barbie fashion passion

Posted on May 1, 2025 by marey mercy

My next photoshoot with my You Create Kit #1 Barbies was an improvement over the previous one. I actually didn’t mind the time it took to set these up for some reason; I guess I am getting used to the differences between other types of photography and doll photography. I’d also like to start taking photos of Nacogdoches and East Texas, but that’s a post for another time – I haven’t started doing it yet so we’ll see how that goes.

This sign was hanging up in my bathroom but it fell off the wall, so I figured what the hell, let’s take pictures of it! I don’t think it totally works because there’s a lack of diversity among these dolls – there are different ethnicities represented, and one curvy doll, but for the message of the sign I think there should have been more variety for it to be truly effective. Mattel makes Barbies in wheelchairs, with prosthetic legs, vitiligo, and Down’s Syndrome – just to name a few – and the inclusion of such dolls would have really worked better. But I worked with what I had.

It was a happy accident that the lighting turned out so cool in these shots. I tried putting a light bender on my external flash and the results were better than I would have expected! Lots of nice shadows to play with.

When I first started photographing dolls, the stands made me crazy .I really thought I had to find a way to edit them out of shots, which is tedious and imperfect. But now I include them if they need to be included without giving it a second thought. However, I’ve also gotten better at finding ways to pose dolls without using stands, too. It did take forever to get the doll with the short bob and scrunch boots to stay leaned against the shelf wall though; she fell over every time I messed with any other part of the set. The “set,” by the way, is a collection of table shelving I got off of Amazon that can be put together in different ways. Kind of makes me think of a Bob Fosse “All That Jazz” set.

I’ve been working on re-bodying some of my original Barbie Basics, which came on non-articulated bodies. As much as I love their original body molds, they just don’t work for photos, so I’ve taken some of my dolls that are more “character” based (like my Barbie movie ones) and swapped out their articulated bodies with the Basics from the early 00’s. I tend to use Barbies with less recognizable face molds in my photos, so the ones based on familiar characters don’t need to be as posable since they’re just going to stand on a shelf for the most part. Also, I have a few collector Barbies that come clothed in pieces that can’t be removed, so they don’t really need articulation, and I re-body those as well.

Once I got the setup going, it was quite fun to move all the dolls around into different positions (as you can see LOL) and the Basics clothes being so coordinated and interchangeable made changing up their outfits a breeze. So even though at first I was less than thrilled with this line, the kit concept changed my mind on them completely. I’ve since purchased one other, which leaves me three more to go – the only one I probably won’t get is the petite one from this release; I really dislike her outfit and I’m not thrilled with her face mold either.

She looks better in the out-of-box photos I’ve seen posted on Reddit and Amazon reviews, but I still think I’ll give her a pass to save some money. I don’t attempt to collect an entire set of any release as it’s too expensive, and there’s always at least one I don’t want. For my money, choosing to dress a petite doll in a maxi skirt was a big fail here, and even though I can use the maxi dress elsewhere, I still don’t like the doll enough to bother with it. The other three, though, I still want to acquire.

I just got this one in yesterday, and I have to say these curvy dolls are growing on me – especially now that more clothes fit them. I wasn’t super-impressed with her after seeing the stock photos, but real pictures of her face changed my mind. She’s really gorgeous.

This is a tall body, and her skin tone should match the three dolls from my kit, which makes her head easily swappable with the others. Yay!

I totally missed the last platinum-haired Barbie release; when I could have bought her for around $35, I kept passing on her, and now she costs around $150. So I bought this one from Amazon last night. Blonde Barbies are usually my last choice, but these platinum-haired ones are everything.

Last but not least, I took some individual shots of the dolls while working on this shoot, so you can see the face detail better.

This doll is from the original Basics line of the 2000s

This is not a Basics doll but is from the Barbie Looks series that was released in the fall of ’24

Also, how amazing do these kit dolls look bald?

That’s all for now – I’m sure there will be more doll shots in the near future. Also I am working on another found footage horror review, and have written a few poems I could upload as well. Lots going on!

Barbie Party

Posted on April 19, 2025 by marey mercy

I’ve taken some better photos of my kit #3 dolls, as well as one I got at Goodwill for $2.50. Someone donated a huge stash of Barbies to the Goodwill near my house, and the haul I got from them is unreal. But more about that later. Let’s take a look at some better kit photos.

My only gripe with this set is the doll with the blue and black wig – something about her face just does not photograph well. Her face always comes out looking flat, for lack of a better word. I probably need to get some shots of her solo in different wigs and see if that makes a difference.

The curvy doll is the one who looks good in every single wig, and she even rocks a bald look like a boss. She also wears all the outfits best, as these fairly simple, stretchy pieces benefit from some added curves.

As I mentioned in my last post, the tall model looks best in that Afro wig. I guess I should describe them by face mold instead of body type since they are all interchangeable, but I’m not familiar enough with the names of the different molds and am too lazy to look them up. Suffice it to say that the dolls in these configurations are my favorite, but I haven’t played around with them much to be certain.

Moving on to one of my Goodwill finds, it was windy yesterday, so I took this one out to see if I could get any decent shots of her hair and dress blowing in the wind. The results were mixed, but I had fun shooting them and felt like I came away from this set with a better understanding of how to shoot dolls and have fun while doing it. So I’m feeling a little more confident now.

I’m pretty sure this is a Barbie Extra doll; she came with different clothes on so I can’t be sure, but she looks closest to this one:

Bummed I didn’t get my hands on that purse

The dress she’s wearing in these shots is from a Liz Taylor doll I got for a steal on Amazon several months ago; since this is a curvy doll and Liz has a seriously snatched waist, I couldn’t close the dress in the back, and it gapped out a lot. But I used some body software I have to fix the rather shlumpy shape she had with the back unfastened.

