Sunday, April 30, 2017

on 1 comment

Digital Dozen April Birthday - Rainbow bubbles

I actually only created a rainbow bubble mani for the first time a few months ago, but this month two girls from the Digital Dozen, who are celebrating their birthday in April, chose an inspiration photos of rainbow bubbles. I enjoyed doing that mani so much that I eagerly participated again this month.

Instead of doing a plain background, or either black, blue or purple in this case, I used some loose glitter that I recently got from Mega Nail Supplies here in Australia and rubbed it into a black base. Mega Nail Supplies are the new Australian Supplier for Clear Jelly Stamper products, and they also have some lovely loose glitters for nail art and polish making. But I'm going to save talking about the glitters for another blog post, because they deserve their own.

For my bubbles, I painted them freehand using acrylic paints.

Happy birthday month to Katherine from  Procrastinails and Uma from Uma's Nail Art







Thursday, April 27, 2017

on 1 comment

Picture Polish Talisman with MILV water decals

It's been a while since I was last here, and I have a bunch of new nail art that I've done on my nails but not yet edited, so today you will have to do with something I've had in my draft folder for several months. 

I believe I wore this on my nails back last year some time shortly after Picture Polish released Talisman, a collaboration shade with Tanya Wish.  I remember thinking at the time that this polish was rather similar to Starry Night and Darcy, which are both black/dark grey scattered holos, but they are all quite different.  Sveta has a great swatch comparison of them all on her blog.

Of the three, Talisman has the most scattered holo appearance, and I prefer that, as I'm definitely a bling and glitter kind of gal.  In fact I went to my physio for my foot for the first time today and he was very impressed with my glittery nails and blingy toes.

For this mani I paired talisman up with some MILV water decals.  Water decals are such a great invention, I love how quickly you get an amazing nail art look with them, and I think they are way easier to apply and get a perfect finish compared to other wrap products.





Saturday, April 15, 2017

on 9 comments

Digital Dozen - Get to know me week - Day 5 - must finish!

Hey there people, I'm stretching out my last post for the week by a day simply because I didn't have any nail art to post.  This whole week I've been flying by the seat of my pants to get my manis done, literary painting them at night, photographing them and then blogging about them.  It was too much last night, and after a day of doing intense physio on my foot I decided I didn't feel like painting my nails again.

So that left me with having to do something today. But I actually had the urge to clean the house instead (which never really hits me) so I figured I'd better clean rather than do my nails. Bu now here I am a day late with still nothing about 'me' on my nails. So instead I'm using this mani because it was the only other one that I had completed already.

So how am I going to tie this design into the 'me' topic, here's how.  You see at work I'm considered a 'doer'. That is, I get shit done. I don't stuff around and I do what is needed to finish a job. And I really hate failing to meet deadlines or achieve results and if that means making a few reasonable shortcuts then so be it.  

Which is why I'm posting this mani, it's not really showing anything about me except that I don't like to leave things unfinished, and today I'm taking a reasonable shortcut to do so! 

So you still learnt something about me, and you get to see this really pretty mani I did.

For this mani, I started with a white base and then a quad colour gradient of pink, yellow, purple and blue.  I then applied a layer to top coat and rubbed some of the scattered holo flake across my nails. To finish the design I outlined each nail in black and then did feathered brush strokes up each side. They remind me of opals.






Thursday, April 13, 2017

on 8 comments

Digital Dozen - Get to know me week - Day 4 - Crazy Cat Lady

Day 4 and today I join the league of Crazy Cat and Nail Ladies.  It's really incredible the number of nail polish ladies who are also crazy cat ladies.  In fact two of the Digital Dozen have already posted nail art about their kitty cats, did you see them already?

My struggle was how to incorporate all three of my kitties into one mani.  Then I remembered a I heart my cat image on one of my stamping plates and figured I could created the fur of each of my cats on the other three nails (and we wont even talk about what is on my thumb, deal!)

For each of my kittie fur nails I actually hand painted them all with fine brush strokes and everything, and then when I was just about finished I remembered by set of flocking powders.  They hardly ever get used, and cat fur seemed to be perfect time to pull them out.


Let's meet each of the girls.

