Happy Birthday November! Citrines and Chrysanthemums

Some of the symbols of November are citrine for the birthstone and chrysanthemums for the flower. I have used both of these elements for this birthday manicure for November.

I started with Kleancolor Metallic Yellow for the base colour. This was the best shade I had with that yellow colour to match citrines. Granted citrines come in a range of colour but I wanted a rich yellow that had that gem like quality and shine. That is a little hard since all I have are either golds or creme yellows that were not quite right. I was surprised by rainbow flashes of shimmer in Metallic Yellow when the light hit it. I never expected that as I thought it would be a simple gold.

In Australia, chrysanthemums are usually sold in May for Mother's Day. I have never liked chrysanthemums because the cut flower smells terrible. Pyrethrum keeps me away as well as the insects. Thankfully, Mr R and Miss L have never bought me any, yet.

Nevertheless, I find the stylised chrysanthemum image from Bundle Monster BM-313 pretty. This was stamped in Konad Black. I was going to use Kleancolor Metallic Black but I knew the Konad was the best for that dark, black and crisp image. If this had been an all over image with a lot of clean up required, I would have chosen something else as Konad Black is horrendous to clean up.

The placement may seem all over the place but I was trying to do the same design differently to add interest. My right hand that I did afterwards has a more even placement and it looks good all lined up together. Unfortunately my left hand refuses to assist in taking a photograph to show you.

Happy Birthday October! Black Opal

I drooled over Nubar 2010 when I first saw it. That flake goodness reminded me of black opals when it was layered over black. Something was missing from 2010 that would make the black opal just right. When Australis released Speck-tacular I realised that the play of colour was just right.

Opals are one of the birthstones for October and I always knew I was going to do a black opal manicure.

To start, I painted two coats of  Fantasy Makers Wet N Wild Black on my nails. I only managed to have this colour because I bought it for the RIP Tombstone bottle it came in. Over the top I put one layer of Australis Speck-tacular. A simple manicure but rather rich and gorgeous. I wish I had real black opals to photograph with it.

The black opal image is from the Wikipedia page for opal with the original image posted on flickr by sulla55.

Happy Birthday September! A Regal Manicure

Sapphires come in all colours apart from red. Red "sapphires" are called rubies. Most people think of sapphire as blue and this is the representation I went with today. The Ceylon sapphire is one of my favourite stones with that unique shade of cornflower blue.

As you may have guessed, sapphire is the birthstone for September.

My base colour for this manicure is Orly Royal Navy. I have used three coats here and some more where I had some fails with my stamping. You can tell I shook the bottle well before use as I also have the blue shimmer that likes to settle to the bottom of the bottle on my nail.

For the stamping I used Nails Inc Cleopatra's Kiss and two different Bundle Monster image plates. On my ring finger is the crown from BM-215 and on my thumb is the crown from BM08. I accented both of these with blue shaded rhinestones. I also used a row of rhinestones along my middle fingernails.

Awesome Aussie August: Happy Birthday August

This is my first watermarble and I thought it would be the best way to create sardonyx for August. Most people would associate peridot as August's birthstone but sardonyx is an alternative birthstone. Sardonyx is a layered stone in shades of red and white.

Sardonyx image by Adrian Pingstone. Public Domain image via Wikipedia Commons

Today also marks the first month since I started this blog. Happy one month anniversary Stubby Nubbins!

I decided to use some Mode polishes as they are cheap and I have seen them used for watermarbling previously. Red Velvet is a glorious metallic red that has an almost rust shimmer. In the future this will be shown again to share some of it's goodness.

Watermarbling is messy! I am not sure that I would easily do this on both hands without ruining the manicure. Lots of sticky tape, cotton buds, wipes, paper towel and acetone was used.

I think I needed to let the nail polish dry more before I applied the top coat. In all of the tutorials I have read, they mention that you need to work quickly. It is possibly due to the weather that the polish stayed wet over the water for a long time. This made it extraordinarily difficult to clean around my finger before I pulled it out of the water.

What you don't see here is my test run over my old manicure. This used Mode Red Velvet, Cerise and So Parisian. It did not work so well so I started with Cerise and N.Y.C. Color Casper.So Parisian was too sheer to use. I used the same two colours for the index finger. I did not feel this look was right as Cerise became too pink in the marbling. A better result was achieved when I used Red Velvet and Casper on my thumb, middle and little fingers. My little finger was my favourite but I ruined it with my top coat. The other finger that turned out well was the thumb.

Happy Birthday July!

A few special people I know celebrate their birthdays in July. I thought I would honour that with a manicure featuring red for the birthstone of July, ruby.

The glowing ruby shall adorn,
Those who in July are born;
Then they'll be exempt and free
From love's doubts and anxiety.

- From a Tiffany and Co pamphlet (1870)

I was going to use China Glaze's Ruby Pumps. Instead I used a red spectraflair franken christened Revhead Rainbow. The base colour is Rimmel Lasting Finish Double Decker Red. Surprisingly, I was able to wear this for three days before I had to remove it. That had to be some kind of record for me. And yes, this polish is much more holographic in real life.

As I did not have time to do anything too fancy, I stamped two images on my ring and middle fingers of each hand. Yes, I have fallen in love with using Nails Inc Cleopatra's Kiss. The balloon image is from the Australian themed Konad plate from ICNA. When stamping, I made sure that the "Happy Holidays" part was removed from my stamper. The gift icon was from Bundle Monster's BM-205.