Halloween Part 3

Before I finish with Halloween here’s my manicure for the day itself, yes it’s Sally Hansen Salon Effects in Ghoulie Girl.

These are from last year’s Halloween collection, I found them in TK Maxx over the Summer – I am nothing if not thrifty and organised!

Again my application wasn’t perfect, you can certainly see on the last photo where I managed to tear the edges, so I don’t think I’ll be keeping them on for long, but I didn’t want to wait another year to try them out!

I thought at first the black background was giving me lobster hands, but trying against white proved that I do actually have lobsters at the end of my arms, oh well…

Halloween Part 2

And as promised, here is this year’s cake. It’s a sparkly mummy, but you can tell that right?

The bake itself was a disaster, a bake off is not the time to try a new recipe and tinker with it, but I think I’ve at least rescued the appearance. Cross your fingers that I can make it safely into the office for our annual competition – the trick is to transport the different coloured pieces separately and get them back in the fridge so they don’t melt into each other on the sweaty journey.

Less impressive than my ghost from last year with light up eyes, but what you can’t see is the pureed raspberry inside which hopefully will trickle out when it’s cut into. Again, keep your fingers crossed.

I would love see your Halloween bakes, and hear what you think of mine!

Halloween Part 1

I’d like to think I’m ever so British and haven’t been sucked in to Halloween, but in truth my visit to Poundland for decorations took place weeks ago and you will be seeing a spooky cake before the week is out.

So in keeping with the time of year, here are some Halloween nails:

Now I’m terrible at stamping, mainly because I can’t line up the stamp on the nail, but I figured if I made them intentionally lopsided it would solve the problem. A side effect of that is that now I’m not sure if you can tell they’re spiders, but I’m proud of my best attempt yet.

To create these I used:

love & beauty by Forever 21 Glow In The Dark nail polish in Neon Orange (this categorically does not glow in the dark)
Orly Liquid Vinyl (black stringy bits)
Konad Special Polish in black
Sinful Colors Snow Me White

What do you reckon?

Snowmen!

I love Rite Aid. That’s all.

Sinful Colors – Dazzle

It’s not like me to have something to show you from a new collection, but there’s a first time for everything and here is Sinful Colors Dazzle from their new Winter collection.

This is three coats, mainly because I’m incapable of leaving anything at two and it was an absolute pleasure to apply.

It leans a bit more pink in real life than I could get in photos – what is it about American hotel rooms that they never have ceiling lights?

And please try if you can not to notice the terrible dry skin / cuticle on my thumb, although obviously you won’t be able to now I’ve pointed it out, I had no idea how bad it was until I looked at the pictures.

I’ve just applied it and already I love this colour, just keep your fingers crossed removal isn’t too painful…

This week I’ve been wearing

Bit difficult to post while I’m working away, but just a quick one to show you what my nails have been wearing these last few days.

I like to give Sally Hansen Salon Effects a go when I’m on my travels because if nothing else I can’t spill them all over my hotel room!

This is Pink-A-Dot which I believe was from the Spring collection earlier this year.

As ever with nail wraps I’m completely prepared to believe they can last the advertised 7 days when applied correctly, but a combination of me being a bit cack handed and altogether lacking in patience means that they go on in a less than perfect fashion and I end up ruining at least a couple of them within a day or two.

But of course that means that I get to do my nails again! As I’m in America let’s call this a saran wrap mani (at home it would be cling film) but in reality it was actually done using the plastic wrapper from a packet of chewing gum.

This is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On (which I just bought because I had read so many great things about it from lovely blogger ladies) with Sinful Colors Pull Over on top.

Given that it’s October this feels far too Summery, but the sun is shining in Tennessee y’all so yellow nails it is!

You know you’re in the South when…

You have hot chicken and waffles for lunch.

I wondered why my suitcase smelled like that…

Still that’s why they were in a plastic bag.

*sad face*

Flying Fail

All being well when this post is published I’ll be on a plane. I’m flying to Nashville for work for a couple of weeks. Not the most excited I’ve ever been about a business trip, but we’ll see how it goes I guess.

So while spending the day washing every item of clothing I own and trying to get enough of it dry to pack I figured I should do my nails, after all you never know who you might meet in an airport.

This is a lesson in what happens when you fail to plan. After applying base coat I taped some vertical stripes of naked nail and painted on Essie Nice Is Nice. After removing the tape and top coating I added horizontal striping tape and sponged on Bourjois So Laque in Bleu Violet. Turns out none of that made any sense and in the end it just looks a bit lame, not dreadful, but not what I wanted.

I’m leaving my striping tape and sponges at home, so anything I do while I’m away should be a bit different. Let’s hope so anyway!

See what you think…

Zoya Andrea with Essie Triangles

I knew I wasn’t going to get round to taking a proper photo of this finished manicure, so I’ve made do with a phone picture taken while I was at work.

I liked the way the colours looked with my handbag, hence the product placement!

I wanted to keep this subtle so I taped off some triangles and painted on Essie Footloose which is a colour I can’t bear on it’s own, but I enjoyed it here. However I think it ended up a bit too subtle as it was only really noticeable under fairly bright light.

Taking pictures highlighted how badly I’d applied the brown layer, the formula was thinner than I expected and it resulted in some general mankiness that no amount of cleanup could sort out. So what you see above has been fiddled with to try and hide my shoddy handiwork.

Hmm… maybe it’s not quite as bad as I thought it was…