Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is only celebrated in America, but that doesn't mean that I wanted to give up my turkey day when I moved to Australia! Thanksgiving is one of my favourite holidays, so my friends and I still had it. It just had to be on Saturday since we don't get the Thursday off. It helps that another one of my friends is also American.

So of course I had to do my nails to celebrate the occasion! My husband was actually gone in the afternoon when I painted my nails, so I watched Pocahontas to get into the holiday spirit!

I absolutely loved my hand turkey. It was so simple with just a skittle for the main four, but I thought it was hilarious!

I wanted to capture the Native Americans, turkey, and pilgrims on my other hand.

The colours that I used were Bananaram by Kmart, Blackest Black by Designer Brands, Lily White and Scarlet by Ulta 3, Gold Fusion by China Glaze magnetix, Tiramisu by Sephora, Tahiti by Ulta 3, and A-piers to be Tan by OPI.

Dreamcatchers

I keep failing at doing these prompts on time, but oh well. I saw that the decals I got from the Born Pretty Store had feathers on it, I knew that I did want to do this prompt.

When I think of dream catchers, I think of Native Americans and turquoise gems.  I wanted to capture the turquoise in the background colour. I wanted to do a technique that I've seen online that is similar to water marbling. The only difference is that instead of doing a bull's eye and swirling it, you spray stuff on it so that it starts to separate. I tried this, but it failed miserably. Instead I tried to redeem it by using the Saran wrap technique where you paint the accent layers on top and then use the Saran wrap to reveal parts of the underlayer.

I really liked how the turquoise came out, but then I realised that it was going to be hard to find a colour for the dreamcatcher that would be noticeable amongst the speckles.

I decided to do the dreamcatcher with grey polish. I didn't have a grey cream, so I mixed a white with a silver to get a more creamy colour. On my left hand, I added the water decals from Born Pretty. I did the same thing that I did last time where I painted the back of the decals first, but it didn't turn out as well as I hoped. One of the feathers looked good, but the others didn't.

I decided to go with a freehand painting for my right hand. It looked a lot better. I'm not sure how I feel about the dreamcatchers, though. They sort of looked like the spiderwebs that I did for Halloween. That's especially true after they got squished a bit the next day.

The colours used were Metallica by Wet n Wild, an unnamed goldish brown by Chi Chi magnetic, A-piers to be Tan by OPI, Koala Bear-y by OPI, Snow me White by Sinful Colors, Low Tide by Spa Ritual, Coach Ella by Fresh Paint, Plugged-in Plum by OPI, Tiramisu by Sephora, and Blackest Black by Designer Brands.

An InLinkz Link-up

Nail party for our Rushing Waters debut!

The Christian a Capella group that I am in, Rushing Waters, had their first performances on Sunday at my church. I decided to use my nail art talent and invited the girls over on Saturday to do their nails. Only three of them were able to make it, but it was great fun!

The first one is a base colour is Sparks Will Fly from China Glaze magnetix and it has cascading dots of Bonna Blue by Fresh Paint and the shiny end from Pinstripe by Revlon.

The second one was music notes. The base colour is No Room for the Blues by OPI and the music notes are Sparks Will Fly from China Glaze magnetix. I included two pictures to get the thumb in.

I had a bit of trouble with this one. Or should I say treble? Haha. The problem was that I tried to do a tape manicure. I do like the idea, though. I had based it off of a paint chip. I'll just have to wait longer before I put on the tape since most of the white polish underneath came off when I pulled the tape off. The polishes that I used were Snow Me White by Sinful Colors, Bonna Blue by Fresh Paint, No Room for the Blues by OPI, Shark Attack by Sephora, and Blackest Black by Designer Brands.

Once they left, I did my own nails. I tried to do a technique that I hadn't done before, which involves squishing dots of nail polish down with Saran wrap. I started out with a base colour of Amazon Amaz-off by OPI.

Next I added dots of a bunch of different blues and greens. I forgot to write them down, but I believe it was Low Tide by Spa Ritual. Bonna Blue, No Room for the Blues, and Shark Attack.

After the dots, I put the Saran wrap over my nails and pushed down to make a marbled look.

 Then because this is a Christian group, I added a cross. This cross is a water decal from the Born Pretty Store that they gave me for previous review. I decided to try something new with it and paint the decal brown. (A-piers to be Tan by OPI) Since what you paint is the part that attaches to the nail, you could still see the intricate design of the decal. It ended up messy on my left hand, which I did first, but the right hand looked great!

I loved doing the other girls nails and it was great to see people walking around with manicures that I did. Plus one of the girls was up on stage to introduce our group and another did the rest of the singing at the morning service, so my nails were on stage! Our performances went really well and you can watch the videos here.

