Hi guys,
this weekend I finally got around to doing some actual nail art. For the past couple of months I've really only done boring old manicures and swatches and used the striping tape occasionally. With that in mind I pulled out my stamping stuff. I always feel like stamping is a "risk" because if done improperly you can completely stuff up your manicure and have to start all over again...but this time I think it worked out relatively well. Especially when you consider that I haven't stamped for a really long time!
I used a polish from Face of Australia's Barbados limited edition series called 'Let's Go Scuba Diving' which is absolutely gorgeous. Requiring two coats or three thinner coats, this is a really striking teal shimmer polish with heaps of depth. I used 'A Piece of Forever' to stamp.
And now I am finishing with a bit of a random picture (which I hope you enjoy). Whilst I was trecking around the backyard looking for good lighting I snapped this photo of a camellia bush which is about the bloom. It's all furry!!!
Hi guys! I am so sorry this is two days late!!!! University is crazy at the moment and I have five major assignments due this month so I'm worked off my feet. Unfortunately that means that I don't have time to do my nails very often and when I do....it's nothing superb. Although I did find a beautiful polish in my collection that I had totally forgotten I had! The polish in question is 'Lion Around' by Essie. It is a beautiful pale pink with a pretty shimmer in it.
So the prompt for the Girly Girl challenge was "delicate and elegant" so I decided to do some stamping over Lion Around using my favourite stamper. I know, I know!!!! I am boring and this stamp features way too often on my blog but I love it! Anyway, I used 'Lilac Love' by BYS for the stamping. If you live in Australia you should definitely check out the BYS polishes. They are $4 and can be found in K-Mart and Gloss (and probably other places too!). They are great polishes, especially for the price :)
Hope you have all had a fantastic weekend,
Take Care
G'day mate......Happy Australia Day!!!! I hope everybody has a wonderful day and enjoys the long weekend, whatever you are doing. Two of my best friends are coming over for bubbles and some nibbles before we head into the city for some dinner. Fingers crossed we get a table and its not too chaotic :)
For the 26th day of the 31 day challenge which coincidently (I assume) falls on Australia Day the prompt is very fitting as it is 'Inspired by your country'. I have super-short nails at the moment :( so I feel quite limited in terms of nail art. Plus, I'm ashamed to feature these short nails on the blog, they are so yuck!
I know I have a missed a couple of days for this challenge but I will definitely go back and complete them before the end of the challenge.
I went for a burnt orange polish with gold speckles in by Essence called 'Gorgeous Bling Bling'. I'm thinking this could represent the outback. I've never been to the outback although I would love to go. I have however been to the 'bush' and, especially when we were in drought, it was very dry. I also did a gold accent nail using Essence's 'A Piece of Forever' because according to our national anthem we have "golden soil". I guess our colours our green and gold and a green and gold skittle would have looked cool but with short yucky nails I'm just not brave enough. I did however stamp a kangaroo onto my accent nail using 'Gorgeous Bling Bling' and consequently discovered that that polish is definitely not good for stamping. But oh well, you can't win them all!
So if you're not a fan of Australia I guess you should stop reading now (bye) but I thought I would write a little about Australia :) First up, our anthem. We use to sing this every Monday morning at assembly in Primary School, while raising the Aussie flag up the flagpole.
Here is a video of 'Advance Australia Fair' the name of our anthem:
I also though that for the long weekend I would showcase some more of Australia, do some more Aussie nails and maybe some more videos from youtube. I have to laugh, when I was searching for videos, I found a video, '10 reasons not to come to Australia' :)
Hi guys, for the 20th day of the 31 day challenge the theme was "texture" so I decided to layer some awesome polishes over each other and then do some stamping. It was looking GREAT but then my top coat ruined it....not a happy camper!
I started with two coats of Sportsgirl's 'Love Potion' which is a green/gold duochrome and looks wicked. Then I did two thin coats of Butter London's 'Fishwife' a teal holographic polish which I adore. Finally, I stamped using my fave stamp using Konads blue stamping polish'. The top coat which ruined all my hard work was by ModelsPrefer. Maybe I didn't wait long enough or maybe this top coat just shouldn't be used over stamping? It was really only the middle finger that got wrecked but I still don't want to dwell on this mani for too long. But I am definitely going to re-do it at one stage because it looked AMAZING :)
Sorry for the lame post....Kinda hard when you are are disappointed with the end result. So close but so far!
