Bald Caps for cosplay

This weekend I ventured into the world of bald caps, and this is what I went through.

Firstly, don't buy a Smiffy's bald cap. Although they are cheap, they smell awful (the smell did eventually lessen after I covered it in flowery talc for a few days, then let it air for a few more), and unless you have a small head, they are very tight, like a swim cap (I wouldn't be happy wearing it all day). It's also weird shaped - it leaves a crinkly pointed bit on the top.

After doing a lot of research I fancied a Kryolan Glatzan Bald Cap, as you can blend away the edges with acetone to make it more realistic, but I had a limited budget, and the caps are around £15-20 each and near enough a one time only useage (so you can't even practice), and that's before I bought all the gubbins to attach it (glue, glue remover, acetone, make-up to cover).

As I had a head band for my character I decided that the full blend away effect wasn't needed, so went searching for more ideas.

I eventually came across a Mehron Bald Cap Kit. The kit has everything you need - latex cap, glue, glue remover, make-up, make-up applicators, dusting powder and a little pot of latex for blending to the skin (and quick repairs - I'll tell you later).

Now I'd seen these for around £38-42, but I found one on eBay for only £22. I was a bit wary, as that price seemed too good to be true, but looked at the seller and discovered it was a fancy dress shop  about 25 mins from me, so off I headed  to buy it in person.

You only get the one cap, so again no practice can be done, so I watched a load of YouTube vids and hoped that I'd learn enough to be able to do it on the day.

The event arrived and I went for it.

First thing you have to do is cut the cap around the ears and forehead to get the fit. I had seen people cut it whilst wearing it on their head in the vids, this isn't as easy as it sounds, in fact it's really hard to do. I used some round-ended scissors, so that I didn't stab myself in the head whilst cutting - I'm clumsy! This, with hindsight, is a mistake, not the scissor part, but cutting it on your own head, as whilst doing my second ear, the tension on the latex meant that it split upwards when I did a slightly jagged cut.

Having the little pot of latex saved me at this point. I took off the cap, carefully, and dabbed some latex at the apex of the split, and built it up so the split wouldn't continue. Luckily for me the head band would cover this flaw. After this attempt I now know that next time I would mark out my ears and the 'cut lines' with a make-up pencil or similar, take the cap off my head and cut it without the tension, that way there would be smoother continuous cuts without the jagged bits that tend to split.

Cuts done, I put the cap back on, and carefully started glueing - another nightmare if you are trying to do this on your own. The vial of glue in the kit is small and narrow, and has a brush in the cap, so when you have one hand holding the cap out to get the glue under, the other has to negotiate a tube with an unstable base and a small opening - tricky. This led to a number of tip-overs, and therefore glue all over the sink, and my fingers, which doesn't work so well when fiddling about with thin latex.


My character Timov has the aforementioned headband, and she also has draped material over the sides and back, so to save time and aggravation, I decided that the back and sides of the cap didn't need to be glued down as no-one could see them and the band would keep the cap taut. Only my forehead, and sides of my face needed to be glued.

With a lot of faff (and swearing) I managed it, and then used the pot of latex to dab over any obvious edges to help blend it to my skin.

Next up is doing the makeup on the head. The kit comes with a strip of 5 skin colours and 2 sponges. With a bit of trial and error I found the middle shade to be closest to my tone and began dabbing it on with the sponge. This is where it definitely becomes a 2 man job as you can't see if you've covered everything at the back without some Cirque Du Soleil style contortions. I grabbed my husband to finish off the dabbing, and, after a generous amount of dusting over with the powder to set it, all was done.

Now to get dressed and head off.

As I said earlier these caps are really a 'one use' kind of thing, but I had to wear it for 2 days, so at the end of day one I got the glue remover and one of the pointed cotton buds in the kit, and slowly and carefully started trying to get the cap off. I did manage it, but the bit that had split earlier split some more as I was removing it. Thankfully I had brought along a polystyrene head for the cap to sit on, so I got the latex out again and did a botch-up repair. It wasn't pretty, but it held, just.

The following day I had to cut a little bit more off the cap where the glue had mangled the edges, which meant that I had to stretch the cap a smidgeon more to get it to the same place. This wasn't much of a problem as the glue they provide really sticks, and the cap stayed put, but later in the afternoon the slight tension did start to hurt my head a bit.

