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!

READ MORE...

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.

READ MORE...

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*

READ MORE...

Happy Queen’s Day!

It’s Queen's Day in the Netherlands today!  The sun is shining and I’m sure there are a lot of people dressed in orange partying it up all over the country.  So of course a Queen’s Day Manicure is in order!
You are probably wondering why the Dutch flag looks upside down but I figured it was best to have it in the direction that other people would be looking at it from. So just twist your head and pretend! haha
If you notice on my pinkie finger, you can still see the ridge from the damage I got from the nail salon that did my first set of acrylics.  It is starting to grow out though and I’m hoping that my nails are a bit stronger once it is gone. At the moment some of my nails are bendy like paper and I hate the feeling of that.
The flag is a little messy because I free handed it.  For some reason whenever I tried to use the tape, the white polish was pulled off with it.  It’s never happened with the tape I use before so I said the heck with it and just tried to do it freehand.
Happy Queen’s Day everyone!!
Polishes Used:
Orange – Miss Sporty
White – Catrice Snow Motion
Blue – 2True Shade No. 14
Red – 2True Shade No. 41

READ MORE...

Easter Mani!

I hope everyone had a great Easter weekend!  Here in the Netherlands we had a four day weekend and it was HOT!  Reaching temperatures over 25 degrees every day.  I spent a lot of time here:

Out on my balcony, that I wish was bigger but hey at least I have one!  It gets SO hot out there in the afternoon I always have to get out my umbrellas to give me a break from the heat.  The animals love it though, our cat and two dogs spend a lot of time out there basking and sleeping in the sun.
Between Easter and this beautiful weather screaming SUMMMMMERRRR at me, I needed a colorful and bright mani. 

It was an easy choice due to my limited stash, these were really the only really colorful colors I had.  I first did a mani with each finger a different color and then dots of each other color on it but it looked horrid so I removed it.  It looks much better with the white dots.

I’m still wearing this because I just think it’s SO cute.  I guess I’ll have to remove it soon but I will be doing something similar to replace it.  I’m still trying to get my full nail Essence stamps to work, maybe I’ll finally be able to get some stripes on there if I figure it out.  I’ve already gone through an entire bottle of the stampy polish just from trying to get a full nail design onto the stamp.
Polishes used: Orange / Blue / Pink are Miss Sporty, Purple #33 by Etos, Green Maybelline MNY #753, White spots are Essence white stampy polish.

READ MORE...

Nfu Oh Surprise from Hubby

After a really stressful time my husband wanted to cheer me up a bit.  He’d recently seen me drooling over some Nfu Oh polishes online and decided to order some for me as a surprise!

He got me Nfu Oh 40 and 68 and I was soooo excited!!  He knew that I like all things sparkly and that purple is my favorite color.  Not a bad job, huh?!  I think he made the perfect choices. 

How awesome are these bottles?  That’s one of the main reasons why I was looking at them.  I knew the polish must be great because I always see other people posting about it, but the bottles… they are amazing!  
I don’t really understand why more companies don’t do something like this to set themselves apart.  I would buy every color by Nfu Oh just because I totally dig the bottles. Seriously, that is not a lie.

I decided to try the Nfu Oh 40 first, because I just love the effect of it. I’ve seen it done a lot over black polish on other people’s blogs and loved it like mad, but I’d done a fair bit of black lately and decided to try something different first.  To look at the bottle it looks yellow, and alone it doesn’t really do it for me, but put it over another color and WHAMMO, INSTA-AWESOME!

So I put a coat of it over Maybelline Express Finish Pearl Blue Sapphire, which is a lovely navy / midnight blue color.  The flakies still stood out really nicely and I just loved it.  I do intend to try it over black soon though because I think the contrast of the black with the flakies is beautiful.
I wish I’d taken more photos of this polish because I don’t think these photos do it justice at all.  I was in a rush that day and forgot to take more before I removed it.  I will come back with more when I do it over the black.  I’m sure most people who are reading this have seen many photos of this anyway.

I learned my lesson and made sure to take more photos of the Nfu Oh 68.  I’ve had this on for quite a while now because I’m totally in love with it.  I love the mixture of purple and silver, how smooth it goes on, how it deepens depending on the light and well, everything about it really.  I will be wearing this one A LOT. 
The above photo was taken early morning in the sunny side of our flat.

This was taken indoors late afternoon with natural light.

This was taken early in the morning outdoors in natural light on the non-sunny side of our flat.
I love this stuff… love love love love love! This is the first ‘luxury polish’, as I would call it, meaning it’s not a cheapo drug store brand.  I am getting the feeling that the saying “You get what you pay for” rings true in the world of nail polish because this is a world of difference from some of the cheaper bottles I have.  I’m hooked.
I am not lying when I say I want every single color they have available and I think my husband has found his ‘go to’ gift for when he just feels like getting me a little surprise.  Sweet!

READ MORE...