Soft Kitty, warm kitty

...little ball of fur.

Soft Kitty says hello! I got him at the Syndey Supanova Expo this year and I absolutely love him to bits! He's the Soft Kitty from Sheldon Cooper's "Soft Kitty" song from The Big Bang Theory. "Soft Kitty" is the song Sheldon's mum used to sing to him when he was sick as a child. And it's the song that this little cutie pie sings too! YES! He sings :D If you press his little paw, he sings "Soft Kitty" out loud, perfect for when I'm sick too  :p

Soft kitty warm kitty, little ball of fur.

Happy kitty, sleepy kitty, purr purr, purr.

And he is the inspiration for my most recent mani:

These were done just late one night with acrylic paint on a white base.

TIP: when I just want to try and see what a drawing would look like on my nails, I paint the base colour on first and top it with a coat of top coat. After it's all dry, I can doodle all I want with acrylic paint and just wipe it off with a cotton ball and water if I don't like it. Easy, right? 

Before I bid you all adieu, here's a sneak peek at tomorrow's colourful design!

Indie Cherry..

   finally popped? *nods head with vigorous enthusiasm* :D

   Coming home after a day of stifling hot 35°C weather I was estatic to come home to a package from the lovely Missi Barry from Different Dimension! I purchased 3 full sized 15ml polishes, and Missi was kind enough to also include 3 minis from her The Big Bang Theory collection for me to swatch and review. All in all this post will be photo heavy. But I promise you, the photos are well worth having a look at as the polishes are just gorgeous! 

   The full sized bottles I ordered were: Light It Up Blue (for Autism), Boo, You Whore and Soft Kitty, Warm Kitty.

   The minis that were included were: Rock, Paper, Scissor, Lizard, Spock, Penny and Bazinga.

   To start it all off, we have Light It Up Blue (for Autism):

L-R: 2 coats over white, 1 coat over white, 1 coat over Maybelline Party Blue

   This polish is inspired by Autism Speaks and is  filled with tons of little blue glitters, holographic silver glitters and larger white hexes... AND it glows blue in the dark!

   My first impression of the polish is that it was quite thick, but it actually painted on like a dream, with the only exception being the larger white hexes that I had to fish out of the bottle and place. 

   Next up is Boo, You Whore: 

L-R: 2 coats over white, 1 coat over white, 1 coat over BC Co. Shade 12

   I love love LOVE the name of this polish. It's what drove me to buy it no matter what it looked like, it is the one most awesome line in Mean Girls! Lucky for me, the polish is down right just as awesome as it's name! It's an amazing blue jelly base jam packed with holographic blue glitter and several other sized/ shades of blue glitter. This applied really well as well, and there was little to no placing, there was plenty of glitter to go around!

   Next is Soft Kitty, Warm Kitty:

L-R 2 coats on it's own, 1 coat over Max Factor Opal, 1 coat over Rimmel Grey Matter

   I bought this polish for the exact same reason as Boo, You Whore because I am a major die hard The Big Bag Theory and Sheldon Cooper fan so how could I not buy this?! It's a creamy grey jelly based polish with silver holographic glitters and different sized white and grey hex glitters. Compared to the first two polishes, Soft Kitty isn't as jam packed with glitter, which in my opinion really suits its name and the 'gentle' grey feel of the polish. It paints on nicely but is really tricky to get the glitter spread even.

   The next three are the mini bottles that Missi included for me to try and swatch. 

First up is Rock, Paper, Scissor, Lizard, Spock (for the sake of this post it will be noted as RPSLS):

L-R: 1 coat over white, 1 coat over Maybelline Party Blue, 2 coats over BC Co. Shade 12

   This is a light blue jelly based polish and is filled with tons of micro glitter and small white, light blue, grey and light green hexes. It has a good formula and required no placing at all, just paint right on top, there's plenty of glitter to go around!

   Next is Penny:

L-R: 3 coats on its own, 2 coats over Orly See Yah, 2 coats over Black

   Penny is a copper based polish with plenty of copper and brown glitter. Like the rest of the polishes in the collection, its application was nice and smooth, and coverage was great! It's the perfect colour for Fall.

   Last, but definitely not the least, is Bazinga:

L-R: 1 coat over white, 1 coat over Sinful colors Let's Meet, 1 coat over Orly See Yah

   Bazinga is an absolutely great polish! It sticks true to its name and does it proud! It's a yellow jelly based polish with red and yellow micro glitter, as well as plenty of different sized yellow and red hexes. Since there were so many larger sized glitters that came out with every coat, there was some placing needed to balance the glitter out evenly on the nail. But that's expected, so despite all that, the polish applied like a dream and the coverage was great!

 The next few photos are of the polishes on my own nails.

