who Know's if the Moon's

Ελληνικά / Greek

who knows if the moon's
a balloon, coming out of a keen city
in the sky-filled with pretty people?
(and if you and i should

get into it, if they
should take me and take you into their balloon,
why then
we'd go up higher with all the pretty people

than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away into a keen
city where nobody's ever visited, where

always
            it's
                  Spring) and everyone's
in love and flowers pick themselves

I love this e.e. cummings poem so much. It feels so light and fresh, you’d never guess it was written 90 years ago.

The first sign of spring round where I live is the almond blossoms that suddenly appear at the end of January. They come so early that sometimes I can’t tell straight away whether the branches are covered in flowers or snow. This design was part stamped (Konad m66 plate) and part hand-painted. The base coat I used is Nailtek Foundation III and the top coat is Seche Vite.

base colour: Korres – 82 Ciel
branches: Le Chat CM – 4 Brown
flowers: Konad White, Korres – 17 Candy Pink, Essie – Plumberry
iridescent accents: Misa – Radiant

xxx

Elysse

Fuchsias in the Garden

Greek/Ελληνικά

The fuchsias this season are glorious so it was a bit of a no-brainer what my 'In the Garden' manicure was going to be about!

Base colour: Etude House - GR605 

Stamping polish: LeChat CM - True Violet

Plate: Konad m83

Green leaves: Misa - The Grass is Greener on my Side

Flowers: OPI - Kiss me on my Tupils & LeChat CM - Royal Purple

A rare moment of sunny weather

Experimenting with Dots and Stripes

I felt a bit inspired and was in the mood to experiment with the striper brush and my dotting tools. The result was neither quite how I imagined it nor perfectly neat, but I'm pleased since it's only a first attempt. The more I was doing, the more ideas I was getting and it ended more messy than I initially planned, but that is the nature of experimentation I suppose!

Also, I know that some people prefer to see pictures post-clean up, but I want to mark my progress in not making a total mess when applying polish so I prefer posting my pre-clean up pictures. Eventually I won't be making a mess of my cuticles and my pictures will look neater! Enough with the rant, here's the manicure 

(artificial light)

The base colours I picked are all shot through with a subtle white pearl which makes the manicure come to life, but this element doesn't translate well in the pictures. What a pity!
Base colours (index to pinky)
Misa - Fribbelicious
Zoya - Pasha
Nina Ultra Pro - In a Tiff
Jessica - 687 Au Natural

Stripes
CM Nail Art - 4 Brown

Dots
Ciate - 030 Gold Digga
Nina Ultra Pro - In a Tiff
Misa - Fribbelicious

Comparison: Dirty Greens

Since I have a few colours that seem to belong roughly in the same dirty turquoisy/greeny group I thought people might find a comparison useful. The polishes I compared are:

• O.P.I - Mermaid's Tears
• China Glaze  - For Audrey
• Etude House - V.V.I.P.Green
• Misa - Dirty, Sexy, Money

Bottle pictures

Fluorescent light

Natural Light

Purple Nails: Mononoke's Kusuri Uri

It's geeky time! Following a discussion I had earlier with some friends I was reminded of one of my favourite characters from an animation horror series, Mononoke(モノノ怪)'s Kusuri Uri (薬売り), the Medicine Seller. He is a sort of mysterious psychic detective and amongst other things that add up to make this character amazing, he also sports purple nails and I haven't done purple nails in quite a while so ...

I didn't want to do plain purple though so I did an accent nail where I tried to paint freehand a pattern from his kimono. Here it is: 

The breakdown

OPI - Parlez-vous OPI?

The greenish background is a custom mix of equal parts of Misa - Dirty, Sexy, Money and OPI - Mermaid's tears.

H&M - Moody model (the teal)

Etude House - yellow

The red was a custom mix of Ciate - 138 Snatch and a bit of white. Green cancels red sο it really needed something to make it stand out and a little bit of white was just it. I also picked an orange-based red becuase I didn't want the addition of white to make it look pinkish.  

Too bad the top coat dragged the design a bit! I hope you like it!