My Nails Are 36 Years Old Today!

Today is my birthday and boy oh boy do my peeps know what I like!  Especially my husband!  He really threw me for a loop today as he got me the absolute best present I could have ever asked for.  Not only is it something I love, but it’s not something I’d hinted at or even put on a list… just something that he heard me talking about, made a point of remember and got for me!
Here, I’ll give you a hint!

When I unwrapped it I … well I was silent for a few seconds because I was in shock.  Then I squealed!!  I can’t believe he remembered this!  I have the best husband ever.  I know I’ve said that before, but I’ll say it another million times before our time together is through.
Remember my stamping frustration?  I can’t wait to see if this makes a difference!

Doesn’t it look beautiful on the inside? So luxurious and pretty!  My preciouuuussss!!!  Wait… what is that thing in the bottom corner??

What the heck is this?  It was in the box but I don’t know what it is.  Is it meant to be there? Does it serve some sort of purpose?  Oh what a mystery!  Does anyone know?
I’m not sure it is supposed to be there, but I know these things are!


You can see a list if what was included here under Konad Classic Collection II.  LOVE LOVE LOVE!!!!!!!!!!!
My parents sent me a box from Canada, which had some beautiful jewelry, a new watch, and a few other things, including these bottles:

(L-R) Avon SpeedDry+ Mink Vison (why do I feel like this should be vision? It says vison on both the bottle and box though!), Avon SpeedDry+ Red Wine, Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear Hot Magenta, Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear Purple Potion, Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Merlot.
I’m so chuffed that she sent me some reds because the only one I had was from 2True which I’m really not a big fan of.  I also didn’t have any browns so that makes for a nice change!  Oh, and a girl can never have enough purple and pink!
They also got me this, which I totally forgot to get a photo of so I swiped one from the internet.

A white Sally Hansen nail art pen!  I can’t wait to try that out either!  Although if I like it my mother will wish she hadn’t gotten it for me because I’ll be bugging her to send me one in every color!  They are lightweight though so shipping shouldn’t be too terrible.
Oh, but that’s not all!  I also got polish from my BFF who brought it all the way back from California, where she spent three weeks last month on holiday!  If you are an expat and have ever travel overseas you know how precious luggage space is coming home.  So you will understand how grateful I am for her bringing them home for me!

(L-R) WetnWild Fast Dry Teal of Fortune, Finger Paints Art Dealer Teal-er, Finger Paints Be A Pal-Ette, Finger Paints Wine At The Gallery, Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat, Seche Vite Crystal Clear Base Coat.
SWWEEEEEEET!  These are all brands I’ve seen on people’s blogs but have never seen in the shops here.  I have seen (and lusted after) the Seche Vite products on a website here in NL so I was super chuffed when I opened the package and saw that in there!
Oh wait, but that’s not all! There was also another polish surprise! 

My new friend Kati (she has no blog to link to, boo hoo!) sent me this bottle of WetnWild Wild Card.  We had just met a few weeks ago but we both have been bitten by the polish bug.  Her a lot sooner than me so she has a much larger collection.  When she heard it was my birthday this weekend she asked for my address to send a card, and then the sneaky sneaker sent a bottle of polish along too!  What a pretty one as well, I think I’m going to like this polish! Wasn’t that sweet of her?!
So my day was fantastic, I got some lovely gifts (which included all these bottles of polish!), hubby and I spent 1.5 hours at the dog park with the dogs this morning, went out to do a bit of shopping, spent some time in the sun, got a bunch of phone calls from family members and he made the most beautiful dinner.  Now it’s almost time for bed and it’s hard to believe that another birthday has pretty much come and gone.  My parents weren’t kidding when they said the older you get the faster the time goes! 
Now, I have a dilemma!  My nails have been naked all day because I’m so overjoyed and overwhelmed with all this new polish that I can’t decide which I’m going to use first!  I think this is what my husband calls a ‘luxury problem’!!!
I know one thing, whatever color it is I choose, it’s darn well going to have a stamp on it!

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Don’t Tell Romeo!

