33dc day scarilyclosetothirtythree

Getting there! Today is 'same pattern different colours'... At least I hope it is, that's what I've done lol. Every time I push the word 'pattern' closer and closer to the extremes of its definition :s. Anyway.
My pattern is awareness ribbons. You may have noticed I do them a lot Haha, in fact I almost did them for favourite pattern. But in the end they lend themselves pretty perfectly to today's prompt (so long as you keep an open mind and accept them as a pattern lol), since they come in every colour under the sun.
I've chosen colours representing causes that are relevant to me and/or this blog... Most of them I will have spoken about before! Thumb (in tarastalons show me the stars) is simultaneously purple for alzheimer's and periwinkle for eating disorders.
The blue on the index (tarastalons blueberry cheesecake) represents bullying and child abuse as well as addiction recovery.
Green on the middle finger (tarastalons toy train) because it represents the whole mental illness spectrum. It is also for depression and bipolar specifically. Finally it's close to teal (which I missed because, despite being from Norfolk, I only have five fingers) for dissociative identity disorder, anxiety, ocd and post traumatic stress disorder.
Yellow (tarastalons sandcastles) for suicide prevention is on my ring finger.
And finally orange (sinful clors not tarastalons lol, big daddy) for self injury awareness day on the pinkie.
Simple :p.

The base is another rimmel space dust I think, a silver one. Which,  incidentally, is the ribbon colour for schizophrenia. 

To the best of my knowledge this is correct, I started with wiki (of course Haha) and then cross referenced from there.... But we all know the dangers of believing everything you read online!
Now I must sleep, gotta be up to bake a cake in the morning. X

Just a quick nail post

Yea nothing of any particular substance today cos I'm shattered. Nails today are rimmel space dust in luna love. And can I just pause for a moment here to say 'omg I love this polish'. Im a big fan of raspberry, cerise-y, fuschia colours anyway.... and, it turns out, am rapidly becoming a textured polish convert. And I never thought I'd say that lol. The recent textureds are a lot finer than the ones I originally tried though so maybe that's it. Oh and the sparkle is beautiful... Who doesn't love sparkle at Christmas?
Sorry tangent. I get hugely carried away with pretty much every new polish I buy. And since I spent nearly forty quid in boots the other day the are a few atm. That's without an order from tarastalons...Oh and polish club of course... and all those polishes sitting in my etsy cart cos they're all too beautiful and I can't decide!
And my apology for the tangent just turned into another tangent. Smooth. Anyway the dots are 17 silver holo. And it was neater honest but I'm had a busy day with friends :) and they're now a little tired (like me! Lol). Lastly, I'm sure I copied this design from a mani I saw ages ago. I think even the colours are similar, unfortunate it's so long ago I've forgotten who! So if it was you in sorry I can't give you credit but thank you. X

33dc...29?

Oh dear I'm getting worse at this instead of better! In my defence I barely know what day it is in general half the time lol.
I also really, really need to sort out my in linkz codes.... it's just irritating on my phone and I'm lazy!

Aaaanyway. Today is 'your favourite pattern'... and the other reason I didn't use bellringing for Monday's theme of lines. Cos I used it today lol. At the end of the day ringing lines will always and forever be my favourite pattern.... even if it is stretching the theme a tad. They are patterns though, all ringing is about is patterns of numbers, different pairs of bells switching to create new sequences....hopefully with musical results lol.
Oh one day I'll do a proper bellringing post.... cos I love it and it's been such a positive factor in my life (rather like polish lol). But today I want to talk specifically about the method I've chosen to paint on my nails. It's called stedman doubles, the doubles simply means it's on five bells (usually with a sixth keeping the beat 'at the back' or 'bonging'). The stedman bit is someone's name. Fabian stedman was a change ringer a long time ago, and I mean a long time ago This year we're commemorating the 300th anniversary of his death so we're talking about him ringing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. What's important about stedman is that he is one of the forefathers of method ringing...ie those squiggly little lines all over my nails. The development of the art of having more than two bells switching places at once. He also collaborated to write the first book in the subject of change ringing.... which has the amazing title 'tintinnalogia' (nothing to do with a ginger cartoon character with a quiff lol).