 L-R: 1 coat RPSLS over white, 1 coat RPSLS over Maybelline Party Blue, 2 coats Boo You Whore over white, 2 coats Boo You Whore over BC Co. Shade 12

L-R: 1 coat Light It Up Blue over white, 1 coat Light It Up Blue over Maybelline Party Blue, 2 coats Soft Kitty on its own, 2 coats Soft Kitty over Max Factor Opal

L-R: 2 coats Penny on its own, 2 coats Penny over Orly See Yah, 1 coat Bazinga over white, 1 coat Bazinga over Orly See Yah

   And there you have it! Just a little taste of the awesomeness that is Different Dimension by Missi Barry. My personal faves are Boo You Whore, Rock Paper Scissor Lizard Spock and Bazinga! All these and more are available for purchase at Missi's Etsy store.

www.etsy.com/store/DIFFERENTdimension

   Which one is your favourite?

Neon-tastic!

   Well, hello there y'all! Good morning! It's currently 6:51am here in Australia and I've yet to catch a wink of sleep.. probably because I napped after work in the afternoon (whoops). I guess you could also attribute my insomnia to my need for a new manicure! I knew I wanted something bright and fun and ikat-y (let's pretend that's an actually adjective, and it isn't made up at all). I spent the night painting, removing, painting, removing... and painting, and removing nail polish trying out different patterns, different colour combos. Here are the ones I was bothered to snap pictures of:

   So, in conclusion, I decided to smush these 3 designs together and got this:

   There is something about the ikat design I just love. Partly because it's so easy and less tedious than trying to create straight perfect lines. Painting those black dividing lines were a pain enough to get straight and even *sob Though I have to admit, in this mani I used black acrylic paint (yes, I've finally bought some!) instead of regular polish; it is so much (SO MUCH) easier to create opaque straight lines. Top it off with a coat of top coat and you can't tell it's not polish *grin

   For some strange reason, these remind me of Fresh Prince of Bel Air.. or is it just me?

   OH AND while I was absent for the most part of this week (on blogger and tumblr) I had a mani that I had only uploaded onto instagram. Just for your viewing pleasure, here they are:

   Just a basic pastel green to blue striped gradient ^^ There were requests on instagram for a tutorial, so I whipped one up real quick.

   Also as a special request from my mum, I made pistachio macarons! And they have feet!

   Andddddd... I think that's all for now. I've bombarded you all with enough photos. Until my next post that is ^^ 

Toodles~

Eek!

   What I have for you all today is... *drumroll please* a ripped flesh mani! Inspired by the ever awesome The Daily Nail's "I'm Going to Let It Slide" Halloween manicure. 

   I saw this design on tumblr a few weeks back and I thought it was pretty damn right cool! So now that Halloween is right around the corner, I may as well have spooky nails for work on Thursday! And just to add a little extra "eek" I added stitches *grin Though, half way through the mani it occurred to me why a zombie with ripped flesh would have stitches... right? So instead, I decided to just think of these nails as hacked body pieces that have been sewn together.. sounds a lot creepier huh?! 

   There really isn't much else to say other than Happy Halloween everyone! 

Naked Nails!

   Well.. half naked nails. 

   I started painting my nails frequently around May of this year and ever since then I've never worn my nails naked or half naked if I could help it. Of course back then I was a complete amateur and never wore base coat, which is probably why my nails stained faster. Only recently have I paid extra attention to painting 2 coats of base coat and lightly buffing my nails every now and then between manicures. And I'm so thrilled that after chopping my claws off, almost all the staining is gone! So thrilled that I decided on this black glitter tip mani on my naked nails:

   It's basically just sponging on a black "french" tip then sponging on a fine silver glitter polish to mask any hard lines and blend the black/naked nails better together for a smoother transition. The flowers on each of the nails are done by hand using a technique I saw on youtube years ago. I don't remember whose video it was, but if anyone knows let me know so I can credit them properly! 

   To create the flower, all you need to do is with a dotting tool (or use a bobby pin like me), paint 5 dots in a circle. Let them dry for a few seconds until the dots are a little tacky, then with a toothpick or a pin, drag each dot outwards, then drag inwards to create the petal shape. Finish it off with a large glitter piece, or a dot of glitter polish, et voila a flower!

   And a couple more snaps of the design:

Pinktober

   October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and is a time to show support for women and families affected by breast cancer. I personally know someone who is currently dealing with breast cancer and I can't possibly begin to imagine what they and their family have been going through. To show my support, I thought I'd take this opportunity and paint my nails pink, pink and more pink! 

