Spring Fling With My Pastel Mani

Hello peoples, welcome to my continued effort to get my blog back on track, with my second post in almost a year!

As regular followers will know from my previous posts I am currently back in the UK and I have been here since November, and this was the first winter I have spent at home in almost 10 years! British winters are notorious for being cold, wet, windy and generally bloody miserable, but let me tell you people, there is nothing like coming back to a country after living away for 10 years to make you realise that climate change is REAL.

This was the nicest, mildest winter I have ever known in my country! Sure it got cold, but there was no rain, no 100 mph winds that blow said rain into your face like a million tiny frozen needles, no constant dampness frizzing my hair, no seasonal depression due to the sun not showing itself for 6 months solid. I actually saw the sun plenty, it barely rained, the wind was occasional at best, I had many a hairstyle survive the season, and even wore a dress quite comfortably for a christmas do! Due to our movements between the northern and southern hemispheres, my husband and I had just enjoyed 4 summers almost in a row, (but as good as in a row as they were divided by only one very mild tropical northern Australian winter) after that kind of sunny luxury I was quite concerned about our move back into an extreme cold climate, and I spent a month trying to mentally prepare my Brazilian husband for the sensorial torture that is the British winter, but now he's just wondering what all my fuss was about!

Even now that spring has sprung, we should be barracaded in our homes so as not to shrivel up in the rain that normally occurs without respite from March to May, instead I have been laying in the garden enjoying an early summer. I don't know how to feel about it though, it's the weather we have always dreamed of having here and I'm chuffed to bits to be enjoying it, but at the same time, you know the weather is great because we fucked around with mother nature, and however glorious it may be now, it probably won't be that way forever, especially when that lovely sun has melted the north pole that the tiny island that is the UK just happens to be situated next to...

So when concerned with issues of climate change, and worries of being swallowed up by the cold northern sea, what better way to distract oneself than with a pretty seasonal mani! hahahahaha

My island might appear to be sinking, but I'll have the prettiest nails when it takes me down!

(And as it is almost Earth Day, you can then overcome the guilt of prioritisng your mani over climate change, by using said mani to raise awareness of climate change in a relevant blog post, wink wink!)

So in an unjustfied celebration of the effects of climate change, I present to you all a pastel spring themed mani, that for the first time in history represents a sunny, colourful, glorious spring time that Britain is actually having for once!

 I did this mani about 6 weeks ago as soon as the sun started showing itself regularly, so I am struggling to remember all the polishes I used at the time. I know the thumb is Nfu-oh 354, I couldn't guess the index finger as peach is one of my favourite colours and I have this colour in a million brands ( I really should start writing this shit down if I'm not going to post while my memory is fresh!), the middle finger is maybe a Rimmel or Sinful Colours, the ring finger is a cheap Italian brand called Riveel, and the pinky is a cheap British brand called La Femme whos bottles never have names or numbers on them! The glitter polish on the middle finger, was actually just a bag of glitter mix that I won from a facebook seller and that I then put into a bottle of suspension base. If anyone is that bothered to know what the polishes are just drop me a comment and I will go through my stuff and see if I can figure out which I used.

To create the design on the tips I used the same polish colours, and painted a rectangular strip of each colour onto grease proof baking paper, when it was dry I then used a tool that I borrowed from my mums craft room, its just like the shaped hole punchers, except that it is long and regtangular, and used for creating a pretty lace edge on paper or card. (My mum makes celebration cards so she has a few interesting tools that can be used in nail art too!) Once I had punched out the nice shapes from my baking paper, I cut a piece out to nail size and just stuck it on over a layer of tacky clear coat, finishing with a generous layer of top coat to smooth it out and then matte topcoat for that velvety look.

I really loved the paper edge punching tool, and my mum has a couple of different designs so I will probably play with them again in the future!

I really loved this mani and thought it was so pretty and fun to do, have you guys ever used a paper edge cutter before? If not I suggest you go find some, they will not disappoint! x

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If you like what you see please my help my blog to grow by becoming a follower! Knowing that you all appreciate what I do helps keep me going on those days where I feel like everything I do is poo! :)

The Come Back Mani - Advanced Stamping

No, you are not imagining things... this is a real, live post, with actual words, and pictures and everything. I know it's hard to get your head around, I know that it doesn't feel real, but yes, I have actually done a blog post for the first time in almost a year!