Doll hair sure doesn’t move like wig or natural hair, and it’s surprising how much wind it takes to get it to move. I’m still working on that, as I certainly learned plenty of tricks to make my hair move around in portraits, but as of now I’m still learning how to get similar effects from doll hair. I have many shots of her falling over as the wind knocked her down for sure – not only was it windy, but I added a warehouse fan and pretty much had to blast it right up in her face as best I could. Even then, the dress moved a lot more than the hair did.

I got a lot of stray wispy hairs flying about rather than all of it moving at once, which makes things look a little messy. Also, I had the shutter speed way too slow in about half the pictures, so instead of capturing the hair’s movement, I ended up with a lot of hair blur. So as I said, still learning over here. Oh, and I remembered my old habit of wearing clothes in weird ways for added effect, and since I loved the two colors in the skirt of this gown, I took a lot with her wearing it upside down. This made up a bit for the lack of real movement in the hair. Remember my motto: when in doubt, strangely wear your clothes for more interesting shots.

Also, my tendency to over-process shots really has to be reigned in with these dolls. I guess because I am already dealing with a fake person, the photos can’t take a lot of fakery when it comes to editing. Most of these shots I over-processed the first time and had to start completely over. The only exception is the one above; it has that strange lens flare because there was a big pole in the shot that was distracting, so I found an effect to blur it out entirely. So heavy edits can still be used to fix errors or flaws, I guess, but what I’m learning is that when I’ve got an already great shot, I need to keep it simple instead of trying to make it, well, greater.

As I mentioned above, I came away from this shoot feeling more satsfied with the results and more energized than I have since switching to photographing dolls, and I even enjoyed shooting outside for once. So I’m hopeful I can move forward with more success and satisfaction. In fact, I took over 900 shots during this set, so you know I was feeling it.

Dolly Shots

Posted on November 30, 2023 by marey mercy

I can tell I’m going to quickly run out of doll puns to use as blog post titles. Oh well.

I’ve been doing a fair bit of reading since my last post, and have picked up some tips from others to improve my doll photos. One big mistake I was making was using too much light. Generally, when dealing with a human subject, you want as much light as possible on the face to balance out uneven skin tone and help hide imperfections. Not so with dolls. Too much light on a doll’s face and you end up with a hunk of plastic with eyes. You actually need more shadows on a doll’s face to give it depth and dimension. So yeah, learning this improved my results tremendously.

I’ve also had to pull way back on my photo editing – which has always been my first love – and put more care into the shots themselves. When taking self-portraits I worry mostly about color and the texture of fabrics, then I just twirl and jump and roll around until I come across a good shot or two. Dolls obviously cannot do any of that, so most of my time is spent on getting the setup and the pose of the doll just right before taking the photo. There’s a lot of upside to this. While much more time is spent actually taking the photos, a lot less time is spent editing them, and I also don’t have to take as many to get a good shot.So, it’s a different process, and I still get too heavy-handed with the editing on occasion because I can’t help myself, but overall I’m starting to really enjoy it.

Obviously, I am now obsessed with buying dolls, but it’s much cheaper than wigs and people costumes, plus I don’t have much room to build up a massive collection so that helps. And with “fashion dolls” like the Monster/Rainbow/Shadow Highs or the LOL OMGs, they usually come with extra clothes and accessories so I can mix things up. There are some gorgeous dolls out there I’d love to buy, but they actually cost more than a synthetic wig even at today’s prices, so that’s not going to be happening. Pullips and Blythe dolls are the two I’m drooling over, but I couldn’t see myself daring to take one of these and stick them in a tree to take a photo anyway, given their price point, so for now I’m sticking to dolls in the $20-$30 price range.

Pullip doll – price range $200-$400. These are supposed to have more posability than the Blythes, but I still like the Blythes a wee bit better.

Blythe Dolls – $250-$400 without customization – that pink one tho!! It’s everything.

After some experimentation, I’ve figured out the best lens to use (my 17-40 mm L-series)and where the best setup is around the house (on top of my desk). One nice thing is that I can sit in a chair while I take pictures! 🙂

She’s leaning on a little desk shelf I have that I turned over on its side – I also used some PhotoShop magic so that her eyes are looking to the side instead of straight ahead, and changed her skin from blue to pale.

My head is brimming with ideas right now for things to try, which is great – I bought several rolls of wrapping paper to use as backdrops as I still prefer to take pictures in a studio setting as opposed to outdoors, and all sort of things I have around the house can be put to use as props.Some work out great, others not so much, but it’s so much fun trying things out I don’t mind too much when something fails.

Wallpaper backdrop and $12 doll from Amazon

I freaking LOVE this doll’s hair and rockin’ outfit

I often look up photos of real people to help me get poses right. My little $12 Amazon doll in front of the wrapping paper was posed by looking at photos of poor children from the 1800s. And this rockin’ babe was posed in imitation of all those Charlie perfume ads from the 80’s with Shelley Hack in them. Remember those? In almost every single one of them she’s walking with this wide stance and her hair is blowing everywhere. I can still sing the jingle.

There’s a fragrance that’s here to stay, and they call it – CHAAARLIE!

OK so I had to add a background to this one – and check out those SHOEEEES!

I’ve started to look more at the clothes a doll comes with than the facial features, since these two brands I really like mostly look the same but with different hair. And since a set of clothes cost as much as, if not more than, just buying a new doll, I’ve got two more coming that I bought strictly for the outfits. But the dolls are cute too:

LOL OMG Melrose doll – I NEED those leggings!

