Just a quickie tonight to share a recent skittlette mani I created to match a new polish I bought.

I finally grabbed myself my first Hare polish!  I got it from Femme Fatale Cosmetics during their new year sale.  I was very happy with Bisbee 2.0 as my first Hare polish. The formula was great and the colour really pretty.

I created the gradient over two chevron nail vinyls, but after I pulled the vinyls off, I didn't like the stark white of the base colour, so I filled it in with Zoya Solange. I probably should have chose a similar colour in a non-textured polish, because the chevrons looked a bit lumpy. Not my best work, but I still enjoyed wearing it.

I have some lovely scented nail polishes to show with you today from new to me brand Tuff Scent.  I have a trio of polishes which were released as their Valentine's Day collection, containing a cinnamon scented  champagne gold, a rose scented red creme and rose scented clear rose topcoat.

Let's take a closer look.

The bottles are tall and slender with a silver metal cap in the shape of a rose bud. You don't really notice the polish scent when you open the bottle, but you certainly can smell it as they dry.

Kiss is a champagne gold metallic polish that smells like cinnamon.  I even shoved my fingers under my  mum's nose and asked her to have a whiff (which generally I wouldn't recommend you do to someone unless they totally 'get' your 'thing' with nail polish).  Luckily mum totally get's my thing with nail polish, and obliged without thinking I was being gross or doing a stupid pull my finger joke.  She immediate said, mmmmmm cinnamon!

The formula was nice, although the brushes are very long because of the bottle shape, so you need to remember to wipe the wand shaft along the bottle as you lift it out, otherwise you will get a big drop run down that will flood your cuticles  I did three thin coats here. This one is most definitely a 'me' colour, and the colour is really complimented by the scent.

Love is a rose scented, highly pigmented red creme.  This has a slightly jelly finish to it and you can get away with one coat if you don't mind that slightly translucent jelly look. This one is highly pigmented and did colour my nails a bit pink, even through my base coat.  But the staining was easily removed with some Orly Cutique for a few minutes and then a scrub with a nail brush.

The rose scent on this one is quite strong, and most definitely rose smelling. I think rose scent is either one of those smells you love or hate. I'm actually not a huge fan, but my mum absolutely loves rose scent, so I think the rose smelling ones might go live with her.

The set also comes with a clear top coat that is also rose scented, pictured in the top photo. What I really like about it is its presentation. The bottle contains a silk rose petal and leaf. The top coat is super glossy and dries in normal time.

I did two coats of Love here, topped with a coat of rose top coat.

I decided to create some easy negative space nail art with Love, which was made particulary easy because of it's pigmentation. Nail art is always much easier with one coaters.  

Tuff Scent nail polish has a beautiful looking range of polishes with a wide variety of scents, including french vanilla, coconut, jasmine, lemon grass and grapefruit to mention just a few. I love that the scents aren't just the normal perfumery smelling ones and I think everyone would be able to find a scent they like (although matching a scent with the polish colour you like may be a bit more difficult). 

You can see the Tuff Scent range on the Tuff Scent website.

Polishes provided for review.

I created a little underwater scene for this mani. For the base I used OPI Can't find my czech-book. I then layered two coats of Dance Legend flakie Avada Kedevra - which is a green to blue flakie in a very pale blue tinted base.  It is from the Dance Legend Lumos collection and has the small LED light in the cap.

I created the seahorse using Messy Mansion plate MM29, where I stamped in black and while it was still on the stamper, I coloured it in.  Once that was dry, I painted Seche Vite top coat on that nail - counted to 20 and then pressed the stamp onto my nail. The polish is just perfecly tacky at that point and nicely adheres the coloured in stamping design.

On the other fingers I used Moyou Sailor 04 plate and stamped the curly seaweed design on the bottom part of my nail.

I love how this mani shifted between looking green and blue, and the seahorse was a really bright accent. I actually googled seahorse images and discovered that most of them are yellow and orange in colour.

Some products used in this post were provided for review.

Way back in August 2012, I created some print at home water decals using a Mandelbrot Set. It was one of my favourite nail art creations that year.  Imagine my surprise when I was browsing new products on the Born Pretty Store website and I spotted some water decals in another Mandelbrot set design.

For 99c I just couldn't help myself and added them to my order.

I decided to put the water decals over a silver holo so I could get a nice glowing holo flame behind the image. Although I'm sure if I layered it over white it would have shown the colours off to be a little brighter.

This is what the water decals come like.  They are in one sheet with seperate sections for each nail.  To get a perfect fit for my nails, I like to trace around a set of stick on nails that I have set aside for just this purpose. By tracing around them, I'm able to get a perfectly neat and sharp finish to the cuticle edge of the water decal.

I found these water decals easy to work with, and they weren't too thick or thin. But I did find they were too small for my nails.  The largest one wasn't wide enough for my thumb, so I had to cut some of the excess length off and use that down the side of the nail.  The one for my pinky nail was also too narrow, which meant I had a silver holo gap down the outside of my nail.

