Are You Feeling Lucky? Lucky Green Clover nails and a weekend away!

St Patrick's day is coming up and what better way to get into the spirit than with a little lucky clover mani :-) So I present my blinged up lucky clover:

I didn't realise this would be so hard to take a photo of! I decided to use Essie Pretty Edgy as the base and I was sad I didn't have many yellow green grass type cream polishes so I blinged out with China Glaze Emerald Sparkle as the dark green base and Sephora by OPI Gleek Out as the outline.

Sadly flash was not my friend tonight. While I got some superb shots of my thumb nail, trying to get all in focus with no light reflecting was quite difficult. But you get the picture :-D

I wasn't able to post on the weekend because I was in Perth for a friend's wedding. We did some touristy things in the Swan Valley (we've been before so didn't have do to the wineries again) and managed to get in a bit of shopping in Perth CBD ;-) Here are some photos of my weekend away...

After shopping in the city, we walked out to the Bell Tower that's along the river.

We also returned to the Margaret River Chocolate Factory (the one located in Swan Valley, but we've also been to the Margaret River one :-) to pick up some delicious but over priced choccy.

This is the second time we've been around the Easter season but they had a lovely display in the window looking in on the factory.

Close to the chocolate factory is Yahava Koffee, coffee tasting with a large selection of coffee beans and tea. I got a black tea and the bf picked up 3 kinds of coffee beans.

Here we have a shot of the wedding location (ceremony was held outside at the resort we stayed at).

What trip isn't complete without a little shopping? :-D I picked up the velvet edition Lola by Marc Jacobs (the one with the felt cap) and the solid perfume bracelet. It is love.

I love the scent. It reminds me of something from my childhood but I can't put my finger on it...

Well I hope you had a lovely weekend, and have a great St Patty's day if you celebrate :-D Until next time lovelies...

Enchanted forest mushrooms... shopping, and a day by the lake!

Welcome to my enchanted forest mushies look! Deary me, it took me a couple of attempts but finally I was happy with them:

I am embarrassed to admit that this was inspired by Farmville :-/ They had a fairy tale/enchanted forest theme and I just loved the purple trees they had going so I took it to mushroom form :-) I used these pretties for the look:

Left to right we have Rumple's Wiggin' (light purple from the Shrek OPI collection), a mini Orly limelite, Funkey Dunkey (purple also from the Shrek OPI collection), Sephora by OPI Metro Chic, Essie Pretty Edgy and China Glaze Snow. Whew! What a lot of polishes. The base coat was Rumple's Wiggin' - a gorgeous light purple cream, then I drew the stalk of the mushroom and filled it with Metro Chic. After that I drew the mushroom top with Funkey Dunkey and added white spots with China Glaze snow. I was going to leave it as this because it was so cute:

I wanted it to be a little more 'enchanting' ;-) So I added Essie Pretty edgy as grass. Then decided to add some sparkle with Orly limelite. Progress shot below:

Limelite is really gorgeous, especially over other colours. Thumb swatch below:

Well after I drew my mushies I went out for lunch and cupcakes at the Canberra Centre. There is this fountain right outside the cupcake shop:

And we've switched to iPhone quality shots. You've been warned :-) Onto the cupcakes! I have posted about this shop before - Jazz Apple cafe:

Big claim. Best of where? I don't know. But we always turn up late and only have a few to choose from:

I picked up the yellow lemon meringue cupcake and the bf had the toffee looking one on the right. I can't remember what flavour it was. I still have the same opinion of these cupcakes, perhaps they weren't fresh but the cake is a little too dry and the cream too much. But I felt like pretty cupcakes :-)

We took our cupcakes to eat at Lake Burley Griffin, which is a lovely place to picnic (and many people were). The lake is well known for the Captain Cook Memorial Water Jet:

I shall be returning soon for a picnic and the SLR to take some better photos! There was also the Captain Cook memorial itself:

Which had a nice timeline of historic events, bringing back school memories :P

I can't believe I have been living in Canberra for 6 years and I never knew this was here? I've sat maybe 50 metres away (twice!) for Skyfire and yet never noticed the big globe fountain... sigh.

Yay onto my purchases! Purple flower havaianas (slim prints). I have been hunting these pretties down for ages! They never have my size. Purple and grey = love.

Saved the best until last! I caved and decided that breaking my nails wasn't worth it - I bought the Pandora clasp opener and my second charm, the Mother of Pearl.

The opener works a treat and the charm is lovely. I was going to get purple but didn't really like the shade as much as this one above. Well I hope you enjoyed this look and my apologies for the lengthy non nail related post - it was a bit of a 'day in the life' kind of post :-) Let me know if you liked it!

Oh and I have also managed to get a nasty head cold so I've spent most of my week in bed :-( I really want to be better for the weekend to try some new polishes. But let's see if I make it! Until next time lovelies...

China Glaze Crackle Fault Line swatches and new Pandora goodies!

