LSG Gets Nailed Blackout Challenge Week Three- Black Tie Affair

Gliiter Gal (Pink) under BYS Quake topped with Seche in a vain attempt to keep this on for a few days. Black lace decal from Born Pretty. Check them out- they are bargain Grand Central with FREE SHIPPING. 

I was thinking more Valentines than Black Tie.

Glitter Gal are really expensive for a very small bottle. It chips and gets edge wear within hours despite being covered with Seche. I can't say it's a brand I'd buy again despite the colours being so pretty. I'm all for supporting Aussie companies but when they charge nearly triple compared to overseas equivalents I have to throw my hands up and import from eBay sellers and friendly nail polish mules. I bought about nine of them direct from the Glitter Gal site.  Because the bottle is basically a mini they only hold what I estimate to be around 6 manies. Below is a pic after two manies consisting of two very thin coats each. The brush is dreadful- it's too thin and ends up pulling off half of the previous brush stroke.

This is the edge wear I woke up sporting only 8 hours after the mani was done- I finished up with a coat of seche, read for half an hour and went to sleep. I can't imagine what I did in my sleep to get this kind of wear considering that I wrapped the nail with Seche.

Below is the chip that showed up an hour or two after waking up. The only thing I did besides surf and goof off that morning was pour myself a bowl of cornflakes and make a cup of coffee using  an automatic coffee machine that requires a couple of button pushes to make coffee. Oh how I suffer with such hard manual labour.

Chips ahoy!

LSG Gets Nailed Blackout Challenge Week 2- Rockstar Nails

Thanks to Erica (a totally awesome nail polish enabler and all round sweetheart) I now have a full set of Finger Paints Special Effects. OMG The Pretty!

This week's Black Out Challenge was Rock Star nails. What could be more rock star than glitter over black? This is three coats of Special Effects on each nail over the top of NYC Colour (Australia- by The Heat Group) Night. Of course it's topped with my ever favourite Seche.

I just ordered a salon sized Seche  kit with the Restore from EBay at a great price. I'll get back to you on the seller if she turns out to be any good when it comes to service and getting it out quickly. There's already some iffiness on the  lack of promised combined postage when checking out with eleven items as one transaction.. She has OPI really cheap for us Aussies and will post to our golden shores but if postage is going to be that high then savings aren't that great. I'm hoping she'll fix up the postage issue. If not then my nail budget gets spent elsewhere.

My thumb is sporting Flashy, Twisted is on my pointer (it's the flakiest of the bunch and I think my fave), Asylum on my bird flipping finger, Motley is on my ring finger and the Pinky is wearing Flecked. I'm holding Twisted in the picture.

They don't look like much in the bottle but on the fingers they are like little opals. I'm planning on trying them over a bunch of other colours. I think they would look like white opals over NYC Colour's Angel (pearl white with a delicate gold sheen).

I officially love flaky polishes! I can't wait for my Essie Luxe Effects to get here. Gold Flakes people! GOLD!

Oh and Sweet Libertine have new gorgeous colours out and there's a sale on with big discounts on blues. Get your butt over there. You know you want your share beautiful mineral eye shadows and bargain prices. I've already blown my make up budget for the month over there. Yay for being back at work and having money to be self indulgent.

LSG Gets Nailed Black Out Challenge

If you're a Ravelry user you probably know about LSG. It's a no holds barred group where bad language and being awesome to one another is the creed. There's an offshoor group called LSG Gets Nailed for the nail polish obsessed knitters and hookers (crocheters). This month there's a challenge on to get us to use a little black. I've always been a little stand offish with black so I'm giving it a go.

Challenge #1
The Rorschach Test
Give me a mani that uses black to enhance or accent your look. Black lace or Pinstripes? Get your nads on! This is a great way to ease into black. I want to be seeing Rorschach all over your fingers.

So here's my attempt

NYC (Australia by The Heat Group) Metal

Konads Special Stamping Polish in Black

Seche Vitae (am addicted to the glassy look)

Happy Australia Day

It's the anniversary of Europeans landing in Australia and traditionally the day we celebrate our nation. Personally I can think of some much more sensitive days than this one. Australia's first inhabitants, Aboriginals, call this day Invasion Day. It's the anniversary of the day they lost their country and the beginning of genocide, hardship, plagues and starvation. Today I am taking the time today to acknowledge the traditional owners of the country from where I am writing, the Burramattagal people of the Dharug language group. I would like to show my respect and acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land, of elders past and present, of the land on which I live and from where I write.

For more information about traditional owners in the Sydney area visit Barani, a site that explains it all really well.

Political sensibilities aside I love my country and consider myself fortunate to be a daughter of the antipodes. Although I really wish Australia Day were on another day I still want to celebrate my country. So how do I celebrate things? I put it on my nails so I can look at it while I'm knitting.

My Supplies- (from left to right) Seche Vitae (best top coat ever despite the dreadful chemicals), NYC Silver Sparkle, BYS Red and White Nail Art Polishes, OPI -Yoga Ta Love this Colour, tiny silver metal balls for the smallest star in the southern cross, tiny diamantes for the bigger stars and BYS Silver Nail Art Polish, a fine but firm brush for making the stars on the flag and a skewer for picking up the bling. I also used NYC Mushroom over my Seche base as an opaque neutral. The OPI is a little transparent.

