Hello again!!!

Hi everyone!

Sooooooo my job has officially taken over my life - BUT - I am still painting my nails like ever and thought I would share!

By the way - yes I took these with my phone, it's been so long I have NO IDEA where my camera charger is! Sorry!!

I used a franken pinky-nude as the base - this was actually my first failed attempt at frankening my own mannequin colour - and Konad special polish in black with the lace design from plate m65.
Because my talons are verging on velociraptor the image did not cover my entire nail I freehanded black french tips with Diamond Cosmetics - Starry Night.

I would really love to hear what you think - I know my technique has dropped since I stopped blogging and I welcome all critique! My cuticles need a LOT of help I know...

Talk to me my darlings - I missed you all so much!!!


Love,
 

You can't polish a turd....

Hello my darklings!

Sorry for my absence of late, I've been ridiculously busy lately, what with working and... working. Haha!

Another reason I've been away is I had a bit of a problem. As you may have known I had a tear in my right thumbnail below the quick, I'd been using pieces of tea bag as a silk wrap replacement, but the inevitable happened, I didn't buff it down quite as much as I thought I had and I snagged it, tearing across.

I hate having my nails mis-matched lengths. So I've been reduced to this...

I'm just kidding!

I really hope all of you can tell the difference between bitten and cut nails!

Okay back on topic... sort of... 

Here's what they REALLY look like!

My sad little thumb... :( 

You can see how stuffed up it is... 

No more pics of this until it grows out more!

My inpiration for this was partly all the cute pastels I kept seeing around easter, as well as having Nubar - Milk Chocolate Creme turn up. I'm not sure about using it for day-to-day polish, but boy, I'll use this guy for nail art for sure!

What I used:

Thumb and pinkies: Eyeko  - Lilac Polish(The only Eyeko so far that agreed with me! Yay!)

Forefinger: Franken

Middle: BYS - White

Ring: Eyeko - Vintage

Chocolate: Nubar - Milk Chocolate Creme

Rhinestones: Konad Nail Art Stones

Yay!

Oh and the title of this post is from me worried that chocolate would look more like... well... you get the picture.

My photography lecturer in Uni used to used the phrase "turd polishing" a lot. It means when you start with a piece of crap, you can spend ours and hours polishing and refining it, but in the end, it's still a piece of crap.

One day he was looking at what I was working on, shook his head and for the billionth time...

"You can't polish a turd"

Not missing a beat I looking him in the eye with a manic grin and said

"Maybe... but you can roll it in glitter!"

He was HORRIFIED.

Love,

Hello Kitty!

Hi everyone!
Everything's been a little mad here so yet again I didn't get to the shops, sorry!
You'll have to settle for a vault post where I went... insane....

Yes, that is a little hello kitty. On a toenail. A big toe-nail. A man big toe-nail.
There's a story behind this which i'm not going to go into.

The base for this one is Orly's Enchanted Forest with Fauxnad Hello Kitty using Colour Club's After Hours as stamping polish, the face is Stargazer White (from the "Gothic French" kit) the nose is The face Shop GLI11 and the bow is Stargazer nail Art Pen in UV Pink.

And yes, this is waaay sloppy, you all know I normally wouldn't post things this bad but for a Hello Kitty man-pedicure I had to make an exception!

My nail art needs a little work but mostly this is due to me trying to finish up and slap some seche on before Jai could complain. :)

Love,

We're not obsessed, we're just best friends!

Hi everyone!

LOL Excuse my random blog title, it's hard coming up with names for this collection without resorting to chat-speak...

Don't know what I'm talking about?

THIS is BFF from China Glaze...

It's nigh on impossible to take a bad photo of this baby! This is under 2 different lights and flash. It ALWAYS looks amazing! I'm obsessively in love with these. I need the whole set!

Not that this wasn't gorgeous enough on it's own - I wanted to add a tiny bit of konad, mostly cos I've been feeling super lazy. So I thought a mini galaxy would work with the amazing starbursts of colour!

