Bleugh

Bleugh is the only deserving word,

That this manicure in me has stirred,

A tad disappointed is little old me,

A failed use of laquer to this degree,

Wasting my bottle of Aquadelic by China Glaze,

To create this mani that does not amaze,

It barely even passes muster,

A touch of Northern Lights makes it less lacklustre,

Here it is for you to see,

Take a gasp, it's just a bit ghastly.

As well as sharing this rather rubbish manicure with it's fried eggs plonked atop the aqua blue, I do have some other things to show you today....

My spoils from a polish swap with Sunny from 365 days of color! Thanks again to this lovely lady for the box of goodies! She got me some Zoyas, CC holos, Milani jewel fx and gems as well as Candy Shop by Claire's:

For those who follow me on facebook, you may already have seen what I sent her along with a personalised poem (yep, the last bottle of Fantasy Fire in the shop!) but now that I have received her parcel, mine seems a bit inadequate....

In the last week or so, I have also done some mini manicures on two little girls I know.  One of whom got a new one today as I babysat her for a few hours plus she got her hair crimped as well:

That's all folks!

xoxo

Shades of Grey

The term "shades of grey" has been going around my head since yesterday and I just realised why when I googled it: it's the erotic literature that has been hitting the headlines!  I think I heard it on Chelsea Lately yesterday morning when I had a lie in after an eventful 24 hrs (I went with a friend to A&E as she broke her ankle after our Friday night out) and the snippets I heard of the content I didn't want to stick in my mind (gross) but the title seemed to.  

Today's dotticure could be termed "shades of grey" with it's base of China Glaze "Concrete Catwalk" and dots in Zoya "Trixie", Sally Hansen "Platinum", Color Club "Worth the Risque" and A England "Merlin".

xoxo

Drops of Snow

I meant to do a snowdrop manicure when it was snowdrop season but I clean forgot! However, as snow has intermingled with sunshine of late, this is perhaps a fitting delay.  

Ingredients: China Glaze "Grape Pop" and "Tree Hugger" with Essie "Going Incognito" and Zoya "Purity":

xoxo

Spring Skittle #2

An update on my spring skittle from yesterday.  I've done a whole nail in Essie "Going Incognito" and Zoya "Moxie" and on my index I have added Color Club "Holiday Splendor":

xoxo

The Bright Stripes

I share a love of black, white and red with The White Stripes but I didn't use those colours for this manicure!

I did this manicure yesterday morning on a day I took off work to spend time with my best friend Alice, it may have been sunny all week but we had indoor plans to go to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery which is conveniently located five minutes from my house!

For this manicure I freehanded stripes on a base of Nubar "Classic Camel" with Essie "Navigate Her" and "Armed and Ready" and Zoya "Ciara": 

In the sunshine!

At the gallery:

xoxo

Sparkling American Royalty

As Kennedys go, you have no crown,

 A "pale french beige" is your Zoya noun,

Hardly a nod to the Americans renowned,

But with this mani I announce you crowned.

With magic attraction sparkles I bestow,

atop a coat of Chloe to make you glow,

And with a little lilac foil I trimmed,

Now you're regal to the brim.

So here is today's manicure: Zoya "Kennedy" topped with Zoya "Chloe" flakie top coat and trimmed with Color Club "Foil Me Once" and OPI "Dutch Ya Just Love OPI" as a base for Color Club "Magic Attraction."

Kennedy is a gorgeous pink beige that looks lovely alone but I couldn't leave her that way so I topped with Chloe, which is a lovely way to wear her, but again I was longing for some sparkle so embellishment had to have it's day.

Check out the holo goodness of Magic Attraction:

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

I only wanted to see you laughing with some purple nails...

I never meant to cause you any sorrow,

I never meant to cause you any pain,

I only wanted to one time see you wear me,

I only wanted to see you laughing wearing purple nails.

Purple nails, purple nails,

Purple nails, purple nails,

Purple nails, purple nails,

I only wanted to see you laughing wearing purple nails.

I never wanted to be your weekend colour,

I only wanted to be some kind of friend,

It's a shame you have so many of me,

All of your fingers have to have some purple nails

After my shoddy nails for the wedding I wanted to change them immediately and decided to try out just a few of my purple polishes all in one go!  So without further ado, here we have purple nails......