What you can't see very well on either this photo or my picture, is that the water decals also have gold micro glitter highlights.  They get lost a bit in the holo finish, but would show nicely over a white base.

What I love about using mandelbrot sets in nail art is that they can look very much like multicoloured water marbling, minus the frustration and mess!

These water decals are available from the Born Pretty Store for 99cents, they are item #11339 and this is design 1569.

If you want to get some inspiration for nail art, check out this google image search for mandelbrot sets.

I was playing around with my french tip nail vinyls the other day and was inspired by a mani I saw by @nailsbynemo on Instagram, where she had done a dotticure over vinyls. Her dots were much more spaced apart, and in different colours to mine. 

I started with a white base and place two french tip cured nail vinyls at different angles on each nail. Next, I pretty much did dots on top of dots on top of dots over the top of my nail, including the vinyls, trying not to leave too much white space at all. Once that was dry I decided to stamp over the entire nail.

I used white polish and stamped using a crazy zigzag design from Lily Anna Plate LA08.  I then pulled the nail vinyls off and noticed that I had created a very floral looking design. The stamping on top of dots made it look like I had painted the petal shapes into it.

What do you think? Do you see flowers here or is it just me?

Have you guys tried creating a gradient with textured polishes yet?  This was my first one, and oh boy is it so easy and the gradient so blended!  I just used my normal technique of painting the polish on the sponge and dabbing it onto my nails. But the liquid sand polishes stick so nicely that you don't have to do 10 coats to get a rich depth of colour. I think I only did three quick dabbed coats of polish on the sponge for each of these. Because they are dabbed on they also dry sooooo much quicker than a normal liquid sand /textured polish. It actually has made me consider applying textured polishes with a sponge if I need it to be dry quickly!

The polishes I used were OPi Jinx, I'm Brazil nuts over you and You're so flippy floppy. I stamped using Moyou plate Time Traveller - Back to the 80's 04 XL. I used the two smaller palm trees and stamped them individually at different angles.  You're so flippy floppy just glows!

Now that I finally have some internet back up at home, I'm able to share with you my swatches of the OPI Brazil Beach Sandies.  The Beach Sandies come in a collection of four mini polishes, which are not available individually.

I actually love mini bottles like these. I'm the sort of person that doesn't wear the same colour over and over again, so the mini size is perfect for me - I guess that happens you have enough bottles of polish that you could wear a different colour every day for three years and still not repeat one!

I'm Brazil Nuts Over You is a red leaning coral pink with a purple shimmer. The purple shimmer actually shows quite well with the textured finish. I used two coats, but it took a good 20 minutes to dry well enough for my liking.

What's A Little Rain Forest? is a bright aqua blue with silver shimmer. Opacity is good, but again it took a while for this to dry down to it's best textured finish. This is two coats.

Samba-dy Loves Purple is described as a violet, but to me it's quite pink. It's one of those shades that can look more pink or more purple depending on your skin tone. This is two coats.

You're So Flippy Floppy is an uber bright yellow. Now I'm a big fan of gold polish, but this isn't gold - it's definitely yellow. I normally don' t gravitate to yellows like this, but it is the second time that I've chosen a yellow as my favourite polish from an OPI collection (the last one was with I can't cope-acabana from the Brazil collection). Formula was good, but opacity is a little lighter. I still only did two coats, but you can see a very slight nail line. I really love this one and have already paired it up with I'm Brazil Nuts Over You and Jinx for some textured nail art coming soon.

I've already mentioned that these took a a bit of time to dry on me. It may have been they very hot and humid 38 degree weather we had when I swatched these though, so don't take my word for how long they took to dry.

The OPI Brazil Beach Sandies are available at selected salons and David Jones in early February and in Myer stores later in the season. For your nearest OPI Stockist call 1800 358 999 or visit www.opi.net.au.

Polishes provided for consideration.

Last week, Anutka from Wacki Laki created the most spectacular nail design. The moment I saw it I knew I had to recreate it and now that I have worn it, it has become possibly my most favourite manicure ever. It incorporates my two absolute favourtie things with nail polish, gold and rainbow!

I recreated her mani using almost the exact same polishes and nail art supplies.  I used China Glaze Mingle with Kringle as my gold base. I used black polish and stamped with the same image from Bundle Monster BM-422.

I had just received the multicolour glequins from the Born Pretty Store, so I also had the exact same glitters. Using dabbs of top coat, I applied a rainbow of hex glitters into each cell of the honeycomb design. Because my stamping placement isn't perfect, I did need to cut some of the glitters for the edges and this also meant I could fit in an extra row of colour

Whist this was one of my favourite manis, it also took close to the longest times for finishing a mani. To complete all ten nails from bare nails to the last layer of top coat, it took me nearly one and a half hours!

Oh, and if you think this looks pretty in the photos, then gawd dam you should see it in real life! It reminds me of some sort of tall, ornate bottle with a cork in it, and if you polished it a genie would come flying out.