My first ever attempt at painting over nail stamping, called leadlighting

Hey guys, this is a really quick post. I just wanted to share my current mani that I did yesterday using the leadlighting technique, whereby you paint your nails a light colour, stamp an image over that and then fill in the image with sheer nail polish tints.
I am so pleased with how it turned out, especially for a first go. The only downside to that is that I have absolutely no desire to change my nails and I have some gorgeous new Glams to try haha

I used the Loreal Gellie range and they gave the images a nice, water colour feel to the whole thing.

Anyway, that's it for today. Told you it was going to be a quick one ;)

I have some lovely polishes to share that were given to me to review by Jacinta of Powder Perfect, so keep your eyes peeled for that post (it will be up in the next day or so).

Until then, ~love and polish for all~

Em xox

Another quickie, this time with Arcane Lacquer

Hi everyjuan (thank you ediotz for that- every time I pronounce "everyone" in my mind it's like that now).
Anyway, that's a totally obscure reference to e-drama that I'm guessing 99.99% of you will find completely meaningless, so onto something we all know and love, nail polish :)
Today is just a very quick post featuring a couple of new Arcane Lacquer releases, Strutter and Lividity Setting In. Both are fabulous on their own, as usual (Bec makes fantastic polishes) but they also look great together in a subtle, vampy gradient.

I only have a few, sub par swatches of Lividity Setting In, but here's a couple to give you an idea of how lush these colours are;

Lividity setting In

Lividity setting In is a deep, deep eggplant purple with a gorgeous gold shimmer effect that I totally failed to capture in these pics- I will take some better ones over the next few days and you can see just how lovely it is.

Strutter

Strutter is a stunning deep burgandy with a subtle gold shimmer running through it and it is one of my current favourite polishes, full stop. It is so rich and lush and yummy.

And here they are together, such a fantastic match;

And there you have it, a very simple but very effective gradient using two gorgeous polishes from the wonderful Arcane Lacquer.
Arcane Lacquer is (are?) also releasing a Halloween duo that looks amazing- the always lovely Christine over at Serenity Nails has a review of them up now and her swatches are fantabulous, so go check them out...they've been added to my "must have" list (even though I'm technically on a "no buy" boohoo).

Welp, I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend... it's school holidays here so I'm just going to be chilling with the kid for the next couple of weeks.
In other news, I have emailed the vet clinic where I had my job interview, just to touch base and keep my name fresh in their minds and I really, really hope I get the position as I need to be working at a vet clinic for 15 hours a week if I want to get in to that veterinary nursing course next year *fingers crossed*. I will definitely post about that when I find out, either way.

Oh, and I also have some very exciting news regarding a lovely Aussie indie polish that I'll be revealing soon, so keep an eye out for that one.

Until next time, ~love and polish for all~
Em xox

Super quick post- a little bit of dead easy "nail art" using Glam Polish's Tinker Bell

Heya again- I know this comes close on the heels of my last post, but it's a quickie ;)

And yes, it does feature another Glam Polish- what can I say? I really dig them.
Anyway, this is Tinker Bell, a bright lime green with a sweet gold shimmer running throughout.
It's such a happy colour, so bright and cheerful, but me being me I had to tweak things just a bit...

Tinker Bell

How cute is this colour? So pretty :)

 

After wearing it "as is" for most of the day I decided to make use of some of the nail vinyls I have and add a little attitude to my mani...the black is just a simple $2.00 Mud polish, which I tend to use for all my black nail art needs as it has great opacity and is easy to use.
Anyway, I love the black and green together, it really makes the green pop and it's very eye catching. I even did the same on my other hand, with straight lines on the thumb, diagonal on the middle finger and chevrons/zigzags on my pinkie, just to mix things up a bit.