   Before I start a mani, I tend to try out the design first on a finger to see if it turns out how I imagined it in my head. Because let's face it, some manis that look AMAZING in our heads turn into disasters on our nails. Here are two practice shots: 

   Fortunately they turned out how I had hoped so I didn't have to do too much fiddling *grin 

   As you can see the black lines in the final mani are a lot thicker than those in my test shots. I actually would have preferred the thinner lines but I couldn't get the straight edges I wanted so I kept going over them until I was satisfied, and hence the fat black lines. 

   The bottle of Chi Chi in the above photo is called "OMG" and omg it is the most vibrant neon (without being too fluro) pink ever! and I lalalalove it! The other pinks I used were Sally Hansen's "Sonic Boom" and "Flashy Fuchsia". The lightest pink was a combination of "OMG" and a whte polish. I've yet to lay hands on a nice light pink that I like. Suggestions?

   There's just something about matte nails I'm liking at the moment. Decided to try these with a matte top coat as well and I actually quite like them more matte than glossy!

Happy Pinktober!

Toodles~

Galaxy Glitter Goodness

   We've all seen galaxy nails, we've all seen galaxy "drip" nails, but then I saw these and I knew it was time to try my hand at it. I've dabbled in "galaxy nails" before but I was never happy with the outcome. Until today *grin

   This is my little spin on the drip nails. I decided to use a black base and had the "cosmic drips" dripping from the nail bed/ cuticles instead of towards it. From previous experience where my white dots (stars) turned the entire mani into a mess, I excluded them and opted for a fine glitter polish instead. And this is what came out:

   I'm actually quite happy with how these turned out! I mean, the drips look kind of wonky (I actually thought the drip shape would be the easiest part but creating perfectly shaped yet random drips was hard!) but it doesn't take too much away from the over all mani ;D 

   I might try these out with a white base next time, but first I need to get my hands on some white acrylic paint. My white polish, as awesome as it is, won't be opaque enough in one layer to outline the drips. (If any of that was confusing, I'm just referring to this tutorial by the same artist of the nails I was inspired by). 

   OH and before I forget: 

   These are the drips with a matte top coat. I was wearing the black polish, which is really a black glitter polish from Nine West, mattefied (is that a word?) before I attempted this mani so I decided to try the drips matte. They don't look too bad, but I prefer the shiny top coat, brings out all that glittery goodness :D

Toodles~

I♥IKAT TUTORIAL

Tada, tutorial! ;D

The picture tutorial itself is pretty self explanatory but I've provided, what I hope to be a clear description of the steps as well. So here goes!
________________________________________________________

Start off with your base coat and 2 coats of white polish.

Need: 6 pastel polishes, 1 black polish, a nail art brush (base coat+top coat as per usual and acetone + brush for clean up)

For the purpose of this tutorial I've labelled the nails 1, 2 and 3.

For nail #1
1. With your nail art brush, starting with yellow, paint tiny vertical strokes/ dashes, one next to the other, creating the zigzag pattern.
2. With your remaining colours, paint on the same tiny strokes/ dashes following the zigzag pattern created in step 1.
3. With your nail art brush and black nail polish, using the same techniques in steps 1 and 2, paint tiny black strokes between the light pink and yellow, and between the blue and purple, also creating a zigzag pattern.

For nail #2
1. Using the same technique in Nail #1 create a V shape pattern with all 6 colours.2. With your black polish and nail art brush, create an ikat heart shape by painting small strokes following the V shape.

For nail #3
1. Create a dark pink to light pink to white gradient.2. With your nail art brush, create miniature heart shapes on top of the gradient.3. Again with your nail art brush and using the same technique in Nails #1 and #2, create an ikat heart shape by outlining the miniature hearts with your black polish.

Top it off with your favourite top coat and don't forget to clean up your cuticles (:

**Remember you don't have to follow the design colour for colour, be creative and if ever you try it, leave a comment with a link, I'd love to see what all your imaginations come up with! (:


Toodles~

I♥IKAT

   Hey y'all! Is it just me or is there something really addictive about the Ikat pattern? AND PASTELS. That's why when I saw this phone cover in Sportsgirl a few weeks back I knew I needed to have it on my nails!

   From previous experience, I've learnt that it's so much easier to get the colours to pop (especially neons!) if you paint a base coat of white polish first. So I did that, then chose 6 pastel polishes to match the colour scheme of the mobile phone case. Spring's just arrived here in Australia so pastels are pretty much the GO-TO colours at the moment. Slap on those characteristic black lines on top of the pastels, et voilà!

   The first time in a long time I painted the same design on my right hand, albeit a simplified version (meaning I replaced the mini hearts on the ring finger and thumb with the simple ikat zigzag on the middle finger!) Disclaimer: Please don't pay too much attention to my unusually short right index nail. It snapped right across while I was out of the house and had no nail glue on me to fix it ): Now I've bought a second nail glue bottle to keep in my bag always! 

I've also had a request for a tutorial on these so that should be up soon as well! 

Toodles~