OMG LOL Groovy Babe – I need those leggings, too

The OMG LOL’s don’t have as much movement as the Monster/Rainbow/Shadow Highs (their legs really aren’t bendable at all), but they’re about an inch shorter which makes them easier to deal with. I also like their big old anime eyes and the fact that they’re all pear shaped – lots of junk in the trunk and pretty small boobs. My Rainbow and Shadow High dolls are adorable, and I love the monochromatic color schemes, but they’re not curvy like the LOLs.

Speaking of which have you seen the curvy line of Barbies? They’re pretty awesome. Just wish they dressed them better. Although this one looks cute:

Sadly, my Madame Alexanders have pretty much been shoved to side, since they don’t fit the photography I’m doing at all, but I still owe them for the inspiration. More to come!

Knitography!

Posted on July 24, 2021 by marey mercy

Well hello everyone! How the hell are ya?

So I haven’t updated since April, and since then I’ve been able to meet up with friends, hang out with my sister, and eat in a few restaurants with Doug. Hallelujah! Except oh wait – this is Texas, after all, and our super-low vaccination rate means the Delta variant of COVID-19 is on the rise in a major way, and Doug and I are back into quarantine mode. I’ll be damned if after committing to avoiding this stupid virus for a year I’m going to turn around and get COVID, even if it most likely wouldn’t be in some serious form since I’m vaccinated, because a bunch of people refuse to do their part and just take the damn shot already. And yes, I have family members and friends who refuse to get vaccinated, and they are all absolutely on my shit list. There’s no way in hell our governor is going to mandate masks, social distancing, or vaccines at this point, so if we’re going to stay healthy AND do our part not to spread the virus (since vaccinated people can carry it asymptomatically) we’re going to stay home. Again. Sigh.

But hey, I did this whole stay-at-home thing for like 14 months already, so I’m good to go. I’m still knitting a LOT, and although I still have much to learn I’ve managed to knit a few decent scarves so far. My plan was to keep knitting scarves until I had several more advanced stitch patterns down – my first full scarf was a basic garter stitch (and that one was a bitch because I bought a light weight yarn that was hard for a newbie like me to work with), then a seed stitch, and then a rib stitch. I tried stockinette with a border but the damn thing still curled up, so I don’t know what I did wrong there.

I was going to move on to a basket stitch when I got the idea to learn how to knit roses – and now I am obsessed. My goal is to knit a shit-ton of roses together to make a blanket, but that’s going to take a while, so in the meantime I thought I could at least get enough made to use in photos. Even that was going to take awhile, so I got the bright idea to just use photoshop to pretend like I’d made a shit-ton of roses. Problem solved!

This was done with only three different roses

I just snapped a photo of myself, then stood in the same exact spot and stuck a knitted rose on a knitting needle and held the thing up in all the different positions I wanted it to be, and then layered them all on to the original photo.

These little roses I turned into tea light holders, and they sit in a little silver platter on my office table. I’m pretty pleased with them! I’m currently learning to knit leaves I can add to my roses, but that involves both increasing and decreasing stitches, which is a new skill for me, so I have so far successfully knitted — one. I have a long way to go folks. But thanks to the Delta variant and a plethora of stubborn Southerners who won’t get vaccinated, I have plenty of time now!

*And yes, I realize many, many people cannot get vaccinated for various reasons. I do not fault those people one bit. In fact, the high risk of COVID to people who cannot get vaccinated make me fault the ones who could get it but won’t EVEN MORE.

Anyway, I’m enjoying both the knitting AND how I am finding ways to incorporate it into my photography – or knitography, as I have taken to calling it. I feel like there is loads of potential here to take both activities in some fun new directions.

This is one scarf I made that is half white and half yellow – I just layered several different shots of me throwing it around into one photo.

Aside from this, my summer has been light. I have put on some weight again, and tried to taper off my Lexapro since I dropped 20 pounds the last time I stopped taking it, but emotionally I couldn’t handle it. I finally realized it was ridiculous to put myself through the wringer mentally to lose a few pounds, so I went back on it and am trying to get the weight down without having to lose my peace of mind in the process. It ain’t easy, but at this point I have at least stopped the weight gain, which was really starting to climb. Haven’t lost any yet, but am no longer putting it on, so that’s a start.

Our old girl Penny had a rough June. She has vestibular disease, which is common in old dogs. It’s essentially when small blood vessels burst in the inner ear, and the symptoms can be scary because they mimic a stroke, but vestibular is much less serious in the long run as dogs generally recover from them 100%. Penny has had three vestibular “events’ as we call them, where she gets major vertigo and struggles to walk and stand. Initially she also gets so nauseous that she throws up, but now that we’ve dealt with this before we have medication on hand that helps her with both the dizziness and the nausea. Mid-June, she had another bout of this; she was lying down on a beanbag chair when all of a sudden she rolled off it and started shaking her head around. We knew right away what it was, and tried to get medicine in her before she threw it up. It was unpleasant night as she couldn’t walk well enough to go outside, so she peed and pooped in her dog bed for about 24 hours before things kicked in enough for her to be able to walk with our assistance.