For those of you who don't know my blog all that well, or haven't chatted to me in various FB polish groups, I'll break it down... I used to live in Australia, I married a Brazilian man there, a new government in Australia then changed all the immigration rules and kicked us out, and then I discovered that my home country the UK had also changed their immigration rules, and I wasn't allowed to bring my husband home with me because he was a hard working student aiming towards a very specific goal of one day being a rich man, but not actually a rich man *yet*. Yes you heard that right, my right to a family life in my own country hangs entirely on how filthy rich my chosen foreign partner is because they don't want to risk letting in welfare spongers instead of hard workers. Shame on me for marrying a non EU, highly qualified, higher education student who was still a step away from achieving his career goals. How bloody well rude of me!

Our only way home was to take advantage of his Italian ancestors and claim Italian/European citizenship for him so we went to Brazil for 6 months, he got all his paper work, and I got a massive stash of awesome nail polish. (Scroll through my older posts to see them, you won't have to scroll that far, that was basically the last time I was able to post semi- regularly.) After that we went to Italy, where the long, time consuming, arduous and expensive process of claiming his citizenship ensued, and that was the death of my blog because I had no spare time anymore. :(

The good news is, we got it sorted, we are finally in the UK, my husband has every right to be here regardless of the lack of flthy richness, we won. It's just that now we are poorer than we have ever been, actually quite a bit in debt with family members, and sponging off my parents as we cram ourselves and our belongings into their tiny spare room. So thank you UK immigration, we weren't as filthy rich as you had insisted we should be, but we had savings and were comfortable until you stuck your nose in, now we are broke and in debt, and starting our adult married lives in the same financial position that we were in when we were 18 years old. AWESOME

The real joke is that the new law was put in place to prevent British citizens from illegitamately marrying poor foreigners who would then come to the UK and claim benefits, well we didn't need to do that. Our marriage is legitimate, we weren't poor and had substantial savings, just not quite the absurd amount that they insisted on, but thanks to them now we are poor and did need to claim benefits, but we never claimed them because the joke just get's funnier, and it turns out we would never have been entitled to them anyway!

So yaaahhh, great system ya got there, really, top job.

 It's a bitter sweet victory really, made tastier only by the fact that within 3 months of being here, my darling hubby had walked right into an amazing job for one of the biggest companies in the country, in a position for which they had been desperately searching for the right person for over a year. So suck on that immigration, welfare sponger indeed, I sincerely hope you don't choke on the 40% taxes you'll be taking fom his wages within the next 5 five years.

Needless to say, after all that my head has not really been in a blogging frame of mind, hell, my head hasn't even been in a paint my nails frame of mind, and it has taken me a while to get myself out of this funk and back into my passions. Christmas helped when a bunch of family members got me lots of new nail goodies for gifts, including a few stamping goodies from MoYou and Born Pretty that I requested, because my entire plate collection had gone missing somewhere between Australia and Brazil and I haven't been able to stamp since. (Would I be justified in blaming the A-holes in immigration for that too???) So since christmas I have been getting back into my nails, slowly slowly, and have recently come up with something that is actually blogworthy.

I am not going to make the mistake of committing to X number of posts a week, I want to be realistic about what I am actually able to achieve with all my other normal life commitments and so I will just post as and when I can manage, but the fact of the matter is that I need my blog as my outlet, it's my safe space and helps me pull my head out of the darkness, so I do need to make an effort, if only for the sake of my mental health. (If I start to disappear again, maybe come and remind me of that...? lol)

Let's just say that my come back mani has certainly helped to do that. This is my first attempt at advanced stamping, and for a first attempt it was pretty damn ambitious, but I personally feel that I have pulled it off quite spectacularly and this has definitely made the top 3 of my favourite designs ever done! Here is a quick pic before I go on to explain how I did it, then I will show more pics as I couldn't decide if I prefered this design in gloss or matte, so I did both!

BEHOLD MY MOST RECENT BEAUTY AND BASK IN ALL ITS WONDROUS GLORY! ROTFLMFAO

 Ahhhh, I look at this picture and think maybe it was worth waiting a year to post again if this is what I got out of it! I think this design has got quite an oriental feel to it, which I wasn't expecting but absolutely adore!

So, down to the ins and outs of this mani. The base is a cheapo UK brand called La femme, but annoyingly the polish doesn't have a name or number. I got it from a local sales group on FB from a nail tech who was closing shop, and bagged myself 16 bottles for £5. Winner. For a cheapo it has a pretty nice formula too, and cherry reds/pinks are some of my favourites.

