Tuesday, May 31, 2016

by Kitties26 on Tuesday, May 31, 2016 3 comments

What I've been wearing swatch spam

I haven't edited any of my nail art photos, so instead tonight I have a bunch of photos of different polishes I've worn over the last six months.  Some my nails are long, some they are shorter, but none have nail art - shock horror. People at work always wonder what is wrong when I don't have nail art on my fingies!

Colors by Llarowe - Blonde Ambition. I've shown this before, but it is a colour that I do just love wearing so it's gets out of the helmers a fair bit!


Emily de Molly - Claire Bear. Geez, I wore this one ages ago. In fact it was December last year. I remember because I chose this polish to match the suit I wore for a job interview for the role I was acting it. I got the job so I love this polish.


Pretty Serious - Daphnie after dark. I had this polish for ages but only wore it two weeks ago.  I put this on the night before my son went into the hospital to have his tonsils and adenoids removed.  I knew I was going to be in there for a few days, so wanted something sparkly to get me entertained.


Pretty Serious - Dragon's Curse. I think I wore this back in about January or February. My nails were shorter and the shimmery gold pastel green was just perfect for the warmer months. The formula on this polish is just superb and the combo of the mint and gold is just so fresh.


 Crows Toes - Jutunheim. I bought this with the birthday voucher that my bestie local nail gals bought me last birthday from Femme Fatale Cosmetics.  This one has to be seen to be believed.  Its a purple jelly with different gold and gold holo glitters.


 Pretty Serious - Eye of Copernicus.  This is just to die for perfection. the glassy smooth deep inky blue base is the perfect opacity to hold the small silver glitters, that glow blue because of the jelly base.  This is a perfect starry night look with exactly the right size glitters. I'm so glad I got this instead of the rebooted Essie Starry Starry Nights.


Picture Polish - Rose. This one I wore just last week.  Picture Polish just released five new shades and they kindly sent me them all to play with. I've got some nail art with this one coming up, but thought I would put the swatch in here with the others.


This one isn't nail art, but it sure made me laugh. I've had this for at least a year and have been reaming to post it but never had the reason to. So today I'll just post it without reason.

I've have a bunch of these blank nail templates printed out, for when I need to plan out a mani.  I found that my daughter had used it as a colouring sheet and used various sharpie pens to create different designs. So adorable!


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Saturday, May 28, 2016

by Kitties26 on Saturday, May 28, 2016 1 comment

Hot pink stripes and other hot pink nail art

I'm still slogging it out for the '40' Great Nail Art Ideas - 52 week challenge, which we are now well past half way on.  In fact we only have 4 months left, which in the scheme of things is not much.

This week's prompt is hot pink and my individual prompt was stripes. I used some narrow and wide nail vinyls, and whilst I do like the mix and match of the widths, I think I prefer the narrow stripes and wish I'd done them all in the narrow stripes.

The base colour is Pretty Serious Fluffykins from the Pastel Pet names collection that launched for general sale today, and the stripes are done with Pretty Serious The Pink One.  

For a gal that doesn't wear much pink, I really like this one. The Pink One is such a great shade, I love every mani I've used it in.






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Tuesday, May 24, 2016

by Kitties26 on Tuesday, May 24, 2016 2 comments

Manis for Rose from Manicured and Marvelous

A group of bloggers got together over the last few weeks to re-create a mani done by Roselynn of Manicured & Marvelous who has been having a rough time health wise recently. Roselynn is a fellow Digital Dozen girl and if you don't already follow her blog or instagram, you should, cause she posts great nail art and beautiful swatches. 

I went way back through Roselynns instagram archive and found this sweet and delicious cherry manicure from October 2014 to recreate.  I used different polishes, but the overall look was the same.  Be sure to check out the other manicures in the inlinks below, because I'm pretty impressed to see that none of us chose the same design to recreate.







2 comments

Saturday, May 21, 2016

by Kitties26 on Saturday, May 21, 2016 2 comments

Nail art ideas for Music

Have you noticed that I've dropped the "40" from my blog post titles for this year long challenge now?  I've decided that using 40 in the title is misleading and false given that now only about half the number of girls are participating.  Check out the inlinkz, I bet the final number is closer to 20 than 40.  

Anyway, this week's prompt for the '40' Great Nail Art Ideas challenge is Music, a pretty easy prompt really, especially after tackling a whole week of 'whimsy' last week.

For this very simple mani I actually started with a basic French. I don't remember when I last did a french manicure.  I did they white tip using some tip guides and then did two coats of OPI Don't touch my tutu, for that soft milky see through look.

To finish it off with a music theme, I stamped some music bars onto the french tip.  The stamping image is from Konad M73 plate.

The day after putting these on, which was also the day before I took my son to hospital this week to get his tonsils out, I had a massive break on my ring finger.  I literally took off the entire white tip of this mani. I was pretty pissed that I broke it, and I just caught it on a blanket for goodness sake.  Would you believe for the couple of days I was at the hospital with my son that I actually stuck on a false nail so it didn't look so hideous.  No one else noticed of course, except it was so huge and wide compared to my other nails that it felt like it had a flashing neon light on it drawing everyone's attention to it.  I have since built out a tip using gel polish and acrylic powder, lets see how long that last for.






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Thursday, May 19, 2016

by Kitties26 on Thursday, May 19, 2016 4 comments

Pretty Serious - Pastel Pets Names Collection watermarble and swatches.

I've been MIA for several days.  My son had his tonsils and adenoids out on Tuesday and has been pretty knocked about by it.  But now that he is home from hospital, and I have some time off work to care for him, I'm able to sneak in some cheeky blog posts and nail swatching!

