More Nail Polish

Paradise cocktail gradient

2020-02-16T21:00:00.002+11:00

I'm a little late posting this look today, and unfortunately it's the last cocktail design I have cause I didn't get around to painting five designs. But at least I'm leaving you with a really pretty one.

I ended up wearing this all week and I'm so impressed with how closely the colours matched the drink. Again I ended up googling pretty cocktails, and this was one that popped up a lot. It's called a Paradise cocktail, and I'm pretty sure I drank a few of these when we went to the USA in 2018 and went to the Caribbean.

Fruit Tingle cocktail for the Digital Three does Cocktails

2020-02-12T21:36:00.002+11:00

Today's nails are something pretty extra. In fact I wouldn't be surprised to see these nails appearing on the "That's It, I'm nail Shaming" facebook group. That would really be an achievement for me.

Honestly, I don't know what I was thinking. I had a beautiful vertical purple and blue jelly gradient, and for some stupid reason I thought, I'm going to use gel polish to try make 3D ice cubes, plus add some white frost to really make that ice look authentic. I'm Sorry! *shaking my head*

Needless to say, these didn't stay on very long. Luckily I put on a peel off base and they were gone quick smart.

Shame away ladies, shame away!

Sweet Poison gradient for Digital Dozen Cocktails

2020-02-11T21:28:00.003+11:00

Have you ever tried a Sweet Poison cocktail? Well me neither, but is sure does look pretty! Plus it makes for amazing nail art inspo.

I know, it's probably a little too simple to really classify as nail art, it's only a basic gradient after all. But don't these colours just look gorgeous together. On the tips I sponged two different shades, a blue and a purple, and looking at this you could almost say it looks like some of the fancy thermal polishes some Indie brands are coming out with. In different lighting sometimes the blue shows more, other times the purple sparks are there.

Please make sure you check out the other participants from the Digital Three. There used to more than a dozen of us, but over time most people have stopped blogging. Let me know if you are a blogger who is interested in joining our group. We aim to post 5 manis on a set theme once each month, and we'd love to have some more participants

I'm alive with some cocktail themed nails

2020-02-10T22:15:00.001+11:00

Well hello there! It turns out that my blog is still here and I can still post to it. Whether anyone is reading it is a whole different question.

That sure was a very fast 4 months!

It's been one hell of a ride over the summer down under. As I'm sure just about the whole world knows, we had a lot of bush fires ravaging the country, and they have been burning since well before I did my last post. In fact in November we drove up to Queensland and I remember that the Highway was closed the night before we drove up because of fires. It was just heartbreaking driving through the forests that were nothing but char. I'm so sad or all the animals.

The other thing we have been really struggling with is air quality. Since late November, my town of Canberra has routinely been listed in the top 5 worse cities for air quality in the world. We all bought P2 masks to try limit our exposure. So with the fires and smoke, we have also had massive heat waves, with day after day over 40C and of course the drought.

But if that wasn't enough we also had a massive super cell storm bust through Canberra in mid January. The storm couldn't have picked a more destructive path. It basically passed through three major town centers where there are thousands of cars parked in open car parks during they day. I've never seen a storm like it in Canberra. Even my mum who has lived here for more than 50 years has never seen a storm like it. The hail was larger the golf balls. Our 5 year old Mazda CX9 was written off, which meant we were forced back onto our motorbikes to commute to work. Usually that's not too bad, except when riding in the aforementioned 42 degree heat. We had insurance, which was paid out last week and we were quick in to buy a new car, knowing that there will be lots of people looking, we didn't want to wait to see prices rise. They have estimated about 30,000 cars damaged or written off.

Throw in Christmas, New Year, Miss 9's birthday, plus massive changes at work where the Prime Minister decided to merge a bunch of departments including the one I work for. This had a huge impact on my work life balance, with so much extra work to be done to set up websites, intranets, HR systems etc for a new merged department.

