Red base- Coca-Cola

I knew that I wanted to do this challenge, so I had to think of something to do with a red base, which was the prompt for today. I had a harder time thinking of something to do than I would expect. Afterall, red was my favourite colour for most of my life!

It wasn't until I got to my desk to work on my nails that I had was inspired. My mother-in-law, um, I mean Santa, gave me an insulated Coca-Cola water bottle for Christmas. Well, duh! Red was my favourite colour when I was younger because I collected everything Coca-Cola. My nickname, CCG, stood for Coca-Cola Girl. I even painted my room in high school to look like the inside of a Coca-Cola bottle. Of course I also have the OPI Coca-Cola collection, although just the minis. Although the rest of my Coca-Cola collection stayed back in America when I moved to Australia.

I decided to paint my nails red and have the logo across the core four and the iconic contour bottle on my thumb.

The red that I used was Coca-Cola Red from OPI. The white was Snow Me White by Sinful Colors. The contour bottle was a little trickier. I wanted to capture the green glass aspect, so I mixed My Dogsled is a Hybrid by OPI and Top Coat plus from Nicole by OPI. I then added A-piers to be Tan from OPI to be the coke in the bottle. I also added a bottle cap with Metallica by Wet 'n' Wild.

An InLinkz Link-up

Monochromatic

I found out yesterday that there is a 31 day challenge going on this month. Sadly, that means that I missed a week, but I still did a manicure for yesterday as well as today.

Yesterday's theme was monochromatic. After some google image searches of "monochromatic," I decided to take one colour and do a fan brush technique. I made different shades by adding white or black. The colour that I chose to use is Amazon AmazOFF by OPI.

An InLinkz Link-up

Marsala- grape vines

When Pantone announced a few weeks ago that their colour for 2015 was Marsala, I was less than overwhelmed. I really didn't like it. It was too deep of a colour. I prefer the pastel of last year's colour. After looking at it several times I started to not mind it, although it's far from my favourite colour.

Then it was a prompt for the monthly NAIL linkup. I didn't think that I had a suitable nail polish, so I wasn't going to do it at first. Then while googling it later, I decided to look at my nail polish collection. I realised that I had a shimmer that was pretty similar that I never use. I thought it was really pretty when I bought it and thought that I had to have it at the time. That was at the beginning of my obsession about a year ago. I also discovered that Marsala is a wine from Italy, so my concept was born.

I decided to paint my nails with China Glaze's Sex on the Beach, which is similar to Marsala. Then I used China Glaze magnetix's Con-fused? to create grape vines.

An InLinkz Link-up

Happy New Year!

The holidays weren't just good for my nail polish collection. They were also good for being able to do more manicures and build up my repertoire! These are the five manicures that I did on New Year's Eve.

This was on my sister-in-law. I searched pinterest for some inspiration with New Year's nails. I found this fireworks manicure that I was obsessed with and thought would be perfect for my sister-in-law, who loves glitter polish. First I painted her nails with different glitter polishes. I used a sponge to get full coverage. Then I let them dry for a few hours. This was when I was going stir crazy and we went nail polish shopping. (See post about Holiday Haul)

When we got back, I put tape on her nails and painted over them with a deep blue. Then I removed the tape and dabbed on some chunky glitter.

I wanted to go with a more simple look for my manicure. I painted my nails with Diva of Geneva. The way that the sun captured the shimmers of the polish was just beautiful! I then added the years with I Don't Give a Rotterdam. Both polishes were OPI.

My next "client" was my husband's cousin. Her nails were beautiful but unfortunately the sun had already set and I couldn't find good lighting to properly show off the glitter tips. The purple is Dutch Ya Just Love OPI. The tips had a blue and purple glitter that matched perfectly.

The other two manicures were on my husband's other cousin's daughters. The top one just turned 13 yesterday and the bottom one is 14. I showed them my previous work and the both chose gradients. The bottom nails were what I was doing when midnight came around. I finished them in time to watch the last of the fireworks on tv. Although they took place in Sydney and were therefore delayed an hour for Brisbane.

An InLinkz Link-up

Holiday Haul

The holidays were good for my nail polish collection! Here's the nail polish I got while I was away.

Sephora just opened its flagship store in Sydney early in December. I was super excited because I heard that Formula X was a good brand, but I only had a chance to try their base coat and remover before I moved to Australia. But since they just opened, they didn't have gift cards yet. My parents-in-law gave me $50 to spend at Sephora on nail polish. Sephora originally promised that they would match US prices, but they didn't at launch. I was very excited to go there and find out that the prices had been reduced from over $20 a bottle to just $14! That meant I could get four and just go slightly over budget.

The colours I got are Continuum, Brazen, Gray Matter, and Desire.

 This one wasn't a present, but I didn't have a quick dry top coat. I just had one from Nicole by OPI and it took FOREVER to dry and usually resulted in me messing up my nails. I kind of feel like my life has now been changed.

The next two pictures were my Santa presents. Santa is funny when he sees my in-laws because he likes to wrap everything individually. Yes, that means that the sponges that you see in front of the polishes were wrapped individually. He goes through a lot of wrapping paper.

