Polish Days - Seven Deadly Sins

It's Polish Days time again! I love Polish Days so much although at the time ,it always seems to stress me out. Basically though, no matter how busy I am, I try and make time to do a little something different for this each month. And for that reason, I really want to thank Hannah (Polly Polish) for setting up this whole fantastic thing.

This month's theme was the seven deadly sins. I have to say this one threw me a little and in my very limited time I had no idea what to do. In the end I just went with a simple water marble using colours inspired by four of the sins...

My sins left to right are...
• Greed - a-england 'Holy Grail'
• Lust - a-england 'Perceval'
• Envy - a-england 'Dragon'
• Pride - a-england 'Avalon'
With each of these main colours I used a-england 'Bridal Veil' and Girly Bits 'Hocus Pocus' on all the fingers.

I started out with the idea that I wanted black, one colour and clear polish as the marble on each finger. I love love love when Sarah from Chalkboard Nails uses her natural nail colour in designs and I wanted to incorporate this somehow. But for the life of me I could not make any clear polish work. I tried so many different top and base coats (quick dry, slow dry, everything). I really didn't want to give up though and in the end The Boy pulled this out and said "Will this work?"... Can we all just take a moment... He is a genius! I am so happy with the effect and I think you can expect different marbling variations using this polish in the future.

Make sure you check out how everybody else interpreted this month's Polish Days theme...

Polish Days: Vintage

It's Polish Days time again! For the first time since I started participating in Polish Days, I really struggled with the theme. This month's theme is Vintage... Hannah suggests that you could take the theme to mean using a vintage polish, or taking a decade or trend or anything really, so long as there is some connection with the past as your inspiration. Seems easy enough right... Wrong! I could not think. I often do stamping that reminds me of old-fashioned wallpaper etc, but I wanted to do something different and as I always use Polish Days as a way to make sure I do some nail art, I didn't want to just swatch a vintage polish. In the end I googled the word vintage and this is what I came up with..,

This totally reminds me of an old-fashioned day at the beach. I actually really like the way this turned out with the stripes and everything.

(source: depositphotos)

This was my inspiration image. As I was scrolling down through google images, I instantly fell in love with this and knew I wanted my mani to come from this.

Here are my nails pre stamping. I love the stripes. Please excuse the fact that only two of my nails are top coated! I'm not sure why I thought it was a good idea to take photos before I did the other two??

Polishes I used were OPI 'My Boyfriend Scales Walls' as the base on all nails. I did the stripes using striping tape from Born Pretty Store with OPI 'Steady As She Rose' and China Glaze 'Aquadelic'. My ring finger was stamped using BM-309 with a-england 'Galahad' and BM-09 with Essie 'School of Hard Rocks'.

Thanks Hannah for another great Polish Days! Make sure you check out what all the other lovelies have made of this theme...

Polish Days: Get Back To Nature

It's time for February Polish Days. I love Polish Days as it makes me do something a bit different each month. Trouble is, I always seem to go a little overboard and can't seem to ever just have one idea and a nice simple mani. This month is no different :) The theme this month is all about getting back to nature. I decided to go with the weather theme that Hannah suggested, in particular the four seasons...

I decided to use different techniques on each finger. For Autumn, on my pinkie I tried the saran wrap technique for the first time. I quite like how that turned out actually. I have to say, the seasons aren't particularly appropriate for New Zealand, but oh well (e.g. it doesn't snow in Auckland and it is certainly not Easter in spring). I used quite a few different polishes so I will just list them below...


Autumn:
• Enchanted Polish 'Mean Mr Mustard'
• Takko Lacquer 'Va Va Voom'
• a-england 'Holy Grail'
• OPI 'My Boyfriend Scales Walls'

Winter:
• KB Shimmer 'Witch Way?'
• Stamping - Konad Special White and Bundle Monster plate BM-323
• "Glequins" from Born Pretty Store

Spring:
• Lime Crime 'Lavendairy', 'Once In a Blue Mousse', 'Pastelchio' & 'Crema De Limón'
• Chi Chi 'Disco Diva'

Summer:
• OPI 'No Room For The Blues'
• Studs from Born Pretty Store


Make sure you check out all the other lovely Polish Days manis...

