Merry Christmas 2012

Merry Christmas everyone. Christmas day is over, the kids have played all day with their new toys, we all ate way too much turkey and I personally must have eaten about 3/4 of a pavlova!  

I can't believe it's been a whole year since I did my last holly leaves mani like this one.  I used the beautiful OPI Golden Eye for my base (which I received a mini of for my birthday earlier this month - I think I will need a full size of this gold!). I hand painted the holly using a green franken and China Glaze Emerald Sparkle.  The holly is created with red rhinestones.  

I can't believe how long my nails are at the moment. I think I must file them down soon, although it's kinda fun having nails this long when I'm not working.  I got this extra length using the Gelicious hybrid gel nails.  I've not got gel on for this mani, but it certainly has helped my nails grow out without breakages.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!

It all ends in a few hours...

Whether it be death by solar storm, death by an unseen comet or death by planetary alignment, I thought I might celebrate with some matching nail art. 

For my apocalyptic nails, I created a galaxy design using a black base and sponging on random bits of light blue, dark blue and purple.  Then I put a thin layer of a  holo silver glitter.

In case you were wondering, the middle finger is the earth blowing up, maybe after the comet impact or the solar storm.  I painted it freehand using Ulta3 Blue Marlin, Frog Prince and Lily white the explosion is with Kleancolor Metallic mango, metallic yellow and Pretty Serious Santas Sunburn. 

On my ring finger I stamped today's iconic date. 21.12.2012.  Here is Australia we always put the day first, then the month - although I know that is back to front for many.  I got the numbers from the plate numbers at the bottom of the Bundle Monster plates.

Lastly, I placed some silver holographic hexes randomly on my nails, they look a bit too big in these photos, but in real life they are just right.

Are you doing anything exciting for the end of the world?

Aussie Christmas Challenge - Elf

Today's theme in the Aussie Christmas Challenge is 'Elf'.  I really hope you can work out what I was trying to do here! In cause you need help, this is an Elf's stripy stockings and green shoes with gold bells on the toes.

The base colour is OPI Don't Pretzel my Buttons.  The stockings were done using a a white line down the centre of the nail with Ulta3 Lily White, then stamped with Ozotic 621 using stamping plate QA3 (not sure what brand it is but if you google stamping plate QA3 you'll find them).  I hand painted the shoes with a nail art bush using Picture Polish Kryptonite.  The gold bells were added with a dotting tool using Orly Luxe.

On the thumb I attempted some sort of elf outfit or hat, using Ozotic 621 and Kryptonite.

Winter 2011 Holiday Mani Roundup

Hey everyone!

I just wanted to put all the holiday themed manis I did last year all in one spot in case any of you need some ideas or inspiration. I know I love getting inspiration from you guys! :) 

I would like to think I have made improvement over the past year. :)

Feel free to comment if you have any questions about what I used!

Footy Fever - Canberra Raiders nail art

The football season has just started in the USA, but here in Australia it's finals time.  This week I have some NRL nails for you, specifically Canberra Raiders nails.  The Raiders won last week, in week one of the finals. Tonight they play an elimination semi-final, which they are not favourites to win.  But there's nothing like a bit of supporter nail art to bring the team home, right!

For such a basic nail design, this took me bloody ages to do.  I kept bumping and smudging nails (as evidenced with my pinky nail). I tried to do it neatly with tape, but was too impatient to get it finished, so the tape started pulling off the polish beneath.  I therefore had to touch up with a nail art bush, and promptly made are rather shitty mess of it.

Putting my nail art skills aside, I really did love the colours I picked for this mani.  I did a white base with Ulta3 Lily White, the blue is Picture Polish bombshell, the yellow is Picture Polish crazy and the perfect lime green is Picture Polish lime lite.

I got lots of compliments on these nails, and from a regular distance, they looked pretty eye catching, but these damn macro shots for the blog are a killer.

I created a water decal with the team logo on it, and I'm really happy with how it came out.

Here are the team jerseys which I based my nail design on.

Now an extra special awkward sharing moment.  Here is something that not too many people know about me.  In the early 1990's I was a Canberra Raiders Raiderette cheerleader.  Surprisingly I have basically zero photos of me as a Raiderette.  It was a time before digital cameras (yeah, I'm that old!) and while I know I did have some photos that were printed, after nearly 20 years I have no clue where they could be.

