You need to Just Keep Swimming in this heat.

We are looking forward to having Summer days with the temperature in the high 30s. That is in degrees celsius. It is times like these that I wish I lived closer to the beach. Then again, I lived on the beach as a child and I don't remember taking every opportunity to swim in the ocean.

I bring another Darling Diva polish today. It is Finding Nemo's Dory inspired Just Keep Swimming. This was one coat over three coats of Satin Nail Enamel 10 which is a smurf blue with pink shimmer.

I found the white bar glitter a little "hairy" but I managed it ok. I was able to get it put into position and not hanging over edges fairly easily. The white bar glitter seems to be rather finer than the bar glitter I have had in other polishes. You can easily see the hex glitters in my pictures but it is more difficult to see the green micro-glitter. Of course I say it is green but this is most likely due to the blue tinted base making yellow appear as green. The flecks can be slightly seen in the shade photograph below.

Inspired by the Christmas Beetle

The Christmas season brings the arrival of the beautifully iridescent Christmas Beetle. I remember watching the shimmer of the shell for ages when I found the beetles in my room.

This year I have only found one beetle and took the opportunity to photograph it for you. I took many pictures as I had trouble with capturing the colour of the shell and keeping the Christmas Beetle in focus. While I was taking the pictures the beetle crawled around on my hand and bumbled with some flying.

When I first saw Pretty Serious Mummy Mush, I thought of the Christmas Beetle immediately. It has a pale gold base with pink and green shimmer. To get a good base, I used three coats as this is a polish on the sheer side. For the design I decided to do a modified version of the ladybird (ladybug/ladybeetle) manicure.

I trimmed a nail art brush to make it finer and shorter and used Ulta3 Black Satin. You can tell why I do not freehand nail art as I am simply terrible with art. Over the top of the black lines I applied Ozotic 503 for a green shimmer. It does not look right... So I had another go.

I only applied Mummy Mush to my nail because I was not intending to keep the design on my nails. Hence, that explains the lack of clean up as I just wanted to see if my second thoughts after studying the picture of the Christmas Beetle were better. I also used the same black.

Hmmm. Shoddy looking but I thought I would add Ozotic 503 again. This did soften the design. If I wore this out in public I am sure I would get questions as to what on earth I had on my nails.

Pretty Seriously Serious Mummy Mush

Happy New Year and welcome to 2013. I hope that the new year has started off kindly for you without too many hang overs from seeing the old year out.

I used three coats of Pretty Serious Mummy Mush for some nail art. To "upcycle" the manicure I added Darling Diva's Seriously Serious.

Seriously Serious is a purple and green version of A Christmas Story. This polish did not need to be thinned and I applied one easy layer over the top of Mummy Mush.

Darling Diva recommends not using Seriously Serious over the top of purple polish as the purple micro glitter can not be seen. I thought the pale champagne gold glass fleck multi-chrome would show both the purple and holographic green micro-glitters well. I think at some point in time I will wear it over a green such as China Glaze Emerald Fitzgerald or maybe a mauve.

I will leave you with a picture that shows a little more of the holographic sparkle from the green holographic micro-glitter.

Darling Diva Apple Crisp

Time has flown over the Christmas break. It is not too long before I will need to go back to work. Until then I will continue to enjoy the antics of Mr R and Miss L.

Today I bring to you Apple Crisp from Darling Diva Polish. It is a scented polish and it slakes my desire for Femme Fatale Stolen Reindeer except for one important point. I removed the polish soon after as the scent was not my cup of tea. Although I am sure I picked up a vanilla smell, I am sure it also smelled like cinnamon as well. No, they are not bad smells but they were definitely too strong!

For my base colour I used two coats of Colour by T.B.N Raisin. This brand of polish has a strong smell but it has an interesting array of colours available for a cheap price. Raisin is a great brown and it helps to flesh out the browns in my collection.

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Look at the mix of colours in this polish. I love the addition of the different red glitters with the holographic and iridescent. My version of the polish does not appear to have as much green glitter as in the pictures from Darling Diva's listing. I do not mind one little bit as this is still visually appealing. I just wish I could stand the smell of this.

Unlike most Darling Diva Polishes, I did not need to thin this. Darling Diva does not cut the suspension base so you can add thinner to make the consistency you would like. Most of the time I find I need to add thinner because the base is too thick to apply.

