My Manicure Burning Bright

Oh Hague of OPI, you burn so bright,

Your vivid orange is a shining sight,

Covered with patterns of Dashica might,

Their swirls a vision of pure delight,

A thumb full of Metallic 4 Life,

My manicure on this April night.

xoxo


p.s. my inspiration; my dress:

Art d'ongle de Marrakech pour le mois de conscience d'autisme

Today's manicure started with me thinking of cobalt blue for autism awareness month and reminded me of my first holiday with my husband (then boyfriend).  

A few years ago, we went to Marrakech and twice we visited the most lush and beautiful place in the city: Jardin de Majorelle, a house once owned by Yves Saint Laurent, painted in stunning Moroccan colours of cobalt blue and deep yellow .  As well as being the one place of luscious greenery in an arid city with dried out former palace gardens, it was the coolest place to be that hot June and a lovely place to while away some hours reading in the blistering heat.

The blue ended up being an accent rather than the main feature and when "Dating a Royal" by OPI was placed on top of "It Colour" also by OPI, the vibrancy of the colour became a darkened hue.  "It Colour" is much more vibrant and warmer than it appears in my photos so don't trust the colour.  I'll try to catch a daylight image tomorrow with no warm sun as snow is forecast for 7am (boo after last week's glorious sunshine!)

I had imagined a much more complex design but ended up with simple dots to create the trellis of my favourite holiday photograph.  I still like this manicure but I have a feeling I will recreate the photograph another day in another variation on my "ongles."

For now:

Jardin de Majorelle

xoxo


Update: daylight photo! (excuse the dry skin, it has been snowing and the heating wasn't working in my office so this made for a fun day and added to my usual dry skin issues)

Tradition Dictates

Drawing near is "Easter" time,

Not something close to this heart of mine,

But Spring is something I can embrace,

The weather turns, sunshine does us grace,

The flowers spring from out the soil,

Chocolate eggs do our diets spoil,

Decorating real eggs, traditions dictate,

So this is one that I did create.

I always planned to konad on an egg this Easter but we decided to have an egg decorating competition at work so this is my entry (no promotion in my part as a member of the social committee!):

xoxo

A Shade of Brown Upon Some Blue....

Subtle was not the intention here,

The intention was to be quite clear,

In a shade of brown upon some blue,

by Nubar was not my dream come true,

The brown was made by OPI,

Jacques isn't for stamping I do decry,

It certainly picked up well enough,

So that retort is my disappointed guff,

It does stamp very well, thank you Jacques,

So my words I do take back,

My stamping skills I do not rate,

For the print itself is not centred straight,

But the unintentional end result,

Is one in which I will now exult!

So in case you missed my subtle hints, the shade of brown is OPI "You Don't Know Jacques" and my lesser promotion of the blue will have left you in the dark so now is the time to declare it as Nubar "Mod Agua."  

I haven't worn Jacques before so I wasn't aware of it's thin formula.  Hence my surprise at the stamping being so subtle.  I did think about changing the stamping colour to my new China Glaze "Foie Gras" or "Midtown Magic" but I wasn't sure of the colours so I just stuck with Jacques and repeated the stamp on all my digits.  I had originally intended to do a brown and blue skittles look with some pinstripes and polka on other fingers but it wasn't meant to be!  

The Nubar is a lovely colour of aqua blue that I am glad I own.  The other option for my blue was "Electric Beat" but I shall save that for another day!

So this is Mod Agua with Jacues stamping using BM 206 and a french using Jacques:

This started out life without the french, don't my nails look long! I wish my nail beds were long so I didn't HAVE to grow my free edge long to have more of a canvas and to have nicer nails.

I had barely finished my manicure last night when my guests arrived; one of my new colleauges and her husband, to join my husband and I for dinner at a local Chinese restaurant called Chop Chop that I adore and my new friend had wanted to try for ages.  They have an amazing unlimited banquet (not usually my dining option of choice but not a self serve one so acceptable!) and the most delicious dumplings and were apparently in some Gordon Ramsay show about Britain's best local restaurants and declared his favourite as well as winning other awards.  Needless to say I have one of their dining cards where you get discounts and vouchers on birthdays and anniversaries.

