Hello Vuitton

blog sale

I recently picked up a whole load of new Butter London pretties...in fact I added nine to my collection in about two days. :/ Oops!! If you follow me on Instagram you've probably already seen them but in case you haven't, my original haul include these:


Stroppy, Fash Pack, Chuffed, Silly Billy, Lolly, Teetotal, Cream Tea, Royal Navy and Wellies. Gorgeous shades all of them.  But then later I was itching to go back and snag some more!! So I did!!


The thing is...when you have so many it's hard to keep track!! So I ended up with some extras! :/ Oops! You can capitalize on my mistakes though, cause I threw the extra's into my blog sale! ;P  In any event I've been wanting to use them so today I decided to try out Teetotal. It's basically just a really pretty brown and even though I love it on my nails I thought it could use some flare.


So I jazzed it up with some gold stamping!  It's the perfect shade for this Louis Vuitton/ Hello Kitty mash up!  I matted it at first but it really dulled the gold so I decided to leave it shiny.  I also switched up my top coat on this one...I normally swear by Seche Vite but I'm running low so I've been using my Deborah Lippmann Addicted to Speed top coat lately and I am IN LOVE. It's still super shiny, slightly thick and it dries WICKED fast. Like faster than the Seche even.  I might have an expensive addiction on my hands!! I hope you enjoyed these nails! :) Thanks for following!

Funky Fingers Anna

anna

Last but not least on the Funky Fingers Frozen polishes line up we have Anna!  I expected to like Anna the least of the three (just not huge on multi glitters) but I actually really liked her!  She has the same white hexes and snowflakes as Elsa and Olaf BUT she also has purple and blue hexes and blue snowflakes.  The blue snowflakes were a total surprise to me. One just happened to land on my index finger and I then of course I had to look for more!


I've swatched her here over Butter London Sozzled.  I think the combination is pretty spectacular!  Really in love with all three of these.  If you can snag them I highly recommend it! Which is your favorite? Elsa, Anna or Olaf?

Funky Fingers Elsa

anna

Continuing with the Funky Fingers Frozen collection, today I have Elsa for you.  Elsa has white snowflakes and  hexes (both large and small) as well as some larger light blue hexes. Originally I anticipated that I'd like Elsa the most of the three, and I did BUT I had a hard time deciding what to use her over!! Light blue and she loses her colored hexes (one of the things that sets her aside from Olaf) but white and she loses everything else!  I suppose you could do a darker blue or a slightly off white but I've gone with a light minty green.



I quite liked how it highlighted the glitter.  (It's Butter London Fiver!) I did fish out the snowflakes here so that I could have one on each nail but that's pretty typical of any large shape glitter polish.  One other odd thing that happened with Elsa (and I think it's because of the way I applied it) is that I got these weird bubbles in the BASE layer of my polish even though it was mostly dry when I applied her.  I didn't have this issue when I applied her again over another polish so it's not an issue with Elsa and I additionally didn't have this issue with Anna or Olaf both of which I also swatched over Butter London's so I don't think it's a polish compatibility issue either but be sure you apply her over a dry layer and in thin coats! This is two coats with fished snowflakes. :)  Which do you prefer? Elsa or Olaf?

Funky Fingers Olaf

anna


You may have heard by now that Funky Fingers, a US brand carried at Five Below stores, has come out with a little polish collection inspired by Disney's Frozen.  The line consists of three glitter polishes: Olaf, Anna and Elsa.  They have quite a bit in common in that they are all top coat glitters with snowflake shapes and small and large hexagons.  However, they do differ in color.  So today I have Olaf for you.  Olaf is white glitter with tiny holographic shimmer throughout.  I have swatched him over Butter London Airy Fairy and I think the combo is fabulous!


This is two coats of Olaf and before you ask, yes, like most shape glitter polishes, you DO have to fish a little for the snowflake glitters if you want them on every nail.  For Olaf I just let them come off the brush naturally and as you can see with five nails and two coats each I managed two snowflakes.  For Anna and Elsa (coming this week!) I fished the snowflakes out instead so that each nail would have one! :) 

Do you Mehndi?


It's the final day of the Digital Dozen's Countries and Cultures challenge week.  Today I'm back to a culture inspiration.  I've done some mehndi or henna inspired nails for you today.  Mehndi body art is an Indian and Pakistani art form which is used primarily in the celebration of weddings.  It's gotten pretty widespread in the past ten years or so and you can actually buy kits or have it done in a number of places now.  In the US at least, almost every tourist location offers henna tattoos.  I've had it done twice myself.  Once in one of these said tourist locations and it didn't take very well.  It was very light and lasted only a day or so.  The second time I had it done was at an Indian festival and the result was MUCH different.  It was very dark and intricate and lasted over a week.  So it's quite important how it's mixed and with what.





I really love mehndi.  I think it's so beautiful and I love the intricate designs that are made with it.  I hope you all enjoyed Countries and Cultures week!


Don't forget to check out the other ladies art below!! And don't forget you could choose our September theme!! Just visit TheDigitalDozen.com and tell us what you want to see us do!!

St. Petersburg is gloomy...



