Blog Archives
Party Nails: Layla Holographic Retro Pink and Cover Bands Stick ‘n’ Stones
My friends and neighbours had a 30th birthday party, dress up or down optional. Of course, I dressed up. I do this. And I chose 80’s theme, as I also like too. And then, of course, had to make my nails themed too… So I chose Layla Holographic Retro Pink (2 coats), Cover Bands Stick ‘n’ Stones (2 dabbed coats), Vivid Lacquer Your Princess is in Another Castle (1 coat) and finished with China Glaze Fast Forward.
One huge advantage to the Layla Holographics is that they dry so fast! Another is that they are very pretty, and VERY holographic.
Sticks ‘n’ Stones added that sort of graphic look that reminds me of the 80’s era, and just broke it up a bit for me, and I loved that the thin layer of Your Princess is in Another Castle added some chunky holo and pink glitters to make it all perfect.
And then I took lots of photos in the sunlight…
And another!
And in case anyone wanted to see a bad photo of my outfit, here it is 😀 You can’t really see, but my makeup was all blue and pink (loads of pink), and my earrings were huge. I also wrapped necklaces around one boot hehehe.
Have a wonderful day
Ami 🙂
Plover Painting – using nail polish
Good morning all! It’s gorgeous here, after a few days of bleak and rain (don’t get me wrong, we desperately needed the rain, and I WAS doing a rain dance, but the sun is nice too..) and we just had a moderately lengthy, rolling earthquake so I’m feeling rather wired. Pleased to report that not ONE bottle of polish fell off my shelves. Now I need to think of some kind of barrier to keep them safe… hmmm. Any thoughts?
Ok, no time for a lengthy post, so I thought I’d quickly show you a tiny painting I did using nail polish, on the glass of a photo frame. It’s my first attempt at this, and I really quite liked it.
backgrounds not finished, but shows the tiny size of it 😀
It’s a spur-winged plover 😀
with flowers (from DDP Bzz Bzz) and Daily Lacquer Makoto among others
I did like how you can lift it, and it becomes quite translucent. Not sure how to go about getting rid of those gaps between background and bird without ruining some of the translucence… smaller brushes, perhaps. I was using the nail polish brush and man was it hard to get any detail in.
don’t much like the messiness, but it’s good to know what I have to improve!
This is with my mentor at The Learning Connexion now, hopefully she’ll send it back later. Even more hopefully she’ll acknowledge that my nail polish collection can, in fact, be almost arty 😀
Have a great, non shaky day!
Ami 🙂
I Had Some Dreams, They Were Dragons In My Coffee…
Now I’ll have that song in my head alll day. You too? Oh, goodie 😀
My husband made me a coffee, and whenever we make each other a coffee we attempt to draw pictures with the milk froth. Often it’s a heart. Or a floating pumice raft *. Something simple. So, imagine my astonishment when he brought in this cup of art!
In case it is only me that sees it, I see the dragon along the left, from top (head) to bottom (shoulders) and the flames are spewing up to the top right. 🙂
Ok, he didn’t do it on purpose. And he wouldn’t be able to replicate it, and I wouldn’t even try. But isn’t it a perfect head/ neck/shoulders/ of a dragon breathing fire? Stunning! Small moments of happiness and entertainment in our lives, shared with you (possibly to your annoyance, sorry about that!) via the wonders of blogging technology 😀
*just blob white foam in random spots on top of the froth. You’re welcome. 😉
Light Sussex Chicken and Nail Art
Chickens and nail polish: two of my favourite things. (alongside my family, and jewellery, and running down mountains. I have lots of favourite things:D). So, I thought – why not combine them? I’m fortunate enough to have quite a variety of chickens, so I’ll use them as inspiration for some nail art, and also give a bit of information on the chook.
First up, light sussex chicken
here are some beautiful Light Sussex hens, image from http://www.wanorastud.com/lightsussex.htm
Sussex information: “Bred to be a dual purpose bird, it is one of the most productive breeds we have today. The hen will lay around 260 large eggs that are cream to light brown in colour. The Sussex is one of the oldest breeds that are still in existence today. The Sussex chicken is an alert but docile breed that can adapt to any surrounding easily. They are good foragers. Whilst they are quite happy to be free range, they will also be fine if kept in a confined space. They can occasionally but not very often go broody.” Information from this great website here.
