So much has gone on this month! This may be a long journal, allow me to warn in advance! I'll start off briefly discussing the SNOW! My family lives in California, and I'm the only one of my siblings to have seen snow, this will be my third year with snowy winters, and I still get so excited and happy when it snows. Of course, driving in it and shoveling my sidewalk is another thing, but all in all I LOVE snow, it is so beautiful and makes me want to draw and drink coffee and make new nails and everything fun.

In the last 15 hours or so, we've gotten about 1 foot (30 cm) of snow here. The news is saying we should expect 2-3 more feet (61-91 cm) by tomorrow! I guess this is a blizzard. My school was even closed today. It has been snowing almost nonstop today, I took this picture of part of my front yard before it started coming down hard again:



There is one other bad thing about big snowfalls like this...the fact that there's children throwing snowballs, instead of throwing heads. (sorry I just saw that movie for the millionth time and those songs are very addictive XD)

I'm finally caught up on Halloween orders for claws... that was grueling! On average I sell about 25-30 sets of nails a month. Last year in October, I sold about 60 sets of nails (mostly claws). I was expecting it to be like that, more or less. This October...115. x_x. Some days people were buying 5-6 sets in a single day, it was a lot of work! I made some extra sets to prepare for Halloween but they were all sold and shipped by late September. Thank you everyone for being patient with me as I've been very slow at replying on comments/deviations here lately.



Moving right along, Nanpengyou and I recently attended our first live Kabuki performance! The teacher of Japanese language in my college (a very kind woman, a Japanese lady in her 60's or so, with purple hair!) always comments on my hair flowers/bows that I wear to college. It's a bit hard to tell in my photos, but I'm fond of wearing red eyeshadow lately, it goes nicely with my hair (in my opinion). This teacher commented on my hair flower (a new red one I got) and my matching eyeshadow, she pointed to my hair flower, then to my eyeshadow, and said, "Same as first Kabuki girl" then pointed to a flyer on a board on the wall. Now, I've heard of Kabuki before, but my mind was a bit frizzled from working on nails and doing my day job, and I forgot what Kabuki was at the moment. So I looked at the flyer, and this is the person that was on it:


I admit, I wasn't quite sure how to take that comment initially. I was looking at a man dressed as a woman wearing dramatic make up. I went home from college very puzzled. But...thank goodness for the internet! As soon as I came home, I checked out what Kabuki was. And it hit me like lightning! Duh! For those of you that don't know... Kabuki is THE DANCE STYLE created by the one and only Okuni of Izumo! After Ieyasu Tokugawa took over, he found it to be too sensual being performed by all-women. So he banned any women from performing it, and men would play the role of any female parts. It is still done in this way now. And they had a live performance of Kabuki last Saturday! Nanpengyou and I went, and it was so amazing! It was the first Kabuki performance that EVER happened in Colorado, ever (according to the announcer people, anyway). We saw two dances, one of a heron spirit that changed forms (represented by various changed kimonos in mid-performance) and one of sacred lion-type spirits called shishi.

A LOT of Koei's Samurai Warriors game series is based on Kabuki! For example, that ugly dead animal (as it's been known by Koei fans) on Mitsunari's head [link] is a lion mane that was used in the second Kabuki dance. There were two lions, a white mane is worn by male lions, and red manes by females (Mitsunari's is red and white so I'm not sure what they're saying there... XD).

Secondly, Kotaro's make-up is also based on Kabuki! Here's his face for a reference:

In between the two dances, we got a lecture on what the make up represents in Kabuki. They explained as they applied a red make up design to one of the lion dancers. The design they applied was nearly identical to Kotaro's, only it was red. They explained that when red, it represents a hero, or strong character, often a supernatural type, such as the shishi lions. They said that when it is blue instead of red (ala Kotaro) it represents evil, or demons.

Kotaro's mouth is also influenced by Kabuki. When working on my drawing of him, I wondered for so long why his mouth always seems to kind of droop down and be open in the corners. They gave the guy on stage this same type of mouth make up, where they made the corners be colored in red (or blue, if 'evil' ) and the rest of the lips be the same color as the skin. They called this a demon mouth. Pardon my utter gamer nerdiness here, I just love finding out about why some characters look the way they do.



Lastly, a mention of some friends of mine!

This is the one I refer to as Nanpengyou, or 男朋友. He's my man!

My dear friend has made two fun little comics for me recently, she knows I am a big fan of Liu Bei (my avatar) and they are really cute little drawings!
This one she made for my birthday:


And this one also, everyone was sick with the flu at the time (including me )


Has been very inspirational for me, she is creative in multiple fields and has been working on an in-depth story, in addition to other works.

She is very very unique and often violent in her work.. but you know what her super talent is? She can make the goriest, bloodiest drawings around, and they are still very very cute! She has some original characters that are especially interesting, and is a big fan of the Silent Hill series (not surprising ).


A very very special girl that I've had the honor and great pleasure of making nails for some of her amazing outfits! If you haven't seen her pictures, you are missing out. She even made a video about my nails for her (it nearly made me cry), she's so sweet and amazing! [link]

Is my little brother, his art is...very unique. He's quiet but he loves getting comments on his 'creations'.

Is my younger sister, she's making an original comic and is a very kind person, in fact she's KAWAIIIIII ^_______________^ (a joke between us... )

is my secondary account based on the awesomeness of Recoome! >:-]

I have more I'd like to mention but this is getting scary and very long, so I'll wrap it up for now.