My new friend and I think we were separated at birth due to our similarities despite our 14 year age gap.  Truth be told, we have as many dissimilarities as well: what person doesn't like coriander lol!!!! But the freaky coincidence is that we have the same engagement ring which led to seeking other similarities.  When she arrived I had promised her a manicure as well so the polishing began anew.  She is a polish lover already but I have introduced her to seche vite and the nail art/polish obsessive world which I am not sure her husband is thankful for!  For her manicure, I wanted to try some more stamping with my favourite stamp from Konad M71 and I added a french in my Essie "Size Matters":

This weekend also had some adventures in babysitting and a manicure is always required, especially when it is used by mothers to bribe and is requested by the three year old about a hundred and one times!  I normally do polka dots on her but I wanted to see if any stamps would look good on such tiny nails with so I used some of the smallest flowers on Konad M57 and 53 on top of my Essie "Size Matters" to create this:

xoxo

Handbags and (No) Gladrags...

Well, today's manicure is inspired by my new handbag that only my sweat bought me from Dorothy Perkins but Rod's wee ditty seemed apt for today's post.  Especially as I've decided that as poetry is my shtick in other walks of life and as I've used songs in previous posts, that my blog schtick should be music and/or poetry so a song about handbags was appropriate!  There is the stereophonice cover as well but they're Welsh and Rod is Scottish like me so he was the obvious choice even though I'm not exactly a fan!

The handbag:

Onto the manicure: two coats of Zoya "Purity", acrylic navy stripes freehanded and a half moon in OPI "Wooden Shoe Like to Know" and my accent nail rhombus is in Orly "Luxe."

Something odd happened during my manicure today and I'm not sure why.  I topped with Seche Vite and went to try to stamp and my "Luxe" stamp didn't show up well so I quickly removed it with a cotton bud of acetone and topped up with seche vite again. A minute later I tried to stamp in another gold polish and the polish came away from my nail like melted marshmallow!!

Any ideas what went wrong?? Other nails are fine. Thumb had a dent in it so I could see how deep the painting was and it looked a few mm.

I removed it all and started again with only one coat of purity this time and by time I had decided not to stamp at all so I just put on seche vite but when I touch tested it, my stripe moved! I have now repainted the stripe and seche vite has dried it hard but I'm left wondering why it happened.....

It's now feeling hard and smooth after another coat of seche vite but when I took the photos above in the fading sunlight, I didn't show my thumb prominently due to the dented look of it.

xoxo

Eenie, Meenie, Minie Mo....

....too many colours for my fingers and toes!

With twenty-eight bottles bought this year,

(some might call this an addiction dear),

What can a girl do to help her decide?

Which she loves and which she can't abide?

I guess that's why it's come to this,

Swatching them all with a twist,

Well not all, I didn't use my toes,

But here's what I did, anything goes!

So....... although I do know what I am going to paint my nails tomorrow, I have bought the aforementioned twenty-eight bottles of polish so far this year (I know!) and with many untried bottles from last year as well, I decided I might as well be lazy and paint over my current manicure (black lace) with some of them to try out the colours. 

Not exactly conventional for a blogger as most would swatch and show the colours to their full potential to fellow polish lovers.  But I'm not normal (wohoo!) and I don't class myself as a normal nail polish blogger either.  I never intended to swatch polishes for the perusal of others as plenty of others do it so much better (scrangie, vampy varnish, the polishaholic to name but a few) so my mission statement was to paint my nails every week, try out nail art ideas created by others or myself and show them here in case anyone was interested in taking a look.

So here is what I have been up to today:

Ignoring the shoddy painting, I tried out 16 polishes which are from left to right:

• Revlon "Royal" with Barry M "Gold Sparkle" crackle
• OPI "You Don't Know Jacques!" with China Glaze "Midtown Magic"
• Essie "Size Matters" with Nubar "Star Sparkles"
• Essie "Navigate Her" with Essie "Bobbing for Baubles"
• Nubar "Mod Aqua" with Essie "Go Overboard"
• Milani "Purple Gleam"
• Nubar "Hyacinth Sparkles"
• Nubar "Elegant Indigo"
• Nubar "Night Sparkles"
• Essie "Armed and Ready" with Color Club "Gingerbread"

That's all folks! Tomorrow I am going to be testing out a manicure on my cousin for her wedding (codename Peacock) and painting my own nails.

xxx

My Manicures: January 2012

New year, new job and new blog!  Almost up to date with the present!


