The Kelly Green Clover

Here's my latest make-up-play-session: re-creating MAC's "lace collection" campaign look. It's an entry to a youtube contest in which you take a "runway look" as your inspiration. So here's mine:




And here's my recreation. It wasn't as tedious as it looks.. or maybe it was and I was just having too much fun to notice?

Last night I got creative with the make-up for another youtube contest. The prizes are really great on this contest: Sigma make-up brush sets; these are like, professional quality make-up brushes. I would *love* to get my hands on a set. So I tried 3 different times to make something I felt good enough about putting onto youtube. I was getting frustrated; the first time I tried to make myself look like a painting:

The second time I tried to do a Monet waterlillies look...

And the third time I did this: a pseudo-cubist inspired blue/complimentary color creation that I improvised as I went along.



To be honest, I don't plan to win. But it's fun to hope!

With a blog named The Kelly Green Clover, it'd be a total shame if I didn't make an update today! It doesn't take much to figure out that I am indeed Irish, and my family used to celebrate this holiday by pub-hopping through downtown Dallas and coming home to a dinner of corned beef and cabbage. This year, we just stuck with the corned beef and cabbage dinner. I busied myself with my project of the day: St. Patrick's Day dessert!


Guiness chocolate cake... with Irish Cream Frosting! Talk about decadence! I got both recipes from Smitten Kitchen. Her version was cupcakes, which was quite tempting...but I wanted to make this into a cake project.

The top looks a bit like a pint of Guinness, doesn't it? I didn't really mean for that to be the effect...but I guess that it's pretty fitting, considering the ingredients of the cake!



The basket-weave was hastily-done, and the runny/thin consistency of the icing made it pretty difficult to accomplish. Definitely a note to self: basket-weave needs stiffer icing than this!







The design was inspired by Irish china known as Belleek. My grandmother had a whole bunch of this stuff, and passed a few pieces on to my mom. I've grown up seeing this delicate-looking china around my house, and always thought it was very pretty. As you can see, the basket-weave is a very common motif in Belleek. Not all Belleek has it, but a lot of it does.

Alright, so that was my day in a nutshell! Well, in a cake. My family hasn't torn into this cake yet, but I'm looking forward to it! Mmmm.


UPDATE: Cake was good! Frosting was a little too sweet (see: Liam's Rejected Frosting)

My most recent cake was made for my dear friend Amanda. It was her 24th birthday coming up, so I wanted to make her a little something...and what better than a cake right?

From Cakes

I made a devil's food (her favorite) two layer cake, with buttercream icing in her favorite colors: salmon, raspberry hot pink, and teal (think Tiffany's). Amanda's style is classic and girly, and I've seen she likes the whole shabby-chic style quite a bit.

So after searching around on the internet for shabby-chic inspiration, I found this adorable cake and decided to recreate it using her favorite colors, and trading out the ribbon at the bottom for turquoise baubles. I'm glad to say she really loved her cake!

This past weekend I had the opportunity to see my friend Andrea and her husband Sam for a quick lunch at Potbelly's (mmm yeah).

My most recent creation is a mosaic that I did in Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas. The above image is a digital rendering (done with the help of photoshop) of my design submission. The Deep Ellum Foundation had a call for entries, and about 25 (?) designs were chosen to replace the old and fading paintings that were existing.

How did I decide on a mosaic design? Well, seeing as how I had no experience in outdoor painting or mosaic work, I decided it'd be a good idea to submit an entry that combines the two. Some have said this move was 'daring' or 'brave.' Looking back, I see it's just plain foolishness on my part. However, I survived, and now it's time to share! So what I think I'll do is separate the posts out according to phases. Stay tuned!