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The Lazy 15: Dessert Nails

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Hullo again. And I’m a wee bit late this Lazy 15 post but still, better late than never. Monday’s theme was dessert nails. And I should add – please forgive the quality of the pics as I managed to flatten the batteries on our camera having only just replaced them (argh) so I had to take these shots using the iPad.

This post is going to be the perfect example of my imagination outstripping my nail art skills. I had envisaged macarons as my dessert nails. And what better polish to represent macarons than the delightful Les Desserts d’Antoinette collection by Lime Crime. So starting with a base colour of Lavendairy I daubed five of the six other colours of the collection in vague, wee macaron-like shapes on each nail. From left to right, the colours are Pastelchio, Peaches Cream, Crema di Limon, Once in a Blue Mousse and Milky Ways.

Macaron Nails

Macaron Nails

Macaron Nails

As you can see I outlined each ‘macaron’ with black stripping polish and then a strip of white stripping polish to represent the mascarpone filling.

Of course as soon as I first thought of what to do I knew my nail art skills, or lack there of, would be an issue so, like a good Lacquerhead, I had a back up-plan. I give you my Fairy Bread Mani.

Fairy Bread Nails

Yes that really is Hundreds and Thousands stuck onto my ring finger. I have a horrible suspicion that Fairy Bread may not be something that translates outside of Australia but here it’s a standard food at children’s parties. Not unlike my mani, Fairy Bread really is just slices of the softest, most nutritiously-lacking-in-substance sliced bread you can find, slapped with margarine or butter and then sprinkled with Hundreds and Thousands. Simple tooth decay in seconds:)

And in totally unrelated news I take delivery of a Thermomix tonight so this weekend I am actually going to try and make Macarons for the first time ever. It could and quite possibly will be a completdisaster. Stay tuned:)

Have you been tempted by Lime Crime polishes? Have they had previous collections beyond the Les Desserts d’Antoinette collection?

Please check out the posts of the other lovely lacquerheads taking part in The Lazy 15.

xx

Orly Androgynie: the lazy lacquerhead’s galaxy nail

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I was after a glittery black polish for a while. I’d toyed with the idea of Butter London’s The Black Night, I’d read the disappointed posts on China Glaze’s Smoke and Ashes and I’d heard underwhelming views about Orly’s Androgynie. So like the enthusiastic lacquerhead that I am, I went ahead and bought all three. Purely for research purposes you understand.

So today I’ve got Orly’s Androgynie.

Orly Androgynie

This is the first time I’ve worn Androgynie. It’s a black jelly with a mix of fine micro and larger hex glitter in a variety of colours. The concept of Androgynie is wonderful. The colour combination of the glitter in the black strikes me as a cheat’s version of a galaxy nail. But then I have very low standards when it comes to such things since I’ve no clue about nail art.

Orly Androgynie

This is three coats of Androgynie with a base coat and then a top coat of Seche Vita. Drying time was fine. The formula of the jelly base is a little thin so you need to watch your application to avoid the polish pooling in your cuticles.

Orly Androgynie

The difficulty with Androgynie is, aside from the fact that the black jelly base is always going to obscure much of the glitter, getting the larger, multicoloured hex glitter onto your brush and then onto the nail. My little finger ended up with basically no visible hex glitter on it by the second coat, so on the third coat I played around a bit in an effort to dab some hex glitter on that nail close to the surface.

I had read somewhere that the trick is to store the polish upside down so that the glitter particles collect at the neck of the bottle but I’d forgotten to store it that way when I was reorganising my stash recently. I’ve turned it upside down now so I will wear this again soon and report back if there’s any improvement.

Overall though, whilst I understand the disappointment many lacquerheads had with Androgynie I’m still actually pretty happy with it. Yes, a wee bit more glitter on the nail without the slightly dirty coating that the black jelly leaves would be nice but is perhaps an impossible ask. I’ve not tried Butter London The Black Night yet, and have only applied China Glaze’s Smoke and Ashes to my niece’s nails. I think Smoke and Ashes is out of the running because what I’m longing for is a black-based multicoloured glitter polish. But again, I’ll report back once I have done further research:).

Orly Androgynie and Lego Crook Man

The last pic is thanks to my partner who was loitering about whilst I was taking these photos and decided to play the joker as usual:)

Have you tried Orly Androgynie yet? If yes, what did you think of it?

Can you recommend a good black-based multicoloured glitter polish?