Sorry I'm rambling, it's really hard to explain ringing stuff without using a load of meaningless jargon lol. But I love it so you've had to put up with it sorry, it won't happen again for a while lol. X

Ps. For anyone who actually knows about ringing: no the dodges on thumb and pinky aren't quite right it just looked better that way oops :p. X

Bonus post: aka a really big box

Haha yea this is a silly and pointless blog post, but does this box seem unnecessarily large to anyone else?
I picked up my increased dose of meds today and I got not one but two boxes this size (two different doses of tablets) each containing just two blister sheets of pills plus the info sheet.
Like I say this is pointless, it just made me laugh lol. X

33dc challenge day whoevenknowsanymore?

Haha I'm failing at inspiration totally at this point. But today's (or yesterday's actually oops!) theme 'lines' makes me think of two things. One is bellringing, and I did I ringing design not so long ago...plus it's fiddly and I was feeling lazy yesterday. The other is art deco. I like, a lot.... and besides I've just returned from climbing lots of tall at deco buildings in new York lol.
Seems like several people had the same thought on this one lol. I went for Black and gold because... Well I like it lol. And I wanted an excuse to try out the black nails Inc polish that came free with glamour :p.  Appropriately enough it's called New York noir, so shall I pretend I deliberately decided on a NY theme? The gold is maybelline winner takes it all. And the lines are wonky lol.

Bonus shot is my original attempt at a 'lines' mani which occurred whilst very drunk lol. It was based around the colours for the trichotilomania/dermatilomania etc awareness ribbon. These are compulsive disorders, either hair pulling or skin picking to an extreme level for psychological reasons. I don't want to tag it on here but I'll do a proper post about this group of disorders at some point.
Oh well, night. X

cuticle oil, tidying and notd

Yep slightly mish mash post Haha.
First: cuticle oil from Tara's talons. I ordered it before I left for holiday and was very glad to see it when I got home cos my hands and nails were a right state. Lack of my usual routine, extremes of temperature plus the fact that as soon as I stop wearing polish I bite my nails like mad lol. Anyway I figured this would be a good chance to play with the oil. Now I haven't actually used cuticle oil so I can't review it per se as I have nothing to compare it to. I do love it though. It has a pleasant, delicate smell and feels nice. It's also easy to apply coming in a normal 5ml polish bottle, complete with brush. and in lieu of a review I figure I'll just post before and after pics.

Yucky post holiday nails. This was AFTER id cleaned (or tried to!) filed and buffed them, and applied cuticle oil lol. Oh and my poor photography doesn't show the true horror. Moving on...

The photography is dicey again but this is today, just over a week after getting back. Now they're in slightly better condition i need to do my nails properly, remove/push back the cuticles blah blah blah.
Which brings me on to my notd. The polish is the rimmel i bought from belle glamour, deliciously dark. It's a very, very dark purple/red though it's hard to tell in the photo. The studs are a recent born pretty purchase...and ridiculously fiddly lol. I'm really not cut out for this nail art thing!

Last, but definitely not least cos it took forever: tidying the polish stores!
i really have nothing to say about this asides from admitting my collection was in an embarrassing stateof disarray before i started. Polishes piled in a basket, dirty tools and i could never find anything. So, here are some before during and after shots:

No surprises that the biggest colour group was purple lol...though looking at the bottom right corner it seems i have a top/base coat issue...who needs that many, seriously?! Lol. Oh and apparently i have nearly 150 polishes oops!
Final point and then I'll shut up, sorry for any weird formatting or spelling errors in my recent posts. My phone hates posting through the actual website, i usually use the app but i can't embed photos that way. Bear with me I'll get there with all this technology stuff. X

