Crazy bird

I went out clubbing and wanted to do something with my eyes that was blue and pink. This is what I came up with.

I think if I did it again I would want the pink to be a bit more obvious, but I'm happy with everything otherwise. It was something different and cool for the night. Again, I can't tell you exactly what I used but it was mostly sugarpill and Ben Nye colours. Go look at their range if you want wonderful vibrant colours. 

Completely dotty

So after I cut my nails off I was a bit stuck with what exactly I could do with them. Cause they're TINY now! (For me, anyway) They haven't been this tiny since November last year when I had to cut them off for hospital placement.

Eventually I remembered that I had wanted to do a polka dot look, but I couldn't do what I originally had wanted with nails this short. So I thought "Hm, why not just do lots of dots?". The result was something that someone's mum said was "aboriginal art" but I thought just looked cool.

Now for the big question: What did I use? Base colour is Color Club - Fashion Addict. Going from the bright green (that you can barely see on the edges of the nail) China Glaze - Paper Chasing, China Glaze - Frostbite, China Glaze - Hey Sailor, China Glaze - Purple Panic (Neon), China Glaze - Solar Power (that's the yellow, so you can tell where we are in the progression), Revlon -  Tidal Wave and Essie - Limited Addiction.

How did I do it? With a dotting tool that I got for super cheap from Crown brushes. (I also have one somewhere that I got from ebay for super cheap) Then all you need is a bit of patience. I placed the colours out in the order that I needed them, about one drop per colour, then I dipped the dotting tool in it and dotted it on my nails. Keeping the lines straight is the biggest challenge. 

Sparkly gunmetal

So this another older manicure that I've had saved waiting to be posted. Every time I look at my nails at the moment I feel sad because they are so short.
Also I've found that as much as I love some of the Color Club colours they really don't have the same staying power as China Glaze. My absolute favourite colour of all time is Color Club and every time I wear it I can barely make it last for the 7 days I like to wear a manicure for. The most recent one I've tired is Fashion Addict and it's already chipped and peeling 4 days in.
Oh well.

I really liked how sparkly this manicure was. You can't see it in the pictures but it is SUPER sparkly.

I've used: OPI - Suzi Skis in the Pyrenees Suede, with a silver glitter art deco nail art on the corner with China Glaze - Nova over that. Then topped off with a top coat.

Something less outrageous

Today I've got something more subtle. Or subtle for me, anyway. Nice and purple, which I think looks good with any eye colour. I haven't done my eye brows because I forget to do them most of the time. 

I actually did this ages ago, so I'm unsure of exactly which colours I used but I do remember that two of the purples used were from a Maybelline duo (or trio?) that had a light silver purple that was shimmery and a darker purple. It was the first purple eyeshadow I ever found. The eyelashes I'm wearing are from Chi Chi.

Purple and red fun

Make-up look today because I cut my nails off and it makes me sad to look at them. I will post pictures of the latest manicure in a day or two.
 In the meantime this is a purple and red look I did a while ago.

Apologies about the weird colour of the last one. It was too dark so I tried to fix it and I just made it weird then I couldn't work out how to make it better. I suck at operating photo programs. 

Anyway, as per usual I can't tell you what colours I used because I don't have the names. I can safely say I used Love + from sugarpill for the red. That is all.

(For the record it is REALLY hard to type with nails this short. Who would have thought that short nails made my typing abilities worse? I prefer not being able to feel the tips of my fingers.)

In your face, Valentines

I entered a competition on facebook to win some Sugarpill stuffs which I'm not about to win but I thought that I would post some pictures here anyway.

This isn't actually what I was originally going to do. What I had been thinking of doing was a red/pink/purple army print mask thing. I tried that twice before I gave up on that idea. The second time I was almost up to doing the mascara before I decided it looked horrid.

Then I thought of this. I did the whole outline in a white eyeliner first to make sure it looked okay and filled the whole thing in with it as well (I don't have a jumbo eye pencil yet - it's on it's way, though!). Then I went over the outline with black eyeliner and then set that with black eyeshadow, pulling the eyeshadow in as I went around so that the inner part faded out. Then half over the black and half over the white that hasn't been coloured I went used a deep shimmer red, then bright red (Love+ from sugarpill) then a bright pink then a more white pink and another pink just over the lids of my eyes. Using magentric (sugarpill) and another red shimmer loose shadow I went over the pink & red parts. Regular eyeliner but I pulled it out quite far in the inner corners and added lashes. I went over the outline with a liquid liner, and went for a basic lip with some bright blush!

Buggity Bug

Everyone loves lady beetles! Having them as nails is even cooler than keeping one as a pet.

