Sales

I’ve got a few new photos awaiting upload and cropping etc, but I thought I’d just write a quick note to say that Gosh nail polishes (and perhaps some of their other products, but definitely the nail polish) are going for 3 for 2 at Superdrug at the moment.

Nfu-Oh-wise, Affiniti Nail & Beauty is having a 17.5% off sale til midnight on Monday, UK time. Only valid for orders from the UK and Ireland though, I’m afraid! Details below:

So, this weekend sees the welcome return of the Nailympics in London, and the Affiniti team have a great offer for our UK and Ireland based technicians to celebrate the festival of nails!

We’d like to offer you a HUGE 17.5% off all our products purchased from NOW until midnight on Monday! Yes that’s right – OLD SCHOOL VAT FREE!!

Simply type OLYMPIA into the coupon code box at the checkout and click “apply code” to receive a whopping 17.5% off your order.

I’m very tempted to order a few of the opal polishes, but even with the discount, the polishes and shipping do add up, and they’re out of stock of 2 of the ones I really want. Butbutbut, there’s also the really adorable corset-patterned bottle opener in the same shape as the distinctive Nfu Oh bottles…

Fiscal responsibility is really getting in the way of my polish addiction. :p

Work appropriate colours, meh!

While packing for the move, a very important decision was (obviously) what nail polish to bring. The problem here was that I had to fit in basically my entire life (since this particular move is long term), into 20kg, though in the end they let me check in 25kg, thank goodness!

This meant that I couldn’t bring my whole collection, and moreover, I had to choose things with at least a modicum of practicality. :( Work appropriate colours, in particular. Cue many conversations like this:

Jayme: You already have a pink!

Me: *holding the two bottles side by side* This one is differeeeent! Kind of…

Jayme: *takes it away and hides it*

and this:

Jayme: You can’t wear sparkly blue to the office!

Me: *plaintively* On my toes? When I’m on holidayyyyy?

etc.

In short, she made me stick to what I said, and I ended up with a very sad, pruned, practical collection. Which is why, last week when I had a one day work function (I only really started work today!), I went with OPI’s Tickle My France-y.

There are no photos.

Mainly because the colour doesn’t suit me at all, and it was BORING. :( I’m sure I’ll take photos of it at some point, because I have a feeling I may be wearing a lot of it. So when I got back from the function, I immediately took it off and painted my tips and toes a bright red, Essie’s Lacquered Up. Such a mood lifter! I chopped all my nails short recently to get rid of all the chippiness* and flakiness, and I think the bright red looks awesome on the short nails.

* not really a word

Seeing as how this blog is called Tips & Toes, and there have been no toes evident so far, there is a foot photo coming up, so if feet squick you out, beware!

Pre-cleanup I’m afraid. This really stained the skin around my nails, so it was actually quite difficult to clean up without messing up the rest of it.

This was the first time in years that my fingernails and toenails matched, so I suppose it’s a fitting first foot .. foto. (Yay alliteration!) It was such a vibrant, bright red, it made me happier every time I looked at my nails (i.e. A lot). It was fairly pigmented as well, this was two coats, and I thought about stopping at one on my toes, though granted, this could be because I’m a little short sighted. :p

Anyway, all for now, second day of work up tomorrow, and I have another work appropriate colour on that I shall endeavour to photograph tomorrow morning. :)

CG Recycle & CG Awaken

Now that, (as of yesterday), I’ve moved into my new place, I’m a bit more settled and organized, and so able to paint my nails, and post! I’m trying to get in a few non-office colours before I start work next week (more on that in a later post), so decided on China Glaze Recycle, konaded with China Glaze Awaken.

Some things so far that are different about applying nail polish here, I’ve noticed a definite change for the better in application, I think it must be because it’s so much cooler here. Related to this, nail polish remover makes my fingers freeeeeze. I’m having to turn the heater on and warm my hands between konads. Isn’t summer supposed to end on the 22nd of September? I’m a bit of a wimp, temperature-wise, admittedly, but I’m cooooold.

Right, photos!

Recycle on it’s own. I thought it might be too flat a grey for me to love, but it’s not, it’s one of my favourites. :)

Konaded with Awaken, which is amazing for the purpose. So much better than the Konad Silver SP, which was meh, though not as bad as the pink, which was really rubbish. (Broke my heart, because I really wanted it for konading on Recycle, as pink and grey is one of my preferred colour combinations.)

Dead on it’s very subtle indeed. But in the sun, Awaken comes into its own.

And lastly, my new toy that’s made playing with Konad even more fun:

I love this nail polish remover dispenser, you just press down on the top with cotton wool and it dispenses a little remover. I know it’s hardly necessary, but when you’re trying to be very careful not to smudge wet polish, it’s so much more convenient than fiddling with bottles and caps. :)

Oops.

Yep, a real humdinger of an absence there! Many apologies. I was going to post about how I was going to be on holiday for a month once I got there.. and then realised that China blocked not only Facebook, but WordPress as well. So.. yes. That explains one month of absence, and then I was home for 3 days, which were spent packing like a crazy person, followed by a move across the globe to London. :p

So yes, it’s been a bit hectic, and to be honest I haven’t had nail polish on my tips in about 1.5 months! The travelling also took a major toll on my nails, they started flaking like crazy, and I’ve still got big dents in them where I couldn’t stop myself from peeeeeeling. It’s compulsive.