O Tannenbaum! O Christmas Tree!

I am not having much success with using PVA as a base coat ever since I had a manicure done. I suspect that the buffing they did on my nails made the surface so smooth that the glue does not have the type of surface it needs to adhere well. Every time I have worn a manicure since the manicure I have used PVA and the polish just pops off.

For this Christmas I had planned to do a few different manicures and life got in the way. We have come to the holidays now and I get to post my Christmas Tree. Someone had mentioned in a post on a blog that Darling Diva's Mitochondrial Eve looked like a Christmas Tree complete with ornaments. There and then I decided that I would get Mitochondrial Eve and I would do a Christmas Tree manicure.

But... I left off buying Mitochondrial Eve. I was trying to be financially wise and then when I was able to buy, the polish was not listed any longer. Oh no! I messed Darling Diva and asked if it was possible to get Mitochondrial Eve. Joy of Joys an affirmative response was received.

The base colour for this manicure is Ozotic 502 that reminds me of Sally Hansen's Nail Prisms Golden Cinnbar when worn. This polish is lovely by itself and I did not take pictures to capture the different colour shifts.

To create the Christmas Tree I simply used tape and applied two dabbling coats onto the nail. Simple, done. If I had longer nails I would have added a star at the top but I do not believe I had the space to make it look good.

You only get three fingers in this picture as I hurt my poor index finger. You can also tell that I did not clean up afterwards with the top coat. Not too long after these pictures were taken when POP! off they came.

Countdown to Christmas

It is hard to believe that it is only two weeks until Christmas. We spend so long with the build up in the shops and then the day itself is suddenly here.

We have two countdown calendars in our house. One for Mr R and one for Miss L. Yesterday I took pictures of Darling Diva's A Christmas Story with Miss L's. I did intend on trying to get the pictures up last night but I am sure that somewhere it will still be 15 days to go when I post.

Most of the pictures I have seen posted of A Christmas Story have shown the polish as a green and red microglitter mix. It sparkles freely but there is a hidden delight. Yes, there is a holographic element. Taking the pictures in the sun showed the rainbow of colour.

For the base colour I used Sephora by OPI Mr Right Now. I feel this was the perfect red after applying two coats to match the red of the glitter in the bottle. Only one coat of A Christmas story was required and I applied two coats of Seche Vite as the first coat was not smooth and slick.

Dead Ringer for Fantasy Fire. Shift Happens eh?

It seems a long time ago when I bought Ringer from Darling Diva Polish on etsy. Ringer is much more affordable and in a larger bottle than Fantasy Fire. That is even when you consider shipping it to Australia. I thought I could go the whole hog and get a mini bottle and a large bottle for that shifting goodness.

Then when my bottles arrived there had been another arrival in Australia. Yes, Max Factor had released Fantasy Fire here. Of course I had to secure my own bottle. Ok, maybe I had to get two but I did share!

Looking at Ringer and Fantasy Fire in their bottles they seem to have exactly the same shift at the same time. Sometimes when I look really hard I wonder if the particles in Ringer may be a little larger than Fantasy Fire. The base colour appears similar although Ringer is more sheer in appearance. Maybe there are more particles in Fantasy Fire but using the polish I did not notice any difference on the nail.

For my base colour I tried to choose a similar colour to the base colour of Fantasy Fire. I wanted a simple creme polish but I found that I did not really have one even though I love purple so much. There seems to be an added factor to most of my polishes. I used Satin Seasonal Nail Enamel 1. Two coats were applied but I feel I should have added a third. This is because I think it would have added more depth to the colour and made the polish pop more.

I had exceptional trouble trying to capture Fantasy Fire on camera today. It is swelteringly hot and I wonder if somehow the camera is affected. That seems silly but I could not stop taking pictures and getting good shots the last time I photographed Fantasy Fire for Spring. Fantasy Fire was applied to my index and ring fingers and Ringer graces my middle and little fingers. For an extra comparison but not really captured, I used Girly Bits Shift Happens on my thumb.

It may seem in the above photo that the middle finger may have less pigment but you can not tell any difference in reality. The difference in the picture may be the angle or the like.

