4th of July Splatter Nails - How To

I have seen splatter nails done on various websites and I decided to give it a go.  My method ended up being a little different than others that I found so I thought I would share what I did.

These are the colors that I decided to use for an obvious 4th of July theme.  All of these I picked up at Sally's Beauty Supply.

I decided to use an old toothbrush to get the splatter effect I was looking for. 

These are my toes.  I prepped them by removing my old polish, cutting, filling, cleaning, and dealing with my cuticles.  

My first coat was a light coat of white.  Also only one of my toes on my right foot needs a little space so I use a tissue between them. Between every coat I dry my nails with a small fan.

 This shows a second coat of white polish having been applied.  I am not very good at getting the polish only on my nails while also getting it all the way to the edges of them.  With this method of polishing it doesn't matter at all!

 In this picture I have splattered my nails with blue.  What I did was to pour out some polish onto some cardboard covered in foil.  I then dipped the toothbrush into some acetone and mixed it with the polish to thin it a little and make it easier to splatter.  Using my thumb or fingers I then splattered it onto my toes.

 I have now applied a coat of red polish in the same manner as the blue.   They kind of look right now as though I have blood splattered all over them, lovely.  At this point I let them dry for about a half an hour and then put a clear coat over them.  

Obviously I have lots of excess polish all over.  I have dealt with this in various ways.  The easiest I have found is to take a long shower after they have dried very solidly.  When my skin absorbs water and gets wrinkly the polish tends to be pretty easy to rub off of with a wash cloth.  For my toes this particular time I soaked in my spa for a couple of hours and when I got out most of the excess polish was gone!  Wow what a difficult thing to have to do!

 This shows how my nails look after they have been cleaned up.  I like the look but I realized some things that could be improved upon. 

 After I experimented with my toes I decided to do my fingernails as well.  I did everything basically the same except for a few changes.  First I only did one coat of white base polish.  Which I liked more.  I also changed how I did the splattering.  With my toes I did separate applications of red and blue.  With my fingers I poured out some of  the blue, red, and white polish into separate areas.  I also had three small bowls of acetone to try and not mix the colors up.  I quickly switched from color to color splattering my nails with many light coats of different colors.  In the end I like my fingernails much more than my toenails.  The color on my fingers has much more depth and detail.

I suggest you give it a go as it was pretty fun!

I have to share with you that while writing this post I have been repeatedly attacked and forced to play with one of our newest additions to our household.  His name is Leonardo.

Living Undefined

I have read much about how GGs say that trans girls don't really know what it is like to be a woman.  That unless you are born a woman you don't know what it is and just because you make yourself look like a woman through clothes or surgeries and hormones, you are still not a real woman.

I agree I have no idea what it means to be born as a real woman.

But... There is another aspect to this as well.  I don't know if I know what it is like to be a real man.  I have always known that I was a boy simply because of what is between my legs.  My genitals have defined me as male.  But now that I have grown to be a man of 40 years I see a large schism between myself and what is considered manly.

For example - I like to talk about everything and anything with my wife, no topic is taboo.  I like taking care of my body and my skin.  I dislike body hair.  I like soft frilly colorful clothes.  I hate drinking beer.  I don't like watching just about any sport.  I like having a clean house with everything organized and put in it's place. I love having my fingernails painted.  I like putting on makeup.  I like talking on the phone.  I have my ears pierced.  I like wearing jewelry.

This list could go on.

My point is, other guys look at me as though I am a freak.  When I go hang out with the guys and they toss me a beer and I'm supposed to crack it and kick back while watching the game, when I tell them I'm not interested in doing that they give me that guy look that not so subtly says "Are you gay?"

Like that is the ultimate insult or something.  Which it often is among manly men.  And I have often wondered, what is wrong with me.  Why don't I like what other regular guys like?  The older I have gotten the more I wonder, maybe I have the wrong thing between my legs.  Maybe I should have been born with different parts.

