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!

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!

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!

Christmas Mani. Oooooh, and a GIFT!

I have the headache from hell. It pretty much sucks arse. I share this information, because I need to whinge to somebody.
Alrighty. Tonight, I painted a Christmas mani, and I am actually stoked with it. Photos are less than ideal; it's 11.30pm. If I wait to get daylight pics, I will have sheet marks.
Excuse my horrible hand-skin. Also, please excuse my very special Rudolph. Assume he has been into the eggnog.  Well, wouldn't you, if your entire family spent time hassling you for your shiny red nose (presumably from the eggnog)?

No flash, then flash.

Individual nail pics:

Base is Sinful Colors-Snow Me White. The rest are-Revlon Mon Cherry; SC Exotic Green; SC This Is It(gold); SC Nirvana(brown); LA Colors Art Deco Red; Miki Black, and the star on the Xmas tree, plus a few of the lights, is Star Kin Merry Solstice. All finished with Rimmel top coat.

You may notice there are no photos of my right hand. This is because it is naked. I'll potentially do something with it tomorrow. Maybe.

I also have a wee bit of a give away. I have one person in particular that reads all my blog posts, and lets me know she enjoyed them-either by saying so, or liking etc.
This person will get a customised Peacock Pie necklace. All she needs to do is message me.
Miss Holly S. You are my best follower. Congratu-fucking-lations.

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.

A very polish weekend.

There was a big cosmetic sale on here in Christchurch this weekend-including polish. I planned well for this.
 That isn't true. I found out about it on Tues, had a tantrum about not getting paid until Friday, and bought polish before I bought anything else. My only regret was not having more money. This is what I got.

Apart from the two SC polishes; I bought those later that afternoon.
The LA Colors minis have no colours on them, and I haven't found any numbers either.  As for the others, from L-R they are: Rimmel Mermaid Green; Rimmel Mysterious Girl; LA Girl 'Rock Star' Head Banging; Revlon 'Dark Pleasures' Talk Dirty; Sally Hansen Good To Grape; Maybelline Electric Blue & Party Blue; and the Sinfuls are Nirvana and Island Coral.
Once I got home, the Mr handed me a package. My brushes/dotting tools! 

I didn't expect them to arrive for at least another week.

I have not used any brushes yet. I need to read/watch some tutorials first.
On Friday night I was overwhelmed by 27 new polishes, and new things to play with, so I got drunk and did no painting. I did a bit of polishing yesterday-the same as what I have on my left-but I am puppy-sitting. Almost dry polish does not like puppy patting.
Here is what I have today-please excuse the mess. I need a better way of cleaning up than cotton buds. I always seem to lose control of my hand and swipe the polish from my nail.

Left hand-Rimmel Mysterious Girl. It is really difficult to capture the beauty of this purple. I am so glad I bought this one. I was unsure at the time-I have a few purples-but nothing like this one. I love it. ONE COAT! Which is always a bonus, and Rimmel's wonderful flat brush just makes it perfect. Dots are, from base to top-Maybelline Party Blue, SC Snow Me White, and SC Island Coral.

Right hand. Jeebus, it is SO BUNG. Look at where the white dot is on my ring finger. I could have fixed it, but I had already had enough of the smell of remover. And honestly? The odds of it improving were slim. I wish I was ambidexterous. I wish I had a little (in my fantasies, my slaves are always little) nail-painter person that painted perfectly. I wish I was able to stop shaking.
Anyway base is Rimmel Mermaid Green (2 coats). Dots from base up are SC Nirvana, SC Snow Me White and Maybelline Electric Blue. I prefer my left hand. Not only because the purple is my current favourite, but I think the dot colours look better overall.

I am currently waiting on more swatch sticks. I got 50 a couple weeks ago, but I have another 60 polishes to do, so I have more on the way. Once they are done, I need to decide how to organise them. Fun!