After falling madly in love with Kleancolor's Holo Chrome, I decided to check out the rest of their offerings.
I find I really hate swatches on websites. When I saw China Glaze's holiday collection on their website, I was all "oh, ho ho ho-hum...." but once I saw that Scrangie's swatches I had to run out any buy it.
Unfortunately, Kleancolor's website suffers the same fault: bottle pics with photoshopped highlights. I will applaud them for having clear photos with a good amount of contrast and saturation - but we all know how things don't always look the same in the bottle.
You should be able to click this and go there. If not, there's a link on their site.
Boo yeah! It must be lovely where Kleancolor is headquartered because they have outside, sunny photos of each colour. It almost makes it worthless for any of us in the midwest to bother swatching Kleancolor until summer.
But I'm going to anyway.
I saw Military green at my LBS but wasn't sure if I wanted to buy it. After being really underwhelmed by Galaxy Girl, I just don't feel like spending money on polish I haven't yet seen (thank God for Zoya's 3 for free deal, huh?). After viewing it on Kleancolor's flickr, though, I was pretty sure I wanted it and purchased it during my last beauty supply splurge. All 15 bucks of splurge...
3 coats + Orly Matte Top
I originally put this on last night and then scuffed it all up doing the dishes. In an instant of laze, I just slapped another coat on top today. For a very military look, I added the matte top coat I happened to have closest. Orly Matte Top isn't as matte as some of my other faves. I actually can't recall if I used this after I bought it. I'd really like to deathmatch my matte coats. My LBS has Kleancolor's Madly Matte, so I'll be sure to pick that up. I hope that it will be more matte than Orly.
Even with more of a satin look rather than flat primer, I think I got a good army green base for some fun nail art.
And I know a thing or two about a military look...
Today, my last 2 rolls ever of Kodachrome film are being processed by Dwayne's in Parsons, Kansas.
At least, I hope they are - I held out for as long as I could so I could use up every precious frame of that stuff and had to next-day it to the lab. Parsons is so small, however, that USPS doesn't have daily service there. That's what the gal at the counter told my anyway.
I know I've mostly posted about nail polish but this isn't a nail polish blog. I just happen to like nail polish.
I also happen to really like film photography. I've been a "soup and fixer" shooter since I was a freshman in high school, worked at a photolab for a while, went to a pretty high-class photography school, and was looking toward a job with Hedrich Blessing when life did a 180 on me and brought me to where I am now.
The end of Kodachrome is the end of an era. Kodachrome was far from the first colour film - but it was the BEST. Because of the *rolls eyes* difficult processing it had to undergo (seriously, anyone who processed it in a modern automated lab, chime in on the "difficulty") Kodachrome resulted in a highly stable negative.
My dad is a shooter, my grandmother was a shooter, and both her father and stepfather were shooters...
Have a peep at Great Grandpa II's Kodachrome and tell me why Kodak got rid of this:
Great Grandpa I's box of 1930's Kodachrome slides were passed on to me several years ago. Despite poor storage following his death in 1938, his stunning images of Cuba, Manhattan, and aerial views from a DC-3 are crisp and easily colour corrected.
Seeing the world at that time in colour film is a delight and draws us closer to the past.
What will our great grandchildren think when they look at poorly saved, pixelated mush that was our graduation photos and holiday snapshots?
For me, this discontinuation of Kodachrome processing is a huge smack in the collective face of photographers by the corporate hand of Kodak.
When it was announced in June of 2009 that Kodachrome would be no more, finally confirming the rumours everyone had been chasing for almost 5 years, we were assured that we would have several years of processing left. Photographers everywhere snatched up rolls to freeze and preserve so we would have it in those several years. Myself, I snagged 2 rolls from the last shipment in Chicago.
Seeing the love, savvy marketers put their shipments up on eBay and other storefronts for insane prices. I saw single, 36 shot rolls of Kodachrome go for as high as 30 dollars....
But, out of nowhere, Kodak changed their mind and gave photographers just over a year to shoot up and process all those caches of film.
Why?
For me, the end of Kodachrome is more than just the end of a film. It's the end of corporate honesty.
Yes, we're all familiar with "Truth" campaigns and everyone is pretty solid in their belief that Philip Morris, BP, Monsanto, and lord knows who else is lying to us. But film can't lie.
When a company says, "this film is 100 speed", it IS 100 speed.
When a company says, "this film is infrared sensitive", is IS infrared sensitive.
So when a company says, "you have a few years to enjoy this classic product", we expect a few years to enjoy that classic product.
Kodak lied to their photographers.
Perhaps the people that buy the piece of junk $60 digitals from Wal-Mart don't care.