The polishes here are Pastel Punk by Revlon, Brilliant Blue by L.A. Girl, My Dogsled is a Hybrid by OPI, Amazon Amaz-off by OPI, and Gargantuan Green Grape by OPI.

I was really excited to get this travel set. My mom got me the full mini set when it first came out. I've always been a collector of Coca-Cola things, so I was hesitant to open it up and use it. Now I can just use these ones!

I got this polish from my sister-in-law. It's an OPI sheer tint called I Can Teal that You Like Me.

These were from my Christmas Cracker that my husband's grandma made. Every year she makes us personalized Christmas Crackers. I'm not sure if I'll use the studs or the fake nails, but the white and black are definitely useful!

These three were from when I went shopping with my mother-in-law and father-in-law. I went into a cosmetics store to "just look" at the pretties as I usually do and they sat on a bench right outside. I saw a display of OPIs that were on sale. OPI is usually around $20 in Australia, but these were 3 for $20! I'm still on my no buying until I get a job thing, so I came out of the store looking really sad.

My mother-in-law then asked if I saw something that I really wanted and so I told her. She's awesome and let me get three and help her pick out three for my sister-in-law as late Santa presents.

The colours I got had perfect names for me. The first is Diva of Geneva, which is great because Geneva is the headquarters of the WHO and I have my degree in public health. The other two, I Don't Give a Rotterdam and Dutch Ya Just Love OPI, are perfect because I grew up in a city called Holland. It has a strong Dutch heritage, which I say makes me honorary Dutch even if I don't have any Dutch in my bloodline.

The next two pictures are from a purchase when I was going stir crazy. I was bouncing off the walls, so my in-laws took me shopping. The parents went to get coffee while my sister-in-law and I looked at nail polish. We were going to go to Priceline, but sadly that one had closed. Luckily there was a chemist across the street. They had the polishes in the first picture on sale, 5 for $10. My sister-in-law bought me one and I bought the other one, but since it was able to be paid with a single coin, I don't count it as buying for the sake of my no-buy. The one on the left is Gaga for Glitter and the one on the right didn't have it's name sticker and was the only one of that colour left. So sad since the names are half the fun of nail polish!

This was sort of a cheat for my no-buying rules. I blame my sister-in-law. We're bad influences on each other. The reason it's sort of a cheat was because it's a quick dry top coat, which I put in the category of things that I need to keep doing nails. That category is things like base coat, files, etc. However I didn't really NEED it because I just got the other quick dry top coat. Buuuuut, it came with a free full size bottle of nail polish, Red my Fortune Cookie. I couldn't pass that up!

Then one last nail polish arrived in the mail today. My mom sent my husband and I some Christmas presents. I was just able to pick the package up from the post office today and I found another bottle of polish. It's my first bottle of Sugar Shimmer, so I'm interested in using it. It's Mint Tint from Sally Hansen.

More Christmas Nails!

One of the best parts of this holiday season was that I spent it with my in-laws and I could do my sister-in-law's nails.

She's not the most decisive with what she wanted, but she did come up with snowflakes for her first manicure. I looked at an InLinkz that I'm a part of and showed her the snowflake manicures. She picked this one from Manicured and Marvelous, so I did my own interpretation.

Her next manicure was based on trees. I made a tree on the accent nail with different shades of green.

I did another look for my nails right before we left to go up to Sydney for Christmas. I decided to go with holly, since I hadn't done it yet, and got my inspiration from this manicure I found online.

When I was trying to decide what to do for my nails at Christmas, I was torn between polar bears and Olaf, from Frozen. Then I realised that I had to do my sister-in-law's nails, too, so I could do both! I gave her the polar bears inspired by this manicure.

Then I did Olaf on my nails. It ended up being a very Olaf Christmas for me! I also went to the store with my husband to find a onesie, I get cold even in summer here because everyone blasts the air con. It took us a lot of venturing through two different malls with 5/6 floors each, but we found a pop up store with onesies. They even had an Olaf one! Then my husband gave me an Olaf figurine and my mother-in-law got me an Olaf plushie! I'm a happy snowman!

Grapes

After a bit of recovering from the holidays, I took some time to redo my nails last night. Now that Christmas and New Year's are over, I can return to summery manicures. I looked at the polishes that I got for Christmas and decided that I wanted to paint my nails with Gargantuan Green Grape by OPI. I was then torn with what nail art to do, so I turned to my husband for advice. He suggested that I go with the grapes option.

I painted the grapes with Desire by Formula X. The vine is Envious by Kmart.

Today I wore a shirt that perfectly matched the background colour and my husband and a friend from church commented on how it matched my nails. It's almost like I did that on purpose. *wink*

Australia Zoo

We went up to Brisbane after Christmas because my husband's father's side is up there. We ended up going to Australia Zoo on the 29th, which I was really excited about. I used to love Steve Irwin and I love zoos and animals. Plus I got to hold a koala! (Queensland is the only State/Territory that still lets you hold them.)

I wanted to do a zoo appropriate manicure, but I had a limited amount of nail polish with me because I was travelling. I didn't have a brown, which severely limited my choices. I decided to go with a snow leopard. It's not exactly something that you'd see in Australia Zoo, but at least it's animal print!

 Here's some more pictures from the day: