Money, money, money...  Continuing my week long feature on all things Australian, I share with you my Australian money mani.

I felt so stinkin rich wearing these nails! Australian money is the perfect design to wear as temporary tattoo designs on your nails because the colours are so vivid and gorgeous.

For this mani I put on a couple of coats of Nfu Oh 66 (the light green holo).  Then I just applied my made at home temporary tattoos.  Easy peasy and all finished in under 30 minutes.  For any of my new followers, I did a photo tutorial on temporary tattoo paper last year.

See what I mean, isn't Australian money just the prettiest money in the whole world!  Plus it's made of polymer (plastic) so it can go through the wash and still be fine.  And your useless bit of Australian trivia for the night... did you know that Australia was the first country to get plastic bank notes way back in 1988!

Some bright and loud summery Aussie nails sharing some fair dinkum Aussie lingo.

For this mani I started with white nails, then I created a gradient using Picture Polish Crazy and Lime lite.  I applied a temporary tattoo design on my middle finger and I placed various words, which I had printed out on water decal paper and then cut up into single words, on my nails at various angles.

All of these words or short phrases are very easily understood down under, although not necessarily said all that often. I'd be interested to know how many of them international people know them all.  And for anyone wondering about what a bogan or yobbo is from my post earlier this week, I've provided some links.  

While putting all the words together I was actually quite amazed and just how many Australian slang words there are - and so many that I didn't actually realize were slang.  Some are words we use everyday and you often don't realize that they are not part of the normal English language.

 

For day three of my Aussie Nails extravaganza, I bring you Australia's iconic Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

For this mani, I first created the gradient background using dark blue, light blue and coral pink polishes, over a white base.  I then applied my print at home temporary tattoos of the silhouette of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge.  Each image on my nail repeats part of the design from the nails either side.  I find I need to do this because my nails are very curved and if I don't, you don't get the full effect.

Lastly I applied Picture Polish Cosmos as the sparkling water beneath the bridge.  I deliberately made the finish on the water uneven to represent the undulating water.  All sealed in with a coat of Seche Vite.  

This mani was one of the longest I've ever endured.  To complete both hands it took me 1 hour and 20 minutes!  Mind you I did end up having to completely redo my middle finger after applying the wrong tattoo image to it and wondering why it looked so weird!

I'm sure I don't need to say how happy I was with the finished look.  It was so pretty from a distance with the combinations of the blue and coral tones, but then so detailed up close for when anyone wanted to see what was on my nails.

Also, I have to add that climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge is an absolute must do for anyone that ever visits Sydney.  We did it back in 2006 at it was a wonderful experience.  You walk up the stairs that traverse the left side of the bridge all the way to the very centre at the top. You then cross over the middle at the top to come back down the same side of the bridge, but the other side of the road.

For once I was really happy how my right hand turned out too.  Here is a rare photo of it.  I don't usually show my right hand because my damn index finger is always short and stumpy!

Something a little more classy for you today, beautiful Australian native flowers.  I hope you're ready for a little lesson in Australian flora.

I created these nails using good old print at home temporary tattoo paper.  I really love using temporary tattoo paper because I can easily create the designs I want and they apply very quickly - plus they last quite well and protect my nails. The colours are bright and vivid, and you can still see through to the polish you wear underneath (in this instance Layla Mercury Twilight)

The image on my thumb is a Waratah - the New South Wales floral emblem.  These are large flowers, about the size of a softball which are commonly bright red.

The index finger is Golden Wattle - Australia's national floral emblem. With trees and bushes growing between 2 and 8 metres high, these yellow flowering plants are a stunning mass of yellow in spring.  Each individual blossom is smaller than a pea, but it's like a little fluffy yellow pompom.

The middle finger is the Sturt Desert Pea - the South Australian floral emblem. A facinating flower with bright red vertical flowesr with a dark blackened eye in the centre.  My tattoo got a little crinkled when I tried to move it, so you can't see the centres too well.

The ring finger is the Royal Bluebell - the floral emblem for the Australian Capital Territory (where I live). Pretty violet blue flowers are up to 2-3 cm in diameter and can either be erect or nodding.  Despite being our floral emblem, I don't see many of these around town.

The pinky finger is the Kangaroo Paw - the floral emblem for Western Australia.  These are very interesting flowers, but I usually only get to see them at Floriade or the Botanic Gardens.  They have tubular flowers that are coated with dense hairs and open at the top to create the claw-like appearance.

As I only have five fingers, and I wanted them to match on each hand, I hand to miss out on the floral emblems for Victoria, NT, Queensland and Tassie, but there's always next year. And while it's actually really difficult to see what these are on my nails, the overall bright and contrasting colours were really pretty.

