Day 29 - Inspired by the Supernatural

Kester Black Starflower, Milani Hi-Res, Milani Cyberspace

I guess this isn't really supernatural inspired, more space robot inspired, but this is what I ended up with! It's been such a long time since I've worn holo nail polish. It was so sparkly!

Day 19 - Galaxies

Orly Liquid Vinyl, Ozotic 903, Ozotic 908, Ozotic 534, China Glaze Snow Globe, Milani Jewel FX Silver, Sinful Colors Queen Of Beauty

Gosh there are a lot of different polishes in this mani! I was quite excited about Galaxy day, but I think it's a mani that I'll definitely have to try again. I did like how these turned out, and they were a lot sparklier in real life, but after doing them, I think that less would've been more.

Day 4 - Green

Essence You Belong To Me, China Glaze Aquadelic, OPI Fly, Milani Gold

Day 4 was green, and I was originally going to try and do some kind of leaf themed elaborate mani. I had planned to add more lines (little tiny perpendicular ones between these lines, like the veins on a leaf) but when I got to this point I liked it so I stopped. I did however add some glitter from Milani Gold to the corners for a bit of fun!

Another Easter Egg Mani

OPI I Vant To Be A-Lone Star, China Glaze Light As Air, Sally Hansen Celeb City, Milani Silver

Easter only comes once a year, so I've got to get all the Easter egg inspired manis out of my system! I was playing around with my new nail art tape, this time just using it instead of normal sticky tape. It is quite handy! 

I hope you all had a lovely relaxing Easter and the Easter Bunny was good to everyone! I have to go put a Lindt gold bunny out of its half eaten misery now. Yum!

Cyberspace Mind Control

Milani Cyberspace, OPI Black Onyx, Bundle Monster BM-221

I sadly had a horrible afternoon at work today, my first not awesome day since I started my new job in January. It was insanely busy all day and ended with a potential disaster that had to be time consumingly averted so unfortunately I wasn't much in the mood for nails this evening when I finally made it home. Usually in cases like these when I've got boring nails happening I'd almost always have some photos of a mani I'd done earlier in the week that was waiting to be posted, but alas, today was not one of those days. 

I've been rocking my new holos all week and not really doing nail art because they're just so amazing on their own, but unfortunately because of this sad sunless weather I haven't been able to get any photos of their amazing rainbowness! Today I had on Milani Cyberspace from the 3D Holographic collection. Man are they sparkly! To jazz it up a bit and make up for not being able to capture the awesome holo in a photo I decided to stamp over it. I'm pretty sure I've seen black geometric patterns over holo polishes somewhere around the interwebs and always thought they looked amazing! This particular combination reminds me of something you'd see on a sci fi show. Or perhaps I just had aliens/outer space on the brain because the polish is called Cyberspace! I'm pretty happy with how it turned out in the end!

Mattified Pointy Moon Thing

OPI Skull & Glossbones, OPI I Eat Mainely Lobster, Milani Gold, Essie Matt About You

Whoa, am I obsessed with Skull & Glossbones or what? I've only had it a few weeks and already I've used it at least twice a week! Which is an amazingly massive amount of usage for one nail polish! In fact, I'm using it for the mani I'm doing tonight! I just can't get enough! 

I've been seeing these triangular reverse french manicures (does anyone know what on earth these things are called???) on the interwebs and finally got around to doing one. My lines aren't all that crisp because I was a little impatient, but from arm's length they looked pretty cool! 

For a bit of bling I used my dotter to pick one piece of glitter from Milani Gold and stuck it on the point. Then I mattified the whole lot!

New Year's Glitter Fest

Sally Hansen Celeb City, Milani Silver, China Glaze Blue Year's Eve

These are my New Year's Eve nails. Of course I had to use China Glaze Blue Year's Eve, none of my other nail polishes are have New Year's specific names so I figured it was a definite. I've always loved glitter accent nails and have recently seen a few reverse sort of accent nails, where the crazy glitter bombs are on all the nails and the accent nail is just a plain colour. So I blinged out all my nails and did a little gradient type thing over Blue Year's Eve. I was trying to go for a glittery gradient like getnail-d's accent nail on her mermaid nails mani but I kind of went a little bit overboard. 

In other news... I'm moving from my little home town in the country to the big bad city! On New Year's day I'm heading off to live in Sydney, which is why I've done my New Year's nails a day early. I'll be too busy packing tomorrow. Of course I'm taking all my polishes, and getting them through the six hour drive meant packing them securely. I had a cardboard box from work and some packing bubbles so I made a little double storey nail polish box to transport them. This photo shows about two thirds of my current collection, all snug in their little box. 

