Christmas Eve already?

Last time I went into Big W they were having a sale on Rimmel (they seem to do this pretty often) so I stocked up. I also saw some awesome colours from Face of Australia and they were already pretty cheap (approx $6) so I thought what the hey!!!

I’m using one of the Face of Australia polishes for my Christmas mani. It’s a sweet vintage looking pastel mint green and needed three coats – the drying time was pretty good. The only downer (for some) was that it had a pretty strong smell – I don’t mind the smell of enamel so it didn’t really bother me. I grew up basically playing with paint in my dad’s shed – I loved using the airgun.

I used the holly stamp for the BM plates in Forest green and dotted the holly berries on. Then I added a little bling with glitter. Last Christmas (or maybe the one before) my mum gave me a set of Miki polishes that have a little glitter bottle attached on top. I hope I get some nail polish this year too!

Top and base coat: Rimmel - 740 Clear
Nail Colour: Face of Australia LUXE – Minty Mojito
Holly Leaves: Rimmel – 28 Forest
Holly Berries: Rimmel – 39 Ruby Me
Glitter – Miki nail polish

Island Mani

I'm back from my island holiday! Actually I was back two weeks ago - but I lost my camera. Anyhooo - found it yesterday - so I do have some shots to show you:





And my nails for the week were:





Rimmel 60 Seconds - 825 Sky High

I did this mani once we were on Long Island and it stayed on for a whole week. Infact when I got back to Townsville, even with the edge wear, they still got comments. I was actually shopping with the girl that I give my old nail polishes to and who is doing really well with her anti-nail biting campain. She was a little in awe when random people grabbed my hands to look at my nails. Patience my young padawan. Haha!

I did my nails for Christmas today - I'll take some photos tomorrow for you!

Holidays!

Tomorrow I'm off on my holidays to the Whitsundays - Long Island! Cocktails and beaches here I come - even though it will probably rain everyday.

So my mini dilemma is - what colour nail polishes should I pack?

Christmas nails

Three coats of:

Top and base coat - usual
Rimmel - 238 Forest
Revlon - Berry Jewelled

I painted the ring fingers the alternate colour, with the left is mainly green and the right is mainly red.



This was last nights effort - I only have 3 days left of school until the holidays so I thought what the hey, do it in Chritmas colours. But look at the wear already! Admittedly I was being pretty hard on my nails today - with moving furniture and sorting through enough old papers and stuff to fill a trailor.

But here is the biggest dissapointment of the year for me:



That is 4-5 coats of a nameless cream BYS. It was gloopy, streaky and the coats jsut did not dry. I wore them for the whole week last week and they seriously didn't dry. They got dented and smooshed though. I fauxkonaded with that diagonal stripe in the BM with a Adoree 241 Sea Turquoise.

You see last week we had a M day to raise money for Movember. I went as the Milky Bar Kid - and painted my nails with this nameless BYS polish - worst polish ever. It didn't dry the whole 5 days it was on - and was dented and smooshed all over the place.

Nail polish and Shoes

Hey, long time no blog >.<

I think I posted this but I've been too busy for nails and with a new principal I've avoided the whole nonwork okay polish by going clear. However I broke the drought and did paint my nails red for my birthday and I painted again on the weekend.

At the moment my nails are:

nail - Model's Own Pink Punch
art - Color Club 811 What a Drag



Models own was three coats - it probably could have had another coat because there was a lot of visable nail lines. The colour is a really good match on my screen. After I painted my nails I started thinking if I had any clothes that would go with it - nope not really except black. And then I remembered my shoe collection.





I love shoes almost as much as nail polish - but I don't have that many - I wish. I wore these when I dressed up Cyndi Lauper at last year's staff party.

Anyway - so I thought maybe should do a little painting so that my nails would really match my shoes:



It's not a perfect match but that's okay. The silver is rubbing off already.

Bored

I've had a new Principal, so I've been walking around with plain clear nail polish :( It's boring.

Last attempt

I decided a little while ago to try out the last L'oreal Resist & Shine Titanium nail polish in my stash. This one I hoped was going to be awesome. I have to say that on the whole it was: two easy coats, long lasting as it was on there about a week all up. But the colour disappointed me again. On the nail it looked black whereas in the bottle it had a lovely teal shimmer. I'm going to see if it konads well as black.