On new year's day my mother-in-law came over to watch some NFL with my husband (at least being an NFL widow is only on Sundays as my husband isn't a huge fan of real football) and I painted her nails as I am often prone to doing to test out ideas, this time it was a Missoni inspired design in Zoya "Neeka".....

I started my new job with my new year black and gold dotty manicure and my handiwork had not passed without comment (the attention seeker in me was happy at that haha) but two days in and it was time for a change so I took out my Zoya "Kelly" and created a check manicure with some black, white and silver stripers:

Feeding my new addiction, I have bought many polishes (more on my collection some other time) and needless to say that without changing my manicure every day, I have not worn most of them (yet!) so I decided I should stop using that old black Color Club in all my nail art and dig out an untried.  It was the turn of Zoya "Jem" which I was less likely to wear as it isn't my favourite creme finish.  I spiced up my Jem with some dots in Orly "Luxe", a foil finish gold, here it is with and without flash:

Without flash is a truer colour.


Nautical nails are more often seen in the summer but I'm not one for being normal (how boring would that be?!?!) so I took out my China Glaze "First Mate" which is the perfect nautical navy and teamed it with some Zoya "Sooki" for a french manicure with a twist or two; double stripe french, striped accent and Louboutin style "sole" painting:

Next up on my design hit list were some chevrons.  I tried some out using tape a la nailside style and tip but some I did freehand.  These were in Orly "Luxe" and OPI "Russian Navy Matte" over which I put seche vite as the OPI was a bit lumpy and then I mattified the whole manicure with Essie "Matte About You":

I liked the matte look but in the end after a few days I splashed on some seche and tried out my Butter London "Tart With a Heart":

To close out January, it was time for some more little girl manicures at my best friend's when I wallpapered her daughter's new bedroom, her bedroom is lilac and pink but her nails where done in Orly "Sweet Peacock" and Zoya "Avery":

She's always the perfect customer, must have been the fact I started her young!

That's me wrapped up with my round ups! Henceforth I shall post when I paint mine or someone else's nails so much less often.


xxx

My Manicures: December 2011

I had fun this past December with some lovely manicures.  I'd seen lots of festive ideas around to recreate on my own fingers as well as some fairly ordinary designs.


The China Glaze Eye Candy collection was packed full of amazing glitters in Marilyn Monroe inspired names of which I appropriated two for myself: "Some Like it Haute" and "Material Girl".  I used "Some Like it Haute" in this one, my trusty Color Club "Where's the Soiree?" and my new french manicure colour "Innocence" by China Glaze.  I won't be using Innocence again (on me anyway) as it looked too pink against my skin tone in the daylight although it looked okay when I first put it on in artificial light.

  
A week later I was feeling a tad more festive so I decided to try something kitsch with OPI "I'm Not Really a Waitress" and..... Santa Claus!

I was rather enjoying having Santa on my nails (despite the kitsch factor) so I embellished it with a snowflake rather than doing my next plan of snowflakes on all my nails:

It was also time for some babysitting for my best friend, at my place this time so that they could pack to move house, so after some good behaviour a little girl was rewarded with some Xmas nails of her own in Zoya "Holly" and the same OPI I was wearing:

I absolutely adore this song by Sam Sparro (whatever happened to him??) and no wonder, black and gold go together like ramalamalama kadinga kading shoo bop!  Now get that song out of your head and listen to this:

I used "Where's the Soiree?" and China Glaze "Hi Tek" for my black and gold combo. Unfortunately, I fear I have ruined the aforementioned "Hi Tek" due to keeping the bottle half open while dipping a brush in rather than taking a blob out :(  It was a rare find so I'll be sorry if it doesn't recover.