Perhaps the people that enjoy the $100,000 scientific sensors don't care.
But to the thousands of photographers (Dwayne's - the only Kodachrome processor in the world - does did 700 rolls of Kodachrome a week) who watched Kodak discontinue large format Kodachrome.... Then 200 speed Kodachrome.... Then listened to some suit try to convince us that Ektachrome was just as good, Kodak is a bunch of lying snits.
I just hope Kodak doesn't pull a Tom Petters.
Almost immediately after scrapping all the machines that made Polaroid instant film, the market for instant photography SKYROCKETED! Now Fuji's instant cameras are being sold in clothing stores and on QVC for like 100 bucks.
Kodak has recently started production of new large format stocks. They see there is an obvious need for professional films - one of which being Kodachrome - so I imagine we may see the production of Kodachrome films (or a direct copy as Fuji has done with their pull-apart instant) again.
My "stepmother" Candy's mother is a lovely wonderful woman. Though Candy and my dad are not married (long story...), Pat welcomed me warmly into the family from day one. When her mother died well into her late 90's, her jewelery was shared with me as though I was a rightful heir to it. I always had a spot at her table and when I went off to college, I had a better send off from Pat than from my own birth mother.
So when I found out she was losing her house of 50+ years (through no fault of her own, for the record), I was devastated. Though I'd only known that home for 14 years, it was more of a home to me than any of the 29 places I'd rested my own head. I had this mix of anger over the situation that led to her going from paid off for over 30 years to foreclosed on an "equity" loan. I raged against the family member that pissed away the money on a new truck and next-gen console gaming systems. I raged against the system that allowed a $45,000 house get $91,000 in the hole. I lamented the loss of her things, her late husband's things (sadly, I never met him), her mother's things, and just her space in general.
But then I calmed down and I thought about the VA apartment she was going to get to live in now. I remembered the way I was able to blossom as a person when I moved into the dorms at my university and saw how her new place was like a senior dorm. She was going to have other women to hang out with, parties she didn't have to set the table for, and a space of her own for the first time in her life. I even started hoping a little that she could meet a nice man and have an autumn boyfriend.
So I got off my duff and made a housewarming gift.
Pat is a very old fashioned lady - really a page right out of a 50's Better Homes and Gardens. Her husband, Don, built a fallout shelter in the backyard... and it still stands today. Sadly I doubt that was a selling point at the sheriff's auction.
I went old fashioned with my gift and crocheted a nice set of coasters and a doily. Since it's getting to be that "most wonderful time of the year", I picked out a pretty Christmassy yarn.
Round little donuts of Christmas
I've just learned how to crochet this summer. I do living history and we're all a little strange. At a friend's birthday, the boys all went out in the garage and talked about guns and jeeps and moustaches or whatever dudes talk about when chicks aren't around and the women sat in the living room drinking and stitching up various historical costumes. Without a chatterling (I'm sure I misspelled that) to create, I was taught how to knit.
I wasn't half bad for being pretty drunk at the time. My friend sent me home with a pair of needles and a ball of yarn so I could practice on the long, long drive home across southern Michigan.
Almost as soon as I got home, though, I lost one of the needles. I put my project down for a moment to get the phone, or save the bird from the miniblinds, or wake the boyfriend... I dunno... and when I came back the needle was just GONE. Still is gone!
The doily. You can tell I've just learned to crochet, but I think it's charming in its own way.
I found a crochet needle for 49 cents soon after though, and taught myself how to crochet from a book called Get Your Crochet On! by the gal that makes hats for Common. (Disclaimer: I've not yet figured out how to make money off Amazon links, so I'm not just pluggin that book for cash.) It was really awesome and though I never finished a hat in the time I had with the book (I got it from the IMCPL who, by the way, NEEDS your money), I learned how to crochet in the round and started making some cute bun covers and will make a snood for myself soon.
So here I am with my little old fashioned present for Pat. I really hope that it helps her feel at home when she gets it. I think of her new gal pals coming over and having tea, setting their mug down on this happy circle of Christmas joy (while making it, honestly, all I could think of was the Italian deli on Northwest Highway in Edison Park... Boy do I miss Chicago), and thinking that Pat really has it together.
I know that a lot of her stuff is going to sit in storage for most of the winter... and honestly, nobody is very sure what exactly they were able to get out of the basement. Is it all crap? Well, we'll find out soon.
I couldn't fit the doily into the box, so it became the decoration. Now I don't have to wrap it! Yay!
I'll be giving it to her, and seeing her new place, Sunday night, so I should report back on what she thought of it. I'll report back. Hopefully, I will have figured out better how to post photos and stuff so I can not look like a total blog noob.