The only photo that I have is one that was published in the NRLs Rugby League Weekly magazine in 1993.  I'm the one in the middle.

Bwahhh haa haa, that was fun. GO RAIDERS!

Edit: so they sucked and lost - BOOOOOOO

Matte flakies gradient

Here is a mani I wore earlier this week.  My base is one coat of OPI DS Fantasy, I then applied sections of three flakies polishes, the first is blue at the top, then green and then yellow.  The flakie polishes I used were Inglot 203, 204 and 205. Then I decided to make it matte, because flakies look awesome matte.

The Inglot flakie polishes are packed with flakies, which is good, cause the bottles are tiny.  This was just one dabbled layer of each of the Inglot polishes.  I never remember to matte any polishes. I must try to remember to do it more often. I particularly like the soft touch feel that matte polishes give.

Merry Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas everyone.  It's the end of Christmas day here and the kids are exhausted from 100% play all day. We've had a lovely day at home with the family, and will be off tomorrow to visit the rest of the family. 

Here is my Christmas day mani.  The gold base is Orly Luxe, I then painted holly leaves using a fine brush and the dark green holo polish I showed here.  I highlighted the leaved with China Glaze L8R G8R and black and then added red gems for the berries.  The accent finger is a pimped up bottle of Ulta3 English Rose, which I added a little extra red and gold micro glitter to.  It's such a totally awesome red polish now.

I love how the red gems glowed golden orange in the light.

I totally loved this mani, and because I pressed the gems into the outer edge of each nail I hardly even fiddled with them, which means they lasted well.

I hope you had a great day, or if your Christmas day is just beginning, I hope it is wonderful.

Candy Canes

Today's nails were inspired by a readers mani, which she sent me a photo of and link to her flickr account.  scratchureuesout did an awesome candy cane mani in red and green and then put a spectraflair top coat over it.  You can check it out here.

She inspired me to do candy cane nails.  I haven't got around to adding the spectraflair top coat to it yet, I will do that tonight and photograph it again to add to another post later.

I used some fancy striping guides to get the nice even lines, then I used Konad special polish in red and painted some polish on the glass table top.  I then dabbed the stamped into the polish to cover the tip, let it dry and then rolled it over the nail.  It gave it a nice thin smooth coverage of polish and the tape came off without any bleeding.

The feature nail is another water decal from the "Fing'rs Holiday Nail Art Decals".  

Oh, and how to you like my little nubbins.  These are the shortest I've ever posted on my blog.

Finally... a Christmas mani

I told you yesterday I had a work Christmas lunch do/afternoon thingo and I had to do some sort of festive Christmas nails.  I was hoping to do something with the new Picture Polish Festival flakie, but it didn't arrive in the post until just a few hours ago.  So instead I picked traditional red and green.

I used Ozotic 518 as the red base and stamped with snowflakes from Konad plate M59, in white special polish.  On the ring finger accent nail I painted a plain white nail and placed a Christmas tree water decal from a pack of "Fing'rs Holiday Nail Art Decals".  The only thing I might have done different was put a holo top coat on the white before putting the decal on.

I chose to do the snowflakes because we are having the coldest start to summer in south east Australia in something like 50 years.  Not that there is any chance of snow cause it's still around 23 degrees, but when it should be 33 it's kinda strange.  

I'm really going to try and push for as many Christmas mani's as I can muster in the remaining few days before Christmas, but it's hard because when you create something you love, it's so hard to take it off.  I will probably still have this on on Saturday.

Who walked over my Power Thief

Here is another really cute design that I did using ENAS soft nail art stamp number A15.

I wanted an earthy colour as the base and my brand new bottle of Cult Nails Power Thief was just the right base.  Its a chocolately brown with a silver shimmer, but there is also the tiniest bit of a pink shimmer too.

The stamp I used has two sizes of the paw print, so I just chose to use the small one.  This took a while to do because I did each paw one by one, but the effect was really cute.  My thumb was also stamped, but I forgot to include that in my photos.

I'm so glad I gave ENAS another go.  With a bit of practice, I'm feeling much happier with the results.  Multi coloured design here I come, but tonight I putting on my first Christmas mani for a work Christmas do tomorrow.  So I'm off to look at all your blogs to get inspiration about what to put on.