33dc day 27...3 patterns

It's getting towards the end of anti bullying week and I haven't yet posted about it. I decided to rectify that with today's challenge post. The anti bullying awareness ribbon/wrist band is blue so I started there with polished by kpt blue smardi and a taras talons nail art pen in, I think, blueberry. The ribbons achieved my first pattern. The second two I went for noughts and crosses. I'm not entirely sure why tbh.... partly I suspect because I heard Malorie Blackman on desert island discs in Sunday and that was a title for one of her books lol. I guess it's apt in that the book is about discrimination and what is discrimination if not bullying? She has said that she chose the title because noughts and crosses is a childhood game that nobody ever plays once they grow up because nobody ever wins. A poignant statement in the context of the book series and the idea of bullying. Who wins really? The bully feels no better and someone else feels a heck of a lot worse.
Bullying is not something I've experienced on a personal level, though I've seen it occur to those around me. And I've been accused of *being* a bully. I hope against hope that was a false accusation cos bullying can destroy lives. I haven't always been as kind as I should and I'm certainly no Angel, I've taken arguments further than is fair and have held grudges.... But I hope I've never set out to systematically destroy someone just to make myself feel better. And that's what bullies do. They victimise others they perceive as weaker until the person believes what they're being told so wholeheartedly that they start to bully *themselves*. And that's a thought process I DO relate to.
We're impressionable when we're young and the things we're told can have s long lasting effect on how we think as adults.... something that seems like just a bit of fun to one person can be the beginning of a mindset that leads to depression anxiety agoraphobia bulimia self harm ocd panic disorder anorexia alcohol and drug abuse and so on and so forth for someone else. 

And then, just as you think you're free and in the adult world, you release that bullying doesn't stop just cos we're meant to be grown ups. It can be more subtle, and often more overlooked, but it's still there lurking in the background.

Bullying IS serious no matter who's doing it and what they're doing.... oof it makes you feel less worthy than them, if it scares you, if it stops you being you then it's wrong and it needs to stop. 

Hence my anti bullying nails.
If you're looking for help try the anti bullying alliance or just do a Google search for anti bullying. It's not ok and it is curable. I promise. X

belle glamour-swatch, review, competition

Trying new brands is always exciting, especially budding UK indies- why let the  Americans have all the fun? :P. So when Catriona from Belle cosmetics asked for bloggers to buy her polishes to swatch ahead of her launch I couldn't resist.
First thing to say is I placed my order in the darkest depths of Sunday night/Monday morning... and by Tuesday morning there was a package on my doorstep. Good start :).
And what did said package contain? Well two sets of false nails which I'll write about soon, a rimmel polish, two free glitters aaaand these beautiful things:

Why yes my coffee table is a state, but asides from that, pretty no? From left to right: midnight, sensational, limelight and passionately purple.
Midnight

This is a metallic charcoal type colour. A good store cupboard staple. I confess i already own a very similar colour but i dont like it, hence buying a replacement. And it's a vast improvement. I love the formula a lot, it's so easy to apply thick enough to control without being crazy gloopy. I used two coats and topped it with seche vite. Without the top coat it actually dried slightly matte/satin which was quite nice but i didn't think to take pics of that sorry.

Sensational

This colour is awesome. I love it. Bright polishes with black fleck are one of my favourite things. This one has a tiny silver fleck too and a scattering of magenta glitter. I own waaay too many polishes but I don't own anything like this. Again it was amazingly easy to apply, i barely did any clean up and that's some kind of miracle for me haha. I did do three coats for this, if you don't mind a hint of sheerness two would be ok, but you know me and opacity.

As you can see, it comes up a lot more magenta than it appears in the bottle which surprised me a little. Still in love though haha.

