Purple Starry Nights nail art tutorial!

Hello everyone! I was in a purple mood and decided to play with my purple polishes to create an all OPI nail art - purple starry nights:

The base polish is Lincoln Park After Dark and can you believe I have never used this polish before? It has been sitting on my OPI rack for over a year now, untouched! I actually had to get my boyfriend to open the bottle because it would NOT budge. Anyway, to create this look I picked some some nice cream purples out from my OPI rack:

Left to right we have Lincoln Park After Dark, Funky Dunkey, Planks A Lot, Rumple's Wiggin' and Alpine Snow. I decided to put to rest my trusty China Glaze Snow until I can figure out how to 'ungloopify' it :P

As usual I started off with the thumb and an idea in mind. If we have succcess, I continue onto the other nails :-) The first step was to add a base coat of Lincoln Park After Dark (2 or 3 coats). It's a deep wine colour and a little bit glossy - I can't believe I haven't worn it before. It is gorgeous.

Using a fan shaped nail art brush, I painted onto the brush the next darkest colour - Funky Dunkey from the OPI Shrek Collection. Then I carefully brushed streaks of colour onto each finger, which ends up looking spikey due to the nail polish separating the brush into big strands.

I cleaned the fan brush and painted the next colour onto it and that was Planks A Lot from the OPI Pirates Collection earlier this year. You can see the gradient start to form.

Again, cleaned the brush and painted on the lightest colour, Rumple's Wiggin' another purple from the OPI Shrek Collection.

Time for decorating! I took my usual small nail art brush and carefully drew crescent moons with Alpine Snow, and went over them again to get them nice and bright.

Next I just added random dots for stars and a few 'shining' stars.

Last step was to add a top coat and we're all done!

I hope you enjoyed this look, it's not often I manage to use only one brand! I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend and I will see you all next time :-)

OPI Nice Stems mini collection swatches!

The OPI Nice Stems summer collection is out and it features very pink frosty shades with one glitter/flaky polish:

This cute little box resembles a garden pot, the top is actually brown to mimic dirt but mine got a little squashed in the mail so I didn't photograph it :P

Left to right we have Play The Peonies, Come To Poppy, Be A Dahl-ia Won't You? and I Lily Love You.

Shown above is Play The Peonies - a sheer pale pink and at 3 coats, it was still quite sheer.

Shown above is Come To Poppy - a warm frosty pink that was surprisingly opaque. I did 2 coats here but on my flower nails below I only needed 1!

Shown above is Be A Dahl-ia Won't You? This was a complex colour to photograph (3 coats) so I have included flash then non flash shots because the flash just did not represent the colour well. The glitter shows a little darker than the base polish and I could see a tinge of orange in the bottle when I looked at it in various lights. A lovely colour but OPI has brought out so many shades like this recently (the Burlesque collection comes to mind). Flash Shot above.

Non flash shot shown above of Be A Dahl-ia Won't You? Much more pink on the nails in low light - no blue or orange.

Bottle close up of Be A Dahl-ia Won't You - see the orange tinge?

And lastly we have I Lily Love You - a spectacular glitter and flaky polish with a sheer pink base colour. Flash shot above with 3 coats. Flash does not make it look very appealing but wait...

The non flash shot makes it look a little better :-) Those pastel multi-colour flakes are gorgeous but somewhat annoying to work with - they don't always lie flat and you have them poking out the end of your nails if you don't move them back onto the nail. But isn't it pretty @_@

You have to be careful layering this polish over lighter colours because the base colour needs to be evened out - I had some trouble just slapping it on because it would be darker on some sides, but that is also the nature of the small 'mini' brush. Flash shot of I Lily Love You over Play The Peonies shown above.

This glitter seems the the set works best when layered over the other colours. Non flash shot above of I Lily Love You over Play The Peonies. It certainly livens the colour up! Very pretty.

And what post wouldn't be complete without some random nail art? I decided to take my favourite from the collection (well the glitter would be my absolute favourite but in terms of being practical for nail art I chose one of the other colours), Come To Poppy:

Simple but cute. Can't always be doing 5 hour epica designs ;-) And I was very distracted by the Offspring finale at the time of doing these. I am loving that show! But I cracked up when I saw a bottle of Sephora By OPI nail polish sitting on the table while they were doing her nails... I didn't think you could buy it here?

Well that is all I have for now! I hope you enjoyed the swatches - I'm not sure of the Australian release date. If last year is anything to go by we will probably have to wait until Spring/Summer like with the summer flutter collection :-( However I'm going to try and pick up a full size of I Lily Love You in the US as soon as I get there :-D It is a must have for any glitter lover! Have a fanastic day everyone and I'll see you next time :-D

Butterfly Nail Art and The Butterfly Award!