An InLinkz Link-up

Geometric

One of the themes for the NAIL link up this month was geometric. I really wanted to try out a couple of the polishes that I got at the Ulta 3 vending machine in Melbourne. I picked out two and decided on a geometric nail design using tape. This was the first tape mani that I did that was actually a success! I'm not sure what I did different, but I think that it might have been just waiting longer for the polish to dry before peeling off the tape.

The two colours I chose were Mulberry and Strawberry Sundae.

I started with the Strawberry Sundae. I actually painted it the night before I did the tape, which probably helped with the tape peeling off clean and easy. It was definitely dry if I had it on overnight! I also really liked this colour. I was very happy that I added this pink to my collection.

Once all the strips of tape were added in the desired pattern, I painted over with Mulberry. The colour is great, too! I could definitely see myself wearing it by itself if I was feeling too lazy to do nail art.

I waited for it to really dry between coats and after the last coat before I pulled off the tape. It was so clean and easy. I hope that's my luck with all my tape mani attempts from now one!

Although I love the Mulberry colour, it is hard to photograph. It was hard to get the purple to show up because it's so dark. I had to wait until the next day when I had sunlight again!

An InLinkz Link-up

Review of Born Pretty Store water decals- Palm Trees

About a month ago, I signed up with the Born Pretty Store to receive their products for a review. I got to pick two different water decals for my first review. I got the palm trees and I knew what I wanted to do right away. I wanted to make a beach, which was perfect for the current heat wave as we are finishing up Spring here in Australia.

The polishes that I used were Bonna Blue by Fresh Paint, No Room for the Blues by OPI, Shark Attack by Sephora, and Coach Ella by Fresh Paint. The palm tree decals can be found for purchase at this link.

I started out with Bonna Blue as my base colour and then I used a makeup sponge with the three blues to create a gradient for the sky. It ended up being really hard to clean up because I had waited too long to do it and my fingers got stained a bit. It did come off later, though. 

Then I added the sand. It's a bit uneven because the formula isn't the best for the Fresh Paint polishes, but I suppose the beach and shoreline isn't perfect anyway.

Next was the moment of truth. I had never used water decals before, so this was brand new to me! I wasn't sure how they would work because they are so close together on a page, but I cut them all out. This is just one hand's worth since I decided on doing two palm trees on most of my nails.

The first one, I just placed in the water and then it sank. I thought that it would float, but it is heavier than most paper. When I realised this, I got my tweezers out and used them to hold the decal underwater since my fingers would have been too big. The instructions say to keep it under for 10-20 seconds, so I counted to 14.

Applying them was super easy. You need to hold them down for a bit with some pressure, similar to temporary tattoos, which was good because I didn't always get them where I wanted them right away due to being uncoordinated. But I was able to get them where I wanted in the end. I was very happy with that since it was something that I worried about, especially since you can't see the image through the other side of the paper.

I thought that they ended up looking great! I've only ever done freehand painting, so it was great to get more detail than I usually get. I loved looking at this manicure, but the only issue was seeing it out of the corner of my eye. The colour of the sand was just too close to my skin colour that I kept thinking that there was something wrong with my nail or that the polish chipped!

These photos were taken the next day when there was sun and my fingertips weren't stained blue!

Decals provided for review by the Born Pretty Store. See the image on the bottom of my homepage for a 10% discount and free shipping worldwide!

Rushing Waters

I had my Animal Crossing nails on for over a week, which is a long time for me. I needed to change them up and had the inspiration from the Christian a Cappella group that I am in. We are just starting up and had a photoshoot today so that we can have pictures on our website and facebook page. We are called Rushing Waters because that is how Jesus' voice is described in the Bible.

I decided that there wasn't nothing better than a blue water marble manicure to represent rushing waters!

I was happy with how they turned out. I painted them with pale blue a day in advance because I my old manicure was falling off and I wanted to make sure that the marbling didn't have a chance to get ruined. Last night I did the marbling. I pretty much just put random dots of colour in the cup instead of following the bullseye pattern. I prefer more random swirls over the flowery pattern of most water marbled nails.

In the past, I have tried using Vaseline and Chapstick to make the cleaning process easier. I decided to try cuticle oil this time. It was significantly less messy because I could use the brush and it at least partly absorbed into my skin instead of just leaving chunks. The only problem was that I didn't put it far enough down on all of my fingers. I also did just one or two nails at a time instead of trying to get five fingers in at once. I did the five fingers because it wasted less polish, but it really does look better just doing one or two nails at a time. That way you can pick better where the design looks the coolest and it is easier to pick out the excess polish around your nail(s) so that it doesn't try to clump up when you pull your fingers out of the water.

 I took pictures again today when I was outside on my way to our photoshoot. I loved how they look in the sun! The colours look so much more vibrant and I could see the shimmer from some of the polishes.