We bought a harness like the one pictured above, and it was a real lifesaver once Penny regained enough balance to be able to walk outside. She was still terribly dizzy, but she COULD walk, and with this harness we were able to help her keep her balance. Her recovery took a while this time – it’s been a little over a month now and it’s just been in the past few days that she’s been completely back to normal. We still keep the back harness on her all day and use it when she goes out, as her back leg strength still isn’t as good as it used to be and it allows us to help her stay upright when she goes to the bathroom. But she’s finally back to walking around the house on her own, and even being able to sleep on the bed with us again – although she still needs help with the stairs that get her up there. For the first three weeks, when she couldn’t get up on the bed, I actually slept on the floor in my office right next to her, which was not good for my back let me tell you, but it was good for my heart. After losing Sprocket in December, we are both even more sensitive towards any pet that gets sick right now. Even after so much time has passed, we still miss that old boy something terrible.

That’s all for now, although I do have a bit more Knitography to process. So maybe we’ll be speaking again soon!

Knitty Kat

Posted on April 15, 2021 by marey mercy

Over spring break, I had enough free time to get in the mood to take pictures again. I’d gotten so stuck in a certain setup and process that I’d “perfected” over the years that it never occurred to me it might not be serving me well anymore. Looking over some really early photos gave me the idea to experiment with some techniques I hadn’t used in years, and they worked out brilliantly.

I’ve always been partial to using softer light than this, but I’ve had the technology to use stronger, brighter light for a long time. As I’ve gotten older, all those soft shadows I’ve been using on my face weren’t as flattering as they used to be – LOL – and directing more light to my face really did the trick.

I’ve also gotten away from using my wide-angle lens for portraits, because to be honest, that totally makes sense, but when I first bought my 17-40 I used it for everything, and in looking over old portraits I realized that hey, they actually didn’t look half-bad. Plus, when working in a space as small as mine the wide-angle really makes it easier to take photos, even if I am just doing portraits. It allows me to incorporate more movement and flowy fabric as well as creating stronger lines that for whatever reason are really working for me right now.

I had a lot of fun doing this over the course of two days, but soon real life emerged again and I haven’t had time to do a photoshoot since.

When the pandemic began, my husband and I committed to staying home as much as possible because we didn’t have to leave the house at all. I switched easily to tutoring from home, and he was already retired, so we went into full lockdown in March of 2020 and still have just barely come out of it. We got vaccinated a month ago – Johnson & Johnson vaccine, but since it’s been over a month we aren’t at risk of blood clots – and while my husband was able to meet up with a few friends to sit outside and have a nice lunch, no one I know has been fully vaccinated so I haven’t ventured out yet at all. But, when this all started I decided since I wasn’t going to be anywhere or doing anything, it would make sense to just tutor as much as possible so I didn’t get bored. So, since last March I’ve been tutoring every single day, seven days a week, and now I’m pretty much stuck with it until the end of the school year because I don’t want to abandon any of my students so close to the end of the semester. But part of my own personal return to normal will be setting some new boundaries and giving myself some days off again. My point is that this should allow me more time to get inspired to take photos again. But we’ll see – I’ve got some other creative endeavors going on at the moment that I’m balancing.

I’ve written about how I took up coloring last year, and while I am still doing that fairly often, more recently I decided to learn how to knit. I’ve only been doing it for about a month now, so I’ve not knitted much more than a bunch of lumpy squares, but I have to say it’s a very enjoyable hobby even when whatever I’m trying to make doesn’t turn out.

I’ve only managed to make one actual THING so far, which is a very skinny scarf -I tried to make a normal width at first but I kept screwing up when I got past about 6 stitches, so I settled for a very skinny one. It’s also kind of short because after successfully knitting a bunch of rows without having to start over, I began to fear screwing up and went ahead and bound it off.

I am currently trying to make a wider scarf in a different stitch pattern, but I’ve had to start over a ton of times so far, which is fine, because as I said before, it’s still a relaxing hobby even when I keep messing up. It only took me a few days to get the basic knitting stitches down – knits and purls – which is pretty miraculous considering my inability to follow instructions, so the rest of it is just finesse and practice. If you’ve ever wanted to try to knit, trust me, you can do it if I can. I am generally hopeless and being crafty with my hands. I’ve tried to learn to sew I don’t know how many times and have always failed, for example.

That’s all for now – I hope you all are getting your vaccine on and otherwise doing well!

Photo-19

Posted on August 11, 2020 by marey mercy

I’ve decided to try another 365 photo a day challenge – this is a way for me to approach photography differently as well as give me something else creative to do while still being stuck at home. Coloring is fun and all, but not going anywhere except to pick up groceries once a week has given me a lot of nervous energy to burn.

For this project, I am going to shoot only in monochrome, and everything will be taken in JPEG instead of raw format. The idea is that this will force me to think differently about the photos I take, and move me in a different direction. It should also eliminate the issues that slowed me down the last time I tried a 365 photo a day project – shooting in color and in raw prompted me to do WAY too much editing of the photos. I got obsessed about the colors being just right, and often ended up over-processing the shots until they looked crappy. It also took a ton of time which made the whole thing laborious.

I think changing the process this way will help me see differently in an environment I’ve been stuck in for way too long and have become terribly over-familiar with. Removing the option of obsessing over color and processing makes me ‘see’ my environment differently, and I’m finding all sorts of little things to take pics of in the coming days. How well this will be working by day 300 is anyone’s guess, but I’m willing to give it a go. I also think I can use photography to tell some sort of story of this time we’re all dealing with – IF, like me, you are staying home as much as possible.

This is a short little update I know, but it’s all I have time for right now. I may just upload a pic a day here under a new tag and add a link to the 365 photos on the menu, but I do still have other things I’d like to share about my coloring soon, especially about how I finally managed to turn my photos into good coloring pages (hint: it involved finding someone else to do the transforming). But I don’t have time to write that all up now so I’ll get to it later. Stay safe everyone!