I saw Julia on top of Chuck! True story!  Please don’t tell Blair either, you know what she can be like.

At the Kruidvat 50% off sale, I tried to snatch up as many of the Essence Nail Twins as I could.  I ended up not getting a single pair but I did manage to get these two.

Chuck, the blueish purple base coat and half of the “Chuck and Blair” twin set, was an absolute dream to work with.  I managed to coat my nails with just one coat and it was sooooo smooth.  I take back whatever I said about cheaper brands not being as good as the others because this has become one of my favorites both for color and for ease of use.  Honestly, I want all of the nail art twin bases now, just in the hopes that they are as lovely as this one.
The glitter is Julia, a small silver glitter with larger silver glitter squares and the top coat of the “Romeo and Julia” twin set.  I’m not sure why they didn’t actually call it Juliet, but Julia it is.  I was a bit nervous using a glitter with slightly bigger pieces in it after dealing with those annoying stars, but this wasn’t bad at all!  Sure the bigger pieces clump a bit here and there but I find even when that did happen it still looked great.  There wasn’t the issue of the brush not picking up the larger square pieces, which was a major relief.  It has restored my faith in glitter with larger pieces involved. 
I LOVE this mani and really am not in any rush to remove it.  It’s got so much BLING to it and I just love the blueish purple color of Chuck.
I don’t know, I’m starting to think that maybe Chuck and Julia were just meant to be!

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I Love Spring

Kruidvat had a great sale on last weekend, 50% off all makeup. Omg!  I got over 20 bottles of polish for less than 20 euro, I was in heaven!  All this sunny weather and trees blossoming made me want to do something with more spring colors, since I often tend to stick to darker colors.  I wanted to do something with dots that would resemble flowers.  Looking back I probably should have put the dots closer together but I can always give it another go some other time.  Even if it just looks like random dots on a yellow base I still think it’s springy and pretty!
I saw a great tip a while back on a website (can’t remember what site it was now).  It’s for using things you have at home as a dotting tool, it came in handy for my Easter Mani and I used it again this time.

Excuse the lint, sometimes the fuzz from the pads I use to remove the paint stick to things (that’s another blog topic because I could really use a solution!) 
Anyway, it’s so easy!  You just take stickpins with different sized plastic heads, cut part of the pin off and stick them in the eraser on and end of a pencil. VOILA!  Dotting tool!!  Great for people like me who are on limited budgets!
Polish used:
Yellow – Catrice Bye, Bye Birdy!
Purple – Essence Found My Love
White – Catrice Snow Motion
Green – Catrice Easy Peasy, Lemon Squeezy!

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Kreativ Blogger Award–YAY!

Yay Shadow gave me an award!  I’m quite flattered because I know she was being sweet as hardly anyone even knows my blog exists yet. haha  I am highly appreciative, in any case!


Here are the rules: Write 10 facts about yourself. Pass the award to 10 bloggers and tell them about the award

Whew ok 10 things about me…

1. I became obsessed with nails and polish when I was looking for an escape from the stress and emotional turmoil of fertility treatments.  Painting my nails made me feel girlie when my body was making me feel like less of a woman.  Sitting for hours messing with my nails made me happy at a time when not much else did.
2. I hate armpits with a PASSION.  I don’t want anyone looking at mine or showing me theirs.  I am actually physically revolted with them.  My least favorite part of summer is seeing so many people’s armpits and I will actually change the channel when a deodorant add is on TV.
3. I am a big time animal lover.  I own dogs, a cat and turtles. I have also owned a hedgehog, rats and other animals in the past.
4. I am a recovered gamer.  I used to be highly addicted to games like Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Star Wars Galaxies and World of Warcraft.  A lot of my life has been wasted on those games and I wish I’d kicked the habit a lot sooner than I did.
5. In the past 2 years I have lost 80 pounds and am still working on getting off at least another 50 pounds before I am done.
6. I also maintain a personal blog about my life as a Canadian expat in the Netherlands.  It’s called Canadutch.
7. I have been married to the man of my dreams for almost 11 years.
8. I am a TV and movies junkie.  I download up to 400 gigs a month in shows and movies to watch.
9. I can be a big geek.  I love gadgets, the internet, playing with the design code on my blog and all sorts of other geeky crap.
10. I have entered about a million giveaways and I really want to win one!!

