Keroppi Nail Art

To continue with the Sanrio nail art theme I've been going with lately, I decided to try my favourite character Keroppi. I don't know why I love this silly little frog. He is awesome and I have been collecting Keroppi stuff for a long time. Oh he also has the same birthday as me :-D Yeah I don't know why Sanrio characters have birthdays... but here we are:

So instead of drawing Keroppi 5 times I decided to draw Keroppi with some of his friends.

This was my inspiration. First sanrio drawer revealed this Keroppi sticker puzzle. Made in Japan 1994. Awesome.

As usual I started with the thumb to see how much I'm going to suck :-P I think this is actually my *third* attempt. I tried various backgrounds and was happiest with Essie's Pretty Edgy. A good solid green base.

Next progress shot involved me drawing the outline of the frog heads on each remaining nail. It doesn't really matter how messy you are, you just have to get the general shape ok. Everything can be touched up later.

Next I filled the eyes with China Glaze Snow and the heads with Sally Hansen Green With Envy. This is a great keroppi green. Was very happy with that discovery. I also did most of my touch ups here.

Next I drew the first two friends Noberun and Keroleen apparently. I was using the sticker as a guide for these particular expressions.

Final progress shot pre-topcoat. The last two are named Ganta and Keroppe apparently! I only ever knew Den Den the snail as I would draw him all over my Maths book. As you do, because quite frankly maths class sucks.

Materials used shown above. Well these were the basic colours used most frequently. I believe I also used MAC Ice Cream Cake for the cheeks as well as Throb by Illamasqua. That would be it! Nice and simple.

'Ahh my eye! My eye!'

Another thumb shot above. I picked up this Keroppi bath toy in Hawaii last year. They need to make more Keroppi stuff. It's all about the hello kitty lately. Bring back Keroppi! Well that's all I have for now. I hope you enjoyed the look and if you don't know who Keroppi is, you do now :-) Hope everyone is having a nice relaxing weekend. I had a bit of a chilli 'incident' and my hands have been burning for HOURS! Soo not chopping chillis ever again. Hmph. Until next time!

Angry Birds Nail Art feat. the birds!

Hello! I have something special tonight. You might have seen my earlier post of Angry Birds nail art feat. the piggies, so of course I had to do the birdies! And here they are:

You could say I was fairly angry doing this nail art because it was so fiddly! As usual I started with the thumb:

And that was my inspiration for the background - stripes of light and dark blue - I used OPI Ogre the top blue and What's with the cattitude (and let me say: OPI Shrek collection - best ever nail art go to colours ever):

Progress shot above. I can't say that I did too well with the stripes. I don't know why it didn't occur to me to use a thinner stripe brush rather than the brush of the mini bottle of what's with the cattitude. Figured most of it was going to get hidden anyway :-)

Another progress shot above, almost halfway there I think? Maybe not quite. I didn't have any particular order, I worked on bits over each nail that required the colour I was holding.

Last progress shot above. I didn't have all the right beak colours so had to make do with what I had. I think it turned out ok :-)

Hehe. Love the red bird plushie.

Another thumb shot - red bird on red bird plushie!

Now unfortunately when I went to put the top coat on, the pinky wasn't quite dry so now he looks even more stressed out haha. But the others are still good so I'm happy with this.

Anyway, it's really late and I have to be up in oh 6 hours so I better get to bed! I hope everyone has a happy Friday and a fabulous weekend. I've had a pretty 'angry' week due to work being so frustrating so this was a good stress reliever for me :-) Until next time my lovelies...

Baby Girl Nail Art and some new scented candles :-)

Well this week has been very special for our family! Earlier this week I became an Aunty to a gorgeous baby girl. So of course I had to do some baby inspired nail art!

The perfect baby pink is of course OPI Mod About You so all I had to do was draw some cute baby things :-) Erm I must admit I don't know a lot about baby things but google sorted that one out!

So pinky to thumb we have a baby rattle, a block with the letter E, a toy duck, a pacifier and a bottle! Honestly this OPI colour is a must have for any nail polish collection. It is that gorgeous. Even if it does require a few coats :-P

Latest scented candles! I know I always post the unattainable Bath & Body Works candles so I thought I'd share another brand I've come to really enjoy and that's Glasshouse Fragrances. We first came across them in Peter Alexander because this potent Vanilla scent would always be wafting out the store. One thing about these candles is that they are *super* strong. We first had a small candle and it would fill an entire room for hours after burning. The large candles cover an even bigger space. So you have to make sure you love the scent because it will be strong! We picked up Montego Bay (Coconut & Lime) and Bora Bora (Cilantro and Orange Zest).

