Couple manis

Nothing very exciting today just a couple of different nail efforts. First is nails inc... Two different browny neutrally colours but I forget the names right now, and a ransom little heart design stamped on the accent nail. Pic is of the illusive right hand cos I took pics after work and left hand was a mess. And weirdly the right hand looked better anyway lol.
Second is an attempt at nautical...I changed my mind so many times on what I wanted to do for this and I can't say I'm particularly happy with it. Partly this is due to sheet laziness cos I couldn't be bothered to tape the lines so just freehanded and they look scruffy! Wow is nails Inc floral Street red is nails Inc at James Blue is rimmel salon pro rhythm and blues and gold is maybelline, something....go for gold maybe? I've blobbed polish over the label lol. Ho hum that's all. X

GOT challenge-stripes

Ah stripes, I like stripes dunno why I don't play with them more often.
Anyway, one of the first mail arty things I did involved stripes do I thought it would be fun to recreate it. I hoped maybe I could make it look a little better now I've had more practice. Evidently not lol, which is a tad depressing really.
I used nearly all the same polishes so I know they've been around a while. The only one I cheated on was the green which is a brand new nails Inc (Green Park) because I can't seem to find the other one and I don't own many plain greens. The white (Barbara Daly snow) is kinda a cheat too I guess in that I use it quite often, in fact it's nearly empty which I'm choosing to use as an excuse for the lumpiness lol. Black is models own nail art pen which I used a tonne in the 33 day challenge but haven't used much since cos...I dunno I guess I haven't done anything that would require it lol. The red is Essie snap happy, which I bought from tkmaxx when I was first trying to build up a collection of colours. Shortly after I bought a color club set and started using that red instead. If kinda forgotten how much I liked this really vibrant red. Turns out is not good for layering though so this time I put the red on the bottom and layered over it with the rest lol. Oh and did the flowers in white first. The pink you can barely see in the flowers is from a simple pleasures set... Also from tkmaxx. Hmm I haven't checked out their polishes in ages actually (behave Katie no more polish this month!!).
I've added my original attempt at the bottom... I'm pretty sure I used a tutorial for the flowers at the time but heck if I can remember whose lol. Maybe I'll reattempt my  reattempt some time see if I can actually improve it! X

Tarastalons take... Three? Four?

Lol I've lost track! And I'm not 100% sure whether I've posted any of these before. I'm tired and had my first group therapy session tonight (new experience lol). so am a little brain dead.

So we have (all dumped at the end again sorry)
- dancer... which i love, asides from the fact that I could have done with undies yet again (I'll be getting a reputation! Lol). I mean it looks fine without but this is three coats and it looked better to me after two... except of course I can't tolerate sheerness. But anyway it is beautiful. It's a punky kinda mix of purple and magenta with a bit if silver and black thrown in giving it an edge. Oh and skulls. Don't forget the skulls. I wasn't convinced by the whole skull glitter thing at first but I'm a real convert. The whole thing reminds me a little of those punky sorta pencil cases people used to have in school when they were waaaay too alternative and different to have anything pink or girly lol.

-Christmas fairy. Pale silver shimmery base, small magenta glitter. Sorted. Another in the calm base bright glitter group that I was saying I loved the other day. What more can I say?

- feeling extra festive. Juicy or what? Somewhere between pink and red with holo-y glitter... plus allsorts od Othery glitter from black and white hearts to various colour stands to Blue hexes. I really like this it's like confetti or party poppers or something. It just screams celebration. And it glitters like mad in the light.

Don't forget to check out taras site.
Ho hum, sorry for the lack lustre descriptions nothing feels quite right today. I took feeling extra festive of cos it didn't fit my mood and now I wish I hadn't cos I dunno what to replace it with! Lol. X

Silly stamping

Yup yup continuing with the mission to improve my stamping skills (MISS :p (I enjoy a good acronym, why do you think I joined the GOT challenge? Lol)). I was gonna change my polish anyway so I figured I'd play with some of the cutesy animal images I have. I confess the elephant was pretty much the only reason I bought this particular plate....yea, there's another obsession to add to the list lol. Anyway I used color club silver that doesn't have a name on it over nails Inc the mall (which is beautiful btw)...I have no clue what the stamping plate is, was in the born pretty store sale ages ago! I don't think it turned out too bad. It's hardly a coherent design as I was just messing around but in reasonably happy with how well the images transferred and stuff. I confess the duck was kinda meant to be central but I kinda like it there...and I played around on my other hand and managed to get it in kinda the same place. Next challenge is to play with the text image.
Oh and sorry for the appalling pics I could not get to light to fall in a sensible place! X

nails inspire...finally!

I really don't know whats taken me so long tp post about these beautiful polishes tbh. But anyway we have:

Frosty morning

This is a glittery, wintery,  thermal polish. It applied beautifully and dries slightly textured, though top coat smoothed it out easily enough and it looked nice either way. The pics are with tc and after wearing it for a day, hence the shoddy tips sorry. AND you can kinda see the thermal-ness! This never happens with me, especially in photos lol. Another huge plus point for this polish is that it has mother's seal of approval. I paint her nails every so often and this is what she settled on when she asked for something seasonal...and believe me she's fussy, out of all my 200 odd polishes thrre are about five she'll wear lol.


Strawberry Jellie

I'm not a huge pink fan but I loved the look of this one. It's just so squishy and juicy, plus holo is always a bonus, and this is a pretty and subtle one. speaking of holo...


