Inspired by my new blue dress

This past weekend I bought a simple but lovely blue dress from Target. On Monday I wore this dress going to training off-site from my regular workplace. Why not go the full package and wow them? Yes, my nails were going to match the jacquard design you can not quite see in the below picture.

Target

As my base colour I chose to use Orly Royal Navy. I thought that Royal Navy would be a lot lighter than the blue in the dress but that I needed a lighter colour when stamping black over the top. The added blue shimmer would help give a little extra and define the design.

After going through quite a number of plates and using different black polishes, I ended up stamping with Konad Black. I really did not want to use Konad Black because it is such a pain to clean up. Even then, I had trouble with the stamping. To combat this, I had to suffer for my nails and turn both the air conditioning and the fan off. This enabled me to stamp properly but I only had time to stamp an accent on my middle finger. A Bundle Monster image plate was used. I know I tried both BM 20 and BM 21 but I am not sure which one I used in the end as both plates have a similar design on them.

On my ring finger I placed a black bow to match the ribbon belt on my dress.  Manicure complete. It drew some admirers too. That is always a sign of a job well done.

Happy Birthday January

I know I missed out on December's birthday post. I did have a plan for it and that did not involve the December floral emblem of holly. There will be another December to post in since the world did not end. ;)

Many of you would know that the birth stone for January is the garnet. The rhinestone flowers I used in this manicure represent garnet. I know that most people picture garnet as a different shade of red but that was the best red I had in my wheel of blossoms. What you may not know is that the Chinese plum (aka Japanese apricot) is the January floral emblem in China. Plum blossoms are a common oriental motif that I like so I thought I would bring it back to the blog after the last appearance in Spring.

My base colour is a-England Dragon. Two coats were applied but the beauty could not be appreciated when I first took pictures as it was overcast. I am not going to complain because the coolness the weather has brought is a welcome relief from the high temperatures we have had lately. The sun did peep out for a few moments after I had applied some cuticle oil. A dash was made to take at least one picture to show the scattered holographic loveliness that is Dragon.

Using Konad plate M66 I stamped my favourite stone fruit blossom image in China Glaze Cherish. I did consider a red for the stamping but I decided for the chrome of Cherish instead. Seche Vite was applied over the stamping. What is unusual is that I stamped directly on the dry base colour. This colour dried satisfactorily fast to enable me to stamp without waiting hours for the firmness required.

On each fully stamped blossom a rhinestone was placed on the wet Seche Vite. That brings us to the end result. I think the manicure turned out well but the red and green could have a Christmas vibe to it. Still, I like it and I hope those who celebrate their birthday in January do as well.

On the Twelfth Day of Christmas...

I shared with thee an Illamasqua pretty.

When my Strumpet gave me two bottles of Illamasqua for Christmas I was overjoyed. I even had hot, little tears burning at my eyes with the emotions. Phallic and Poke were the two polishes I received and both were on my want list. Today I am sharing Phallic with you and Poke will make an appearance in a few days.

I thought I would use the Twelfth Day of Christmas to share a Christmas themed manicure with you. It is the perfect excuse as I did not manage to get the Christmas manicures I wanted to do done. I started with Chi Chi Gimme Gimme a Man and applied two coats.

To make the presents I taped a cross on my thumb and ring fingers with striping tape. Phallic was applied over the top and the tape removed. A coat of Seche Vite was laid over the top and this was used to affix the blue bows. This was the design I had in mind when I originally bought these bows.  Thankfully these look as good when completed as I had envisioned them in my mind's eye.

The stamping was done with Phallic and image plate MJ VII. I chose not to use the gift image as my nails are exceptionally short at the moment and would not show the design off to the best effect. Tape was also applied to the side of the middle finger and Phallic placed along the side.

This manicure gives me a giggle to think of the names of the polishes. How often do you get to feature Phallic with Gimme Gimme a Man?

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.

Nail Fail - Glitter and Gradient Stamping

Today I bring to you a nail fail. It does not look overly terrible except for the fact that I did not clean up at all in the end because I knew it was not working out. The manicure does not work like it is supposed to do.

Early in the days of this blog I posted a haul post. This is one of my most successful posts even though it only consists of pictures of nail polish bottles I bought... Two of these polishes are Nicole by OPI polishes called Virtuous Violet and One Less Lonely Glitter. This is the first time I have ever used them.