So as you can see they have a snuffer with the lid which is well sealed and won't fall off easily. I'm not too sure about the reuse-ability of the glass because it gets so smoked out from burning the candle! Haven't tried washing it though :-P I like Bora Bora the best because it smells so fresh.

Above is Montego Bay. Not the biggest coconut fan but it's not too overpowering. It's nice to find something Australian and easy available for once. WELL. If you live near a David Jones which is probably limited to the capitals :-| But as I said earlier, they sell them in other stores such as Peter Alexander and there is a store locator on the website for other small boutique type shops that stock them.

That's all from me for now, I have been so busy lately that I haven't had a chance to do much housework :-P So better get to it before it's Monday again :-( Hope everyone had a great weekend and I'll see you next time!

Chococat Nail Art

Recently I did my first Sanrio nail art featuring hello kitty. The lovely Ebz suggested I do Chococat and I love kitties so this week I attempted it:

Ah hopefully it looks a little like Chococat. The thumb tends to resemble the character best for some reason despite it being the 'trial' nail! This was quite a complicated one because I was doing a spotted background. I'll take you through the process (which took two nights because I got super sleepy).

This background design was inspired by a sticker from an old Chococat calendar I have (you'll see what I mean further down when I post my first failed attempt haha). This is why the nail art took me two nights - dotting is a very tedious process! I used a medium sized dotter to create rows of dots mixed of blue, yellow, green and coral pink. I liked this so much on its own I decided to wear it to work the next day and saved the Chococat drawing for later. And I was sleepy :-P

So the thumb is always the trial nail. After I added a top coat to the base design, I started with the Chococat heads. I hate how topcoats always dull colours.

Next I drew the outline of the heads with a nail art brush. The same one I always use :-D

Next I drew the whites of the eyes and the ears. Having a white base allowed the yellow on the ears to look more yellow and opaque.

Final touches before the top coat - eyes, nose and whiskers! And that's it!

In terms of colours, I didn't use that many and probably didn't need TWO types of yellow! Back row left to right we have Sally Hansen Yellow Kitty (for the ears), China Glaze Snow, MAC Coconut Ice and Illamasqua Boosh. Front row left to right we have OPI Fiercely Fiona, OPI What's With The Cattitude, OPI Who The Shrek Are You (used for the dots along with the MAC polish) and Sephora by OPI Leotard-Optional. That Sephora colour was used as the base, thumb swatch below:

Tee hee. Really liked the Sephora with the dotted effect.

Look out behind you! That's just the calendar I used for inspiration.

And that above was my fail test run. You can see where I got the idea for the brown with multi coloured dots. And the kitty was an epic fail so I tried again :-)

Look what I got in Myer! They have Angry Birds talking plushies. Oh em gee these are made of awesome. The pig laughs and the red one makes the red bird sound I believe. Ultra cute. They also had the yellow and blue birdies but they were not as awesome as these two. Maybe I should do the birds version of Angry Birds nail art? Hmm...

And extra awesome - since it is a month before our anniversary, the bf got me a red rose and left it for me to find when I got home. He is so sweet.

Well that is all from me for now. Wow that was a picture heavy post! Hope everyone is having a good week and bring on the weekend I say! I'm seeing the new pirates and I can't wait :-D Have a good weekend everyone and I'll see you next time :-)

Orly Pin Up Summer 2011 collection swatches!

Wow is all I can say about Orly Pin Up for summer 2011. As soon as I saw the promo images for this collection I was sold. So much glitter! Purple and green are one of my favourite colour combinations, they look so pretty together.

Left to right we have Coquette Cutie, Here Comes Trouble, Bubbly Bombshell and Va Va Voom! If you think the left and right polishes look similar, you would be right! One is slightly more coral and the other is more hot neon pink. Onto the swatches!