Harried Alive

Posted on October 11, 2018 by marey mercy

Whoo – it’s been a long while. I’ve been busy, y’all.

Face Paint

Doing what, you might ask? Work, mostly, and also precinct chair duties in preparation for the upcoming mid-term election. Which, I am fairly certain, the Dems will not win in Texas. I love me some Beto O’Rourke, y’all – something to which my front yard signs will proudly attest – but in spite of the need for me to put on my happy face for the Dems in my neighborhood I represent, well, come on. We all know Ted Cruz is a lock for Texas. This state might get there eventually, but I do not think this is the year. I’m perfectly willing to be wrong – and I hope I am – but I don’t see it happening.

mistake#6

Visual representation of me not seeing it happening

We’ve held candidate meet and greets and block walks, and I’ve sent out fliers and push cards. And until this week I was watching/listening to news obsessively; something I finally realized I had to put a stop to. The constant news was making me insane, and the Kavanaugh nomination did me in. I was taking it all, way, WAY too personally, and it was ruining my life. Yes, I believe Donald Trump is a shitty president. I think his administration is incompetent at best; greedy, selfish, and batshit crazy at worst. But you know what – I have disliked presidents in the past, and considered them dangerous and awful (I’m looking at you, Dubya), but I still managed to have a separate and functional life from all of that. And somewhere between November 16, 2016, and last week, those lines got completely erased. I was obsessively on Twitter. I listened to MSNBC and/or CNN for about eight hours a day. I ranted and raged alongside my husband (who is as liberal as I am, but had way more control over himself and the amount of news consumption he was absorbing).

mistake#10

My brain on Twitter

Long story short, I finally realized I was not going to be helpful to anyone if I was completely insane, so I put myself on a one-week news blackout. No radio, no Twitter, no Washington Post, nothing. The first two days were awful, as checking Twitter every spare second had become a terrible pastime of mine, but by day three I had started to realize there were actually music channels on Sirius XM, and there were TV shows to watch (Dancing Queen, anyone?), and work I’d been putting off, and you know, a world out there that was worth enjoying. Of course, people are still laughing at me when I tell them I am slowly allowing the news back into my life with my favorite three-hour block of news shows each night (Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’DonnelL, and Brian Williams) as if it’s hilarious that someone’s idea of properly REDUCING the amount of news consumption to THREE HOURS A DAY is somehow inadequate. But to go from 24 hour news consumption to three is, in my opinion, progress. So there you go.

MIstake # 18

But no, Beto still ain’t gonna win.

What else has been going on? Lots of work – I have 19 clients this year, which is a LOT. I tutor 3 or 4 kids a day, starting at 3:30 PM and usually working until around 8:30 at night. I also tutor three kids on Sunday, and then I have Friday and Saturday as my weekend off. This is working well, but it’s a lot of kids to plan for and keep track of, so I’ve really had to commit myself to staying organized and making good planning notes after each session, or else I forget what we did when I go back to that kid a week later. Note taking has become VERY important with so many students, and it’s the last thing I want to do after getting home around 9 PM, but I’ve found ways to make it work. Sometimes I do it the next morning, and other times I leave for tutoring a little early and stop by a coffee shop to make my notes before the work begins. One way or another, I’ve found that staying on top of it is essential to doing a good job, so a lot more of my time is taken up with work now than has been for the first two years of doing this. Which is to say that photography has taken a MAJOR backseat lately. I took zero photos in September, and very few in August, so I started editing old blooper photos like the ones you see in black and white above (photos where I screwed something up). It’s been kinda fun to work with photos that are basically screw-ups, and it kept me occupied when I had a little time to play around with Photoshop.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Here’s a few examples

I actually took the first week in October off, just to catch up with things, and I took a day to shoot some photos in a few new wigs I’ve picked up lately. But then I got so busy again I’ve barely had time to edit any of them at all.

multi1

Except this one

greenlight2

And this one

So there you go – that’s what’s been going on with me since July 9th when I last wrote a blog post. It feels like I’ve been so busy that I should have a lot more to tell you, but at this point in the school year I can’t remember much past the last week or so, so anything else interesting that’s happened to me lately has already been forgotten. I will try not to stay away so long next time, and I hope you are all doing well.

Summer Stuff

Posted on July 9, 2018 by marey mercy

I’ve had a light summer of tutoring, with the past two weeks having no students whatsoever, so you’d think I would be busy taking advantage of all the free time to do things I don’t have time to do during the school year. But, you would be wrong.

JasmineFloral1

For the most part, I’ve been incredibly lazy, napping every day and sleeping late, while occasionally hopping into the pool. But I’ve had a few moments of activity here and there, just enough to keep me away from the blog, I suppose.

braids1

For starters, my older sister and I have taken a few little day trips over the past several weeks. It started when I was staying in a hotel during the last few weeks of our mold remediation; I figured since I was in a nice hotel and she and I both love hotel rooms, she should come on over and hang out with me for a while. She spent one night with me and we spent the day shopping at the nearby mall and eating in the restaurants surrounding the area.

Hallettsville1

I thought this was the town hall in Hallettsville, TX, but my sister thinks it’s a church. I still have no idea.

That led to us getting another hotel room in Clear Lake City so we could visit my brother, who lives in Dickinson, when he threw a graduation party for his two kids. It’s a long drive out to Dickinson from where we live, even though technically it’s all still “Houston” – especially since Dickinson is off the main freeway to Galveston Island and the party was thrown over a holiday weekend. Traffic is always horrible on I-45 in the summer, so my sis and I figured we’d get another hotel room, check in at the graduation party, and then spend another nice night hanging out in a hotel on the water instead of making two traffic trips in one day. I forgot my camera, though, so no pictures of that little jaunt.