Anyone have any good top coats for stamping and just in general?
Thanks for reading and have a lovely day :)
Day three of the new 31 day challenge has arrived and the theme is 'gold'. Gold is indulgent, elegant and is a very royal colour to me. Whiz, bang *light-bulb moment* I decided to do a gold manicure fit for a queen and I just had to include purple too :)
The polishes I used for this manicure:
Revlon's Bold Sangria
Essence's Gold Fever
Essence's peel off base coat {works great for removing glitter}
Essence's A Piece of Forever {middle finger stamping}
A quick side-note, all of these polishes are fantastic. Bold Sanngria is a rich purple and a one-coater (oh joy!) and I'm having a love affair with Gold Fever at the moment.
In real-life this is a lot more sparkly and looks absolutely divine, very elegant. I'm loving the combo of purple + gold.
It's going to a hot couple of days ahead, I think we will be lucky if it drops below 30 degrees for a few days and tonight it is suppose to stay around 23 degrees (Celsius). My silly (but very adorable dog) is grumpy with me at the moment because I won't let her go outside and lay in the sun.Personally, I would have thought the cool air-conditioned kitchen would have been a pleasurable place to be on a day like this! Lol!!! Oh and by the way I know 'blogger' is telling you that I posted this on the 2nd but here in Australia it is already the 3rd....I'm definitely not an organised blogger. I only did this manicure an hour ago!
Hi guys, I hope you all have an amazing 2013!!!!
I've been struck down with a stomach bug so haven't been feeling too good but hopefully I can start posting again today and I will be diving into the NEW 31 day challenge!!!!
I am super excited about this new 31 day challenge although I really probably shouldn't be doing it right at this moment since I have an enormous amount of deadlines this coming fortnight and being sick and all everything is wayyyy behind schedule. I think this new version of the 31 day challenge is super fun and I can't wait to see what everybody comes up with. Day #1 is black & white so I decided to do some stamping.
I used my favourite konad plate & konad white polish with ulta3's 'black satin' which is a wonderful one-coater that dries super quickly so was ideal for this manicure.
I wore this a few days before Christmas for a get together with my best friends but somehow never got around to posting it until now.
This is Ulta3's 'brandy wine' - a gorgeous red shimmer (maybe a metallic). A truly stunning red colour!!!! If you don't have this polish you seriously need it. The colour is amazing, it dries fast and only requires two coats.
The stamping was done with ulta3's 'black satin'. 'Black satin' isn't a polish designed specifically for stamping but works great.
Please feel free to leave a comment or vote in the below poll. Cheers.
Okay so yesterday as part of the pink vs. purple battle I showed you some pink spring-time stamping I did. Since I am currently trying to make my nails healthier I am not and have not been wearing polish for the last two weeks :( and I must say my nails are definitely growing well and looking healthy already! Yay!!!!!! Anyway, that means that I did this on my lovely friend who volunteered her nails :) It was the first time I had stamped on another person so my skills still need improvement. I actually found it really difficult to paint and stamp another person's nails. I was pretty embarrassed as I am always talking about my nail polish blog and nail-art designs.
This is essence's 'where is the party' with gold stamp over the top. I love this combo!!!!
Sorry about the lack of clean-up, I ran out of nail polish remover. Had been planning to do some clean-up with remover and a Q-tip.
I have one more purple manicure to show you for this battle between pink and purple and then it will be time to decide the winner.
Please check out the other great bloggers participating in this challenge, cheers:
To get into spring I decided to do some stamping over Essie's 'Your Hut or Mine'. I used a Konad plate and a Express Salon plate to do these and white Konad polish. I just had to use my favourite Konad stamp (the thin border floral one) and then picked some floral stamps that were not from Konad. I'm quite pleased with the result however wish I hadn't done the border ones on such weird angles! Enjoy :)
Sorry I am so behind with this challenge, I was super excited for this challenge but then my nails ALL started splitting, peeling and breaking so I cut them all sort. Just before I cut all my nails I did a few quick manicures, including this one! I have officially had no nail polish on my nails for over a week, so sad!!!!
