Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day to my lovely followers!

Here is some heart themed nail art I did over the weekend.

The base pink is OPI I think in Pink. 

Index finger is just a little purple heart.

Middle finger is stamped with Konad Red polish and Bundle Monster plate 317.

Ring finger is coated with a layer of Darling Diva Ménage à Trois.

Little finger is stamped with Konad Red polish and Plate Konad M3.

Lots of Love

Lisa

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!

These are my nails from yesterday (Christmas Eve). A mixture of different stamps stamped using Konad Red and A England Saint George over Color Club Oooooo La La and covered in a layer of China Glaze fairy dust.

Lots of Love
Lisa

OPI Cherry Blossom

Because the Rugby World Cup is on in New Zealand at the moment, at work we had to decorate our work spaces with decorations relating to one of the countries playing in the Cup.
Our group of four desks had Japan. We made a giant cherry blossom tree (by cutting out about 500 flowers from pink paper), had origami cranes hanging from the ceiling and had Japanese kimonos hanging up.

A few weeks ago we had a Friday dress in you country colours. I was wearing OPI China Glaze on my nails with Konad flowers. In the end the people from the England group one (they were a bit nuts)

OPI Cherry Blossom - White light

Cherry Blossom is from the Japanese (and Australasian) exclusive range. It is a light pink shimmer made up of very fine glittery particles. This is three coats. The konad design is from plate m3 and is done using white konad special polish.

It is really a shame that OPI (and other brands) have ranges of polish that are exclusive to certain locations. Everything should be available everywhere!!!

Lots of Love
Lisa

Color Club Worth the Risque + Snow!

OMG! It snowed in Wellington. I have lived my whole life here (25 years) and it has never ever snowed!

It started about 4pm on Sunday afternoon. There was still snow outside my house when I got the bus to work in the morning and then about 11am it started snowing again! It has been snowing on and off all day since.

Here is a picture of my mum and dads house.
Its about 15 minutes from where I live.
They were brave enough to go outside and take pictures.

This is a huge deal in our part of the country. The novelty has not worn off for me yet.

So to celebrate this awesome snow I just finished this mani tonight to wear to work tomorrow. By the way its going to be just as cold any yuck tomorrow....this means more snow.

Color Clubs Worth the Risque is a silver holographic from the 2009 Femme Fatal collection.

Color Club Worth the Risque - crappy indoor night time lighting

Unfortunately because it is 10pm at night you cant see the holo-y goodness that is this polish. This is two coats. Application and dry time were great. Even at night I can see the holo in this polish. It is a linear holographic, where the holo rainbows appear in lines on the nail as opposed to scattered all about.

I topped this off with some snowflakes done using Konad plate m59 and Black konad special polish. Its a shame that I only own two different snowflakes, as you end up repeating the same ones over again.

If your in New Zealand I hope you are enjoying the snow too!

Lots of Love
Lisa

Valentines Day Mani

Happy Valentines Day!

My valentines mani took a while to do. I kept changing my mind and in the end had to give up and stop for a couple of hours before restarting. In the end I went for a rather simple konad and glitter combination.


This is three coats of OPI I think in pink from the 2010 Soft shades collection.

My ring finger was stamped with a heart design from konad plate m59 done with OPI Thanks so muchness from the 2010 Alice in Wonderland collection.

A final top coat of Color Club Hot Couture was added to make it sparkle.

I love tatty teddy bears! They are super cute. I saw this tatty teddy in a shop about a month ago and told Chris this is what I wanted for valentines day. He actually got it for me :)

Lots of Love
Lisa

Orly Meet Me Under The Mistletoe + Konad

OMG...........This is beautiful! It has earned a spot in my top 10 for the year. I don't think much needs to be said about this. If you can get it I recommend it before it is too late. (This is available in New Zealand at Farmers)

Orly Meet Me Under The Mistletoe - Outside in Shade

It has so much depth. In some lights it had yellow/gold glitter appearing and in others its a blue/teal colour. A great polish that only needs two coats.