Hallettsville2

Another Hallettsville shot

Most hotels were booked in Clear Lake for the weekend, though, and we ended up staying in an older Hyatt hotel that had a lovely view overlooking the bay, but had horribly thin walls and those old, adjoining rooms that I don’t think newer hotels even do anymore – and the first floor we stayed on was so poorly insulated and populated with small children that I swear my sis and I kept opening the door to the hallway to try to find out where the large gaggle of children was playing in the halls, only to realize that they were the kids in various other rooms that we were hearing as if they were right outside our door. We ended up moving to a higher floor, where they apparently don’t let kids stay, and that reduced the noise level quite a bit. But lesson learned, no more stays at the Clear Lake City Hyatt. It also must have been moldy, because after having no breathing issues for several weeks, I woke up coughing like a maniac the night of our stay, and it took me another week or so to recover. Moving on.

Hallettsville4

Then my sister wanted to go spend a few days in an incredibly tiny little Texas town called Hallettsville, which is where all these pictures are from. It’s a bit convoluted, but my aunt and uncle bought a tiny little country house there, on about 4 acres of land, where they plan to retire someday, and my sister, who is close to my aunt, has a key to go stay out there whenever she wants (I’m not as close to this aunt so I had never even been to this house before). Sounded like a nice free vacation to me, so we loaded up her car and headed out there for a few days in June.

Hallettsville3

When I say Hallettsville is small, I do mean small: Wikipedia lists its population as just over 2,000. Even though we were wandering around their little town square on a Saturday afternoon, there was still almost NO foot traffic, and I have no idea how anything aside from the factory supply store manages to stay in business there. The house my aunt and uncle bought is small, also – almost claustrophobic – but it’s actually a nice enough place to retire if you want some land and a Dairy Queen to visit on occasion. I was a bit fascinated by this little walkway leading up to their front porch though, and fortunately I’d remembered to take my camera so I could do some quick levitation using it as a background:

sidewalk2

That’s the walkway leading up to their house, and as you can see, it just sort of stops for no reason in the middle of the grass. I’m assuming someone at some point had intended to put in a driveway or something and then never did…? I dunno. But anyway, it inspired me as some sort of launching pad to a magical dimension, so there you go. The house is right behind me here, and you can see their little stretch of land with some decent trees and a pleasant view to look out over from the front porch. Not bad, if you’re into that sort of thing. Not sure I could do it long-term though.

Fun little detail: my aunt and uncle keep a golf cart on the property so they can tool around a little, and my sister loves to just hop on it and drive around on the grass, so we did that a few times. I am not as big of a fan of this, because I HAAAAATE flying bugs, and as soon as you start cruising around on the grass all of these CREATURES leap out of the grass and into the cart. So, my sis was really enjoying driving around and listening to me scream. Then, she accidentally ran over a cow pie (that’s cow shit, for those of you not familiar with the term) and it splattered all over my leg. Two more reasons I probably should not retire in the country: cow pies and flying bugs. Moving on.

nails

In other news, I have new little beauty obsession – fake nails, the kind you glue on and can buy at the CVS.I wore acrylics for years, but really got tired of all the filling and drilling involved, so about a year ago I had those soaked off and just got shellac manicures for about another year. But, since my husband and I are both wanting to work less now, I am trying to cut back where I can, and shellac manicures are rather expensive where I live ($50!). So, the last time I went to the salon I just got a plain old manicure and left it at that. But, not being one to just leave well enough alone, I decided to try out these Lime Crime “Pop On Nails” I saw on their site a while back. I’d never been able to try them before, because of the aforementioned acrylics, so I figured while I had naked nails would be the best time to try.

popon

I’ve never tried press-on or glue-on nails before, and I was actually nervous about how these would turn out. I held onto them for several weeks, but then my sister and I decided to make one more hotel trip out to the Woodlands to see Chicago and REO Speedwagon (shut up, I’m old) so I figured that was as good a time as any to give these a go. I was really surprised by how nice they looked. I had to shorten and file them a little because they were pretty long, though:

wine

I don’t drink; that was actually my sister’s glass of wine

I loved them so much I ended up buying all the other available colors of them I could find online (they were limited edition at Lime Crime) but before I got them all in, I discovered some nails I like even better – the ImPress brand you can get at any drugstore or even (in my case at least) the grocery store.

impress

I actually prefer these ImPress nails because they are much easier to apply, and they hold up better. The Lime Crime ones look amazing at first, but they have to be applied with nail glue and the first time I applied them I used WAY too much and spent about an hour melting them off my fingers with acetone. The ImPress nails actually have adhesive already applied to the nail, so you just peel the backing off and stick them to your nails.

Photo Jul 09, 7 42 03 PM

I have always had seriously wrinkly fingers! When I was a kid classmates would call me “granny hands.” Kids are assholes, BTW.

