Current Makeup Kit

I do actually use makeup. Just ... rarely. Really rarely. Meaning: cosplay. And concealer and maybe mascara if I want to look nice for the day.

I don't remember where I got most of these or how much they cost. They were most likely from Target or CVS and were most likely under $5, especially if I had a coupon. Everything is definitely under $10. Because I'm cheap. Also, I'm super pale, so keep that in mind in regards to the colors I chose.

BB cream: I used this as my foundation until I found my foundation again, which matched my skin color better. I use the BB cream now for when I don't want to look as pale as I normally do. (And it has sunblock in it.) 

Foundation: I actually forgot I  had this for the longest time;; It had started to separate so I put didn't use it often. And then it got completely replaced by the BB cream until I rediscovered the foundation bottle. I shook it up more and it works just fine! 

Eyeliner pencil and mascara: I bought these because they were supposed to work well with my eye color. There were at least three different color options (at least for green, blue, and brown eyes). I actually can't tell what color my eyes truly are, because different people tell me different things and they're more of a mix of both colors to me. 

I really don't remember what set I bought. The other set I was debating was something along the lines of "sapphire blue".

Concealer: I think I've had this the longest? I use it to cover up zits if they're really bothering me. It doesn't make them go completely away (you can still tell I have something), but it does do a really good job at making them look less bad. 

Eyeliner pencil: To be honest, I don't think I've ever really used this for eyeliner. I've always used it to darken my eyebrows;; The black tends to smudge, though I don't know if I put too much on my face at one time. The green has worked really well when I've used it for my Gumi cosplay. 

I keep everything in a cute bag I picked up from Otakon! I also have a SHINee "Sherlock" pouch and a cute Rapunzel and prince-like couple, but I don't have pictures of those bags. All three were made by this lovely artist!

The other side of the pouch is cute too! 

I also attempted to swatch my concealer, BB cream, and foundation (from left to right), but I think I used too much... 

I don't think my hand makes for a very good model, because a lot of my face has a pinkish tint that my hands don't have. It's also winter so my hands are constantly dry and cracked, which is pretty obvious;; 

I also did a Target run before Katsucon. The liquid eyeliner I haven't opened yet, but it was to replace one I had a year ago that got lost in my backpack and dried out. I suck at liquid eyeliner, so it'll mainly be for my Matryoshka Gumi makeup. The pencils are combination eyeliner / eyebrow pencils, which have worked well during a cosplay test so far! The powder foundation is to (hopefully) keep my makeup better ... sealed? Is that the right word? The powder foundation is also really nice. 

 I took before and after photos of a quick makeup test, but I don't like how they turned out, so I'm not going to include them. Sorry! Anyway, this is all the makeup I use when cosplaying. And it'll probably stay that way for a while, as I don't see myself running out of any of the makeup anytime soon;;

Katsucon 2014

Katsucon XX was held Feb 14 - 16 at the Gaylord National in National Harbor, Maryland. It was my fourth year of attending Katsucon! I still can't really believe it. I've been con-going for four years now, and I think it's only gotten better as time has gone on.

I spent most of the weekend with Emily and her boyfriend Jason. It was a little bit awkward, especially on Friday it was Valentines Day and I was third-wheeling, but it was still fun nonetheless. Neither of them had been to Katsucon before (and it was Jason's first anime convention), so I acted as a kind of tour guide for them. Luckily, I've finally gotten a good handle of the Gaylord's layout, so we never really got lost.

I also got to meet a lot of sempais this year! I was lucky enough to cross paths with mangosirene, domineau, alexpinku, and stickehbun, and I also got to meet up with staciastarburst, who I started talking to through tumblr. I also got to talk to uberwren, dejavudea, and Alec from DTP. It amazes me that people know and remember my name / face after meeting them!

I spent less money than I have in previous years, but I think I came home with more? I don't have a definite comparison compared to other conventions or previous Katsucons, but I still came home with $90 after buying many posters from AA and a few things from Dealer's. I think one of the favorite things I bought was my Tsukino Usagi / Sailor Moon wig, which was only $40! I've always dreamed of cosplaying Usagi, and I'm finally taking those steps to completing it! I also got tons of cute Pokemon / RotBTD fanart (including a Jack Frost tote bag), and I got a print from the artist of High Tide, an animation short that has made me consider pursuing animation.