Jane, foraging around with Beetle (the black Orpington pullet in the foreground)
I am lucky enough to have four Light Sussex hens, and because they remind me of ladies wearing old fashioned English Lawn dresses, I’ve given them good ashioned names… Jane, Eliza, Virginia and Mary. They are good, regular layers (having a break over winter, but Eliza gives me an egg 5 days a week). Docile? Not so much, they’re first at the door for food and are right at the top of the pecking order. Also, all four of them went madly broody last summer, so I’d not be saying ‘possibly may go broody’ to people, more ‘WILL go broody and bite your hands if you try and move them’. None of them managed to successfully hatch their eggs though, maybe they will this year.
And my nails?
This was three coats of E 44 – white: a Japanese polish, streaky but pretty nice in three coats. I used the dotting tool to make the combs, with L.A.Colors Cranberry Red. Neck feathers are a light gradient of Cover Band Sticks ‘n’ Stones with black teardrop nail jewels; the beaks are gold teardrop nail jewels, and the eyes are orange nail jewels. I used a top coat of Kleancolor Fast Dry.
My favourite one!
I really enjoyed doing these. I wasn’t expecting to paint chickens heads on my nails, but that’s what I found myself doing 😀
And sometime this week I’ll pick another of my chickens and get more inspiration from them! 🙂
Playing with Kleancolor Jewel Box 02 – silly fun :D
So, yes, I said I’d play around with the Kleancolor palette, and I did. Because I’m like that, mostly. ahem. I used Designer Brands eyeshadow primer on my eyelids first.
I guess I’m in a bit of a silly mood because instead of doing something normal with them, I went to town. I did one eye using the browns and golds, and it looked pretty normal until I blinked..
because I painted a leopard print-esque spot on that one.
My photos don’t come out that well, the lighting isn’t great and it looks a lot fainter in the pictures than in does in real life. I used Doll Face Satin under my brow, and Chi Chi brown eyeliner, and Max Factor mascara in Burnished Brown – with the gold side on my bottom lashes. Which then went all over the underneath of my eye. Meh
Then on my other eye I used all the blues and greens, with some gold for emphasis.
Oooh this was fun! I sort of ended up going all blue-eyebrowed-Egyptian theme on it: I haven’t had as much fun with makeup for AGES. I used Dollface black eyeliner for this, and it just didn’t do what it normally does, the powder was too slippery I think. Not sure how to get around this, possibly liquid eyeliner? Or eyeliner first, then top up after? It was fun though!
I did, however, forget how pigmented the blue shadows are. I remembered when I went to take OFF the makeup though.
So, yep, now I have one blue eyebrow. Hopefully it’ll come off with extra scrubbing soon, or I’ll have to paint the other side to match, and I’ll *probably* get weird looks at Playgroup tomorrow. Heh heh heh
But, yes, I can and have worn these ‘normally’ – just put them on lightly, blend well, and don’t paint your eyebrow blue unless you are happy with it potentially staying that way 😀
Lyricosis: Sing a Song, Sing it Wrong…
My family all suffer from lyricosis. Actually, we almost never suffer – we enjoy every minute of it – but others around us, they suffer. (To clear up any confusion, the Urban Dictionary defines lyricosis as “a debilitating disease wherein an individual consistently hears incorrect lyrics to songs”. Also known as Chronic Lyricosis.)
Lyricosis can take many forms: the most common and mild presentation of the disease, is also termed Mumbleitis.
It tends to present at unpredictable moments throughout any given song. An example from my own history is this:
“…I gave you all the love I had in me
now I find you’ve lied and I can’t believe it’s true.
raaanannaNNAAAAAA I see you across the street..”
(lyrics from Stop – popularly sung by Sam Brown, murdered happily by almost everyone else.) So, it turns out, the ACUTAL lyrics in that space should be ‘wrapped in her arms” … but no, that wasn’t what I was singing. Moving on.
The second level of lyricosis; less common but extremely enjoyable, is Word Substitutionese. This can be completely accidental: My cousin V was somewhat abashed when her friend pointed out that the words should have been “You’re sweet like chocolate, boy” – rather than “You’re sweet like chocolate, balls.” Funny how that one simple comma makes that sentence so much ruder.
Or, it can be completely on purpose – usually also to make a song ruder/funnier/more puerile, or all of the above (they often go together, in my world!). One of my standbys for that is Cyndi Lauper’s song, I Drove All Night:
“I drove all night to get to you
is that alright;
I drove all night, cr*pped in your room”.