2 coats of L'oreal Resist & Shine Titanium - 736:



After a while I got bored of the plain black and put on two coats of Lippman Happy Birthday. A pretty awesome mani.

Finally

Went to take photos of my nails and other things today to find I had run out of battery - so had to use the huge camera. So now I have an aching wrist,,, no actually I've been sewing a lot lately and crocheting which is probably to blame more than a few photos.

Here is my current mani:

Adoree - 241 - Sea Turquoise
Revlon - 900 - Gold Get 'Em



It actually took two days for me to finish of the 3 coats of sea turquoise because I'm such a slacker. It's actually quite thick but the first two coats are streaky - it's the third coat that finished it all off.

I was going to konad the heck out of it, but I found the neglected bottle of gold sparkly under some fabric. I took that as a sign.

In real life my nails are so much prettier but you'll just have to imagine it because I'm not picking up that camera again anytime soon.

Ugh!

My computer basically died a few weeks ago - so you'll have to excuse the lack of posts.

So with my computer being overhaulled I also forgot my password into my flikr account and there is no way of figuring out what it is. I've spent over an hour this morning hammering it. Might have to just start a new one :(

My nails this week have been painted in Adore’e’s Dawn Sky. It’s a really nice fuchsia with an iridescent shimmer of mauve. This is three coats and it lasted almost all week, with no chipping just some wear on my tips from Sunday until today when it finally chipped.


Adore’e – 133 - Dawn Sky





This darker colour is probably truer.


You will have to excuse the fabric imprints on my nails – too much of a hurry as per usual. These photos were taken on Wednesday by the way.

The colour got a lot attention and it had my students telling me they looked fake – when they know full well that they aren’t. Normally I would have konaded my nails after a few days because I get bored of just the plain nail, but these were too pretty too cover up.

My one issue is the name, for me a dawn sky would be a tangerine with the mauve iridescent – that would be pretty.

Over the weekend I’ll take some photos of the Piggy Paint that arrived :) Husband and I already took a few good wiffs, although they claim that they are odorless we think they small like PVA glue. I actually like the smell of PVA glue though.

So cute I could have eaten them.

These were my cuties for the last few days. I was inspired in my blog wanderings over the weekend - sorry I just don't remember where I saw the original :(


Nail Base - Sportsgirl Nail It - Ballerina
Dots - Rimmel Nail Tip Whitener
Strawberry - Rimmel 030 Dancin' Queen (Red) & Rimmil 238 Forest (Green)



I'm sure that one day I will find the most perfect pink for me, unfortunately Ballerina isn't it. It is pretty close to it though. It took four coats to get it opaque, the first two coats are pretty streaky for me but a really cute colour in the end.

Have you ever noticed how longer your nails are after you take off the nail polish?

Yay! Assignments finished

Well sort of. To celebrate I painted my nails using Sportsgirl Nail It - Ballerina. But alas, I cannot find a single cord so I can upload my photos.

I have also spent a bit of money today.

Despite my love of nail polish and coloured hair I prefer natural products. In fact most of the time I don't wear make up. I have pretty nice skin so I rarely use foundation, I use mascara and white eye liner and sometimes I use eyeshadow when I'm going out. Although I love buying eyeshadow and love watching youtube videos about it. Most of the time I don't wear lipstick, would rather pawpaw ointment.

My beauty routine is sorbolene cream. I use it instead of soap (except when I have handmade soap), I slather it on every morning and at night although lately I need to put it on more! Just look at my dry skin!!! I often wonder if sorbolene cream is 'green' although I haven't bothered to look into it - maybe I should.

Soon I'll make the change over to homemade deodorant as well once I get the scent that I want.

Where am I going with all this you may wonder,,, well I bought some Piggy Paints. They are water based, no toxic chemicals and apparently no smell - this my husband will love but he will not like that I've actually spent money on it in the first place lol. No, I'm not going to give up on my chemical laden polishes, it's just that I thought I would try them out.

They have gotten a few good reviews - so what they hey!

