Stripe Week - Purple Sparkly Zebras !!!

Hi Goddesses

I'm back ... I think.  I am so sorry I left you in the lurch for 2 days but my sinuses have well and truly kicked me to the ground this week.  Thankfully, the anti-biotics rode into town on Thursday, so I'm hoping I'm back on the road to normal (well, as normal as a Crumpet gets).

So ... where were we?  Well, halfway through Stripe Week, and this was the post I was due to make on Wednesday night but couldn't.   I wanted Stripe Week to be lots of different things, and one of the first things I thought of was zebra stripes.  However, I didn't want to do any ordinary zebra, nooooooo.  I wanted out of this world zebras !!!

Step forward Cosmic from Claire's Starstruck range, an inspired and oh so perfect gift from the lovely Katee.  Wow, this is an amazing polish.  There's so much depth and glitter and effect going on.  Really dazzling, really gorgeous.

I decided to stamp with silver, to get maximum contrast.  Can you imagine living in a world where these are your zebras??  Ha ha.

I stamped with good ole Barry M and Konad m57.

On Wednesday, I should also have linked up with other British bloggers - go and have a look at them :) and also see what Ashley is up to.

Enjoy xx

30 DoP/D24 and Sat-ART-Day Club - One Stroke Mani

Hi Goddesses

Oooh what a busy day!  I haven't loaded a lot of posts yet, but I've done more painting than I have for weeks, and I'm excited about the next few weeks and the inevitable Christmas Challenges!

Today's Challenge in Sat-ART-Day Club was one-stroke-mani, and as it's Day 24 of 30 Days of Purple, I decided to combine them.

These are my polishes - 

Nails Inc - Charlotte Mews - 2 coats as my undies (coming soon to a Work Wear Wednesday)

Nails Inc Duchess Street

OPI Planks a Lot

OPI DS Original

Claires Cosmic

So, how is this technique done?  Well firstly, there's several ways / patterns for one stroke manis.  All of them involve getting all the colours on your nail art brush and then swiping in some sort of movement - either a straight line, a curve or a flower shape.

I decided to recreate something I first saw months ago on Neverland Nail Blog, where Lindsey found a great use for the fan tail brush you get in nail brush kits!

To do this mani is ridiculously easy - I decided to use 4 polishes, but if you have narrower nails, you might need 3.  As it was, poor Cosmic barely made it on to any of the nails :(   On my plastic surface, I placed a good dot of each colour, in a row.  I then dipped my fan tail brush in it, so that the polishes were lined up horizontally along the brush,  and then swiped it once down my nail.  AND THAT'S IT !!!!

This is also a really economic use of polish.  For the second nail, I turned the brush over, as there was still plenty of polish loaded on it.   And then I managed to do the next 3 fingers with another brush load.

This mani is also a splodger's paradise !!  It's arty in that inexact and random way I love, and I really did like this mani.

One final word - I deliberately tried to add a little texture, and the use of a holo was literally a stroke of genius.  It bled into the other polishes in a way I couldn't have predicted, and added a dazzle factor that was just heavenly.  Don't overdo the texture though - you don't want a holo competing with a duochrome, a metallic and a glitter, as it will just bend your eyes out of shape!

Enjoy xx :)

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