It is the middle of summer here and we don't have a white Christmas, so just for all my Northern hemisphere readers I added some konad snowflakes from plate m59 using silver konad polish.

Lots of Love
Lisa

OPI Mod about you + Konad

I never thought I would say this but I am in love with a creme nail polish. This is OPI Mod about you from the Brights collection.

OPI Mod about you - natural light

This is a gorgeous bubblegum pink creme. Slightly streaky, but a thicker second coat fixes it. It is slightly darker in real life - but my camera didn't want to capture it very accurately.

Then I added some butterflies from Konad plate m36, using Konad black polish. I was in love with the final result.


Hope all your weekends went well.

Lots of Love
Lisa

China Glaze Kaleidoscope him out + Konad

China Glaze Kaleidoscope him out - Sunshine

This is gorgeous. Three coats which applied easy. These are not as opaque as the OMG holographics and the holographicness is more spread out and sporadic (not linear like the OMG polishes). It is more holographic than this in real life but my camera didn't want to capture it. China Glaze make no mistakes with their holographic polishes - they are all amazing in my opinion.

I used konad plate m78 and konad black polish to stamp this image. This was the first time I have ever done a whole nail konad.


Oh its so pretty I just want to stare at it all day long. I had a few issues with clean up (I think I need to get a stronger polish remover as the black was so hard to get off - so please excuse the mess)

Hope you all had a good weekend.
Happy Fathers Day!
Lots of Love
Lisa

Orly Oh Cabana Boy + Konad

This Polish is Hot!

Orly Oh Cabana Boy is from the aptly named Hot Stuff collection.

Orly Oh Cabana Boy - Sunshine

Orly Oh Cabana Boy - Up close

This is actually a little brighter in real life. It has a beautiful blue shimmery flash running through it. This was 3 coats, two was good, but three got rid of any visible nail line. This was easy to apply, with no clean up needed.

I then added pretty little hearts in black to this manicure.

Hope you are all having a great day :)

Lots of Love
Lisa

Color Club Tangerine Scream + Konad

This is the second polish I received from the Electro Candy Collection from the wonderful people at Color Club New Zealand.

Im not really an orange person but I thought I'd try it anyway.

Color Club Tangerine Scream - Sunshine

This is great as it is not just plain orange.
It dries slightly matte (when you see it in the shade) and the shimmer isnt too visible in the shade either, but in the sun this is awesome.


It has a subtle gold shimmer to it (not completely visible in this picture, but I assure you it is there), and also a tiny little bit of blue shimmer that ties it into the Electro Candy collection, which is seen in the sun, and it takes this plain orange neon all the way to the next level of amazingness.

I added some Konad stars from plate m3 using black polish. I think it is cute :)

What is your favourite colour from the Electro Candy collection? Do you wish you had them all like I wish I did? What do you wear your neon polishes with?

Lots of Love
Lisa

OPI Bright Lights - Big Color + Konad

OPI Bright Lights - Big Color

This is OPI Bright Lights - Big Color. Very pretty. Its a shimmery polish from the OPI Brights collection. This was 3 coats. It changes colour in the light from orange to pink to yellow to coral. (so I've tagged this as coral)

The first time I tried this colour I didn't really like it much, I didn't think it suited my colouring but it has grown on me and I am quite fond of it now.

Again continuing on with Konad plate m36, I used white konad polish to stamp some flowers on top of this NOTD. (Sorry its a bit hard to see in the sun) I think the white on BLBC was a good combination and I would do it again.

Lots of Love
Lisa

OPI Baby Blue + Konad

I was lucky enough to find an bottle of OPI Baby Blue from the Exclusive Yokohama Japanese Collection. I have seen polishes from this collection for sale on ebay for US$40!!!!! Outrageous!
I wish they were more easily available because the whole collection looked so pretty and I would have bought all of them if I could have.