Both brands stayed on for a week (the ImPress ones are still on as I type this) but I must say that after a few days the color was starting to flake and peel off the Lime Crime nails, and every little scratch or scuff showed on the surface so that by the end of that week, they looked a lot worse for the wear. So far, the black Impress nails aren’t showing any wear and still look like new. I haven’t tried to take these off yet, so I can’t speak to how hard they will be to remove, but all the reviews say they are easy enough to do and I know I didn’t overdo it with adhesive this time. I’m so pleased with these nails, especially since the ImPress ones are easy to find, are inexpensive (around $7 for 30 nails) and are quick to put on. I never liked getting my nails done, although I do still get pedicures (ImPress actually makes press on toenails, too, but I just can’t go there), but I always loved the look of the acrylic nails, and these are a really practical and nice alternative.

newroomjump1

Another thing I’ve done recently is volunteer to be a Democratic precinct chair for my precinct. I do not yet know what this means, but there is a meeting for all of the Democratic chairs for Precinct 3 this Wednesday, so I’ll find out my duties then. With the mid-term elections coming up, I am sure it will entail a lot of phone calls and block-walking, which I do not look forward to, but the opportunity was there for me to fill an empty chair and even though I didn’t really want to do it, with everything going on right now I felt it was important to do it anyway. Especially being here in Texas, where so many of these immigrant families are being torn apart. By the way – our city’s mayor, Sylvester Turner, is awesome, and in no way supports these policies the Trump Administration has tried to implement and bungled so stupendously. He and our city’s police chief Art Acevedo are both very strong, progressive voices for reasonable immigration policy and gun control; Acevedo in particular has gotten a lot of attention lately for his outspokenness on both issues. Houston, even though it’s deep in heart of red, red Texas, tends to have Democratic mayors, and Fort Bend County – which is the county where I live – is statistically the most diverse county in the country. A lot of Fort Bend is more purple than red, except for – you guessed it – precinct 3, where I live, which is the reddest area out here. So block walking for the Dems should be an adventure. If I get shot, well, I can’t complain. I’ve had a better life than most…only partly kidding about this!

bossy1

I also discovered Venessa Arizaga’s jewelry lately, which, if you haven’t checked her out, you really should. I know a lot of her stuff looks insane, and her prices aren’t cheap, BUT the pieces look much better on that they do just sitting there against a white background, and if you get on her mailing list she has major sales ALL the time. I got a TON of her stuff during a recent 50% off all sale event, and things like that bracelet above I got for a steal. It was already reduced to $27 and I got it for 50% off that, when it was originally fifty bucks! I now have a ton of her necklaces and bracelets and they are just what I like. I actually don’t care for metal jewelry, and much prefer necklaces and bracelets made of leather or cloth material, which is pretty much her thing. And everything is made to be worn with other items and really layered together, like so:

floorseat1

It all is very light and works well together – although I will say, I bought one of her shell chokers and it was literally choking me; I had to buy a necklace extender just to fit it around my neck. That one also isn’t very comfortable; the shells are heavy and the material is itchy. But other than that, everything I have bought from her I’ve loved.

Oh, and I have a few other things I’m keeping busy with right now – for starters, I am really trying to learn Spanish, and so far am having little luck. I’m using Babel, and there a few damn verbs I just can’t get a grasp on (those damn ‘to be’ verbs are killing me) and trust me, if I were taking this as a class I’d be failing right now. But using the app is actually helping me understand what it’s like to struggle with English grammar and spelling, which helps me with my tutoring, so it’s all good, even if my Spanish never gets up to snuff.

The thing I am more excited about than that, though, is that I am learning how to sew. I haven’t officially started yet, because my sewing machine doesn’t arrive until tomorrow (I tried to borrow one from my mom but hers was broken), but I’ve got a good book to work with that jumps right in to working with simple patterns like making headscarves and simple skirts. I’ve been wanting to learn how to sew forever (I was forced to take sewing in high school, and in a fit of misplaced feminist rage I refused to learn anything. This worked against me because not only did I not learn how to sew but I failed the class, which was less than impressive on my transcript. I failed cooking too, for the same stupid reason). I figure that most of the clothes I love to wear are loose, light, and pretty damn simple; I dislike zippers and buttons and fancy details, I tend to wear things I can easily pull on and off, and I don’t even like to wear prints, so how hard can it be to sew this stuff? Plus, I have so many things I don’t wear but would if I could just alter them a little, and let’s not even talk about the COSTUMES I could create for my photos! I really think I am going to love this new hobby, and hopefully, I will be better at it than I am at speaking Spanish.

doubleme1

As you can tell, I’ve also managed to take some photos too – so this all sounds like I’ve been way busier than I feel like I’ve been. Especially when I mention that I am taking one more trip with my sister at the end of the month to Galveston, but honestly, most of these trips I’ve taken have been her idea, and she’s done the planning while I’ve just tagged along. I promise there has also been a LOT of nap-taking, TV binging, and Candy Crush playing going on this summer, too. In truth, I’ve actually started to get bored and look forward to getting back to tutoring my students again in August.

Oh, and one more thing – in trying to spend less, I recently opted to not renew a LOT of the features I’ve paid for in the past for this blog. I am honestly not sure what some of the stuff was I was paying for, so things might randomly go wonky here if I actually canceled something I should have kept. If that happens, I’ll figure it out eventually and get things back to normal. 🙂 It just seemed like I was spending lots of money every year for a blog I only post on about once a month now, so in a fit of frugality I canceled all the extra features. We’ll see what happens!

Mannequin Avenue

Posted on June 5, 2018 by marey mercy

Dang, I have been busy with these mannequin heads, y’all:

jasmine4

First of all, I got the idea to stick a bunch of fake fruit to one of my mannequin heads. I really don’t know why this idea came to me, but once the thought occurred to me to do it I had to give it a go.

GrapeNecklace

I used double-sided tape to stick some fake fruit to the mannequin; I actually don’t have that much fake fruit – I used Photoshop to duplicate the grapes and stick’em all on there.

GrapeMohawk

I call this “The Grapehawk”

This one is my favorite of the fake fruit shots. Somehow my edits ended up making the mannequin’s face look so real, it’s almost creepy:

PearHead1

What should I call this one? The Pear Devil?