Black and gold had a short shelf life however as I had a friend over for dinner and polish and when I painted a glitter trimmed OPI "Wokka Wokka", I was extremely envious and had to recreate the same in black on myself!  For the glitters I used three: China Glaze's "Nova" and "Millennium" and Funky Fingers "Sand and Stilletos" to create a multidimensional shimmer:

  
A few days later and I had brought out my new Orly artist white water based striper to draw a snowflake (hence the slight tip wear):

Amidst my glitter craze, it was time for a night in Fundee with my cousin for her birthday which always falls on the weekend of a work Xmas night out (incidentally also an early leaving night for yours truly this year) so of course my cousin and her friend got the glitter treatment although I didn't take a photo of my cousin's manicure:

I'm so glad I learned the easy way (I use that word loosely though) to get glitter off my nails.  The first time I wore glitter, I swear that my thumb was about to fall off it was so worn out! But the foil method of allowing remover to soak onto your nail while the foil wrapped on each finger prevents the remover from evaporating works a treat.


For Xmas week, what else was there to wear on my fingers but.....Xmas presents!! I used China Glaze "Emerald Sparkle", Zoya "Demi", CC "Where's the Soiree?" with Northern Lights holographic top coat, CG "Ruby Pumps" and CG "Little Drummer Boy."

I ended the year with my favourite dots for new year and my new job in Color Club "Where's the Soiree?", CG "HI Tek" and OPI "Designer de Better" which of course is that much loved black and gold:

And that was my 2011 folks! 


xxx

My Manicures: November 2011

Good evening this fine Friday on a chilly evening in the burgh.  I have been out with a colleague from my old work and painted her nails before we went out.  It was only a short sojourn so here I am ready to continue with posting my manicures from November last year.  Almost up to date and then I can post what I have been wearing this week and change my manicure tomorrow and post that next week.  I'm enjoying this blogging business! Even if only two people are following me!

In November, it is another good month of the year for me as it is my wedding anniversary and my best friend's birthday and this year she turned 30 so she had a big party and I made her a cake.  Only my second attempt at fondant icing but it turned out really well with a lot of help from my husband and involved us being on our feet for 5 hours cutting out circles and brushing on edible glitter icing!

My first attempt was actually in July when some of us girls made a cake for a colleague in the shape of an Irn Bru can (a Scottish soft drink for those not in the know) and a drink she is addicted to!  A friend on our team had seen a professional cake but it cost over £100 so I suggested we attempt to make it ourselves.  Here is what the can should look like and our version of it, she takes part in  the moonwalk for breast cancer so the figurine I found in the cake decorating shop was extremely apt and she loved the cake:

Irn Bru also made this hilarious advert which amused many of us one year and even spawned a "raoul" ringtone:

Anyway, that's enough about cakes and back to manicures!


This is my first November manicure in OPI "La Pasitively Hot Matte" with lightning bolts (a la nailside) in OPI wokka wokka which barely lasted a day before I covered the whole mani in wokka wokka, only for that to last a day before I drew on a corset accent nail (I guess it was a fickle week!):

I moved onto my new Zoyas next for a "Faye" and "Demi" french and striped look:

It is well known that I have a passion for polka dots and although I don't like kitsch manicures much for myself to wear, I decided that ladybirds (yes, that is what we in Britain call them) were calling my name because they are in my favourite colours and fulfil my dotty dreams:

I used Zoya "Sooki" and Color Club "Where's the Soiree?" for this with Sally Hansen "Sterling" for the eyes.  I loved this so much I kept it on for two weeks!


My next manicure was for the night of the thirtieth birthday party and I decided to try pinstripes to go with my blue dress.  I used a new blue glitter striper which I am never using again after it would not dry and left glitter particles in my seche vite! Grrr!  I was not amused!  The mani also became ragged on the edges after a shower so I only wore this for the night:

My next manicure took longer to perfect but I was much happier with and I wore it a while.  It is China Glaze "Grape Pop" with various shades of purple and mauve used to create a diamond pattern on my ring finger and outlined with a white striper:

I also did a quick and sort of messy manicure on my half sister when she came over for a night of pizza and chat.  I used Color Club "Worth the Risque" and China Glaze "Nova":

And thus November was concluded!  See you next time for my December manicures which will be very festive, without fail!


xxx