First up is Nahla, on my index finger. She is my old grandma kitty who is about 19 years old.  She suffers all the same ailments that old cats do, like kidney failure and she is a tiny skinny little thing, but she is the most loving and cuddly kitty ever. The moment you sit down, she is on your lap. You often dont even realize that she is there cause she is so light.  We found her at the local shops with a huge wound under her arm.  No one seemed to own her so we took her to the local vet. She wasn't micro chipped, so after the vet stitched her up and she received antibiotics, she came home with us to her forever home. There have been a few times that we thought she was ready to cross the rainbow bridge, so every day we have with her is a bonus.

The next two are sisters, Tikki and Tavi.  They were a in a litter of three with their brother Rikki. Sadly we lost Rikki in 2015 because he had a tumor, it was very sudden and so sad.  In fact I've lost three kitties in the time I've had this blog.  Rikki, Tikki and Tavi belonged to a stray cat that we used to feed at our back door.  One day she just rocked up with kittens. So we captured them all, got the mother neutered and kept the kittens. They are about 12 years old. The mother cat was too wild to keep, so we just released her and kept feeding her until she didn't turn up one day :( (Mum I know you are reading this so don't get teary! *hugs*)

We have quite a history of feeding stray cats at our place. We live near a nature reserve and think that is where most of the strays hung out. We would capture them, neuter them and then release them cause they are wild.  My mum has had countless strays over the years and is now down to five cats! But as always, there is always another one that needs a loving forever home, so our numbers don't drop.







Wednesday, April 12, 2017

on 2 comments

Digital Dozen - Get to know me week - Day 3 - Motorcycle

Have you heard me complaining about my broken foot and ankle recently, yeah I know I don't shut up about it. But how did I break it? Well I had a little crash on my motorcycle. I usually ride my bike to work every day, although for obvious reasons I have not done so for the last six months.

The circumstances around my crash are rather odd because I believe it was another parties fault, but the police still claim I'm to blame.  You see I was riding to work on lovely spring morning and there is a stretch of road that has two lanes for cars and a third lane for buses and motorbikes.  On this particular morning, the traffic was quite heavy and banked back for a few kilometers in both the car lanes. As per usual, the bus and bike lane was empty and we all zoomed past.

Well this particular morning there were two police bikes there that were pulling over cars that wanted to skip the traffic and were driving down the bus lane.  They already had to cars pulled over on the side of the road when I went past, and then as I cleared a bend in the road, there was another car that had been stopped by the police, but he was slap bang in the middle of the bus lane, on a bridge section of the road where there was no shoulder.  I slammed on my breaks, but there was no way I was going to stop in time before slamming into the back of the car. So I tried to steer myself between the stopped car the the banked back row of traffic.  I nearly did it, but unfortunately I just clipped my left foot onto the rear right side of the car.  The impact knocked me off my bike (and broke my foot in nine places), but it was actually a pretty slow fall and I didn't do much damage to my bike at all.  I reckon that the stopped car is to blame as he was breaking the law in the first place, and then hadn't stopped in a safe place. But the police say that the law says because I hit the car it's my fault, regardless of what the car was doing.  It kinda sucks, cause it means I can't get any compo, but at least I'm alive and well, because it could have been really nasty.

After injuring my foot pretty badly and being off work for so long, just about everyone asks me if I'm going to ride still.  As far as I'm concerned, absolutely yes.

I've ridden a motorbike for the last 8 years, and the reason that I started was because both my husbands work and my work relocated into the city center rather than in the parliamentary triangle. Where our offices were before it was free parking, but in the city it costs $17 a day.  So we both decided that we'd rather spend that $85 a week, or more than $4000 a year on something for us (hello nail polish) instead of going into the government coffers.

Ok, enough about me and my bike, lets look at the nails.  My base is Pretty Serious 88MPH, which seemed like an appropriate polish (although let me make it clear that I never have and never would ride at 88MPH on my bike).  I used MoYou Biker 06 stamping plate for the images. The image of the bike is actually huge on the plates, so I did that technique where you splay the squishy stamper head apart when you pick up the image, then when it squishes back into its normal size, the image shrinks. It worked rather well. Although I lost a lot of the bike detail doing it that way, at least I was able to fit the entire bike on my nail.






Tuesday, April 11, 2017

on 3 comments

Digital Dozen - Get to know me week - Day 2 - Hello Kitty

Whoo hoo, it's day 2.  I'm barely scraping it in with this one.  I literary just painted these on my nails, and if you pressed on them they would certainly still be dentable.

Yesterday it was nails for my son, today it's nails for my daughter.  Miss 6.  I can't believe I've been writing this blog longer that she has been on this planet!

