Monday, December 31, 2018

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Lisfranc, Polish hauls and Christmas 2018

Hello nail polish loving friends. It's good to still be here.  I thought I would quickly squeeze in one last blog post for 2018.  I'll admit that this year was a pretty light one around here. I'm still painting my nails with nail art at least three times a week, but just getting the photos edited and then something written up it is the main challenge.  Speaking of Challenges, I'm disappointed it didn't get around to completing the 31 Day Nail art Challenge this year.  With my two month vacation in the USA over September and October, it just wasn't something I was able to priorities. I have done about 10 manis from the Challenge prompts already, and I may end up doing the challenge in February or March maybe, once the new year settles in.

As I did last year for this blog post, I did a quick look back at the previous two years.  At that time I had done a recap of my Lisfranc foot fracture that I got as a result of my motorcycle accident two years ago.  I'm pleased to say that the scar on my foot is now nearly not noticeable, especially compared to the purple scars that were still evident in my post last year. It turns out my sandal tan lines are more noticeable these days. 

I usually post about a little polish haul at this time of year too, as it's my birthday in December, and I usually splurge a bit on some polishes around now.  This year I did a big Emily de Molly haul, she has some gorgeous duo chrome metallics at the moment and some great multichrome magnetics too.  I've wore a few of them already, and taken some nice pictures, which of course are unedited. 

Whilst we are still within the 12 Days of Christmas, I feel it's still ok for me to post my Christmas mani.  It's only just now that I've looked back at my 2017 post that I realized I did a very similar look two years ago.  The base polish is a special unnamed one from Sparkly Vernis from about 2014.  I wore it back at Christmas in 2014 where the photos look totally different because they were taken outside, whereas these ones were taken inside under a light.
With that, I fare you all adieu for 2018.  Many happy returns for 2019. 








Thursday, December 13, 2018

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Digital Dozen does Holo - Day 4

For day four, I've moved onto the fine holo powder burnished into my nails.  Let me just say this took bloody ages to do, and the outcome is less than stellar! How about we called this, #WTFWasIThinkingThursday! But it's still better than tomorrow's fail look for you to look forward to!

I wish I had taken photos of this in direct sunlight, because it certainly looked better than these photos show.  I'm gonna stop now, otherwise I'm just going to continue to bag myself out, and I don't like doing that.  Let's all just focus of the pretty holo flame.






Wednesday, December 12, 2018

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Digital Dozen does Holo - Day 3

Look, look, I did a double rainbow thing. First a gradient and then holo rainbows too! I'm loving this look so much, cause it's such 'me' nail art.

I recently grabbed a whole bunch of the JOSS creme polishes during their sale, I also think I bought the last of their stock of "Will Not", which is my absolute favorite white creme polish cause it's perfect in just one coat. I got them for about $4 each but these shades are now only $1.95 over on the Nail Super Store website.  For this gradient I used:
  • Red - Out of control
  • Orange - Space Shuttle Orange
  • Yellow - Yellow by Van Gogh
  • Blue - It's Blue. Period.
  • Green - Viridian Green
  • Pink - Fandango Pink

I then applied some nail foils and a thin coat of Orly bonder - which is decent sticky base coat that burnished powders seem to stick to quite well.  Finally, I burnished in some holo power and peeled the vinyls off.






Tuesday, December 11, 2018

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Digital Dozen does Holo - Day 2

It's day two of holo week for the Digital Dozen and I have some blindingly holo nails.  I'm trying to use different holo finishes for all the nail art this week, holo polishes, rub in powders, scattered holo, and maybe even holo foils if I can get the new bottle of foil glue I bought to work for me.  

Today it's the scattered holo powered that I have burnished into a black base.  I then stamped a circular design on top, which sadly isn't centered on all my nails despite using a clear stamping. I really must be out of stamping practice at the moment.






Monday, December 10, 2018

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Digital Dozen does Holo - Day 1

So starts another Digital Dozen week, and finally another series of blog posts from me.  Also, in case anyone is wonder what happened to me doing the 31 Day Challenge during November, well yeah, life happened and clearly I didn't get around to it.  As it happens I am still working my way through the 31 Day Challenge prompts, I'm up to the Metallic prompt I think.  I will eventually post them all, but at the moment I'm just enjoying wearing all the nail art for at least a few days, rather than having to take off each design at the end of a single day.  Clearly I'm not going to get the entire challenge done before the end of 2018, but I do hope to start it before the end of the year.

Now onto today's nails.  I wore these last week on the 3rd of December, which was my Birthday. In classic 'me' style I went with a gold holo.  I added some art deco black stamping, and voila I was done.  The holo polish is actually just Lacquistry Amazeballz Extra fine with some holo powder rubbed in.