(L-R): Zoya "Savita,"  China Glaze "Grape Pop," 

A-England "Lady of the Lake," Nubar "Hyacinth Sparkles," and Zoya "Kendal"

topped with some polka Orly "Luxe"

 With flash

No flash

xoxo

What a Wonderful World.....

It was my favourite cousin's wedding on Sunday.  Don't weddings make you come over all happy? Especially when it's someone you love. Best wishes to the happy couple!  I'm singing a bit of Louis although her wedding song was Etta James' "At Last" but both are below for your viewing pleasure :)

So it's been a busy weekend with helping my cousin make her special day wonderful.  One of my jobs was to do some manicures and the weekend before last we tested out some peacock nail art as that is the theme of her two weddings and her hen weekend.  Yes, you heard me: two weddings!  Yesterday was the first of two, one for a religious ceremony for her parents and the second will be in Mauritius in June (I can't wait!).  However on the day, she had to get some gel nails as her own had broken and not grown back yet and she decided once she had her glitter tattoo on her hand and arm, that it was best to keep her nails a simple french.

Thus I was despatched to other tasks and to manicure the other ladies.  I did her sister-in-law, her sister and my sister all by 230am on Saturday night.  No beauty sleep for me for the wedding! And my own was left until the next day in a rush at 12pm, not my best work :(

All glitter tattoos you will see in the photos below were done by a girl called Nadia.  Mine is still stuck hard and fast to my hand through a few showers!

My cousin's swirls in Orly "Luxe" topped with Color Club "Gingerbread" 

and swirls in OPI "Cuckoo For This Color"

Her sister-in-law's swirls in OPI "Cuckoo For This Color" 

with Zoya "Trixie" french and Orly Artist striper in "White":

My sister's in Orly "Liquid Vinyl" with an Orly "Luxe" french topped with

Milani "Gold FX" glitter and Color Club "Gingerbread" holographic glitter:

***Photo to be updated***

My own manicure in Orly "Luxe" and China Glaze "Little Drummer Boy" v gaps:

xoxo

Black Lace

Polishing late at night for no reason other than it's a weekend and because I can :)  We're watching "The Wrestler" while I finish catching my blog up to the present day.


Today I have tried out a polish from the new Zoya Feel collection, "Avery".  I bought the whole Feel collection after seeing them on a few notable bloggers swatch posts (thanks Scrangie, Vampy Varnish and The Polishaholic) and liking most of the colours.  However I think Avery is a tad too yellow for my liking and I should have used my Nubar "Classic Camel" as a nude base instead.  Next time!


I saw this design on a blog but it turned out to be a nail sticker which I thought I could recreate freehand.  I've not recreated it faithfully but the general idea was a circular diagonal french with dotty trim that looked like it was lace.  I hope you like it!

xxx


Update: daylight viewing:

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: October 2011

My first manicure in October was the week of my birthday using my new OPI "Ski Teal We Drop", a beautiful teal that I decided to try stamping on.  It didn't work out too well so I only did an accent nail:

On my birthday itself I changed my nails to a dark red from China Glaze called "City Siren" which I thought would look great on my nails but is a bit too brown toned for me to love it.  I decided to go dotty for my birthday! I loved this dotty effect so much that I wore it for two weeks, I must do it again:

I also got myself a birthday present of six of the muppets collection: Designer de Better, Pepe's Purple Passion, Divine Swine, Gettin' Miss Piggy With It, Wokka Wokka and Meep-Meep-Meep. Ahhhhh, I love the muppets! I didn't get my favourite muppet Kermy's polish but am thinking it might be on the hit list!

After my China Glaze, I had to change it up with a Zoya.  "Envy" this time and somehow it ended up looking like a Xmas manicure:

I had become a devotee of Seche Vite by this time but on this manicure it seemed to cause some shrinkage.


One Saturday afternoon, I invited my half sister over for a pamper party with some friends to do nails and make up with my friend Victoria. She ended up only bringing one friend with her and in the end, I am quite glad! (I'd forgotten what "interesting" conversation you can have with a gaggle of girls aged 12!)  My sister also joined us and despite her disdain for nail art, she let me do a subtle neutral design on her:

The patchwork design looked so nice and a great way to use my more of my growing polish collection so I treated myself to one in Zoya "Sooki", China Glaze "2030" and Color Club "Where's the Soiree?" (it kills me to write "color" like that with my pedantic pants nickname but I guess it is an American company, sigh...)