Shift Happens seems to change more readily from red to yellow and for longer than Fantasy Fire and Ringer. Essentially, there is not much difference in the Ringer from the handmade batch I had to Fantasy Fire. I would call them dupes. Shift Happens is a great alternative and could be applied to a greater array of colours as it does not have the purple coloured based of Fantasy Fire and Ringer.

I was thrilled when I was able to capture this blue shift that came after the green shift. This seems to be the greatest extreme of the colour shift in these polishes.

All three polishes are beautiful and I feel fortunate in owning all three. Shift Happens ended up being the most difficult for me to buy but it eventually came my way from Llarowe. Personally, if you just want Fantasy Fire and can't buy it at a local shop, I would buy Ringer from Darling Diva. I would hurry because it seems as though this pigment is going to he hard to get if at all. For versatility, I would get Shift Happens. I have one more way I want to try Shift Happens as the colour shift changes nature depending on the base colour.

There you go Melissa. I posted as promised. :)

Starbucks and Zebration for my 100th post!

When I looked at plate MJ VI I thought that the lady image looked familiar. At first I thought it may have been a logo for Godiva until I went into the kitchen and noticed that the logo on my Starbucks cup was the same. In my defence, I have probably had something from Starbucks less than the number of fingers on one hand. There is not an outlet locally either.

To start I stamped the Starbucks Mermaid onto the more rigid plastic of a sandwich bag using Konad Black. Ulta3 Lily White was brushed over the top. I had to try this a couple of times because I did not wait long enough for the black to dry the first time. Applying the white smeared the black to make a round grey mess. I left that to dry for another day's manicure. This is a method that I bookmarked from Polished Peripherals.

The day finally came to do my manicure and I had to select my green. None of the greens in my collection matched that of my cup. They were either too pale or too dark. Ulta3 Frog Prince is the closest I could come to the right colour. Two coats of Frog Prince went down over a PVA glue base and another layer of PVA was added to the top on my thumb to stick my mermaid onto. I allowed all of the layers to dry before adding Seche Vite.

On my index and little fingers I used Peita's Polish Zebration to carry through the black and white theme from my Starbucks Mermaid. Konad White was used for the two images on my middle and ring fingers. I thought I would add some beverages onto those fingers. The take away cup with straw was too large for my trimmed down shabby nubbins but I still think it looks good. It came from plate MJ VIII. For the coffee cup I used only the cup part of the "Coffee Addict" image. You can find it on the Fun 2 plate.

MUD Blue Moon - What is MUD polish like?

MUD - Make Up Design nail polish is a new release at Woolworths Supermarkets. Two colours stowed away into my trolley when I did the grocery shopping. Blue Moon is the first one I have tried.

The packaging makes a few claims about this polish. They claim it has high shine and does not streak. I think it fails on both accounts because the only way this polish became shiny was with the addition of a top coat. Application was streaky and required three coats to achieve the opacity in these pictures. Blue Moon's packaging claims that you only need two coats under their Tips and Tricks.

Blue Moon IS a pretty polish. If you ignore the claims on the packaging and consider it as a budget concious polish, then it is not too bad. It is a lovely shade of blue that looks good within three coats of polish. That is not overly excessive although I prefer to use two coats at the most.

To spice up the manicure I added Humble Bee. I want to do a proper manicure with effort for this heavily desired and hard to get polish. I think it pops nicely against the blue. It would have been great to get more pictures but my PVA glue based polished started popping off before I could get more pictures in the afternoon after work. I just don't have the heart to redo the manicure and it looks like overcast, miserable weather has set in.

I Love Conversation Hearts

Recently I received some MJ plates from the creator of the Fun plates. I was pleased with how quickly they arrived from the Phillipines to my end of the world. The only thing I was uncomfortable about in ordering these was wondering what the postage fees would be like.

The Conversation Heart lollies image is from MJ VI. I had to rummage around in boxes for the tools to do this since I have not unpacked my nail polish properly yet. Hopefully that will happen soon. For ease, the stamping polish was Konad's special polish in mauve. I think the image stamped as well as any other image I have from Konad or Bundle Monster plates.

The base polish is Pretty Serious Emma Louise that I posted about recently.

I found out about this newest release of image plates from Spellbinding Nails. They are a great collection of plates and I will have to bring more in coming posts. You can order your own from My Online Shop. For the four large image plates I was changed 650 Phillipine Pesos which exchanges to around A$15.