Tell me about the joker in your life who mucks about in order to make you laugh and smile:)

xx

 

How to be a busy wee polish hoarder but bad blogger:(

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Arrgh! I’m a bad polish blogger I know. I didn’t mean to be quiet for quite so long. It just kind of happened. I even drafted up a couple of posts but before I could take pics of whatever it was I was wearing at the time, my mani would develop tip wear, or a chip or worse. Sadly I don’t swatch for the sake of it which, when you’re attempting to be a nail polish blogger, is pretty daft really. But it just comes down to being a) a bit time-poor, and b) having novice polish application skills:). So what I post here tends to be what I’m acutally wearing.

In these past few weeks though, I’ve continued to amass new polishes which makes me a happy if somewhat indulged wee polish hoarder. One weekend a few weeks ago my partner and I headed up to Sydney to do the rounds of Ikea where I acquired furniture for my polish. I didn’t think I’d get to the point of needing ‘Helmers’ for a long time yet. In fact I had told myself a number of times that I wouldn’t buy any polish-specific furniture for at least a year or two. But I was storing my polish in plastic compartment boxes I got from a hardware store and as my stash grew it got so frustrating trying to find things by having to move six boxes of polish about and then rifle through looking for what I was after. So, in Julie’s (Esmaltes de Julie) terms, I’ve graduated!

Graduation to fully fledged lacquerhead - 'Alex' drawers and table top

I had also ordered a bunch of nail art sticks to swatch my polish to after seeing More Nail Polish’s post about how she stores her collection. So that weekend, as you can see from the pic, once we got the two ‘Alex’ drawers and bench top set up I went about swatching my collection to the sticks. All I can say is if you’re at the very beginning of your polish love affair then start swatching your collection to nail art sticks early on as catching up once your collection is at 280+ bottles is bloody time consuming and not great for your asthma! It was freezing cold the evening I took this pic but my partner insisted I keep the window open as he was so concerned about the fumes from all that polish:)

Graduation to lacquerhead-dom

The swatch stick production line - LCF style:)

My sister and niece came to stay with us from Hobart last week. My niece is 12 years old and very much into arts and crafts and pretty talented at it too. So I suspected she might enjoy sorting out my swatch sticks into colour groups and then ordering them by hue. She did a wonderful job. I’ve now got them grouped and ordered by colour and hue on large key rings.

Proudly OCD:)

Each stick has the brand and name of the polish. The polish is stored by brand alphabetically in drawers. So it’s now so much easier to decide on a polish and retrieve it. Think my sister is a little concerned I’m a bit OCD but I love it:)

Polish stored alphabetically by brand - anal retentive much?

Our place is an old three bedroom double brick cottage and despite that we have no children we don’t seem to have difficulty filling up the space. So my polish station is in our study/guest bedroom. It’s a smaller room to start with and is now even ‘cosier’ but conversely in winter like now it’s quick to heat. One of the cats usually comes and sleeps on a rug on the shelf to the right of my desk whilst I’m doing my nails. She sticks her head up every now and then and looks disdainfully either at me or the waving maneki on my desk so it’s pretty clear she’s not a fan of the lacquer smell or of the maneki:)

Nemo assuming the position

Tonight, whilst I write this on the laptop at my desk, my partner is working away at the iMac on the study desk to my right. Though if I crack open a bottle of polish he’s quick to vacate:) SOFT! The cat sticks it out however:)

xx

 

TAGGED (eek!)

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Ok this is new for me. Jen of Hooked On Varnish tagged me and I’ve not done anything like this before so here goes.

 

The Rules

Answer the 10 Questions

Pass this tag to 5 other bloggers

Alert the bloggers you tagged about this

The Questions

 

How many polishes do you own?

Oh dear. Um…it’s at 163 now. As of about mid-February it was 20 0r so. So there’s been a quick growth over a short period of time.

That total excludes base and topcoats, treatments etc, and the wee collection of cheapies I bought last weekend in a mad moment where I thought I might give frankening a crack. It also excludes the polishes that I’ve ordered but that are yet to be delivered….of which there are currently 47 polishes….um yeah. Ok.

What’s your favourite brand of polish?

Oh heavens, what a difficult question. I don’t think I can really say I have a favourite brand. I appreciate different brands for different reasons. Plus there are so many brands that I’m yet to try.

But at this point, I am in love with Nfu Oh. I have two of their polishes at this stage – #51 and #40. I have another five of their polishes on order. And am planning on putting in another order for some of their jellies this coming week. I love them for a number of reasons. The range of textures, finishes and colours is amazing and well outstrips the well known, larger brands like OPI that are readily available here. Nfu Ohs are also incredibly good value despite that I have to pay shipping from the US. But I also adore the bottle design, it’s just gorgeous.

