[Gossamer's Scrapbook] The Ethereal Canyon I

[Gossamer]

. Nail Polish You are seriously like the fifth person that has asked me that today. I am a nail polishaholic and my favorite favorite favorite brand of all time is Julep. People give Julep a bad name because their polishes are hellishly expensive and when you buy one it comes in a .27 oz bottle instead of a .5 oz which is the standard. But seriously, the quality of Julep is so frigging kickass that it is generally a one coat polish, smooth formula, that goes on without any issues. So basically you use less. The color I'm wearing is called Lucky. Here's the shot of my actual bottle and shitty nails. I've been sporting this mani since about Weds of last week. That's how frigging AWESOME Julep Polish is. Don't mind my broken middle fingernail (I use it a lot lol) and the fact that the polish looks transparent or not there. It's a very fine microgold foil and its absolutely golden green on the nail but looks transparent under the flash. I was going to write a big blog about Julep, but I haven't gotten around to it before now. I should have... because people, especially women, need to know about this. Now Julep is a Seattle Wa startup that is run entirely by all women. It's cooperate HQ is in Seattle and it has tons of events in Seattle. Their nail polishes, every one, retail for $14.00 a bottle. But... they give a large percent of what they make on their polish to women's programs in seattle.. mostly to get women retrained for the workplace or get girls in trouble off the street. However, that being said I've never ever paid full price for a bottle. Julep has incredible sales that they email you. They offer tons of coupons that they send you... it goes on and on. They also have a program called Maven, which you join, get in on all sorts of sales, get free shipping from their website, access to a special hugely discounted shop, and get 20% off sitewide all the time. And best of all, they have a monthly subscription box that you pay $20 a month for. On the 20th of the month you log into their website (you get a few days to do this) and pick which box you want (they usually offer 5 varieties) and any addons.. or they will send you one you like automatically. They ask you a few questions before you join and assign you a beauty profile. I'm a Boho Glam. That means I like Bohemian Style clothing, loud colors, glitters, and fringe - perfect for the Pagan Broomskirt Wearing Redneck I am. Lol. I don't know. I think they know what they are doing because every month I always take the Boho Glam box because it usually has just what I want in it.. or I choose to take the whole polish collection for the month (which you can do too for an extra price). I'm a huge fan of subscription beauty boxes and am a member of ELF's and IPSY's too. Let me tell you why. You get wicked crazy deals. And with Julep, you don't just get nail polish, you get cosmetics, and all sorts of things. Plus they send you candy in your box! It's like a present in the mail every month. For my Nov Maven box, I got two polish colors and a new pallet of eyeshadow neutrals that were fantastic and that I've been using daily since I got them. I've seen the Naked Pallets, and I swear Juleps is better. Then along with the monthly Maven boxes, they have Mystery Boxes that you buy blindly. I had a 40% off coupon from NOV's Maven box, so when the Mystery Boxes came out in Dec (before the actual December box) I ordered one. Here's a picture of someone's below, but I got the same box. All Mystery Boxes are the same. I also ordered a mystery add on - something for an extra $10 bucks that was guaranteed to house three more polishes and maybe more goodies. The mystery box was guaranteed to be at least worth $100 bucks... some had more in them some less... but here's roughly what I got. This is someone else's box, but mine looked just like this cept my paper was shredded pink not white. This Mystery Theme was - Naughty or Nice? And the mystery add-ons was actually three more gorgeous nail polish colors. So the box retailed for $29.99 plus $9.99 for the add-on (optional) mystery polishes which were promised to be worth at least $30 bucks for the add on and $100 bucks for the box products. I got the box for $14.99 and the add-ons for $5.99 using my saved up coupons. And no one knew what was coming in the box. That's the fun of it. Oh, and as you buy from Julep, they give you points to spend like cash on their site... so you can order free boxes any time. And you can send boxes to friends etc. So... how well did I do spending $21 bucks total (free shipping no tax)? Makeup Mattifying Primer = $22.50 Julep Lip Gloss - Timeless: Sheer nude gloss = $17.60 Kajal Eye Glider & Sharpener = $17.60 Rock Star hand cream = $16.00 Tons of samples of lotions and hand repair creams. Total= $73.70 in just products without the polish. Nine Polishes @ 14.00 = $126.00 (Jane,Johanna, Nellie, Lois, Faye, America , Brenda, Aviva, Alaina) I believe the add-ons were Faye, Lois, and Jane... but I can't remember which is which now. So I spent $21 bucks and got $199.70 in retail cost for products. So anyone that says Julep is overpriced might be right at face value, but never pay face value for things. You get killer polish, killer polish sales, help women, get lovely presents in the mail monthly, and mani's that last pretty much until you break a nail or get bored with the color. Here's my Julep collection below. They sell this caddy in their store for $30 bucks, but I got it during the 12 Days of Christmas Sale this holidays... you could buy it for $30 and get five polishes off their site FREE baby... so that's like ... I dunno.. getting the caddy free buying five polishes. It has little slots that fit my nail polish perfectly. I need a second one soon, but they've promised to change the outside design and put another one out in 2014 so I'll hold out for that. And did I mention they send you candy in almost every order? My last Maven Box that came for January had pixie sticks in it along with my polishes. You can find Julep Nail Polish at http://www.Julep.com and I believe they have a walk in holiday store open in New York right now on a trial basis. There is a full store in Seattle open as well. I haven't been there yet, but next time they have an event I'll probably drive up for it. Oh and one more thing.. they send their polishes with stickers on them so you can swatch on the top so you don't have to dig for the color you want. How clever is that? And those stupid square lids? They pop off so when you screw them on.. .they can be pulled off and straightened if the polish doesn't tighten on with the cap straight. That's how its easy to swatch the polish's own lid too. Addendum Cheslyn reminded me of this too. IF you want to become a Maven, do it through my account and I get points... but I'll totally share all my coupon codes with you if your a polish addict like me. And Elysium just told me you can get your first Maven Box free using the code FREEBOX (my code is 408094). And if you don't like the polish selection that month, you can always opt to SKIP it and not get charged. I know people that skip it a lot and don't order the boxes until just the perfect polish comes around. http://www.julep.com/rewardsref/index/refer/id/408094/ .