It's day four of the Digital Dozen's Countries and Cultures challenge!  Today I've done another country mani for you! This one is for Russia and the beautiful city of St. Petersburg.  If you're not familiar with this design then I've included some pictures below of it's inspiration, The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood.  This church can be seen from all over the city of St. Petersburg, It is built on the site where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated and was dedicated in his memory.  Not only is the outside beautiful but the inside is stunning as well.




I've done my art based on the four most prominent towers of the church.  The pinky should be squares and not circles but I couldn't figure out how to do it in a way that I really liked and in person the gold was more shiny which detracted from the round shapes.  There are some pictures of the outside and inside of this beautiful landmark below.  If you ever get to Russia it's definitely a MUST SEE.



 
Don't forget to check out the other ladies art below!! And don't forget you could choose our September theme!! Just visit TheDigitalDozen.com and tell us what you want to see us do!!

I bless the rains down in Africa...



It's day three of the Countries and Cultures challenge with The Digital Dozen.  Today I have an African inspired mani for you. I'd like to call this a country manicure but as Africa is not a country it's probably more of a culture design!  It's also upside down so apologies for that (you can see a right side up pic below!).  I really love African art and culture.  The colors and the vibrancy of it is just amazing.  I wanted something really bright for this and then I used some African tribal type patterns for the art.


 There is a sun on my ring finger over the elephant because I thought combined with the fade it would sort of resemble a sunset.  I've also got a little giraffe and a tree!!


I hope you enjoy these African nails!! 

Don't forget to check out the other ladies art below!! And don't forget you could choose our September theme!! Just visit TheDigitalDozen.com and tell us what you want to see us do!!


Like Toy Soldiers...



Well it's day two of the Digital Dozen's Countries and Cultures week! Today I have a country inspired mani for you.  Hopefully you've guessed what it is by now, even though these didn't come out exactly how I planned them.  I used Zoya Raven for the black part and I don't love it now that it's been photographed! I wanted it to add some depth to the little hats.  I originally thought of using flocking but I was covering a co workers position and flocked nails wasn't really work friendly!! In any event HOPEFULLY you can tell that these are little British Royal Guards. It also occurred to me after I did them that the little piece that goes around the chin should probably have been gold. In either even I quite liked their cute little faces!



I hope you enjoyed them as well! Maybe next time I'll go all out with some flocking! :)

Don't forget to check out the other ladies art below!! And don't forget you could choose our September theme!! Just visit TheDigitalDozen.com and tell us what you want to see us do!!

The Digital Dozen does...Countries and Cultures!!



It's time for another week with The Digital Dozen! This week the theme is Countries and Cultures.  I went with a good mix of both this week.  With the World Cup and everything we've been doing with it at work my mind got kind of stuck on flags at the beginning and I REALLY didn't want to do that.  I really love Japanese culture too but I've kind of done that in the past a few times so I took that off the table too.  Then I had to really think some!! I'm starting the week with these.  They're meant to sort of look like a mandala.  If you aren't familiar with them, Mandalas are symbols for spiritualism and the universe. I first became familiar with them through Buddhism but they are used in Hinduism as well.  A traditional mandala should start with a circle or dot in the center, like my pinky nail.  The stamp I used was pretty small so I changed to a different one for the other nails and they have a more heart shape at the center but I think the basic concept is there!




Each color of the mandala also has a symbolism. Here I've used blue which is for calmness or serenity, green for nature and harmony, yellow for light, intuition and sun, and purple for life and imagination! I hope you llike them!! Have you ever made a mandala?  

Don't forget to check out the other ladies art below!! And don't forget you could choose our September theme!! Just visit TheDigitalDozen.com and tell us what you want to see us do!!

Rock-a-teal...



Today I have some fun gradient nails for you!  I wanted to try out something new and this seemed like a good plan!  I will say it didn't come out the way I had imagined it but I really loved the final result.  The even better part is that it took me about ten minutes to do these, start to finish. I do use a fast dry topcoat and that helps, but even without it this is a quick mani AND it's also an easy way to spruce up an older one that might have some tip wear.  



I started out with two coats of Butter London Fiver, a light minty green.  Then I applied my top coat, let it dry and finally, sponged on some China Glaze Black Mesh.  Then I applied a matte top coat over everything. I really liked the shiny/matte effect that it had before I topcoated at the end. BUT having no top coat on matte nail tips really seemed like a bad plan since I type all day.  That said since I went with a matte top coat instead of a shiny one...they lasted a few days that way! So next time I think I'd just leave the base shiny and the crackle matte.  I hope you enjoy them and thanks for following along! :)

Star Spangled Crackle...



This is just a quick post before I head out to my Independence Day festivites!!  Here are my nails for the day! I wanted a sort of aged flag type appearance and then the accent has an abstract fireworks design. I hope you enjoy them and for those of you who celebrate, I hope it's a safe and happy holiday!!




Painting the roses red...



Well I've officially run out of things to watch on Netflix.  I'm not a huge TV girl anyway but somehow in the move I got addicted to the background noise! I started streaming TV series' and chose ones which had lots of seasons to take up more time! I have a week of posts which will be dedicated to said TV watching but for today, you get this!  My most recent choice was Once Upon a Time which has proved to be both interesting as well as incredibly silly.  Great for a guilty indulgence! These are loosely inspired by the Queen of Hearts. :)  They are also my first attempt at "lead lighting" and I don't love it BUT I think a different design might have made it better.  I hope you enjoy them! What are some of your guilty pleasures?

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