Excuses.

My nails are demolished. Two assessment items due within a week of each other, the one I'm currently working on is min 3000 words - I have chewed :( I broke off a heap last week, which has left some of my nails all peely and it's so cold and dry that my hands are rough and gross. Let's not discuss my cuticles.

They are also stained green. Last week I put on Sally Hansen 430 Grass Slipper which I must say is my new favourite, but so pigmented that I had stained finger tips for two days and still can see green on my nails and it's been off since last Tuesday!

When I have finished my assignments and my nails grow back a little I will show you Happy Birthday!

I feel so lucky!

Yesterday one of my lemmings arrived.

I try to be pretty frugal about my nail polish budget - hence the whole less than five bucks! But I decided that life was too short not to buy really pretty nail polishes that will make me happy.

So I went looking for Mad as a Hatter and found an Ebay store that sells a heap of OPI ranges including the Alice in Wonderland collection. So I bought 2 bottles at $15.90 each. To me that's a lot of money for some glitter in a varnish but oh well, it sure beats the up-to-$30 I was looking to paying for it on Ebay only a month ago.

I decided to compare it with Adoree Hamilton Blue just because.



They are obviously not dupes :)



Mad as a Hatter has larger sized glitter in purple magenta (mostly) aqua, salmon and possibly some other colours but I can't work out right now because the bling hurts my eyes.

Hamilton Blue is aqua, light red, gold or silver once again - bling hurts my eyes. Hamilton Blue however isn't as sparkly as Mad as a Hatter possibly because of the size of the glitter.

Both of these are two coats - using the dab method.

I am very happy to have both in my collection because I am a bit of a glitterati. Bring on the next lemming,,, Happy Birthday!

This week I had this on my nails:



BYS - n238 - Matte Mint Green

It was a two coater and a really lovely colour. It got a lot of complements. This was actually my first matte and it didn't really live up to my expectations, as it had a dull shine and wasn't truly matte. Maybe I expect too much. I top coated it glossy.

Easy to apply and it lasted for 5 days before it chipped. Value to money I think.

C*m Shot:

Behold

This is my haul from over the holidays:



My theme was 'bright!' I think I nailed it. I'll give myself a B+ because a few dark colours crept in :)

Rimmel - 050 - Tangerine Queen



I wore this polish for over a week, with only one finger chipping. I did give it a second topcoat though halfway through. I was really impressed and it got a bit of attention. It was a three coater.

For the last few days I gave it a race car checkered french from the bundle monster in silver; and then went to watch the V8 car racing. The team I support didn't win but at least my nails matched their cars!

A lesson I learnt is not to trust my husband to take photographs of my nails...

Another lesson I learnt is that life is too short to not own pretty nail polish. So since I have been back have 'invested' in some lemmings...

Terrible terrible terrible

I was on holidays for the last few weeks, and omg do I have a haul to share... later.

I went to the dentist while I was away, :( have been in pain for the last week and on drugs. I think it will okay now because last night while I was sucking on a potato scallop I felt a bit of tooth pop out from under my gum! I'm guessing it had been wedged in there while the dentist was working on that tooth. Ouch!

This morning I was catching up with nail blogs and saw an old post about ZannClips - http://www.zannclip.com/

I have really fine hair, but a lot of it so I have issues. They only way to get it up and stay there is a really strong hair band that leaves me with a headache. The big clips don't hold all of my hair and most clips just slip out. My answer is usually to just keep my hair short - boy short.

At the moment I'm growing my hair out for a change - and decided to keep it chin length or so - but I really do love long hair.

Cross fingers and hope that these clips work well for me. I just have to note that the postage cost almost as much as a clip.

Before I go...

Tomorrow I'm off for my holidays. Heading up to my parents and then to Townsville to watch the V8 racing.

I had great plans for these:


But even when I'm on holidays I still don't get time for myself! I had just finished these, when my friend visited. We just sat down and the phone rang,,, it was the doctor's practice to say they could fit me in their schedule in 15 minutes time! Don't worry, it was just to get prescriptions written.

And then my husband picked me up from the doctor's and took me to eat takeaway Chinese at previously mentioned friend's house.

