Polish Haul!

I had an excellent couple of polish days. I am usually pretty broke, so buying polish doesn't happen as often as I'd like, and, normally, I would only get 2-3 bottles at one time.
This week, I had some extra cash, so I shopped.
The Brand Outlet was having a cosmetics sale, starting Waitangi Day. I headed in on Thursday. Nail polish-wise, it wasn't that great. The sale mostly revolved around fragrances this time. However, I scored a few lovelies. Oh! Before I tell you what they are-they had Sinful Colors priced at $8. I was shocked; this sells for $5-6 in chemists.
Anyway, my purchases.

OOoOOOOooOOoOooo. Pretty.

OPI 'A Woman's Prague-ative' & OPI 'Midnight In Moscow'.

Loréal 'The Queen's Ambition' & Loréal 'Drop Dead Gorgeous'. I think DDG will be leaving; I have an SC that is fairly similar.

Rimmel 'English Rose'. Beautiful colour.

Borghese 'Carnevale Grape' & Borghese 'Espresso Brown'. This brand is entirely new to me. Formula seems good, and the brush is a flat, square brush, fairly similar to Rimmel brushes.

THEN I went to the chemist with my sister last night, and got a couple more.

If ANYONE can tell me the brand and colour name of the grey polish on the left there, I would be very grateful. I have been unsuccessful in locating the stupid receipt, and the bottle is BARE.

LA Girl Magnetics- 'Electrostatic' & 'Magnetic Field'. I bought these for the colour, more than the magnetic effect. MF is just a couple lines, not too impressive. I do like the magnet-a-fied (that is too a word) look of Electrostatic.

The mystery dark grey.

Sinful Colors 'Frenzy", a gorgeous glitter topper. Swatch on the left is 2 coats, on the right is 5 coats.

AND THEN I went to the chemist today. It was partially an accident.

Jordana top and base coats are from one of those dollar store thingees.

My chemist accident. SC 'Thimbleberry' & 'Mint Apple'. I have wanted MA for quite some time, and finally have it. Thimble is far too coral for my skin tone, and I do believe that will move on as well.

All-in-all, a very-polish couple days!

Random Mani, Planned By Children.

As some of you may know, I am a nanny. The family I am working for at present has 3 kids; J-8yrs, L-5yrs, and A-3yrs. They told me what I should do on my nails next. Miss A had it all planned. Pink nails, with a boat, umbrella, beach ball, and-somewhat randomly-a blue jacket. I have full awareness of my (lack of) abilities, and asked if blue togs would be ok. She considered it, and gave her permission.
Here is the A hand.

Colours used-base is Aqua brand-I got this free when I bought vodka one time. Drawings are all done with dotting tools and wee brushes, and are Maybelline Electric Blue, Miki black, Sinful Colors Nirvana, a couple of my JulieGs. Thumb has a coat of SC Hottie.

Miss J and Mr L came together for the plan for my left hand-a tree, a book (heehee, I was thinking. Nice and simple)...and ducks swimming in a river. EXCUSE ME?! My god, they started out so friendly, and rapidly descended into little balls of devilish horror. I said I could try. TRY.
In the end, I wasn't all that unhappy. Here they are.

Base is Maybelline Party Blue. I had never used it properly before this mani, and I like it.
I really loved the book, and have plans to do some nail art involving books soon.
The kids were all super impressed with my nails (one of the many reasons I love children), and raved about them. Awww, warm fuzzies!
I'm sure I'll have more child-directed manicures in the future. My sister has just moved in with her family-including 4 kids, aged 6, 5, 2, & 1. Total madhouse, very loud, and extremely amusing.

Vampy polishes.

As mentioned in my last (so long ago) post, I realised I had no 'vampy' polishes. At all. How the heck did that happen?!
I set about remedying this, immediately.
I got given a Farmers voucher for Christmas, so off I went. I came out with OPI Honk If You Love OPI; OPI Ink; Rimmel Reality Chic; and Orly Ruby.

This is Rimmel Reality Chic. For who knows what reason, it was all bubbly, and I have no idea why. I had base coat, 2 cats of polish, and top coat.
Last night, I tried it again.

Much better! I used the same base and top coats. I am not hugely in love with the colour though, so it may move on.

Excuse the lack of clean up here. I am SO in love with this colour; I needed pics immediately. And then I forgot to get post-clean up pics.
It is so rich and red; absolutely stunning. I used 2 coats here.

OPI Honk If You Love OPI. I really like this purple. I alternated top coat and matte top coat, but I prefer the shine! 2 coats, and it looks almost black in some lights.

And finally, OPI Ink. This isn't technically a 'vamp' colour but I saw it and needed it.

I tried to get all the colour shifts, but it was difficult. It goes from purple, to blue, to pink, and you get the odd flash of gold.
I'm having issues improving the state of my cuticles. I think 25yrs of nail chewing really screwed them over.

I just took delivery of a destash parcel, which contains another vampy colour. I'll share that in a couple blogs time.

