I couldn't let Australia day slip by without doing a little nail art.  Unlike previous years where I've gone completely nuts with numerous Australia Day nail art ideas, this year there is just one, and it's pretty subtle.  So subtle that my daughter asked me this morning why I only had the 'Australia thing' on one nail!  I told her that it was all I could be bothered doing last night, but actually I really loved the simple gradient on the other nails.

Last year we were luckily enough to be up in Sydney were we went to Luna Park and Wet n Wild, sadly with my stupid broken foot we aren't venturing far this Australia Day long weekend.  We've decided to try get to the fireworks around the lake tonight, but so much will depend on how far I'm able to hobble around.  News with my foot wasn't great last week. My surgery wound, which is nearly 7 weeks old, still hasn't healed. Doctors originally thought it was infected, but after a swab they said it wasn't. instead they said it just opened up where the stitches had been. I've had fancy silver dressings on it all this week with nurses from the community clinics changing it every second day, and it looks like it's slowly coming together. This time next week and it should finally be sealed.  But the exciting news it that I get to have it all cut open again in about 2 months when they have to remove the metal plates!  Anyway, enough about my foot and back onto the nails.

It seemed right to use three polishes from my three favourite Australian brands for the gradient.  The darkest blue is Type 40 from Pretty Serious.  The mid shade blue is Swagger from Picture Polish and the white is Lily white from Ulta3.

I stamped the stars individually from a Bundle Monster plate and the Union Jack part of the flag was created using the ENAS stamper that I used last year shown here.

Happy Australia Day to any Aussies that might be reading this, and happy Thursday to everyone else.

Is there anything worse than a rehash post?  As a reader, probably not, but as a blogger who is away from home for Australia Day, with only three polishes on hand, it's the best thing ever.

 

Tomorrow is Australia Day, our national day where we BBQ, head to the beach or have a pool party, and dress in things adorned with the Australian flag. Will I be doing these things? Most definitely. Today in Sydney we are heading to Luna Park, and tomorrow to Wet n Wild.  My kids have gawdy "Aussie Kid" t-shirts and I have my Australian Flag baseball cap. While I only took three polishes away with me, I also took a pack of Australin Flag nail wraps (the ones at #10 below), so we are totally set to rock Straya day!

 

No now lets get to some Australia Day nail art inspiration. It's been several years since I created many of these, and I'm thinking I'll have to redo some again cause they were just so awesome to wear.

 

#1 - Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House 



Happy Australia to my Australian readers.  I hope you had a wonderful day off.  Mine didn't really turn out as expected.  We went to Bunnings early this morning to grab a few things to do around the house.  The plan was to do those things, have a swim in the pool, maybe a BBQ and relax and then head out the the fireworks around Lake Burly Griffin.

But instead, our sewer backed up and we had to get our Gerni and drain hose down into that icky mess.  Six hours later it was clear.  In the mean time, the pool pump packed it in, so I installed the spare pump we had in the garage.  Whilst the pump was off we high pressure cleaned the pool filters - more yuck all over me!  Putting it all back together, the pump installed nicely, but then we couldn't get the filter housing to seal properly and it kept leaking! I think we need a new O-ring seal, but we eventually made it work using a lot of plummers tape around the rim.  By this stage I was covered in stinky sewerage, a slimy pool backwash, so a late afternoon shower was delightful!

We grabbed a pizza for dinner and took the kids to the fireworks.  My littlest had never seen fireworks before, she was mesmerized, although the loud bangs were a little frighting for her.  We certainly packed lots into our long weekend - although I didn't get any swatching done at all, and I have a mountain of amazing Dance Legends to show you too.

Lets check out the nails I had on for Australia Day.  The base is Lacquistry Glitterally. Glitterally has a deep yet bright blue jelly base with green/gold/blue color-shifting glitters, accented with micro holo glitters.  It's a real stunner and unfortunately my photos dont capture the holo shine.

I then stamped some gold Kangaroos along the tip of each nail using Hit The Bottle polish in Hello Buttercup.  It doesn't get more Aussie than the green and gold kangaroo!

Last Wednesday I was out at my local shopping mall with the kids and we walked past our local 'dollar shop'. I'm not even sure of the name of the shop, but 'dollar shop' is our generic name for any of those shops that sell all sorts of random products imported from China for just a few dollars.  Given that it was a week before Australia Day, they had a whole isle dedicated to Australia Day crap.  Hat and headbands with flashing lights, full sequined Australian flag dresses, face paints, giant blow up hands and thongs (the Australian kind that you wear on your foot, not the American type that go up your bum).  Anyway, you get the idea.

They had the same range of nail wraps that I tried out last year, with the flags, kangaroos and koalas.  This year they also had these glitter ones, so I grabbed a pair to try out.

The wraps have a white sticky base and then the glitter appears to be sprinkled on.  I took a macro shot at the end to show you.  The texture of these was quite rough, and I had a hard time getting them to stick down properly on the sides of my nails.  So to combat both those issues, I add two thin coats of Gelicious gel top coat to seal it all down and to give it a super glossy finish.

After I was finished, I was really pleased how good these nail wraps looked.  I loved that they actually looked like I had gone a little crazy and sprinkled glitter over striping tape and star shaped stickers.

The last three years I've always managed to do a series of mani's dedicated to Australia.  If you are looking for some inspiration for Australia Day manis, then check out the 19 different designs I've done in the past.  This year I've just not had the time and capacity to pull a whole week of designs together.

So with only three posts left before Australia day, I had to get my butt into gear and come up with at least a few Australia Day manis - and preferably something new that I hadn't done already. Australia's flag colours, like hundreds of others, are red, white and blue, so enter the red, white and blue watermarble.

I started which a white base and then marbled over it with red, blue and clear polish.  I find I have much better luck using clear polish in a water marble than white, because usually the white bleeds into the red and makes pink.  Once again I used my personal Paws brand nail polishes that I've formulated perfectly for me to be able to watermarble - remember if you want to make or have good water marbling polishes, the key is pigmented and runny polishes.

Here is my last Australia themed mani for this year.  One thing that Australia is quite well know for, apart from it's awesome weather, beaches and people, is it's deadly animals.  From spiders to snakes to jellyfish and octopus, we have some doosies here.

This mani is a nod to our deadly snakes.  Did you know that of the top 25 most deadly snakes in the world, that 20 of them are found in Australia (source).  Plus, they don't just live in remote unpopulated areas, they live where we live.  I know we have had a brown snake in our backyard in the past, and a brown snake is #2 on that deadly list.  Anyone want to come visit us?

I started my mani with a coat of Picture Polish Bewitch. I then layered two coats of Picture Polish Splendour, which is a yellow, orange to green flakie.  I then stamped using BM-215 with black polish.  I painted the snake on my middle finger freehand using nail polish.  I'm so happy with how it came out!

That's it for my Australian themed nails.  I hope you enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed painting them.  Thanks also to all my Aussie friends that joined in with the nail art spirit and create all the below manis.