But then I think about - I like to use the parts I was born with, they have brought me great pleasure over my lifetime so far.  I regularly enjoy growing out my facial hair, yes even while shaving all the rest of my body hair.  I love hunting, killing, cleaning, and eating birds.  I like talking while burping.  I like watching UFC.  I love working in my wood shop.

This list could go on also.

So what am I?  Other guys don't consider me to be a real guy and girls don't consider me to be a real girl.  I guess I am somewhere between.  I exist within the spectrum that is gender.  And I am no longer worried with defining what I am.  I am me and me is beautiful.  I don't want to change myself to be either one or the other.   I like being me.  I am happy being me.

I am the happiest when I break down my own barriers and allow myself to be myself to the fullest.

I hope you are happy with you.

Love ya!

Challenge for July

Last July I challenged myself to wear a different outfit each day for the month.  Or at least to take at least one picture of an outfit each day.  Now that July is quickly approaching I am considering another challenge for myself.  Here are my choices so far:

- double the number of outfit pictures that I took last July
- do my makeup every day
- fully dress for as many full days as I can
- quit smoking
- write a blog entry everyday
- ??

Which one of the above do you think I should do?  Got any other suggestions?

Thanks!

I'll let you know what I decide on!

Guest Post From My Wife

I thought that I would give my wife some space on my site to represent her thoughts about my cross dressing.  So today  I have asked for her to write a guest post from a wife's perspective.  I will also take this post of hers and possible other ones and create a page specifically addressing issues associated with cross dressing and marriage.  

Enjoy!

From Nadine's Wife:

In the Beginning

 When my husband first told me he wanted to cross-dress, we were in our early to mid twenties. Really I don’t remember a lot about how I reacted to this new info, but I don’t think I was really all that surprised that he wanted to do this. He was already wearing women’s underwear so this seemed in line with that.  It was kind of a slow progression then that if I remember correctly started with him wearing bras and breasts at home usually during sex, and then more women’s clothing at home both during sex and just hanging out.  I don’t think I had any issues with this first stage of his cross-dressing mainly because I am attracted to women and breasts are fun to play with during sex. Also, wearing women’s clothes seemed to make him happy so I went with it. I knew he had played dress up with his sister when he was young and really loved it so I kind of figured that that feeling of happiness just stayed with him.

Inside I wondered what this meant in the long term like did he want to be a woman some day or be with men.  I had feeling s that I was not enough of a woman for him that he wanted to do this to make up for my short comings as a partner.  Yet I was very supportive in this stage.

Later

As time went on, and he became more interested in cross-dressing, and adding more to be fully dressed as a woman including a wig and makeup, I wasn’t sure how to feel, but I tried to be supportive. This is my husband and this makes him happy, but I had no experience with being really girly myself and his interest in these things kind of scared me a little. I definitely was not as supportive as I could have been during this period and sometimes was rude in my comments to him. It took my husband to point out that him doing this was making me look at myself and my lack of feminism or girlyness.  He was right  and I am a stubborn person, so it took me some time to know that was true. But I did.  Actually because of him, I wear makeup to work every day now, and whenever I go out with him or friends.  I think that women with cross-dressing boyfriends or husbands need to understand that they need to be supportive regardless of anything if they want to be with their man.

It was another change when my husband decided he wanted to go out in public dressed as a woman. Before this, I really wasn’t concerned about the outside world and my husband cross-dressing. But when he expressed his new desire, I got really scared about what might happen and what people might think and thus say or do to him or me. (A waste of time because studies have shown that 90% of what we worry about never happens.) Also this brought up the thoughts that he might want to dress as a woman full time or eventually become a woman. That really scared me. I loved both sides of him and didn’t want to lose that. But after talking about it, and him letting me know emphatically that he really enjoyed being a man and a woman, and that he would never want to change that, I let go of that fear. He started going out in public about 5 years ago (I think) and the more he did, the more people surprised the both of us. People went out of their way to be kind and helpful instead of what I thought would happen. I am so proud of him and thankful to him because he had/has the courage to do what he enjoyed and through those actions, we have both been able to see people in a new light.   

Who's More Afraid, You or Kindergarten Students?