G'day Mate!  This coming Saturday is Australia Day, so to start the celebrations I'm doing a week long tribute to all things Australian, and I'm putting them on my nails.  I started this tradition last year with a bunch of Australian themed nails, and this year I have some doozies for you (although I've had to think hard to come up with some new ideas)

Today I'm really taking the blog into deep bogan territory.  I bring to you, Australian Beers.  

The guys at work thought these nails were pretty cool and it finally made them a little interested in my nail art.  When I mentioned to my mum I was going to do beer nails she was wasn't too sure about the idea.  She thought it might encourage the notion that Australian's are a bunch of beer drinking yobbo's.  And the truth is, that especially around Australia Day, I think a lot of Australians are!  (BTW - if you don't know what a 'yobbo' or a 'bogan' is - I'll cover that in an upcoming post).

The base I chose was Layla Gold Idol.  I wanted something holo but I wish there was an amber holo more the shade of beer, but still with the same strong flame.

I'm adding a single inlinkz to all my Aussie Nails posts this week, cause I'm hoping lots of other Aussie girls will include links to their nails, even if it's only the ones they do for Australia Day next Saturday.  So Aussie girls, please feel free to add your link and grab the code below.

I'm pretty excited to show you this polish today.  Remember when we all went crazy about OPI Black Spotted, well Layla have release five bubbly effect polishes in blue, cherry, red, white and black.

I was very graciously sent this bottle from Sally at Sally Magpies Magnificent Nail Emporium after she contacted me asking if she could use some of my swatch photos.  Sally Magpies are located in the UK and sell Layla, HITS, Jade, Ozotic and Picture Polish.

Layla Bubbly Effect White Meringue applied exactly like OPI Spotted did.  You need to use a very very thin coat and the bubble effect is immediate.  Like OPI Black Spotted, you will want to be as neat as you can with the Bubbly Effect, cause if it dries its very hard to get it off. So if you get any on your cuticles clean it off straight away.

I like how they white bubbly effect gives a white wash appearance and it tones down the bright colours I used as my background.  I deliberately chose some very strong colours rather than pastels, as I wanted to see the full effect, although I do this this would look very pretty over pastel shades.

I was really happy with the final appearance of this mani, I think I prefer the white bubbly effect to OPI black spotted, but maybe that's just cause it's summer here and I'm liking the brighter lighter shades.

Here are some quick and dirty photos of the background stripes I painted taken under the bathroom light.  I used my favourite bright rainbow coloured polishes (again) Pretty Serious Santa's Sunburn and Kleancolor Metallic orange, yellow, green, blue, sapphire and purple. I only painted the lines very roughly because I knew I was covering them up with the bubbly polish, but I still liked the starting look.

What do you think of the white bubbly effect polish? Are you liking it, or do you think it looks a bit too much like spilt milk on your nails?

Today I have the my last Gelicious shade to show you. This one is called Sleep til Noon and it is a simple black creme. 

I applied two thin coats of Sleep til Noon, curing each under the gelicious lamp for one minute.  I then applied the ultra glaze top coat and cured for two minutes.  I did notice that when I wiped my nail with acetone after finishing the mani to remove the sticky residue, a small amount of black wiped off my nails from the very edges.  I'm not sure if this is because my nails have a very strong C curve and therefore the sides didn't cure quite as well.  Despite seeing a bit of black on the swab, I didn't notice any difference on my nails, and they still looked perfect.

So there you have it, a perfect black creme soak off gel polish - there isn't much more to say about it.  When I eventually removed this it came off easily with a 10 minute foil method soak.

Now if I just showed you regular black creme in this blogpost, it would be rather boring, right?  I mean we all have black creme polishes and we really just consider them essentials in our collections.  So what I have for you today is a collection of seven different mani's that all have a black base.  With all of these, I just removed the top layer of polish with non acetone remover leaving the black gel base each time.

Glitter gradient created with colour changing glitters.  I used Enchanted polishes, but you could also use the Ozotic Elytras or the HIT Phenomenia polishes.

Mattfied flakies gradient.  I used Cult Nails Clairvoyant and Essie Matte about you.

Floam - I've had this for months and only just got around to wearing it - cool.

Holographic stamping - I stamped with Layla Retro Pink.

Abstract colour morphing with rhinestones.  I used gold to green on the outside edges, and green to blue in the center, finished with gold and blue rhinestones.

Sugar gradient -I tried creating a gradient with Ozotic Sugar 901, 902 and 903, but I ended up with an awful lot of sugar on my nails.  The end result was very reflective and certainly duochrome, but I wish I hadn't put so much on with the sponge.

Multichrome watermarble -This is the second time I have tried a multichrome watermarble and I was very proud of me work this time.  I used a bunch of Ludurana mulitchromes polishes this time instead of Ozotics, and the Ludurana's work better because they are more opaque than the Ozotics.

So there you go, a whole weeks worth of different manis all using the same base! Which is your favourite?