Wow, ok, so now you all know I do have the sense of humour of a 12 year old boy at times, but it always makes me snigger.
Singing penguins! The awesomeness! From http://pengcognito.wordpress.com/category/music/
But the epitome of lyricosis – also called lyricosis grandiousis (by me, and hey, I’m the one making up most of these terms), is when the lyrics to a WHOLE song is changed. And for this I have to bow to the Warped Wordsmith Master; sister V.
These are the L. grandiosis lyrics to It’s A Kind Of Magic, by Queen.
One dream
One sole
One cries “one goal!”
One goal should glance
At what should be.
One slice of lard
That shoulders whey
No Mordor, man
Can witness day.
And you know? Once I’d stopped crying laughter tears over this, I realised that’s exactly how I’ve been singing that song. So, when does lyricosis stop being a problem, and start being genius? Right there. Thanks, V! You rock 😀
So, lyricosians of the world, unite! (Dyslexics, untie! But thats a whole other post). We make this world more colourful and fun. And, even better, it seems to get more pronounced with age .. my mother still has me in fits of laughter when she sings ‘Love is a Battlefield’ by Pat Benetar. Despite the words being the actual title of the song, she still sang ‘love is a fallacy’ for years. Upon being gently corrected, she then changed the words to ‘love is a fallowfield’ She’s so awesome, the inspiration for many.
Perfection. From http://1057crushfm.com/misheard-lyrics/
Nail Patch Nail Foil Wraps – Silver Skulls Review
I really felt like trying something different, so I purchased two nail foil wraps from Ebay. They were really inexpensive (just over $3 for 2 sets, including postage) so I didn’t have anything to lose. This is a metallic silver base, with tiny black skull and crossbones over it.
I have tried the Incoco nail strips before, well, once. See – THEY are expensive! $14 for one set of nail polish strips? Ouch! Mine was cheaper off Trade Me, but still. For the same amount of money I can easily get a bottle of polish – lasts me a LOT longer. The attractive aspect to the Incoco nail polish was that it did last a long time on my nail – grew out, with a bit of tip wear, rather than peeling off immediately. But I digress – meaningfully. These foil wraps are nothing like the Incoco nail polish strips, they are stickers. Funky stickers, yes, but just metallic stickers.
This bangle was sister C's, it's hinged and has lizards on it. Always reminds me of her!
You can probably see that they don’t want to go on all that smoothly, either. Although I put that down to User Error (I can’t put clear seal on books properly, either!), I didnt blame myself completely for how hard these were to file off at the ends. So, on the plus side, these looked great from arms length away. I loved the bling factor! Some lovely lady admired them, then asked if I had painted them myself. Oh how I laughed. No… no… I could not do that, even if I knew a polish that had that finish. They were easy enough to apply – the glue wasn’t so sticky that I couldn’t reapply the two I put on wonky, so that’s good. They were seriously cheap. They were a really fun design, something I couldn’t do. They also didn’t stink like nail polish does, so I could put them on, inside, at night, watching tv. I KNOW. Wow, right? 😀 (I am quite conscious of the chemicals I use around the kids, including nail polish!)
But.. cons. Here, check another photo out.
EEEwwwwwww.
Some seriously terrible application, plus they peeled at the ends immediately! I didn’t put the advised top coat on, because I would have needed something like resin to be thick enough to stick that down. The bumps were weird (user error blamed on those), but the jagged edges felt like I had cut my nails with a stanley blade to shorten them (yes, I’ve done that. Haven’t you?!) and not bothered to file them. Yuck. It also felt unhygenic having flappy bits at the end of the nail for greebs to hide under. So, they didn’t last very long on me. less than 24 hours. The other issue for me was the sizing – 16 nails, one too skinny for my littlest nails, one too big by far, but I managed to make them work. They do have to fit a range of people, but depending on nail size, you may have to trim some down to size to make it work.
Overall? I think they would be great for a special occasion: dinner out, holiday, party or dress up event. A lot of fun, for very little money. They took me quite a while to get on my hands too, so don’t leave it till the last minute! There are a lot of different ones for sale on Ebay or Trade Me, almost anything for almost anyone. I enjoyed the experimenting, and I still have another packet (with spiderwebs!) that I will save for a special fun occasion. 🙂
everysensory and Star Kin 