Limelight

Vibrant no? I'm not a huge green person so i bought this more for nail art than anything...except when i wore it to work i got compliments from three of my ladies (most of whom got bored of my incessant polish changes ages ago lol) so i may have to rethink that! This is a real 'spring green' very vibrant and cheerful. On the nail there's quite a lot of yellow in there too...and a lot of shimmery, metallicy juiciness. Can you tell i liked this? Haha polish is full of surprises. Again the formula is great and again i used three coats plus seche. I didn't strictly need the third coat tbh but i smeared :p. Oh this and the pink dried a lot more gloss than midnight did. i went mad and took two pics of this one cos it looks different in different lights

Passionately purple

Ah purple! Of course i had to pick the purple. Yea i have lots of purples, some quite similar to this so it's not a shockingly.unique colour...but you can never, ever have too many purples. The formula on this was  ever so slightly more sticky...but that's just being picky. I used two coats except for a couple of fingers that needed touching up. Again without top coat there was a slight satiny finish, pics are topped with seche. I like that it's quite a pale purple, almost pastel in some lights, which is unusual in a metallic polish. So yea i probably didn't technically need it but i still love it!

Forgive the bumpy thumb i painted them late at night lol.


phew! I can't really comment on wear as i never leave polish on long enough but i did wear all of these for either a morning at work or ringing practice before photographing so *shrug*.
If im really, really nitpicking i'd like the polish names on the bottles...i know it doesn't really make any difference but not knowing bugs me :p.

Finally, Catriona is running a competition right now so why not try your luck?

Highly recommend :). X

Challenge cheating-tutorial and pinterest

Hmm so in the interest of getting back on track I'm multitasking... Or my nails are.
Basically I'm following two different things on pinterest: WAGGS (guiding) and 'purple'... yea I never really got into it! There was a WAGGS 'stop the violence' thing I wanted to do but it was fiddly and my hands are shaky today :p lol any excuse. So I chose to just do something purple and count that Haha.
That brings me to the tutorial bit I followed this tutorial from one nail to rule them all. Pretty glittery bows.... and within my skill level give or take. Admittedly mine aren't as pristine as hers but I liked the result enough to actually do it in both hands and wear it lol. So that's that. Better figure out something to do tomorrow!

33 day fail

Blah I haven't done anything for today. Only the second one since I've been home I'm meant to be catching up not getting more behind. Partly I'm just lacking in ideas cos my pinterest is pretty much empty and I don't really use a specific inspiration board. Partly I'm just having a rubbish day...I'm not sure why exactly? Back to reality slump? Lol.

Anyway instead of posting nothing I figured I'd post a little bit about new York to cheer myself up :p.

So new York, New York (it's a hell of a town.... behave Katie!). We arrived there totally shattered after our manic two weeks in Mexico, which I'll describe at a later date, and a lot later than planned! Pretty sure we spent more time waiting on the tarmac than flying Haha. But aaanyway moving on our first objective, after settling into our hotel just off fifth avenue, was fooood! We wandered for a bit before getting a recommendation from a local... For an Irish bar lol. Tasty though.
First proper day we took it easy starting with watching some of the memorial day parade followed by wandering round the local area. Oh and we found or way to macys... and their utterly bling Christmas department! A stroll to times Square to book tickets and have diver at hard rock Cafe and the evening was spent watching 'Rock of ages' on Broadway. Fun times.
Day Two we woke up to snow...Only a flurry but snow nonetheless. And it was seriously cold. And windy. And did I mention cold?! So we went on an open top bus tour. Of course Haha.
The tour was interesting though taking in downtown manhattan. We hopped off first at the 9/11 memorial which was....something. I remember the towers being hit, but I was twelve and the enormity of it was a little lost on me. It isn't anymore.
Back on the bus, after defrosting in Starbucks (a recurring theme!), and we headed for the rockerfeller centre. We timed the trip to the top just right to watch the sun going down :).
Day three was another frigid bus trip this time hopping off at battery Park to catch the boat out the the statue of liberty and Ellis Island. We toured what we could of the immigration museum.... though it's not back to full capacity after the hurricane yet. Oh and the sun came out... briefly. Learning about the hotch potch of cultures that have accumulated in new York and the USA at large over the years was fascinating. Then to test out endurance further we did the night time bus tour of lower manhattan hopping over into brooklyn for views back at the manhattan skyline.
Day four was warmer! Unfortunately we were done with the bus lol. Instead we took the subway up to Central Park (via a slightly circuitous route having accidently got in an express train oops!). We then ambled back via the reservoir, pen air threatre, 'Castle', Lake, puppet theatre, Strawberry fields, sheep's meadow and Icerink. Oh and past the zoo. Leaving central park, we went to carnegie Hall.... though only to the foyer cos we weren't booked on a tour lol. Then back to Tiffanys and that Diamond a wander through bloomingdales, the vestibule of the Chrysler building grand central station and finishing at the top of the empire state building. Phew.
Final day was only really a half day before heading to the airport. We spent some of the morning walking along the high line, raised gardens built on disused rail lines. Then.... free time! Where I snuck out to buy my two sole polish purchases of the holiday...a limit based on time restraint not personal restraint I can assure you Haha. Pictures below, opi vesper and Nicole by opi I lilac gumdrops.
Actually holiday snaps may appear but I haven't really looked through yet. Sorry this was sooo long, I waffle! Oh well I'll be back with my challenge post tomorrow. X

