Other mani inspired by one I saw on Instagram, this time by @kgrdnr aka www.lacquerstyle.com.  

I started with a layer of base coat, and when then was try I taped off the two vertical stripes on each nail.  I then painted my nails using OPI DS Fantasy.  DS Fantasy is an outstanding one coater, so after just one coat I pulled off the striping tape and then added top coat.

Next I applied two thin coats of Dance Legend Cany Flakes Sun Still Sleeps.  Sun Still Sleeps has a bright blue jelly base and is full of red to green colour shifting flakies.  To finish the mani I added a stripe of matte top coat down the flakie, cause everyone knows flakies look better mattified.

I really loved the matte/glossy mix together with the negative space design.

Happy Friday everyone. Got any plans for the weekend?  We are getting a new sofa delivered on Tuesday so this weekend we are moving our existing sofa out of the lounge room and doing a massive clean up. Vacuuming, shampooing, removing those balls of stuff in the corner that are some odd mix of cat hair and dust - yep, you know what I mean!  So it's an exciting weekend ahead for me - I must make sure I put a few extra layers of top coat on for extra tough cleaning nails!  Nothing like starting winter with a big spring clean.

Tonight's mani features one of my favourite technique combos, gradient with stamping.

The gradient was created using two Dance Legend holographic shades Optic Illusion (the darker shade) and Teleportation (the pale lilac)  The stamping design is from Messy Mansion plate MM13 - which has a range of Arabian themed designs.  This one looks like you are looking through an intricate glass window out over an Arabian city scape.

You wont find me wearing pink polish very often, but this Dance Legend glitter topper just made me feel like wearing pink.

Dance Legend Accio is a glitter top that contains satin hexes in white, pale pink and red.  It also has a bright fuchsia shimmer. 

I wore Accio over a pink to red gradient, which ended up looking like a pink to hot pink instead
(especially when compared to the orangey red of the satin hexes).  I sponged the glitter topper onto my nails as I've found that is the best way for me to get plenty of glitter into the gradient without creating thick and chunky tips.

I've actually remembered to paint a mani for this months theme of The Lacquer Legion, which is Garden. For my inspiration I walked out into my garden and had a look around.  What did I see? Lots of bare looking trees, no flowers on any bushes and certainly no spring blooms.  Plus, lots and lots of falling leaves.  This made my choice of nail art pretty easy.

I chose the leaf plate from Bundle Monster BM-H11 and created stamping decals.  My base polish is Dance Legend The New Messiah and I coloured in the leaves with OPI Big Apple Red, I can't cope-a-cobana and Jade is the new black.

I'm going to head to be early tonight so not much chit chat here, sorry.  I was up way too late last night trying to record and then edit a video tutorial.  My set up really sucked, but I was innovative to make things work. My setup included my iphone taped to a tissue box - so it was pretty high tech stuff! Although I'm going to save that story for another blog post because... I need to go to bed early.

This isn't my neatest work and my clean up leaves a lot to be desired, but this mani was something I slapped on really quickly one night to ensure I didn't have naked nails the next day at work.

Base polish is JOSS Oh So Natural Nude, the black tips are Ulta3 Black Satin and the stamping polish is Mundo de Unas Black using Messy Mansion MM42 Lace plate.

This mani did not turn out anything like what I was planning to create, but that's not to say I didn't love it in the end.  I was originally just going to have blue with a silver arched frame, but then I decided to add another arch of silver, and then inside that I did another arch of blue and then I just had to finish the whole pattern off with more and more arches.

So while the mani probably looks like I just painted either blue or silver arches on top of the other, I didn't.  Instead it's five concentric arches getting smaller and smaller.  It's a similar idea to the step up mani I did, except without the layers of jelly polish in between.

The two polishes I used are OPI Push and Shove and Picture Polish Swagger.

I told myself that I never needed to purchase thermal polish given I could franken up pretty much any ones I wanted using the thermal colour changing pigments I showed more than year ago. But of course mixing something yourself takes precious time that I have very little spare, so when I received a voucher to spend at Femme Fatale Cosmetics, I picked up a range of polishes that I wouldn't normally have purchased.  Yippee, this meant I was able to try new indie brands too.  This polish falls into that category.

Polished by KPT - Kelvin Blue changes between a silvery pale blue (warm) to a periwinkle blue (cold) jelly.  There is also a fine scattered holo finish.

I didn't bother with any hand dunking in water action to show the colour changes, as you can easily google of other swatches of those, instead I just left the polish alone to show how it looked on me in it's natural state.

As you can see, there is a light colour change on the tips of my nails, but also that different fingers of mine were different temperatures.  My pinky was rather cold and my thumb was very warm.

I did some double stamping inspired by a similar look by Bettina's Nails.  I used Emily de Molly stamping plate EDM03 and stamped with black using the geometric design and then stamped in white using the circle design.

I went missing there for two days, did you notice?  Probably one of the longest blogging breaks I've had here for a very long while.  I've been knocked out with an acute bout of tonsillitis since Wednesday night. Only this afternoon did I start to feel any semblance of normal again - yay for antibiotics! I was so sick I didn't even play with polish at all! No swatching, no nail art, nuffin, nada.  Thats when you know you are really sick! But I do have some photos ready that I did last weekend.

Tonight I have swatches of the Contrary Polish On the Rocks collection.  This was a winter 2014 collection, which meant it was released in about December or January. But I only recently got my hands on the collection, which is perfect timing with it just coming into winter here in the southern hemisphere.

Almandine - an oxblood red base with gold to green color shifting shimmer. The green shift was a little shy to come out for me, but the shimmer is so intense - check out the macro to see all the colours in that shimmer!  Lovely formula and opaque at two coats.

Dioptase - bluish green with antique gold and green shimmer.  This is a beautiful teal green shade and the shimmer is like tiny glass flecks.  I used three thin coats with top coat.

Fluorite - blurple with green to pink color-shifting shimmer.  Be still my heart.  Just look at how gorgeous this one is.  It looks like it has sapphire blue glass flecks as well as that shy colour shifting shimmer. This was three coats with top coat.

Graphite - muddy grey jelly with varied shimmer/micro-flakes - gold, silver, pink, grey. Because of the jelly finish this one has a really squishy look to it, and even at three coats the very tips of my nails have that sheer edge.  All the different micro-flakes in this really make it sparkle.

Obsidian - purple near-black jelly with green to blue color-shifting shimmer.  This one is another absolute stunner!  I did three coats to ensure total opacity, but the dark purple jelly base is just the perfect balance of tint and shimmer.  I was able to see the colour shift the most in this polish.  In direct light the shimmer is a sparkling green.  With the lighting from an angle the shimmer is a mix of purple and blue.

Tiger's eye - a bronzy brown with metallic gold shimmer.  This is such a gorgeous golden brown, and it is just perfect for the last day's of Autumn here down under.  The shimmer is so intense but the polish is still totally smooth.  This is two coats with top coat.

Contrary Polish is available from these stockists. Carrie also sells minis through Contrarypolish.com. You can also keep up with Contrary on Facebook & Twitter.

Polishes provided for consideration.