Things I learnt:

• If you can, take the cap off to cut it.
• Try to have someone there to help you.
• Make sure you get the a bigger pot of glue (nail varnish size) so it doesn't tip over easily.
• Make sure you have proper remover to get the glue off - that stuff sticks!
• Wearing a bald cap was fun, but putting one on wasn't.

For my next foray into bald caps I'm planning to buy a Kryolan Red Head Bald Cap Mould Block, and make my own, either from Glatzan or Latex, so that I don't have to cut it down.

I'd be able to make them specifically for my head dimensions, and it would be a damn sight cheaper than buying a cap each time.


Thanks for reading,
Karen Lee

I've been wasting NHS money, and I never knew!

Sometimes I get annoyed at things that, if only I had known about, I could have changed. Today it's the waste of money in the NHS.

We all know that the NHS is a behemoth that has issues, mainly to do with money, but the NHS is still a great institution that no-one wants to perish, but it's spending really needs to be looked at. I am not talking about the big cash injections like the mysterious £350 million, I want the day to day small pennies to be watched.

This week I went for my yearly review with the diabetic nurse, and found out I have been wasting the NHS's money every month. If you don't know, as diabetes is a life threatening illness (type 1 - the one with insulin injections), we diabetics get our insulin and general diabetic gubbins free on the NHS. As part of the way to control our blood sugars, so we don't keel over and end up in hospital, we test our blood with a small monitor, and therefore can adjust our insulin injections.

I have been using the same monitor for over 5 years now which was given to me by the diabetic centre, and only because of an off the cuff question I discovered my testing strips cost £15.59 per pot, which is the most expensive on a NHS list I discovered when I looked it up on the internet.

I've been using a pot of these strips approximately every 25 days, more frequently if I'm ill. I found out that for all this time I could have been using a different meter (that the clinics get given free to hand out by the big companies), and the strips would be £9.95 per pot, a saving of £5.64 each time. This means that, on a conservative estimate, I could have saved the NHS around £83 per year just by switching strips, and like I said I've had this meter over 5 years so that's over  £415 lost.

That doesn't seem like much in the massive amounts that the NHS has to deal with, but with over 3 million diabetics in the UK, if the same is happening in only a percentage of the country then a lot of money is being paid out unecessarily.

As individuals we all like to have a choice, and there are a lot meters to choose from, but if we are going to continue to have a NHS that works, we need to reign in that choice to only allowing the testing strips that come within a certain budget. A lot of people don't like change, and will be in dismay at having to change meters, but if this change was made and they wish to continue with the more expensive versions then they need to pay the difference.

I have now changed my meter to the more economical version, and there is no difference to my experience of testing, so why didn't the NHS/diabetic clinic tell me about this sooner? As a diabetic this is relevant to my experience, but I can bet there is the same thing happening all throughout the NHS.

As the saying goes
'take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves'.

Thanks for reading, please write your comments below as I am really interested on your thoughts.
Karen Lee

#WeWantLeia & my search for Wonder Woman

When Wonder Woman came out on my birthday I was so happy. Finally a strong woman portrayed on the screen; the same one who I'd pretended to be a lot through my early years.

I didn't know it in my head, but when I actually tear'd up in the opening 10 minutes in the cinema, I realised that seeing a load of strong, capable women (who didn't actually need to be looked after, or saved, by men) was something I had been waiting for, for a very long time.

It's actually taken 75 years for Wonder Woman to make it to the big screen!

All wasn't rosy though, only a week later I was moaning to my hubby about the severe lack of Wonder Woman merchandise out there. I may be a 47 year old woman, but I wanted to buy some stuff (t-shirts, etc.), but no there was little to nothing in the shops.

Even when Batman vs Superman came out (a film not greatly received) there was stuff everywhere, and naively I thought that with Wonder Woman it would be the same (there is a bit on the internet, but mostly it's retro WW, not the current film).

Then I happened across this amazing TED talk. Watch it, it's eye-opening.

To my shame, I hadn't actually realised that female characters have been systematically removed from view,  #wheretheBLEEPisLeia/Gamora/BlackWidow... (shame on you Disney).

Female superheroes are being erased from view, I am bloody angry about it.

Does having a female superhero on merchandise make it impossible to sell to boys?
NO

Will having a female superhero doll make boys less macho, and girls less feminine?
NO

Me trying on retro WW knickers in 2014.
I bought them!