Virtuous Violet is a nice colour. In the bottle the shimmer seems almost duochromatic. To get enough coverage on your nail you need four coats. I used three here because I knew the glitter would work fine with only three coats.

I seems it would take too many coats to make One Less Lonely Glitter opaque. On other blogs I saw that most people seem to still have some nail visible at three coats. It has pretty mauve small and microglitter in a clear base. The brush seemed rather clunky but I applied the polish without problems.

Onto the fail part of the manicure. Miss L decided she wanted both Kleancolor Metallic Pink and Metallic Aqua "side by side". I sponged a gradient on for her and she was mightily pleased. Her nails are very small and the ridges around the cuticle and the sides of her fingernails are deep. It makes it difficult to get the sponge into the area to dab the polish on.

I decided that these two colours would go well with the purples. Since I already did a sponged gradient, I thought I would stamp one onto my fingernails. The plate I used was an MJ plate but you can not see the full nail heart design. Part of the problem is that I used the double sided stamper from Lightinthebox.com. It was TERRIBLE as the silicone part of the stamper is much harder than the Konad one I adore. I switched over to the Konad double stamper after doing my thumb and index finger.

This one will come off soon. Thank goodness I used PVA glue as a base.

Movember and International Men's Day

Today is International Men's Day and about two thirds of the way through for those growing their (hopefully) spectacular moustaches for Movember. I am proud to admit that Movember was started in Australia and has grown from there. It seems we have a lot to do to catch up to those Canadians but at least we are giving our men some support for men's issues.

Visit the Australian Movember website has lots of information, merchandise and ways to connect to other Mo Bros. Most importantly you can donate to the foundation for the funds to be used for men's health initiatives such as prostate cancer and mental health.

The theme for International Men's Day for 2012 is health to tie this post in nicely with the aims of Movember. Helping men to be aware of their own bodies and minds will help them to live longer and happier lives. That is something to want for every special man and man-to-be in our lives.

Don't Feed the Hand Models from Sephora by OPI tends to be my go to nude base colour. I have used it here in two coats to represent skin. I would have done different skin colours but I did not have the polishes to represent that.

On the new MJ VIII image plate there is a full nail image of different moustache styles. These are perfect for Movember. Different shades of Kleancolor Metallics were used to represent different whisker colours for the moustaches. We have Metallic Black for black whiskers, Metallic Mango for the ginger whiskers, Metallic Yellow for the blond whiskers and Coffee Addict for the brown whiskers.

Iridescent Eye visiting the Celtic Moon

I decided that I would do something with my right hand. There was a blank canvas of Orly Matte Vinyl and it was begging for me to decorate it.

Another design from MJ VIII was used with Jessica Iridescent Eye as the stamping polish. I had heard how well China Glaze's Bohemian collection stamped over black and I thought that this polish would as well. The full nail image I used appears to be a variation of a Celtic Knot treatment.

I would have left my nails with just the Celtic Knot design over the matte black polish but I had a slight mishap. All of my nails stamped well except for the little finger. Since I did not have a top coat on, I could not remove my failure and re-stamp. I was also reluctant to remove all of the nail polish and start again. Putting another layer of Matte Vinyl and then stamping over that would have made my polish too thick on my nail.

Over to one side of the coffee table I still had some paper reinforcer stickers. I still have not tested the design I was going to do with them when I pulled them out of the box! The perfect solution was to use the stickers as guides to make half moons. When I painted the rest of the nail with Iridescent Eye, my little mistake where the polish did not go would be covered.

These pictures were difficult to take as I had little light to work with the first time I tried. When I had light outside available the manicure had lots of wear as I did not use top coat to seal it all in. I wanted to preserve the matte. The other reason why it was difficult to take picture is because of my camera. It is hard to hold the camera in my left hand, keep it steady AND push the button to take the picture.

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.

Lest We Forget - Remembrance Day 2012

"Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives…

You are now living in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours…

You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace, after having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well."

Ataturk, 1934 - Gallipoli Memorial at ANZAC Cove

My base colour is two coats of essence Viva La Green. My bottle was very thick and tacky. As this is the first time I used it, I think people had opened the bottle in the store before I bought it.