It was a struggle to decide what to paint on my nails for her. She flip flops across so many favourite things. She too loves minecraft, but also really love My Little Pony.  I've already done many MLP manis for her. She also loves Dragons of Berk and Toothless and also has a favourite YouTuber, who is CookieSwirlC.  On a side note, I tell you, if you ever wanna make the big bucks through social media, then becoming a big time You tuber is the way to go.  Both the big ones that the kids follow have about 4 million plus subscribers, and did you know that from the ads in their videos alone these people are making between 1-4 million dollars a year!  What!  Why they hell aren't I working harder on doing videos instead of writing a stupid blog I ask myself.

Anyway, Miss 6's current favourite obsession is Hello Kitty. In fact she actually painted hello kitty on her own nails today freehand.  It was only tonight after I had tucked her into bed that I found the plate that I have with Hello Kitty on it.  I had to go and show here and she is now very excited to paint her nails tomorrow using the stamping image too.  






Monday, April 10, 2017

on 3 comments

Digital Dozen - Get to know me week - Day 1 - Minecraft and tbnrfrags

I can't believe it's another Digital Dozen week already.  Soon my blog is just going to be a Digital Dozen week followed by nothing for three weeks and then another Digital Dozen week!  Seriously things will start to get back to normal soon, especially when I'm back at work with regular schedule. I'm off work again following surgery last week, I'm nearly walking normally, which is great and things will only get better after the stitches are removed on Wednesday.

Anyway, enough about me, and lets got on with today mani.  Oh hang on this weeks theme is get to know me, so I guess we will be talking about me for a bit longer.

Truth is, I didn't realise that DD week started today, so I actually had nothing else prepared. However I did do these nails for the weekend for my son and his 9th birthday party.  When I thought about it, my number 1 kiddo is a huge part of what makes me 'me', so talking about him and the inspiration for this mani was appropriate.

So yeah, my boy had his birthday party this weekend, although his birthday isn't for a few more weeks, with term one school holidays, Easter and ANZAC day all in the next two weeks it was easiest to plan something early.

He likes minecraft, he is obsessed with it.  He'd skip school to play if we let him.  He plays on his iPad and on PC and his skill are really quite phenomenal from my perspective for a young kid.  He is amazing a creating electronic circuitry using red-stone and he has recently started making his own server and using command blocks.  

Most of the stuff he has learnt is off YouTube videos, which really is what this is about.  His favourite YouTuber is PrestonPlayz, also know as tbnrfrags.  My middle name features his minecraft skin and my ring finger is the PrestonStylez fire logo.  We even bought some Preston Stylez clothes for him with the fire logo on it for his birthday, so my nails matched his outfit on the day.

For the nails, it's a bit of a combo of freehand and temporary tattoos.  The diamond sword and the green creeper are both temporary tattoos applied over a gradient.  The middle two fingers where painted free hand with nail polish.  My thumbs had the 'Minecraft' word tattoos.




Here's a shot of it glossy before I made it matte.


He also recently created himself a YouTube account where he is starting to upload some of his minecraft game play from various servers, particularly Hypixel.  For his birthday cake, we ordered an ice-cream cake and got them to decorate it with the YouTube play button and his account name - Baydenator8.  We also printed out skins of his favourite YouTubers in edible paper and placed them around the cake.



Saturday, April 1, 2017

on 4 comments

FUN Lacquer - Northern lights

Just a quick old swatch tonight.  I had surgery again on Wednesday on my foot to have the metal plates and screws removed. It's hurting me today and not feeling as good as it was feeling before the plates were removed, so I'm feeling kinda bummed about it and just want to curl up and have a snooze.

The swatch today is FUN Lacquer Northern Lights.  It's a gorgeous looking polishes, but really a very basic one.  It's just some blue/green colour shifting glitter in a clear base. Its disappointing when such a high end brand creates such as basic polish. I want to see a bit more creativity and design in my indie polishes than just one glitter in clear. 

Anyway, it's still very pretty, although it did need to be sponged on to get the full duochrome effect.  I first applied a single coat, the sponged it on until it was full coverage, and then applied about 3 layers of top coat to get the glassy smooth. The sponging process definitely made it a very rough texture.






About Me

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I live in Canberra, Australia with my husband, Mr Ten and Miss Eight. My blog is all about nail polish, and a few other bits in between. You can contact me at morenailpolish@iinet.net.au