Pointy Glitter Tape Manicure

China Glaze Grape Pop, China Glaze Recycle, China Glaze Heli-Yum, Milani Gold

I've been wanting to do a pointy tape manicure for a while now. I'd been waiting to find colours that go together nicely, and were opaque in one coat. In my Christmas haul of nail polish I got a heap of China Glazes, including Grape Pop and Heli-Yum. I was super impressed with how dense the colour was! Grape Pop was better with two coats, but Heli-Yum was a solid one coater! Finally! I had my matching one coaters for tape manis! I did this mani while watching a movie so I could give each coat enough time to dry before putting the sticky tape on it. Then, at the end for a little bit of extra flair I dotted on some glitter from a bottle of Milani Gold, from the Gems FX collection. 

The one thing that confused me with this kind of layering tape mani was the tips of my fingers. Because I have such short nails I never wrap the edges (I think that's what it's called, when you sort of paint the tip edges too) because there just ends up being polish all over my fingers! So when I finished off this manicure I could see each layer of colour on the tips of my nails, and as they wore, the darker colours underneath became really noticeable. Has anyone else had this problem? The only solution I could think of for next time was to remove the polish from the tips of my nails before the last coat, so the last coat would be the only one on the ends, just like a normal mani. I guess I'll just have to do another like this so I can see if that works!

Happy Christmas Everyone!

OPI Black Onyx, piCture pOlish Festival, China Glaze Atlantis, Milani Gold

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!

This was my Christmas Eve/Christmas Day manicure. I couldn't wait to use Festival. It's SO AWESOME!!! So many colours! I have to say... I may not need Cult Nails Clairvoyant now. Then I added a Christmas tree to make give it a bit more festive spirit. Festival was beautiful to apply, this was three coats. One of the things I really love about Festival is that it's in a clear base, so you can put it over any colour and get flakie awesomeness without changing your base colour. Festival is made by an Aussie company called piCture pOlish. The girls at piCture pOlish were just lovely. I received a cute little email along with my order invoice. It makes you feel all nice and special when you get personalised service! While I was on their website I picked up a couple of  Ozotic polishes as well. Prepare yourself for some awesome holo goodness and colour shifting glitter in the not so distant future!

Anyhoo, off to eat my weight in Christmas chocolate now! Have a happy and safe holiday!

Nailside Christmas Tree Mani

China Glaze Rodeo Fanatic China Glaze Heli-Yum, Milani Gold, Essence Make It Golden

Nailside is so good at coming up with super easy tape nail art. This Christmas tree came from her Abstract Christmas Tree Tutorial. It's so easy and so cute! I wanted to keep doing Christmas themed nails, but I just received a bunch of new polishes in the post and I wanted to try them out. So this ended up being less Christmasy coloured than my other Christmas manis. My nails are a mess at the moment. My job kind of kills them every day and it's been so busy with the Christmas rush that they're getting a real bang around each day!

Glitter In The Sandwich

Essence Forget Me Not, Essie Lapis of Luxury, Essence Make It Golden, Milani Silver

This is a bizarre sort of mani. Lots of different layers happening here. I'd spent the whole day before I did this mani lusting over Deborah Lippmann's Glitter In The Air. When I got home I felt like doing a bit of a glitter sandwich and Essie Lapis Of Luxury is usually annoyingly sheer to me so I thought it'd do well as a top colour! The layers here are 1 coat of Forget Me Not, 2 coats of Lapis of Luxury, 1 of Make It Golden, 1 of Silver and another 1 of Lapis of Luxury.

I took this photo the next evening, after a very busy day at work. I think it held up quite well, considering my job is very hands on and they get banged about quite a bit! 

Houston, we have too much glitter!

OPI Houston We Have A Purple, Essence Make It Golden, Milani Gold

You can buy Essence in Australia!!! At Target!!! And I'd never even known! I'd been eyeing off a few Essence polishes for a while after seeing them on the interwebs (mainly on Nailside) but I was pretty sure the brand was only available in Europe. So imagine my surprise when there they were in my little country town's Target! They only had the Colour & Go range (not the Nail Art Twins that I so desperately wanted). I managed to limit myself to three - Make It Golden, Blue Addiction and You Belong To Me,  but for only $2.55 a bottle (only 5ml, but oh well) I may have to go grab a few other colours! 

My original plan with this mani was to use Houston We Have A Purple as the base and then just put one coat of Make It Golden over the top. But... the glitter mad part of my brain decided that it just wasn't enough glitter, so I added a coat of Gold and instantly I knew I'd gone too far. Never thought I'd say it, but there was too much glitter! This mani didn't last long because of the over-glittering, also I banged my hand and put a massive dent/hole in one finger just after taking this photo so I would have had to do some serious damage control if I was to keep it on. Just easier to do another mani. And a good excuse to paint my nails twice in one day!