Hello, is anyone there? Is this thing still on?  Once again it's been a while. The last four weeks has just been an absolute blur of life.  My birthday, a driving trip to Queensland for two weeks (which is 12 hours each way) plus of course Christmas.

I have of course been painting my nails the whole time, and usually with some sort of quick and easy nail art, so I will endeavor to edit those photos and get them up on Instagram and the blog, even if they don't come with much commentary.

Unfortunate I missed the December prompt from the Digital Dozen, it was during one of the weeks that I was in Queensland, and I didn't take enough nail art supplies with me to be able to paint the nail art prompts, not that I would have had the time anyway.  Our trip was crazy busy doing theme parks, water parks, beaches and roller coasters for me to have any time to paint serious nail art.  But I will be back with the January prompt too keep me on some sort of regular blogging schedule.

Before writing up this blog post, I did a quick review of my Christmas blog from 2016.  It was titled, Lisfranc, polish hauls and Christmas 2016.  This time last year I was recovering from my Lisfranc foot surgery of having the plates and tightrope inserted into my foot. I had some complications after that surgery where my surgery wound spit open and it took months to heal.  In March I had the second surgery to remove the metal plates (but keeping the tightrope permanently). The surgeon also did a scar revision to remove as much of the horrible purple scar that was left of my foot after the previous wound healed.  Here is a photo of my foot now.  It still swells up when I've been walking around a lot, and the purple scar is still visible, although much narrower than the original scar.  I'm told I walk with a limp sometimes, but I don't notice and I generally don't have too much ongoing foot pain. But it's never going to be the same again.  Amazing red nail polish on my toes does help though - thank you Lacquistry Redicilious. 

Sometimes I just feel like wearing something extra shiny and metallic, and this combo really satisfied that desire.  This was blindingly holo and metallic in the sun and still metallic in the shade too which was nice, because usually these ultra strong holos can look pretty dull in the shade.

This is one coat of Lacquistry Amazeballz extra fine and then one coat of Nfu Oh 61.  This is the original version of Nfu Oh 61, not the re-released one, which was much less holo.  In fact, in my swatch stick comparisons of all my holos, my friends and I have been unable to determine the difference between origianl Nfu Oh 61 and Chanel Holographic.  Which is awesome, cause now I don't feel like I need to drop $300 on the Chanel!

More fun with temporary tattoos, plus more Lacquistry, plus a lemming slayed = one mani that I really love!

Lets start with my feature nail, which I have used temporary tattoo gold chains to make it look like a golden pendant.  This polish is my slayed lemming.  Darling Diva Champagne Wishes and Holo Kisses.  I fell in love with it when I saw it on Lavish Layerings, damn you Jenny with gorgeous lemming creating swatches.  I very nearly managed to grab my own bottle from the last restock in about October last year, but I was out with the kids Saturday morning sports and didn't make it home in time.  

Then I nearly managed to win a auction for it through a facebook group when we were driving back from Queensland in November last year, but as were were in outback Australia I dropped out of phone range, and by the time I got back into phone range, the auction had closed and I'd been out bid.  

I then posted to some facebook groups that I was searching for it, someone came forward but then said they weren't comfortable sending polish internationally. Are you enjoying my sob story!

Then, jump forward three months, when someone in another Facebook group tagged me in a message and said I should check my 'others' folder for a Facebook message.  God damn stupid others folder!  I had five messages sitting there, two recent ones, but the other three were from last year, with one being nearly a year old!  Anyway, one of those older ones was from a little angel who said they had a bottle of DD CKHW that they would be happy to sell.  I replied (now three months later) hoping desperately that she still had the polish and I could convince her to sell it with my offer.  And yippee, she did!

The best part is that the polish lived up to my expectations.  It's a gorgeous soft gold holo with a strong gold metallic sheen and gold flake shimmer.  Good luck finding a bottle if you like the look of it!

The polish I paired it with was Lacquistry Tall Dork and Handsome, which is a dark red leaning purple version of Amazeballz.  Fantastically pigmented and this is just one coat with Seche Vite top coat. I then layered the same gold chain tattoos across my nails, and really loved the final look.

I have another new polish that I bought from Lacquistry to show you today.  As I understand it, Jenna had waited a long time to create a black nail polish she felt was worthy of her calling it Blacquistry.  She believed this polish was it, and I have to totally agree. I don't think I've ever loved a black polish more.  

