Butter London–Pillarbox Red with Cult Nails-Coveted

Merry Christmas, everyone!

So, the Christmas mani I did yesterday didn’t quite work out but I have another one for you. This is the mani I did for the Christmas Pageant in my little town:

Two coats of Butter London Pillarbox Red and two coats of Cult Nails Coveted. So, so gorgeous. Pillarbox Red is honestly the most perfect red I’ve ever seen and Coveted is such a lovely, deep green jelly with glass ‘shards’ in it.

 

I decided to make it a little more Christmassy:

I sponged white on the tips and stamped some Konad designs on. Cute little snowmen on my fingers and “Merry Christmas” on my thumbs. Everyone at the pageant loved this!

 

Hope you’ve had a happy and safe Christmas!

Em xx

Jade–Mystic Gold with stamping

I don’t usually ‘do’ gold, especially not yellow gold. White gold, oh yes, but yellow gold just doesn’t suit me.

I did have to try this particular gold polish, though. Why? Because it’s a holo, of course!

 

Jade Mystic Gold, two coats. Stunning, right? It’s a really rich yellow gold so it doesn’t look tacky. I just love the Jade holos because they have such a strong holo effect. You just can’t go wrong!

I added some Konad stamping on top, a cute and funky zebra pattern.

 

What do you think of my zebra nails?

Em

Manis for Race Day

Every year in the little mining town I live in we have an Outback Cup. Half the town gets doled up to the nines and the other half wear jeans and a t-shirt and we all head out to the race course to watch some horsies run and win races. It’s basically an excuse to get drunk and dress up. I don’t really drink and I hate getting dressed up so I wasn’t even going to go to the races. A friend and client of mine convinced me to do some volunteer working serving all the drunk people their alcohol. It was good fun for most of the day until about half an hour before the bar shut when people started getting rowdy and messy and just plain gross. It really made me glad I don’t drink!

 

Anyway, I’ll cut to the chase and get to the point of this post! I ended up doing three lots of nails for the races for friends of mine. I had a really busy evening the day before the races and the morning of the races prettying up three friends nails.

 

First up was Miss Michelle’s nails. Michelle wanted something natural and understated so we started off using essie’s Au Natural and we were just doing stamping over it. Then she spotted essie Footloose and fell in love so we ended up with this:

Pretty, right? A coat of essie Foot Loose (my favourite one-coater pink) with Konad in white. It turned out so, so pretty! She loved it! She ended up borrowing my bottle of Foot Loose and when she returned it she asked me to find her a bottle to buy.

 

Next up was Miss Laura.

Laura picked a base colour of Towel Boy Toy by China Glaze, a gorgeous blue neon. Silly me didn’t actually realise it was a neon so I needed three coats. If I’d started with a base of white it probably would have turned out a bit brighter. But that’s okay, it was still super bright!

She wasn’t sure if she wanted any stamping and left that entirely up to me. I decided to do some dotting. Simple, effective and eye catching!

Here’s the end result:

Pretty right? So this was three coats of China Glaze Towel Boy Toy and dots with Ulta3 Frangipani and Gelato.

She loved it!

 

Finally, we have Miss Narelle.

Narelle has been interested in trying gel polish for a while, so I tried out my BlueSky shellac polish on her. I used a pretty purple shimmer which as far as I can see, doesn’t have a name.

This is what we ended up with:

This was a coat of the BlueSky base coat, cured for two minutes, then a coat of the purple, cured for two minutes, another coat of the purple, cured for two minutes, then the BlueSky top coat, cured for two minutes. Then I wiped off the tacky layer with a cleaner and stamped a pretty Konad flower design in silver on the ring fingers and sealed that with a coat of Seche Vite.

Narelle wore these nails for about two weeks with no issues! She even said that she’d broken a nail underneath the polish but the polish had held it all together and protected it for her! Winner!

I think this is a great idea for people who don’t want to change their polish all the time but love having pretty nails. What I loved about it was that you could change the stamping designs easily

For polish addicts like myself, this probably isn’t the answer!

 

Em

Unknown Light Blue with Konad

I recently bought a bunch of polishes off a friend here in town and there are quite a few I don’t actually know the brand of.

 

This polish is one of the pretties I scored:

This polish was very, very sheer. This took three coats to build up to a gorgeous squishy blue jelly. This is the colour I thought was missing from the OPI NYC Ballet Collection. It fits right in!

 

I thought it deserved some pretty, delicate stamping:

I used a Konad plate with their special stamping polish. So, so pretty

Unfortunately the wear time on this wasn’t great but I didn’t mind too much because it was gorgeous while it lasted!

