52 Week Pick 'n' Mix Week #7: Wild Animals

I've been slacking on my 52 week challenge, but this week I have actually done both prompt in two different manis. Prompt one is Wild Animals and the Golden Oldie prompt is Yellow.

So first up is Wild Animals.

I instantly knew I was going to try out the cute animals tutorial that Jacki from Adventures in Acetone did a long time ago, they are so darn cute. In particular the monkey. What I didn't do was follow it :D - I was watching The Flash together with hubby while trying to do the monkey design - and we watched it on the computer and my phone was down so I did them from memory.

As you can see I got the proportions warped a bit, the upper face is a little too wide so the lower face is almost the same width. Not that it isn't cute to look at, but it looks more like a teddy bear than a monkey :D

I used Illamasqua Nurture as base, YSL La Laque no 36 Rich Coffee and Zoya Pasha for the monkey.

I loved doing these even though they weren't quite successful - and I will definitely follow Jacki's animal tutorials again :).

Take a look at the wild animals and yellow manis the Nail Tarts have come up with this week.

52 Week Pick 'n' Mix Challenge, week 4: Gray+Colour

The two prompts for Pick 'n' Mix this week are 70's and Gray+Colour - and today I'm doing the colour prompt.

I love gray nail polish and have quite a few of them but obviously I'm not using them enough. Enter my Nail Tart Challenge and I am finally wearing gray again ;).

Rescue Beauty Lounge Stormy is a golden oldie and I wanted to give it a touch of Halloween, so I searched through other golden oldies in my stash that would fit the bill and came up with: Illamasqua Gamma - an almost neon orange, Lime from Dior for the green dots and finally Electric Violet from Dior for the purple dots.

If you spot some wobblyness in the dots it is because I used my non-dominant hand. I still struggle with my dotting tools even though I practise frequently.

In the pictures on my phone the purple dots were colour correct but on my computer screen they look a bit more blue. How do you see them?

Make sure to check out the other Nail Tarts Pick 'n' Mix mani's - there are some awesome combinations going on!!

An InLinkz Link-up

Golden Oldie Thursday #37: Burnt Orange/Copper

I have a polish the same colour as copper pennies that hasn't seen light of day since the week it was bought - and the sad little bugger only got a one finger swatch back then!!

GOT to the rescue!!

Illamasqua Shrapnel was one of three polishes created by fans of Illamasqua and I bought it in my very first order together with the other two fan collaboration shades: Raindrops and Eclipse - incidentally polishes that has suffered almost the same sad fate as Shrapnel.

I usually don't like that colour on me but I am not hating this either, which is good :D.

I had some bubble issues which I can only connect to my base coat so I won't use Sally Hansen's Nail Quencher together with Shrapnel ;). Top coating it didn't help the bubbling so I decided to stamp it - my go-to rescue.

I used Messy Mansion plate no. 20 for this image...

...and stamped with BarryM Gold Foil:

As you can see my rescue attempt didn't help much  - bubbles are totally visible :D

I really like this even though I shy away from colours like this - maybe I should try some more.

Remember to check in with the rest of the GOT polish girls and see which polish they have chosen for this week's challenge.

An InLinkz Link-up

Golden Oldie Thursday #13: Pastels

This is short and to the point - and a day late. Blue and green pastels. Hope you like them - I sure do ;)

Happy belated St. Patricksday!!

I haven't celebrated St. Paddys since I studied in England over 10 years ago. It was fun and since I love Irish beer it was a blast. So to remind myself of all the fun I had I decided to get in on this year's celebration - and here is what I did.

I started out with this basic mani and had it all planned out. At least I thought so. But when it came to stamping the pot'o'gold on my ring finger I suddenly remembered I had thought of painting one of my nails gold.

A lot of facepalms later I got myself together and started stamping. And then I got to the Claddagh and realised I still hadn't gotten it all together. So I topped the middle finger with Ninja Polish Shillelagh and was good to go.

Last year I bought some plates from Messy Mansion one of which was this St. Patricksday plate. It is very versatile and though I will only get to use it once a year I'm still happy I bought it :)

I used Camelot for the pot'o'gold and should probably have used my Black stamping polish though that one isn't always a guarantee for a clear transfer either.

And these were the polishes used for this mani:

Have you made a St. Patricksday mani and want to share it? Follow this link to add the inlinkz script to your blog post:

get the InLinkz code

Golden Oldie Thursday #7: Chevron Fail

If you're a regular reader of this blog you probably know about my tendency to share my nail fails on a fairly regular basis. This is one of those days...

My nails have a fairly deep c-curve which can make stamping a bit challenging at times - in particular if you don't have a squishy stamper and the design itself need to be very straight, like chevrons. At the moment I use an XL stamper that has a more firm silicone head which gives me slight problems to say the least. I didn't really realise how bad the problem was until this mani. But I'll return to that in a moment.

