I'm a little late posting this look today, and unfortunately it's the last cocktail design I have cause I didn't get around to painting five designs.  But at least I'm leaving you with a really pretty one.

I ended up wearing this all week and I'm so impressed with how closely the colours matched the drink.  Again I ended up googling pretty cocktails, and this was one that popped up a lot. It's called a Paradise cocktail, and I'm pretty sure I drank a few of these when we went to the USA in 2018 and went to the Caribbean. 

Today's nails are something pretty extra. In fact I wouldn't be surprised to see these nails appearing on the "That's It, I'm nail Shaming" facebook group. That would really be an achievement for me.

Honestly, I don't know what I was thinking. I had a beautiful vertical purple and blue jelly gradient, and for some stupid reason I thought, I'm going to use gel polish to try make 3D ice cubes, plus add some white frost to really make that ice look authentic.  I'm Sorry! *shaking my head*

Needless to say, these didn't stay on very long.  Luckily I put on a peel off base and they were gone quick smart.  

Shame away ladies, shame away!

Have you ever tried a Sweet Poison cocktail? Well me neither, but is sure does look pretty!  Plus it makes for amazing nail art inspo. 

I know, it's probably a little too simple to really classify as nail art, it's only a basic gradient after all. But don't these colours just look gorgeous together.  On the tips I sponged two different shades, a blue and a purple, and looking at this you could almost say it looks like some of the fancy thermal polishes some Indie brands are coming out with.  In different lighting sometimes the blue shows more, other times the purple sparks are there. 

Please make sure you check out the other participants from the Digital Three. There used to more than a dozen of us, but over time most people have stopped blogging. Let me know if you are a blogger who is interested in joining our group. We aim to post 5 manis on a set theme once each month, and we'd love to have some more participants

Well hello there!  It turns out that my blog is still here and I can still post to it.  Whether anyone is reading it is a whole different question.

That sure was a very fast 4 months!  

It's been one hell of a ride over the summer down under.  As I'm sure just about the whole world knows, we had a lot of bush fires ravaging the country, and they have been burning since well before I did my last post. In fact in November we drove up to Queensland and I remember that the Highway was closed the night before we drove up because of fires.  It was just heartbreaking driving through the forests that were nothing but char.  I'm so sad or all the animals.

The other thing we have been really struggling with is air quality.  Since late November, my town of Canberra has routinely been listed in the top 5 worse cities for air quality in the world.  We all bought P2 masks to try limit our exposure.  So with the fires and smoke, we have also had massive heat waves, with day after day over 40C and of course the drought.  

But if that wasn't enough we also had a massive super cell storm bust through Canberra in mid January.  The storm couldn't have picked a more destructive path.  It basically passed through three major town centers where there are thousands of cars parked in open car parks during they day.  I've never seen a storm like it in Canberra.  Even my mum who has lived here for more than 50 years has never seen a storm like it.  The hail was larger the golf balls. Our 5 year old Mazda CX9 was written off, which meant we were forced back onto our motorbikes to commute to work. Usually that's not too bad, except when riding in the aforementioned 42 degree heat.  We had insurance, which was paid out last week and we were quick in to buy a new car, knowing that there will be lots of people looking, we didn't want to wait to see prices rise.  They have estimated about 30,000 cars damaged or written off.

Throw in Christmas, New Year, Miss 9's birthday, plus massive changes at work where the Prime Minister decided to merge a bunch of departments including the one I work for. This had a huge impact on my work life balance, with so much extra work to be done to set up websites, intranets, HR systems etc for a new merged department.  

When I look back at the last four months, I certainly can see why I didn't do any blogging.  However, there wasn't a single day that went past where my nails were naked.  They didn't have nail art on them all the time, but were always painted and looking on point.  As a result, I have so many mani photos that need editing and posting.  Wanna see some Christmas designs anyone?

This weeks theme for the Digital Dozen was a fun one, being Cocktails.  I did plan on drinking one of each mani that I created, but sadly that didn't eventuate.  I've also discovered that cocktail inspired designs make excellent gradient nail art inspiration.

For my first look, I did was inspired by a Tequila sunrise.  I even garnished my nails with a cherry and the orange slice, just like the inspiration picture.  I should be back tomorrow night, as I have at least a couple of designs to share.

Here is the final ook for this week in my five days of fluid art.  I was going for a rainbow look, and used the Pipedream A Night in Vegas polishes as they always look so fantastic together.  The final look ended up very pink looking, and the cooler blues and greens didn't really come through much.

I used my own mixed up bottle of clear fluid art polish, made using the quirt of Garnier Fructis Sleek and Shine serum.  But this time I did a slightly another new technique when I used a stamper to smoosh a pool of polishes, but the difference was that I used the black flat side of the stamper. The flat side doesn't end up making a gap in the center like a regular domed stamper.

Are you ready for another fluid art design. I hope so, because I've been enjoying these so much recently I think I will continue to participate in the #Fluidartfridays and find the group that sets the colour palette each week.

Today I chose to go with a Halloween theme with the colours of green, orange and purple.  This was also my first attempt at creating my own fluid nail art polish.  I mixed up my own clear polish and added a full squirt of Garnier Fructis Sleek and Shine. Yep, you read that right, I added a pump of hair serum into my polish.  I read about this on instagram from a number of different posts and thought I would try it myself.  Some people said that it's the silicone in hair serum that make it creat the cells, but I'm not so convinced.  That's because I also tried making my own fluid art polish with silicone spray.  We have plenty of cans of silicone spray around the house because we use it on our pool pump and equipment.  I tried spraying some of the silicone into a small tube and let it settle and evaporate for a while. But when I mixed it with the polish I didn't find that it made any cells.  I wonder if its the Moroccan Argan oil in the hair serum that works?

Can you tell that I'm having lots of fun trying out different polishes and techniques for fluid nail art?

This time I have used the Sinful colors transforming polishes in Purpunk, combined with a pastel pink and black polish.  The technique I used this time was to paint random dots down on my silicone mat and then use the zip side of a zip-lock bag, and carefully drag it across the polishes.  I managed to get some good cells again using this technique. 

It's day two for the colours that collide prompt and I have a really crazy fluid art design to share with you today.  For this design, I again used some of the Sinful Colors Hypnotic Transforming top coats. But instead of just one, I used two. A red and a blue. I also use a regular white polish for this look too.

I used a different technique with these polishes. Rather than using a stamper to squish the drops of polish, I just piled up the colours on top of each other like a water marble, except on the silicone mat. Then I picked up the mat and swirled the polishes around letting the run into each other and all around the mat.  The end result was this crazy look with lots of cells splitting and showing the colours underneath.  I totally love how this came out.