definatalie.com

Charming Prints.

Natalie — Sun, 27 May 2012 06:46:03 +0000

A bar chart of my recent prints poll. Leading with 46 votes is Pastry Queen.

Thank you to everyone who voted in the prints poll, I had SO many responses it was overwhelming! Now I need to figure out how to approach selling prints. I may initially do this on a preorder basis just so I can build up enough money to stock prints on an ongoing basis. Or I might figure out another way to do it. I’m just a lady who draws pictures!

A watercolour and ink illustration of a fat white skinned woman with brown hair looking towards the donut on her forehead. A bright halo surrounds her head.

Speaking of, I drew this over the last few days after a conversation with my friend Lillian. Somehow we got onto the subject of donuts and baptisms and I said I’d baptise her and draw a donut on her forehead. Mmmmm blasphemy. Someone should fly me over to L.A so I can hang out with her, draw and laugh at her hilarity.

And finally, after about a year of neglect, I’ve updated my portfolio. Check it out and link it and pin it and do other social things with it, ok? OK!

Poll: Prints! Which ones would you like to purchase?

Natalie — Tue, 22 May 2012 06:58:44 +0000

A dodgy panorama photo of lots of my recent drawings laid out on my bed.

You’ve been asking for prints for months and months and now I think I’m ready to deliver! Before I go ahead and order prints, it’d be really helpful to get an idea of which prints people would purchase and how many I should order.

You can vote as many times as you want, but please keep in mind that you should only check off art work that you’d buy pieces of (otherwise I’ll be ordering way too much and that will make me poor and sad!)

Take Our Poll

A watercolour and ink illustration of a white skinned woman wearing an assortment of pastry delicacies on her head in place of hair as she licks her upper lip.

Your sharp eye might have noticed a new drawing, or rather, a new version of an existing sketch! I illustrated Pastry Queen on A3 paper, adding even more pastries to her crusty bouffant.

If you are interested in buying any of the original art pieces, I’m open to selling them too. I’ve had interest for a number of pieces so I will be giving dibs to those who are first in!
A5 pieces are $140
A4 pieces are $210
A3 pieces are $280
Contact me here and let me know which piece of art you’d like to buy. (Postage and handling is extra.)

I’m not yet sure how much prints will cost but they will definitely be affordable. I can’t wait!

ETA
Don’t forget to sign up to the Fancy Lady Industries mailing list to find out when I reopen the shop and get prints in stock!

Resolving things.

Natalie — Sat, 19 May 2012 09:47:18 +0000

A pencil sketch of a fat lady wearing a ruffly top and knickerbockers.

Lately I’ve been looking through my sketchbooks and revisiting bits and pieces of drawings that I want to resolve to a point where I’m a bit happier with them. This fat lady sketch is from maybe 1-2 years ago when I was fascinated by fat lady sideshow performers.

A watercolour and ink illustration of a fat white skinned lady wearing a pink ruffly top and knickerbockers. A banner behind her says, "World's fattest lady... doesn't give a fuck."

And this is my resolved drawing. It only took… uh, forever! I changed her face so she looks more smug ;)

Fat Cows and Strangers.

Natalie — Thu, 17 May 2012 09:26:40 +0000

A watercolour and ink illustration of a fat person with a cow head wearing a floral dress and platform heels in some kind of glamorous running pose. A daisy strewn banner overhead says Fat Cow.

A watercolour and ink illustration of an orange and pink haired woman who is sticking her tongue out. Surrounding her are lots of small objects, like hamburgers and rainbows and narwhals and what not. A banner down the bottom says A Stranger on the Internet.

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Tutorial: Lilac leopard gradient nails.

Natalie — Thu, 17 May 2012 00:17:24 +0000

My lilac leopard gradient nails.

I picked up three Orly nail polishes for $10 the other day (ie: a BARGAIN) and wanted to use Glitz, a gold, immediately! I didn’t want to do a plain gold because after receiving my WAH Nails book in the mail I felt like I ought to get a bit creative. Nail time is self care time, so an hour and a bit doing my nails is time well spent!