Above is Va Va Voom, a neon pink creme. And wow it's bright! I believe I did 2-3 coats for the creme polishes. And to give you an idea of what they look like without a topcoat, here is Va Va Voom minus the topcoat:

I really like this finish, it seems less in your face as the shiny bright topcoat version :-)

Above is Coquette Cutie a coral creme. Less intense than va va voom but still quite bright.

Above is Bubbly Bombshell and these glitters do not have top coats so you can better see the glitter. Quite like this one even though it's on the pink side of purple. These glitters have two sizes of glitter in the polish, one micro and one slightly larger. You'll see what I mean further below on the Here Comes Trouble swatches. Another thing to note about these glitter polishes is that they do have a base colour so it will change the colour of whatever you put it on top of ever so slightly.

Above is Here Comes Trouble and you can see what I mean about the base colour. The edges look slightly greenish yellow and that's what the polish looks like if you don't where a lot of coats or layer it on another colour. Another thing to note is that I lost count of the coats I did :-) I basically did enough to get a good coverage.

I like the name of this polish though. I think if a polish could be named after me it would be Here Comes Trouble. I'm always a trouble maker at work :-( But I don't find trouble, trouble finds me I swear...

So when I had the green glitter on I was inspired to draw some butterflies on my nails because of these cheap green butterfly earrings I own.

There's a better picture of the earring. Even managed some little gems on the drawn butterfly. Cute right! Well I don't know what happened but halfway through I became really uninspired, mainly because I didn't have the right greens and pretty much rage quit. I should have done purple butterflies, I would have liked those better!

Here's a 1-2 coat application of Here Comes Trouble to give you an idea of the glitter particles and the icky green base colour. I think this nasty yellow is what also put me off my nail art. Oh well!

Anyway that's all I have for today! I was a little hesitant to post this after the major blogger issues of last week (and I believe I still don't have my comments back from my last post :-( but I'll just throw caution to the wind and post this one :-) I hope everyone is having a lovely weekend and I shall see you next time!

MAC Quite Cute Nail Polish Swatches and garden nail art ;-)

So I wasn't tempted by the cool colours of the MAC quite cute makeup collection but I did see some pretty polishes. I was so torn, MAC polishes are expensive and the brushes are quite frankly, crap but they were looking so pretty. I ended up buying them :-) And I was inspired to use the mint green Mischievous Mint to do some garden nail art:

Inspired by my last post and my Hello Kitty calendar :-) Onto the swatches!

Left to right we have 3 cream finish polishes named Ice Cream Cake, Mischievous Mint and Little Girl Type.

Above is Ice Cream Cake, a bright cool pink. These are about 3 coats I believe with top coat. This one is my favourite.

Above is Mischievous Mint and like the name suggests, it's a mint green.

Above is Little Girl Type and it's a pale purple. Lovely. The pink is still my fave though :-D And if you think these colours look familiar, take a look at 3 of the OPI Pirate collection colours next to this collection:

Look familiar? Yeah the OPIs are more muted but I'm still feeling a little silly for owning all of these :-P

Now onto the disappointing aspect. MAC nail polish brushes. Honestly. The majority of my MAC nail polishes look like this:

Look at that. And no it's not temporary, several uses and still a bristle pokes out waiting to ruin your mani. Believe it or not the pink one is much worse:

At least with the purple you can use one side of the brush and still get a nice mani. The pink sticks out in ALL directions and makes for messy application and quite a ragey Leanne :-P Seriously MAC learn how to make a brush? $22 for this crap? 'nuff said.

Well isn't it just so cold! I know everyone is cold but seriously try living in Canberra. It's ridiculous. No summer and now autumn is winter? Currently the apparent temp is 0.4 degrees. At the start of MAY :-| I thought my fingers were going to snap off walking home today. And I don't know if I got rained on, dripped on by melting frost or hailed on this morning.

Thought I'd post some pics from the weekend. I'm trying to grow some sugar snap peas. Yeah I have no idea how big they are going to get and I'm thinking a new pot for these soon! They are getting so tall.

Oh em gee. Tried to go out for mother's day brekky on Sunday and of course everywhere was absolutely packed, so we ended up going home sad with pre-made pancakes and strawberries. We made the best of it though :-)

Anyway that's it from me for now! I hope you enjoyed the swatches and garden nail art :-) And I hope everyone is rugged up here in Australia and if you're enjoying summer weather, I'm very very jealous! Until next time...