Pick N Mix Week 15 - Dotting Tools / Pink & Aqua

I'm really fond of odd colour combinations. Orange and blue, purple and green (Hulk smash), and pink and aqua.

Alas, my aqua turned out a little more green that I wanted.

Armed and Ready ... to stamp!

I've been pretty good in December - I put myself on a no buy last pay day (22nd Nov) and I can honestly say I've not bought anything.

Mr Painted Claws, on the other hand, saw me looking longingly at the Essie that is the base colour for this mani and promptly informed me that he couldn't let me go home without it. 

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.

Pink Wednesdays

Time for another Pink Wednesday!

This week we've got a design inspired by The Nailasaurus' Waterfall Manicures for Pink Wednesday, and I had so much fun raiding my inexplicably large stash of pink polishes for this one!

The base for this is OPI Step Right Up, a beautiful pale pink which is unfortunately super sheer. This is four fairly thick coats to get it opaque.

The waterfall itself is done in OPI Kiss Me On My Tulips, Orly Sterling Silver Rose, Orly Lola and Essie Big Spender.

I love the look of this mani and I've been wanting to try it for ages, so what better opportunity than a pink wednesday!

An InLinkz Link-up

ER31DC Week 31 - Redo!

Well, the last week of the Extra Relaxed 31 Day Challenge is upon us, and this one was quite difficult. I didn't quite know what to redo.

The other half suggested tribal, but to be honest I nearly wept tears of blood after how long it took to do the first one. Then I was thinking glitter or polka dots... until I remembered I'd not done a gradient mani in an absolute age. I love gradients. Not so massively fond of the cleanup afterwards, but I have a new bottle of pure acetone on my desk that says that isn't going to be a problem any more.

Birthday Polish Haul

I turned 27 last wednesday, and I got some amazing polish-based presents from  Mr Painted Claws and from my bestie and Chief Enabler Rachael (of Racho's Nail Love).

Just to warn everyone in advance, this is gonna be a fairly pic heavy post - and these are just the bottle shots! I haven't even gotten time to think about swatching the lot!

ER31DC Week 23 - Inspired by a Movie

Apologies for the massive lateness of this post, but I'm off on my holidays on sunday and last minute panic is in full swing in the Painted Claws household. And by that I mean my other half keeps telling me not to worry and I keep writing insane lists and losing things.

This mani was inspired entirely by Rachael over at Racho's Nail Love and one of the mani's she did for a recent challenge - Comic-Con Geek Week Day 3.

I love Stargate. I remember watching the film so many years ago and absolutely adoring it. I even had the video game for the Mega drive back in the mid-90s. I was terrible at it. But the thing that captivated me most and the one thing that ties all of the various versions together is the gate itself.

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?

Swatched - Essie All Tied Up

Once again I find find myself unable to actually tell what colour this is. I've been staring at it for three days now and I'm still not sure how to describe it.

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.

ER31DC Week 14 - Flowers

Last week's flowery stamping has come in useful - I don't read ahead for this challenge, I just do the weeks as they pop up and thus this is a fabulous coincidence.

My favourite flowers are Cherry Blossoms.

They're so pretty, and delicate. And when they drop from the trees the look like pretty pink snow.

Work Week Nails - Spotty!

I actually made an effort for once for my nails for work, thanks to the three day weekend we've just had here in the UK.

Managed to pick up OPI French Quarter For Your Thoughts for only £3.99 and really wanted to give it a try as I'm quite fond of grey polishes at the minute.

Colours used for the spots were Sinful Colors Savage and Be Happy, as well as Essie Mojito Madness and Asda George Quick Dry Polish in Cloudless Sky.

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.

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.

Swatched - Essie's Beach Bum Blu

I'm not short on new buys at the moment, but I couldn't resist swatching one of my newest purchases this week - Essie's Beach Bum Blu. A beautiful metallic/pearl sea-blue, BBB is a perfect summer colour - which is something I could do with right now because its started snowing again.

As you can see it catches the light beautifully, the photo above is two coats with Seche Vite topcoat. The formula is good too, with one regular thickness coat being just short of opaque.

I absolutely love this colour! I'm fairly fond of blues and greens and the colours between, but as soon as I saw this I knew I had to have it. This will probably be worn for a large chunk of the summer, or at least to cheer me up when it starts snowing again.

My first gradient

I've never done a gradient before. I've stared at the fabulous tutorial on The Nailasaurus god-knows-how-many-times and thought "I'll do that... at some point. Maybes." Because I am a lazy wuss who is disappointed by anything less than perfection first time.

So, I figured I'd do a subtle gradient on a polish I'd not used yet - Essie's Bahama Mama!

Sponged over top of my ring finger is a lovely muted bronze polish from Sleek called 'Truffle' which actually looks a lot more subtle in real life than it does in these photos. 

I adore both polishes, both Bahama Mama and Truffle, as they both go on quite easily and give wonderful colour. Bahama Mama is difficult to clean up however, as I found last night when I did these and had to scrub my cuticles when my hand slipped! They're still not totally clean on the middle finger.

Spotty!

I love spotty things. I also love stripy things, but I've got fairly shaky hands and no long striping brush so I figured it was best to stick to what I could do pending the procurement of a nice set of long striping brushes.

I got a triple pack of Essie the other day from TK Maxx - three bottles of what I suspect to be Forever Yummy, but sadly they have no identifying mark on the bottles and the labels they do have have no barcode or anything. I'm very fond of reds, especially the less orangey end of the red spectrum. I'm kinda convinced, although I'm really not sure if I'm right in this, that I don't suit the orange/coral colours, so over the years I've ended up owning a lot of very similar shades of red.