Polish Days - Something New

Polish Days time again! I love participating in Polish Days, because it pushes me to do something that I wouldn't necessarily get round to otherwise. So this month Hannah of Polly Polish set the theme to be 'Something New', as "January is all about new starts, resolutions and starting over". I took this as a good kick up the bum to finally try a new technique - Galaxy Nails. I had slightly limited supplies, as I did this mani in Wellington. When I go home and have more time and polish, I'd quite like to try a slightly more complex version with a different colour combination etc. For now though, I do quite like this simple galaxy mani...

I got my inspiration from a lot of googling of NASA images and also from the lovely Sarah from Chalkboard Nails.

This mani was so simple and I don't know why I thought it would be so hard?! Now I want to do more like these.

For this I used a-england 'Camelot' for the base, China Glaze 'Sweet Hook' and OPI 'No Room For The Blues' for the sponging. The dots are OPI 'My Boyfriend Scales Walls' and of course, a bit of Chi Chi 'Disco Diva' on there too.

Make sure you check out everyone elses 'Something New' manis...

Polish Days: Bling

It's that time again... Polish Days time. To be honest with you, I thought I had till the 6th (which would be the 7th here in NZ and suddenly I realised that the 4th was the actual date, so late last night I got to it and came up with this...

It's not really at all what I had in mind for this Polish Days, but I think it turned out ok given that it was a bit rushed. I used a-england 'Camelot' as my black base and Sally Hansen 'White On' as the white base. On the pinky finger is a couple of coats of Chi Chi 'Disco Diva' (which does NOT want to sparkle properly on camera!) and on top of that on my index finger is a coat of Cult Nails 'I Got Distracted'. I also used my little gold studs from the Born Pretty Store and some sticky little gem things that I got from the scrap booking section at The Warehouse.


Well, hopefully next time I can be a little better organised for Polish Days. Also, just to finish this little post, I would like to say congratulations to Hannah from Polly Polish and to her Mr who got her the most GORGEOUS ring that could inspire this month's theme.

P.S. this is my 100th post! WOO. Thanks to everyone who reads my little blog :)

Polish Days: MAN-icure

My first Polish Days! I'm very excited to have finally joined up with this awesome idea. This months theme is MAN-icure in tribute to Movember. I instantly knew what my MAN-i would have to be, as it is something that I get teased about loving, due to its manly nature (according to my friends). One of my big loves in life is Formula 1, namely Sebastian Vettel.

For those of you that don't know, Vettel is the current world champion, having won the championship for the last two years in a row, so he is car number 1. The 1 on my ring finger is the one on his RB8 (car) this season. The water marble is taken from the Red Bull colours (his team).

This is a quick snap of my Red Bull cap. Unfortunately I got this before Vettel won the championship the first time so it has number 5 on it. Anyway you can see the colours of the team there nicely.

The final MAN-i that you have just seen was actually attempt number two... I originally wanted the bright yellow from the nose cone of the RB8 in the water marble, but it didn't quite work as I had wanted...

As you can see, the colours all sort of muddied together. Much as I don't hate this, I am glad I redid the two nails. I love how the F turned out in the top one anyway.


I used a whole lot of polishes for this MAN-i...
a-england - 'Excalibur' & 'Camelot'
OPI - 'Red Lights Ahead... Where', 'I'm Not Really A Waitress', 'Yoga-Ta Get This Blue', 'No Room For The Blues', 'The 'It' Color'
Nicole by OPI - 'Listen To Your Momager'
Sally Hansen - 'White On'
Konad - Special White

If you have any questions about what I used where, please leave a comment and I'd be happy to tell you more :)

For the middle finger I used LeaLaC XL - B stamping plate and for my ring and pinky finger I used striping tape to get all the lines nice and straight.

I had lots of fun doing this MAN-i and it actually served as the perfect distraction to take my mind of the pain in my tummy while I was sick :)

If you want to sign up for the next Polish Days, hop over to Polly Polish for information.