For the stamping I used Born Pretty Plate BP-L002, the gold stamped outline is WJCon from Italy, I think its number 428 but the middle number has rubbed off a bit, so the 2 could be a 3? I have a whole bunch of awesome polishes that I got whilst in Italy, hopefully I will get around to swatching them all for you soon, and I also bought a bunch of Kiko's for a giveaway which I really need to get on with organising! Anyways, I digress. The Polishes I used to colour in the stamp were: Nfu-Oh 354, OPI You only Live Twice, and 3 bottles that I got in Italy - Shaka Holographic Violet and 2 colours of a brand called Caiuro, which I bought in a chinese store in Italy and then discovered is also available here in the UK, I couldn't tell you the names of these Caiuro colours though, as the labels are pretty messed up, I have 3 botlles all totally different colours, and they all have the same label that says 'Bluberry', go figure. If you haven't seen this brand yet go find it, the formula is a PITA for painting your nails with, but they are awesome for stamping and small bold details.

I used the standard technique of painting in the spaces while the stamped design was still on the stamper, (for the partial designs on my thumb, index and little fingers I used a clean up brush with acetone to cancel out the parts of the design I didn't want) and then painted a layer of topcoat over it once I was done. At first I peeled it off the stamper then attached it to my nail like a decal, but for some reason I kept having issues with huge air bubbles getting trapped under the decal and ruining the design, so I changed up my application method, and after topcoating the final design instead of peeling it off the stamper I left it on there, I painted a coat of clear top coat (non fast dry) on my nails and let that dry for a minute to get tacky, and then I just stamped the design straight from the stamper onto the tacky nail and it went on as smooth as a babies bum!

With this method the whole image comes off the stamper in one piece, so I still had to trim off the excess from around the edges of my nails just as I would have done with the peel off decal.

I loved the glossy look of it but have recently been a bit obsessed with my matte topcoat and so had to try both, let the enslaught of pretty pictures begin...

Gloss Finish:

Matte Finish:

I really cannot decide which finish I prefer more, I just love this mani and that's it! What do you ladies reckon?

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If you like what you see please my help my blog to grow by becoming a follower! Knowing that you all appreciate what I do helps keep me going on those days where I feel like everything I do is poo! :)

Holographic Matte Dotticure

Ohhh I'm really excited about today's design! Not only does it look really cool with the matte effect and holographic dots, but this is also my first successful attempt at a flawless and perfectly even polkadot pattern! After the success of my singular dottified nail in the last skittle mani I posted, I was feeling brave and went for a full dotticure, and I am glad to say that I finally feel like I have mastered the dotting tool! Fuck yeeeaaahh! 

So without further ado, let's see my first perfect dotticure!

And just so you can appreciate the holo-y goodness of the polkadots, here's a close up!

To do this mani I started with a simple black creme polish for the base, and mattified it using my awesome Mode matte top coat. To do the polkadots I used a large sized dotting tool with Nfu-Oh 61, a bright silver holographic polish which already has an almost matte finish all of it's own and tied in perfectly with the base.

So what do you think? Have I finally nailed the dotticure?! (pun totes intended haha)

                                                                                                                                            

If you like what you see please my help my blog to grow by becoming a follower! Knowing that you all appreciate what I do helps keep me going on those days where I feel like everything I do is poo! :)

An InLinkz Link-up

My First Skittle Mani!

Though this is a post I prepared months ago and have dragged out of the vault whilst I am busy getting life organised in Italy, I'm hitting a first with today's mani, my first (and so far only!) skittle! I don't actually know why I haven't done a skittle mani before, I guess it just never appealed to me more than all the other stuff I wanted to do, but then I got these 2 polishes that were sent to me for review (I already showed you swatches of them late last year so they may be familiar!) and they were just such great colours together they actually inspired me to do a skittle for the first time!

So the polishes I used were as follows: Mint Green = Mode 'Cool As'. Lavender = Mode 'Gorg'. Holographic glitter is Nfu - Oh GS07.

Despite many previous dodgy and wonky dotticure attempts I managed to do a nice even polkadot pattern  on the index finger. On the ring finger I used masking tape cut into chevron shapes and painted over it, and for the little finger I used a fine striping brush. Of course I had to have a glitter finger too to give it some sparkle!

I'm actually quite pleased with my skittle mani, it was more fun than I imagined it to be, and it was actually quite simple and not very time consuming, you've gotta love those designs that have high impact with minimum effort!

                                                                                                                                            

If you like my nails make sure you don't miss out on future designs and how to's, become a follower! Your support would be greatly appreciated and ensures the continuation of this blog!

Carneval Nails - What I should have worn!

I'm back today with the last of my carneval themed mani's, and today's design was inspired by the 'costume' of Brazil's 'Miss Carneval' Pageant winner. I say 'costume' in parenthesis because it's actually just body paint! Brazilians don't have any problems with plenty of lady flesh on TV!