Tomorrow I will post my purple manicure and then lets see which manicure wins the battle :)
Thanks for reading, have a great day!
Please check out the other bloggers participating in this challenge
The second battle for the battle nail challenge is black vs. white and I decided to combine the two and do some stamping. I had difficulty thinking of something that was black and white, and could be turned into a nail design easily. I also only have 1 good black polish and konad's white stamping polish. I eventually decided to go with the black and white checkered flag they use before a car race begins.
The black polish used was by Ulta3 and was named 'Black Satin'. It was my first time using this polish and I must say, I am impressed! It only required one coat, formula was fantastic to work with, brush was brilliant and it dried super quickly. This manicure only took a little over 10 minutes to do :)
I must apologise for the horrible photos!!!! As soon as I stepped outside to take photos it started bucketing with rain, so these were the only decent photos I managed to snap of the manicure. Typical weather!
Please check out the other great bloggers participating in this challenge:
The first battle is Blue Vs. Green and I have decided for this battle to complete two manicures. You have already seen my first manicure/opponent, essence's blue addicted and this is the second manicure/opponent.
Recently I have really been into blue and green polishes....and teal polish which I guess is in-between blue and green.
Anyway, for this manicure I turned to my reliable and loved Revlon 'Emerald' Polish. Consistently easy to apply, quick to apply and only requires one coat!!!! I then decided to do some stamping using my blue Konad polish and favourite Konad plate.
Sadly, the stamping isn't very easy to see in real-life unless you are super close. But at least in photographs it looks awesome. Well at least I think so anyway!
So now for me the first battle is complete: my 'blue addicted' manicure vs. this stamping manicure. Which one has won the 'battle'? Feel free to comment below and let me know...
Thanks for reading :)
Please check out the other bloggers participating in this challenge:
Another stamping post for you today, I wore this earlier this week and wasn't thrilled with the result. It was the first time I had stamped using my gold konad polish and while the gold wasn't as opaque as I hoped it would be, I think the purple and gold together looked really awesome and in my mind 'royal'.
The base coat was two coats of Revlon's Bold Sangria. A lovely polish that dries quickly and applies with no fuss.
I don't have much to say to be honest and just want to get to the pictures :)
I have nicknamed this manicure the 'fishnet tights' manicure. It is the first time ever I have done a stamping manicure using my Konad polish and plates that I got in a set from the carnival. I had my fingers crossed that the Konad polishes would actually make a difference because my previous stamping attempts haven't been too successful. I was pleasantly surprised, the polishes so far seem to work well with stamping and I love the designs on the stamping plates. Stay tuned, I have lots of ideas floating around my mind.
I used my Butter London pillar box red polish as the base-coat and then using the black konad polish I stamped the lattice pattern onto my nails. I was pretty impressed with how it looked but then decided to add black tips. Probably shouldn't have done this, I always seem to go too far with my ideas and they end up looking like a dogs breakfast! All photos have a top-coat.
This manicure is a bit gothic and vampy and was pretty easy to create :) I have already received compliments. Even from my skeptical mum who thinks my obsession with polish and doing my nails is crazy! Well, she is probably right!!!!
Would you wear this manicure? With or without the black tips?
The three nail challenge is nearly over!!!! I haven't missed too many days which is a pleasant surprise (hahaha) and so today I am posting the theme 'edgy' which was suppose to be posted on the 25th but oh well, I'm not too late, am I?
For the theme 'edgy' I wanted to do a manicure with lots of lines (and therefore edges). I didn't want to do a tape manicure because I don't have any sticky tape!!! So I decided to do some stamping. I'm not quite a stamping expert yet :( but I am improving slowly, I hope!
The polishes I used for this manicure were:
Rimmel Grey Matter
Kit Start Up
The stamping is not as good as I wanted it to be and the lines are not super crisp on some of my fingers but overall I think it is a cool looking stamp. Although I did have trouble making sure it covered my entire nail. But maybe that's just me!
Today's theme for the 31 day challenge was 'inspired by a pattern' so I decided to get my new stamping plates out.....but sadly my attempt failed so today's mani isn't very pretty :( But I want to post it anyway because I am so behind with this challenge!
When I finally perfect my stamping skill it's going to be so fun.....