All up I think it's a great mani, easy-peasy and cute to boot (woah, epic rhyming abilities there, bow down before the master folks haha). I love easy nail art ideas, so please let me know if you have any tips or tricks to making your mani pop :)

Until next time ~love and polish for all~

Em xox

My best ever gradient (that I am so proud of)

Hey all, how are we today? Hope everything is fine and dandy.
Today is something a little different, I'm going to share with you one of my best ever gradients.
I love gradients, they're my go-to nail art favourite. I also love dotticures, but for some reason gradients are my favourite and I can't seem to help myself from whacking on more polish if I get the chance. And this one is by far the prettiest I have ever done, it's like a tropical sunset or a deep space supernova. Something bright and gorgeous anyway ;)
So, without any further ado here it is;

The polishes I used were Mud's Pink a Lot and Dark Room, Pretty Serious Cosmetics' My Darling Clementine, Arcane Lacquer's Funhouse and The Power, The Passion and finally Miss Ashleigh's Too Hot to be Blue. All but Mud are Australian indie polishes and they're fabulous too.

I can't begin to express just how stoked I was with how this turned out, it really is my best gradient to date and I think I'll be hard pressed to top it.

What do you think? Do you like gradients? What's your favourite go-to nail polish trick (if you have any) that you use to jazz up your mani with?
I'm going to be doing another gradient today as I'm going to a family do tomorrow and want my nails to be really bright, so if it looks as good as I'm hoping it will I'll post some pics of that soon.

Until next time ~love and polish for all~
Em xox

Sorry I've been MIA but I'm making up for my absence with 3 AMAZING polishes by Glam Polish, so you've gotta forgive me ;)

Hey there, I'm really sorry for being so sporadic in my blog posting recently- I am struggling a bit with feeling down, which always leads to crazy levels of apathy and 16 hour sleeps.
But I'm still around, still buying, and playing with, nail polish and the odd bit of nail art. I just haven't really been taking many photos, and those that I have just haven't interested me enough to warrant uploading and colour adjusting and blah blah blah.
But I have to say that I am absolutely falling in love with two particular indie polishes at the moment- Two Birds Lacquer (which you may have surmised from the last couple of posts) and Glam Polish.
Glam Polish is another Aussie company that makes exceptionally beautiful polishes, and their formulas are consistently fantastic too. Oh man, the colours! The depth, the intensity, the sparkle and, well, glamorous-ness of their products... seriously, you need to try these babies out to experience the glory first hand.

I'm going to post a couple of different polishes of theirs, and hopefully you'll see what I'm on about.
First up is Coven, from their "Cast a Spell" collection (of which I have now ordered the rest, because reasons!), a bright red beauty with holo, glass fleck, shimmer... there's so much in there, yet it's all done so well that nothing outshines the other, and it all balances perfectly. I also say that about every polish of theirs that I currently own (and yes, I"m about to own a lot more haha).
I don't know quite how to describe their bases tbqh; they're sheer enough that you get to see the glitter and shimmer, but they're also very pigmented, so opacity is achievable in only a couple of coats and they are thin enough that they're super easy to work with. I suppose a tinted, jelly-like base is the best description, but they don't have that syrupy feel to them that a lot of jellies tend to have, which makes them super easy to apply. But that's my best description, so that's what I'm going to go with. If you have a better descriptive term please let me know ;)

I mean, this polish is simply stunning- it glows from within and is so sparkly and rich... ahh, heaven!

And that's no exaggeration either. Just look at that inner fire!

And for a little bit of fun I also did a gradient using Glam's "Maleficent", which is a rich, red leaning purple polish with glassfleck, holo and shimmer and also red glitter running throughout, which helped to tie it together with the red of "Coven".

Isn't is gorgeous?

And now onto the third Glam Polish beauty that I want to show you tonight- the amazingly vibrant "Evanora". This was soooo hard to photograph as it's so shimmery and glowy that my iphone kinda freaked out over it.

Evonara in direct sunlight- my iphone couldn't handle the amazingness

I can't fangirl enough over this polish. It was like I had some supernatural force glowing on the tips of my fingers. And there's these awesome little iridescent diamond pieces in the polish that added such an interesting twist to the depth and dimension already on show. And of course, it's green, and a fabulous green at that. It's neither too blue or too yellow, so I think it would look great on any skin tone (and hey, who cares anyway? you wear it, you rock it!).

Formula wise this was slightly thinner than Meleficent and Coven, but it was in no way difficult to apply. This was three thin coats and one coat of Poshe (I'm trying Poshe to see if I get less tip wear- I think Seche might be shrinking back from the tips a bit- alas and alack as it's a brilliant top coat).

