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.

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!

Flowers for Floriade

Today has been a crazy day! I had practice for my singing group because we are singing at Floriade, a big month-long flower festival in Canberra, tomorrow. Then after practice, I headed down to Floriade to meet my husband and some friends from our video game club. It's been a busy, but fun day.

You can't tell from these pictures, but they make really beautiful patterns and designs with different flowers. This year's theme is Refection and the patterns are all military based. It'll look even better from the Ferris wheel when more of the flowers have bloomed! My husband and I may end up going back in a few weeks.

I did some basic flowers on my nails for this weekend. I was glad to find some flowers today that matched!

It's Spring!

Spring started on the 1st of September down in Australia. I wanted to do this mani for the first day of Spring, but it's been a busy few days. I finally had a chance to finish my mani this morning! I used a sugar shimmer for the background to give it some texture like grass.

OMD3 Day 30: My nails and my bag

I couldn't decide if I loved these or didn't like them at all. Then I realised that was my first thought when my in-laws gave me my bag and I absolutely love it!

*note: I didn't finish this one until after the challenge was over, so it's not on the inlinkz. *

An InLinkz Link-up

OMD3 Day 10: Floral

I wanted to do a purple flower in the corner of my nails, so I took to the internet for some purple flower inspiration. I wasn't sure how these were going to turn out when I had just painted the petals, but I absolutely loved them when I got around to painting the middle bit. The petals are from two different colours and then a third with them mixed. The middle bit of the flower is a gray and a darker purple.

An InLinkz Link-up

Honour Nails You Love

I knew immediately that I had to do something from morenailpolish.com because I love her work and her blog inspired me to start my own blog. She's also from Canberra, which is pretty awesome!

I really love her fish manicure from May 2013, especially since it was the first jelly sandwich manicure that I had ever seen. But I sadly don't have a blue jelly and had to choose something else. I went through her blog and remembered how much I loved her dot manicure for this challenge. You can see it here.

There were a lot of colours involved in this manicure! A-piers to be Tan by OPI, Envious by Kmart, No Room for the Blues by OPI, Snow Me White by Sinful Colors, Glowstick by Wet n Wild Fergie, Summer Rose by boe, Plugged-in Plum by OPI, Con-fused? by China Glaze Magnetix, Bonna Blue by Fresh Paint, Belsize Park by nails inc, my unknown black, and Ginger Melon by Revlon Parfumerie.

I started with a background colour of Bonna Blue.

The original manicure from morenailpolish.com had a slight gradient, so I used a sponge with some more Bonna Blue and No Room for the Blues. I really do love gradients and they're so easy!

I added the clouds next.

My first dots were for the tree trunks. I forgot about the thumb when I took this picture, but I added it right after.

I used the three greens to make the grass and the trees. I just used Envious to make the flower stems.

I chose Belsize Park for the yellow here. The reason that I chose that instead of Bananarama was because I only had to use a bit. I only have a bit of it left and it's getting thick but I don't want to waste it.

Ginger Melon was a great choice for the pink flowers. Now my nails smell a bit yummy!

I then added Plugged-in Plum for the purple flowers and a bit of Summer Rose into the blooming tree on my pinky.

I finished off with adding the birds and cleaning up any stray dots.

An InLinkz Link-up

Inspired by a Tutorial

I went to my pinterest board for nail inspiration to look up a tutorial that I could do. Most of my pins are just pictures, but I do have a few tutorials. I decided to go with the dandelion puff design seen here.

The colours that I chose are No Room for the Blues by OPI, Snow Me White by Sinful Colors, and my unknown black.

I started with a background of No Room for the Blues.

 I started with the black lines and then added the white ones on the other nails.

I quickly did the black dots on the bottom of the white parts. I wanted to do it quick so that the black blob that I put on my plastic baggie wouldn't dry first. I'm running low.

I finished off with some white lines for the puff. It didn't quite work out like I had hoped, but I still like it.

An InLinkz Link-up

Fashion

Last time I did a prompt for fashion, I chose to do one of my purses. That was the easier one but I wanted to do another one of my purses. I'm not very fashionable, so they were the best things that I could think of doing. The purse that I chose to do is a Vera Bradley bag. Her prints are very intricate, so I chose to really zoom in to get the details.

The colours that I chose were No Room for the Blues by OPI, Bonna Blue by Fresh Paint, the dark end of Pinstripe by Revlon Nail Art, Glowstick by Wet n Wild Fergie, Con-fused? by China Glaze magnetix, and Snow Me White by Sinful Colours.

I wasn't sure exactly what parts of the bag that I wanted to do, so I did a bunch of colours that worked as background colours for different areas of the bag.

I decided which part of the bag I wanted to do on a nail by nail basis which meant that I ended up not using one of the colours that I had initially planned and I didn't think about that fact that I had two white and dark blue nails next to each other. But I still like how it turned out overall. I only wish that I had a better colour to use for my dark blue. I thought that it would be lighter than it was, especially when I added the top coat since it's matte. 

An InLinkz Link-up

Half-Moons

I'm not a massive fan of half-moon manicures, but of course I want to do all of the prompts. After looking at different manicures on pinterest, which is what I do for fun, I decided that I did like the ones with part of a flower for the half-moons. I decided to go with sunflowers.

The colours that I used are No Room for the Blues by OPI, Bananarama by Kmart, A-piers to be Tan by OPI, and my strange black with the warn off label.

I started with No Room for the Blues. I love this colour. I just wish that my brush wasn't broken. The tube that holds the bristles has a crack and so more and more of them keep sticking out the side.

I then added the yellow for the petals.

Next was the brown. I was going to stop there but realised that something was missing. That something was that sunflowers have seeds!

I added some black dots, finished cleaning up around my nails, and voila! 

An InLinkz Link-up

Flowers

There's been an idea for flowers that I've wanted to do for a while but since I was in a continuing winter, it just didn't seem right. Now that it's finally Spring in the Southern Hemisphere and the prompt for today is flowers, I finally did it!

The colours that I used are No Room for the Blues by OPI, Bananarama by Kmart, and Snow Me White by Sinful Colors.

I started with painting my nails blue.

The next step was to make daisies from white dots. I used Snow Me White because I didn't like how it paints when that's the base colour, so I wanted to see how it looked in nail art. I was happy that it worked well because it means that I won't be wasting a bottle of polish!

The final step was to add the yellow centers. If I do this again, I would probably use a smaller dotting tool to make littler flowers. I do still really like the design, though. It's just too bad that this prompt isn't next week when my in-laws visit because we'll be going to Floriade, which is a big flower festival in Canberra!

An InLinkz Link-up