I was, and still am, one of those 'tomboys' (Oxford Dictionary's description : a girl who enjoys rough, noisy activities traditionally associated with boys) Christopher mentioned, and I agree with his assessment that for little girls it's a bonus to have these traits. They are described in terms such as : plucky, spirited and confident, which are all generally held to be good things.

I'm lucky to be a girl, as I am horrified to see that if I had been a young boy with a liking for 'activities traditionally associated with girls' I would've be called a 'sissy' (Oxford Dictionary's description : a person regarded as effeminate or cowardly), and I may have ended up doing myself harm, like Mike.

I have written before about my dislike of gender specific toys in 'No more mini-mummies!', in fact it was my first ever blog post back in 2014. Unfortunately not a lot has changed.

The Wonder Woman film has done a lot to show that:
- a female lead character in a superhero movie can make money
- that a female is perfectly capable of directing such a massive hit

AND
- that there IS an audience (male & female) out there

So give us more female superhero movies, but next time can we have the merchandising too. After all, Mr. Merchandising Exec., it is mainly women who buy it.

Thanks for reading, and please leave a comment below.
KL

SaveSave

Aaaargh, a sanitary bin bit my bum!

Today I feel a need to rant about toilets. Well not actually toilets more like small cubicles and large sanitary bins.

I took this picture of the toilets in the local Cineworld cinema. I headed for a quick tinkle, only to find that part of my arse (a proper ladies' bum, in that I have Marilyn Monroe-esque curves) ended grazing the not-so-sanitary sanitary bin.

Now I realise that the cinema wanted to help us ladies out from queuing whilst desperate by squashing 3 toilets into a space that should only have had 2, but if you are going to do that please invest in some smaller bins, because, as you can see from the photos, the bin's lid is actually over the edge of the toilet seat, so even ladies without a Monroe bottom would have the same problem.

Apart from it not being a comfy thing to do, the health/germ implications of sitting on a sanitary bin edge makes me cringe!

You may think I'm just having a rant about a local issue, but no, this has happened a lot recently in quite a few motorway services, a couple of theatres and a library!

So I am putting this out to the universe…….

If you make sanitary bins, could you please make a narrower version, or why not make a C shaped one that curves round the bowl to help us out.

Thanks for reading, and if you've had this same problem please leave me a comment below, or why not name and shame a bum pinching venue if there is one near you.

If enough people have this problem maybe we can make one of the big sani-bin firms listen.

Toodles
Karen Lee

Did you ever have a shocking moment of 'Ta-Dah!' ?

This blog is dedicated to all the innocent or naive people in the world.

I sit here writing this in a shocked state.

Did you ever have a moment of 'Ta-Dah!' that you just weren't expecting? I have just had one whilst listening to Radio 2 whilst they played Gene Pitney's 24 hours from Tulsa.

Now, I am 44 years old, so I know the song and have sung along with the chorus many of times, but I have never really 'listened' to the song. I have always thought it was a sweet song about a bloke on his way home to his wife, just calling to let her know he was close.

How wrong was I !!!

If you are like me and haven't ever connected the dots, I'll tell you what it is really about:

It's about a bloke on his way home who stops off somewhere a day away from home, meets another woman, does the dirty and is basically telling his current girlfriend/wife that he's not coming back!!!

SHOCKED!

I feel like Emma Pillsbury, Jayma Mays' character in Glee Season 3, when she found out what Afternoon Delight was really about (and no, I didn't know what this song was about either! I am soooooo naive).

Jayma said in an interview with E! 
"I didn't know it was so dirty, I don't know if I thought it was about pie, but I can remember singing that song with my parents when I was growing up. That's so creepy now."

"My mom and dad wrote me an email the next morning [after the episode] and were like, 'We had no idea what that meant!" Mays laughed. "We're like the most innocent family ever."


So, if like me you are a bit naive (only in some things *wink*) I hope I didn't shock you too much, and if you are worldly wise please be kind to us innocents, we need looking after.

Toodles
Karen Lee
(Note: I wrote this article a little while ago on another blog, but I think this is the more appropriate place for it.)

Reclaim the Fairy Cake!

Over the last 5 years the whole of Great Britain has been inundated with cake makers.
I am very partial to a cake or 4 so don't misunderstand me, I DO NOT have an issue with the cakes themselves. I DO however take issue with what these new batch of bakers are calling their creations .........CUPCAKES!!!!