Dry time between coats was minimal and it was really easy to achieve opacity. I did try to place the little diamond shaped glitters as I really wanted them to pop, but the rest was easy, standard application, no dabbing required.

I'm sure you can see what I mean by magical- it's so luminous, it's amazing. And I love that regardless of whether you're out in direct sunlight on indoors at night under dim lighting the polish still looks fabulous, picking up whatever light is available and twinkling away. It's definitely a "keep your eyes on the road" polish hazard!

 

Glam Polish is available through their website for Australian buyers and also sells to the States. There's also a list of other stockists on its website.
I would wholeheartedly recommend Glam Polish as I think their wares are stunning and of excellent quality.
What more can I say- I think the photos, even coming from such a humble source as my iphone, speak for themselves.

And needless to say, I will have plenty more of their polishes to review in the coming month or so... I kinda went a little overboard on their site, but it was all so sparkly and pretty! It hypnotized me, I had ~no choice~ Hmmm, would that stand up in court I wonder? JK ;)

Anyway, I promise not to take so long between posts again- I'm trying to get on top of the shitty mood I've been in for the last couple of months, but unfortunately it's not always as easy as just "snapping out of it". I'm sure any of you who have dealt with long term depression can understand that one :\

Until next time, as always, love and polish for all!
Em xox

Another super-cute polkadot manicure, and a small detour to talk about that old foe of mine, depression

I've always thought dotty (dotti?) mani's were cute, but I also felt like I was too old to really wear them as most of the ones I saw were very light and bright, and I don't really do "light".
But I decided to have a play around with my dotting tools, as I didn't want the entire $2.00 I spent on them to be a total waste, and I thought maybe I could make them work for me.
And I did- the trick was simply toning down the pastel, girly vibe and dialing up the darker, more winter based tones I tend to gravitate towards.
My last mani featured a black based version with quite bright, vibrant colours (which I think looked freaking awesome, in my oh-so humble opinion), whereas this time around I wanted to try a really muted version and I love how it's turned out;

This is just a simple combination of a medium grey base and black, white and mauve dots, but I think it's really effective and the colours balance out against each other really nicely.

 

I changed how I approached the actual dotting part this time around and only placed one colour on my "palette" (read; plastic lid) at a time so the polish didn't dry out as I moved along.
It was definitely a lot easier dotting all my nails with one colour before moving onto the next and I also got a nicer arrangement on the nail by focusing on one colour at a time.

I seriously love how this looks and can't believe I was so leery of trying polkadots on my own nails, all because I thought I would look a little too "mutton dressed up as lamb".
Which is really pretty ridiculous when you consider just how much glitter I am prepared to wear on each nail, and the fact that I still run around wearing converse hi-tops and t-shirts and that I have tattoos and wear too many earrings and basically act like I'm 16 most of the time (much to my 10 year old daughter's embarrassment... but she needs something to tell the therapist when she's older, right?).
Maybe I just thought the colours I usually see used with these type of mani's were just a little too "soft" for me, but I am definitely trying to step out of my comfort zone and try new things, and I am really glad I did.

Anyway, as always I hope you are all well (the theoretical "you" as I don't think anyone ever reads this, but hey, why not, right?) and that life is moving along nicely.
I'll be honest, I'm struggling a little bit.
I feel like the ol' Black Dog is hounding me again, and that's a little scary as I've managed to avoid a major depressive episode for a couple of years and I had hoped that maybe, just maybe, I had finally found a medication that had finally put an end to all that bullshit.
Who knows, it could just be emotional exhaustion, which is certainly understandable after all that I have been through over the last couple of years. I don't know, but I hope that this isn't the beginning of another decent down the rabbit hole of depression... I am so tired, the thought of trying to get through another episode in my current state is more than a little daunting.

Thank god for this blog, and, as silly as it sounds, for the nail polish scene. Who knew that focusing on nail polish could give me such an effective method for distracting myself and giving myself something to look forward to.
And what a wonderful way this has been to connect with so many lovely, kind-hearted people too... it's a silver lining that was quite unexpected but very much appreciated.

Em xox