Yummy You! Cupcake Scarf is in the Valentine’s Day gift round up in Woman’s World Magazine! Pretty cool! All the items in the round up are super cute!

When we were in LA last week, Hairy met up with a buddy in Santa Monica, and while waiting for him, I shopped around H&M and grabbed a few cute pieces. While shopping, a gal asked if I modeled for ShanaLogic. She was like, “Your face is all over her online ads!” I apologized for invading her internet! 😛

I have a very tough time associating the word “model” with myself. I do not consider myself one at all. I am in fact a TERRIBLE model. If someone else points a camera at me, I am pretty much useless, and as a result, I feel like the photos are 100% uglytown. I much prefer taking my own photos cuz nobody sees the weird outtakes, and nobody sees that it takes like 200 bad shots for me to come up with 1 usable one! I photoshop my eyebags out. I photoshop a dark spot out of the whites of one of my eyes. Zits, of course, gotta go. When Amy‘s bf did me a big favor and photoshopped some of my photos for Yummy You posters, he asked if I wanted him to fix my armpit fat. YES. YES OF COURSE FIX THE ARMPIT FAT!!! I am pretty average-sized, not tiny as some people may think, and my bell-bell is starting to show through in my tshirt pictures. It’s all going down hill! 😛 On a side note, I ordered a bunch of clothing recently from a website in Asia, and none of it fits me cuz my arms or my torso are too big. AWESOME!

I vent about this mostly for people who never fancied themselves pretty. I was definitely the smart one growing up, NOT the pretty or cute one. I carry this mindset to this day. I’m often surprised that some people out there think I look ok, ok enough to ask me to take photos in their cute products. I’m a late bloomer. There are a lot of us out there! My face is plastered all over a lot of the Twinkie Chan and Yummy You stuff, since it’s now just part of my branding. But when I first launched my website in 2005, I hadn’t even planned to model my own scarves. I wanted to be in control of the photography, so I asked my bestie to be my model. Well, I woke up on the day of our shoot, and she had already left the apartment, TO GO TO THE BEACH WITH HER BOYFRIEND!! AHHHH!!!!! The rest is accidental history!

I guess my point is that if you ever felt like a big weirdo, or ugly, or awkward, or un-stylish, you are not alone. We’ve all been there and are still there! Just keep doing things your way, dress to make yourself feel awesome, do things that are fun to you. It all works itself out in the end. Do you refuse to leave the house or answer the door without eyeliner? Me, too. *high five!* But I also don’t want my point to be that the end-all be-all of life is for other people to find us cute. Don’t get me wrong. That’s nice. Let’s be real. I guess I want my point to be to never close your own doors because you see yourself a certain way, or because you’ve already put your own self into a certain box. I’ve stepped out of my comfort zone A LOT these past few years, and I think it’s really good for us to try new things. We’ll probably revert back to our old ways in the end, but sometimes, you end up crocheting for a living like you’d always dreamed. You know, stuff like that!

You know what triggered this post?

A friend called me tonight to ask if I would take photos for her new company. She has modeled for me, and payback’s a bitch, bitch! Just kidding. I support all my buddies in their adventures! I was also going to post an outtake from one of my ShanaLogic shoots. I’m holding out an empty hand. I thought it would be funny to post it as an “InstaModel” photo, where people can photoshop their products into it! Then it felt really ego-maniacal, even though it was just a dumb joke. Then I felt like I had to make it clear that I don’t consider myself a model. Then everything you just read just occurred. Now I’m going to post the photo anyway. I expect some a-hole out there to photoshop a penis into my hand. In advance, I say to you, “You’re a big idiot.”

So last week, Hairy and I darted down to L.A. to celebrate Onch’s launch party at House of Petro Zillia, a super adorable boutique! Onch and I collabed on some cute hair pieces. I snapped photos of our hair bows, but I finished and shipped the rainbow pretzel head bands so quickly that I never got a photo of them. You can catch them in my video below though! The event was cute, sweet, and delicious, filled with candy for your eyes and your tummy!

As always, I decided to make an outfit at the last minute. I was going to make a top and then wear a floofy skirt or bloomers on the bottom, but Manda insisted on making me something, so I put her to work making me a giant pink princess tutu!!! We stayed up all night and then napped for a few hours in the late morning.

Unfortch, due to the extra last minute nature of this project, I never really put everything on until right before the party….and everything was a little bit big!! I was kind of like this sad saggy melting ice cream monster! HAHA Oh well. Now I need figure out how to repurpose the banana split into another project, because the tank top just reeeeally wasn’t working!

Bebe, Laura/Pretty Star Clothing, Jessie Jae Joplin (I stole the pic from her awesome array of photos), me, and Chrissa.

Me and Twinkle. How cute is she? I also stole this pic from her.

Me and Michelle. Sometimes I wrinkle my nose when I hear something funny. This is not an attractive habit.

Here’s Bebe, Laura, and me again!

Me and Onch. I didn’t want to bother him while he whirled his magic around the place all night, so I finally caught him on our way out!

Here’s us sitting next to our collab!

CAANDY!!!!!!!!!!!! (not pictured was the pile of Twinkies and HoHo’s and DingDongs and stuff!)

Here’s my lil video! Sorry about the crap quality!

Here’s some progress pics and closeups of the hair bows!

I really loved working with these saturated candy colors. Look out for more candy craziness in my Etsy shop soon!

$400 and a week later…. my laptop screen is fixed! YAY!

I am going to try really hard to catch up on all my blog stuff this week, including my book tour, Christmas, Disneyland, hiking in the woods, and Onch’s EAT IT ALL launch party in L.A.

But right now, I gotta deal with some fun tax stuff and shipping out orders. And don’t worry. As per usual, I will be busting out some Valentine’s Day themed stuff at the last minute…. Also for those in the Bay Area, Hairy’s art gallery will be having a 2-day trunk show the weekend before Valentine’s Day, and I will be vending from noon to five that Sunday. More deets when we get closer! Fun opportunity to perhaps partake of Hairy’s new food cart “Underbelly” and do some last minute Valentine’s Day shopping!

Here’s what today’s workspace looks like: a hot pink mess!

You can also see my box full of tonight’s snack: Purple Yam flavored CRUNKY chocolates with krispies inside!! I like to pick Japanese snacks based on oddness. There needs to be more purple food in the world.

p.s. If you are still reading, my comment/reply thingie broke, and then we installed a new one. With this one, you need to click a box to get a notification in your email when I reply to your comment, otherwise, if I do reply, you won’t know unless you check back on the blog page. It will only notify you when people respond to your comment, and it won’t spam you with all the other comments to the blog post. K, thank yoooouuu!