That is awesome to hear, learning is fucking so much fun and I love coming across people who enjoy taking advantage of the wealth of knowledge at our fingertips. 

Yeah I got the joke, Tonto. I was responding to the original post. 

It is so dreadful how the comments people make to us when we’re growing up can traumatize us, isn’t it? Everyone seems to have at least that one thing that they have been made fun of that has bred insecurity in them. Of course being 5’2 I have longed for long legs and often feel like my legs look positively stumpy, but when I look at myself realistically I think that my legs are nice and proportionate to the rest of me, but that does not mean my legs have been problem-free…

 I remember one day when I was in fourth grade I had on shorts and was standing in the lunch line and this boy from my class said “Why do you have blue knees?” l looked down and noticed that my legs were in fact very dry and my knees were ashy (I was super tan as a child and it was the beginning of summer at the time so I had been getting quite dark, and when dark skin gets dry it gets a grey/ blue tone.)— but I never noticed it and in fact thought I was very pretty when I was in 4th grade. But I can still remember how embarrassed I felt and how I cried to my mom when I got home and became obsessed with lotion (still am to this day). My legs became more problematic to me in 9th grade- I wore skirts and dresses to school a lot and was super confident and only ‘obsessed’ with straightening my hair before school- nothing too bad. But then someone told me that people had made jokes about the bruises on my legs, which I never really noticed or thought was that important until then. Some guy tapped me on the shoulder in 10th grade and went “Whoa, no disrespect but you have really wide shoulders!” Which planted some insecurity. But I felt very bad and stopped wearing things to show off my legs and hid my broad shoulders for years…

But I stopped doing that a while ago and have no idea how I ever let those remarks impact me so much. I no longer choose to let my easily bruised shins stop me from wearing what I want and loving how I look. My bruises are not so easy to fix; I take vitamins, am not anemic, get enough protein and sunlight when I can… but it’s part of my pigment. I bruise easily, that’s all there is to it. My shoulders are broad because that’s the way my bones and muscles formed and grew, there is absolutely nothing I can do about it, so I might as well get used to it and learn to love it, and I do. I draw women with broad shoulders often, I love female models with broad shoulders, I am inspired by seeing models and illustrations of comic book women with strong broad shoulders and strong shoulders becoming a fashion trend. Art is healing to me, it has the power to represent anything in a beautiful way. There is nothing that art, creativity and perception cannot make beautiful.

I’ve also just stopped looking at people in terms of looking to see how even their legs are or hydrated their skin is or this or that- I focus on things that make me happy, not insecure! I look for interesting parts of people’s faces, their quirks, their clothes, their demeanor and I also don’t tell myself that everyone is noticing __________ and judging me and thinking bad of me. I honestly might sound a bit delusional- and it surely is- but at this point I assume that every time someone looks at me I think “ahh yes, enjoy how cool I look and interesting I seem”. I highly recommend injecting an ounce of delusion into your self esteem building exercises. Believe that the world loves you for you, short legs and all- in fact people find your short legs & heigh positively adorable and petite and lovely- and it will become the truth.

Thank you so much! I’m proud of my Black Cat but it is by no means one of the best ones out there. If you like seeing great cosplays, check out comicbookcosplay.tumblr.com — they feature some truly breathtaking work that totally inspires me to up the ante with my own! 

I know, the shade I threw about staying in school was pretty much a joke, I don’t think that it is something you are required to learn unless you take a course in world economics or history of world war. I definitely don’t remember learning about it in high school. 

I am a dork and have this thing where I make myself watch one documentary a month about a topic that I know little to nothing about and think I am completely uninterested in so I can actually learn something new and maybe find inspiration in what I learn. I don’t ever want to limit myself in terms of deciding what interests and inspires me by choosing out of what has already been presented to me amongst my daily comfortable life. It also makes me one hell of a crossword-puzzler and full of random trivia that can come in handy in social settings (the trivia part, not the crossword part, clearly.)

I think the info on Switzerland was from a documentary about economics during wartime, economics being something I was not at all interested in but thought that since I am interested in learning about war it might go down a little easier. I can’t say I remember all of the information from the ones I watch that are just plain boring, but the Swiss banks bit stuck with me because it made me realize that although Switzerland appears to be neutral and innocent on the outside, who knows what kind of hush hush financing and laundering they can do with almost any country? There was a rumor that they secretly laundered money for the Nazis during WWII even though they were supposedly totally uninvolved with the Axis nor the Allies, so it was deviously intriguing to think about the secrets of the Swiss banks..