Emma Louise is Pretty Serious about her sweets.

When my box of Pretty Serious polishes arrived I took some pictures. They looked very nice but I put them aside because I have not been doing much with my shabby nubbins. The second polish I have used is the limited edition Emma Louise.

I knew Emma Louise was pretty from the pictures I had seen online. I thought I was prepared for that and the fact that Emma Louise was not as stunning on the nail. No, I was not prepared at all because when I took Emma Louise out of her box I went into a state of OMG! *drool*

Emma applied to the nail well. I used two coats and Seche Vite for the top coat. The polish is still pretty as I find most purple nail polishes are. You still have some of that delicious green glitter that shows up well in the bottle but it is hidden and scattered on the nail.

I find the golden green glass fleck seems gold or silver most of the time and I love what it brings to this polish. Scattered here and there is the purple and green hex glitter that make a grown woman go weak at the knees in the bottle. Whilst you can not really see the green easily, they do help to bring the polish together so that Emma Louise is not "just" another polish with glass fleck.

Not so polished pink.

I have not polished my nails in what feels like a long time. During and after moving I have had a serious case of Shabby Nubbins. When you don't have much in the way of nails in the first place, you do not have much to work with when you need to cut them off to start again.

Yesterday I wore Pretty Serious Mummy Mush for my Polish Us Pink Monday. It is not a pink polish but at certain angles it does look pink and peach. At other times you get pearl, gold, green and at one extreme, blue.

Breast Cancer is a "pretty serious" thing and no Mummy should need to turn to mush by hearing a breast cancer diagnosis. That means you need to check your breasts whether you are male or female and go to your doctor if you are at all concerned.

I used three coats of Mummy Mush for the finish above. It can appear opaque at most angles but at others you can still see the nail line. That does not bother me so much as it is a very pretty polish.

I tried to find the pink on my camera for you but I think I failed. I am sure the pink in the picture above owes more to my nail bed colour that capturing anything else.

Later on I added a daisy sequin to my nail with nail glue and a 3 mm pink rhinestone on top of that. For some reason the nail glue would not dry and secure the rhinestone to the sequin. I did manage to stick my fingers together when I plucked the slipping and sliding rhinestone off.

Although I am late with my post, there are other people on time with their Polish Us Pink! posts for the Mondays in October.

Chi Chi Fr**ken Weekend with Darling Diva Pendragon

That post title sounds so very wrong.

I went bin diving with the Strumpet the other day and we pulled out a couple of Chi Chi polishes on clearance. One of these was Fricken Weekend. Yes, I have to admit that I was very taken with the name of it. I promised to share a decant with the Strumpet and so my bank account had another deduction. Ooops.

Weekend is an unusual colour. It is almost a greenish cast gunmetal. Application was of two coats over PVA glue as I intended to apply a glitter polish over the top. When wet this polish tends to be streaky but the streaks mainly disappear once dry. How much they disappear will depend on your application.

Over the top of this I used Pendragon from Darling Diva Polish. I was attracted to the varied green and bronze glitters in this polish from the moment I saw it in etsy. The other great surprise you get as you turn your hand is the holographic effect. This is from the small gold holographic glitter in this polish. It is beautiful.

I had brilliant customer service from Darling Diva Polish. She was very patient as I decided what I wanted in my mini bottles. I did have a worry that I may not have been able to get everything in a mini bottle as some of the larger glitters will not fit through the neck of the 5 ml bottle. Thankfully all of the polishes I wanted did.

Dedicated to the Ones I Love - XOXO VL001 image

This one is for Mr R and Miss L. I love you.

Sally Hansen Crushed Gems Cha-Ching reminds me of diamonds and rubies. Those stones are special for me as they are Mr R and Miss L's birthstones. I used two coats of this polish and it dried fast. It looked dull and gritty without top coat and I wondered whether it was going to be a top coat eater.

After one coat of Seche Vite had dried, I stamped with the XOXO image from Vivid Lacquer's VL001 image plate. The polish I used for the stamping was China Glaze Millenium. I bet you were wondering if I used any other polish than Nails Inc Cleopatra's Kiss. Finally, all of my fingernails were given another coat of Seche Vite to help smooth them out.

