NOTD: Lavababy

Today's NOTD is a little unusual, but I'm hoping to do more like it in the future.

Since I was just a wee baby newbie on tumblr, I've been following a fanartist who's style I completely adore, called flatbear. She's a fellow geek and she even works in a comic book shop- living the dream! So I made a manicure based on one of her original characters, Lavababy. (the art is with permission but I didn't ask her if I could put a  photo in the post, so this is a link to the image I used for most of my references). I teased this earlier today on instagram with the right hand designs, which were much simpler.

Behold!

My index finger is her dress, my middle finger is her hair (although I may have gone overboard with the flamey bits), my ring finger is her face and her little sideways smile, and my pinky is a kind of abstract of the arm and leg bands she wears. I hope that you like it! This is done entirely in polish, no acrylic paint. Mainly because I didn't have the right colors.

Fun fact: The brown I used for Lavababy's face is chocolate scented!

For the right hand (and the thumb on my left) I went abstractly lava-ish with a black crackle over a gradient base. Do people still use crackle? I miss crackle. Let's bring it back.

NOTD: Roses

Gosh, I haven't done an NOTD post in ages! I've done nail art here and there, but it has mostly been simplistic stuff that just went on instagram and wasn't worth making a whole post about. At the end of the month I'll do an instagram roundup for any who missed it, but yeah. Gotta get back to it.

On that note, here are some freehand roses!

These were surprisingly easy to do, actually. I got so many compliments too! I need to do art more often. All I used (besides the sponge for the gradient) was a detail brush. I kind of wish I'd done something different on the non-rose nails, but I don't mind it like this.

Look, even my right hand came out good!

Polishes Used:
Ga-De Blue Blood (dark blue)
Ga-de Majorelle Blue (medium blue)
Ga-de Azure Blue (light blue)
Ga-de Burgundy Velvet (dark pink)
WOW Cosmetics 415 (light  pink)
Dalia 393 (dark green)
Chic Crazy In Love (light green)

Don't forget to enter my giveaway!

Jewelry: My collection

I'm participating in an Israeli blogger's challenge, and this round's theme is "Collection". Since there are a lot of beauty bloggers participating, I've decided to eschew the obvious choice of my nail polish stash, and talk about something else.

This is not all of my collection, but this is the part that sparks my creative juices: the decorative elements. I do have some other decorative elements squirreled away elsewhere, but these- the crystal and glass and semiprecious beads- these are my muse. I can stare at a box of beads for a few minutes and be inspired to a new project. I love my beads.

I've actually been collecting these for about ten years!

These two were my first ever sorters- the second one is a little jumbled, but these have been with me for so long I can't even remember where half of it came from. This is from back when I mostly used plastic, and glass beads were a rare treat.

This one is my main work box- it's got my most commonly used elements in it, as well as jump rings and crimping beads and such.

I actually took these photos in my brand new light box! I'm still figuring out the best way to use it, but I like these better than they would have come out otherwise.

And since it's a roughly cat sized box, Simon came to visit of course:

Don't forget to check out the rest of the bloggers doing the challenge!

An InLinkz Link-up

Convention! Passover 2014

Man, I keep forgetting to make convention posts. I've been doing them twice a year for three years now, but I've only made one post! Well, here's to a better job in the future.

Unfortunately, this con was fairly underwhelming for me, I had almost no customers. I'd been all excited too, since this year I made a whole bunch of nail decals to speed things up! I mean, I love hand drawn as much as the next person, but when you're at a sci fi convention you're not going to sit for forty minutes while your nails get done. Better a quick base coat and a cool decal or ten.

So here are a couple of clients:

Galaxy nails

Avatar (the last airbender) nails

Avatar nails part 2

Companion cube

Portal nails

Batman nails

Devil's trap (Supernatural) nails

And since I had a lot of down time, I did my own nails too. The white stamping polish smeared a little, but I still like how they came out:

I didn't photograph a lot of cosplays, but a friend of mine dressed up as a character from Death Note (I don't know which since I haven't watched it) 

And I did manage to photograph one cosplay (there were lots of really good ones), this was an amaaaaaaaaazing amazing amazing Winter Soldier- seriously, I'm putting it on the largest size, check out the intricacy on that arm! And the kid who made it is 16. I predict that he'll go places.

And finally, I didn't buy much but I did pick up some Tokidoki figurines:

I got two Spidermans- luck of the draw, I guess! Sadly, I didn't get more Avengers, only Captain America. But look how cute he is with his little hamburger and his skateboard!

For the record, these little fellas measure 4cm high.

Anyway, that's it for this time, hopefully next convention will be more productive. Reminder: Don't forget to enter my giveaway!

2 Year Nailversary Giveaway!

Okay so I'm about a day late, but April 9 is the anniversary of my very first nail polish post! I actually started this blog in June 2010 as a jewelry post, but after three dinky posts I let the blog gather dust for over a year, and in 2012 my nail polish obsession had reached the stage where it needed it's own blog :)

It's been a bumpy ride, since I have been alternating between extremely busy and extremely broke for the past four years of my life, so I've only made ~115 posts in two years, but hopefully things will be looking up soon! I have a convention coming up, some new polishes and techniques to try, a functional camera, and most importantly, a job. True, the job does take up a LOT of my time and I have very little time for proper nail art, but I'm slowly learning to balance things out.

On to the giveaway! Since this is mainly a nail polish and jewelry blog, I will be making two prize packs.

Prize Pack 1: $50 credit at my Etsy store + free shipping

I have used a collage of some of my existing jewelry to show what you can get with it, but if you want you can also commission an original piece just for you! If it's within my skill set, I'm happy to do it.

Since there are a LOT of pictures, the rest of the giveaway (and the rafflecopter) are under a friendly readmore cut :)

Swatched: Superficially Colorful Giggly

Hi everyone! Apologies for my accidental hiatus. But I've got a good post-hiatus comeback- thermal polish!

Say hello to the new indie polish in my life, Superficially Colorful:

I decided to try out a larger photo size today, mostly because I've been thinking about it for a while but also partly because this nail polish is SO PHOTOGENIC. It's amazingly easy to apply- two coats for opacity (although I used three for these swatches) and absolutely no topcoat needed. That shininess comes from the polish all on it's own, baby. I can totally see why Jin considers this her flagship polish- this makes me want to get more and more. The temperature sensitivity is perfect too- it sits exactly in the spot where most of the time it is purple (cold) at the tips and pink (warm) on the base of the nail, but it can go through surprise changes after a gust of wind or a little time in the sun. I wore these for a whole day (although not this swatch- you may have seen a preview on my instagram earlier last month) and I honestly could not stop looking at my hands. I spent the day with a friend, and she also kept grabbing my hands and staring at them in amazement.

Warm pictures:

Cold pictures:

All in all, I will definitely be buying more polishes from Jin in the future. Also, tune in soon, because I will be adding a bottle of Giggly to a prize pack in an upcoming giveaway!

Polishes from Superficially Colorful can be found at her website, international shipping available.


*Disclaimer- this polish was provided to me as a sample for my unbiased review