Hi everyone! I believe this is the first award I have posted and it is the Butterfly Award :-) So to celebrate I present Butterfly nail art:

I'll talk about the award first and show you a few progress pics at the end.

I was nominated by both paint that nail and Aly Loves Lacquer. Thank you! These lovely ladies have awesome blogs and I highly recommend you check them out.

The rules are as follows:
1. Link back to the person who tagged you.
2. Tell 7 things about yourself.
3. Answer the questions below.
4. Award this to 15 bloggers.

Sooo 7 very random things about me:
1. I am addicted to the internet. Seriously, if I have no net, I get super ragey :P
2. I used to run a graphics design website and take orders from people as I offered free graphics. It was 'pixel art' so my love of drawing miniature things started a long time ago...
3. While I used to love web design, work has killed all enjoyment I used to get, so now I have new hobbies :-)
4. I am also addicted to coca cola. I should clarify - Australian coke made with cane sugar, not the nasty stuff I had in the USA last year - corn syrup? Omg it completely changed the taste! Cane sugar is for the win.
5. I am from tropical north Queensland and miss the warm weather and even the humidity. Canberra winters are not for me! 6 years here and I still cannot get used to it...
6. I have never seen snow! Well *real* snow. It 'snowed' once here in Canberra in August 2005 (or 2006?) but it was more of a sprinkle. I really want to go one day but this conflicts with my hate of winter :P
7. I don't wear eyeliner. Ever. Too much effort. Heh see question #10 below.

Questions to answer!

Name your favorite color: Purple!
Name your favorite song: That's a difficult one. I have so many but I will decide this by my iTunes playcounts - and at a whopping 225 plays it's Lady Gaga - So Happy I Could Die. It's my ringtone come to think of it. Specifically love this song around the 2:34 mark @_@
Name your favorite dessert: Don't have one. Something with chocolate probably. Wait scrap that. I love cheesecake (not baked) and carrot cake!
What pisses you off: Loud, noisy, sick people! To the dude coughing at work with your mouth wide open this means YOU. If you are sick stay home and don't infect the rest of us?
When you're upset you...: Cry :-/
My favorite pet: I've had many, my cats.
Black or white: Black.
Your biggest fear: Hmm that's a tough one. I think dying?
Best feature: My eyes. Eyeliner less and all.
Everyday attitude: Meh. I'm so lazy!
What is perfection: Nothing is ever perfect.
Guilty pleasure: Nail polish? :P

Now we have to award this to 15 Bloggers but my gosh I don't know if I can do all 15, I'm just going to start and see how I go... I like finding new blogs that are just starting out - especially nail art ones :-) Peruse and enjoy!

1. Silence Is Loud
2. Taya
3. The Khromazone
4. Making Up 4 My Age
5. Polished Pony
6. Lovin' Nailz
7. Polish Me Crazy
8. Kayley's Nail Art
9. bini blogs beauty

... and that's all I have for now! Back to the Butterfly Nail Art. A few polishes were needed this time:

Left to right we have OPI Alpine Snow (RIP China Glaze Snow), Essie French Affair, Sally Hansen Yellow Kitty, Essie Borrowed & Blue, MAC Ice Cream Cake, OPI I Lily Love You, and Illamasqua Boosh. Whew!

I started with 3 coats of MAC Ice Cream Cake. I persisted with the mangled brush because I knew I could cover anything bad with this new OPI glitter polish from the Nice Stems mini collection, I Lily Love You (swatches coming soon)! Aren't those multi-coloured flakes just gorgeous?!

This is my second attempt at the butterflies (hence my lack of posts recently). I got the design right this time and was happy with my outline.

I then filled the butterfly wings with Essie Borrowed & Blue and French Affair. They are beautiful colours and I love the pastel girlyness of this look.

I then went over the white and coloured the butterfly yellow. I was umm'ing and ahh'ing about whether or not to do this (didn't want a second failed attempt) but it turned out nicely! I finished with the eyes and a top coat. And guess what I did? I butchered my thumb with over zealous top coating. I never learn. Sigh:

I call him my emo butterfly! Heh.

BIG close up of the thumb swatch pre-emo. Excuse the mess, nail art is messy! And as per question #10 I am lazy :-D

Well that is all I have for this late Friday night! I hope everyone survived their week (my days have been crazy lately). I have begun the countdown to my holiday overseas @_@ It is coming up so quickly! I'm so excited! Until next time my lovelies...

Rainbow Nail Art and Revlon Scented Nail Polish!

