Pick N Mix Week 8 - Book / Brown

I tried desperately to think of a not massively popular book series to do and failed miserably which is such a let down as I read loads and loads of books. So I went for brown, which is a bit of an under-represented colour in the polish world.

Hallowe'en 2013 - Trick or Treat

Mmmm candy.

Now to be perfectly honest, I was a bit stuck on what to do for all five nails. You see - I never went round knocking on doors and demanding tasty treats as a child. We just straight up asked for cash. We never really got that much, or at least not much per house - perhaps 20p or so - but as a small child that might as well be a fortune. In fact, I can only remember being given something edible once, and that was because the very nice man in the house had just cooked cupcakes but had no change left.

Pokemon Challenge Gen II, Round 13 - Bug

Yet another pokemon type I don't use, or like.

Bug type are so annoying, with their paralysis and sleep and poison attacks!

There's one bug pokemon you just don't mess with though...

Shuckle.

Pokemon Challenge Gen II, Round 7 - Poison

There aren't many poison pokemon I like. Maybes Grimer / Muk, Ekans and Oddish, but I've already done Oddish and Ekans, and I can just tell how Grimer/Muk would come out. Lets just say its a good thing y'all ain't seen creepier-than-creepachu Ditto that I tried last year. I've seen horror movies that were tamer than that creepy looking thing.

Then, all the way down at the end of the list for gen II, at number 211... Qwilfish!

ER31DC Week 22 - Inspired by a Song

Nothing jumped out at me to do for this one, so I decided to stick my iTunes on and let it decide for me. Thankfully my music collection is varied beyond most people's wildest imagination, and the first song it threw up on shuffle was this beauty...

ER31DC Week 21 - Inspired by a Colour

I love turquoise. Its halfway between my two other favourite colours - green and blue - and is the lighter form my other favourite colour, teal.

I also have far too many turquoise polishes. Can you guess how many I used in this skittle?

Quickie Mani - Slate & Gold

Nothing like recycling a good swatch for a nice mani.

This was done on top of the Revlon Blue Slate & Sally Hansen Gray by Gray comparison mani, mainly to test out my new purchases from the Born Pretty Store.

Comparison: Revlon Blue Slate & Sally Hansen Gray by Gray

Apologies for the quietness here lately, but the sun has come out and as a Northerner I feel duty bound to spend as much time it in as humanly possible. We have to make the most of what sun we get - it could be next July before we see it again. Winter is coming, don't you know.

This, however, inevitably leads to me being a little pink in places and having to hide for a couple of days whilst I cool down and stop feeling a little ill. Thanks to yesterday's family barbecue, today is very much a hiding-and-cooling day.

So whilst Mr Painted Claws did manly DIY things in the back yard, I sat in the living room and played with my polish.

Contrary to what your eyes are telling you, this is actually two different polishes. Revlon Blue Slate and Sally Hansen's Gray by Gray.

Nail Art - Doctor Who

I'm a nerd. A fairly big nerd, I think.

I like anime, sci-fi, fantasy, pretty much everything nerdy. From Sailor Moon to Tolkien via Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

So when I heard the news last week that Matt Smith was no longer going to be playing The Doctor as of Christmas coming. And I was a little sad, because Matt Smith was a good Doctor.

Warning: Post ahead is very picture & .gif heavy. I'm totally not joking.

Tri-Polish Challenge May - Toy Soldiers

For some reason these nails really remind me of the toy soldiers off the Nutcracker and I really do not know why.

I've managed to use all 3 colours in all 4 of my looks for this month's tri-polish challenge. Go me.

Tri-Polish Challenge May - Leopard Print

And we're up to look #3 for May's tri-polish challenge.

This picture was the first time I'd ever done leopard print. I liked it so much I did it two days in a row for two different challenges, haha.

Pokemon Challenge Week 15

The final week of the Pokemon Challenge! I'm a little bit sad, to be honest, because I absolutely loved this. Also I'm about to finish the very first nail art challenge I started!

Week 15 is dragon type, which doesn't leave much choice in Gen 1 - we've got Dratini, Dragonair or Dragonite. So I decided to go for the middle child - Dragonair.

I don't quite understand the evolution from Dratini to Dragonite - it starts off kinda looking like a big worm, gets all super graceful and water-snakey... then turns in to a massive dinosaur? Hey-ho. I suppose its Pokemon, it doesn't have to make sense, haha.

ER31DC Week 8 - Metallic

This week, I've gone for a colour combo I've not seen used much - brown and gold.

With it being metallic week I figured I'd have to include either silver or gold in my mani, but after that I was a little stumped. Silver is usually my go-to colour for anything metallic, so I went for gold to try and push myself out of my usual comfort zone of colours... then I sat and stared at my stash for ages. I have reds, pinks, greens... but none of them grabbed my attention. I'd used them all before or they didn't quite look good sat next to gold, until I opened my purple/brown drawer and pulled out one of my as-yet-untried Sally Hansen polishes - Coco-a-go-go from the Insta Dri range.