This took AGES. I almost gave up - but it looked so cool I couldn't stop! These are teeny stars from fauxnad C01.

Hello right hand! We don't see you round these parts much! haha!

For the stamping I wanted it to be subtle and work with the holo-ey-goodness rather than overpowering it. So when I read that Aussie brand Chi Chi konads well but is very pale and you can see through it - I thought this may be the perfect occasion to try! 

The stamping colour is "High Maintenance" - you last saw it when I did my half moon manicure! 

Pretty, no?

Love,

Gradient WIN.

Hello my lovelies!
I was originally going to try one of those "swoop" manicures I've been seeing around the place with these colours.

But I can't draw straight lines. Ack.

So instead i broke out the sponges I used for zombie-toes and has my first ever crack at a PROPER gradient mani.

I'm immensely impressed with how well I did!

It looks so much brighter in real life.

As you can see up close you can see sections that look blotchy and a bit weird, but even I'm not looking that close IRL.

I think I might keep this one on longer than I anticipated.

Also - i'm feeling a bit better but still can't sleep though the night due to pain. Going to hospital today. Wish me luck. :)
Love,

Bored now.

Hello ladies!

Ugh. I am sick of swatching plain colours. I want to do some nail art so I can get better at it!

Unfortunately... er... I need to get better at it!

Blargh! Unhappy!

So to make me happy I swatched a plain colour. o.O
This is Urban Decay's "Bruise"
I frikking LOVE this colour.
As you can see it is a dark purply burgundy with green shimmer.

Also - Xtreme wear - day 4.

Um... fail.

Now for the yak yak part of my post today. If anyone has noticed me being bitchy, snarky, or generally emotionally absent lately (HA!) it's because I went to do doc yesterday as I've been having three days of pleuritic chest pain. Not good. The doctors are a little stumped as I do not have the normal symptoms of pleurisy, just the pain. So it could be a number of things for which I may need to go to hospital. Bleargh. I just want it to hurry up and be pay day already... I know exactly what will cheer me up... >:D

Love,

Toxin's First Flakie! Plus Xtreme wear day 2.

Hello Ladies!
I love blogging. Apart from the chance to meet and share my love of all things polish related with people all over the world, I get to see things I never would have known about before!
If you had asked me last year how many flakie polishes I owned, my response would have been "What's a flakie?"
So thank you ladies.
Thank you!

I went to a friend's house a couple of weekends back (we've both been lurking on polish blogs for ages - she does a cocktail blog - SidecarBeastie - its in my blogroll!) and we were chatting about polishes, how we both love how all these different brands look but find it so hard to find them here in Australia.

Then she said "Oh wait - I had something to show you!" and pulled out a flakie. I nearly squealed.
"Where did you get THAT?!"
Then I saw the label.

Inglot.

Inglot is AMAZING. It's a standalone counter at Highpoint (for those Aussies that are curious!) which is fifteen minutes near my house. I went down there on thursday. They were doing a Valentines Day deal - a polish and a lipgloss for fifteen dollars.

Of course I walked straight to the flakies - they had different ones, red, orange blue and green.
I originally wanted the blue flakie but it didn't have a sticker on it - meaning it wan't available for the Vday deal.
I picked up the green with the blue/purple duochrome.

I thought it would look awesome over the pink... so here you go!

Check it out! Blue AND purple duochrome on green.

With flash.

Without flash

Sunlight

Shade

Inglot has over 200 eyeshadow colours and over 200 NAIL POLISHES. They have "02M" a "breathable" nail polish. All their polishes are big 3 free - if you're into that.
Check out the Inglot website here.

Also for today - day two of Jai's Xtreme Wear test:

No visible scuffs, chips or scratches. (And yes this is day 2. I was going to put up extra pics for day 1 last night but there was no difference!)

Love,