I settled on a lilac and gold gradient but wasn’t feeling very satisfied with it, so I threw a few leopard spots on it and voila! I swear these are the best nails I’ve ever done! Some people asked me to do a tutorial so here goes my first attempt at a nail art step by step. I’m not a professional, I don’t have long nails, and my techniques are all self taught so I hope this encourages other people to give it a go.

You will need: base coat, first colour (lilac), a light gold, dark gold, black, top coat, a triangle sponge, cuticle cream, a little palette and a small brush. (Not pictured: polish remover to clean your brush in.)

I used:
Essie Beam Up
Lilac by The Face Shop
Calypso Gold by Face of Australia
Glitz by Orly
Liquid Vinyl by Orly
Seche Vite top coat

You don’t have to use these, or even find terribly close dupes! Choose a light/ non saturated first colour, and then you can do the gradient with two colours close to each other. If you only have one gold polish just use that! The light gold I used just helped smooth out the gradient.

Clean nails with base coat.

Start with clean nails and add base coat. For a long time I didn’t use base coat and had quite yellow nails! The Essie Beam Up actually makes your nails a lot whiter, which is great if you’re doing nail art requiring natural nail showing through.

Two coats of lilac polish.

Apply your first colour. The tip of the nail will be covered by the gradient so it doesn’t have to be perfect!

Dab the sponge in a bit of the light gold polish.

Dab the sponge over the tip of your nail.

I use a plastic lid off a discarded pot as a polish palette and drop a little light gold polish on it. Grab a triangle sponge and lightly dab a corner in the polish. Then lightly pat the sponge over the top half of your nail. I did my gradient on an angle but you don’t have to! If you want more coverage repeat until you’re happy, but remember the darker gold will be going over the top of this.

A drop of dark gold on the palette.

After dabbing the dark gold over the tip of the nail.

Repeat the sponge dabbing with the dark gold polish. Dab the sponge on the top third of your nail if you’re using two colours, that way the lighter colour will help the transition.

Lilac spots over the gold gradient.

Now we start to build the leopard spots over the gold gradient. Drop some lilac polish on your palette and then use a small brush to paint dots of different sizes over the gold area of your nail.

Drop your brush in an old bottle of nail polish remover to clean it.

To finish the leopard spots you’ll need a little black polish on your palette and a clean brush. I keep the dregs of my nail polish remover to use for this purpose!

Paint black polish loosely around the lilac spots.

This bit requires deep breaths and concentration. To add the borders around the spots, drop the brush lightly on the edge of the lilac blob and drag it around a little. You don’t have to circle the blob entirely, and sometimes even small dots does the trick!

Black leopard spots with lilac centres.

Once you’ve added black borders around all the spots, fill in the empty spaces with tiny dots. Then finish with a top coat and you’re done!

Finished lilac leopard gradient nails.

I would love to see your results if you end up following my tutorial, especially if you use different colours!

Ankledale, or our only holiday photos.

Natalie — Wed, 16 May 2012 02:42:09 +0000

A photo of Sonya and I walking in the mid distance along a path beside an old building.

I’ve only just gotten around to pulling the photos from our holiday off the camera, and unsurprisingly there weren’t that many! We did take photos of the little bit of time we spent in Armidale visiting the lovely Sonya so I will share a few here for you.

[Warning: Animated gif at the end of this post.]

Sonya on the swingset.

Sonya and I laughing/ posing for outfit photos.

A duotone photo of clusters of hydrangeas.

A duotone photo of vines growing over an old building with lens flares.

Sonya and I walking away from an archway in an old building.

Keep in mind these were taken after I fell over! I was walking around on my broken ankle for a few hours, eep. A significant length of time was spent recooperating on a swingset and talking to a couple of kids about how awesome Minecraft is.

Animated gif of Sonya and I swinging on a swingset.