 

What do you think?
Em

China Glaze-Flyin’ High with Konad

It’s one of my favourite colours again I swear, I will NEVER get sick of blue/teal polishes. Never ever ever. I have so many that are similar but slightly different and I love them ALL!!!! China Glaze does some AMAZING blues and here is one of them:

Two coats of Flyin’ High. Gorgeous, gorgeous colour and amazing formula. I honestly could not fault this polish. It was to die for Just looking at the photos makes me want to wear it again and again!

 

I wanted a simple image to stamp over this colour so I didn’t cover it up too much. I decided on a pretty Konad image:

So cute Reminds me of a patchwork quilt!

Do you like?
Em

OPI–Care to Danse?

I’m almost through all my OPI NYC Ballet Collection polishes. Ah, what a good collection. This is the pale purple of the collection, even though both in photos and on the nail it looks pink!?

 

This is Care to Danse? Three coats. The formula wasn’t as great as the others I’ve tried but still not too bad and evened out with three coats. I did some Konad stamping over the top in silver which was so pretty and girly, I loved it

 

You can’t go wrong with these polishes, do you agree?
Em

OPI–You Callin’ Me a Lyre? with Konad

Today I have another polish from my beloved OPI NYC Ballet Collection

This is You Callin’ Me a Lyre?

This is the darker pink of the collection. There are two pinks! This is so, so pretty and dainty, I love it!

Three coats, which seems to be the norm with this collection. But the formula was beautiful and once again, you can build up the opacity to your liking and it doesn’t streak or get bald spots.

 

I tried out my new Fab Ur Nails Metallic Pink stamping polish with one of my Konad Plates:

So pretty and vintage This Fab Ur Nails stamping polish is pretty dang good! It’s not quite as easy to use as the Konad Special Polish but you just have to adjust your technique a little. I scraped a little softer and stamped a little quicker because I found the polish dried quicker than the Konad polish. Gorgeous colour, though! I got the whole set of polishes which includes Gold, Metallic Turquoise, Silver and a couple of others!

 

Have you tried any of the Fab Ur Nails stuff?
Em

Ulta3–Kiwi Kaos with Konad

Happy Easter, everyone! I hope you had a great day yesterday and aren't in too much of a sugar coma.

My partner had to work pretty much the whole Easter weekend so I took the opportunity to do extra massages and, of course, extra manis!

This is a mani from a few weeks ago that I'd forgotten I'd even done. You know you're a nail polish addict when you can't remember any of the manis you've done recently:

This is Ulta3 Kiwi Kaos from their Gelato collection:

Two coats... pretty decent formula! I like this! It's a nice, muted green. Some greens are way too bright but this is perfect!

I did some stamping over it in one of the classic Konad designs:

Aussies, doesn't this remind you of the Harris Scarfe logo!? Non-Aussies, Harris Scarfe is a department store here which sells clothes, bedding, kitchen and homewares and electronics. Their old logo and design used to have this design and they have always used green!

Have you done any manis which remind you of something like this!?
Em

China Glaze–Starboard with Konad

This is the second mani I did while I had yucky ruond nails. I think there’s only one more after this, phew!

 

As you may have been able to tell, I’ve been on a real blue and green kick lately. I didn’t realise until I started catching up on my blog posts but I seriously need some colour variety I’m promising myself that my next mani will not be blue or green!

 

This is China Glaze Starboard, a pretty medium green creme:

Two coats, great formula. But I needed to do something to jazz it up a bit:

 

Wow, these look like total Aussie nails! I didn’t even realise until I looked at the photos how Aussie these were.

I quite like this Konad image. I think it would look awesome stamped with silver. It reminds me of barbed wire!

 

Have you done any accidental themed manis lately?
Em

China Glaze–Ahoy!

Ahoy there, maties!

Haha oh so lame, I’m posting Ahoy! by China Glaze. Get it? Haha. Wow, I’m tired.

 

I’ve been such a bad blogger lately… I’ve got heaps of photos edited and ready to go on my computer but have had no time to actually sit and write blog posts! Well, time to get back into the swing of things!!

 

My nails are a wreck lately because of moving house twice in a month and from expanding my massage business. Why from expanding my massage business, you ask? Well, although I use oil (mostly coconut oil which is amazing for your skin, nails, hair, just about anything!), I wash my hands twice for each client. Once before, once after. So if I’m doing four clients in a row, that means washing my hands eight times in about a five hour period. I use the anti-bacterial hand soap so it’s very drying on my cuticles. Urgh. Time to slather my hands in coconut oil and wear cotton gloves to bed, I think.