Recently I have learned of an interesting activity conducted by Tom Wujec.  Here is the set-up:  You are given 25 pieces of dry spaghetti, a yard of string, a yard of tape, and a marshmallow.  The goal is to build the tallest tower that will support the marshmallow.  You are supposed to work in teams of four and try to build a taller tower than the other teams.  Oh and you also only have 18 minutes to complete the challenege.

Tom has done this with many different groups of people.  Most notably he had recent college graduates perform the challenge as well as kindergarten students.  Who built taller towers?  The kindergarten students. Tom goes on with his personal explanation about it and you can hear about it during his TED talk here.

The basics of what he says is that the college grads came up with a plan of what they thought would work and used their 18 minutes to construct it.  Near the end of their available time they placed the marshmallow on top of their structure and watched as it fell down.  The kindergarten students built their structure without much of a plan, had it fail, and then tried again.  It turned out that basically the older that the participants became the less iterations they performed.  The younger participants tried, failed, tried, failed, tried, failed, tried, and then succeeded far more than the older participants.

What is my take on this?  The older we live in this world, the more afraid of failing we become.  Another interesting thing is how Tom offered a prize to group with the tallest tower.  He offered like a 1000 dollars to the group with the tallest tower, in that attempt, no group was able to build a standing tower of any height!

How is this possible?  How is it that all that really happens in life is that the older we get the more afraid we become?

I strive to be able to live my life with the freedom of a kindergarten student and set aside my foolish fears.

Free yourself and your mind will follow.

Love ya!

Outfit for Wine Tasting

Black Top - Guess

Red Tank - Guess

Shorts - Guess

Shoes - Aerosoles

Off and on now for about a year and a half I have documenting what I wear and through this I have learned so about myself as well as my wardrobe.  One very obvious thing is my grand desire for Guess clothing.  So many of my favorites clothing items are from Guess.

I see a variety of reasons for this.
1 - Guess clothes often have a very good cut to them that flatters and accentuates a female form
2 - The clothes are higher quality fabrics than some other manufacturers
3 - The clothes are age appropriately sexy for me (I try to go into all stores and many of them, I will walk in and then out after quickly surmising the clothes are being marketed to someone much older or younger than me)
4 - I personally feel extra feminine while wearing them


It's funny, many of my favorite male clothes are also from Guess.  


A side note to this post about getting good pictures:
While taking the pictures for this outfit, as I do for all of my outfit pictures, my wife took several different ones while I change about my poses.  I then will go through and pick out the pose that I think flatters me the most.  I chose the picture above instead of this picture:

Can you tell why I chose the top picture instead of the bottom picture?  My feet are together in the top picture and it looks much more feminine.  It helps add to the illusion of curves.  Again this is something easy to see in pictures and something also that I try to keep in mind while out in public.  I try to walk by rubbing my ankles together to keep my legs tighter together.  One thing I still struggle with is remembering to stand with my feet closer together then maybe I am used to, as evidenced by the bottom picture.

Got any tips for walking in a more feminine manner?

Thanks!

I Want to be a Jeannie

I want to be a jeannie.  I want to be able to wiggle my nose or blink my eyes or wave my magic wand and change anything that I want to.  I want to blink my nose and be a hot sexy girl.  I want to blink my nose and be a tall handsome rugged looking man.  I want to wiggle my nose and be a dog.  I want to change myself into an eagle and fly through the sky until I spot a salmon and dive down and gorge myself on it's yummy raw fatty flesh.  

I want to be these things, I want to be all of them.  I want to BE them!  I don't want to be an imitation of them.

There is only one perfect thing that I can be and that is to be me to the fullest.  And me is somebody that is far different than just about anybody else that I have ever met.

For example, here is a picture of my hand today as I sit here and write this.  Oh and BTW, I am at work.  Oh, and I am dressed as a guy.  Why do I have my nails painted and obviously girly rings on?  I'm not sure.  Oh and I also am wearing a girly undershirt, and girly underwear on.  Oh and both of my ears are pierced.  And yet I am still presenting as a guy.