Photo courtesy of  bakinginspiration.com

For at least the 44 years that I have been on this earth, these mini cakes, covered with icing, buttercream, hundreds & thousands and/or metallic sugar balls, have been a mainstay of every school fête, community events and kiddie parties.

They have been created by mums, grandmas, brownie troops and enthusiastic kids, and have been decorated with whatever could be found in the back of a deep kitchen cupboard, and for all this time, and probably a whole lot of years before I was born, they have been called FAIRY CAKES.

Photo courtesy of georgetowncupcake.com

So why do we now have a country full of 'cupcakes'?
The ever pervasive influence from our ex-colony, the good ol' U. S. of A. is the culprit. Someone, and there are a lot of claimants to this particular title, decided that if you took the humble fairy cake, gave it an unusual name such as Red Velvet or Lava Fudge, and then covered the top with various sickly sweet concoctions piled higher than the Eiffel Tower, then you could sell them for an obscene amount of money, to people with more money than sense (I only say this because this trend took flight in Beverley Hills!). 

As mentioned earlier Great Britain is full of bakers of all ages, so when this trend crossed the pond many people saw an opportunity to jump on the bandwagon and make a living doing something that they loved, but, and this is my big BUT, they allowed the American name to stay because, to be able to charge the big prices, they couldn't be seen to be related to the humble Fairy Cake.

My biggest objection to the cupcake name is that it's influence doesn't stop just at the fancy shops. Nowadays at the local fairs or the school fêtes the Fairy Cake has been usurped, and a whole generation of children think that the swirly topped, sponge creations, made to fit perfectly into a small hand are called Cupcakes. NO!!!!

Please, I beg of you all, can we keep our British names, don't let foreign invaders take over, and if you are from the land of the free, we like you, we really do, but please can you keep your Americanisms of our great language to yourselves.

To make up for your corruptions of our words, dear Americans it's time we gave you one back, so here it is. You can call an umbrella an umbrella if you wish, but over here it's called a Brolly. Enough said!
Toodles
Karen Lee

(I wrote this article a little while ago on another blog, but I think this is the more appropriate place for it.)

The unnatural contortions of a red carpet life.

I know it's been done for years, but recently it seems to have got more extreme.

What am I talking about?

I'm talking about the leg contortions that seems to be prevalent amongst the red carpet glitterati.

It used to be that you turned at an angle so that you weren't photographed from the full on front view. This was done so that the flattering 45˚ angle made you look thinner, and your curves were more prominent.

Which Hollywood / pop starlet wouldn't want that?

But nowadays the strange overly exaggerated leg cross seems to be in fashion. Nobody in the real world would strike this pose unless they were desperate for a trip to the ladies, but on the red carpet it is used to slim the look of your thighs, hopefully creating that Marilyn hourglass effect on women who, to be honest due to near starvation diets, haven't usually got any of their own curves left.

Some pull it off better than others. Reese Witherspoon is rarely seen on the red carpet without the crossed leg look, even perfecting it in this middle photo to seem like she has only one leg!

But there are one or two ladies who need a little more practice to get past the 'this is really not a natural pose' look.
To me Rosamund Pike looks like she may topple at any moment, and Beyoncé has got work to do, especially if she's wearing that split leg dress that magnifies any issues. She needs to have a chat with Reese.

You just have to take a quick look at InStyle's Look of the Day pages to see that more and more ladies are making the leg cross grade, but really is there something wrong with women looking like they have two legs, and showing off their curves as they really are?

I was going to use Jennifer Aniston as my example of a woman who doesn't do the leg cross, as most of the pics of her on the red carpet had her in a very natural stance, and I think she looks

AMAZING!

Could it be that she doesn't need to contort herself to create curves because she actually has some? Just a thought.

But then I came across Jennifer in leg cross mode. Noooooooo, not you too Jen!

Here is Jen in the same dress, one in a normal stance, one crossed, and I think she she looks equally stunning in both, though to me she looks happier and more natural in the uncrossed pic.
What do you think?

In this world where women have to measure up to ridiculous standards of beauty, where some even resort to surgery to achieve 'the look', could we please draw a line at having to also contort ourselves into highly unnatural poses too. I mean, would we see men contorting their bodies in this way just for a red carpet photo?

I don't think so!

Toodles
KLxx

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