Formulations

Which, as far as I can see is just a fancy word for care plan. Which is just an official word of saying 'wtf shall we do?'
Anyway. Subsequent to a four sessions the psychologist has written up said formulation, a page and a half of type summing up what we've spoken about, her analysis of this and how it affects my patterns of thought and behaviour, plus what she wants to do about it. That's a lot to expect of not very many words isn't it?
Tbf I got over the oddity of seeing myself reduced down and summarised in reports quite a while ago. And this was more accurate than some (one of the best from way back was 'Katie drinks to feel more confident to post in online forms'... really?). I have trouble expressing emotions cos I never did as a kid so I feel negative emotions are bad so I suppress them but that doesn't work so I end up not really experiencing any emotions properly and just venting them as 'behaviours'. Nothing earth shatteringly new there. But at least we're all coming from the same place. She feels I 'can't form real meaningful friendships' which I confess hurt a little as I care for my friends a great deal.
The what to do bit comes in two forms. First: keep taking the pills... and start titrating back up towards full dose now I'm home. Yawn. Second: group therapy. So I can work on how I interact with others. Eep. That's a little terrifying. Though not unexpected cos she had mentioned it before. I struggle a lot with new people, especially en mass, because I don't know how they work and what the proper rules are. I guess that's kinda the point though lol.
So Yep. 11 group sessions in the new year. And a med review near Christmas when I've been on the therapeutic dose for a while. Then 'hopefully you shouldn't be with us anymore'.
Except us isn't 'us' because the service has been reshuffled (it's not just the cabinet that does that apparently) and my case worker has been assigned to a different department. I'm now under the psych lady so she counts as my care coordinator I guess. Little scared of the lack of regular contact for the next couple months but I'm sure it'll all work out. It's a very new service so it's all a bit changeable Haha.

Lala there's your trip into the world of mh care for the day. Figured it may be informative. Though bear in mind there are many many people with mh problems out there getting a lot less help out no help at all whilst being in a lot worse positions. I'm lucky :).
Aaaand here's a sneak peak at a polish I'll be talking about later in the week just to lighten the mood. X

33dc day 25? New technique

Yea sorry I may have entirely lost track of everything! I think it's day 25 anyway.
And there are many many techniques I've not attempted... In fact probably more than I have attempted lol. But several of them in a little daunted by atm hence why I have attempted them! I'm getting more confident but one thing at a time, I'll be leaving water marbling and rainbow gradients and the like for another day. I did consider sugar spun cos it looks fun but I kinda didn't have the energy for all the mess!
So I went for flocking. Inspired largely by the pot of flocking powder I came home to in my taras talons order. I kinda didn't do anything interesting just played around with different shapes to see how it worked lol. It did look better honest but I did it last night and forgot to take a pic so this was after I finished work today so a little bedraggled lol. Except the thumb that was a mess from the start.
I enjoyed the flocking powder more than I expected actually...I really only ordered it in a whim to play around with (and the reasonable prices mean I can do that without too much guilt lol). It was a lot less... bumpy than I'd anticipated and applied easily enough with shockingly little mess considering it was me doing it. Definitely one up from the whole ordeal of caviar nails lol.
Ho hum. I should definitely try more techniques, so maybe I'll make a concerted effort to try a new one each week... Or maybe just once a fortnight! Haha. Also when I get five minutes I hope to get a chance to organise/revamp this blog cos I pretty much just threw it together when I decided randomly to blog lol. More cohesion is needed. And better planned posting. I just need to actually find the time to sit down and sort it out!
So that was a tangent lol. Here are the nails. X

honey, I'm hoooome!