Blacquistry has a black base with plenty of that shiny pigment that you find in Amazeballz.  It's basically the black verison on Amazeballz, Redicilious, Inadverdant, Soulstice etc. The platinum gold particles make this look like a dark warm brown, but when you look closely you can see it really is black.

I was playing around with some more metallic tattoos.  These ones are from StapTats and I love how you can apply them to your nail and to your finger to continue the art work. I find the tattoos dont last very long on my fingers, not even a full day.  Although I have done a wear test of a few different brands of metallic tattoos on my arm if you guys are interested in seeing that.

I continue on my Lacquistry binge with another polish I picked up at the end of last year.  This one is called Obsessed: Holo and it has a bright purple jelly base and is full of aqua blue to purple colour shifting glitter as well as fine holographic glitter.  

Its hard to capture both the colour shifting glitter and holo glitter in a single photo, but wow, in person this beauty sparkles!  This is two coats over black topped with seche vite top coat.  This was one of those polishes that I just loved how it looked on it's own and I didn't end up adding any other nail art - although people at work did say my nails were a bit plain.  They are so spoiled with all the nail art they see, I mean how could anyone ever say holo colour shifting glitter nails are plain!

Man, I didn't post for two days! What's up with that?  I tell you whats up.  Work!  I've just been so damn busy over this last week getting ready for another website launch for the Government department that I work for that I just have been too exhausted to post at night.  On Friday I was at work by 5.45am, and left 11 hours later, wiped out.  But everything went smoothly and the site has been really well received.

You know that I've been busy when I haven't even had a chance to photograph my nails, and I have to resort to taking them in my office.  At least the bright fluro lighting makes the polish sparkle!

This is another new polish from Lacquistry - it's a bright and vibrant blue version of Amazeballz - so Blueballz if you will, although the official name is Soulstice.  Just like REDicilous and Amazeballz extra fine, this baby is a one coater. One simple amazing coat!

I also bought some of those metallic tattoos recently from a few different brands (Snaptats and FlashTats), and this is the first mani that I tried them out on.  I didn't put top coat on as I didn't want it to wrinkle up the tattoos,  and as a result, by the end of the work day there were a few areas that had rubbed off.  But I felt they did actually stand up to not having top coat to protect them very well.  I originally had some tattoos on my fingers too, but by the time I took these photos at work they had all worn off.  I blame moisturizer and hand washing for that.

So yesterday I was feeling tired and wiped out,right.  Well guess who woke up with a runny and blocked nose and sore throat!  Yep.  The kids started back at school this week after summer holidays and both came home on Thursday with something, which they have kindly passed onto me.  Damn it I hate how school is such a breeding place for nasties!

I'm pulling this mani out of the vault from when I wore it late last year.  It's actually a combo I spotted on my mum nails and had to ask immediately what she was wearing.  It was Lacquistry Amazeballz extra fine with a single layer of Glam polish Mulitchrome flakie Eternity Dragon.  

The warm golden tone of Eternity Dragon warms up the whole feel of this golden mani, but without making it brassy looking.  Fantastic combo Mum!

Do you love green nail polish? I sure do, and if you do too, then get ready to add another lemming to your wishlist.  This is InadVerdant by Lacquistry and it's a dark forest green version of Amazeballz fine.

It's so hard to capture how glowy this polish is, even for such a rich dark shade.  The formula is thick, but smooth and easy to apply.  It's a one coater, but I did two coats for extra depth and sparkles.

Here is another Lacquistry polish that was part of the holiday collection I bought a few weeks before Christmas.  REDicilous was also from the same collection, and I'm slowly working my way through wearing them all.

Today's Lacquistry polish is Amazeballz HOLO!  Which not surprisingly is a Holo version of Amazeballz. It has the same gold tone as Amazeballz with the addition of some seriously strong holo glitters.  I have no idea if those holo glitters are gold or silver, because it's just so reflective you can't tell, all I can say is that it's a beautiful cool toned gold with lots of multicoloured rainbows that will probably be in my top polishes for this year (yeah even though it was realeased last year, I only wore it this year so that counts ok).

This is two coats of Amzeballz Holo with a coat of Seche Vite top coat.  This polish is a thicker than a regular polish because of the serious glitter payoff, but clean application is easy.