Birthday Nails - Number 1 !!!

Hi Goddesses

So, it's my birthday tomorrow, or today, depending when you're reading this .. hell, maybe even yesterday or last week !!!  I have therefore decreed this week Purple Week, in honour of my favourite nail colour, and so there's lots of purple as well as Crumpety goodness on the way.

I thought you might be interested in some random facts about me - 

* I was born on August 29th

* that makes me a Virgo

* HOWEVER I should have been born a whole month earlier - and should therefore have been a Leo, so I'm a bit of a mixture of the 2

* yes, I was born after 10 months chilling out in the womb

* I was born with an extra finger

Yup, so if you didn't all think I was mad before, you do now lol !!!     Anyhowwhohey, like the Queen, I am having several birthdays this week, partly because I like to wear 2 manis at once lol!   Tomorrow you get some insanely special nail art, and today you get ......

.... this.  In tribute to one of my all-time-and-forever favourite bloggers, Sarah of Chalkboard Nails, I finally did a ruffle mani !!  If you haven't seen it, Sarah did an awesome mani at the end of last year which she originally called the Carmen Miranda - you can see it HERE.  

I've wanted to do this for the LONGEST time, partly because it's so easy as well as effective.   It's literally just rows and rows of dots (which I did with my "almost largest" dotting tool").  

My base colour was a GORGEOUS possibly Workwear appropriate greyish lilac which might be coming to a WWW post near you oooooh tomorrow ... and for the rest of my dots, I picked up some of my untried purples (and shit the bed, there's a LOT to choose from) -

* Bettina Purple

* Cosmic from Claire's Starstruck Collex - thank you Katee :)

* Jade holo Fascinio Violetta

* Cult Nails Spontaneous (thank you Coco for such a to-die-for purple)

It's an easy process but one for which patience is required.  I did the bottom row of dots on every nail, waited for them all to dry, then did the 2nd row on all 5 nails and waited for them to dry .... and so on.  But boy, don't it look pretty ?

This reminds me of witches tights, which is fine with me.   The polishes work well together too.  Because purple spans such a WIDE spectrum (brown based to blue based), the biggest cause of failures (for me anyway) is a lack of congruence between the colours.  I really wanted to use one of the new Germany OPIs or my Sation Miss Emo Shun All which I'm DYING to wear ... but I'm so glad I resisted, as neither would have worked.

So altogether now, Happy Birthday to Meeeeeee .... I'm off to enjoy :) xxx

Bettina Apple Green, Purple, PepperMint and Sand Blast

Hi Goddesses

A quadruple treat for you today with 4 seriously amazing Bettina polishes, courtesy of my best dealer, whoops, Friend, Momma Stern.

First up we have Apple Green .... gulp, holy crap in a bucket that's bright !!  Apple Green ??  Neon green more like!  

This looks delish in the bottle, but kind of took my breath away on the nail.   It's absolutely not my sort of colour at all, but I have a strange fascination with it nevertheless.  It's so bright and so obnoxious that I just couldn't stop staring at it!

It's helped by that perfect Bettina formula of course - smooth as a baby's bottom.

Next up is PepperMint, which just annoys me.  It's Not Green, It's Blue!  So why is it called PepperMint ?  Why Bettina, why ?

That said, it is a very lovely shade of blue, deliciously sky of tone and creamy of texture.  

It's a very pure and happy blue, totally serene.  Gorgeous.

Then we have Purple.   There's nothing outwardly special about purple, but it does exactly what it says on the bottle - it's purple.

Again, it's creamy smooth, and pure of colour.  There's a slight blue undertone going on, but if you're looking for a pure and plain purple, er Purple's your gal.

And finally Sand Blast.  This is lovely.  

Sand Blast is a super pale grey, dreamy and creamy and pure whipped confection.   She is softer in tone than Dove, and she's like the insides of a cloud - light, fluffy and utterly blissful.

You can't really go wrong with a Bettina.  They all have stunning formulas, apply like a dream, and look like a million dollars.

Enjoy xx :)

MSMD - Dotted Lines - Kayla's Tribute

Hi Goddesses

This may be my last MSMD for a little while (as I think the Summer Challenge may take a lot of my time, PLUS I've managed to get involved in 2 other week long challenges - I know, I'm nuts; but I will try to post if I can) so I thought I had better go out with a bang and do a mani I have yearned for since I first saw it on Kayla Shevonne here - 

There was something about the pattern that was so cool, but also so .... simple.  Even a Crumpet could do that, I thought.    And I've promptly forgotten about it ever since :/

So here's my version, slightly different, because I am in full on bold summer mode, even if the rest of rainy England is not.  I used 

* 2 coats of Bettina Purple for the base

* OPI Steady As She Rose for the lines

* Zoya Moxie for the dots

Firstly, I have been trying to be a better Crumpet, and I used my new nail art brushes for my stripey lines.  They're not as good as Kayla's, for sure, but they are way better than a Crumpet has ever done before.

Also, Moxie, love ya, but why have you turned red in this mani?   She obviously didn't like sitting on top of Rose cos she got all huffy and took her fab fuchsia loveliness away, so the colour combo isn't *quite* what I envisaged, but I like it anyway.

I decided to mix the direction of the lines, just for fun, and next time, I might even criss-cross them on the same nail.  I just love that this is simple, but looks cool, retro and elegant (when Kayla does it).  See, that's the secret of a grand design, it even looks ok when a Crumpet gives it a go!

Enjoy, and I will do my best to post a few MSMDs before the  end of the summer :)   xxxx