 

Anyway, enough of my incoherent babbling. Today I have for you a polish I lusted after for a long time and finally bought when it was cheap on Ozsale. This is China Glaze Ahoy!:

 

Eh. Don’t get me wrong, this is a gorgeous polish but from the photos I’d seen of it, I expected more. It’s a beautiful colour but it was just lacking something for me.

Anyway, this was two coats. Great formula, excellent wear. No issues there!

 

I jazzed it up a little with some stamping:

Again, meh. Maybe I was just hard to impress that day  

 

What do you think?

Em

Ulta3–Violet Rumble with Konad

Well, Ulta3 have done it again. Another amazing colour for $2.25. How do they do it!?

This is Violet Rumble from their new Gelato collection:

Two coats, fantastic formula. I loooove this colour. It's a pastel purple but like a bright pastel, if that makes sense?

I added some stamping:

I used my Red Angel image plates and dotted the middle of the flowers with my dotting tool and Ulta3 Frangipani.
Wow, I really didn't notice just how smudged my little finger was. Oopsies :P

I love this mani because it's so pretty and summery. Seeing and it's 40 degrees here today, it's quite appropriate!!

Em

Zoya Rihana with Essence Time for Romance

While I was in Adelaide I painted B’s mum’s nails. She was kind enough to let us stay at her house for a week so it was the least I could do!

 

She picked Zoya Rihana as a base, a stunning burgundy shimmer:

This was two coats. It almost covered in one but there were a couple of bald spots. Beautiful smooth formula.

 

I layered my new Essence Time for Romance glitter on top:

This is just one coat! See how much glitter comes out!? I love it!!!

 

And finally, I stamped a couple of gorgeous Konad images from image plate S10:

Naww, a bunny and a kitty. B’s mum loves bunnies and kitties. She has three bunnies and two kitties. I fell in love with one of the kitties, Cassie, while I was staying there. She was so adorable and would snuggle up on my chest and wrap herself around my neck while I was sitting on the couch. I wanted to take her home with us!!

 

What do you think?

Em

Custom Polish–Toxic Slime

I’ve been looking for an excuse to use more of the colour morphing pigments I bought from Cathy. I decided Christmas was a good enough excuse, so I made a Christmas-inspired polish.

 

This is Toxic Slime:

Three coats and a slight visible nail line. It’s very sheer! But a gorgeous green and the red pops in the light.

 

Here’s a blurry shot to show the gorgeous sparkle:

 

And another one, just to show the gorgeous red on the nails and in the bottle:

 

I didn’t want to cover this polish too much, so I just stamped a simple bow on each thumb:

I used Konad image plate M59. Cute Notice how in full sunlight the polish throws off more of a yellowy green colour shift. Strange! But gorgeous!

 

Hope you’re enjoying your holiday season!

Em

piCture pOlish Christmas Nails

I’ve been doing Christmassy nails this week and here are my favourites of the bunch:

This is two coats of piCture pOlish French White as a base and then I sponged every second finger with essie Going Incognito, a gorgeous dark green, and the other fingers with China Glaze Ruby Pumps. I was a bit disappointed with how Ruby Pumps turned out, because it was very pink when sponged over white.

Then I stamped some Chrissie trees and candy canes using Konad image plate M12. I added a rhinestone to the centre of the candy cane on my left hand and a star to the top of the Christmas tree on my right hand.

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS everyone! Hope you had a great day

Em

Custom Polish–Grass Roots

I made this custom polish the other day and I’m so pleased with it. Once again I was trying to make a dark green holo but didn’t quite get there because this colour captivated me.

 

This is “Grass Roots”

Two coats. Gorgeous, huh? I stamped “Merry Christmas” using Konad image plate M12 and the presents are Bundle Monster plate BM-205. That’s right, I managed to stamp using a Bundle Monster plate without screwing it up

 

Here’s another shot:

 

And another:

 

Ahhh pretty. I love how the blue of the rainbow pops!

 

Love it

 

Em

essie Life Saver with Konad

I wasn’t sure about this polish. Sure, it looked great in the bottle but I thought the beautiful shimmer in the bottle would disappear once on the nail.

Luckily, I was wrong  

This is essie Life Saver:

A gorgeous orange with gold microshimmer. It is STUNNING! The subtle shimmer really tones the polish down and makes it something a little different.

This was three coats because I’m pedantic and had a couple of tiny bald spots after two coats. Gorgeous formula, as I’ve discovered most essies have!

 

And what goes so well with orange?

Tiggerrrrrr! Konad tiger full nail design in Konad Princess Special Polish (Warm Black).

I LOVE IT It’s so fun and eyecatching but not TOO out there and garish like some oranges are. Definitely my favourite orange by far!

I wore this to the Christmas pageant here and got so many compliments!

 

Have you done any Konad-ing you love lately?

Em