I used all of my blues in this mani, but different nails had different amounts of each shade. The colours are Bonna Blue by Fresh Paint (which was my base colour), Sparks Will Fly by China Glaze magnetix, Frostbite by China Glaze, No Room for the Blues by OPI, Shark Attack by Sephora, and Radiant Violet by Three Beauties.

Animal Crossing

My husband and I went down to Melbourne last weekend. Not for the Melbourne Cup, like most people that weekend, but to attend PAX. PAX is a gaming conference. I had to do something nerdy with my nails to both live up to my name and as a tribute to PAX. I knew right away that I wanted to pay tribute to my favourite video game, which really isn't hard because I don't play many video games. But this is the one that I have spent BY FAR the most time playing. That is Animal Crossing.

I actually wanted to do an Animal Crossing manicure for a while. I had even sketched out something about six months ago and it was the reason that I bought a brown, the only neutral that my mom didn't have in her collection that was at my disposal. I just never got around to making it because I had other manicures that I wanted to do any nothing that it specifically went with, like a holiday or other event.

Before I go into detail, here are overall finished products.

This manicure used A LOT of different polishes and I'm not even counting the number of ones that I had to mix! I definitely did not keep track of how much mixing I had to do to get just the right colours. I would have lost count even if I had!

The polishes used were (top row, left to right) Blackest Black by Designer Brands, the matte end from Pinstripe by Revlon, Koala Bear-y by OPI, Bananarama by Kmart, Summer Rose by boe, Envious by Kmart, a frankenpolish I made by mixing Belsize Park by nails inc and French White Creme by Wet 'n' Wild, and Bonna Blue by Fresh Paint. 

(bottom row, left to right) Guava by Fresh Paint, Sparks Will Fly by China Glaze magnetix, Amazon Amaz-off by OPI, Snow Me White by Sinful Colours, Tiramisu by Sephora, Coach Ella by Fresh Paint, and A-piers to be Tan by OPI.

I actually started off with K K Slider. He's a dog DJ that sometimes plays live music in the town. He was on my right pinkie and I'm not sure why I thought that it was a good idea to start with him. I have a tendency to mess up my right pinkie by my nail getting stuck behind my ring finger. I ended up needed to fix him several times, so I was glad that he was a simple black and white design.

The next one is Leif. A sloth that owns a gardening centre in your town and will "help" you with weeding if your town gets too many weeds. He wasn't too hard to do, but I realised while spending lots of time looking at his picture to replicate it, that he's very strange looking. Then the other day I saw a picture of a sloth and realised that he's really spot on.

This nail could be Nook or the Nooklings. They are chipmunks in the game. The dad owns the place where you buy your home and the Nooklings are twins that own the store. This nail is the main reason that I bought that brown. The inner dots of his eyes are actually blue, so I used the matte end of pinstripe for them.

Isabelle is probably the most iconic character of the game. She's the secretary to the mayor, which is the player. She's a yellow Shih Tzu. I only had two really bright yellows and her base colour definitely had to be a very pale yellow. I decided to take my old bottle of white polish that I didn't like and add some yellow to it. The yellow was from my old yellow that was running out. I just added a touch of yellow to the bottle and shook it. I did this until I got the desired colour. I was very happy with it. The lighter brown for her hair and mouth was also a mixture of one of the browns and the pale yellow mixture.

Brewster is a teal pidgeon and, as his name suggests, he runs the coffee shop in town. He was pretty simple. The only issue was that I had to be careful with Amazon Amaz-off because it stains my fingers pretty well.

This is Katie. She is a wandering kitten that gives you a gift if she ends up in your town and you take her to a friend's town. My nail actually does look quite a bit like her character, but I wished that I had chose a different character. I think she looks too much like a lego when you zoom in to just her face.

This guy is Pascal. He's a pink otter and acts sort of like a stoner. When you go diving, sometimes he pops up when you find a scallop and will trade something for it. I did some more mixing for the yellowish area around his mouth. His beanie hat was also composed of some mixtures.

Finally we have Dr. Shrunk. He is an axolotl, which is not something that I had ever heard of, but they're pretty weird looking animals. Dr. Shrunk owns the club where KK Slider performs. If you come in the afternoon before the club opens and give him fruit, he will tell you a joke and then your character learns how to make different facial expressions. He also has an iconic dance and is my husband's favourite character.

I kept it really simple with my thumbs. They were both just the logo of Animal Crossing: New Leaf.

And here's some more of the finished product. I was actually really happy with these nails, especially considering that they were all different characters that involved a lot of different polishes and mixing and I didn't start the characters until after 10pm and have been suffering from exhaustion. The reason I waited that late was because I wanted to paint them after I had washed up from dinner so that I didn't ruin them but we also had Bible study and didn't get home until late and we left early the next morning. At least I slept on bus/train on the way down to Melbourne.