Gothic Renaissance in NYC, but I think you can find them online. The brand is Demonia and the style name is “wave boot” ;)

I don’t yet, but one of my interns is currently putting one together for Beautilation. I have no idea how to even begin it, but once it’s up I plan to have it not just be about my new designs or whatever but also personal pictures and inspiration sharing. Kinda like what I do on Tumblr… which I might have to get used to if Yahoo ruins Tumblr for us all..

I’m confused by the question… do you mean which fabric would burn the way paper looks burned? The answer to that is almost any fabric, it really is much more about the burning technique, that is where you should experiment. Any fabric- organic, a poly/ poly blend or a skin will burn and can get those nice gradients and uneven edges- but here are my tips based on a lot of experience making fabric look naturally burned:

• Please remember that fire is dangerous and can fuck your world up. Respect its properties and take precaution; Use a lighter as opposed to matches, preferably one with a long nose (like the ones used for lighting pilot stoves or grills) and have water nearby in case the flame gets too big and you panic. This has never happened to me but it has come close. Remember to always experiment with a swatch of fabric as opposed to yardage or a sewn creation.
•  keep your space well ventilated because nearly all fabric is treated with some sort of chemical and it will smell- also poly fabrics (made of manmade thread or fibers) can emit a semi toxic fume- not enough to hurt you if you are doing a little swatch for a few minutes, but I suggest wearing a simple face mask from the hardware or drugstore when burning fabric, in addition to the well ventilated area.
• I don’t use gloves because I enjoy having full hand control and feeling when experimenting with fabric, but there are reasonably thin heatproof gloves you can buy which may make the experience less painful if you are using a regular lighter and are flicking the flint over and over to control the flame. 
• If you want the fire-eaten edges, you have to burn the fabric and be super quick with blowing out the flame to control how much it eats. Organic fabrics will burn slower than acrylics. If you just want the fabric to darken from the heat, hold the flame close to but not touching the fabric- the longer you hold it near the darker it will get. You will learn how to control the direction of the darkening with practice.
• You may want to first cut the edges of the fabric in a general “uneven” shape, like how old flame-eaten paper edges are shaped. This will help guide the flames as far as the shaping of the burned edge of fabric.
• You can heat up metals and use them to burn fabric as well if you want markings; I did a collection inspired by old Western movies and Satanism (that one was a lot of fun) and I actually branded a shirt the way they brand cows. I took a wire clothes hanger, used needle nose pliers to bend it into this pentagram sheriff’s badge logo thing, made sure the handle was very long so I would not burn myself, heated it up on a flame until it was glowing red hot and then stamped it onto the fabric. You have to experiment and time yourself with how long you hold the metal on there and how long you keep the metal red hot on the flame, and then see which will give you the best look. 
• Not every fabric will give you that great light-to-dark gradiation from the regular fabric to the burned, ashy edge, but depending on how important that detail is to your vision you can certainly fake it. Option 1 is to tea-dye the hem where you burned it (a natural dying technique where you simply use tea bags in water to create dye- this technique is #1 for making garments look years older.) Option 2, the more painstaking option, is hand painting the fabric with fabric paint, which can come out much like watercolor on paper- you just paint that taupe- burnt sienna- umber gradation onto the fabric in very non-opaque layers. It’s usually a last resort, but can come out even more beautiful since you can control the way the burns look with a lot more precision this way. But personally, I think when burning fabric it is important to give up a little bit of control and work with the way fire works. It usually looks much more unique and authentic when you let the flames do their thing and try to manipulate everything else as best as you can. 

So as you can see, it takes a whole lot of personal experimentation to do these sort of techniques, but I think that this is half the fun and it can give you whole new ideas that you didn’t know were possible. As long as you don’t give up and don’t stop until you get that result you were looking for, you will do great and will learn a lot!

If I follow you, it is because I want to see more of your blog! It really isn’t me doing a favor by following anyone because widening my insight on people who are into my work and/ or general aesthetic, getting to know their interests and other things that make them tick, it’s very rewarding and gives me new inspiration and ideas. So please don’t thank me, but you are very sweet for this message :)

Yup!