This polish is so cute and exactly what it says it is.... Baby Blue

OPI Baby Blue - Overcast weather

I think this was 3 coats but 2 is ok with this as it is no where near as thin and see through as other light blue polishes are. This is more opaque and beautifully shimmery.


Still continuing on with using Konad plate m36 I added some purple flowers (using OPI Black Chutney Cherry) and then some little crystal gems.

I really liked how this turned out. Very pretty!

Lots of Love
Lisa

OPI Flower-to-Flower + Konad

This was the final Polish I got from the OPI Summer Flutter Collection....
And it is my favourite :)

OPI Flower-to-Flower (overcast weather - in fact it was raining)

Unfortunately there has been no sun here so this is in the shade and does not show the beautifulness of this amazing colour. In some light it appears creme, but in the right light you can see the tiny little glittery shimmeryness to this polish.

I decided to add some butterflies to this gorgeous colour.


This is the butterfly off Konad plate m36 (thanks to Lisa who let me borrow this). This was done with OPI Black Onyx. The colour of Flower-to-Flower is more accurate in this photo.

Back to the bad light again :(

Lastly I added some little black gems to this. I was a little disappointed with the gems as the black ones don't sparkle as much as the other colour gems do and I think this is just because they are black.

This was a pretty manicure though and I will do it again in summer when it can be truly appreciated.

Lots of Love
Lisa

OPI Flashbulb Fuchsia and Crystals

This is one of my favourite colours of all time. Flashbulb Fuchsia from the OPI Brights collection. Its a bright beautiful shimmer - done in only 2 coats.

Outside in Sunshine

Today was the first time I ever tried using crystals on a NOTD.
I still only have one konad plate (M3) so here again is a picture from that.
I put the clear/silver crystals over the top of the spot in the middle of the flower.


I used OPI top coat as a glue and then sealed it all with another layer of top coat on top.
I really like this. It was so much easier to do than I thought it would be. A great way to make your nails sparkle with bling for very little effort time and money.
Although now I do feel obliged to wear this for a lot longer than I normally wear a polish for and at the moment I have only done one hand - so guess Ill be finishing my other hand now.

Lots of Love
Lisa

ANZAC Day

Today is ANZAC day in New Zealand and Australia. Its been 95 years now.

For those of you who don't know what this is, Wikipedia says:

Anzac Day is a national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand, and is commemorated by both countries on 25 April every year to honour members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who fought at Gallipoli in Turkey during World War I.

Each year we remember them. Its quite a big deal here. there are dawn services and lots on the news about it. All over the country we remember the sacrifices our relatives made.

Than ANZAC symbol is the red poppy. This is because red poppies grew in the fields where all our soldiers are buried. Mainly in Flanders Field.

So this was my ANZAC day NOTD.

Done using OPI Pearls Night Out and the Red Konad polish my Konad kit came with.

Lest we forget

Lots of Love
Lisa

OPI Think it's pink? pastel

I LOVE this polish.
OPI Think it's pink? Pastel. I am unsure of what collection this is from (If you know please let me know).

Outside - no flash

This is three coats. Its amazing! Its a beautiful white base which shimmers pink and green and blue in that cool way glitter sometimes does - but over the whole nail. It looks different at every angle and every time you look at it you notice its shimmering a different colour. This applied really well and needed no tidying up afterward.

I also used Konad plate M3 to place little black hearts on top. I did these using OPI Black Onyx. I think I'm getting better at it.

Lots of Love
Lisa

My first ever Konad

Today I tried my first ever Konad manicure.

I wanted to try it with OPI Keep of the grass and then Lazy Daisy Pink as the stamped pink flowers. However the pink was too light so I switched to OPI La Paz-itively Hot.


This is how it turned out.

I was quite disappointed with keep off the grass. It was streaky and even after 3 coats it still looked streaky too. It has a metallic finish to it.

I will be definitely trying more konad out - I am actually really happy with it and the way it works. (Although this is another thing to add to the list of hard to get in New Zealand products).

Lots of Love
Lisa