The Tiger and the stump (nail rescue and nail art!)

Hi Friends and welcome to my new readers :-)

I'd hoped to have a little something for you tonight (or rather, this morning because it's 01:15), but right now, I still have to jump in the shower, iron my travelling outfit and get a couple of hours of sleep. I'm setting out again at 6am...my flight isn't until 12:00!!! If I hadn't spent so long gluing rhinestones, smudging polish and having to re-glue all over again, I might have been able to put up some pics! 

I have seen all the nice comments that you have left on the entries to my giveaway and on my recent posts. I shall try to do some more tutorials and easy to follow nail art. If I get a chance, I'll upload them when I'm lounging on a beach, drinking cocktails and baking myself....LOL!!

Okay, so I felt guilty. I couldn't come in here and not post what I've done tonight! No editing or watermarking on these so please excuse the colours of the pics, backgrounds etc.

I've been walking around like a maniac since Thursday. I tore off my nail trying to get out of the car park at work I have really dry hands. They look terrible.

 I couldn't walk around like that so I had to stick on a tip.

 Use some fibre-glass...

 From a strip like this^^

 Put it, sticky side down, on the nail,

 Use resin and activator to bond the fibreglass to the nail (I didn't picture them because I'm not trained to use fibreglass for extensions. I do it at my own peril and don't want you to follow me!)

 This is after the resin has dried. Repeat the strip and resin step again.

 Buff to finish.

Now for the nail art!!!

 Sponge on some white (whilst ignoring the heavy staining on the nails. Ehem)

 Paint on some orange strips (two coats)

Paint on strips with a striping brush

Use gold polish for the outlines

Glue on rhinestones and you're done!

I'm sorry for rushing, but I didn't want to leave without posting.

Talk to you soon

xx

OPI and cosmetics sale alert at BrandAlley.co.uk!

Helllllooo ladies (new, regular, visible, anonymous...)

I only have five minutes to tell you about a sale site called BrandAlley. My inner frugalist dictates that I subscribe to sale sites and keep my eyes out for places where you can buy premium brands for cheapo prices.  Every so often this site has ridiculous sales on OPI and at the moment you can get up to 50% off on some of their colours.

 

source

There sell everything including:

source

And...

source

Have a look and let me know if this is a site you'd use.  Will you buy anything?

I don't have any affiliation with the site, by the way.  If I did, I'd tell you.  I just like to share and help someone else save their pennies.  One word. Recession.

Thank you ALL for visiting me and I'll reply to all my new comments tomorrow.

xx

£1 shop, fake nails and some body jewellery

I LOVE my Pound shop. It's great. It has everything in it. From food to books, to nail art gems to garden soil. And everything is a £1. You know I love a bargain.

This is what I picked up today.

 I bought these so that I could practice my nail art without having to dry out my cuticles experimenting on my own nails. I like to keep the fake tips I already have for when I need to put an extension on myself or anyone else. I have no intention of wearing these things because they are just so weird...there's already an adhesive on the bed of the plastic nail. The pattern is awful, but I'll be painting over them so it's no big deal.  You know how to remove them after wearing? Soak your hands in warm water. Crazy right? If you do wear these, you'd better not get your hands dirty!

Yes! More storage, but for £1!

Tiny isn't it? I think I may need to pick up a few more at some point. Oh, and yes, my daughter slapped Sponge Bob on my phone one day when I was gossiping with a friend.  I'm too lazy to take it off. Plus it looks like I put it there on purpose, lol!

 

One drawer contains a lid from a Body Shop body butter tub. There are a few costume jewellery earrings in there along with a pair of white gold and yellow gold creoles, several silver rings, silver heart pendant and white gold chain.

Body jewellery (a labret, bioplast nose and labret retainers, nose studs, banana bars and a hoop-thingy). I don't wear them all at the same time - I keep lots of spares because they get lost so often!