Well, I thought it was really cute. I had tried to do bug nails before I eventually did this one. This one was my first really good attempt but I had done it with white eyes previously. I like the yellow eyes better, but I love googly eyes that I have done (use the Bugs tag to find it). 

I used OPI - Crimson Carol for the red and just a regular black Art Deco nail art polish for the black. I used the brush for everything but the dots. I used a dotting tool for the dots. Fairly easy. The eyes were just from a really cheap wheel thing I got from ebay. 

No one is safe!

My brother's girlfriend suffers so much! Poor girl. I keep her from spending time with my brother just so I can do her nails whenever she comes over. Something fairly straight forward this time and quite easy to do, but it looks really effective!

This hasn't been cleaned up properly yet because I'm really bad with that. I don't colour within the lines so to speak. I always make sure to give the cuticles a really good moisturise before I start to help the nail polish come off without killing the cuticles. 

I've used OPI Designer Series - Desire, OPI Designer Series - Sapphire, Color Club - Wild at Heart. Then I used a plate by Bundle monster #21 for the lace pattern with American Apparel - Hassid. 

I don't think this picture does it justice. It looks AMAZING on her nails. I almost wish I had done it on myself (I would have done something similar if the plates had designs big enough to cover my whole nail). 

Single on Valentines? More than enough love in these nails!

As promised I did another Valentines Day manicure. I have now been told that it looks like St Valentine got drunk and threw up love on my nails, haha. Why not go over the top for Valentines? It only comes once a year!

I was totally stuck trying to think of what to do. I was actually going to do a polka dot look. Then I was thinking of bright green with something (because I really like green nails for some reason), but I couldn't decide what. THEN I was thinking of doing a beach scene but with palm trees all broken in reference to the cyclone in north Queensland that is making my work hell at the moment. After pondering this while watching the first 5 episodes of Cowboy Bebop again I thought "Oh My God! Valentines day is on Monday! Duh!" Which is when I actually wrote the last post and had the brainwave of doing this manicure.

The colours I used are China Glaze - GR8 (as the gold base) then various hearts using China Glaze - Ruby Pumps, China Glaze - Purple Panic (neon), OPI - Crimson Carol, Essie - Limited Addiction, Sephora by OPI - Shopping Frenzy. Then I did black outlines using America Apparel - Hassid (I think I might buy myself another 3 bottles of this, haha) and a couple of dots with Sephora by OPI - Rumba Romance. Then a few dotty things that I got in a really cheap wheel from ebay.

Valentines means red explosion

Or something.

So I'll have two valentines inspired/themed nail designs that I'll put up before Valentines. This is the first and was something of an experiment on my part.

So you can see it's not totally even, but it still looks good. I really enjoyed this look, actually. And it's almost easy to do because you can just use the regular brush for the polish. All you need is a steady hand! Another good this is because the thickest part is at the top of the nail it takes longer to start to wear off.

I've used Sephora by OPI - Shopping Frenzy, OPI (Designer Series) - Sapphire, China Glaze - Ruby Pumps.

I'm going slightly mad

So I was bored and home alone and wanted to try something a bit different. So I picked out some random colours and started applying them over my lids. Then I went a little bit more over the top. Then I went even more over the top and this is what I came up with:

I also discovered that the powder that I was using to set my foundation made my face look really odd in pictures but it looked fantastic in real life. Very weird. You can see I don't have mascara in one of the pictures, too. Whoops. This was using only Sugarpill colours.

Then I went to fix a couple of things and I was like "I wonder what it would look like if I extended this bit of colour? Ooh and if I added this? I really like this colour, I wonder where I can put it?"

Then this is what happened:

The verdict? I shouldn't be trusted home alone with make-up and nothing to do. I did wear this for another good 6 hours after I did it, though. 

Birthday nails revisited

So I said in my birthday nails post that I would do another post with the actual birthday day nails. And here they are!!

I quite liked them. It's a more spiced up version of the original. To do these yourself you can use pretty much any colour, too, which is great.

I ended up using: OPI - Designer Series Sapphire as the base with a coat of Nubar - 2010 over the top for extra sparkle. Then the balloon's are China Glaze - Frostbite, China Glaze - Solar Power, China Glaze - Ruby Pumps,  China Glaze - Paper Chasing, China Glaze - Kiwi Cool-ada and Revlon - Orange Flame. Art Deco nail art lacquer in Black for the strings and another coat of Nubar - 2010 over the lot. Easy!

Flood

So I live in Queensland and a couple of weeks ago we were all going to die in flood waters. Fortunately not too many people died in flood waters and it didn't get quite as bad as it was predicted in Brisbane. My work got flooded and I had a week off work with full pay so that was okay. And I had people at my house who either couldn't get home or had to leave their home for fear of flooding.