I didn't have any big cosplay plans this year. Friday I wore the blue hamster kigurumi I bought at last year's Katsucon. Saturday I wore a combination Jack Frost / Danny Phantom cosplay I made a week before the con, and on Sunday Emily and I cosplayed as Danny Phantom and Danny Fenton.

I think for once I didn't have any sort of problems with the convention at all! The past three years there have been conflicts regarding friends or sharing the Gaylord with another con, but this year there didn't seem to be any major problems! I'm really grateful for that. I was able to buy everything I wanted to, and much more than I actually needed to. I had lots of fun with my friends and I didn't feel any sort of insecurities about my cosplays. I wish I had recorded more video and vlogged more in-depth, but that's something I can improve on in the future, and I still was able to get around an hour's worth of video.

Books I've Read -- Jan

Yay! Books of 2014!

Enchanted by Alethea Kontis, finished 1/6. Enchanted is basically a retelling of pretty much any fairy tale you can come up with -- all wrapped up into one novel. Seriously, I didn't even bother counting. But for having as many different story elements as it did, Enchanted did okay with handling all of them. Sure, some of them were pretty cliche (but that comes with the territory, really), and some of the fairy tale references were just in passing. It was a really light-hearted book for me and I enjoyed it. However, it is kind of predictable, so I don't know if everyone would like it. (Goodreads reviewers also have an issue with the "insta-love" and plot, so I guess keep that in mind?)

Itch by Simon Mayo, finished 1/9. I originally wasn't going to finish the book. The margins were "messing with my zen". Eventually I did get over it, but the book was kind of a weird size for me. Anyway, I'd say the book overall was just okay. It wasn't absolutely terrible, but I'm still debating the three star rating I gave it. A lot of the book seemed implausible. I mean, okay, it's fiction, so you have a lot of wiggle room with it. But a fourteen year old being able to get his hands on dangerous elements (not to mention one that hasn't been discovered)? A teacher that's okay with torturing a student and possibly letting him die over the new element? Teachers that know a student has a radioactive chemical and don't do much about it? I was questioning a lot of characters' sanity over the book. If this actually a middle grade book like the Goodreads shelves suggest, then it makes sense in my head, but it seems too big of a book to really be middle grade. And there are no reviews of the book under three stars, which is fishy. I'm tempted to change my rating to two stars to see what happens.

My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick, finished 1/30. I totally binge-read this book. I got over halfway through in one afternoon, and just about finished it in an hour the next day in school. It's a "fluffy romance book". And it was really cute! It reminded me slightly of Along for the Ride, especially with Samantha's relationship with her mom. Sam and Jace did seem to have a kind of insta-romance, but they've also been aware of each other's existence for a long time, so it's not like they just fell totally head over heels for someone they just met. I will say that the book was kind of lacking plot-wise -- not just with the romance, but also with how Sam is somehow good with babysitting Jace's siblings despite never doing it before (and she got a lot better than I did over one summer than I have over more than a year) and how it built up to the climax. Things built up slowly but steadily, creating a sort of perfect existence, and right when Sam points that out, it's pretty obvious that it's gonna go downhill from there. The whole "downhill" part seemed a little strange, though, because it wasn't just a few things crashing -- it was pretty much Sam's entire life that fell to pieces around her, and at least with Nan, it was for almost no reason at all. Like it fell to pieces just to make her life miserable, and for no other reason. Other than that, though, I did like the book. Sometimes predictable ones are okay to recover from an emotionally-tolling book. (Or Itch, which really bothered me.)

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, finished 1/30. You know, I should probably go back and add in all of the books I've read for English in the past. I'm glad that we were assigned The Glass Castle after having to read The Things They Carried and Fallen Angels. It was a really interesting story, especially since it's a memoir. Some of that stuff, you'd have to be really imaginative in order to make it up. Or just want to make the characters as miserable as possible.

January seemed like kind of a slow month for books. February is looking better, though, with the release of Cress and the remainder of the library books I have.