, and the somehow incomplete list is 46 items strong.  And one of those I have listed as “Eat everything at Epcot Food & Wine.”  So.

However, you needn’t worry too, too much about my dieting motivation in light of all this gorging talk – the Disney Force is still very strong with my workouts, as evidenced by this pre-workout shot of me in my favourite Turkey Leg varsity tee.  Yes, that is a lot of Stephen King on the shelf behind me – things you already knew. 😉

Anyhow, these cherry blossom nails with not-so-hidden Mickeys are in celebration of the fact that I may be able to stop griping about the other thing I’m always banging on about, and that’s the crap weather we have been, um, enjoying this protracted winter.  Because with temperatures predicted to be in the mid-teens this weekend, it looks like spring might actually be here to stay.  So cherry blossom season, just ever so slightly delayed.

I say that now, of course.  I mean, I’m sure it’ll snow in July or something, just to spite me.  Yes, just to spite ME, I’m sure. 😉

Classic Mickey

Simple and elegant.  Not bad for a manicure inspired by a falsetto-voiced cartoon mouse.

Happy Birthday, Mickey!

Well now, what’s this utter madness here – actual nail art on this nail blog and not some long-winded tale about my recent Disney vacation that has taken exponentially longer to spin out than it did to actually experience it?  😉  At the very least this Mickey mani is well within my all-Disney wheelhouse these days.

The main Mouse’s birthday was actually yesterday – 89 years young.  Doesn’t look a day over a well-plasticized 50, though.  Happy belated, Mickey!

I’m All Ears

I’ve just noticed that I have featured a lot of blue polish-based manicures on the blog as of late. This runs contrary to my general nail art MO, which is to dabble a bit across the entire rainbow spectrum, never lingering too long on any one hue. But I guess I’ve been feeling the blue lately (as opposed to just plain old feeling blue) because here’s another one!

It looks like Mickey’s got his head in the clouds again with this mani, where I brushed on one coat of All Ears, a Mickey glitter-studded polish from Whimsical Ideas by Pam, over a background of fluffy white clouds in a blue (and glow in the dark) sky. All Ears is lovely and classic Mickey – tiny red, white and yellow matte hexes make up the bulk of the glitter mix, but the Mickey heads are plentiful and not the least bit difficult to capture on the brush – and the blue background polish is a favourite of mine, Serum No. 5’s Blue Blazes, a sky blue creme that glows electric neon turquoise. Here’s the best shot of Blue Blazes in action I’ve ever taken, which is still not saying much, but we’re getting better!

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.

World of Color (31DC2014)

Today’s theme in the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge commands – commands, I say! – the participants to produce a mani inspired by a colour, but I say why stop at one? There’s a whole world of colours out there – plural – and for my Disneyfied purposes at least, one World of Color light show at Disneyland’s California Adventure park that’s long overdue as the inspiration for one of my Disney manis.

Here I’ve shown some of the rainbow-hued water jets that go off in formation during the half hour hydrotechnic show, along with the ferris wheel at Paradise Pier with Mickey at its centre that acts as the focal point of the night time light-and-water extravaganza.

GeoMickey (31DC2014)

I skipped over yesterday’s theme of a delicate pattern in the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge, eschewing any new daintiness for a repost (on Instagram at least; sandra_fingercandy if you care to give me a follow) of a not-so-old manicure I did featuring my take on the Haunted Mansion‘s damask-with-eyes printed wallpaper. I never felt like those nails got enough love given how much work they were and how well I think they turned out, so I thought I’d give them another kick at the can while I took a day off from the Disney (I know, I know, can there be such a thing?)

But I’m back in the new swing of things with this angular mani for today’s challenge theme of geometric. I’m not sure how much Mickey looks like Mickey when he’s missing his iconic bubble ears, although I think the M-O-U-S-E still shines through. The addition of a few fingers’ worth of a red and white, hex-packed glitter, KB Shimmer’s Candy Cane Crush, helps keep this manicure squarely (heh) on the side of the geometric theme.