Congratulations Keryn and Paul!

A couple of friends from church got married on Friday. I've been to a million and one weddings before because I have a huge family, but this was the first one that I've been to where the couple are my friends. I was so excited and it was a blast! I'm so happy for them. It was also sort of a fair well because they're moving for a year because she has a temporary job in Victoria. They'll be back to visit, though, and will be moving back in a year. (I didn't take any pictures, so I took this one off of another friend's facebook profile.)

December has been really busy for me, so I just had time to do a simple mani. I had an incident with nail strengthener. I took my polish off last week and discovered that my nails were SUPER stained. They look like I drew on them with a yellow highlighter, so going with naked nails was NOT an option. I think it was after I usually go to bed that I started them. I was happy with how they turned out and with such a short time to do them!

I wore an emerald green lacy dress, so painted my nails to coordinate with a glitter accent nail. Unfortunately I didn't get any nice pictures of me in the dress. My husband and I were too busy being maniacs on the dance floor all night. It made a tiring weekend even more exhausting as I tried to recover!

Christmas Tree

Our church has a Christmas carols event every year and my a Capella group was performing in it. Our uniform was black dresses for the girls with Christmas accessories.

Since I didn't have anything too Christmassy, I did my nails. One of the themes for a facebook group that I follow was Christmas tree and my nails reminded me of a zoomed in Christmas tree. At first the green glitter looked sort of brown just on my nails. But then I figured out that if I did a thin layer of green underneath, it became a beautiful Christmas tree green.


I started off trying to do one thing, which ended up failing. I'm happy that happened, though, because I absolutely LOVE these. Although the tip wear after less than a day is pretty sad!

 This is just a random treat that I got at the Carols event. I thought it was adorable!

An InLinkz Link-up

Mockingjay

On Saturday, my friend celebrated her 30th birthday. Her actual birthday is on Christmas, but each year she celebrates her "Canberra birthday" on 25 November and her actual birthday when they go back down to visit family.

Her party was an all day event. It started at 11 and we watched Mockingjay part 1. Then half of us went to see Mockingjay part 2 while some stayed home with the baby. Then we came back and had dinner and cake and the next people went to see the movie. The movie theatre just got reclining seats and they're pretty awesome! I think we got back home at around 11pm.

But onto my nails! I didn't think I'd have time before the party to do my nails, but I somehow pulled together this in 1.5 hours. I was impressed with myself. I made fire on my nails, for the girl on fire, with a mockingjay pin (the one from the first movie rather than the promo for this movie) on my accent nail.

Nails. Bond Nails.

Our friend had a James Bond party for the new Bond film this weekend. First we went over to his house for cocktails and mocktails along with some finger foods. Then most of the people went to the movie. I've never seen any of the Bond films because male chauvinists don't appeal to me. I stayed back with one of the girls and her baby, along with a 1 year old whose parents both went to the movie.

I wanted to do my nails for the occasion and thought that tuxedo nails were perfect!

Here's some pictures from the event!

Red poppies

Today is Remembrance Day which, for those in America, is kind of like Memorial Day. Red poppies are the symbol of Remembrance Day, so I did a simple mani featuring the flowers.

The nail art that stops a nation

I found out yesterday when I was at "work" that today is Melbourne Cup. "The race that stops the nation." Clearly I couldn't care less as I didn't even know that it was today. Apparently they were also having a party today, but I didn't go in as I only volunteer for work experience one day a week.

I decided to do my nails for the occasion, since I haven't been doing much nail art lately and want to get back into the swing of things! I was thinking of the big hats and fascinators initially, but decided that jockey uniforms would be easier. After much searching, I found a guide with the jockey uniforms for those running in the race today here.

Each finger was a different jockey, but I still didn't have the winner! Apparently today's race was the first time that a female jockey won. Although I've seen more things posted today about animal cruelty in the race than I have about a woman winning. Poor horses!

A Simple Halloween

I wasn't going to do a Halloween manicure this year. I've been in a bit of a nail art slump and I've been busy unpacking. Plus they don't even celebrate Halloween here, which is kinda sad. (Although I am wearing an Olaf onesie at home to celebrate by myself along with watching my favourite Halloween movie, Hocus Pocus. When the husband's away, the wife will play!) But then last night I was looking for nail inspiration and decided that I should do something a little Halloween-y.

My nails were already painted with Ariel by Glam Polish. I just decided to add a little ghost on my accent nail. It took less than 5 minutes, but I think he's cute! Plus my nails are currently too short to do a more detailed design anyway. I just hope they grow back by the time I start Christmas nail art!

Purple "Cherry Blossoms"

It's been a while. Sorry about that! My life has been pretty hectic and exhausting the past few weeks. My husband and I have been having financial struggles, so we decided to break contract at our apartment and look for somewhere cheaper to live. We were staying at the apartment until they found someone to move in, which meant that it could be anywhere from two weeks up until next March when our lease was supposed to be over. We had just gotten started with packing when we got a call saying that they found someone and they were going to be moving in in exactly two weeks.

That meant chaos! We got the call on a Friday, we went to open houses on the Saturday, got approval for our new rental house on Tuesday, and moved in the next Saturday. That was a lot of packing and moving and unpacking in a very short time frame! It's really done a number on my nails, so I'm not sure if they'll be photo ready anytime soon.

But here's a manicure that I did before we moved, but haven't had time to blog about until now. I was inspired by some manicures I've seen floating around online with cherry blossoms. I just decided to go with a purple flower instead of pink since I was making the background pink.

I'm hoping to do some nail art this weekend. My husband is down in Melbourne for PAX from this morning and doesn't get back until Monday evening, so I should have plenty of time. Lets just hope that all the unpacking doesn't keep my nails short and brittle forever!

Swirly Dry Marbling

About a week ago, I found this really cool nail art idea on Instagram from Girly Bits Cosmetics. I had a bunch of pretty holos from my What's In-die Box when I bought the Disney Princess and the Harry Potter themed ones that I still hadn't tried. It's Spring, so I didn't want to do black, which meant that the hardest part was figuring out which colours to use!

I ended up going with a dark blue for the main base colour. The holo colours were Minutes to Midnight from Gloss n Sparkle and Ariel and Fleur from Glam Polish.

Since it was my first time doing a dry marble, it was more than a little messy. Although probably not as messy as water marbling is. The issue was just that it used much thicker blobs of polish which meant that it took a while to dry. The actual marbling was super easy when you had enough polish, though.

I love how they turned out and will definitely be doing something similar again. Hopefully it'll be easier to clean up now that I know more of what I'm doing!

Brainiac

My husband went to Sydney for a few days last week and I asked him to get me a nail polish from Sephora, since Sydney is their only location down under. Like a good husband, he went and got me one! I told him any one that he liked the colour and/or name of, but I'd prefer a creme. He came back with a beautiful shade of purple called Brainchild.

After a busy weekend, I finally got a chance to paint my nails yesterday. I decided to do a blobbicure of Brainchild and Gray Matter, both from Sephora. I really love this technique because it's so simple and looks pretty cool. Some of my blobs ended up more like a dry marble, but that's fine with me. I always wanted to try dry marbling!