I have read from so many trans people and groups and conferences that they do no like when people present as a mix of genders.  They want people to be either one or the other.  They want people to pick.  Well I have picked and this is me.  Sometimes I present as a guy, with little to no girly attributes.  Sometimes I present as a girl with little to no guy attributes.

And most of the times I present a mix.  This to me is possibly my favorite.  I like mixing things up and forcing people to question their preconceived notions of what is acceptable behavior for a given gender.

If I were a jeannie, would I change myself into something else?  Most certainly, but I doubt I would remain that for very long.

Outfit for the Mall

Skirt - Guess

White Top - Guess

Tank Top - Guess

Shoes - New York Transit - TJMaxx

This past Saturday it was 106 degrees and my wife asked if I wanted to go to the mall.  What do you think I said?  Not much actually, I just got into the shower.  I've been a little non-communicative lately, but I thought that my actions were pretty clear about what I wanted to do.

Being as I knew it was going to be hot as hell, I donned possibly the shortest skirt I own.  I worked my cleavage up and put on some open airy shoes.  Speaking of the shoes, what do you think?

I bought the shoes the last time I visited TJMaxx.  What do you think?  I thought at the time that my outfit looked a little trashy.  My wife reassured me that I looked great.  She also highly complimented my legs.  I would say that even with my feelings about my outfit, I did notice that there were so many worse outfits on regular girls all over the mall.  It is amazing what some people choose to wear.

Anyways, I really like this picture.  I think my legs look great, I look hippy, and I love the rise of boobs!

Thanks!

Refining Your Wardrobe

To purge is a love-hate thing for most crossdressers.  If you don't know, a purge is when you take every girl thing you own and throw it away in attempts to give up crossdressing.  I experienced a purge only one time in my life.  I still miss a certain black dress that I had before I threw it all away.  At that time I truly thought that I was done with crossdressing and that I would never want any of that stuff anymore.  Well obviously that was not the case, huh?

Now what I see is that I often have a difficult time in getting rid of anything.   I keep thinking that I should hold on to things because you never know when you might want it again.  Well this past weekend I pushed myself to go through my Spanx like garments as well as my bras.  Both of those things are very difficult for me to get rid of.  This process also dealt with all of my breast inserts.

I get most of my inserts from The Breast Form Store.  I really like the ones that I have gotten from there.  I generally get the Gold Seal Classic Attachable Breast Forms.

Anyways, I had a size 6, a 5, a 4, and a 1.  I say that I had them, because I decided to get rid of them all.  My wife took the size 1's.  They make her boobs look HUGE!  Wow, jealousy much?  Yea, lots!  She has great boobs.

Okay, off topic again.  Since I decided to get rid of those inserts I also got rid of about half the bras I owned.  I will tell you, that was hard!  I really struggled with doing that, but it was certainly needed.  I had some bras in there that I probably had not worn in a couple of years.  And the really nice thing is that the bras that I kept all look really nice and fit really well.

Fellow crossdressers and fashionistas, here is my advice to you.  Go through your clothes regularly and make donation bags for things that have gone out of style, of things that no longer fit you, or things that you just don't wear anymore.  Don't think of it as a purge, think of it as a refinement.

Through years of refining my own wardrobe, I have found my own personal style and I am much happier.

Do you refine?  Or do you purge?  Or do you hoard?

Oh, I have a few pairs of really nice, $200, inserts available if you are interested, message or email me.

Even WalMart Clothes Can Be Cute

Black Tank - Bali Studio

White Shirt - Myth NYC

Jeans - LEI

Sandles - Life Stride

This was an outfit that I wore the other day when we went travelling.  It was a car sitting day so I wanted to wear something pretty comfy.  But I challenged myself to wear something that I haven't worn before.  I have never worn the black tank outside of the house.  You can't see in the picture but it is a lace tank top.  I generally have shied away from wearing any sort of lace while outside of the house.  I thought it added a nice touch to this outfit though, so I went for it.

