Have you ever tried a Sweet Poison cocktail? Well me neither, but is sure does look pretty!  Plus it makes for amazing nail art inspo. 

I know, it's probably a little too simple to really classify as nail art, it's only a basic gradient after all. But don't these colours just look gorgeous together.  On the tips I sponged two different shades, a blue and a purple, and looking at this you could almost say it looks like some of the fancy thermal polishes some Indie brands are coming out with.  In different lighting sometimes the blue shows more, other times the purple sparks are there. 

Please make sure you check out the other participants from the Digital Three. There used to more than a dozen of us, but over time most people have stopped blogging. Let me know if you are a blogger who is interested in joining our group. We aim to post 5 manis on a set theme once each month, and we'd love to have some more participants

Well hello there!  It turns out that my blog is still here and I can still post to it.  Whether anyone is reading it is a whole different question.

That sure was a very fast 4 months!  

It's been one hell of a ride over the summer down under.  As I'm sure just about the whole world knows, we had a lot of bush fires ravaging the country, and they have been burning since well before I did my last post. In fact in November we drove up to Queensland and I remember that the Highway was closed the night before we drove up because of fires.  It was just heartbreaking driving through the forests that were nothing but char.  I'm so sad or all the animals.

The other thing we have been really struggling with is air quality.  Since late November, my town of Canberra has routinely been listed in the top 5 worse cities for air quality in the world.  We all bought P2 masks to try limit our exposure.  So with the fires and smoke, we have also had massive heat waves, with day after day over 40C and of course the drought.  

But if that wasn't enough we also had a massive super cell storm bust through Canberra in mid January.  The storm couldn't have picked a more destructive path.  It basically passed through three major town centers where there are thousands of cars parked in open car parks during they day.  I've never seen a storm like it in Canberra.  Even my mum who has lived here for more than 50 years has never seen a storm like it.  The hail was larger the golf balls. Our 5 year old Mazda CX9 was written off, which meant we were forced back onto our motorbikes to commute to work. Usually that's not too bad, except when riding in the aforementioned 42 degree heat.  We had insurance, which was paid out last week and we were quick in to buy a new car, knowing that there will be lots of people looking, we didn't want to wait to see prices rise.  They have estimated about 30,000 cars damaged or written off.

Throw in Christmas, New Year, Miss 9's birthday, plus massive changes at work where the Prime Minister decided to merge a bunch of departments including the one I work for. This had a huge impact on my work life balance, with so much extra work to be done to set up websites, intranets, HR systems etc for a new merged department.  

When I look back at the last four months, I certainly can see why I didn't do any blogging.  However, there wasn't a single day that went past where my nails were naked.  They didn't have nail art on them all the time, but were always painted and looking on point.  As a result, I have so many mani photos that need editing and posting.  Wanna see some Christmas designs anyone?

This weeks theme for the Digital Dozen was a fun one, being Cocktails.  I did plan on drinking one of each mani that I created, but sadly that didn't eventuate.  I've also discovered that cocktail inspired designs make excellent gradient nail art inspiration.

For my first look, I did was inspired by a Tequila sunrise.  I even garnished my nails with a cherry and the orange slice, just like the inspiration picture.  I should be back tomorrow night, as I have at least a couple of designs to share.

Here is the final ook for this week in my five days of fluid art.  I was going for a rainbow look, and used the Pipedream A Night in Vegas polishes as they always look so fantastic together.  The final look ended up very pink looking, and the cooler blues and greens didn't really come through much.

I used my own mixed up bottle of clear fluid art polish, made using the quirt of Garnier Fructis Sleek and Shine serum.  But this time I did a slightly another new technique when I used a stamper to smoosh a pool of polishes, but the difference was that I used the black flat side of the stamper. The flat side doesn't end up making a gap in the center like a regular domed stamper.

Are you ready for another fluid art design. I hope so, because I've been enjoying these so much recently I think I will continue to participate in the #Fluidartfridays and find the group that sets the colour palette each week.

Today I chose to go with a Halloween theme with the colours of green, orange and purple.  This was also my first attempt at creating my own fluid nail art polish.  I mixed up my own clear polish and added a full squirt of Garnier Fructis Sleek and Shine. Yep, you read that right, I added a pump of hair serum into my polish.  I read about this on instagram from a number of different posts and thought I would try it myself.  Some people said that it's the silicone in hair serum that make it creat the cells, but I'm not so convinced.  That's because I also tried making my own fluid art polish with silicone spray.  We have plenty of cans of silicone spray around the house because we use it on our pool pump and equipment.  I tried spraying some of the silicone into a small tube and let it settle and evaporate for a while. But when I mixed it with the polish I didn't find that it made any cells.  I wonder if its the Moroccan Argan oil in the hair serum that works?

Can you tell that I'm having lots of fun trying out different polishes and techniques for fluid nail art?

This time I have used the Sinful colors transforming polishes in Purpunk, combined with a pastel pink and black polish.  The technique I used this time was to paint random dots down on my silicone mat and then use the zip side of a zip-lock bag, and carefully drag it across the polishes.  I managed to get some good cells again using this technique. 

It's day two for the colours that collide prompt and I have a really crazy fluid art design to share with you today.  For this design, I again used some of the Sinful Colors Hypnotic Transforming top coats. But instead of just one, I used two. A red and a blue. I also use a regular white polish for this look too.

I used a different technique with these polishes. Rather than using a stamper to squish the drops of polish, I just piled up the colours on top of each other like a water marble, except on the silicone mat. Then I picked up the mat and swirled the polishes around letting the run into each other and all around the mat.  The end result was this crazy look with lots of cells splitting and showing the colours underneath.  I totally love how this came out.

It's another Digital Dozen week and the theme this week is colours that collide.  I thought for a while about how I would interpret the prompt this week, and I've ended up settling on my own personal theme for the week, that being Fluid Art.

Acrylic Fluid Art on canvas is all the rage at the moment, in fact I wasted quite a bit of time watching fluid art pour videos on Youtube. They are so satisfying to watch I tell you.

I've been reading about lots of different ways to do fluid nail art, and I thought I would try out a bunch of them this week and see what works for me. I plan to use a range of transforming top coats, as well and making my own transforming top coat based on all the cool experimenting other crazy nail ladies have done.

This first look is made using a transforming top coat from Sinful colours.  This ones is the pastel purple one called PurPunk, which you actually can hardly see in this design. To get the mix of colours, I just did drops of all the polishes onto a silicone mat and then pressed a large stamper into it.  After removing the stamping all the cells start to appear like magic.  These Sinful transforming top coats (offically called Hypnotic Transforming top coats) work so well for this type of nail art.

Ok, no bring on a week of Fluid nail art.

My home town of Canberra has been painting the town green this week, because the Canberra Raiders have made it into the NRL Grand Final tomorrow. For my American readers, that's our equivalent of a football team making it to the Superbowl.

Canberra last won the NRL Premiership 25 years ago, so we are well due for a win.  All around town this week people have been making all sorts of things green. Green sausages, green pastry on the meat pies, green bread, green coffee froth on top of your cappuccino, the Telstra Tower and other city monuments are lit up with green lights, anyway you get the idea. Literally painting the town green!

Back in 2012 The Canberra Raiders made it to one of the elimination semi-finals, but lost. I did Raiders nail art back them too, and I'm glad to say that I think this one, whilst very similar, is much neater.  I printed out another water decal for the team logo, and freehanded the other stripes.  The pinky finger represents the local saying of "We bleed green".

Good luck boys and GO RAIDERS!