I know the deal is that you are supposed to give this to 10 other bloggers, but everyone’s blog that I follow has already done it.  I’m sort of catching the tail end of this trend, I’m afraid. 

SO, I’m going to give it out to you.  Yes you, the person reading this blog.  I’m pretty sure there aren’t more than 10 of you and I really appreciate those of you who do read, so if you are reading this, you have been tagged!!  Please let me know if you do it so I can read the 10 things about you!

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Claire’s Stars–Lesson Learned!

A few weeks ago I was in Claire’s looking at the polish and came across this glitter polish with such lovely big stars mixed in.  Without even thinking I snatched it up and ran for the register.  I couldn’t wait to get home and try it!  My memory totally failed me that day because I had bought this kind of polish once before and couldn’t get the darned stars out of the bottle, so it’s been sitting in my cupboard ever since.  It wasn’t until I tried with this one that I remembered my previous experience.
I decided to try it over a dark polish I already had by Rimmel, which I LOVE.  It has a big fat brush and goes on so nicely.  Love love love!

After once again trying to just get the stars on the brush I gave up and started digging them out with a wooden stick.  I managed to fish out enough to do my ring finger on each hand and then was all like … oh screw it!
I think the stars are so pretty but I’m sure there is something ‘dry’ available out there that can just be picked up and stuck on the nail rather than going through the hassle of trying to fish it out of the bottle.
Is there a trick to this?  It absolutely does not come out on the brush, evil tricksters!  I’ll probably do it again sometime, maybe even with that old polish I bought before… or maybe not.  I’ve not decided yet.

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Stamping Frustration–Help!

Ok well if you’ve been reading up until now you’ve probably heard me complain about stamping more than once.  I have the Essence stampy set and image plates and my problem has been that for some reason I’ve always been able to get the smaller designs done just fine, like in this photo:

Ok, whatever.. no problem. I got the flower on there pretty well.
So where is my problem?  The full nail designs.  For the life of me I could NOT get them to work.  I went through two entire bottles of the stampy polish and almost an entire bottle of remover just trying again and again and again and aagggaaaain, to no avail.  I couldn’t get the stamp to pick up the polish, it just wouldn’t work!
I Googled, I YouTubed, I Screamed, I may have even cried a little…
Then I figured it out, I wasn’t pressing lightly enough.  I knew it said LIGHTLY but I didn’t know lightly meant “barely touch it”!  It turns out I was pressing too hard the whole time.  So I did manage to get the stamp to pick up the polish… look:

Ok, it’s not pretty BUT it’s on there. I successfully (I use that term very loosely, mind you) managed to transfer the stamp from the plate to my nail… but what a mess! 
Firstly, I am yet to get the hang of how you get the entire design on the stamp. If you just press it straight down you only get the middle. If you roll from one side to the next, you only get a small strip.  I’ve tried various techniques of rolling the stamp over the design to try to pick it up but well, this is the result. It’s patchy. 
Getting it on my nail is an entirely different story, clearly you can see I need a lot of practice with that!
It seems like between getting the design on the stamp fully, and then actually getting it on my nail… well, it seems so much more difficult than everyone makes it look!  I wonder are other plates easier to work with, like Konad or Bundle Monster.  Is it the Essence plates that suck or is it me?!

This was my next attempt.  Ok, it’s a bit of an improvement but there were still a lot of spots that were missing, smudged, crooked, etc.  I also was irritated with myself that I forgot the 2nd coat on my index finger so this is another one that hasn’t left the house and was promptly removed.
I’m wondering, has everyone had this problem when they started with stamping or am I just stamping impaired?!  Please, I will take any tips you can give me!  I don’t get a lot of replies usually but I could really use some on this one, I’m about to whiff all my stamping stuff out the window and call it a day! *sigh*

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