Basically the pageant was held by the leading TV channel in Brazil who went on to do full coverage of the parades in Rio, and Miss Carneval's role was to do a cute little samba dance to the opening and closing credits of the show, and they also super imposed her in giant size onto the parade runway to introduce the next samba school of costume clad people! The channel is called Globo, and the word for beauty in portuguese is 'beleza', so her title is the 'Globeleza!'

Though her body painting was rather daring and didn't leave much to the imagination, it was rather amazing and done in glitter gradients up her legs, take a look at the picture and see how fab it is!

I decided to do a stripes and spots design with glitter polishes, but it turned out I didn't actually have that many on me, when I left Australia I posted the majority of my polish collection to my mum in the UK so I wouldn't have to travel to Brazil and then Italy with it all, and so I didn't really have a good selection of glitter colours to be able to blend them and do a gradient, but I'm still happy with what I came up with and it looks really fun!

I chose to replicate the glitter paint on naked skin effect by using a nude base.The base is a Brazilian brand which I borrowed from my mother in laws stash, the brand name is 'Risque' (I didn't buy any of their polishes in the end because they have a very basic colour range and I was looking for special effects and glitters mostly) the polish is 'Meia Calza' which my husband tells me means 'stockings'.

The glitter polishes I used were from my Brazilian Cora milky way collection, and one Hits Specialita' glitter, all of which have been swatched for you just a couple of posts ago. ;)

So here is my mani!

As you can see I wasn't exactly spoiled for choice on glitter colours and I would have had a hard time getting a good gradient by combining these colours, but I think that once I get my full collection of polish back I'll give it another go with gradient stripes. I am rather impressed by my dots, I have really struggled in the past to get a nice unifrom effect with my dots all the same size, I think I pulled it off really nicely this time!

As I'm currently nursing two teabag repairs on my blogging hand, the next few designs you will see on the blog will be past designs from the vault that I have still yet to show you!

Carneval Nails - What I could have worn!

I have another carneval inspired mani today (I'm playing catch up for those of you that are wondering why I'm so late!) and today's is a pretty glitter placement design that I would have loved to have worn if I had actually had the time to do something this complicated!

I took my inspiration from my location for this one, and choose the colours green, yellow and blue from the Brazilian flag! I didn't take a pic in full sun as it was too harsh on the glitter and you couldn't make out the colours of the glitter properly for the reflections, so have a couple of different shade set ups because I couldn't decide which one was best!

The index finger is a little extract from the brazilian flag, and the middle finger represents the parade where the different samba schools who march have their own color theme, resultings in large coloured blocks of people that make the parade look stripy from above! The ring finger is a part of a flower as the costumes are covered in millions of them, and the little finger, not being able to fit much on there, represents the special stadiums in which the brazilian carneval parades takes place, it's kind of like a gigantic concrete models runway with bandstands on either side, called a Sambodromo!
I placed the glitter over a base of Ludurana 'Ouro Puro' (pure Gold)

I did the index finger first and I was super impressed with my very careful and neat glitter placement, after that I'm not sure what happened, It all got a bit higgeldy piggeldy! It looked awesome though! I just wish I had had the time over carneval weekend to do these nails for my partying, I'm sure it would have gotten lots of compliments from the Brasileiros!

Carneval Nails - What I Wore

Hello Lovelies!

Been out of touch again for a month as I made my move from Brazil to Italy, but now I'm here and things are settling so I can get back to it! 

As some of you my know I got to spend carneval in the best place for it - Brazil! But as soon as carneval was over I had to crack on with packing my stuff and getting prepared for the big move here to Italy, so I didn't have time to work on some carneval inspired nails, which lets face it, due to my location at the time was an absolute must!

So all be it late (as has been the case more often than not in these last few months of world travel!) I decided to do some carneval nails anyway, I only managed to get a couple done which I will show you during this week, for today I'm going to show you the nails I actually wore to attend carneval, as even though I didn't get time to do any blog stuff, I did at least manage to snap a couple of pics of my nails before I headed off for a wild weekend of partying Brazilian style!

The mani I wore is a simple glitter gradient, it was a pretty intense weekend and I just didn't have the time to do something elaborate, so being forced to keep it simple I went for a super bright colour and glitter! What more do you need for carneval anyway!?

The base is Australian brand Mode ' Love Me' with Cherimoya 'Electric Heaven' Mylar Glitter topper in a gradient. I love this colour and this glitter together!

Here are two pictures that I took in direct sunlight and in shade.

This week I will post a couple of manis a bit more elaborate, with designs that I might have worn had I had the time to do them!! One is a glitter placement mani which took me hours! and the last is inspired by a 'costume' worn by a lady who won Brazils 'Miss Carneval' Beauty pageant!

Stay tuned!