Poppies are an enduring symbol of Remembrance Day and I chose to use these for my manicure. Both of the images that I believe to be poppies are from Bundle Monster image plates. The image with the two poppies comes from BM09 and the single poppy is from BM06. Konad special polishes in red and green were used for the stamping.

Gloomy Sunday - Black on Matte

It is a dismal, gloomy day. A Gloomy Sunday. I first encountered "Gloomy Sunday" in the movie "Schindler's List". The song has a reputation for being associated with suicide. I do not know if the song deserves the reputation or not but I definitely feel more despondent in rainy weather.

I applied two coats of Orly Matte Vinyl and this gave me a black chalkboard like finish. In the picture above you can see some of the rain drops that fell on my nails as I took these pictures. There is some smearing on the lower left from a drop on the lens of the camera. I braved the rain as I have been unable to take decent pictures inside my house.

The look of shiny stamping over matte has been something I have wanted to try for some time. So I used Konad Black and stamped a design from MJ VIII. I like how simple and subtle the design is. It's something different to have the sheen of the special polish picking out the features of the design as a counterpoint to the dullness of the matte.

I thought I had cleaned up well but black is not your friend in the clean up stakes. This is especially true with Konad Black. I used cotton buds AND a brush to get into the crevices. Ooops. I can't seem to get all of that polish out.

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.

Happy Together! - Rainbow Smiles

For some reason my manicure makes The Turtles' song "Happy Together" get stuck in my head. Is it the rainbow of colour? Then there is the extra rainbow goodness from the holographic polish... Maybe it is just because there are so many happy faces all together on my nails?

So we have:
Thumb - China Glaze Gr8
Index - A-England Dragon
Middle - Spectraflair franken made from Rimmel Blue My Mind
Ring - China Glaze LOL
Little - Sally Hansen Nail Prisms Pink Rose Diamond

I made a little bit of a mess on my little finger by stamping a little too hard and smooshing my polish.

My stamping was done in Konad White Pearl and I used a Bundle Monster image plate. The plate itself is BM-304. On my right hand I used the negative image that is also found on this plate. I did an even worse job on my right hand I did on my left. This is what happens when you try to rush through a manicure in the morning before work. I also have a hard time trying to photograph my right hand. I know, any excuse.

Me and you and you and me
No matter how they toss the dice, it has to be
The only one for me is you, and you for me
So happy together...

Inspiration: Purple Animal Print Jacket

Recently I was trying to pack for a little weekend away. What do I pack to wear? I am not usually one for animal prints but I liked a jacket in a purple and cream animal print. It inspired me to have a manicure to match.

To start with I used Sephora by OPI Don't Feed the Hand Models so that I would not need so many coats of Avon Vanilla Shake. Two coats of Vanilla Shake was applied and then I let it dry. A gradient was sponged on with a make up sponge with both Vanilla Shake and China Glaze Cowgirl Up. I alternated the direction of the gradient to match the jacket better.

There seem to be a few different styles of animal print on the jacket. I decided to use the cheetah image from Bundle Monster plate BM-221 and I stamped with Konad Black.

This manicure was effective and I think it matched my inspiration well. Cowgirl Up's shimmer also mimicked the sheen from the material. I am very pleased with my first animal print manicure. Maybe I should try another?

Silly Old Bear

Winnie the Pooh and his friends are an old favourite of mine. I could not resist getting the QA3 image plate from Light in the Box since it features that Silly Old Bear.

I used two coats of Orly Hook Up over Sephora by OPI Don't Feed the Hand Models. Hook Up tends to be a shimmery and streaky yellow. The nude polish was essential for eliminating visible nail line.

The stamping was done in Konad Black and the highlights on the wings of the bee and the petals of the flower are Color Club Worth the Risque.

The images all stamped well from this plate. I bought this for less than $2 and that included the shipping. Light in the Box tends to be rather slow and the plates can be hit and miss in quality.

Overall I am very happy with this cheerful manicure. It was simple and it looks good even on my extra stubby nubbins since the major breakage.

OPI Glow Up Already! Butterfly Wings

This is not the best manicure. I piled on two coats of OPI Glow Up Already! over an existing manicure.