When I look back at the last four months, I certainly can see why I didn't do any blogging. However, there wasn't a single day that went past where my nails were naked. They didn't have nail art on them all the time, but were always painted and looking on point. As a result, I have so many mani photos that need editing and posting. Wanna see some Christmas designs anyone?

This weeks theme for the Digital Dozen was a fun one, being Cocktails. I did plan on drinking one of each mani that I created, but sadly that didn't eventuate. I've also discovered that cocktail inspired designs make excellent gradient nail art inspiration.

For my first look, I did was inspired by a Tequila sunrise. I even garnished my nails with a cherry and the orange slice, just like the inspiration picture. I should be back tomorrow night, as I have at least a couple of designs to share.

Rainbow fluid art for Digital Dozen does colours that collide

2019-10-19T21:44:00.001+11:00

Here is the final ook for this week in my five days of fluid art. I was going for a rainbow look, and used the Pipedream A Night in Vegas polishes as they always look so fantastic together. The final look ended up very pink looking, and the cooler blues and greens didn't really come through much.

I used my own mixed up bottle of clear fluid art polish, made using the quirt of Garnier Fructis Sleek and Shine serum. But this time I did a slightly another new technique when I used a stamper to smoosh a pool of polishes, but the difference was that I used the black flat side of the stamper. The flat side doesn't end up making a gap in the center like a regular domed stamper.

Fluid nail art with Halloween colours for Digital Dozen does colours that collide

2019-10-17T22:55:00.000+11:00

Are you ready for another fluid art design. I hope so, because I've been enjoying these so much recently I think I will continue to participate in the #Fluidartfridays and find the group that sets the colour palette each week.

Today I chose to go with a Halloween theme with the colours of green, orange and purple. This was also my first attempt at creating my own fluid nail art polish. I mixed up my own clear polish and added a full squirt of Garnier Fructis Sleek and Shine. Yep, you read that right, I added a pump of hair serum into my polish. I read about this on instagram from a number of different posts and thought I would try it myself. Some people said that it's the silicone in hair serum that make it creat the cells, but I'm not so convinced. That's because I also tried making my own fluid art polish with silicone spray. We have plenty of cans of silicone spray around the house because we use it on our pool pump and equipment. I tried spraying some of the silicone into a small tube and let it settle and evaporate for a while. But when I mixed it with the polish I didn't find that it made any cells. I wonder if its the Moroccan Argan oil in the hair serum that works?

Pink and Greg Fluid art for Digital Dozen does Colors that Collide

2019-10-16T21:36:00.001+11:00

Can you tell that I'm having lots of fun trying out different polishes and techniques for fluid nail art?

This time I have used the Sinful colors transforming polishes in Purpunk, combined with a pastel pink and black polish. The technique I used this time was to paint random dots down on my silicone mat and then use the zip side of a zip-lock bag, and carefully drag it across the polishes. I managed to get some good cells again using this technique.

Crazy fluid nail art for Digital Dozen does colours that collide

2019-10-15T21:09:00.004+11:00

It's day two for the colours that collide prompt and I have a really crazy fluid art design to share with you today. For this design, I again used some of the Sinful Colors Hypnotic Transforming top coats. But instead of just one, I used two. A red and a blue. I also use a regular white polish for this look too.

I used a different technique with these polishes. Rather than using a stamper to squish the drops of polish, I just piled up the colours on top of each other like a water marble, except on the silicone mat. Then I picked up the mat and swirled the polishes around letting the run into each other and all around the mat. The end result was this crazy look with lots of cells splitting and showing the colours underneath. I totally love how this came out.

Digital Dozen does Colours that collide - Fluid nail art Day 1

2019-10-14T21:04:00.002+11:00

It's another Digital Dozen week and the theme this week is colours that collide. I thought for a while about how I would interpret the prompt this week, and I've ended up settling on my own personal theme for the week, that being Fluid Art.

Acrylic Fluid Art on canvas is all the rage at the moment, in fact I wasted quite a bit of time watching fluid art pour videos on Youtube. They are so satisfying to watch I tell you.

