Witchy Makeup and Baldur's Gate 3 🐉

It’s been a while since I’ve updated! Trust me though, I’ve been working really hard, both on brainstorming for the blog and on my degree!

Not long ago I started my Finding and Reaching an Audience class and we’ve been learning all about everything an author will need to build an audience and nurture that audience, and I’m really finding it super interesting and it’s gotten me incredibly inspired. Like, sometimes I’ll go through moments when I lose belief in myself and in my future, but whenever I sit down to work on my homework both in this class and in my Speculative Fiction 1 class I find myself rejuvenated and re-inspired!

One of the things I was excited to do was give my website a facelift (do you love it?) and to work on my blog. I’ve got a lot of plans moving forward because we learned about how to make, for lack of a better term, on-brand content that encourages our author personas and reader personas that we came up with throughout the classwork. The content here is going to move more towards like, cottagecore / goblincore / witchy vibes. I want this to feel like a cozy goth space and I cannot wait to move forward with that ideal.

I’ve been brainstorming how to make the kind of content I want to make in a format that I want to make it in. Some of it will have to be a creative experiment, but I’m an artist so the idea of creative experimentation really inspires me. I’m working on ideas of how to turn makeup tutorials (or just like, makeup stuff in general) in blog form. I’ve been reading a bunch of beauty blogs trying to get ideas and a lot of the ones I’ve read aren’t quite what I’m aiming for. But again, creative experimentation!

In the spirit of that, I wanted to share a look I did with my makeup. Like I said I wanted to lean more towards a goblin-y, witchy vibe and I wanted to encapsulate that in this look.

I got the berries necklace from HotTopic in the pursuit of filling out my wardrobe with more stuff that feels like me, and I think I used almost entirely the Interview with the Vampire palette also from HotTopic, though I did use Kat Von D’s Alchemist palette under my eyebrows and used that to diffuse the edges of the darker purple. My eyes always seem to swallow up everything I put on my lids proper and nobody can ever see it, but whenever I try to take it higher up it’s never quite high enough to work. It’s going to take some experimentation, I think, but I want to get to a point where I can do a brow highlight but also still have my main eyeshadow high enough that people can actually see it.

Also just an fyi: I’m by no means a makeup artist, or anyone who is particularly good at makeup. I’m just somebody who follows the vibes when doing her makeup and sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. I think I’m better at it than I used to be, but still learning new techniques (ie: any techniques lol).

This makeup look was all vibes, and I didn’t know how it was going to turn out when I did it. It turned out way better than I expected!

I also decided to play some Baldur’s Gate 3!

I had played the first act of the game already, but decided to start over because I wasn’t satisfied with the choices I made as a total n00b so I decided to start all the way over with a new character and try again. I still played a high elf druid but this time I made her way more interesting looking and am so far loving the choices I’m making. My other Tav looked so boring and lame and I wanted something a bit more . . . like a main character. Also, we’re romancing Astarion! I love him so deeply and am excited to keep playing and actually get into Act 2 this time lol.

The mushroom camp site is literally my favorite, but is that really that surprising?

I hope you guys are having a great night, and I can’t wait to post more and connect with you guys!

I’m putting together a newsletter, per my class, and I can’t wait to share it with you guys. In a few months when I start my Writing Short Works class and learn how to write good short stories, I’m going to send out my first newsletter that is going to have exclusive short stories every month that no one but my newsletter subs are going to see!

Also you guys will probably get more consistent updates on my writing, because I’ll be doing a lot more of it. After that class I’m going to buckle down and write a ton of short stories for the blog, for the newsletter, and to send out for publication in magazines! I want to be fully prepared for a career once I finish my thesis book and I’m actually really looking forward to sitting up here in my office for hours upon hours upon hours doing the one thing in this world that I know without a doubt that I’m meant to be doing. We set up a coffee bar up here so I always have tea and coffee on hand, and we’re working on turning my office into a nicer one with a dark academia vibe.

Anyway, this wasn’t really meant to be a “life update” post but I got talking and couldn’t stop lol!

I’ll stop myself now before I spend the next several hours reiterating my feelings about how much I’m looking forward to working on the blog and on my career, because when it comes to writing I’m such a workaholic. I literally have to be lured away from my keyboard with the promise of food if anyone wants me to stop trying to work for 5 minutes. It’s all I ever think about doing and it’s all I can think about when I’m not.

See, there I go again!

I’ll do another post later about my MFA journey, in case anyone is interested in that. But for now I think I’ll end the post!

I’ll see you guys next time!