Then I stamped with Vivid Lacquer's VL002 image plate in Konad Black. In many ways I can not wait to use up all of my Konad Black because it is horrendous to clean up. In other ways it would be a bad thing because I do not have another great black stamping polish to go to!

This image is not really designed for stubby nubbins like mine. I still think it looks ok and it is much better than I could ever do freehand. The white dots are made with Rimmel French White Tip. After I took these pictures I did the washing up and removed it all. Yes! Easy removal with my PVA glue base.

When Shift Happens over a Tequila Sunrise with a lot of pictures.

When I first tried Girly Bits Shift Happens, I wondered how fiery it would be over orange. For that orange I chose Rimmel Tequila Sunrise. I was pleasantly surprised that two coats of this did not look terrible on me. Admittedly, it is a little bright for my taste but I could not say it looked awful.

Next I applied two coats of Shift Happens. I took a LOT of pictures.

The red part of the colour shift did not appear over orange.

I found orange and gold. At the very extreme I could tease out green.

Not that I could get the green to appear well on the camera...

It did not look in the least bit like fire. Nice but no dice. I had anticipated this and I had already decided that I would stamp over this combination. I dragged out a few choices but I did not have anything that was a flame image. Well, not one that would show the above polish rather than the stamping polish.

I used Konad Black as my stamping polish and you can tell with the shoddy clean up. Why oh why does this polish have to be so hard to clean up? It smears everywhere and it is terrible. The image plate was from Bundle Monster (yet again) and was BM-312.

This manicure looks nothing like fire. Maybe tiger stripes? A colour shifting tiger?

Shift Happens over Purple Velvet

I had a disaster of the nail kind. Nails on both of my hands broke and I had to trim the others off to suit. Thankfully it was my right hand that had the worst damage where I had to cut them down drastically. Now my fingernails are nubbier than ever.

There was a quick removal of my Dragon with an Iridescent Eye manicure and I had to apply a quick manicure before I had to head off to work. What to wear? What would dry in time? I know, I would use Orly Purple Velvet. Matte polishes are always a good choice because they look good and dry quickly.

After a day of wear the polish was looking pretty bad. I really did not feel like removing it and applying something else. There was not the time for that! What to do? Girly Bits Shift Happens was one of my deeply craved polishes and it was sitting in my "to be used" area. Yes, I would add Shift Happens over Purple Velvet and see how it looks. Two coats went on and of course I had multichromatic loveliness. Hmmm but I had a similar loveliness when I used Fantasy Fire earlier this month...

Aha! I know that the Orly Matte polishes stamp reasonably well so I decided to stamp over the top of my manicure and see how well that worked. I think it is wonderful because you are surprised by the design when you get the colour shift. I used an image from Bundle Monster BM-224

When I wore this indoors, I tended to get mainly a red sparkle. Shift Happens did change colour more readily than Fantasy Fire but I do find Fantasy Fire prettier. This is most likely due to the colour I wore underneath Shift Happens. Purple Velvet gives the polish an unusual purple colour that seems almost a dusty colour. And obviously this shift was stronger because I was able to photograph these colours unlike when I attempted to do the same with Fantasy Fire. Being a top coat, Shift Happens would be more versatile. I am interested to see how fiery it would look over an orange base colour.

As you can see from my pictures, I did not clean up well and there is a lot of chipped wear out of my tips. I almost did not take pictures of this because I did not really want to share how lazy/awful I was with this manicure. On the other hand, you can not deny that it is very pretty. I especially like the first picture were you can see all of the colours over the nail. Below is a picture of what it looked like most of the time but much more red. Artificial light seemed to bring out the red play in Shift Happens.

Eye Spy an Addition to the Dragon...

I know I said that I would not add anything to the Dragon with an Iridescent Eye manicure. I was wrong. What I used did not fit with any reptilian or dragonish idea.

Over yesterday's A-England Dragon and Jessica Iridescent Eye gradient I stamped with Konad Moss Green. I used an image from Bundle Monster BM-316. I am thrilled with how well Moss Green went over this combination. It is such an elegant manicure and very simple too. Sometimes I wonder why I ever bought all of the rhinestones and other fripperies to put on my nails when stamping provides so much.

And here is the end of a short post to share how I updated the manicure. I don't have anything else to add.

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.