Have a good Sunday!

*Witty Title Goes Here*

Hello, people!
As I write this, I'm sitting outside in glorious heat. It's 11am on a Sunday, and 26 degrees.
Bit of a random post today.
Firstly-a month or so ago I bought 6 swan plants, so I could have monarch butterflies. The plan was to cover 3, and when the others had been eaten, uncover those and rotate the available plants, so there would be a constant food supply. Well, I failed. I have half of one plant left. Last night I went out to discover a whole heap of caterpillars. Today I plan to buy more plants, and actually cover the others. What a dick. I got a couple caterpillar photos.

Greedy little buggers!

Yesterday, I decided to sort my nail polish. It started out like this:

Clock-wise: Swatch sticks, minis, top/base coats, randoms, and the two main boxes.



It ended up like this:

So, I haven't lessened the box amount, but it is much more organised now. Swatch sticks are in with their polishes, and the boxes have lids, so I can stack. This excites me. Possibly more than it should.

Last night I decided I wanted my nails a dark, vampy-sort of colour. Turns out, the 'vampest' I have is a dark, almost poo-brown (Revlon Dark Pleasures-Talk Dirty). It is much prettier wet. I'm going shopping today to find a dark, dark red, and possibly a purple of the same ilk. Any suggestions? I'll be at Farmers, so the options are Essie, OPI, Revlon, Australis, etc etc.

Finally-my rat babies almost have all eyes open. They are unbelievably cute right now. Incredibly mobile, and getting fast. I'll be taking some photos of them later on.

Babies babies babies! **lots of photos**

Happy Sunday morning!
As I think I have mentioned before, I am part of NZ Rat Rescue (go look, go on).
On Christmas Eve, 2 girls came in who were probably both pregnant. As an average size rat litter is around 12, with the 'normal' range being anything from 5-15+, this was concerning.
So, both girls (Possum & Bellatrix) were fed and housed as if they were up the duff. The signs were not awesome. Weight gain was steady-which, being that they had not been correctly fed before, was not a guarantee-they were eating a lot, loved nesting etc etc.
There is no real surefire way of telling if a rat is pregnant, until you get near the end, and they look like they have swallowed a lightbulb.
Possum is now off pregnancy-watch. NO BABIES!
Bellatrix surprised me last Saturday (4/1) with 12. TWELVE teeny pink squirmy things.
I have never raised a litter, and had never planned too. Being involved in a rescue shows you precisely how few new rats are needed. There are plenty of needy rodents out there.
Anyway-my nails have been a bit left out, as I have been distracted. I will have something to show later today, hopefully. For now-baby pics! They are 9 days old today, and I have a group shot from ages 1-8days for you.

They are so freaking cute. Ears are no longer stuck down, their peach-fuzzy fur is incredible. It is almost impossible to stop touching them. In a week-ish, eyes will open, and they'll start eating real food. This will also be the time I end up staring into my kitchen, wondering how I am going to feed all these mouths. I started stocking up on food that day Bellatrix popped.
It is possible to sponsor this litter; if you are interested, contact office@nzrr.org.
There are 6 boys, 6 girls. Because Mumma rat is Bellatrix, the babies will get Harry Potter names. I have the names chosen, but I haven't given them to anyone yet.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have eepers to cuddle.

Ocean creatures and gradient.

Firstly-happy new year!
I ran out of nail polish remover. I have no idea how this happened-I usually have a lot of it. I'll just blame the holiday season. I managed to remove my fireworks mani, but there was none left for clean up. Until I get to the shop, these nails are a mess. I'm forever apologising about the quality of my clean up, so I'm sharing the photos-call it a before/after type thing. Or something. Either way, you get to see how much worse it is before I tidy it up.
My niece gave me the idea for this mani. She thought my Rudolph looked like an octopus, when he was upside down,  so I promised I'd do something with an octopus soon.
I started with a base of LA Girls Holographic Blue. I love these polishes; they are great for a one-coat and go mani.
I then sponged Sinful Colors Secret Admirer on the tips. The idea was for it to look like the ocean getting darker/deeper. It doesn't really look like that. I think a lighter blue would have been better. But...glitter.

This octopus was done with LA Girl Disco Brites Psychedelic. It glows under UV lights, but I'm never near those.

And left hand:

Ignore the bungness of that starfish. It was supposed to have five arms. Not entirely sure where my brain went.Do you like the way I highlighted to make it look semi-normal?
Polishes used are: SC This Is It; SC Exotic Green, I mixed white in for the lighter seaweed; Coral Colors Rio, SC Snow Me White, Rimmel Grey Matter, Rimmel Mysterious Girl ('oh ohoh oh oh oh, mysterious girl, I wanna get close to you' and Peter Andre will be with me ALL DAY), all finished with Rimmel 60 seconds top coat.

Here are the photos after clean up.

Not perfect, but a hell of a lot better!

I'm off to the beach now. See ya!