Now look at this beautiful holo stainless steel cup I got for my birthday. This is the gold one. I also got one called Merlot, White and Charcoal.  They are so stunning in the sunlight and perfect for us to use outside.  They also work great at insulating the drink to keep it at whatever temperature you need it, be it nice and cold or nice and warm.






Saturday, November 17, 2018

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Digital Dozen Looks Up - My little ponies

I'm running a little behind on my Digital Dozen mani's this week. I know what I want to paint for Day 5 but I'm just not sure that I'm going to get it painted on my nails.

Day 4 and I have a rather different idea than you would normally think of.  You see I was trying to come up with ideas for something quick to paint and I came across these cute My Little Pony water decals.  Then I remembered my daughters room, and that when you look up in her room there is a high shelf with all her plush My Little Ponies that she has gotten over the years from the Build a Bear workshop place. She really has a very extensive collection.


Here is a quick photo of the shelf in the room.  You can see it's right up near the roof so you definitely look up at it.




Friday, November 16, 2018

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Digital Dozen Looks up - the sun and solar flares

So yesterday we looked up and saw the moon, today it's the sun.  I wanted to do something a little different, so I attempted to do an up close look at the sun with the halo glow and solar flares.

Getting the solar flares thin enough was tricky and clearly I don't have a fine enough brush to do really thin strokes that I need to.  I also wish I go the glowing orange sponging a little lower on the middle two fingers, or perhaps not so low on the index and pinky, cause its annoying me that the glow isn't even.  But now I know I'm just being super critical and I need to pull my grumpy, critical pants off and remember how cool it is to be doing proper nail art again when my nails have just been pretty boring with simple single colours for the last two months.






Thursday, November 15, 2018

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Digital Dozen Looks up - Moon phases

It is Day 2 of 'Look up' week, and I've been pretty predictable once again with my choice.  Today's nails are the moon, and specifically some moon phases.  I'm very happy with tree of these nails, but that pinky nail is a bit disastrous!

Rather than using a black base, I used Ulta3 Midnight Fever, which is a very dark blue shimmer.  It was a great choice, except that it did make painting the moon phases harder, because i could just choose black polish to block out the darker parts. 






Tuesday, November 13, 2018

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I'm back - Digital Dozen looks up - Clouds

Hello. I'm Back. It's been just over two months since I was last here and didn't I promise I would return. We had an absolutely amazing time on our two month vacation in the USA and around the Caribbean.  If you are interested in having a look at some of the photos of things we got up to, I did post to a facebook page.

I'm straight back into the nail art.  First I have five days of Digital Dozen posts and then I want to get right into the 31 Day Challenge in an effort to complete it before the end of 2018.

So without further adieu, here is my first return at nail art.  Yep, I went simple and easy for my first effort, as one really does need to ease back into things! The theme for this weeks Digital Dozen is 'Look up'.  I took the obvious choice here and did a blue sky gradient with some dotty clouds.

So how is everyone else going.  Did you miss my nail art LOL! What did I miss in the last two months? Any amazing mainstream or indie collections I need to check out? Talk to me people if you are still out there?






Wednesday, August 29, 2018

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The 31 Day Nail Art Challenge 2018



September is almost here, and that means the 31 Day Challenge is almost here, too!

But.... I have a problem this year. I am going overseas and travelling to the USA for all of September and October. Sadly I have not prepared 31 days of nail art, so I'm going to have to postpone my participation until later this year. 

The good thing is that anyone can participate in the 31 Day Challenge whenever they want, or at whatever pace they want. I plan to participate in the 31 Day challenge in November 2018, when I return from our travels. This will be my 6th year participating and again I'm looking forward to the challenge.

This also means I wont be posting here on my blog for the next two months.  I will be back I promise, I'm just off travelling the world with the Fam.

As per previous years, I invite you to all to the challenge, whether you do it during September, or join me later in November (or in fact do it at any other time).

If you are unfamiliar with the challenge, check out the 31 Day Challenge FAQ and inlinkz to learn more. Looking for the inlinkz? they're on the same page.  I've made the inlinkz open through until the end of the year, so if you want to participate you have plenty of time to add your mani to the linkz. Don't forget that you can link to Instagram too.

Finally, make sure to use this year's hashtag: #31DC2018

Here are the 31 Day Challenge prompts for 2018! Feel free to share, repost, upload to your blog, put on Instagram, etc. Click to enlarge.



Will you be joining us? Let me know in the comments?


Saturday, August 18, 2018

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Digital Dozen does Tropical - Day 5 - Layered stamping

It's day 5 and I've really loved this week's theme.  Its totally put me in the mood for our upcoming vacation to the USA and Caribbean.  

My final look ended up being so striking with the colour combo. It's just a simple layered stamping look, but the colours are all so bright and pop off each other.






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