Most of my Illamasqua polishes are more than a year old because ever since that awful debacle with Royal Mail last year their shipping prices have gone up considerably so I've found myself only wanting to purchase when they have sales - and then I still only buy make-up AKA I haven't bought them in more than a year. So off I went and dug into my Illa polishes for this week's challenge.

Illamasqua Elope       Illamasqua Nomad     GOSH Forest Floor       BarryM Gold Foil

And since my freehand Chevrons sucks big time I decided to try stamping them instead - as if that would make any difference :D

The base for this mani is a "circle gradient" where I applied the polish in a circle like a layer cake diagram and then pressed it on the nails, making sure to get a smooth transistion by moving the sponge in all directions when I applied the polish.

As you can see the chevrons are all wobbly due to the c-curve. When I stamp I can't push the head down enough to get a perfect transfer so instead I have to roll the stamper, which results in these very much curved sides on the chevrons...a loose-loose situatuation.

Hopefully my next stamping session will go more smoothly - and my next GOT challenge for that matter ;)

Remember to check the other awesome manis:

Golden Oldie Thursday #5: Green

So here is my GOT polish post for this week. One of these greens here is actually one of my very old polishes.

Illamasqua Rampage is from 2009 I think. Back when Raindrops was released, I'd read about the three polishes made by fans of the brand at Scrangie's blog - and she had a promo code, so naturally I bought those plus some others, Rampage among them.

For the leafy pattern on my thumb and pinky I used nails inc. emerald street which I got through a lucky dip at their home page two years ago...thank you my british mules for being helpful back then before the horrendous Royal Mail scandal.

I decided to stamp on top of Rampage and to make it pop I picked out my Nubar Reclaim, my first ever Holo back before I really knew what a holo was. And I got it for real cheap at BeautyBay at a time where they shipped fast and had reasonable prices on them. By the way, I used Moyou Pro Collection no. 02.

Attitude Adjust-mint, which is on my ring finger, was in my first batch of Lynnderellas bought through preorder at Llarowe, it was her first shipment in December 2011.

For some strange reason it decided to chip on me less than a day after I did this manicure - and my Dior gel top coat also shrunk Rampage - that's a first for me!!

Mount Yu is the base for the leafy nail art and is an Elevation polish. It is also a "first batcher" - I purchased it back in November 2012.

Hopefully you enjoyed this and hurry on over and check the other girls and their green fingers ;)

Golden Oldie Thursday #3: Blue

Well I'm a blue kinda girl so I have a lot of polishes in that colour spectrum in my stash - and also some that are more than a year old...and some that are untried...

It's been ages since I last wore any of my butter Londons so I thought I'd show it some love here.

I really love doing tape manis but at the moment it is really hit and miss for me. It was slightly off today once again but I really liked the end result so I didn't want to change it. Though I doubt I'd ever get it as crisp as Sarah from Chalkboard Nails who inspired these nails with this mani.

So here it is with those slight faults that I ended up with.

butter London Blagger

Illamasqua Nudge

GOSH Attitude

Are you also a fan of blue polish or does it leave you cold?

And remember to check out the rest of these wonderful blue manis :)

Fancy Friday #18: Purple is Purfect

So everything has been crazy busy in my life, as per usual and that also means I had the mani ready and done but didn't get time to write up this post. But it is not of lack of trying. See I've got this new phone that takes decent pictures and I got Blogger on it - so I've been trying to get it done that way. But since I can't set it in html mode it is no good for my FF post since I need html access for them.

So what I'm doing right now is write up this post on the computer and adding the phone pics from here. Hopefully the pics will be satisfying enough for you :D

I wanted to try out a skittlette mani, I'm quite fascinated by how much you can fill in before it tips the scales. For this I used FeverLacquer Violent Sweet on my thumb and pinkie, Illamasqua Poke with Illamasqua Babtiste lines drawn with a nail art brush, and Kiko 331 striped with GOSH Misty Mauve and fan brushed Girly Bits Daddy's Little Girl on top of that.

I'm quite happy with this - and I love purple so this challenge was awesome for me ;)

Hopefully you guys liked it as well - there are more to come, I think.

Forsinket igen som vanligt men i skal ikke snydes alligevel :D Lilla er Lovely og det kan jeg da lige skrive under på, elsker simpelthen den farve i alle dens afskygninger. Har læst en del om skittlette manier her på det sidste, flere af dem jeg kender eksperimenterer med dem og de ser for fede ud - og vupti skulle der da lige laves sådan en. Er selv ret godt tilfreds ;)

Wednesday Polish Picture Spam

So I realised I had an enormous amount of polish pics floating around but never got around posting them. So this will be my new "regular" posting: Polish Spam on Wednesdays. They will be short and to the point with one or two pictures of each mani and without an elaborate discription. If you want to know anything specific about each mani you are more than welcome to ask away in the commentary thread ;)

Lacquistry Faux Fir, three layers, no undies.



Nostalgic Nail Lacquer Envy, underwear Illamasqua Elope



Nostalgic Nail Lacquer Lust, underwear a-england Iseult.

Nostalgic Nail Lacquer Gluttony, underwear a-england Excalibur