I've been reading about lots of different ways to do fluid nail art, and I thought I would try out a bunch of them this week and see what works for me. I plan to use a range of transforming top coats, as well and making my own transforming top coat based on all the cool experimenting other crazy nail ladies have done.

This first look is made using a transforming top coat from Sinful colours. This ones is the pastel purple one called PurPunk, which you actually can hardly see in this design. To get the mix of colours, I just did drops of all the polishes onto a silicone mat and then pressed a large stamper into it. After removing the stamping all the cells start to appear like magic. These Sinful transforming top coats (offically called Hypnotic Transforming top coats) work so well for this type of nail art.

Ok, no bring on a week of Fluid nail art.

Let's go CANBERRA RAIDERS!

2019-10-05T18:41:00.001+10:00

My home town of Canberra has been painting the town green this week, because the Canberra Raiders have made it into the NRL Grand Final tomorrow. For my American readers, that's our equivalent of a football team making it to the Superbowl.

Canberra last won the NRL Premiership 25 years ago, so we are well due for a win. All around town this week people have been making all sorts of things green. Green sausages, green pastry on the meat pies, green bread, green coffee froth on top of your cappuccino, the Telstra Tower and other city monuments are lit up with green lights, anyway you get the idea. Literally painting the town green!

Back in 2012 The Canberra Raiders made it to one of the elimination semi-finals, but lost. I did Raiders nail art back them too, and I'm glad to say that I think this one, whilst very similar, is much neater. I printed out another water decal for the team logo, and freehanded the other stripes. The pinky finger represents the local saying of "We bleed green".

Good luck boys and GO RAIDERS!

31DC2019 Recap

2019-10-02T20:19:00.003+10:00

Once again, it's time for my recap post. I love doing this at the end of every year following the 31 Day Challenge, to look back at some stats around which were my most popular and least popular designs.

On Instagram, my most liked manicure was orange design, but with added help. On Instagram I applied some werble effects and actually made my nails look like fire. If I don't count that as my most popular, because it was a very different post, then it was my glitter placement as the next most popular.

On my blog, my most visited blog post for the challenge was my red design. But I reckon that is only because it was the first post of the challenge.

My least visited mani on my blog was the geometric design. I can't even tell you yet what my least liked mani on Instragram is because I haven't finished posting them all there yet. Sorry, I'm a slacker!

Here is a recap of my all manis. You can click through to each post by clicking on the images. I'd love to know which one you liked best and which was the most popular nail design you created on your blog or IG?

Also, make sure you go over to Buff and Polish and grab one of the finisher badges for your blog or insta if you made it the whole way!.

31 Day Challenge 2019

Red
Orange
Yellow

Green
Blue
Violet

Black and White
Metallic
Rainbow

Gradient
Dots
Stripes

Animal Print
Flowers
Delicate

Geometric Print
Glitter
Half Moons

Galaxies
Watermarble
Colour

Song
Movie
Book

Fashion
Pattern
Artwork

Flag
Supernatural
Tutorial

Honor nails you love

31DC2019 - Honor nails you love

2019-10-01T22:11:00.000+10:00

That's a wrap folks! 31 Days of nail art and another year done and dusted. Just this one last mani to post to honor the nails you love.

This year I'm honoring a design created by one of only 31 Day Challenge participants that I could see keeping up with me and posting every day and linking it in the Inlinkz - Kathryn from Kathryn.nails on Instagram. She created a very similar design for the flowers prompt, and whilst I didn't have the same stamping plate that she did, I did have a similar one.

I loved how Kathryn didn't use black or white polish for the stamping, which is something I find difficult to do. Which is a shame since I have so many varied stamping polish colours.

So Kathryn, this one is for you. Thank you for joining me along this journey for the last month. Also a shout out to a few other nail artists who have been here for just about all of the 31 Day Challenge too. LacquerLit, Eva from Flight of Whimsy, Cindi from Cindibythesea, Uma from Uma's Nail Art. Thank you ladies!

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My inspired by artwork nails from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017!