I also gave her a grape beard in one shot:

FruitHead8

Now, some of you may remember that when I tried out all those Oribe products, I mentioned how shiny and metallic silver the Silverati shampoo is, and how much I wanted to take pics of it running down my face. That would have been pretty messy to do, but when using a mannequin as a model, it was just crazy easy:

Oribe4

I really only took pictures of one mannequin. I composited this shot and changed the face a bit on one of the images so they didn’t look exactly the same.

These mannequin heads are so ridiculously easy to work with. The have these perfectly smooth, proportioned faces and they’re easy to manipulate as well as glue stuff to or smear crap all over. When I was done, I was able to just wash the old gal off with a rag and call it a day.

Oribe2

The perfect “skin” tones on these mannequins make them super-easy to overmanipulate in processing. I don’t have to worry about uneven skin tones that don’t match up – and this all led to an absolute photo-editing frenzy. I started out simple enough, but as time went on I started to really go to town with the color and shading:

Oribe6

See what I mean? The mannequin is such a great ‘blank’ canvas for some awesome edits and I can really cut lose in all sorts of ways I’ve never done before.

Oribe5

Not to mention how easy the setup and breakdown is. I managed to shoot all these photos this morning before heading out to tutor in the afternoon. Usually that’s not even remotely possible – it takes me at least an hour to put on my makeup and then after the shoot is done, I have to wash it all off again. Not to mention how much longer it takes me to shoot myself as opposed to a perfectly still doll head.

Oribe1

And I didn’t even need any fancy lighting, just my camera with my external flash. Heaven!

Oribe7

I am sure eventually I’ll get bored with these mannequins, but then again, there’s all sorts of mannequins out there with all sorts of faces, and they do whatever I want them to do without complaining. The perfect models!

Oribe8c

I can’t believe how many photos I was able to take as well as edit today, while also eating two meals, tutoring a student, and swimming for half an hour. I’m over the moon with this new direction!

Marey January

Posted on January 20, 2018 by marey mercy

earcage2

It’s been awhile, huh? First I got a few weeks off, and got really lazy. Then, I went back to work and got ridiculously busy right away. In neither circumstance did I do any blogging, or much picture-taking – not that the ridiculous amount of photos that are in this post are any indication of this.

memphisbloos1

I took a fair amount of photos in December, but never got around to sharing them here, or anywhere, for that matter. I keep forgetting to log on to my Flickr account to post photos. Days will go by before I realize I haven’t shared anything anywhere, so a big-ass backlog of photos has piled up. It’s weird to look at it all now, since I haven’t touched a camera in weeks. My schedule has gotten all turned around, because once school started up for my students they all had to change their appointment times around due to extracurricular activities, and everything is flipped and flopped and I’m still not used to the new hours.

I’ve worked basically from 3-8 Monday through Thursday, with Fridays off and a few appointments on Saturday, for a good solid year now. But all of a sudden, my students are scattered all over the place. Whereas before I saw three kids each evening, now I see two on some nights, only one on others, with no entire days off except for Sunday. And, I’m seeing students in the morning on Saturdays now, which I’ve come to learn that I dislike immensely. I don’t know how I ever taught high school all those years when the first class started at 7:30 AM – right now, I have my first morning appointment at 10 AM, and it’s miserable. Of all the changes I’ve made to my schedule, it’s the morning appointments I dislike the most, and as soon as I get an opportunity I intend to change it so I never start tutoring before 1 PM again.

trashcan

I’ve had other scheduling issues in the past that I didn’t like – I don’t mind having several hours between appointments, but getting stuck with, say, one hour between two sessions really sucks, because it’s not enough time to do anything other than sit in my car or drive around aimlessly – so one thing I’ve learned is not to sweat the unpleasantness too much, because my schedule is always changing. I’d say the longest I’ve gone without any changes to my work schedule is three months, so by now, when I run up against a schedule I don’t like, I just suck it up and bear with it until it changes again. So, I’m pretty much doing that now with the Saturday morning thing.

Also, the weather has been bananas here lately. Just this last week, Houston was hit with temperatures well below freezing for two days in a row (Tuesday and Wednesday), with sleet and snow and roads iced over everywhere. I know people who live in cold climates love to make jokes about how a warm Southern town like Houston shuts down in weather that wouldn’t make anyone blink in, say Boston, but the fact is no one who lives here is equipped for such weather, and our city isn’t well-equipped for it, either. None of us natives have ever seen a snow tire, and we are generally hard-pressed to even buy heavy sweaters, much less coats and warm boots and the like. So yeah, the city was basically shut down on those two days, which are also two of my busiest tutoring days, so I’ve spent the rest of week cramming in all the appointments I missed wherever I could to make up for that. And, get this: it’s now Saturday of the same week where the entire city iced over and froze on Tuesday and Wednesday, and it’s currently about 60 degrees outside. My sinuses don’t even know what to do anymore, and trying to decide whether I need to wear a winter scarf or summer shorts is a daily ritual. Usually I just wear both.

earcage1

One thing I’ll mention about my photos: I’ve made a conscious decision to use less Photoshop on my portraits. Don’t get it twisted – I still use a lot of Photoshop, but I’ve really backed off the portrait editing software that can alter my face shape. It was fun for quite a while to try to make myself look as different as possible, but the thrill of that has worn off for me now that I’ve basically pushed that as far as I can, and I’ve dialed it way back. I still love to add makeup and I do still even out my skin tone and smooth it a bit, but I’m doing a lot less in that department than I was doing for a while. Obviously I’m still using wigs and makeup, though – that’s probably never gonna change.

luscious1