Swatching and Psoriasis

Since I didn't get pictures of that one dog transport I did way back the weekend before last, I'll post a few swatches, and some psoriasis update stuff. WARNING: There are some graphic pictures of my skin, so if that grosses you out, don't scroll to the end. So let's get to the pictures, which you can enjoy while I get my new ones uploaded.

First of all, I have swatches of the trio of ELF polishes I found at Target. Cranberry is a nice sparkly red, which will probably take three coats for best coverage.

Golden Goddess is a great glittery gold (oooh alliteration) that I really liked.

Here it is over black.

Twinkle is a sparse glitter that is definitely only for layering in my book.

Here's a coat over black. I love the multi-colored glitter.

Next a quick swatch of the Hard Candy LE minis. I picked these up at Walmart. There are no names for these.

And some wonderful SH polishes that I recently got from a blog sale. Magnet is up first, and this is a lovely blue jelly with lots of sparkle. It's probably a four-coater for full coverage, and is reminiscent of ChG Dorothy Who, though not as amazing.

Here's a coat of it over black.

Radar is brown with multi-colored glitter. It's very much not my kind of color, although it was okay. Again, it will probably take four coats.

Here is a coat over black.

Sonar is an amazing teal green jelly with glitter. Even four coats wasn't quite enough to hide VNL, but this color is gorgeous enough to forgive that.

Here's one coat over black.

I also found these adorable Nicole minis at Walmart, and The Mate bought them for me. Eventually I'll swatch or wear them. Heh.

And, soon I'll have manis featuring the following Essies, which I think are wonderful!

I haven't seen those Essies featured very much at all, which is surprising. Maybe it's because they are limited, as in there are only 5,000 of them being produced. Maybe it's because they are expensive, at $30 for the set, it adds up quickly. It does benefit a cause (The Actor's Fund), so that helped me be willing to spend the money on the set. I got mine over here from the Addams Family Musical Store. ANyway, I'll have my NOTDs with these and reviews at some point this week. Let's just say Essie did a FANTABULOUS job on them.

Now, below are going to be the graphic pictures I spoke of earlier, so you'll want to X out of here now if those will bother you. 

I mean, they don't bother me mostly, because I'm sorta used to it. But that's not the same for others.

The pictures include my forearm, the same I showed once before to illustrate how widespread the psoriasis is; a picture of how my chin was affected after starting the new meds; and a picture of the huge bald spot on my head, which is the toughest one for me to deal with.

The good news is that the meds seem to be working finally, so hopefully I'll have some nice skin before too long. I'm already better than I've been for a long long time, so it's been worth it to deal with all the yucky stuff from the meds. Side effects suck, but I'll take getting worse for a while to get better.

Okay, so here we go.

First, this is the picture of my arm now.  It's still looking pretty raunchy in this picture, but it actually is a mild improvement.

Here's my chin, which has since healed up. You can also see how my lips are chapped, I have about a dozen different lip balms and I'm using them ALL THE TIME right now.

And this is my poor scalp, with wide swaths of missing hair. I can just barely comb it to cover this up, but now that I'm healing I'm hoping it will grow back in nicely. You can see the thick scales next to the bald spot, which I can't remove, or I'll lose way more hair. However, those are starting to go away as well, so it seems the meds are doing their job.

I do try to keep my blog mostly upbeat, but I feel it's only fair to share this stuff too. If there are others out there who've been made to feel like crap for how their skin looks, I'd like them to see this, and know that there is hope. I've had psoriasis for more than half my life now, and it's a rough thing to deal with. What works for one person may not help another at all. It's really a matter of trial and error until you hit on what works, and what makes it even harder is that it often takes up to three months to know if there will be good results.