Easter dots

First of all, thanks to a girl on the Makeup Alley forum, I think I have found the holy grail of base coats - Borghese Hydrati. It works superbly on my nails, the chipping has slowed down to almost nothing and it makes the manicure stay on for round 5 days without chipping, which for me is a record :-)

Happy with the sudden change of result for Zoya Jules last week, I decided to try out one of the few Zoya I have left (I gave the rest of them away cause they simply refused to work on my nails), a green one - Irene. And along with Borghese as a base (two coats) and three of the decorative polishes, I'm ready to hop around like the Easter Bunny LOL.

As usual the quality of the pic is not perfect, but at least you get an idea of how it looks - Easter Dots and I'm happy that I finally found some use for all these bottles of decorative arty nail polishes :-)

Gaudi nails ;-)

Talk about seriously bubble headed - this I posted on my quilting blog yesterday instead of here... sigh...

Anyhow - a couple of years ago The DH brought back some gifts for us from Barcelona while on a conference: a couple of soccer t-shirts for the kids and this beautiful trinket box in an Antoni Gaudi design for me:

and it has been sitting on a windowsill ever after looking pretty. Until yesterday.

Remember all these 60 bottles of art nail polish I bought from China some months ago? I think I said it before, but the quality of these polishes has left a lot to be desired for, mostly cause they never dry no matter Seche Vite ot Poshé. So they have been sitting there in a box, doing nothing. Until yesterday.

Not in a sewing mood I decided to try something with my new dotting tools (also from China for under 1 USD :-O) and started with yellow, green and blue. Then it struck me that the result was similar to the Gaudi box, so I checked it out and added red, white and black dots:

So here we are - a kind of Frenchie Gaudi manicure :-D Sadly my camera refuse to focus and give me crispy clear pictures, it's probably that shiny Zoya Jules fault. The upside is that all them dots and several layers of Seche Vite, makes Jules staying power so much better :-)

Am I dotty?

Got my new dotting tools last week (eBay, less than 1USD :-O) and played a wee bit:

Then scrounging up a piece of tin foil (chocolate wrapper) I looked at it and went hmmmmmm, maybe you can do something like this on your nails? Said and done, two coats of Borghese Hydrating polish, two coats of Essie "Little Brown dress) and on top of that one coats of a golden polish from Zoya, One coat, then a scrounged up piece of aluminum foiled and dabbed:

Sealed it with a coat of Seche Vite and know what? It have lasted the whole week!! I really like the effect, much more subtle than these horrible cracking polishes that many companies sell and many bloggers fan over, but more distinct than a sponge work. Makes me think of these old tooled leather wall"papers".....

Well today it has started to show it's wear, so during the weekend I have to take it of and come up with something new to try. Or....I might stick with a simple French??

They say it's going to snow 10-15cm (brrrrr) but they said that a week ago too. Right now it's old snow still up to the 3rd step of of from stairs and thick layers of pure ice :-(

Wonder why

people here is willing to pay 95-135SEK for a bottle of Nubar polish when you can get it for USD 5.5 on eBay???

So far I only own two bottles of Nubar - Raspberry Truffle and a clear one with reddish glimmers, but I must say they are the absolutely best polishes I have tried in a long time. Easy to apply, dries fairly quickly and it stays on for more days than imagined. The glitter one changes color of the shiny stuff, depending on what color you have underneath. In a not so distant future, I am going to invest in a nice little collection, just have to justify the purchase to myself LOL.

Troublesome plates

Some month or so ago I bought some "not all all Konad" stamping plates and have been trying them out ever since. The quality varies a lot and most of the flower, very lovely designs simply don't work - see me pout...I don't know what's wrong with them, but they load way to much polish and the flowers (and other  graphics) looks like big blobs :-( I haven' tried many of the small ones, but the few I used on some falsies, turned out OK.

This fishnet pattern worked excellently, but when I tried to add some flowers or stars, it simply wouldn't do. So I think I went through 4 or 5 manis yesterday ending up with this. China Glaze (not a name but lots of ins) stamped with one of the Krome's (also China Glaze) with a thin Frenchy tip. Can't say I'm to fond of it, but it's better than nothing;-)

Now if Konad could turn out several new designs each month, I would never have the need to stray into not 100% perfect terretory. Why don't they simply hire all these talented girls who now do their own thing, that way we would both have gorgeous designs and highest of quality at the same time = Kinder Egg LOL.

Handmade soap

I have some friends in the US who makes the most delicious handmade soap and of course they use only natural botanicals to scent them. I am in need of some soap right, but right now in this moment they don't have a large selection in store. Soooo I turned my eyes to Sweden to see if I could find a soap maker close by who use naturals for scent. But so far no luck - only horrible awful fragrance oils and even though I can bee tempted (Pomegranate sounds lovely) I know for sure that I'm never going to be able to stand the scent = shiver and shake allover. I can't for the life of me understand why you go through the whole process of making handcrafted soaps using natural oils and fats and then "destroy" it all with using synthetic scents.

Well, the search goes on :-) or I buy a whole lot of the same soap from my American friends.
Edited; both my marvelously gifted soapmaking, soapy friends now had several different soaps at sell at Etsy, so I placed an order from both. That way I'm assured that I'm getting the quality I'm used to :-D

And if you never have tested all handcrafted all natural soaps from a master soap maker, please do so and you and your body is in for a treat. Ever since I stopped using commercial soaps which contain almost no or none natural glycerine, my skin almost never need any lotion or such. If my skin for any reason should get overly dry, I just blend a nice little sugarscrub for using a bit of jojoba, some rice bran oil and maybe a hint of avocado oil, just enough to cover some table spoons of brown sugar, scenting it with what tickles my fanny - an aged Patchouli and Vanilla (bean infused in jojoba) work everytime:-) maybe a hint of antique Sandalwood and why not, a dash of Lavender concrete?
When you use this, take care so you not slip in the shower!!!

Ack, I feel a need for a bath or shower coming on - making me smell heavenly on a Saturday night:-D

Clean break

last week I bough on suggestion a tiny set from Orly called Rescue Kit containing a bottle of "glue", a jar of powder (acrylic maybe?) and a tiny buffer. You use it to fix splits, cracks and such and since some of my nails are suffering from several filo pastry like tips, I thought it would be a great idea to keep them together until they have grown out.

Well, I do still think it's a great idea, but I did put it on the nails just to keep tiny flakes in check and not to grow worse. I must say that I really love the feel and look of the nails now. Until....

I went grocery shopping and the self scanning system was down and I had to put all the things on the conveyor belt and then pack them all up on the other side and all of a sudden - pain..pain and when I looked at the left pinky, the whole nice long nail ( bait over 1cm) had broken of cleanly and disappeared :-( I haven't figured out what happened, but I must have leaned of the nails while getting the wares furthest away. Since the nail beds on the pinkies are so tiny, it looks ridiculous, but dang if I'm going to chlip all nails of too make them even. To top it of, when I tried to take some pics of that misery, the camera battery went dead and is currently recharging. And when that is complete, there will not be enough daylight left...= blaaaaaahhhhh.

And my dotting tools from China seen to have gone MIA, very cheap they where but nevertheless :-(