I love Nubar polishes although I’ve only just discovered them. I love them for their quality and their incredibly reasonable price relative to brands like OPI, Essie etc. But I also love them for the number of duo and multichromes they do. They dry to the loveliest finish. Just wonderful.

But I also love my Orlys, my A Englands, my Chanels, my Glitter Gals. So it’s hard to narrow it down to just one brand.

Do you like crackle or do you hate it?

Is hate to strong a word? I’ve not tried it so I don’t like to say I hate it but it holds no attraction for me.

What was your first nail polish brand?

As a child, probably Cutex. Or more correctly probably my older sister’s Cutex (sorry Slapper xx). My oldest memory of my ‘own’ nail polish was a gift set of Revlon polish. Mum gave my sister and I a set each one Christmas when I was about 10 or 11 years old. I loved it and was wrapped with it but I don’t recall really wearing it because I was a terrible nail biter and never had any nail to speak of worth painting.

As an adult, I don’t recall being overly interested in nail polish during my 20s. But in my very early 30s I bought a couple of Clarins polishs (not 230 unfortunately) and, a couple of Nutrimetics ones. It was not too long after that that I became aware of OPI nail polish so it must have been around then that David Jones started selling it. From then on until only this year it was OPIs that I bought, bar a couple of Mecca polishes. Oh what a narrow life I led.

If you’re gonna create a nail polish line, what are you call it?

Something smart-arse or a play on words, possibly something automotive related. My partner is a classic car bore who is forever buying old cars and semi-restoring them. Just last Friday we bought a 1974 Series II XJS Jaguar in Pale Primrose. Modern nail lacquer was a by-product of developments in the automotive paint industry in the 1920s and 1930s so something that reflected that history and connection would be great. Although I’d imagine that the branding experts would counsel against anything so oblique. But meh.

What nail polish colour does not compliment you?

Have never tried orange or yellow. And don’t really do corals. I’m not sure if that’s because it wouldn’t compliment me or I’m just not attracted to such colours. Chicken or egg?

And what colour does not compliment you?

I’m fair skinned and freckled, thanks to Scots, Irish and whatever other pale and non-sun loving heritage there is in my family. So yeah those colours that look fantastic on tanned skin don’t look good on mine.

Name two of your best nail art friends?

I can’t say that I’ve befriended many nail art types. But there are a couple of blogs I follow that do some nail art and do it beautifully. So I hope they don’t mind me referencing them here. First is Sugarmitten. The other is The Subtle Shimmer

What was the best nail polish gift you ever received?

Beyond my mum’s Revlon gift set and a few OPIs from a lovely friend, I’ve never received nail polish as gifts. So I’d have to say the lovely OPIs I’ve been given.

That said, my partner is on notice that nail polish is very much an acceptable birthday, anniversary, Christmas, replacement-for-a-bunch-of-flowers-type gift and I will be creating a wish list and directing him to it in the near future:)

Make a speech about thanking the blogger who gave you this tag.

Jen of Hooked On Varnish tagged me. I thank the lovely Jen for introducing me to this questionnaire type of post. It’s fun and a great way to connect with others. I’d seen posts like this occasionally on some of the blogs I read but never thought I’d end up doing one. And of course, I’d be remiss to not also thank Cutie-CLUE-Les who tagged Jen; and Miss Theodora of Red Hair and Black Nail Polish who tagged Cutie. And then of course the several bloggers who tagged Miss Theodora … you get the idea? It’s a long list and time doesn’t permit me to trace its parentage entirely. But thank you all.

I’m very new to the nail blogging world, both as a reader and of course as a blogger. I’m not certain I thought anyone beyond friends and family would look at my blog but that was fine. So long as I enjoy the process of playing with nail polish and the camera, and then writing about it, that was really all I was looking for. But of course interacting with like-minded souls who share my fascination with all things polish makes it all the more fun, whether that be here through this blog or via Twitter. Polish is such a frivolous thing in the scheme of the world and all its worries but connect a bunch of women, and the odd bloke (no pun intended), from different countries, cultures, languages and socio-economic backgrounds and they’ll build affinities and friendships in no time, all over a tablespoon of solvent and a teaspoon of pigment. It confirms for me that we as people are far, far more alike than we are different.

So thank you Jen and all those that came before you. xx

Now let’s play tag!:) The five nail bloggers I’d like to tag are:

Sugarmitten

The Subtle Shimmer

Fab Fingertips

A Lacquered Affair

A Polish Problem