[Elysium]

Do you know how freaking excited I am? I got three nail polishes, a bottle of top coat and a bottle of cuticle serum stuff for like 11 dollars. Free shipping. I mean, c'mon people. Get on Julep and earn Jen some points!

[Magpie]

YES. So looking into this. It's one of my new years resolutions to get into nail polish

[Gossamer]

. Zoya's Blowout Tuesday, January 7th (12PM EST) through January 13th, 2014 (11:59pm EST) In case any of the nail polish guru's out there are interested, Zoya's having a little bit of a warehouse blowout. I'm assuming this is to make room for the new 2014 colors. If you aren't familiar with Zoya, it's another women's startup nail polish company and the colors are omfg fantastic. I have some Zoya. Logan and Tinsly started out my Zoya fetish and I rounded out my Zoya collection on Cyber Monday of this year and several flash promos on FB and Twitter in the subsequent month. They had a lot of order one free polish free shipping now flash promos. This is a great deal since the bottles cost $8 a piece off the site (though you can often get them on ebay cheaper). The downside is shipping isn't free. It's $12. The upside is if you buy a bit more at regular price on the site... you get everything mailed to you free waiving the cost. This announcement has been what their big countdown clock on their website and FB page has been about since Midnight New Years. I have no idea why they are counting down to a sensational deal that doesn't become valid until the 7th. But here's what I'd do. If you want the deal, load up your cart before hand... and then checkout a few minutes after the 7th midnight EST. That way all the colors you want are going to be in stock. I promise you, a couple hours east coast time into this sale and some colors will be out of stock because Zoya will get bombed. They already have like 500 comments on facebook in 19 hrs of women complaining about the big countdown (that some people stayed up for all night) being to announce a deal that happens NOT TODAY but on the seventh. Oh and Zoya is notorious for having these blowout deals start out as total clusterfucks at checkout the moment they go active so watch the FB page if your cart isn't working with the code properly. Not only is it highly entertaining to watch people SCREAM (like literally hundreds a minute) but its even funnier to watch the FB Zoya Fairies (that's what they call themselves ) try to calm the raging nail polishaholic masses that will be lined up to get the code used in their account, their husbands' account, all their fake kids, etc. Gillar offered to make himself an account just to get this deal twice. I'm sorely tempted. And if your a dude and like to see women go absolutely batshit insane, check out the facebook page a few minutes after midnight and watch it all fall down. I don't know who the tech folks at Zoya are, but I kinda wonder if it isn't Zoya herself's cousin's uncle's kid who kinda knows about computers instead of an actual tech team. Tee hee. I kid you not. During Cyber Monday they had an amazing deal. They had whats called the Dream Collection for FREE in its beautiful case if you bought like ... what was it $50 bucks worth of polish? The dream collection itself was worth like 148 bucks and came with a beautiful black case with velvet liners. Plus they had all their other stuff buy one get one free so in order to make that extra money to get the package, you got TONS of nail polish. I wasn't sure what was more annoying... that the code went live three days before cyber monday while it was being tested out by the Zoya techie geeks, or that people could put like 50 bucks in their cart, added the free deal in, then remove everything else and just get the free deal mailed to them.. (Zoya asked people to stop doing that hehehe). When it was announced the code was working, Zoya told everyone to go ahead and order, so I did. But it was so much fun watching the FB chaos ensue after that. Because, of course, by the time Cyber Monday rolled around a lot of their colors were out of stock. This round should be as equally fun. Here is a huge image of my little current Zoya Color Chart out already plotting which new colors need to come live at my house. .