Hi everyone! Well this week has just been chaotic, so busy! But finally got a chance to sit down and do some pretty rainbow nails:

These are no ordinary rainbow nails, they are 'Not So Blueberry' scented rainbow nails :-D Oh yes I bought scented nail polish:

Shown above is Revlon's Not So Blueberry (370) scented nail polish. Now the bottle label reads 'Scented When Dry', which doesn't really appeal to me because surely it can't be that healthy to sniff nail polish, dry or not! Still, it's a gimmick and I fell for it and bought it. Smells fruity. I guess it's called Not So Blueberry because it doesn't look blueberry? I don't really know what blueberries smell like but it just smells fruity. I bought it because it was purple and pretty as you can see in the picture above :-D The swatch above was two coats.

Back to the nail art! The rainbow colours used were (L-R) Essie First Dance, OPI Flit A Bit, OPI Fiercely Fiona, Illamasqua Smash, Sephora by OPI Slushied, and finally some random mini purple Mecca Cosmetica freebie nail polish I got in-store one time... it's called Virtual Violet!

So to start off with I took a nail dotter and a white nail polish (China Glaze Snow) and dotted 4 times to form a cloud. I did one cloud for each side of the nail.

During my trial run I realised that you need a white background for the rainbow colours to come through nice and bright. Otherwise everything is dark and has a purple tinge. Unless you have super opaque colours, a white base is best. I took a guess as to how much room I would need for the rainbow, I ended up adding an arch underneath on a few nails.

Then begins the rainbow effect! I started with red...

And kept going with orange, yellow, green... until I ran out of space so added more white.

After adding blue and purple we are all done!

Thumb swatch above. This Revlon polish set me back $13.95 from Priceline. They had a special stand for it and I notice they have been snapped up pretty quickly! I don't think I'll buy anymore though - I'm not the biggest fan of frosty polishes. But they had all sorts of different 'flavours' :-)

Are you tempted? I've never had a Revlon nail polish before so I was keen to give them a go. I have always eyed them off wondering if it's worth the price tag...

Well that's all I have for now, am looking forward to a weekend of sleeping in, drinking hot chocolate and painting my nails ;-D I hope you all had a fantastic week and I'll see you next time!

Birthday Cake Nail Art feat. OPI DS Signature!

I realise I have been absent from the online world this week. I was very suddenly hit with a cold turned chest infection and it just knocked me over completely. Bedridden :-( Thankfully I am starting to feel better and since it's my birthday tomorrow, I have birthday cake nail art!

Ah yes and that is the elusive OPI DS Signature holographic polish. I paid a pretty penny for it. Actually compared to how much OPI costs here in Australia, I didn't pay much at all! Online hauling definitely for the win! I am so sad OPI replaced all the holographic DS polishes with non holographics. They must have bad things in them :-S And after a single day test run I am highly suspicious of this polish being a 'yellow tinging' polish... that doesn't really matter because it's so pretty @_@

So despite the initial sheerness of one coat, two coats was all I needed to get decent coverage. I think the holographic effect definitely takes away from the slight sheerness.

This birthday cake design wasn't too complicated, although there were a few colours involved - China Glaze Snow for the plate,  MAC Ice Cream Cake for the 'cake' (oh how appropriate, I didn't realise that coincidence until JUST then :-), Sephora by OPI The Way Tutu His Heart for the icing, OPI DS Signature for the base, OPI Flit a bit and Fiercely Fiona for the candle flames, and finally Essie Mink Muffs for the candle sticks. Who has brown candle sticks? Yeah I have no idea either :-P

So starting with the plate I drew ovals with a small nail art brush in China Glaze Snow.

Then I drew a sort of can shaped rounded cylinder over the cake plate in MAC Ice Cream Cake. They look like top hats. Cool!

Next I added icing using Sephora by OPI The Way Tutu His Heart. This was a tad sheer so I had to go over it a little bit.

Next I drew the candle sticks with Essie Mink Muffs and added the base of the flame with OPI Flit A Bit. It looks pretty good at this stage, but I decided to go one colour further and add the yellow as shown below:

Finally Fiercely Fiona added for an extra 'flamey' effect and we're done :-)

Close up swatch of thumb and pretty holograpahicness @_@

Well that's all I have for today! I am going to lie down before I get a secondary infection or worse. I'm kind of in that stage where you're getting over a cold but if you push yourself too far you could easily develop another infection. As for birthday presents, one came early as my boyfriend surprised me by taking me to the airport - he arranged for my dad to visit for my birthday! There was a lot of crying on my part, I had NO idea he had organised that! He is such a sweetie. Well, I hope everyone is having a fabulous *germ free* weekend and I shall see you next time!