The other thing that I like about this outfit is that I bought the jeans at WalMart.  I wear many clothing items that have a large price tag on them but this pair of jeans cost about 10 dollars.  Notice how hippy these pants make me look?  Well I do, and I got them for about 10 dollars!!

I don't think that it is important where you buy your clothes, I think that it is important that the clothes that you buy look good on you.

Hope you all are doing well ;)

Eye Makeup

Eye Shadow - Lancome

I recently got an ipad.  It is the new ipad3 and I have been pleasantly surprised.  I kind of had to get it for a work related project, otherwise I would not have gotten it.  I am really a PC/Windows person and have been a die-hard anti-Mac person, but I will have to admit the truth - I really like my iPad.

One of the things I like about the iPad is the camera on it.  I took the camera and took a close-up of my eye makeup.  That is the picture that you see above.  Really I was just playing around with my new toy, but I thought it was kind of an interesting picture.

What it shows, is a couple of things.  First, it shows my eyebrows.  I do two things for my eyebrows, one - I have them waxed.  Sometimes they are thinner, but I kind of like the way that this picture shows.  Second - I color my brows with a light colored eye shadow.  If I don't do that my brows, while thicker than many women's, hardly show on my face.  Now for my eye routine.  First - when I do my foundation, I make sure to do my eyes also, just to even out my skin tone.  Second - I apply an eye shadow foundation from clinique.  I'm not sure if that is what you call it, but it is a light colored cream base that comes out from a tube.  It makes it so that around my eyes is brighter.  It also helps to hold the shadow in place.  Third - I apply shadow.  For my shadow colors, I generally use a three or four part shadow process.  I generally use the four colors that come in the compact I am using.  There are four colors, ranging in lightness.  I apply the 2nd lightest color to my lids, the next darkest to the crease above my lid.  The darkest color, I apply in a small triangle in the upper outside corner.  I will also lightly sweep this color a little under the lower lid from the outside towards the center. Lastly, or sometimes first, I apply the lightest color to the brow portion.  The last thing I do is to curl my lashes and apply mascara.

I started off doing my eyes with inexpensive makeup from Target or WalMart or CVS.  Then I tried Clinique, and I love it.  In the picture above, I branched out and got some shadow from Lancome.  Clinique is very good for great day, or read subtle makeup.  Lancome is good for a more night look.  I generally use browns to contrast with the color of my eyes.  But with this Lancome color I chose to try and branch out and got a set with some bright blue color in it.  I kind of like it.  I like more that I proved that I can wear blue if I would like to.  I actually still prefer browns, but it was nice and will be nice to switch it up some.

I have intentions of continuing to try and document my various eye looks for you all.  But we shall have to wait to see if I follow through with that all.

Hope you all are doing well.

I'd love to know what you do for you eye make-up routines.

Anonymous submissions are allowed, though I am choosing to moderate the comments first.  So be ncie or at least polite and your comment will make it on.

Going to the Movies Again

Top - Guess

Skirt - Loft

Shoes - Aerosoles - TJMaxx

Earrings - Target

Today's outfit was worn for going out to the movies.  We saw MIB3 and I enjoyed the show.  We got to the movie area early and decided to go to TJMaxx first.  If you don't know I like going to that store to look at the shoes.  In fact the shoes that I have on in today's picture were the last pair of shoes that I purchased at TJMaxx.

 Today I challenged myself to try on shoes that I wouldn't normally try.  Generally shoes with lots of straps do not fit well onto my feet but today I tried on a pair that fit well and I decided to get them.

While trying them on it occurred to me how lucky I am that I can fit into regular sized girl shoes sold in regular stores.  I don't know if I have mentioned it before but I fit into a size 9 1/2 or 10 shoes.  These sizes tend to be the largest sizes that I often see in most store.  I feel bad for those of you whose feet are too big to be able to shop in a regular shoe store.  Many men would like to find resources for pretty shoes in their sizes, but alas I am no help for you in being able to find those locations.

Interesting in that I have always been insecure about my rather smallish feet.  Now I am thankful that I have them.