[Gossamer]

. What Can NaNo Do For You? The next time someone says something about NaNo or how inconvenient it is for you, be sure to remember that NaNo can do a great deal to advance the wonderment of a PC and that PC's story. Case in point: My Own. I just got done updating my CS because someone (as usual) said I hadn't been keeping my main PC's CS up to date and that I had a ton of outstanding graded threads that weren't in the picture and that my XP was outdated. Okay. I get it. They were right. So I updated it. I kept tabs on what was NaNo XP and what was just cleanup and old finished threads not documented. The result is kind of mind blowing. Keep in mind she has one more Morphing, Beekeeping, and one more Herbalism Solo to finish out with a few posts. I also have a couple of group threads that should yield 5's in weapons as well that I can add to this list after the fact. I expect +5's on those for her main themes in those threads because I won't stop posting until I think shes there. Skill XP Acrobatics +2 Architecture +3 Beekeeping +15 Blind Fighting +3 Construction +4 Climbing +4 Dancing +3 Deduction +4 Dual Wielding +3 Herbalism +6 Interrogation +3 Mathmatics +1 Meditation +11 Morphing +15 Negotiation +2 Organization +7 Philtering +5 Planning +5 Reimancy +8 Running +7 Seduction +7 Socialization +13 Unarmed Combat +6 Weapon:Dagger +3 Weapon:two bladed sword +5 Writing + 11 It's funny too. The only reason I decided to go against my initial plan of doing NaNo with two PCs was basically because someone told me their whole goal in life was to beat my ass at NaNo rather rudely and snidely after about the second day when I hadn't even posted because I had Alea staying with me. I didn't even know we were in competition, so of course I had to switch over and just write with one PC just to make them eat their words. Being nasty calls for waking sleeping giants, I firmly believe. NaNo came easier this year than last. It was more fun branching out with my PC and writing more varied threads. It was also somewhat challenging as my PC was sick and fairly physically unable to be active during that time. I worked around it though by filling out unwritten placeholders and flushing out missing or gapped pieces in her history where I had thoughtfully inserted threads or had abandoned threads that I could use for NaNo material. It's also something wholly amazing and satisfying for me to start with 0 in a skill and build it up from the ground upward and not say pad my primary skills with a starting XP count. My PC didn't start with any magic in fact, so all she's learned and grown has been in game through threadwork. I never intended for her to be a mage of any significance, but I do think she started the whole Earth Reimancy is amazing movement on Mizahar. That's a huge point of pride to me that all the magic she has she's earned in game. NaNo also got her into her tertiary business, and got me into Beekeeping irl which was a whole different adventure that I have scrap post after scrap post devoted too. Bees are absolutely the coolest thing around... and I'll say that covered in beestings and smarting like crazy from them. I have roughly 200,000 living with me currently in real life. And we seem, for the most part, to get along fine. What did NaNo do for your PC? What did it do for your writing enthusiasm? I'd love to hear your thoughts. .