Woop! Back from a brilliant three weeks away....gotta return to reality now boo hoo :(. Back to work tomorrow, in about six hours in fact so this will be brief! I'll do some proper holiday posts at some point though, I took pictures and everything (that's huge for me Haha).
What's coming up this week? Three more 33dc posts... plus I hope to sneak in one of the ones I missed while I was away Hehe. That fact box I never did on ocd (sorry about that!). A holiday post naturally. Maybe even a bellringing post if you can all put up with the tedium cos it's our annual branch meeting next weekend. Oh and I have some polishes to swatch. Plus a treatment review on Tuesday to decide the best way to become less crazy so depending how it goes I may post about that.
That's definitely more than a weeks with of posts Haha oops! Oh well ttys.x
Ps. Token shot of me in Mexico :p.

33dc day 24 most owned colour

Purple. Always purple. I love it and I can't resist it. Especially in polish. I have way too many purples many of which are objectively quite similar but I don't care I just love it Haha. Leafy frondy ferny pattern, just because. Actually the pattern was drawn in silver for some reason I don't understand it went purple when I top coated. Something to do with refraction, light bending, physics I don't understand? Who knows. Still more purple is never a bad thing. Did I mention I'm obsessed?! X

33dc day 22 3 colour gradient and pattern

11/11? It has to be poppies. Every year the parade down the high street with the guides, the cadets and the Legion leading the way, a piper right at the front. One of the few times I actually attend a Church service. I'm missing it this year of course, I should be in New York right now. Still I think remembrance day is important so I figured I'd commemorate it on the blog.
Hence the poppies. The three colour gradient is subtler than I intended with a beige (closest I have to military khaki colours), silver and gold. I'm not good at gradients but I like them so I'll keep practising. X

A few random memes **trigger warning**

Yea some of these may be sh or ed related so beware.... Does anyone actually listen to trigger warnings? My ill-brain always pups up with 'ooo this will be interesting better read'! Anyway. Even the ones that aren't triggering will probably be inappropriate cos I have a horrible sense of humour so I'd be careful reading this anyway. I'm not convinced I should be posting it actually but um I am. I'd anyone is offended I'll take it down. X

33dc day 20 pattern from your wardrobe

Oh I chickened out. I have allsorts of pretty patterns in my wardrobe but I went for basic white on black polka dots. I did add a little red bow to reflect the red belt on the dress though. It's one of my favourite dresses actually :). A cheapy from ibternacionale or somewhere but it gets worn all the time. What else can I say? Not a lot I don't think. X

33dc day 19... Or not!

Oof this is the first of the challenge days I've missed. The other two are Europe and geometric. Today should be tutorial. I'm not actually sure if that means following one or writing one. Hopefully the former cos I'm not accomplished enough for the latter :p. I willdo this when I get back from holiday... tbf Ive used a lot of tutorials as I try to navigate the world of nail art. It's all very new to me! But I love playing and I love the transient nature of it... it's not like playing with your hair which takes forever to change back. Or playing with your style which requires a lot of expenditure... Well ok has involved a lot of expenditure but only cos I have no self control :p. There is no actual point to this post btw! Just filing space lol. X

33dc day 18 two patterns

So November 1st is all saints day. That's about as far as my knowledge of the day goes I'm afraid. I do however know how to ring the method called 'all saints'... and one of the churches I ring at is nominated as all saints too.
So pattern one is bells. They don't look much like bells though lol.
And pattern two is the blue line for all saints. By Blue line I mean the pattern we follow that tells us when to ring in order to get a particular method (our versions of tunes). X