31DC2019 - Inspired by a tutorial - Fluid art

2019-09-30T21:24:00.000+10:00

Just one more day to go, and I love the last two designs I have for you. For my design inspired by a tutorial, I have some fluid nail art for you. I keep seeing so many ladies doing #fluidartfriday on Instagram and I wanted to have another red hot go at it. I can’t say which tutorial I followed because the truth I I used techniques from a whole bunch of different video tutorials.

I really want to try creating my own DIY bottle of a spotted polish, specifically I’d like to make one with clear polish, but I didn’t have the time to do all that experimenting. I ended up using a pastel purple shade from the sinful colors range of magic toppers. I love all these pastel shades together, but I admit I had to darken up these photos to be able to see the different colours on my nails, as the contrast wasn’t very strong.

I definitely want to do more fluid art and use some stronger contrasting colours next time.

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My inspired by artwork nails from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017!

31DC2019 - Inspired by the Supernatural - Mind Flayer from Stranger Things

2019-09-29T20:32:00.002+10:00

I'm just about to go and paint my nails with the last design for the challenge. That mean's I've done it. I made it through September again and somehow managed to post every single day!

Today's prompt is always one that I have to think really hard about, because I start to find limits about how many supernatural things I can think of to paint on my nails. The last couple of years, Game of Thrones came to my aid and helped me with ideas, this year I'm drawing inspiration from another TV show. This time it's Stranger Things, and that creepy shadow monster that I believe is called the Mind Flayer.

I was inspired by some fan art for this one, as the monster on the show was always so hard to see among the dark shadows and clouds, and you only saw it with the lightening lit it up.

Image by Brandon Scalf

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My inspired by artwork nails from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017!

31DC2019 - Inspired by a Flag - Arendelle from Frozen

2019-09-28T19:30:00.001+10:00

Who was it that came up with the challenge all those years ago, and what were they thinking when they added this prompt? It definitely my least favourite prompt of the entire challenge, yet I feel I've always been able to come up with something from a little left field.

You see I don't like to just pick a regular country and do their flag, so today I've chosen a fictional place and their flag. This is a rough interpretation of the flag of Arendelle. You know, the place where Elsa and Anna live in the move Frozen.

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My inspired by artwork nails from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017!

31DC2019 - Inspired by Artwork - Van Gogh’s Starry Night

2019-09-27T21:31:00.001+10:00

Check out my mad painting skills here with this design, inspired by Van Gogh’s Starry Night artwork.

It’s all glittery, and perfect just like the painting, and it took me literally minutes to apply because they are nail wraps and I cheated!! Sorry folks. I did put it out there at the beginning of the challenge, that I would do anything necessary on my nails to keep up with the challenge, even if it meant nail wraps. And these wrap were just too perfect to pass up for this prompt.

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My inspired by artwork nails from 2013, 2014,2015, 2016 and 2017!

31DC2019 - Inspired by a pattern - Mickey ears

2019-09-26T22:39:00.002+10:00

Can you believe we only have 6 days left in the challenge. I see the light people! We are nearly there.

The prompt for today Inspired by a Pattern. Sometimes in previous years, I think I’ve ended up doing more of a design print for this prompt, rather than strictly a pattern,. A pattern is described as a design where the elements of the pattern are repeated in a predicable manner. So that is exactly what I went for this time with a repeating Mickey ears pattern in a multitude of colours.

I created these as stamped decals, and made quite a whoopsie on the ring ringer. Can you spot it? I accidentally applied the decal upside down, which means the edges of the black outline is painted over, where I was colouring in the decals. I’m lucky my colouring in was pretty neat. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it, otherwise you may get not have noticed.

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My inspired by a pattern nails from 2013 and 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017!

31DC2019 - Inspired by Fashion

2019-09-25T22:22:00.002+10:00

Damn it, I was already warm and snuggly in my bed when I realised that I hadn't yet done my blog post tonight. For that reason, I'm keeping it short and sweet tonight.

