I'm going dotty in my old age ;)

Just a very quick post today. I don't normally show you my attempts at nail art because they're usually not good enough to bother with, in my opinion (although I am my own harshest critic, that's for sure).
But today I tried my first ever dot manicure and I love how it turned out- it's really freaking cute if I do say so myself :)
This is heavily inspired by the work of Debbie Crumpet who does the most adorable and clever things with dots and nail polish- seriously, if you don't follow her blog you really should.
Anyway, because it's winter here I decided to do a darker take on her mani and this is the result;

How freaking cute is this mani? I love it! And my daughter was legitimately impressed rather than doing her usual "lets just humour mum until she stops waving her fingers at me", which means I really hit the mark.
Have some more photos;

The best things about this mani was just how seriously easy it was to pull off. I used a cheapie black (Mud) and then just used a variety of dotting tools to apply various colours.
I wanted the colours to be bright and bold as they wouldn't stand out against the black otherwise, so I blended a few of the lighter colours with my Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear white to give them a boost and that was that.
Two generous coats of Seche Vite and I had this cute, bright and cheery manicure that looks great, especially when you consider both hands took around 25-30 minutes all up. And my non dominant hand looks great too! Yay!
The dotting tools cost me around $2.00 on ebay and I just used a plastic take away container lid as my palette and there you have it, one very cheap-but-cute dotty manicure, winter edition.

Hope you like it as much as I do and I'd love to see your dot manis, so hit me up on my instagram or twitter if you'd like to share.

Until next time I hope you're all having a rockin' day, and for the Aussies I hope you have a great Queen's Birthday long weekend.

Em xox

Dance Legend Roz, very picture heavy because I can and it is, so there

Hello to my grand non-audience out there, how goes it?
In my world of nail polish, cats, single parenthood and not-so-great-episodes of depression it's only so-so.
To be honest, I am feeling a little meh, a little flat. I suspect a lot of that is down to the fact that I am well on the road to recovery from my last surgery and, as I'm not due for any others in the near future, it's time for me to get back into things.
The only problem is, I have no idea where to go to from here. So I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by the knowledge that I need to get on with my life but I just don't know what it is I should be doing, and I'm very scared I'm going to fuck it all up.

Anyway, that's what's going on in my life and it's kinda a shitty place to be...I wish there was some sort of magic button I could press that would make all these important life decisions and choices for me so I can just get on with it, rather than wondering what it is I need to be getting on with in the first place.

So, as a distraction from the pressures of adulthood I had a play with Roz, one of my Dance Legend multichromes that are all named after characters from the movie Monster's Inc. which I find really endearing as I have a real soft spot for that movie.
This polish has the most amazing colour shift, and it's not the sort that requires you to hold your fingers "just so" either.
The slightest movement is enough to have Roz dancing from mauve through rose gold to bronze to vivid green to copper and so many shades in between. But words really don't do this polish justice. Let's have a peek at some snapshots shall we?

O.K, it's a pretty dark pink/mauve, I hear you say, it's nice but so what? Well, here ya go :D

Oh, and it doesn't stop there either, oh no...

And then it does this...

And it doesn't just look amazing in daylight like holo's, this baby looks fabulous even under less than ideal lighting, like my kitchen at 10pm with only my iphone and fluorescent lighting to play by;

And it just keeps on going. I have so many pictures I can't post them all, I'd probably crash your computer, so i'll finish off with this little series;

Oh, ok, and these. I really love how you can have  so many colours at once, you don't need to contort your fingers to achieve a good amount of colour shift, just holding a cuppa tea is enough to have your nails flashing pink, bronze, gold and green. Just glorious.

As for the polish itself, application was surprisingly easy as I have heard that multichromes and holos can be tricky with issues like streaking, dragging and bald spots, but none of that occurred here. And I didn't even layer Roz over black, this is just three thin coats over a cheap Essence base coat.
I do have teabag wraps on my thumb and index fingers and I was worried that the slightly frosty aspect of the polish would make them look really obvious, but even that didn't turn out to be a problem at all.

Dance Legend  is a Russian nail polish company, and you can either buy through their site or through one of the international polish stockists such as Color4Nails, Femme Fatale and Llarowe. There is a greater range on the original Dance Legend site, but shipping from Russia can be tricky, so really, it's one of those decisions you'll need to weigh up for yourself.

Anyway, I hope I have managed to do Roz some justice with my iphone photos- it was actually really hard to narrow down what to publish as every shot showed another aspect of the polish that I want to share, but there comes a point where you have to take people's bandwidth into consideration, so I tried to keep it down as much as I could.

I've got some info about a fanastic giveaway competition

Just a quick post to let you all know about a great competition going on right now by Shades of Phoenix and Moonstone Polish.
This should take you their facebook page...

I reckon it's well worth a look see, as there are some amazing polishes up for grabs.
Good luck <3

Em x

It puts the polish on its fingers... yep, Emily De Molly has kidnapped my heart with this one

Hello again. What a dreary, crappy couple of days its been here in Rye- normally I get some pretty good shots outside even if it is a bit overcast, but it's so dark and gloomy it's almost impossible to take a decent picture with my super-duper fancy camera phone ;)

Regardless, I battled on to bring you some photo's of one of my favourite polishes, Emily De Molly's "Absent Minded".
This was one of the first ever indie polishes I ordered, along with Cosmic Forces and Fashion Victim.
And, to be honest, when I first tried this one on I was disappointed, it was so much more laid back than the others, and it felt a little plain in comparison.
But I slowly warmed to it, and now I love how understated the polish is whilst still having a lot of complexity.

Emily De Molly's "Absent Minded"

Isn't it lovely? Hayley has managed to create a beautiful polish, with the copper and aqua glitters adding a subtle twist which elevates it above your standard purple polish into something quite special.

As with most Emily De Molly polishes I own it is easy to apply, and there is no fishing required for the glitter- each brush stroke is loaded with enough glitter to cover the nail, but not so much that it overwhelms the base colour.
The base itself is a blue-leaning purple crelly, and it is the perfect opacity to allow full coverage of the nails while still allowing the glitter to shine through. I only needed two coats for these pictures, although I do recommend a generous coat of Seche Vite or similar just to even things out on the nail and to give it that lovely glossy look.

There really isn't much else to say about Absent Minded as I feel that the pictures speak for themselves. This really is a stunner, but it's subtle enough that I think you could wear it to work without causing too much fuss.

"Absent Minded" is still available as far as I know, however Hayley is currently on hiatus as she's just had a baby, but her store should reopen soon.

I must say, in my oh-so-humble opinion, that Emily De Molly is well worth checking out. She is one of the best known and well loved polish makers here in Australia and for good reason; the quality of her polish is consistently excellent and she offers a great range too, from subtle work safe holos to in-your-face blingtastic creations. She also has a line of stamping plates which I have heard are excellent too (although I haven't tried them myself- stamping's a lot harder than it looks).

Here's hoping Hayley returns to the indie polish worlds sooner rather than later (I have several polishes that I didn't get a chance to snag before she went on maternity  leave and I must have them!).

And that's it from me today- I hope your weather is nicer than what we've got down here at the moment and that everything is traveling along nicely.
I'll be back in a day or so with more swatches as I still have so many to play with from my last polish haul (not to mention that I may have just bought over 10 more bottles from several de-stash sales... someone stop me, please!).

~in polish we trust~
Em xox