So all in all it was a pretty good day but my nails had lovely dents all over them.

Anyway, I just tried to fauxnad them but it just wouldn't work. It was like there where two copies of the pattern when I stamped. I cleaned everything up extra carefully and changed nail polish and it still wouldn't work. I cleaned everything again, and it finally worked but I was just over it all so much so that I just cleaned my nails off to go bare naked for my trip :(

+ Another plus + I did get my hair coloured (purple) today. I'll see if I can get a photo of it in the next few days - I luff it.

Almost forgot

Nail colour: Cover Girl - 500 - White Night - 3 coats.

OMG!

I just realised!

I am only a few days out from being near real stores that sells nail polish. Although the chemist is okay and has Mode, I still get cravings for shelves of glistening pretty nail polish bottles.

Yay for me!

Catchen up

My holidays have started! The last few weeks of term were incredibly hectic so I didn’t have much time for nails or anything else bar school. I did do one manicure last weekend, but because I was rushed I didn’t let my nails dry so they got dinted heaps. Much like my manicure at the moment.

I’m not really a brown make up person. I remember when I was in my teens and brown became a really popular lipstick colour – and the Avon lady said “That really looks like shit on you” – haha! So I don’t really know what possesses me to buy brown polishes but I do.

Base colour is Rimmel357 Azteque; a terracotta which was a two coater.


The dahlia flowers were stamped in Australis Caramel. Which looks like melted milk chocolate.


Next time I do this I’ll just leave it at this step!


And the bling is Revlon Molten Metal. I do love the idea of Molten Metal, it looks so pretty in the bottle and on the nails, but it never seems to last for long :(


Top and base coat is the usual suspect.

There was a whole lotta stuff going on in this mani, but I found myself looking at my nails heaps - lol - vanity.

So currently on my nails, I have Adoree 201 Pink Pansy. It’s a lovely mushroomy pink with a flash of pastel purple iridescent. This was four coats, which is too many for me usually but I really like the colour. I can’t wait to use it for layering.

Queenslanders!

Gah, I can't believe how busy I've been with everything this last week. It's report card time basically.

Anyway, here are my nails from last weekend. The show was on so I wanted to go a little funky:

Nail: Mode Blueberry
Nail: Avon Feisty
Glitter: Adoree 220 Hamilton Blue



Sorry for the terrible photo, I just could not get a clear shot :(



The Blue needed three coats and the Maroon needed 2.

If you don't live in Queensland or New South Wales you may have missed that the second State of Origin game was on last night. I'm not really a football follower but we had friends over to watch the game and I got to paint their nails while we watched:

Davo is a 5 year old boy who loves nail polish. I know a few little boys that do, I gave one a heap of blue nail polishes after his father had refused to buy some for him. Nail polish lovers unit!


His older sister, Aug, is trying to grow out her nails and stop chewing. She's the one I donated a heap of polish to recently.

Aug is a NSW follower.

Their mum, Bec wanted butterflies.

Bes is a QLD follower.

And can I just say that everyone at school today were very jealous of this family's manicures. In fact I had two girls ask me if I had really painted Aug's nails.

My friend doesn't know her nail polishes

Last night I finally put some colour on my nails. I regretted it because the polish was a streaky sticky pearly mess, although I like the colour. It also smells bad.

A friend gave me this, so I thought I would try it out. I put two coats on gave up despite the vnl. Then promptly covered it in gold glitter. The glitter saved it, but I still haven't done a clean up lol.

Nail - Bia 13
Glitter - Adoree 152 Golden Star



Soemthing I learnt last night; don't use nail polishes that friends give you unless they love nail polish too.

Colorblind Fail

This was a pathetic attempt as faux-nadding but I'll share it anyway. I really wanted to stretch the Green with Envy a few more days so I thought I would try some nice black polka dots,,, but unfortunately what I thought was black polish was actually a dark blue jelly. Oh well, work loved them.


Base - Rimmel - 819 Green with Envy
Dots - Satin - Milky Way <- not black



I'm trying to decide what colour to go for the next few days,,,

Blue with Envy

My favourite colour is green - actually a turquoise - but any green is fine.