The Union Jack (the flag of Great Britain which is a whole bunch of flags united) in the corner of the Aussie flag was done using the BYS Red and White Nail Arts. I painted the white section first (St Andrew's flag representing Scotland) starting with the cross in the middle then adding the diagonals. I added the red diagonals next (St Patrick's flag for Ireland) being careful to leave the white frame for the cross in the middle which represents St George's flag (England). Then I added the middle of St George's cross in red.

The seven pointed federation star, which represents our six states and The Australian Capital Territory, was made by placing a big dot of white below the Union Jack then using the stiff bristled brush to smudge out the points. Next I put the stars of Southern Cross, our famous constellation visible anywhere in Oz. These were also smudged dots, the main four stars should have seven points with the smaller star having only five but I just went for star-like.

Next step was to add the Southern Cross to my ring fingers using BYS Silver Nail Art Polish. I smudged out some points with my stuff bristled flat brush, coated all nails thinly with NYC Silver Sparkle Added the bling to the southern cross then topped with Seche.

Happy Australia Day everybody! We're celebrating Australia's multi cultural heritage by having croissants for breakfast. We're out of Vegemite so it will have to be with jam. We'll be having Chinese take away for dinner to celebrate the contribution of the Chinese people during the gold rush days. There's iced lemon myrtle tea, which is a bush tucker flavour, and Japanese mochi cakes for afternoon tea (no significance for mochi cakes- we just really like them). Lunch will involve meat pies and lamingtons -fair dinkum Aussie tucker.

Pink Wednesday- Vintage (almost) Polish

The nice thing about nail polish is that it can last for years. The base in this Wedesday Pink mani is at least 15 years old. I bought it sometime in the early 90s. I know not where. It's sparkly- almost in the same way that the more recent holos are sparkly. I compared it to some holos and it wasn't far off. Everything old is new again!

The stamp is a Bundle Monster plate. I didn't write it down and seeing as I am a cushion for a rather large kitty right now I won't be getting up to get my stamping kit to look at the number. It's from the second set released on Amazon. The white is a Konad special stamping polish.


Happy Pink Wednesday.

The Funky French Attack

• I have a bit of a backlog of mani pics so I'm posting this lot in a batch. This is my Funky French Collection. I discovered BYS Nail Art polishes. They have this wonderful long brush that practically paints the stripe itself. This lead to a mini Funky French Obsession.

First we had the teal mani. All colours are BYS plain colours range. There were no names on the bottom of the bottles.

• Seen here with my Sweet Libertine lip balm. They have THE BEST range of mineral eyeshadow in the world. I have over one hundred and fifty of their overshadows. They're that good. It stays where you put it all day. Even if you happen to be running around on a melting hot day. I apply mine using a brush, mixing the eyeshadow with a tiny drop of water in the lid. The colours are a little brighter when applied wet and have longer staying power. They also make stunning eyeliners.

Sweet Libertine gives out samples if you send a stamped self addressed envelope. If you're a mineral makeup newb don't bother with the samples. I highly recommend jumping in and getting one of their really reasonably priced beginner's sets to start you off. And don't forget to grab a mineral veil while you're there. If you're a mineral foundation person they're great for balancing out those too yellow colours that are a problem with some mineral brands. On those days when I'm wearing a conventional foundation I use a mineral veil to set the foundation and extend it's longevity. It goes without saying that Sweet Libertine is my hands down favourite mineral veil. There are rumours that Sweet Libertine might have a foundation in development. I can't wait.

And back on topic

• Funky French #2- Flirting with a Dotting Tool

• The pink is a BYS scented. I think it's Floral. This time I taped off the top, painted a BYS black stripe across then ripped off the tape before it dried.

• After drying add a stripe of BYS Striping Polish in White and another in Chrome Silver.
• My pointer was done using a medium sized dotting tool.
• The dot feature on my ring finger used the second smallest tool.

Funky French #3 NYC all the way!

At this point I had discovered NYC by The Heat Group. They also make Ultra3. Both use the same formula. They are cheap and cheerful. They stay chip free on me much longer than OPI ever did. If you use the NYC Top Coat and remember to wrap the nail edge wear rarely happens.

The Purple colour is Purple Monkey the tip is Polka Dot- very sheer but shines up nicely over an opaque colour. The strip is my trusty BYS Chrome Striping Polish.

I used the usual tape and paint technique to get my tips straight.

So there you have it. My Funky French Phase. Up next is the Crackle Crack Up.

The Turkish Delight Easter Egg Mani

This one is over a year old. I was going through old pics on my iPhone and thought I'd update with some of these old shots.

When I did this I had just gotten an OPI haul from Ebay. Both colours are OPI. Pamploma Purple and Glitzerland.

I didn't mean to make a copy of a Cadbury's Turkish Delight Easter Egg wrapper. I didn't even pick up on it until a couple of days of looking at it and thinking it looked very familiar. Then it hit me. I'd recreated my favourite type of Easter egg's wrapper. The Derp- I have it.

No wonder The Husbear had been making cracks about my delicious nails.