Black, White and Red All Over....

What's black, white and red all over?

A zebra that doesn't know how to put lipstick on

......boom boom!

Today's manicure is one I will be sporting at a charity pamper party I have organised on Friday night.  It uses my Dashica Big B plate for the first time for the dogstooth stamp which I decided I prefer to the new Bundle Monster version as it's smaller.  The polishes used are Zoya "Sooki", Zoya "Purity", Color Club "Where's the Soiree?" and for the leaves of my roses I used OPI "Jade is the New Black" and China Glaze "Treehugger".

Not many tickets have been sold for the event at my work while I've been on my holidays to Mauritius and Dorset but one of the girls has extended the event to friends so we may muster up a few folk! We shall see!  One of my friends is doing make up and we have some stalls promoting portrait photography and dance classes.  Hopefully we will be able to raise some money for the charity Arran Brown Rainbow Foundation and I will have some manicures to show you on the weekend.

xoxo

Wedding Belle

The countdown to Mauritius continues! And today I tested out some manicures for the wedding belle, my cousin, which I will be doing for her big day!

xoxo

Jubilee Jack

I am a little impressed with myself for my Jubilee Jack nails, even if I do say so myself!


So, with a little fanfare, I present Jubilee Jack!

I've wanted to do union jacks at some point so the Queen's Jubilee seems apt, even if I'm not getting a long long weekend :(  My new job doesn't give bank holidays (just accrues them into holidays) so I have a few spare days to use in December I guess!

For this manicure, I used the following polishes:

Zoya Purity

Zoya Sooki

Sation Midnight Kiss (a tad difficult for nail art but a lovely colour)

xoxo

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

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

I'm springing into Easter with this skittle but I think it will be gracing my hands for one day only!  I'm not too keen on two of the fingers so I think I shall swap three of them tomorrow.....

In this manicure, I used the following:

Thumb: China Glaze "Laced Up" with Zoya "Purity"

Index: Zoya "Kirsten" with Konad butterfly in Konad white

Middle: Color Club "Lavendarling" with Orly "Blue Collar", Laced Up, CG "Grape Pop" and "Happy Go Lucky"

Ring: Essie "Navigate Her" with a L'oreal frosted pink, Zoya "Ciara" and Essie "Going Incognito"

Pinky: Nubar "Mod Agua" with Orly striper.

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