I've come to realise that while other cameras have issues with purple, mine doesn't like greens. Hence the blue with envy title.

Nail colour: Rimmel 819 Green with Envy.
Top and Base coat: same as per usual



Two coats. It bubbled because I shook it. It dries pretty quickly, but not quick enough because last night I went out to tea with wet nails still and now have dints everywhere - oh well.

Actual colour:



Most of the left hand nails survived my stressful week it seems.

Passing on the love

Bec from Bec's Beauty Buzz gave me an award! How cute is this pic?



So I have to pass it onto 10 bloggers - I'm sure every blog that I read has had it already - so I'm passing mine onto some new Gum Leaf Mafias like me :)

Meg is a Nail Geek
Sun Glasses After Dark
Konad-licious!

Here's what you guys have to do:
- Make a post about the award including the picture and mention the person who gave it to you.
- Put the award on your blog.
- Let your nominated 10 know you've awarded them by leaving a comment.


I painted my nails last night - may fav colour - so expect to see a photo at some stage this weekend. I have two more assignment left for this semester due on Monday - so I'm working on them - supposed to be anyway -___-

No nails

I’ve had a pretty stressful week at work and unfortunately my nails copped it. I few nails had legitimate breakages from moving furniture and one broke when I was helping a girl with her new wheel chair, but the others, I’m sad to say, I picked at and nibbled on.

Plus I’ve had the worse headache – can a headache be contagious? Because lots of people of staff have had it this week. So anyhow no nail photos with lovely nail polish on it for you.

My bundle monster pack came on Thurday – it is pretty cool. I guess that is one good thing about having short nails, the nail images will fit on my nails!

Nice with rice

I was poking around Mode R Us (my local chemist) on Saturday and remembered that they have a heap of Coral Colours at the back,,, Mode is up the front so I rarely go further.

A few years ago I did buy some Coral Colours and didn’t like them. They peeled off really easily. But I’m a very forgiving person and did buy a bottle and it honestly could have been my application’s fault. I’ve worn this mani for 24 hours now and it’s holding up nicely.



Nail colour = Coral Colours – 140 – Silk
Konad art = Konad – Dark Purple
Dots = Rimmel – 239 – Your Majesty



I normally don’t buy frosts – because I have heinous ridges that frosts like to highlight and the brush strokes are so obvious blah! But I wanted something really girly and pretty.

Ignore my dodgy konading skills, I was watching Xmen again so I should be forgiven lol.

This morning my boss was telling me that her husband wanted to call their child Wolverine if it was a boy – luckily it was a girl. But isn’t that funny how things work like that? Because I hadn’t mentioned to her anything about my Xmen weekend and she just brought it up.

I like Your Majesty a lot. This school holidays I’m going to the V8 races – and am on the lookout for a dark neon orange (oxymoron?) to go with the silver – my favourite team is Vodaphone and they are their colours.

Anyways toodaloo, I’m off to cook rice.

I can't think of a pun.

You get three photos - you lucky things you.

I went purple for today. It totally matched my aqua shirt and rainbow bright socks. I felt that I would need it. I knew that today would be pretty frustrating as I had an online conference and because everything IT I touch lately goes kaboom - it went as planned - KABOOM!

Nail colour: Mode - 10643 - Glitterati




I've been sporting this colour on my toes for a little while now and liking it.

It is a jelly with a bit of red to purple micro glitter. I needed three coats all up. Unfortunately I went to bed early last night - I'm talking 8:30 - which wasn't a long enough time for my nails to dry. I did get a lovely woven pattern across my right nails.

I do my right hand last even though I always mean to start there. Oh well.





These last photos serve no real purpose do they?

No I didn't go to bed

Pretty Random added my name to the Gumleaf Mafia so after a lot of trial and error I got my blog list added ---> see it?

I'm so proud of myself right now.

And I'm off to bed.

Just a bit of ramble

I'm home sick today and I don't have any nail photos to show you.

I got rid of the black mess on Monday night and have gone naked so far this week. I always go bare on Tuesday and Wednesday anyway because they are the days that I have cooking classes - it's a health and safety thing to cook with nail polish on so I set a good example for my kids - it kills me though.