Fresh off the Fancy Lady Industries workbenches…

Natalie — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:39:50 +0000

A watercolour and ink illustration of a woman with long brown hair with a curly pomp holding up a hand mirror. Text above says "Look at yourself!" and text on the mirror says "Stop looking at yourself".

A set of five handpainted matryoshka dolls, each doll painted with a different fat body. Also a tiny unicorn!

Sorry for the downtime over the last few days, Dreamhost is being an absolute turd at the moment!

I’m not running anywhere… especially up that hill.

Natalie — Mon, 07 May 2012 10:39:39 +0000

Watercolour self portrait of me, standing with a pair of crutches under my arms and wearing a denim jacket, short dress and pink gradient leggings with a CAM boot on one leg. Text in a speech bubble says "GPOY". (Gratuitous Photo of Yourself.)

So, two weeks ago Nick and I were set to head down to Coffs Harbour for a few nights after scoring a deal on Wotif for $32 a night accommodation. I was looking forward to the break and I’d even written out an itinerary of things to do and see while we were in the area. Our hotel was next to the Big Banana! But the bed was foam and once you sat down on it you could never escape! And there was a dolphin and seal park where you could get kisses! As well as a tiny model Dutch village! A butterfly house! A carob factory! So! Many! Things!

On our first full day we decided to drive to Armidale to hang out with a super awesome pal, and I had planned on scouring local op shops for magical rural deals on furniture and whatnot. Unfortunately I happened to break my ankle while strolling through one of Armidale’s gorgeous parklands, just moments after giggling at a dog bathing in a fountain, and ended up falling into a soft bed of grass and fallen magenta leaves. I was helped up by Sonia and Nick, feeling a bit of a pain in my ankle and a lot of pain when I took a step, but we carried on and swung on swings and looked for deer at UNE.

The pain got a bit much for me and we left to drive back to Coffs, with Nick threatening to take me to the hospital emergency. On a toilet stop I totally planned to show him how good I was at walking and not wincing, but I couldn’t take a step unassisted at all! Nick made good on his hospital threat, and well, it was a good idea because I actually broke my ankle. My first ever broken bone!

We left Coffs Harbour the day after I broke my ankle. No dolphin kisses. No Big Banana. No butterflies. No shower because it was in a bath tub and I couldn’t get in because I broke my bloody ankle walking in Armidale. Guh.

So I’ve spent a week at my Mum’s, and I’m now back home. I’ve got a CAM boot as my statement accessory for the next couple of months, as well as a pair of hospital grey crutches. I’m glad I didn’t get a plaster cast, but I’m still very grumpy at myself for ruining our nice holiday, not getting a dolphin kiss, and being unable to properly help when we move in a few weeks. Also, it hurts.

Fancy Lady Industries is closed until I can get fully mobile again, and that might be even after we move in early June! I’m planning on doing a print order, probably on a pre-order system, so if you’ve got requests do let me know!

Two more.

Natalie — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 13:57:41 +0000

A watercolour and ink illustration of a beehived green/blue haired babe wearing a pink top with a doily collar and red bow as they lick their upper lip.

A watercolour and ink self portrait of me holding a dripping nail polish brush and blowing my nails dry on my other hand, while wearing an orange bra. I have visible blemishes and stretchmarks over my body.

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Four things I did in recent weeks.

Natalie — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 02:43:45 +0000

A watercolour and ink illustration of a teal haired fat babe's face with a languorous expression, dripping blush and lipstick and a donut necklace that says "Glutton". Various fat related insults fill the rest of the paper.

A watercolour and ink self portrait as I hold a pink iced donut up to one eye like a monocle.

A watercolour and ink illustration of a babe with fluro yellow hair (who looks like me, ha!) that contains the words "hard fance". Their make up is bold and they wear a bra with lots of tattoos that include a femme alien, a donut/ licorice/ doily/ leg chestpiece, lipstick and a milkshake.

A watercolour and ink illustration of a green/ purple gradient haired babe with braids and eyelashes so long they can be braided around their head.

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