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.

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.