First Scott e-mailed me about this cute amigurumi pair, then TempleDog -- It's such a good thing that I had to pass it along. :D

兎野U / Usagino U and 熊野900 / Kumano 900 make up U900, a terrific ukulele duo.

Find out more about them in this video:

For locals familiar with Hawaiian music may recognize some of their licks in some of their videos, but they also have a CD out with their covers of Ventures songs: Ukulele Ventures.

In the meanwhile, you can watch more at Yosuke Kihara's youtube channel or befriend the duo at their MySpace page!

It's my hope that one day Anpan and Nemu will meet this pair and jam out. :D

Now, just how many American folk have heard of Eyeko?

I certainly wasn't familiar with it until recently, and it was thru a couple randomly found youtube reviews when looking for new lip balms/lip glosses to try. (Again, I love lip balms, glosses and treatments. I have quite the growing collection... If you have a glowing recommendation, please send it my way~ :D)

Upon first hearing the name, you'd think the brand was Japanese with some weird spelling... but in fact, it's a London-based company. The spelling is intentional, but if you check out their site, you'd know exactly whom their target audience is.

Like the Bonne Bell and Wet n' Wild, Eyeko is aimed at the younger teen crowd with cute and bright packaging and budget pricing. Most of the products are basic - eyeliners, mascaras, nail polishes, lip glosses, and creams. Also, most have a bit of shimmer to them.

Because the prices were so affordable and they had a free shipping offer, I jumped at the opportunity to try a few things out.

So I'll be detailing my haul behind the cut~

Continue reading "[Reviews] Eyeko London Makeup Haul + Giveaway [Closed!]" »

During the winter rush, I received a second book from Exaclair to review~! (You can see my previous write up about the Quo Vadis Habana here~!)

So this time around, I have the privilege to try out their Exacompta Basic Sketch Book~!

Continue reading "[Reviews] Exacompta Basic Sketch Book" »

So, I've talked about my WOES with Photoshop previously in the main nemu*blog... In 2009, I had upgraded from Photoshop CS3 to CS4 with the hopes that some of those "shakes" problems would have been fixed.

In a way, they were~

One nice fix was the ability to rotate my canvas. I could also draw a line at *under* 50% zoom and it wouldn't show up all choppy and shaky. This was a definitely improvement over CS3 and I rejoiced.

And then I slowly came to realize a couple things:

1) My inking was taking longer for some strange reason.

Excerpt from #527

2) My inking wasn't improving... in fact, it was getting WORSE.

Detail of #527 - at 100% zoom (Click to see full-size)

...

Continue reading "[Random] Photoshop Woes" »

So you already know I'm a big pens fanatic. If I had more money, you'd know just what I'd buy. XD;;

Continue reading "Hobbies: Copics Haul 2009" »