Anyhow! I have more than 1000 unread posts in my nail polish folder on google reader, which I have been slowly ploughing through. And what with that, househunting, and starting a new job in a new country, posts are likely to be extremely sporadic for a while I’m afraid. Just an (extremely belated) heads up. :)

Experiments

Just a couple of shots of some experimental designs I fiddled around with the other day. The first two are on my cousin, aka my little guinea pig.

L-R: one coat of Orly Bon Bon, Color Club Lazer Pink stamped with Konad White SP, some random white stamped with Konad Black SP, Color Club Lazer Pink stamped with Konad Black SP. I love the ring finger, I may have to replicate that one day!

L-R: Orly Platinum stamped with a Bourjois red, the Bourjois red on its own, Orly Bon Bon stamped with OPI Parlez-vous OPI?, Color Club Worth The Risque stamped with Manglaze The Death Tar.

I love the index finger, though I may be biased as that’s my favourite Konad stamp. It is now referred to as the cheongsam design, perfect for Chinese New Year! :p

Mine were slightly more monochromatic. They were originally just experiments, but I decided to wear them out for a few days, as they did kind of match each other!

L-R: Color Club Revvvolution stamped with Manglaze The Death Tar, Manglaze The Death Tar stamped with Orly Platinum, Manglaze The Death Tar stamped with Color Club Revvvolution, Manglaze The Death Tar stamped with Color Club Worth The Risque.

L-R: Manglaze TDT, Manglaze TDT tipped with Color Club Worth the Risque, Manglaze TDT stamped with a random Missha polish, same as ring finger but with topcoat, Manglaze TDT stamped with Color Club Worth the Risque.

Excuses, excuses.

Oh dear. It has been a while, hasn’t it? Life has been pretty hectic around here, since I last posted there has been:

• a funeral
• a wedding (where I was a bridesmaid, hence heavily involved!)
• family members visiting from overseas (who I haven’t seen in about 10 years!)
• a horrendous bout of flu (not of the porcine variety)

And apart from all that, I had a horrendous nail break, I went bowling with a couple of my cousins, and my thumb nail ripped off really low, right at the pink. :( It looks terrible! So everything has been filed down, not to match, because that would just hurt, but they’re now at a length at which I can type.

I don’t have any of the really new pics, because my cousin’s taken my camera on her honeymoon so she can take underwater photos, but there are a couple of hurried photos while I was playing around during the wedding prep days! :) Also, the cousin that’s visiting from Australia is suspected of having H1N1 (yes, really), so while we wait for the test results to find out if we’re allowed out, I figured I should post. :p

First up is a quick pic of Barielle Beaches & Dreams, with one of my cousins (how many have I mentioned in this post already? Yikes.) modeling. I ordered this one solely for its name, because once when we were talking about the future, places we would visit etc, we coined this phrase ourselves. So the moment I saw it, I had to have it. And that also explains why it was the first colour she chose, because we’re moving to separate countries soon, and it’s going to be difficult to meet up as often as we’re used to. :( Anyway! So much lengthy explanation for one not-particularly-good photo. :X

What I had on while she was rocking what she called her tai-tai (or lady of leisure) nails, was Color Club Worth The Risque. (LOVE the name!)

Sorry about the index finger, no idea how I didn’t notice that.

In fact, they’re all kind of horrendously done, eh. Oops.

And this last one taken in full sunlight. At the busstop, for maximum entertainment value for my entire neighbourhood.

All from me for now! Jayme’s off in Japan for 2 weeks, the lucky thing, so I guess it’ll be me holding the fort til she comes back. :)

Color Club Vintage Couture

Just  a couple of shots of Color Club Vintage Couture. I really like this colour, but man the application almost killed me. I’m thinking that if Helen can have temperature-related application issues at 26C, then it’s very likely that the daily 30C temperatures here are going to have some effect on my poor polishes. Sigh. Alternatively, it could be due to the pale pastel streaky effect.  Either way I soldiered on, and managed to get them looking fairly decent.. if you don’t look too closely!

Didn’t konad over it because I couldn’t face repainting it if I screwed up.

OPI Russian Navy

Accidentally discovered this colour when I was having a cheap manicure ($5!), I really really am fascinated by this colour, and am truly sorry that I haven’t the photography skills to capture the nuances of this colour. It’s a dark blue but with violet shimmer such that the colour changes depending on how the light hits it. Note however that the side effects of wearing this colour includes gazing into your nails unknowingly and being oblivious to the rest of the world :) Not necessarily a bad thing!

OPI YDNJ + Essie Greenport

Was really deliberating about posting the picture because it came out slightly fuzzy, but the unexpected amazingness of the colour combination just made me want to put it up! To be honest, i did the diagonal greenport stripe only after the brown had some amount of tip wear so that i could drag out my polish longer. it turned out quite alright, and it was able to go for another 3 days!

Night Nails

I did this set of nails as an experiment for my ‘clubbing’ nails which I wanted to do for a night out. I tried a black-on-black (Black Konad Polish on a base of Man Glaze Matt) which seems to be all the rage – but can i just say that i thought of it way back when :p.

I also did a  Black Konad Polish on China Glaze’s Awaken (this is a great polish, especially if you’ve been lusting for OPI’s Earthquake like I have). The effect was amazing, my favourite had to be the black on black, but that was a little too subtle for my camera,  to fully capture. Perhaps if i went without a top coat? HMM!

A preview of the OPI You Don’t Know Jacque matt is on All Lacquered Up and I am super excited!