So this design was 100% inspired by the whole day I spent in Osaka, mainly Dotonburi, eating nothing but Takoyaki. (I am not even exaggerating, I literally only had Takoyaki and vending machine juice that day, well actually I also had an ice-cream filled melon bread but I don’t think that quite counted towards my 5-a-day.) A lot of the vendors had these super cute octopus mascots on their stalls to instill some guilt in you as you chowed down on their delicious bretheren.
So from the desk that I paint my nails at, I can see over in to the woods and it really is great to see the plants starting to come to life again. I was getting tired of looking out on to it’s hollowness and being able to see naked trees and grey trunks far in to the distance. It’s refreshing to see the buds popping out, the leaves starting to unfurl and the whole body of the forest start to flesh out again. (Sure, I’ve had daffodils bobbing their heads at me for literally weeks but I’ll be glad to see them go as I don’t particularly like daffodils….) My inspiration is drawn directly from a gorse bush. It is a prominent feature to my window view, and it has really exploded with colour in the last day or so, I think the warmer spell helped. I personally know this gorse bush rather well, as every now and then I relive it of some of it’s branches and place them around my garden – particularly on the parts where the soil is bare. Why? Because the gorse bush has some massive thorns which are surprisingly sharp, and this helps keep away unwanted feline visitors who like to take regular nighttime ‘dig and dumps’. Top gardening tip for you there!
So it’s my birthday on Sunday, hip hip hooray. As I’m going out for a ‘few drinks’ with friends on the Saturday night, my dad figured it would be safer to take me out for my birthday lunch today so I’d actually be able to enjoy the food without a hangover.
He took me to a restaurant that we’ve both been to before and enjoyed; it serves good food and has such a cozy atmosphere thanks for it’s wood burning stove and rustic decor, which is perfect for this time of year. It’s called the ‘Jam Jar‘ and is located in Bridge of Allan. Now it totally makes sense as to why I have a jar of jam on my nails right!
So this post is a bit of a cheat, as the design was actually a base for some vegetable nail art but if I hadn’t said anything would anyone have pulled me up?…
I’ve been super busy still, so apologies, but I am still trying to stick to my ‘posting schedule’ even if it’s cheat/fail posts!
So here’s another Autumn design, which is actually inspired by ‘Nail Swag’. I had to change the colours as I couldn’t go for a ‘natural’ looking base – my nails are still horribly stained from the weather map design. The more eagle eyed of yous will noticed I have a nub on my middle finger (don’t worry if you didn’t spot it, I have quite large nails anyway so I feel it’s not as noticeable). This was due to some over enthusiastic usage of a craft knife but I’m glad it was my nail and not my finger!
So I’m keeping it simple. Polkadot means ‘one of a number of round dots repeated to form a regular pattern’ so here are some polkadots on an ombre! (Maybe a little uninspired but…)
So tomorrow is Valentines! I’ll unveil my nail wheel then, but for today have some love bugs farting out hearts!
So I managed to scored off 4 polishes with this design, leaving 19 more bottles from the calendars to try out! The base colour is ‘Loop the Loop’, the sort of duck egg green is called ‘Apple and Custard’, the dark green is called ‘Tweed and Tails’ and the only one left is called ‘Hidden Gem’. I used my new Seche Vite (how do you pronounce that by the way?) and it’s great. At first it made the nails look fuzzy, not smudged but just odd – but then it kinda cleared up and it dried pretty quickly and with a nice gloss. Yet another great bargain from TKMaxx!
So this design again isn’t related to Christmas other than the bows, but even then. I feel that a lot of the colours from the calender have been suited to spring/summer pallets than relating autumn/winter moods and I wonder if they’ve missed a trick.
Anyway the base is called ‘Pepperminty’, this did not apply well at all. It seemed to apply so thin and dry too quickly meaning you ended up dragging away what you’d already put down, but I persevered and three coats finally did it but even then it was still patchy. The glitter top coat is called ‘Party Shoes’ it’s an interesting combo of gold glitter and greeny, blue iridescent particles – very delicate, I’m wearing two coats. The bows are ‘Kiss Chase’, a pink shade which I actually really like and I think it goes together well with ‘Pepperminty’. Then I matted the whole lot because I thought it would look good!
So this nail design was inspired by my jardiniere! I love my jardiniere, I picked it up in a charity shop for £5. Yeah they’re maybe classed as old fashioned, and I even have a spider plant sitting on it, but let’s just call it ‘retro’ or ‘vintage’ or something!
WonderfulWolf 