I went with the masses and gawked at the flooded Brisbane River on the Thursday that the waters reached their peak. Because I'm pale as a ghost I got burnt. For the record it was between 6 and 7am that I was out in the sun.

Recognising the fact that it was the worst floods since 1974 in Brisbane I decided to paint my nails in honour of the occasion. Tasteful? Perhaps not. But it did get a random Navy man to offer to kill someone for me in exchange for coffee. I didn't take him up on the free assassination offer but I did walk up the hill to get him coffee from the Mater hospital.

Apologies about the messed up thumb nail. It was perfect but this was about a week after I'd done it. I had got the middle finger of my other hand slammed in a door and the polish had cracked. I got out my Color Club - Take me to your Chateau to do a quick one colour fix before I went out in the morning and I smashed it allllll over the tiles. So now my favourite colour polish is smashed, and I spent 30 mins cleaning polish off the tiles using polish remover and my dwindling supply of cotton balls. 

I thought the feature nail being in the opposite direction of the other nails was something a bit different.

Colours used are (in order of lightest to darkest): Color Club- Take me to your Chateau,  Australis Nail colour - Blue Tiger mixed with Colour Club - Take me to your Chateau then just Australis - Blue Tiger, Nubar - Absolute, L.A. Girls Flare - Twinkling, China Glaze - Frostbite, China Glaze - Blue my mind, Nubar - Sapphire.

Checkered Torture

Ahh the horror! The pain! Well perhaps not pain. It was annoying though! I asked my mum "How should I do my nails this week?" and she says "What about white and purple squares?"
So I think about it and I look at my collection of polish and I realise that my favourite purple is just about dead. So I think about colours that I haven't done together in a while. Blue and orange! Perfect! Blue and orange and white squares in all different sizes. It'll be all pseudo modern.

Then it comes time to do them.

The Revlon white polish I use is awful, I've said this before. It took me four coats until I was happy with how opaque it was. Then I get out my orange and blue polish. The orange I was going to use is no where near opaque enough to use so I chose another and just used the polish brush to do dots of nearly rectangles and squares on my nails. It's a bit hard to judge exactly how many will look good and what will look like overkill at this stage. Then I do the blue. All good. Then it comes time to do the black. The brush I was using had a hair that kept poking out at weird times. And because it's summer, and the heat is evil, the fans were on and it kept drying out the polish I'd put out to dip my brush in. Then I started to get hand tremors (I get them randomly). Then my nose starts running (in the middle of summer? WHY?!). Then my back starts to play up and I'm in enough pain that I can't sit upright properly. Then I crack it and yell at everyone, turn the fans off and do the rest of my nails with the fans off, hot, dripping sweat everywhere, hunched over like an old woman with a runny nose, shaking hands and talking to myself.

Fun.

The colours used are: TERRIBLE Revlon white (why don't I buy another white? I've had this for more than 5 years. Who keeps nail polish that long?), Revlon - (limited edition) Orange Flame, China Glaze - Frostbite and American Apparel - Hassid (again, the best black in the history of plain black polishes).

Did someone say BLUE?

Why yes, I did! Hurrah!! I grabbed this fabulous girl the other day and was like "Let's play FACE!!" then we picked a colour and ran with it. All in all I'm really happy with how this turned out.

For colours I've got some Ben Nye and some Sugarpill on this (again, hopeless, and don't have the actual colour names). The really dark blue eyeliner/crease bit? That's Sugarpill.

Impressively awesome? I can't wait to torture her with make up again!! Bwahahahaah

Purple. I like purple.

I love how beautiful purple looks with green eyes. Actually, I love how beautiful purple looks with any coloured eye. Purple is just a wonderful colour. I think I use purple a little too often I love it so much...

Unfortunately I don't have colours for my makeup otherwise I'd tell you what I used. I de-potted all my makeup a while ago and never thought to keep what colours they were. But it works a inspiration so I'll still post it. This was a rush job that I did in about half the time it normally takes me to do makeup for clubbing, but I was mostly happy with how it turned out. 

Two for Tuesday!!!

Two manicures today!! One is my nails, the other is my brother's girlfriends that I did for her. She's just starting to grow her nails so it's all very exciting. I think I might post my Mum's nails as well a bit later on this week.

So her nails are just a basic coloured French manicure. Pink and blue!!

I used China Glaze - Purple panic (neon) for the pink/purple and OPI - Frostbite for the blue tips.

This week my nails have gotten a lot of comments. Normally I can have whatever outrageous nails I want and no one says anything, but these seem to be particularly eye-catching. I actually did this manicure originally back in 2007 but I didn't take pictures of my nails then. 

So we've got China Glaze - Solar Power for the yellow, China Glaze - Purple panic (neon) for the spots and American Apparel - Hassid for the black. 