More of my favourite costume jewellery earrings, a few rings and a Tiffany bracelet buried in there too.
I have a lot more costume jewellery floating around my flat but they are all in Tupperware boxes or hanging up all over the place. I've been meaning to make a frame to hang my necklaces and the rest of my earrings on, but I haven't got around to it yet.  I say YET. When I do it, I'll let you know.

Thanks for reading

xx

A-England and Their Glorious Discount!!

You've heard about the very fabulous new nail polish company 'a-england' right? If you haven't, why not?!

This company sells premium nail polish (holo's included!!) and is based in the UK.

I was on their Facebook page today and I spied a special gift for the fans of their page. A 20% discount!  Their polish runs at £9.50 a bottle, so if you like what you see, I suggest you make the most of that discount. You can get there by clicking the 'F' at the bottom on the right hand side of the website.

xx

I'm having a giveaway - NOW CLOSED :-)

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED. I'LL ANNOUNCE THE WINNER WITHIN THE NEXT WEEK (06/05/11)

Hello friends, I hope you had a happy Monday. Mine was pretty busy.

My lovely readers, I have decided to run a little giveaway. Initially, I had decided to do it at my milestone of 100 posts, but I surpassed that milestone and completely forgot all about it! Now, the giveaway is in honour of your support since the start of this blog. I really do appreciate it and I'm really chuffed every time I see a new reader *big hugs*.

Without further ado...here is what you could win.

This is one prize, for one person.

 

4 x Rimmel Fruities - Lemon Drop, Apricot Punch, Strawberry Fizz, Cranberry Zest. Yes, they DO smell like the fruits they claim to be!

1 x GOSH Green Hawaii - green with holographic glitter. It has this nasty sellotape around the top which I tried to take off, but the bar code on the bottle started to tear and it looked even worse...so I left it alone, lol!

A file and a small bag of four nail art goodies *wink*

Everything is bought by yours truly and is all brand new.

I have to let you know that between 20/03/11 and 04/04/11 I will be on holiday and may or may not have access to a computer/smart phone. If you don't see any new posts or replies to your comments during that time, it will most probably be because I'm on a beach in Jamaica. I WILL be back though - my cat needs to be fed.

If you like what you see, feel free to enter by filling in this form:
Closing date is Friday 29th April 2011 (that's 23:59 GMT) and it's INTERNATIONAL.

Carrie and Mr Big.

No, I'm not talking about Sex And The City, I'm talking about my current manicure.

I got these two polishes in a swap I did recently, and I have to say, I actually quite like them!

Mr Big and Carrie.  Carrie consists of glitter squares and micro glitter with a clear base.

I was itching to use some 3D nail sticker and I needn't have bothered; I think it looked alright without. 

What do you think? Are these polishes your cup of tea?

xx

Nails Inc and water decals

 Hi again friends.

As I said in this post, I'm going to make the most of the Nails Inc colours I have.  Who knows, I may just develop a love affair with them. Or not.

Here's a very simple manicure here, done with Heather Grey.  .

The Diet Coke sticker is there because the polish was free (if you bought two bottles of Diet Coke), during a recent promotion that was running at Boots.  My poor old hubby was prepared to by the entire cooler section in the store in order to get these for me, but when he went looking, they weren't put on the shop floor. A friend of mine ended up coming round with four bottles of Coke and two polishes for me instead :-)

For this manicure I used all Nails Inc products (base, colour and top coat). I have to say that I like the consistency and the brushes too. My only gripe is that it has already started to chip on my right hand after one day...I'm wondering if that's because on that hand I only used one layer of top coat instead of two. I don't know, but as a result, I'm going to have to re-do my nails. Boo.

The colour shown is true to life and I actually like it.  So much for me moaning about the company not having any colours that interested me.

