Saturday 23 February 2019

More Sharpie Nail Art

Happy Saturday or in my case ugh my head hurts I need my botox appointment.

I can always tell when I need my botox as the migraines slowly creep back in with more pain and last longer. The 12th March cant come soon enough as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway there are more important things to talk about, like polish!

Today I have more sharpie nail art for you, this time I went with a base of My Boyfriend Scales Wall from OPI, this is a very very light grey, great formula opaque in two coats, I picked this up for £5.99 at a beauty outlet store a couple of years ago, I grabbed 2 bottles as its quite a sought after polish.

I then used the Kelly Negri plate KN34 with the butterflies on and I had picked up more markers from Home Bargains at a steal of 99p.

Instead of using a white over the markers I went with Harp On It by Color Club and that worked like a charm, in the sun they sparkled, so cute.

I do love it when an idea I have in my head translates to the nail.



Friday 22 February 2019

Sharpie Marker Stamping

Happy Friday

Today on the blog I have a sharpie stamping manicure and I got my new keyboard, its so nice to type on, and I am loving the rainbow colour fade it does :) you can also pre-set some cool colour effects which I will likely do once I get my PC build, its just doing rainbow at the moment with the MacBook :)

The keyboard is the Cooler Master Masterkeys MK 750. the wrist rest is magnetic so can be easily removed if you dont like that type of thing, personally I like it as it makes you set your hands on the keys correctly and it was easy to remap the keys to function for a mac too.


So today mani is a base of Zoya Allison a stunning one coat deep pink creme.

I then used Lina Nail Art Summer 01 Plate for the flowers and Kelly Negri aka esmaltesdakelly plate KN34 for the butterflies.

The technique is pretty easy to do, you get your stamping plate and the markers you want to use, you then colour the plate in with the markers then layer over a white polish or for a little extra bling you can use a silver holo, lightly scrape, pink up the image and stamp as normal.




Wednesday 20 February 2019

Zoya Misty with added stamping

Happy Hump Day

Today on the blog I have the very unusual ok weird colour that is Zoya Misty, this is a very dusty green creme with a brown and or grey undertone.

The formula was really good no running or pooling and opaque in two coats,

I then decided that it needed something, so I pulled out my trusty Fab Ur Nails Fun 21 plate, its got awesome paint splatter designs and went for it.

I used Virago Varnish Nauseating as my stamping polish of choice as its a tan beige which I figured would be interesting, well I ended up with what looked like mud splattered nails so thats a win, right?

Items used
Zoya Anchor basecoat, Misty and Matte Topcoat
Virago Varnish Nauseating
Barry M Plumpy Topcoat
Clear Jelly Stamper Big Bling
Nail Artisan by Alex Scraper
Fab Ur Nails Fun 21 Plate

The second picture shows the plate in a little more detail, picture three shows Misty on her own without topcoat, love that shine, then shown with the stamping and a matte topcoat.


I think I could do this again with slightly different colours and get camo nails :)








Monday 18 February 2019

Orange nail with Virago Varnish

Hsppy Monday

Today I have some cool orange nails to show you, I got some very cool Snag tights in the colour pumpkin spice which is a burnt orange and I decided to do some matching nails.

I start with one sweet coat of Props on the Flat Top, I then stamped using pumpkin everything. I used my Lina All mixed up 01 plate which is a random images plate with no theme.

My outfit of the day was as follows

Top from Anvil
Skirt from H&M
Tights from Snag tights
Boots by pikolinos





Sunday 17 February 2019

Building a new computer

Happy Sunday :)

At the moment my computer is a 2011 Macbook Pro, last year Apple decided to stop updating the OS (Operating System) and due to my failing sight its time to go back to a windows machine. Another reason for going back to windows is that they have much better options for visually impaired people.

So as a start I've bought myself a new keyboard, I've gone for a Cooler Master Masterkeys MK 750, this is a gaming keyboard that has coloured LED's under the keys, link http://www.coolermaster.com/peripheral/keyboards/masterkeys-mk750/, this has cherryMX brown switches, so its a clicky keyboard but not as loud or clicky if I'd gone for cherry blue switches. When you type all day for your job and then type when you get home a nice keyboard and typing experience is essential and as I also suffer from phonophobia when I have migraine I didnt want super clicky keys, my hubs has a Cooler Master Masterkeys Pro S with cherry MX brown switches and its really nice to type on.

I bet you never knew there were so many different types of keys either, at the moment I am typing on an apple keyboard, the flat one, its a good typing experience but the keys are a little difficult for me to see now as they are white keys with a greyish letter.


If you want to know more about switches on keyboards this is a pretty good video to watch



I've also ordered a NZXT H200 Mini Tower case in blue, link below, I dont need a big monster case like my hubs machine which has to sit under the desk, this is small enough that it will sit on my desk.

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/nzxt-h200-blue-black-mini-itx-computer-chassis-w-tempered-glass-window-mitx-2x-120mm-aer-fans-2x-usb

Thats the start of the machine, next on the list will be a Ryzen 5 gen 2 6 core CPU, 16 GB of RAM, a 1Tb SSD, a power supply and a copy of windows 10, still debating on whether to get windows Office or not, I use google sheets for my Zoya spreadsheet but I havent used their word equivalent yet.

