Space, the final frontier...

Okay, apologies in advance, I have had a bit of a busy week and I'm a little tired, so this post might be a bit rubbish! For a while I'd been wanting to try out galaxy nails, but always felt a little daunted by the idea. So basically I had to paint tiny galaxies on my hands? Pretty, but challenging. However, my urge to have space-age nails overwhelmed my performance anxiety, so armed with some sponges and some determination, I went to work.

All of the nails have a basic black coat underneath (my standard, trusty Rimmel - Black Out), with a bit of white sponged on (Natural Collection - Nail Tip Whitener :P). The purple nails then had Zoya - Tru, Zoya - Valerie, and China Glaze - DV8 sponged on in bits across the nail. The green nail had the same treatment, but with China Glaze - Lighthouse, Zoya - Ivanka, and China Glaze - DV8.

Once that was done, I lightly sponged a few dips of CND - Sapphire Sparkle across the top, for extra bling. Using a dotting tool, I put a few little white 'stars' (might try to make them more star-like next time, haha!), then covered everything in one coat of China Glaze - Fairy Dust (and, obviously, my beloved Seche Vite to finish). Ta-daaaaa! :D

Despite the trickiness, I'm quite happy with how they turned out! Next time I might try to leave a little more black space (especially obvious on the green nail!), use a smaller dotting tool for the stars and/or embellish them a little. (And maybe if I'm feeling super geeky, I'll paint a tiny Starfleet ship somewhere in there.)

So there you go! Galaxy nails! I have a red accent finger on my right hand instead of green; polishes used were Sally Hansen Nail Prisms - Golden Tourmaline, China Glaze - Lighthouse, and Zoya - Valerie. :) (Maybe a bit tooooo close, LOL, but all the other photos were blurry! Sorry!)

Arista has big hair...

So this week's manicure is three coats of OPI's Big Hair, Big Nails. It's a jelly (or 'sorbet' if you're OPI and you like to sound pretentious), which means it has this gorgeous juicy glossy finish. Name stupidity aside, I'm really, really starting to love these OPI jellies. <3
The jelly sandwich filling on the ring finger is Sea Lore's Arista. I honestly have not been able to find or take a photo that truly shows how sparkly this polish is in real life. See those large, paler hexes? They're actually holographic, and they still flash & twinkle beautifully through the jelly in person, but on camera? Nope, too shy, no dice. :(
Quick recap of other news; my Andrina manicure lasted all week while I was on holiday, which is pretty impressive! Also, I am a bit nervous about posting my upcoming stash hauls, as I have gone a little bit mad. :/ This month and next month may be a little... uh... packed. :3

Andrina gradient and Sea Lore love!

The short; Creme gradient done with Models Own - Utopia, Barry M - Berry Icecream, Revlon - Rock. Topped with one coat of Sea Lore - Andrina. <3 (The tiny shimmer flecked throughout? That's Andrina too. <3)
Also, my camera seemed to be having trouble with this set of purples; it is pulling a little tiny bit too blue in this picture, apologies! Imagine a bit more royal purple and a little less blue-purple. :)

The long;
So recently I went on a massive indie polish splurge, and one of the most exciting ones I stumbled across was a relatively new company called Sea Lore. It's run by a sweet, delightful lady called Jamie (although previous to this knowledge, I had just been calling her "magical mermaid nail polish lady", which also worked for me).

Her polish collection is called Triton's Daughters, and since I'm a fan of glitter -and- Disney, how could I resist? I swiftly ordered mini bottles of Andrina (the first swatch to catch my eye), Alana (so pretty and delicate!), Adella (step out of my comfort zone, but more on that shortly), and Arista (red! holo glitter!).

These bottle shots were taken in my rubbish lightbox (I opened the parcel late evening after work, so no sun), so they're in no way as representative of the awesome shimmer of joy that is in these babies. I am sorry, I will try to learn better photography skills just for these. <3 Having only briefly swatched them on one nail each, and spent a lot of time oohing and ahhing at the bottles, Adella surprised me by being a bit of a runaway favourite. I'm not usually a great fan of gold or lime green, but this polish is -gorgeous-. It'll very probably be my next manicure, but I digress. LOOK AT THE SPARKLY PRETTIES.

Shipping, even internationally, was fast and lovely. The polishes came wrapped in glittery tissue paper, with little Ariel and friends stickers all over them. And sweets! :D She also had a promotion where the first 100 people to make an order over $20 got a handmade polish ring of their choice (I have an adorable ninja octopus stamped over Aquata - photos in the fangirl post to come!) Communication is spectacular; swift replies, plus she's a total sweetheart and her polishes are both gorgeous and professional looking, even down to the adorable little bottles. Seriously, I cannot recommend this lady and her beautiful polishes enough. I'm hopefully going to make another fangirl post later this weekend swooning over her some more.

Go forth! Buy the pretties! You know you want to!

Jul 2012 - New Additions....

 It's that time again! Bottle porn, stash pictures, new additions... whatever you want to call it, it's a lot of new polishes for me! :)

Ballet birthday cake!

Well hello bloggers! I have a backlog of other manicures to post, as well as a stash update for this month, but I am honestly quite terrible at being organized. Recent computer issues combined with crazy overtime at work and general laziness = Manda is a bad blogger. Apologies. :)

Anyway, my nails have been very good and strong recently, and got so long that I couldn't actually type properly at work anymore! I have tried previously filing them to keep them at one length, but I quite like having varying nail lengths over a few months. I find different styles look nicer on certain lengths, so I get to try them all!

My darling flamingo queen Katti accompanied me on a scary adventure to a beauty supply store today, where we got lots of exciting polishes for cheap! Woo! (More haul posts on that to follow.) One of them was a recent hardcore lemming of mine, OPI's Don't Touch My Tutu!.

This manicure is two coats of Don't Touch My Tutu!, one coat of Ibiza Mix by Models Own, and then another coat of Tutu. I thought it looked vaguely like an indie polish I've seen somewhere on the internet called Jawbreaker, I think? My sister said it looked like pop tarts or birthday cake, which was fitting as it's my mummy's birthday today! :D