I recently ordered one of the China Glaze crackle polishes - Fault Line. It's a gorgeous purple shimmer. I was hesitant to order anymore 'crackle/shatter' polishes after the trouble I had with the OPI Black Shatter but the purple called to me :-) So here we have Fault Line:

And the little card attached has instructions in three different languages:

Basically you need to wait until the base coat dries. Otherwise it's going to be a gooey mess. I decided to go with OPI Coronation DS as a base coat. Silver and purple - can't go wrong right? And it turned out gorgeous:

It is matte until you put the top coat on but I wanted to show you both. I mangled the ring finger but it still turned out pretty. But again, I love purple and am biased so I'm going to put that out there :-D Swatch with top coat shown below (which clears up said mangled nail):

I love this effect in purple. Black was very harsh but purple gives it a whole new look. I feel the formula was different to OPI but the more you use it the more it's going to dry up the top of your bottle and be hard to screw the lid back on. Shatter/Crackle dries incredibly fast. I had heard that Fault Line is the 'thickest' of the China Glaze crackles so I used a very thin layer for the swatches above. I'm wondering whether or not I need anymore of the crackles. I was very temped to get the pink one... but am still undecided. Will it be as pretty? On a side note I visited Pandora recently:

It's the bf's mum's birthday soon so I picked up a charm for her bracelet. Then as I was looking at all the charms I spotted one that I fell in love with. So of course I needed a bracelet to start my own charm bracelet. I'm such a sucker for cute miniature things :-| This is what I picked up for myself:

A standard clasp silver bracelet (which is a royal pain to open - do I need the clasp opener?!) with a silver oxidized Cancer charm. The product description says it's black but it comes off more blue in real life if you can tell above. I love it. I'm thinking silver and purple charms would be really pretty as a theme for the bracelet. I would love a gold one too but I'm holding off on buying the expensive gold bracelet until my USA trip in August. I think it's a bit cheaper overseas (if the dollar stays strong). Do any of you lovelies collect Pandora charms/have a completed bracelet? I would love ideas :-) Well that's all I have for now, I hope you enjoyed and until next time...

Chill out with ice cream nails!

Oh where to begin with this. This must be the most random design I've done. I wanted something like summer fruits but it didn't work out so I went back to the drawing board and ended up with ice cream nails ;-) And it was a process but eventually I got there:

These super cute nails were a bit of effort! First I'll show you the colours I used:

Left to right we have China Glaze Snow from the holiday 2010 collection, Essie Demure Vixen, Knockout Pout, Splash of Grenadine and Lapis of Luxury and finally Inglot O2M polish in no. 631. Whew! What a list.

To start off with I painted Essie's Lapis of Luxury and Splash of Grenadine to the left and right of each nail. These stripes were 2-3 coats, then I did a stripe of China Glaze Snow down the middle (using the side of the brush so it wouldn't be too thick), again about 3 coats. I finished off with a top coat, Seche Vite.

Next part was a bit tricky. I drew the outline of the ice cream cone on a bit of paper and used that as a guide of what I wanted to end up on my nails. Then I used an Orly detailer brush to draw the outline of the ice cream tops (easier to start with the ice cream in case you make your cones too big), filled in with the brush and painfully waited for it to try and repeated 3-4 times. Then I did the same for the cone. For the ice cream I used Essie Knockout Pout and the cone was Demure Vixen. I added a lattice type effect to the cone to give it that 'waffle cone' look with Inglot 631. So after a lot of effort I ended up with this:

I was going to stop there but I decided to add some dots to the ice cream with China Glaze Snow to bring the ice cream more to the foreground. I felt it was getting a bit lost in the stripes :-) And voila! Pretty ice cream cone nails (natural light shot below):

Even though it took a bit of effort, I love this design. And you can make it work with any colour, I wanted mint choc chip to start off with but by the time I figured that out it was too late ;-) Well I hope you enjoyed this look and try it out for yourself! I'd love to see alternative colours. Have a lovely weekend everyone and I'll see you next time.

Day 25 of the Nail Polish Advent Calendar: MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Merry Christmas everyone! Yes it's finally here and I hope everyone is with their family and friends having a wonderful Christmas Eve/Morning (depending on your location ;-) I promised one last polish and here it is: China Glaze Emerald Sparkle!

What no layering? Emerald Sparkle doesn't *need* layering, it's just that gorgeous on its own. And I know there were some repromotes with different formulas way back when and quite frankly I'm not sure which version I have but who cares - it's gorgeous.

Emerald Sparkle is just the ultimate holiday polish and is fitting for Christmas Day. Well, that's it for me, I'm going to be enjoying a nice break for a while but hopefully fit in a boxing day blog post or two in the very near future.

Anyways, since it's Christmas I thought I'd share a few snaps of our time here at the moment. It's not a white Christmas in Australia, but up north it's been a very wet and rainy Christmas holiday.

This is our mini pink Christmas tree. Pink with butterflies and pink decorations. I think I'm gonna steal this before mum sees!

This is a very cheeky kookaburra. I opened the door and he almost flew straight in! He's saying peek a boo!

I think we have a family of five kookaburras in the area. They are so cute even in the rain!

This is bluey, one of my two very fat cats. He's beautiful and he knows it ;-)

My other cat is guarding the Christmas presents!

Hope everyone enjoyed the Advent Calendar and I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Day 24 of the Nail Polish Advent Calendar: Dashing Through The Snow...

Day 24 of the Advent calendar brings a combination of China Glaze holiday polishes I'm sure you've all seen before on every other nail polish swatch site but of course this belongs here, and that is Party Hearty layered over Snow:

You either love it or hate it but love/hate aside, you have to admit this is definitely festive! My swatches are nothing in comparison's to Jacie's on You've Got Nail so be sure to check hers out!

I originally only purchased Party Hearty for the red and green glitter that is just LOVE but Jacie's post made me NEED Snow ;-)

Well I'm sad to say the Advent Calendar finishes tomorrow. Are you wondering what the final polish is? Hehe, I bet you won't be able to guess! Come back tomorrow to find out :-D