I'm quite a fan of brown as colour, and as soon as I sat it next to my chosen gold (Ciate's Sand Dune, one of my Marie Claire Freebies) all I could think about was chocolate. I was sold.

ER31DC - Week 6 - Purple

Week 6 already!

With the colours in the first few weeks of this challenge I'm trying to do manis and styles that I've not really tried (or succeeded at!) before. SO, I humbly present....

In artificial light...

... my first ruffian.

I have no idea why I've never actually done this before. Its not even like its difficult, especially if you use tip guides. I do have the terrible feeling that it'd be a massacre if I tried to freehand these.

... and in natural light! We've been allowed to see the sun!

The polishes used were Sinful Colors Snow Me White for the base, with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Grape Escape for all but the ring finger, which is Sinful Colors Verbena. Grape Escape is an amazing, deep purple which is that opaque in only one coat. Its awesome!

Easter Nails

Just a quick post this morning before I continue lying around dying of a nasty cold (illness makes me so melodramatic haha!). Did these last night as everyone seemed to be doing Easter nails and I decided to hop on the bandwagon.

Nails are done in Sinful Colors Snow Me White, with sponged gradients of (thumb to pinkie) Nails Inc Albert Place, Sinful Colors Verbena, Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Yellow Kitty, Sinful Colors Mint Apple and Essie's Off The Shoulder. Then, for the super cute icing on the cake, I topped them with Cagedbird Lacquer's Faerie Carnival, a beautiful pastel glitter which kinda makes my nails look like frosted cakes.

Mmmm, cake.

A shot of the gradients before glittering. I quite like the semi-matte look you get from sponging polish.

Pokemon Challenge Week 11

Psychic week.

Psychic pokemon are my favourite type - I always have an Abra or its evolutions kicking about somewhere in my party. Theres nothing quite like Psychic to lay the beatdown on some poor unsuspecting wild pokemon haha. I picked today's pokemon entirely for its appearances in the anime though.

Specifically, this appearance...

Thats right - Its Slowpoke time! I love this episode so much, its hilarious.

I'd have done Psyduck as well, but despite its name and kick-butt psychic powers... Psyduck isn't a psychic type pokemon. Very surprised at that one.

Pokemon Challenge Week 10

I never use fighting pokemon. In fact, if it doesn't burn or mentally crush, then I'm probably not a big user of it haha. My squads are always big on fire and psychic pokemon, with others thrown in as necessity dictates.

So I had a real problem deciding which of the fighting pokemon I was going to use this week. I don't like any of them! I was tempted to go for Mankey or Primeape, as I do love the episode of the anime where Mankey steals Ash's hat, but as always I had to be awkward and go for the non-obvious choice...

...Poliwrath.

Poliwrath is conveniently a dual type pokemon, water/fighting. And far more interesting to look at the the rest of the fighting bunch, with their various shades of brown/beige.

Poliwrath was done in Sinful Colors Snow me White, with Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Thinking of Blue and LA Colours Art Deco in Black. Gradient (as always) was done using the fabulous tutorial from The Nailasaurus.

ER31DC Week 4 & Apologies

First of all, apologies for not posting for a week or so - we've had a bereavement in the family so everything has been a bit topsy turvy, and obviously family comes first.

Back to our regularly scheduled activities, and first up this weekend is the Extra Relaxed 31 Day Challenge. Week 4 is green week, and has once again highlighted that I really don't realise how many of each colour I actually have.

Shuffling through my surprisingly large collection of greens, I decided to see what I could do with just two colours and a glitter - Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Green Slipper, Essie's Navigate Her, and OPI Fresh Frog of Bel Air.

ER31DC - Week 3

Week 3 of the Extra Relaxed 31 Day Week Challenge, this week's colour is yellow.

I only own 2 yellow polishes - Sally Hansen's Complete Salon Manicure in Yellow Kitty, which is a soft, pastel yellow; and BarryM Yellow, which looks like an American Taxi. I was fairly stumped with what to do this week to go with the yellow, until I remembered a really old website layout I created whilst in uni. Mid-grey, sky blue and sunflower yellow halftone gradients all over the place, with shy blue and sunflower yellow highlights on white text. It wasn't as awful as it sounds, honest. But when I remembered that, I pulled out my trusty dotting tools and created this...

Pokemon Challenge Week 9

9 weeks in already!

This week is Poison type week, but I realised that I already did my favourite poison type pokemon for Bug week - Venonat. I clearly did not think ahead. So off I toddle to the Bulbapedia to peruse the poison type listing, and I spot the only pokemon I would I want to do on the list....

Arbok.

Then I also realised that I cut my nails short last week and I've not actually got much space to paint an full Arbok on my nails now. So I went abstract.