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Thursday, 31 May 2012

OPI - Call Me Gwen-Ever

HI Goddesses




What the holy crap is this colour on my nails??  and why the hell am I liking it ??  




Elizabeth Stern, I blame you.  Before I met you, I would never have worn this colour, and now I am wearing it and ooooh gosh, OMG I love it!  (And thank you Chelsea, for sending it to me, mwah xx)



In my polish universe, I have several aversions, a lot of which (matte, blue, green) have been eroded over the last year.  The last holy bastion was my pure and utter hatred of coral and all things corally ... but ooooh would you look at how pretty this is?



This isn't actually 100% coral (phew) as there's no pink undertones, but this is nevertheless a disturbance in the force.  Call Me Gwen-ever is a gorgeous dark peach, a burnt orange with a ickle blob of cream in it and it's just about PERFECT for summer.




There's also something very retro about this polish.  It brings to mind the 1930s for me - there's a very old fashioned glamour going on.



So, wow, whaddya know.  Bloody hell, I'll be wearing yellow next ... no, please, no ... don't make me go there .... nooooooooooooooo.



PS really sorry about the cuticles, I've been a-creaming and a-rubbing, honest!



Enjoy xx :)
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Harry Potterthon Day 4 : Goblet of Fire

Hi Goddesses




So here we are, halfway through already, and look what we have today - the biggest, fattest book ever lol.




To be fair, although GOF is huge, it's massively enjoyable, and I don't begrudge it any of its 636 pages (unlike Order of The Phoenix, but we'll discuss that tomorrow).  For the most part, GOF romps along, and then, at the end - KAPOW!!!  Fabulous exposition, magic and witchcraft.  Ka and boom!




I love the ending of GOF, and by ending I mean every moment from when they enter the maze.   It's just fabulously paced, shocking (Cedric!) and full of myth.  It's also one of those hugely emotional moments that make Harry Potter so vivid for me.  When Harry and Voldemort's wands collide and invoke Priori Incantatem, I can feel Harry's pain as his parents stand alongside him and protect him from evil.  As I mentioned before, as someone who has lost a parent, these are the moments I most strongly identify with, and my heart breaks everytime he realises he can't hold on to the moment forever.




So today's nails don't capture Mad Eye, the World Cup, the Death Mark, the tents, and all the other things I thought about, and instead they focus solely on those spine-tingling moments in the graveyard.







The thumb represents the maze, and is a mixture of a-England Dragon and Saint George (am I the only one who finds this ironic?  A battle of good and evil within a battle of good and evil lol).


The other nails are all on a base of OPI Metallic 4 Life and feature the bone of a forefather, the flesh of a loyal servant and the blood of a mortal enemy.  The pinkie is the moment Harry and Voldemort's wands fuse together and allow Harry's parents to protect him.










Thank you for all your comments so far.  I think we've all found this a hugely enjoyable challenge, so make sure you check out each and every one of the lovely ladies HPing it with me :)










Sam : http://legiolinde.blogspot.com

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Wednesday, 30 May 2012

Harry Potterthon 3 - The Prisoner of Azkaban

Hi Goddesses




POA is my favourite book in the entire HP series.  If I only had time to read 1 of the books again, it would always be this one.  Rich, layered and no padding whatsoever, this is JK Rowling at her best.



For me, as someone who lost my mum 10 years ago, part of the emotional pull of Harry Potter is the way Rowling speaks so evocatively of loss and longing.  For me, these are always the moments that have the most impact, and here, reading of Lily's sacrifice, we start to understand the love, loss and loathing that drives the entire series.



POA is also rich with anthology.  This is the book where it really starts to add up to more than the sum of its parts, from Lupin to the Marauders Map to Sirius to Patronuses to time turners .. wow, this book is soooooo rich.




I also distinctively remember how this was the first HP that literally made me go "wow".  The way the ending knitted together was utterly perfect, though as one fantastic poster on pinterest puts it, you used a time turner to attend classes but NOT to kill Voldemort on the night of Lily's death?  Lol.




As you are no doubt seeing by now, I went very plain with the nails.   I've written recently of my depression, and its embodiment in the form of the Dementors was an opportunity that (for personal reasons) I didn't want to miss.




So here are my dementors - black drags on a background of SH Wet Cement.  A dank, miserable colour scheme, an incoherent form, the bleakness of black .... the dementors really are one of the best expressions of depression a writer has ever given.