I've been hacking my nails off as well - I don't like it when they get too long or really uneven - so off they went.

And finally - I have been meaning to share - but I ordered a bundle monster pack of fuaxnads from Amazon. I feel bad buying fakes but that doesn't mean that I won't buy real ones anymore. I have a wish list that changes all the time - but at the moment I want those clouds! I really wish Konad would do more fairies or some cats - that makes me sound a little like a crazy cat women ha!

And while we are on the subject, what is with the name Konad? My husband instantly thought gonads, whereas I think feminine hygiene products. Either way isn't good.

I'm going to back to bed now, forgive me for rambling on.

Edit:
Wait a minute! Crap I have followers? I don't even know how that works!!! Thank you!

No sir, I don't like it

Last night I removed the glitter and glam – it took forever and I still have little pieces of glitter on my hands :D So while I watched some X-men cartoons I painted my nails with a L’oreal. I just have to say that I have bought 3 different colours of these and haven’t been happy so far with the two I’ve tried.

It goes on quite nicely – two coats. But it doesn’t look like the bottle. It is very dark and not as shimmery as I think it should be. But it’s okay if you want bitumen coloured nails. And can I just say that my staffroom wasn’t happy with it either – I got a few comments about how boring my ‘black’ nails were. Thanks very much L’oreal.

The other issue I have had is chipping. Now as I said above, last night I had an exciting night of X-men cartoons and then went to bed – but when I rolled out of bed this morning I already had a chip in my nail. Just to put this into perspective – I like soft pillows. It has worn off the edges pretty quickly as well.

Maybe it is me, but two polishes both with the same issues??? I am leaving the colour I like the most ‘till last – hoping that it doesn’t have the same problems.

Base and top coat – Maybelline Express Finish
Nail colour – L’oreal Resist & Shine 710 Titanium



Titanium? I think not.
Up to 7 days? I think not.

And just in case you think that the gold lid is actually the brush handle – think again:



Not another word.

Bling my nails

Second polish for the week is:

Adoree 220 Hamilton Blue

I like this one a lot.

It took at least 4 coats to get it opaque - I lost count - but it dries super fast so I didn't care. It does have a scaly finish so I top-coated it twice but I don't mind a little texture, it makes me wanting to rub my finders over it; sensory deprived childhood?

I always worry that glitter will chip - but 24 hours later it is all good. I took this photo yesterday afternoon after a really busy day at school - a nail punishing sports day basically.

Anyways - I luff this polish - the glitter is a mix of tiny green, gold, light blue, red and maybe silver flecks with a gray clear to hold it altogether. I will need to get a backup bottle of this one for sure; I say that about a lot of polishes -_-,

Now be prepared for some ugly cuticles - they have been really awful lately and in the photo I had just oiled them:




You were warned!

Konad blues

So I prettied up my nails today. The Turquoise Sea is still awesome but I wanted to konad the heck out of it.

First up I speed striped my nails with Mode Tatt-tastic (the most awesome-est polish I ever did see). Then promptly spilt my Tatt-tastic all over my chair and onto my leg.

Anyhoo, I then konaded with iamge plate m78 using Tatt-tastic and White. Topped it off with a top coat which did smear the pattern a little but after my fantastic mani experience this afternoon I don't care.

Adoree 241 Sea Turquoise
Mode Tattastic
Rimmel Nail Tip Whitener
Maybelline Express Finish

Adoree blues are over

I have been having such a bad computer day today, if the world wide web blows up in a few minutes, blame me.

While I was doing my uni readings this morning I wiped off the other mani and started with another Adoree polish. This time it went awesome.

2 coats of Adoree - 241 - Sea Turquoise
top and bottom coats - Maybelline Express Finish

I gotta say that I love this colour, it's the colour of my yoga mat and also my wedding shoes. It is slightly greener in real life. It reminds me of the blue 'white out' that you used to get.

I also love this nail polish, it was two coats. If it lasts until tomorrow without chipping then I think I'll have to by a backup. Imagine all the nail art I can do with this, well maybe you can't but I can. I'm already lining up something with a Mode polish for tomorrow.



Hopefully when I press "publish post" nothing will go wrong, cross fingers.