It's really easy to do. Just do all the nails normally with the yellow. Then randomly spot the Purple Panic (I just used the polish brush), then do to almost half circles on either side of the spots. I also tried not to have the gap in the same area. And a couple of tiny random black only spots.

Something easy...

A quick and easy one this time. My camera went missing after I went to take pictures of the Queensland floods and I've only just found it! I've gotta get into gear and upload the rest of the pictures I have on there. 

This is a really easy manicure. Pink with pink french tips with a gold highlight line and a gold feature nail with a pink highlight line. The highlight line is something that I haven't done in ages. It can make a plain manicure look more interesting. I used to do it with black and have a gunmetal grey highlight line.

Colours used: Nubar - Brilliant for the shimmery-holo pink, Sephora by OPI - Shopping Frenzy for the tips and China Glaze - GR8 for the gold. 

Bloody Dracula

Dracula's nails! Dracula's is a theatre restaurant down the Gold Coast, Queensland. It is awesome. My friend had a waiter crack onto her. I was paid out for not being able to reverse park my car in a crowded car park.

So I did these bloody nails to get in the mood for the event:

Awesome, isn't it? 

America Apparel - Hassid for the black (this is the best black nail polish I had ever tried. Ever.), then Camouflage Colour nail lacquer (made by tns Australia) in a bright red (Sorry, the label wasn't on it when I got it). The feature nail is a white polish (Revlon, but I don't recommend it because it takes about 4 coats to get it perfectly opaque). And the red on that nail is Essie - Limited Addiction which I used a straw to blow the nail polish onto the nail to get the splattered effect. 

For the dripping blood I just used the normal polish brush and did it by hand. It was surprisingly easy but it really is just packed on. That's about three or four coats of the red. You could feel the red I had to put so much of it on. Thank god for Seche Vite top coat. 

Belated New Years Eve Fireworks Nails

Yes yes, I was slack in posting this. I did these about 4 days before NYE. And I hated them, but I went with it because I had no other ideas that I could be bothered doing.

Ahh, aren't they horrid? I was hoping for something much more effective, then I found that the colours weren't showing up on the black background, then I went a little insane.

I started with China Glaze - Cosmic as the first colour, then I used Nubar - Nubar 2010 over that to make it extra OMG special. Then I just grabbed random colours. The gold that looks very effective on the far right is China Glaze - GR8. I highly recommend that as a colour over black. And I don't have a picture of it but Nubar - Jewel also is really good.

Right, more posts to come. I've got two makeup looks and the Dracula nails I mentioned previously. ^_^ Exciting stuff!!

Lost his marbles...

I was really confused by the "lost his marbles" joke when I first saw Hook at the movies. Then when it was shown on TV a couple of years later I thought I was really smart because I got the joke. haha.

Marbled nails aren't too hard to do although they are really messy. Just look up instructions on youtube.

I think the biggest trick is to get the colours right and not to mix it up to much.

This was my first ever attempt at marbled nails:

I used really cheap dollar store fluro coloured nail polish. And you can see on the pinkie that I swirled it a little too much. On the ring finger I did that design and decided that I hated it, but I had already done the nail twice so I gave up, haha.

(I've typed this all with really wet nail polish and it's quite time consuming. I've done bloody Dracula nails because I'm going to Draculas theatre restaurant tomorrow night. Pics of the nails to come.)

Rainbows!! Sugarpill Rainbows!

So sometime mid last year I got the Sugarpill Burning Heart palette. For the record Sugarpill is awesome. Super long wearing (as in I wore the look below for 24 hours and it still looked PERFECT). Super bright and amazing colours in the pressed shadows and the loose ones are so sparkly! One time I actually tried to fit as many different sugarpill colours into a look as I could. It didn't turn out so well because I have zero talent some days. I shall post pictures of that failed attempt, though. It's always good for inspiration! haha.

So, burning heart palette. It is awesome. Although every time I use it I keep doing very similar looks.

Example number one (using ONLY Sugarpill eye shadow, August 2010):

Two faced shadow insurance followed by the colours in the burning heart palette. White Kohl eyeliner on the waterline then the same coloured eye shadows as on the lid over the top (this was still on the next morning when I woke up hungover as hell). Random fake eyelashes that turned out to be the same length as my own lashes.

I did this and thought that I was pretty awesome. Then I got the palette out again and I thought, "Right, something TOTALLY different this time!"

And this happened:

Different? Not so much? I look at them now and I think that they are more different than I thought at first. But then if I just think about it while I'm trying to think of new things to do I just think that they look exactly the same and I'm being unoriginal. *sigh*

Go buy Sugarpill cosmetics!! I cannot recommend it enough.