Today's prompt is inspired by Fashion. I did a real quick browse of some dresses over on Modcloth, and picked out this dress because I new I could do some pretty cool matching nail art. I love the end look, but I still hate thin striped nail vinyls like these, they are so slow and tedious to use.

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My inspired by fashion nails from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016and 2017!

31DC2019 - Inspired by a book - Warriors

2019-09-24T22:06:00.002+10:00

The prompt today is Inspired by a Book, and the book I chose to try represent is one of the covers from the Warriors Cats series by Erin Hunter. I love the covers to this series of books, they all feature different cats. Whilst I've not actually read much of them, what cat person wouldn't love a series that follows the adventures of five different clans of cats.

I've just started reading the first book with my eight year old daughter, there are lots of books in the series so not sure how we will go, but she was very excited to see the start of the series in her school library.

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My inspired by a movie nails from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017!

31DC2019 - Inspired by a movie - Aquaman

2019-09-23T22:12:00.002+10:00

Today is the movie prompt, and it was an easy choice for me this time. Just last week Aquaman was finally available on Foxtel, meaning I was able to watch it, as we missed seeing it when it was on at the cinema. When I saw Jason Momoa in his fancy gold and green Aquaman armor, I immediately saw the nail art in his outfit.

I did some green scales to match his leggings, a full gold stud nail to represent his gold blingy chest armor, and then the Golden trident 🔱.

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My inspired by a movie nails from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017!

31DC2019 - Inspired by a song - Imagine Dragons Radioactive

2019-09-22T22:15:00.001+10:00

The prompt today is inspired by a song. The song I chose isRadioactive by Imagine Dragons. My kids are obsessed with Imagine Dragons and every time we get in the car to go somewhere, they ask for their songs to be first up in the play list. It’s really sweet listening to them sing their hearts out, especially when they know all the words!

I started with a yellow base, then applied a neon green topper that glows in the dark, just for that extra special effect at night time. I then stayed with some green polish with a circular pattern and then added the two different types of symbols. I think one is the radioactive symbol and the other is a biohazard symbol, but I wanted to mix it up a bit!

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My inspired by a song nails from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017!

31DC2019 - Inspired by a colour - Sunset

2019-09-21T22:04:00.002+10:00

I can’t believe I never thought to use this Picture Polish shade as the inspiration for this prompt before. Some years for this challenge, I’ve been inspired by actual colours, other years I’m taken the lead from Sarah at Chalkboard nails, and been inspired by nail polish colours, more specifically the name of that colour.

Picture Polish Sunset has inspired this African animal scene. I used a few other picture polish shades to make the gradient, I think it was Blue and Crazy.

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My inspired by a colour nails from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017!

31DC2019 - Watermarble - pastel water marble

2019-09-20T21:36:00.001+10:00

So here with are with the Water Marble challenge in the prompt, a day that is no longer a feared for me in the challenge, in fact I love the water marble prompt. If you struggle with water-marbling, you should check out a post I did a few years back with some tips and tricks to get it to work right.

I realised I hadn't done a pastel water marble for the challenge yet, so I pulled out my favourite brand with pastel shades that I know marble perfectly.

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My galaxy nails from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017!

31DC2019 - Galaxy - Neon galaxy

2019-09-19T21:57:00.001+10:00

I’m always trying to think of different ways to do this prompt, so mach so that I don’t think I’ve done just a regular galaxy mani in the 31 day challenge yet. I’ve had a drip galaxy, cats in space, a pastel galaxy etc.

One that I hadn’t yet tried was a neon galaxy. These were very fun to wear and super eye catchy! I’m not sure I really got the galaxy feel to the sponged background, but chuck in a couple of star bursts, a few dots and a glitter top coat and suddenly it looks like a galaxy mani.

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My galaxy nails from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017!

31DC2019 - Half Moons - Donuts

2019-09-18T22:26:00.003+10:00

I find this prompt to be one of the hardest to come up with something unique each year. This year I have bit of a silly fun design for this half moons prompt. These are half moon chocolate and strawberry iced donuts, with sprinkles!

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My half moon nails from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017!