My Manicures: September 2011

# Do you remember? Dancing in September! #

Ah yes, September, I remember you well: starting my birthday countdown, having a polishing good time, some babysitting, some cuppitycake with my cousin.... Earth, Wind and Fire not so much haha.  


I got myself some more Zoya, this time treating my fingers to some Lola love.  In honest truth, I get Lola love quite often as my new cat Lola arrived around the time of the royal wedding and gives me lots of love (when she feels like it!) and I think I love her back even though she is a bit annoying with this insistence of making one of my other cat's life a misery and peeing everywhere but her little half Siamese face and teeny body is cuteness itself so I shall forgive her.

The polish version of Lola also deserves more than one picture as flash showed the brightness to her real potential:

I was attempting to recreate a konad design I'd seen but before long I decided to buy some konad and bundle monster plates and try my hand....let's just say I wanted to love stamping but it has never really worked for me for some reason.  I have read blogs and followed tips from konad queens but my stamper won't pick up the polish.  It managed to work once in September and once in October but I have not been successful since and those plates are now gathering dust in my polish parlour.


Here is my September effort; OPI opi yoga-ta get this blue with some Zoya Trixie konad:

My cousin came to visit in September around the time of her birthday, see if you can guess her name from this song:

Although this is not traditionally the song we sing with her name, it is normally this one:

Here is Mona with her manicure on her munched on nails wearing Zoya Jana and a Chanel gold:

The next night I tried on some new China Glaze with First Mate and Zoya Sooki for some nautical nails:

I had heard on the grapevine that grey was good these days so I bought some Zoya Kelly and gave myself a french manicure with Nars pink.  As lilies are my favourite flower and as these days, I can't have lilies in the house for fear of killing my cats with a painful death, my nails would have to do! This lily didn't look like much as I painted it but it came together quite well in the end: 

I had also heard that mattes were marvellous so I got some Essie matte about you to try mattifying my polishes and Zoya Posh which lasted quite well on me given I had no top coat on:

My final manicure of the month was China Glaze Emerald Sparkle that I couldn't resist embellishing a few days after I had her on:

I also babysat my best friend's daughter who is as old as my marriage and she is always promised a manicure by her mother as a bribe for good behaviour (the things you have to do eh?!) I seem to recall having my fingers pointed at quite a few times in desperate attempts for me to hurry up and get my polishes out.  This is what I came up with on the almost three year old in all China Glaze:

Time for bed, gym in the morning at 6am :O


xxx

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

More Early Days....

I was going to take the time to separate out all my manicures from the last eight months into many individual posts but I think grouping them is best so here are some more early days of Saima's Salon....


I had a sleepover at my half sister's with her best friend in the summer and of course some polishing had to be done.  I needed the practice after all!  They were 11 while I was 33 but despite the age gap, we had a great time and I tried to get them to watch Grease 2 (somehow they weren't as taken as I was with the film... :O.)  Here are the manicures I messily created:

Soon after an afternoon tea session with my best friend meant some more polishing but she wasn't keen on anything too avant garde so a simple flower on blue it was:

My half sister was again my guinea pig for some spots and stripes but I forgot to take a photo, hence this webcam photo she posted on facebook:

I do love polka dots (as evidenced by my kitchen full of red and white dotted mugs, tea towels, biscuit barrel, my lunch box and the many polka dot dresses I love to wear!) so some for me as well, I wore these for two weeks including to a job interview in June where I am now working since January:

A summer weekend in Fundee with my cousin to welcome her to her new flat with her new flatmate and old friend means what else: more guinea pigs! The perfectionist in me is so disappointed with these efforts and almost didn't want to include them but the truthfulness within will include them to show my poor efforts.  Somehow my manicures on myself are always better than on others but this seems to be the last of the messy manicure months....

Better manicures will follow!


xxx

The Early Days....

Around April 2011, I finally hauled some more of my stuff from my mother's to my marital home and one of the main things was my polish collection.  I knew I had lots of polish even though I left some unwanted bottles behind but I decided to line it up and count it out. I made it about 40 and an IKEA box to store them in was deemed fit. Poor soon to be forsaken 40 polishes....

With the addiction known as facebook, I had started to occasionally post photos of my painted nails but they were all plain colours or my first foray into a polish adventure: coloured french tips.

An old Loreal turquoise to match with Tigger:

One of my first Barry M polishes:

Nars pink with Barry M orange tips (I loved this at the time!):

My second Barry M polish, a yellow with multicoloured tips (some called it a bit loud but I loved it!):

                                      

I admired my nails wherever I was.....

The next manicure used one of my new nail art stripers to embellish plain Bourjoise red and Maybelline black tipped nails (you can see my box of Rio nail art pens on the coffee table):

With these nails, I also discovered that I was now "vain" enough to not want to break my nails. I say "vain" only in so much as girls who complained about broken nails were so pathetic but as I went bowling that week, I found myself hoping I wouldn't break my nails and ruin my manicure (obviously I was nothing like one of those vacuous girls with nothing else to worry about but broken nails and calories, I had a brain for goodness sake but still....(now of course it matters even more!)) 

In those pre-blog reading days, I thought I was so original with my triple stripe Wimbledon nails (done freehand):

I recreated the look in shades of gold and mocha on a visiting colleague from Mumbai:

I was experimenting a wee bit by the time it came to my own next manicure and again I recreated it on my colleague Kiran on a day trip to Loch Lomond (what else is there to do post picnicking??):

 

Playing with my nail art pens, some embellishment was called for so along came my first attempt at a dotted flower:

I was liking this dotting malarky so off I went:

It was around then that I discovered Nails Magazine's art gallery for sharing my photos and nail bloggers with amazing colours, brands and designs.  I was in love! Next stop ebay!

xoxo