I'm really looking forward to getting my new machine, my poor MacBook is one its last legs, its getting quite slow even though I upgraded the hard drive to a 500GB SSD and 16GB of RAM. The CPU is only a Intel Core i5 2.3GHz think its a first or second gen one.











Zoya Pinks for Valentines Day

Hey guys, sorry for the long absence, been really struggling with motivation lately, the weather is driving me nuts, the cold and damp is aggravating my arthritis and the barometric pressure changes are aggravating my migraines, cant win in winter weather.

Anywho time for some pinks, I joined in a little collab on Instagram to wear pinks leading up to and including Valentines day. I am also wearing a lot of pink to support a friend on Instagram who is battling cancer.

I started with Zoya Fergie a stunning deep magenta leaning pink, this was a one coat wonder! I bet she will stamp as well.

Long post lots of pictures :)

A Zoya a Day
Name - Fergie
Year - 2005
Number - ZP954
Coats - 1
Finish - Creme
Collection - Hugs N Kisses
Colour - Pink
Topcoat - None





Then we moved on to Starla and Ciara, these two were very different to each other, Starla was very sheer with little multi-coloured glitter particles good formula no running or pooling though, I think I'd wear her as a topper next time, while Ciara was this deep plumy pink with a red undertone, this has a great formula no running or pooling, opaque in 2 coats.

A Zoya a Day
Name - Ciara
Year - 2009
Number - ZP487
Coats - 2
Finish - Creme
Collection - Dare
Colour - Pink
Topcoat - None

A Zoya a Day
Name - Starla
Year - 2006
Number - ZP328
Coats - 3
Finish - Metallic
Collection - Glitterati
Colour - Pink
Topcoat - None





Next up we had Ellie and Kali who looked very similar in the bottle but were different on the nail. These two were perfection formula wise, opaque in one sweet coat :) Ellie is slightly more blue toned than Kali who had a reddish undertone.

A Zoya a Day
Name - Ellie
Year - 2018
Number - ZP944
Coats - 1
Finish - Creme
Collection - Sunshine
Colour - Pink
Topcoat - None

A Zoya a Day
Name - Kali
Year - 2000
Number - ZP274
Coats - 1
Finish - Creme
Collection - Classic
Colour - Pink
Topcoat - None





Almost there, last one we have the gorgeous Dawn, naughty Dawn didnt arrive with a label so I had to hand write one. This was almost opaque in one coat, great formula no running or pooling.

A Zoya a Day
Name - Dawn

Year - 2000
Number - ZP183
Coats - 2
Finish - Creme
Collection - Classic
Colour - Pink
Topcoat - None




Wednesday 6 February 2019

Nail Art Challenges

Today on the blog I have some Nail Art Challenges I've been taking part in on Instragram.

If you'd like to follow me there, I dont just post nail polish, theres cats and alsorts.

https://www.instagram.com/thegoodbyegirl1804/

The first challenge for February was lace, so I started with a base of 2 coats of Virago Varnish She Cries Everyday, a lush bright pale blue.  Then I grabbed my fav stamping plates from Maniology aka Bundle Monster as I knew of the perfect lace stamp, I love the ripped design with the rose and Zoya Ryan stamped like a dream, I much prefer having duel purpose polishes than buying into the whole *you must use stamping polish* thing, I own some actual stamping polish and quite frankly I wish I hadn't wasted the money on them. I topped my design off with Barry M Plumpy Topcoat, best drug store topcoat, its shiny it dries fast and it doesnt smudge stamping.  Then I threw on matte topcoat, using Zoya Matte topcoat. My stamper of choice is always the original Big Bling from Clear Jelly Stamper, mine is beat up but the heads are replaceable so its all good.

Carries on after the pictures.





The nest prompt for the challenge was Wedding, this was kinda tricky as well what does Wedding mean? Is it the flowers, rings, expressions of love? Who knows, I went with love birds, rings, hearts and abstract.

I started with a base of Zoya Anchor the only basecoat I use, then one sweet coat of Zoya Ruthie, this is a deep mauve pink I then grabbed various stamps from several different plates, 3 Maniology plates and 2 El Corazon plates.  I stamped using Sally Hansen Pronto Purple which is an Insta-Dry formula and it stamped really well, I hope you can see the flash of blue shimmer in the shiny pictures. I then once again topped with Barry M Plumpy and then Zoya Matte topcoat.








Friday 1 February 2019

Migraine is hell

Well January was going so well then on Tuesday night I got a mirgraine, which turned into hell on Wednesday, I haven’t had such a bad migraine for years, I spent all day Wednesday sleeping or hurling my guts up.

Below is my sleep info as I wear a Fitbit to track my exercise and sleep. So yeah it’s taken me until now to get over this monster, and that gap from Wednesday night I’m not sure how that got there because I was asleep. Never sleep so much ever, I really don’t like this time of year because of the issues with the barometric pressure changes, today its supposed to go from 998 to over 1020 in the space  of the day.

I couldn’t take any meds even or drink or eat the nausea was awe full, I was sipping liquids but even that was getting hurled back up again.