Hopefully this mani hasn't sucked the joy out of you, and we'll be back tomorrow for a very colourful Goblet of Fire :)  I'll leave you with Beth's cuter version :)




Enjoy xx :)
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Summer Challenge - Sunshine with NerdLacquer - Gorramit

Hi Goddesses 





Today's Summer Challenge is Sunshine, and I have cheated a little.  Rather than do a design, I picked a polish that to me looks like everything sunshine is :)




This is Gorramit from NerdLacquer's Serenity trio.  Kirsten does keep telling me, and I keep forgetting, what this Serenity thing is.  Trouble is, whenever I see, hear or think of this polish, all I can hear is a frog in my head going "Go'rramit, go'rammit".  Lol.




Let's be honest, this isn't a polish I would normally be drawn to - it's mustard yellow for crying out loud - but wow, there's a lot of artistry in here.





The mix of gold, copper and bronze glitter is what makes it look so exciting (wholegrain mustard, anyone) and it looks AMAZING on the nail.






This is almost a 1 coater.  Amanda's polishes are of a stunning quality, and considering the amount of glitter in here, there are no application issues at all.




I think this would look cracking as a gradient colour too.


Enjoy xx
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Tuesday, 29 May 2012

Harry Potterthon Day 2 - Chamber of Secrets

Hi Goddesses



I hope you all enjoyed Day 1 yesterday and managed to check out my fellow Potter-geeks :)




Now, today I have a confession.  I don't actually like Chamber of Secrets.   As a book, it didn't grip me the way the others do, and yet it does have it's fair share of standout moments. There were lots of iconic images that I could have put on the nails but didn't -

* the flying car
* the basilisk - sorry, I HATE snakes
* the wonderful first glimpse of the Weasley's Burrow
* Errol, the owl, flying into the window
* and Dobby, dear sweet Dobby




Inevitably I went with things I thought I could do justice to, so let's have a gander shall we ?




On the thumb we have Aragog, the mahoosive spider.  Beth hates spiders, so I've been wiggling my thumb under her nose to freak her out :)




The index fnger actually had a lot of care and attention, but I'm not sure that you can tell!  This is Gilderoy Lockhart's standard ensemble of shirt, cravat, waistcoat and cloak.  I went for sickly shades as he is a bit of a ponce.   Also, I actually stamped the waistcoat, but there's so much going on, that it's really hard to see.




Middle finger - the infamous howler from Mrs Weasley :)    This was an envelope that turned into red lips, with teeth and flying tongue tendrils, with the scroll of parchment in the middle.  Not a total success.




The ring finger is the bloody writing on the wall warning that the Chamber of Secrets has been opened.  When I googled it, the wall was very "old" looking, with years of wear and fancy plasterwork.  So, the base of this is white, with aged sponging and white stamping - I know!  For me that's a lot of detail.



And the little finger is a fail, I think because this nail was too narrow, but this is the cake that Dobby dropped on the head of a ghastly Dursley guest - I just tried to make it look like lots of layers of cream and jam.






Let's end with Beth.  I mentioned yesterday that she was ridiculously excited by this challenge - these are the drawings she sketched out for me.  You can't see all the detail, but she had even written down which EXACT polishes I should use.  Uh oh ..... what have I done lol :)


Enjoy !  xx :) and don't forget the other lovely ladies taking part - 









Sam : http://legiolinde.blogspot.com/
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Summer Challenge Day 6 - Summer Sunrise

Hi Goddesses



Well, would you believe it, the sun is shining in England, so the little epilogue mani I've done for you isn't quite as hilarious now.



Sunrises in England tend to not be dramatic, so for this I went for a deeper interpretation of my Spring Sunrise (which you can see here).  I used - 

base = Bettina PepperMint
* CG Lemon Fizz
* OPI The It Color
* CG Papaya Punch




I used a sponge to apply the gradient, lining all my colours up in little stripes. I think that's why there seems to be so much depth to the mani, because the colours blurred and bled together, creating more than just 4 shades.




The eagle eyed amongst you may also recognise this as the base of my Sky's The Limit mani, where I reinterpreted it as a field of crops under the summer sky.

Speaking of which.....  the weather in the UK has been awful for the last 2 months, pretty much constant rain, and I also did this for today's mani until I decided it was too gothic.




This is the view I've had every morning driving to work - neon yellow fields of rapeseed under thunderous skies.  Not nice at all.  Hideous in fact lol.

So let's end with the cheerful one :)



Enjoy, and don't forget to check out the other Purple Crumpet Fairies :) xxx







Alyssa at Fancy Phalanges - http://fancyphalanges.blogspot.com/







Lucie @ Lucy's Stash www.lucysstash.com





Vic @ Glowstars http://glowstars.net

Rychelle @ Colorsplash Nails- http://colorsplashnails.blogspot.com/






Missy the Manicured Maniac @ http://melissahenderson95.blogspot.com/



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