Holo top coat

Forgive the slightly distracting context! This is a really effective holo top coat, even though I haven't managed to capture that very well. It applies well, and maintains the colour of the base polish.


????

I don't know the name of this final polish, it's the blue glitter over the white nails. It was very kindly (and totally unecessarily) included by  Kim because she took a few days longer getting the order out than she expected. Anyway it's a really pretty, delicate little polish, with tiny bright blue iridescent glitter and a flakies (is that what they're called?). I like this one a lot...and the ordr wasn't even that late arriving so it was very sweet of her.

Have a look on etsy here. X

Contradictions

So I had a post planned on nails inspire....I've been meaning to post about them for months afterall. But a. I've neglected the mental health side of my blog and b. I kinda don't have the energy tonight.
I haven't really known what to write about... But the other day I was talking to my friend about the contradictions of mental health.
There are the inconsistencies of thought and behaviour. I'm terrified of failing yet I don't study. I pointlessly rearrange people's cutlery draws but my own room is a tip. I'll drive like an absolute lunatic but never ever break the speed limit. I imagine such contradictions occur in mentally well folk also? Still it must be terribly frustrating for anyone living outside my head. And inside my head lol.
Then you have the distance between thought and feeling, knowledge and belief. I know that I suffer from depression and that's why I am not always able to truly engage with and appreciate the positive things in my life. I feel like an ungrateful, unappreciative cow who should get a grip and realise how lucky she is. I can think about the evidence and realise I've managed nine gcse, three a-levels and half a degree. But I'll still believe that I'm a stupid, worthless failure. What you know doesn't always change what you feel. In fact sometimes what you know can make it worse. When the you that knows starts arguing with the you that believes it all gets very noisy and very messy and very painful. Because the knowing wants so hard to set the record straight but belief has never had anything to do with reason. So, whilst positive self talk has it's place it's not always the magic answer to low self esteem.
Thirdly, the huge gap between intention and actuality. Now I know this isn't just a mh thing. All those forgotten resolutions, nicotine patches gathering dust, alongside the running shoes and books on the atkins diet and self improvement. But always people seem to be surprised when sufferers of mental health issues say one thing and do another. If I slip and sh it doesn't mean I was lying when I said I wanted to stop. It doesn't even mean I add lying when I said I was trying to stop. It must means it's really hard to do. In the past I've had issues with taking meds, not because I don't want to be well but because a stupid thought process takes over in which I I feel I don't deserve to be well. I want to be healthy more than anything. But I'd it were as simple as just wanting it there wouldn't be s problem in the first place.

Often it's easy to assume that being aware is the same as being in control. After all these years I'm reasonably tuned in to the patterns of my craziness. But there are only a limited number of times where this is any real use to me. If you sat in a cafe and suddenly saw your car start rolling down the hill you'd be totally aware of what was happening. You could probably make a few guesses why. That wouldn't stop the car though.
It's very frustrating lol. Sorry for rabbiting on about me.... it's not me really I'm just tired and couldn't be bothered with the whole third person, impersonal voice thing lol. In which case it must be bedtime. X

Ps. A poem with some more amusing contradictions from the world of ringing. The missing first line is 'when GO is called noone departs' x

Bonus post: actual effort!

Something that isn't swatches? Blimey! I need to make an effort to do some mh posts soon but this will do for now.
My parents were out for the evening so I figured I'd actually attempt to do something more interesting with my nails. Don't get me wrong one been loving the beautiful indie polishes I've been wearing but yea I haven't played much recently.
Anyway I was looking at the set of technic polishes my friend got me for Christmas, hoping to find a purple. I find two that kinda fit that description.... neither of which I really fancied as a standalone polish. So I figured I'd try a gradient. I confess I'm not great at gradients but they're on my list of 'skills to master this year' alongside stamping.
Of course at this point I remembered that I threw out all my makeup sponges. Not to be deterred I nicked a bit off the end of a washing up sponge. This goes part way to explaining why it's a rather course gradient lol. Still it's an improvement on my last attempt (several months ago now, time flies!) so that's something :). The colours don't appear to have names but they're both from the aforementioned technic set. X

Swatch out! Nelly polish

Oof Yea swatches again :s. And lazy bunging all photos at the end again.
So Nelly polish. This is yet another awesome UK indie. This one is a bit different though: it's dried. This is the creators ingenuous way of circumventing all these new postage issues. They're available in bottles and in sachets and you just add whatever clear polish you fancy.
I bought two in bottles (because im lazy) and one in a sachet (because I like to play). It was really easy to do (though being me I did get powder everywhere decanting the sachet one lol) and kinda fun. It appealed to the child in me mixing magic potions and doing 'experiments' lol.
And I got to choose a clear polish that I love the consistency of so application was really easy.
So, the polishes themselves. Beeny is a delicate Blue with bright orange glitter...I love the contrast and this is actually the polish that drew me to this brand.  Mena is a black jelly base with silver and pale purple hexes plus little purple glitters. Finally teal is.... beautiful. It looks so unassuming in its sachet, but on the nail it's just amazing. And rather camera shy. It's dark and mysterious which in the light flashes a beautiful vibrant.... Well, teal lol.
All of these dry matte, which the etsy description warns about. But then I always topcoat anyway. You can buy on etsy here. X