The water decals were bought from Wicked Nails and they remind me of water colour paintings. I couldn't be without stickers or decals, because you can make your nails look good in a few minutes and with minimal effort. Just paint your nails, put some stickers on and you're good to go!

xx

Pink 'n Gems

Hey everyone.  I'm sorry for the recent lack of posts, I've just been so busy and so tired after work; my blog has taken a back seat :-(

I was having a look at my nail art magazine recently and noticed that a lot of the manicures in it used pearls and jewels.  I thought I'd do my own jewel encrusted manicure.

I used Rimmel's Ethereal as a base, sponged OPI's And This Little Piggy

 I used nail glue to stick on some gems and pearls and also used a few from this sheet of stickers...which is looking pretty sparse at the moment.

This wasn't my best manicure and I felt a bit weirded out with the texture at times (okay so that might be odd, but aren't we all? I mean, my husband gets the heebie geebies at the sight of Oak tree bark!) I wouldn't say it was practical, but it was fun whilst it lasted.  I actually wore it for three days, hence the tip wear.


xx

I'm re-arranging a few things.

Hi everyone, I hope you are having a happy Monday.

This is just a quick note to tell you that I'm having a little move around on my blog. I've been looking at it and think it's a little cluttered so I'm jyst going to tinker around with the design a little.  Don't worry though, I'm not going anywhere ;-)

Nails Inc polish, gradient, stamping, whatever...

 It has come to my attention (after now organising my polish) that I have a lot of Nails Inc polishes that I have yet to open, let alone wear.  The joke of it is that I've never really rated their polish.  It wasn't for any sensible reason, like 'oh, the formula is blah' or 'the brushes are blah'.  I just didn't think that they had a good colour selection.  Okay, so I've not been to their big store in the West End, but from what I've seen at Debenhams, I wasn't really impressed. As you may already know, I like shiny...and I didn't really get that with them. So why do I have more than 10 bottles of their polish, you may ask.  The polish I do have were either bought for me, bought with a voucher or have been obtained for free (either with their Diet Coke giveaways or magazine). 

Over the next few posts, I'm going to try and make the most of these polishes.  Who knows, I may even actually start to like what I have. Ya never know.

 This is Barry M's Berry Ice Cream as a base, with Nails Inc Maple Place sponged on and images from SdP B08.

This has lasted one full day.  My right hand now has chips on the tips of 4 out of the 5 fingers!

Hope you have a great week

xx

So, I bought a Helmer...and did some stamping too.

Hey, hey everyone.  The weekend is nearly here!

Look what I bought...

Yes, I succumbed to the lure of 'The Helmer'.  I know I'd complained about the way it looked in the Ikea catalogue, but when I saw this 'white' one (which looked more like a cream colour), I thought it was passable.
It took one hour to get from this ^,

to this ^. It was pretty straightforward to put up, though the millions and trillions of pieces I found when I opened the box was a bit of a shock!

She fits cozily into the corner of my room. Unobtrusive, inconspicuous, quiet.

She's adorned by the crystals my late aunt gave to me every time I went to stay with her in Bussum, Holland.

My little girl helped to put some drawer liners (also from Ikea) in the drawers to stop the polish sliding around and she also arranged the polish too. The drawers do have labels on them, but they are there so she could figure out where to put what! What a sweetie <3

Overall, I do have to say that I am pretty happy with my purchase.  This little treasure is slim, easily hidden and is extremely spacious. The polish I have only fills 1.5 of the drawers! I've had to spread the rest of my art supplies, liquids and cotton wool around in the other ones...but I believe I need more polish. Muhahahahahaha.


Speaking of polish, I got 'Betty Blues' from Boots.  I had another £5 voucher so I only spent £2.

Such a gorgeous colour in the bottle...

...but rubbish on the nail.  Okay, so this has been on my nails for three days so it looks a bit worn, but the colour does NOT translate onto the nail at all.  Booooooo. I'm not going to use this again.

The images on my nails are from Shirley's plates (SdP A16)

Oh, it's my wedding anniversary tomorrow. Five years and two kiddies later, we still like each other, lol!

xx