You may have noticed some odd things about this manicure. My hands are very shiny from the moisturiser I just applied. While I was applying the moisturiser, the polish on my index finger slid off in a sheet. Ooops. So I quickly reattached it and took these photographs before they all came off.

Bee Obsessed Dad - Featuring VL002 Honeycomb Image

Happy Father's Day Dad! This one is especially for you.

The reason why I perk up my ears when something involving bees comes along is because of my Dad. He is an apiarist and is currently showing Mr R the tricks of the trade. Bee related things also make for great presents for both him and my mother since they have a good bee collection.

When I was browsing etsy for Indie nail polish, I came across Vivid Lacquer's store. My attention was immediately drawn to her stamping plates. Honeycomb alert! I had to wait for a little while for some disposable income but buy both plates I did. They arrived in excellent condition in their own plastic bag inside of a black box. The plates also had blue plastic film to protect the surface of the plate.

Two coats of China Glaze Happy Go Lucky were used as the base colour and the stamping was done in essence Just In Case. When I tested Just In Case for stamping on paper it seemed to do well. It did not stamp so well with this plate. I chose Just In Case because I thought it would go well with the yellow and I did not want to stamp with gold or black. The honeycomb image is from VL002. In my opinion the stamping on my thumb seems to have worked the best and this was the first nail I stamped on. Using nail glue, I affixed a fimo slice bee to my middle finger.

In my pictures I am holding a candle that Mr R, Miss L and I made with honeycomb foundation. Bee keepers often attach sheets of this to frames in their bee hives to help the bees out and to maintain neat honeycomb production. You don't want the bees making their honeycomb anywhere they want.

Awesome Aussie August: Peita's Polish Aussie Bee

I am a sucker for anything bee related. When I saw Aussie Bee in Peita's etsy store, I had to make an order.

My base colour is Ulta3 Honolulu. Although I have added some thinner, it is still thick and applies awkwardly. I had to use three coats to get a decent appearance. The colour of my manicure owes its colour to Honolulu rather than to the yellow jelly base. Looking at the base I did not believe I would get a good look on my nubbins applying it by itself.

Honolulu is the best opaque yellow that I currently have. If I had a more lemon yellow, that would have fit with Aussie Bee a lot better. Aussie Bee applied well for a glitter and the pictures show one coat. Seche Vite was used as a top coat.

Awesome Aussie August: Peita's Polish Little Princess on Satin.

This will be a very short post as I only obtained one good picture.

I used a base of PVA glue. I have been experimenting using this and I am currently working on a post about my experiences using it as a base coat. Then I applied three coats of Satin Nail Enamel 6. In the bottle it seems as though it would be a pink foil. It is a lovely pink colour and Miss L has claimed it.

Over the top of Satin 6, I applied two coats of Little Princess from Peita's Polish. This is a pink holographic glitter top coat. Using two coats gave the polish plenty of sparkle to stare at and as usual my camera refused to pick up all of the action.

All in all, a very girly manicure.

Awesome Aussie August: Peita's Polish - Shooting Stars

I previously used Shooting Stars over Satin Nail Enamel 21 but the blue stars were lost on the base. After removing the polish because it had started chipping before I had opportunity to take some pictures, I tried again. This time I used the latest craze of PVA glue for my base coat. After this had dried to clear I used Ulta3 Antique Copper.

Antique Copper seems more a champagne gold colour in many lights to me. I used two coats of this colour to make it opaque.

Over the top I used Peita's Polish Shooting Stars. After my experience with Zebration, I should have added some thinner to it. In fact, I should have done it after my first use of Shooting Stars over the blue polish. It is very thick and I had trouble fishing the stars out.

Shooting Stars has a lovely blue shimmer that showed up spectacularly on the blue colour but I could not seem to find it on the gold base of this manicure.

What I could find but not photograph well was the holographic glitter. This is definitely the shooting star part of the polish for me. I am a sucker for anything holographic although I have stayed away from the gritty holographic glitters because of the removal factor.

With the PVA glue as a base it did come off easily. I removed the polish fairly soon after I did the manicure and took photographs. Because of this it seemed as though the middle layers of polish were still tacky and that was the hardest part to remove. I had a bath and this resulted in clean nails.