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!

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!

December-lots of pics.

How's that for an exciting title?
I hope you all had a great Christmas. Mine was awesome, starting with a BBQ on the 22nd. Most of my favourite people were there-friends I have known for 15+yrs. The missing person was in Tasmania, for her family Christmas. It was an awesome night.
My Christmas nails were pretty boring. On Xmas Eve, I was all keyed up and restless, yet bored out of my mind. I had no patience to do anything too detailed. I went with candy canes.

Boring yes? Base of Revlon Coconut Crush, stripes are Revlon Mon Cherry and Sinful Colors San Francisco. Sidenote-Coconut Crush-that lovely, pearly WHITE polish, stained my nails a pale blue. I don't know how this happened.

My next mani was pastel. I wanted to try the matte top coat I bought in October. Colours are Sinful Colors Unicorn (yellow) and SC Cinderella.

So pretty! I really liked the matte look; it made the pink shimmer in Cinderella stand out a bit more.

I removed this yesterday, only to discover-Unicorn had stained my nails. It looked like I had painted them with nicotine. For crying out loud. I use base coat. Not so happy.

Today I decided to do my New Year mani. This despite the fact I am not going anywhere. I'm actually really looking forward to my evening. My plans involve reading (as usual), listening to MY music (currently completely obsessed with Muse/Silverchair/Biffy Clyro), and I will watch Toy Story 1 & 2. I am such a rager.
I thought I'd do fireworks. That's fairly straightforward, right?
I wanted a base colour that was dark, but sort of starry looking. I was leaning towards black, with SC Hottie on top. While I reached for those, I spotted an SC I have not tried-Secret Admirer. AWESOME. It's this almost black with a grey shimmer through it.

OOooOOOOOoo, aaAAAAaaaAAaa. Love LOVE LOVE it.

I picked my JulieG polishes to be the fireworks. They are a thick glitter that dries quickly, so you aren't waiting around before painting over it.

Fireworks are all JulieG-Sleigh Ride (blue), Silver Bells, and Gift Of Gold. On my thumb, I have LA Girls holographic pink and purple. They were a bit dark to work. I am not sure whether I actually like these. However, they will do for the next couple days.

In other news-I'm about ready to go on a homicidal spree due to the weather. I'm not someone that copes well with incessant rain. I need sun to function happily, and I have forgotten what it feels like.
In other other news-I'm not sure whether I have said anything previously about the Goodreads Reading Challenge. I set a goal in January to read 200 books this year. I am currently 2/3 through book 261. I've really loved tracking my reading, and pinpointing when it slowed down/sped up. I think this is the messiest year my house has had. Assuming I finish this book today/tomorrow, I'll finish the year with Stephen King. I love that guy.
In other, other, other news-2 female rats came into the Rescue on Christmas Eve-both possibly pregnant. At this point, it's looking like one is, the other-probably not. Yay, one litter is far more manageable...but still not ideal. There is no sure-fire way to tell if a rat is pregnant, it's mostly just a waiting game. And so I wait, and sneak into the room 4,000 times a day.

Have a fabulous NYE, and stay safe. See you next year!

Bowling mani.

Just a quickie post.
Tomorrow is our first work social club thing, and we are 10-pin bowling. I needed to change my nails and thought I'd attempt a bowling theme. It's reasonably shit.

Colours are: Base of Eclipse some-number-these-polishes-have-no-names; ball is Rimmel Grey Matter mixed with Miki Black; skittles (is that what they are?)-SC Snow Me White; and LA Colors Light Red. Accent(middle finger and thumb)-LA Girls Brilliant Blue, from the holo range.

Hopefully, I don't get an embarrassingly low score tomorrow.

It's my birthday!

So, I did some birthday nail art. As you have seen from previous posts, most of my nail art is very basic-dots, stripes, stickers etc. This time I tried drawing things.
I admired nail artists before, now I am in complete awe. The mani you'll see in the following photos took me 2 hours. I was half dead before I even got to my right hand, hence the very basic design on that side.

My table at the end of it all. Prior to starting, the table was tidy-all polishes in containers, brushes in the glass and so on.

Left hand. Colours-at least most of them-are: Bases first-Sinful Colors Snow Me White; Rimmel Grey Matter, Revlon Cloud, Australis Peek-a-boo, Sally Hansen Good To Grape. Colours used in the art-Kleancolor minis, LA Colors Art Deco pens, LA Girl 3D Effects, and the dots are all Kleancolor minis, with the exception of the gold dots. That is SC This Is It.

Bases on my right hand are-HD 25, Maybelline Party Blue, Revlon Minted, SC Unicorn, and SC Snow Me White. Letters were done with LA Colors Art Deco, glitter topper is an LAC mini, and the cupcake is a selection of Kleancolor minis. Nameless ones.
Thanks to Jessie at Nailed It NZ for the cupcake tutorial.

Here is my birthday badge:

I have since been given another-a lot smaller-that says "Oh no, 30!" Yes, I went shopping with this on today.
So far, my birthday has been great. My only complaint-my car decided starting was a desperately uncool thing to do, so I sat outside a dairy for almost an hour.

For anyone wondering what is happening with my heart-I have a monitor. It is part of a research trial; not only do I get a record of what is going on with a cardiologist, but the results could potentially help others, I'll be wearing it for the next 3 weeks. Thankfully, it is fully removable for showering.

You can just see the top 2 electrodes. There are 2 more under my ribcage. Hanging white thingis where the date is collected, and sent to the hospital. I need to change the electrodes each day-tonight my latex intolerance is showing. I'll need to move them around each day to prevent awful skin soreness. As it is, I have 4 very tender, red, circles.