I don't buy much polish these days.  The crazy days of me buying every collection I saw are well behind me now.  These days I only buy a whole collection if they really talk to me.  Once again, Pretty Serious has done it for me, just like they did with metallic collection at Christmas time last year, where I saw the collection and knew I had to get them all.

My immediate reaction when I saw them all lined up together is "I have to try these in a water marble".  Of course water marbling is a very fickle business, and whether it's going to work for you isn't, in my opinion, anything to to with your skill, it's all about the polish you use.  So my question was then, will these new polishes from Pretty Serious water marble like I want them to?  Clearly the answer to that is YES!

I used all six colours for my flower patter watermarble. Aint it pretty! I've done pastel water marbles before, using my own polishes that I've mixed up, but I love that the Pretty Serious pastels are stronger and brighter pastels that the ones I already have.





Now for some swatches of each of the different colours. The forumla on all of these was excellent, two coats of perfectness - including the yellow.  These swatches show two coats plus Seche Vite top coat. I'm kicking myself now that I haven't got some of the original bright Pet name polishes too.

Bunny Foo foo - a cool blue leaning creamy mint shade.


Cutie Patootie - mid toned lavender purple.


Doodle bug - a mid toned aqua blue, the brightest shade of the bunch.


Fluffykins - classic fairy floss (or cotton candy for you US readers) pink.


Little duckling - soft pastel yellow, a really pretty and wearable yellow.


Peachie poo - creamy pastel peach.


I bought these during the pre-sale, but they will be available for general purchase from 28 May 2016 via the Pretty Serious website.
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Saturday, May 14, 2016

by Kitties26 on Saturday, May 14, 2016 7 comments

The Digital Dozen does Whimsy - Neon butterfly pond mani

I'm very happy with myself and feeling ever so clever, because I managed to combine my two nail art challenged for today into one mani.  Digital Dozen's theme of whimsy and the 40 Great Nail Art Ideas weekly challenge, where the theme was neon and my personal prompt was stamping.

I could have also joined a nail art challenge for gradient as well as pond mani, cause this mani has so much going on.

I used the Dance Legend Aquarelle top coats for my gradient and stamped various butterflies between the gradient layers.  I think I did about five or six layers, which in hindsight was probably too many, because the layers of butterflies tend to over lap too much, but I can still make out the different layers.




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Thursday, May 12, 2016

by Kitties26 on Thursday, May 12, 2016 7 comments

The Digital Dozen does Whimsy - Neon bubbles

It's day four of the Digital Dozen Whimsy week already and today I've gone with a much more abstract approach to the theme.  The definition that google gives us for Whimsy is "playfully quaint or fanciful behaviour or humour".  So while I couldn't show a behaviour on my nails, I could sure show a playful and imaginative design, which would surely fit the theme as well.  

This nail art was so fun to create, especially the part when you use nail polish remover on your nails to make the design magically appear.  To create this look you need gel polish.  I used a white gel polish base by Australian brand Gelicious.  You will also need a gel top coat, again I used the Gelicious Ulta Glaze top coat.

The idea is that you paint a design on your white gel base (I did a bit of neon sponging) and then you apply dots of clear gel polish.  After curing it, you use polish remove to remove the polish that isn't protected by the top coat, thus making it white again between all the bubbles.  I really want to do this again with smaller dots and maybe some stamping as well as a gradient beneath the bubbles.  I also want to try it with darker shades like a black base and then multichrome bubbles.  Oooohhh so many designs to try and only ten little finger!





I'm just off to finish editing my video for this, so make sure you jump over to instagram and check it out.
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Wednesday, May 11, 2016

by Kitties26 on Wednesday, May 11, 2016 6 comments

The Digital Dozen does Whimsy - Seasons tree art

Day 3 of Whimsy and the idea for this nail art has been in the back of my mind for quite a while.  It's funny, cause a few of the other DD ladies have also done whimsical trees for this weeks prompt too. 

This nail art is inspired by those four panel seasons paintings.  I'm somewhat happy with the final look, but it took quite a while to achieve on all ten nails. Doing the gradients in different colours was slow to start with. Then I painted the tree branches using a few shades of brown polish.  Then I went crazy with a dotting tool.  

I was actually happier with how I painted my right hand! Isn't that ridiculous. I used a smaller dotting tool on my right hand and did less dots and it looked better because you could see the tree branches clearer. I have included a photo of my rarely seen Cinderella hand down the bottom.  Sadly the photography is not great because for the life of me I can't work out how to hold a bottle for a nail shot with my right hand. Is anyone else like that or just me.  I'm completely awkward when trying to photograph my right hand, and am what my mum would call 'cacky handed' I believe that one is an Australia colloquial term.









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Tuesday, May 10, 2016

by Kitties26 on Tuesday, May 10, 2016 2 comments

The Digital Dozen does Whimsy - Fairy at night

One thing I certainly found when googling for whimsical pictures was that fairy's are definitely whimsical. I searched though all my nail plates to find a fairy image, but would you believe that I found the perfect image on a new plate that I just got in the mail the day I painted these nails.

The plate was DRK XL Magic Garden. I haven't even had a chance to really look at the plate properly yet, that that fairy was perfect.

The mushrooms and grass were stamped from EDM07 plate.  The moon was painted free hand.  Now would you believe that the base polish I actually started with as Picture Polish Whimsy?  I just had to use a polish called Whimsy for the whimsy theme.  But after I sponged on the darker jelly colours in blues and purples from the Dance Legend Enamel Glass collection, there was pretty much no trace of whimsy left.  Oh well, at least I knew it was at the heart of this mani.  

As a last final touch I added some iridescent flakes to the fairy's wings and added some holo glitter as sparkly stars in the sky.






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About Me

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I live in Canberra, Australia with my husband, Mr Ten and Miss Eight. My blog is all about nail polish, and a few other bits in between. You can contact me at morenailpolish@iinet.net.au