[Taylani]

I loved grading some of your Nano threads Kavala Yours and Rosela's have really helped me understand Miz's magic. I don't know what it is about me, but the Lore is wonderfully written but somehow seeing it written in a story form makes so much more sense to me. So thanks!

Nano did wonders for Tay, not because of skill building because I am pants at doing that. But I was feeling very guilty about the amount of solo's I was writing and flooding the grading threads but I just had the itch to develop Taylani. So I did a series of dreams..when I say a series of dreams I wrote out several threads, with each having posts spanning several nights dreams.

I am a firm believer that most dreams (not all, we all have those weird dreams where we are building a glass dome on the moon using hammer and nails... or maybe that is just me..) reflect where our mental status is and that is what I used to flesh Taylani out.

It is also, how I consequentially was able to pull her from "omgosh I will kill Fallan in his sleep as soon as I learn how to survive on my own" to "Oh. Fallan is kind and gentle..and since I am pregnant with no other options might as well try to make a go of it.. and perhaps learn to love him." with Taylani is through those series of dreams.

I would never have bothered to write those dream sequences without the guilt of spamming the moderation threads and I am 100% sure I would be having a lot of trouble figuring out how to get Taylani wanting to stay in Endrykas.

[Gossamer]

. What's Your Dialect? Yet another fun thing from a Seattle Startup. So I was listening to this program on one of Seattle's Talk Station's Saturday night as I was blowing through the city (twice) roaming around Lake City, Tacoma, Renton, and Ballard (seattle burbs) making store deliveries with a big truck. Geekwire is a great program and is often truly interesting to listen too. For example I found out their recommended app of the week was called LIFT... a goal orientated group cheering on type thing where you track your life goals and work towards them and everyone and their dog can see. They had a couple guests on too. Both of these men were working for a Seattle startup in the tech industry and were working on mapping dialects and other various things. Here is a link to the show so you can see the synopsis or hear it yourself if you'd like. It kept me entertained for quite a while with the guys trying to pronounce things. One of them had authored some work for an Ivy League U that he worked for that got posted in the New York Times during the holidays and was evidently the talk of the Christmas and New Years party circuits. You should check it out. This just tells me that despite having grown up in a tri-lingual household you can't shed your roots. Washington is in my blood. The New York Times proves it. The New York Times Dialect Survey .

[Wanda Endust]

My mom actually took that survey not too long ago and it was 100% accurate: Southern Illinois!

...I took it too, but it breaks the system a bit when you're not "from" anywhere. All in all, it really is super fun to take and comment on some of the options. Like, "who the heck calls a roundabout a rotary?!" and all that jazz. I'd love to see all the work that goes into making something like this!

[Drusilla]

I took it and it nailed my hometown! Rockford, IL. I got a good laugh out of it. Thanks Goss!

[Taylani]

*grins* I took it and it was pretty accurate.. Kentucky with a little Louisiana flair in there.