I ended October with a manicure I didn't like too much as it was a poor effort.  It was my attempt at cherry blossoms but I think my branches were too thick due to using the wrong brush.  I did like them overall so I shall try to recreate it sometime.  I did my cherry blossoms on Orly "Ancient Jade":

My Manicures: August 2011

August in  the Burgh. My favourite time of year.  The Edinburgh Festival is on the whole month and I take in many a show of comedians and the arts and this year I went to the silent disco twice which was in the open air this time, on the road behind the university library at the back of a lecture theatre.  I bet that I never thought I'd be dancing my arse off in Buccleuch Street with a giant pair of yellow headphones on when I was at Edinburgh University at the turn of the millenium!


As promised, better manicures!  My comment on how they always come out better on myself than others proves out with my own next manicure in early August recreating a design of Robin Moses who I discovered on Nails Magazine Art Gallery and then discovered her blog and many others to satisfy my new addiction.  These used polishes by Barry M, Bourjois, No.7 and my first glitter (a Revlon one):

I'm a tad enamoured with Cath Kidston and for those unaware of her existence, prepare to be enlightened.  This is she at her London showroom with some of her wares:

http://www.cathkidston.co.uk

She is the designer of a few beautiful roses prints that are used in clothes, handbags and kitchenware as well as one of my favourite things; polka dots of course!  The polka dot kitchenware I have is actually not by Cath Kidston though as she didn't have much of the red and white variety that I wanted.  I am the proud owner of some of her handbags however in the green polka dots and rambling rose prints and since this past xmas, of her provence rose teaseat (thank you to my husband!).  This is one of her patterns that I replicated on my nails in the second week of August with Revlon and Loreal polishes:

A week later and the most bubbliest person I have ever met, codename K, an intern at my work was yet another guinea pig for a kitsch manicure: cookie monster!  These used two Loreal mocha inspired polishes and a new No.7 blue:

By this time I had discovered that the polish world was awash with those swatching collections of polish released by companies I had never heard of.  I had seen OPI in  the UK but had never heard of China Glaze or Zoya.  Sometimes I almost wish I'd never heard of them actually! BUT these brands are of such good quality that it is blasphemy to say such a thing.  Thus, eBay has been my downfall and I've now spent a fortune and amassed a massive collection of 150 (more on that later haha) and my old polishes have fallen by the wayside.  One of my first forays into this new polish world was China Glaze "For Audrey" (I also bought another of their best sellers at the same time: "Ruby Pumps") and as my sister is often seen sporting a Tiffany scarf, I decided to give her Tiffany box nails:

I actually haven't worn "For Audrey" myself and haven't even touched the bottle! What a travesty! Here I am eyeing up one of China Glaze's new turquoises in the Electropop collection when I haven't even worn this notable member of the turquoise family.  This must be rectified soon.  I spy with my little eye, a "For Audrey" and black geometric pattern in my future..... (hope I don't forget!)


The first of my new polishes that I choose to wear is Zoya "Casey", a gorgeous vampy jelly, which now that I think on it, I have also never worn again! Bad Saima! Here it is when I wore it in August.  It was such a nice finish that I could only bring myself to do nail art on one finger but it was my first attempt at painting a proper flower and it was beautiful (if I do say so myself!) despite some bald patches that showed up with the flash:

August is also when it is one of my friend's birthdays so I invited her to stay at my house on the night that we went out with our mutual friend, my best friend since aged two :)  She laughed at my suggestion that I paint her teeny tiny nails but they were only small, not chewed to bits, so I told her that was no drawback and here is what I produced:

FYI, this picture was taken when we were already out supping cocktails post a peppercorn burger and pre a comedy show that we treated our friend to for her birthday.  We saw the Welsh comedian Mark Watson who I have seen every year for 5 years now, he is a lovely person and incredibly amusing.  Check him out if you get the chance! This was also one of the silent disco nights:

My next manicure was with China Glaze "Heli-Yum" and "Happy Go Lucky" which I did in a rush one morning before work:

My final manicure in August was with Zoya again, the shiny metallic "Trixie" and matte black "Dovima".  My french manicures normally have very straight lines even freehand but this looks a bit bumpy:

This has taken longer than expected transferring photos in date order and adding a watermark etc. but it's been fun! See you tomorrow (I think) for my September manicures!


xxx