Lillibet's Jubilee all glittered up

This is one of the Royals Collection trio from Butter London. A wee bag of three polishes, all posh and royal and stuff. And since purple is the royal colour, they are all aspects of that. Total surprise gift as I had asked only for Pitter Patter and my son (yes, son!) got me the whole collection!

This is two coats of Lillibet's Jubilee and probably a polish I would never buy on my own. It is very very foil-y with a tinge of lavender. Difficult to photograph - you can see above that the bottle looks silver. But it is not. Definitely a colour I would only wear in the summer with tanned hands. I can imagine this not working well with my colouring in the winter.

Application was beautiful and I bet I would have survived with one coat. Not streaky at all like some metallic foils. Very smooth. a-england smooth. Then I thought I would jazz it up with some glitter. One coat each of Orly Can't be Tamed and Zoya Electra (Orly first).

My nails feel very bright! I think this is a polish my R-ladies would love! And I got compliments today from other ladies. So maybe a more "lady" combo. Am late posting this. Sunday café traffic got the best of me -  isn't that positive! And..... I sold some jewelry!

a-england Rose Bower love-li-ness pure

This is most beautiful polish. a england's Rose Bower from the Burne-Jones Dream collection. No wonder it has won heaps of blog prizes as the best red of the year. Well worth the wait – I have been waiting for this it seems forever!

Pretty straight-forward mani: two coats of Rose Bower topped with Out the Door. The colour is absolutely fabuliscious! A deep raspberry rose red with holographic shimmer. All you can do is think of new adjectives to describe it. So great. The colour moves from deep raspberry to a bit of a pink tinged deep rose. Velvety application, no problems. a england has to be my favourite brand (just wish they weren't so hard to get a hold of).

I decided to do an accent nail (seems like forever since I have done that). Two coats of my fav nude, Butter London All Hail the Queen. Another gorgeous colour. I top coated first before drawing and painting. I was trying for Pre-Raphaelite wallpaper designs à la William Morris. Look like plain ol' leaves, ha! But the red against the nude is stunning.

And.... I couldn't resist and made a ring to match. Talk about beautiful! Simple, yet elegant and chic. And a tad medieval. (more here). My last mani lasted all these days! Why is that? When you want something to last it seems to get ruined in hours. Oh, I made a pendant to match that as well. So much inspiration.

right hand

Well, tonight is film nite and it has been chilling cold all day. Southerlies blasting through. I have had some business today. Sitting on egg shells as I have applied for a couple of jobs. The one interview was Saturday and they talked to me for almost two hours! For a super part time job. Really makes no sense unless they were trying to get all my knowledge! Would like to get it, but you just never know who they are looking for. The other one is very, very appealing - am waiting for an interview call. Hope I get a try.
Yeah!!! Today is my girls' 25th bday. xxxxx.

Summer stripes with You Oughta Know

Although my dots were still in pretty good shape, I felt like something new last night. I wanted to use one of my new Nostalgic Lacquer glitters, and then had an awning stripe idea - oh so Tuscan!

I started with two coats of Butter London Cheeky Chops - a good bright but a tad muted yellow. Then I used my white striper and drew three lines on each nail. Pretty simple. Worried about cuticles lines later for clean up!

Then I grabbed Nostalgic Lacquer's You Oughta Know - a black-white based multi-glitter with bright flecks of red-orange and yellow and tiny turquoise spots. Even though I had the bottle upside down, I had to fish around for the glitter. Not that big of a deal, but still worth mentioning. Probably two layers of glitter. One layer of top coat.

If I were a "normal" person I would have applied at least another layer of top coat. But I know I will not be wearing this for long (GOT day and Waitangi Day on the horizon). The large black hexs have an ever so slight taco effect. And some of the thin bar glitter sticks up (and you annoyingly pull it off!).

All in all the mani looks good - the awning style of the yellow and white stripes reminds me of Disneyland! In fact, the whole mani does. I feel a pendant coming on....... ha!

yes - you can buy!! :) here

full sun

right hand

Zoya Vespa with handdrawn yellow daisies

This beautiful green I just bought off a PANZ destash! Yeah - my first pixie dust! Zoya has a couple of pixies out there that I have my eye on, but alas.... not yet snatched! Vespa is a light olive green with the sparkles of silver running through it. Tender and easy going. Beautiful! My original plan was just to paint my nails but then I thought how yellow would look rather fab with it!

The base is two coats of Vespa. I top coated before drawing as – as expected – the surface is not kind to fine brushes! The polish dries matte with structure. But not as structured as OPI's liquid sand finishes. In the end the finished mani has two coats of top coat. Can't feel much but a third would be perfect.

I drew the daisy and stem outlines in black then filled them in. Since the surface was a bit rough, I had to go over the black lines again after the yellow. They got kind of smudged or something. I just drew daisies in different directions. I like the freehand look to them.

For the yellow I used piCture pOlish Mellow Yellow followed by Butter London Cheeky Chops. Mellow Yellow is exactly that, very mellow. A faint light yellow (it would look totally fab matte, like candy!). The inner parts of the petals has a dot of Cheeky Chops to add dimension. Like I mentioned, I top coated after this. Used Poshé the second time as it is a bit thicker.

Now.... could not resist starting a pendant necklace in these colours. It is not finished yet but tomorrow is my day off and will finish things then. But I wanted to give you an idea!! When done, I will add a finished pick below.
As “promised", here the finished pendant and charm (here the link to my shop with more pics):

200th post! Hand painted green skittlette

This is my 200th post!!! I am slowly coming up on one year of blogging (29 Sept) and in honour of all my new found friends, ideas, "success" I will be starting the 31 day nail challenge on 1 Oct. Thanks to all my fellow bloggers for giving me inspiration and for reading my little ramblings about life, nails and love - oh, and travel!
Hands down, I love this mani! Not to toot my own horn and all that - but I love it! I am so happy with the flowers (on my second outing) and just love all the green.

I started with the flower part of the skittle. Figuring, if that goes downhill I can change plan mid game. My base is two coats of Butter London All Hail the Queen (a totally fab nude shimmer). I wanted to darker this a bit so thought up this pk-esque way of adding depth. I dropped Layla Coffee Love on the nails, let it sit a sec then sponged around them. That gave me a flecked base for the flowers.

I wanted a darker green than the leafy green I have in my acrylic set. Here is the link to the set off BPS as it really is good, inexpensive and easy to use (link). I used the green supplied and mixed it with royal blue and black to create a dark green. Then I meshed this with white for the flowers.

I drew some random flowers (the one stroke approach) then used a small brush just dipped in black for the stems. I am still not happy with that brush, not tiny enough. I need to go through my brushes and sort them all. I seem to have brushes everywhere and just grab what is in front. Used a toothpick for the white dots. I quickly top coated this before moving on.

This skittlette is again ABBCC = two sets of identical nails and one accent. So the flowers are BB. For CC I applied my new - and totally groovy gorgeous! - Layla hologram Emerald Divine! I did not base coat, but did buff. I hadn't buffed my nails in a while so did that. I applied two coats of ED. This is probably a bit lighter than I thought it would be, but it is just beautiful. Thank you CandyGirl for finally getting this in stock!!! I think Layla makes the best holos - so elegant, super shiny. I have four now and all are great. My A accent nail is piCture pOlish Kryptonite - another great holo.

I am even happy with my right hand flowerwise! Even the Mr said, these look like flowers! Last time he thought they were blobs! Sorry for all the pics, but they are too beautiful (will die of big ego soon haha!!).