My Birthday Giveaway is FINALLY here!!!!

You read that right, after being unwell and unable to get it sorted for a while it's finally go time! :D
To the right there are two rafflecopter widgets where you can enter to win the goodies below.
One is for New Zealand residents ONLY, please please please do not enter this one unless you have a New Zealand postal address. If you do your entry will simply be disqualified and the winner re-drawn.
The other widget is open internationally, if you are 18 or over and you have an address you are eligible to enter! ;)

Now onto the good stuff - the prizes!!!

International Prizes:

 $25 Gift Voucher from Pretty Serious

 The Polished Kiwi 'Purple Fairy' 15ml

 The Polished Kiwi 'Good vs Evil' 15ml

 Nail Juice 'Oil Slick' 5ml

 Happy Polish Jewellery 'Alice' Necklace and adjustable ring set

 Just Nails 'Dance 24' Nail Art Brush

 Ciate 'Corrupted Neons' Nail Polish Kit

Plus 100 x 2mm swarovski crystals (sorry, my camera wouldn't play ball when it came to photographing them)

_______________________________________________________________

New Zealand ONLY Prizes

 Peacock Pie Polishes 'White Gold' 'Black Gold' 'Midas' 10ml

 Shiny Cottontips Necklace

 Shiny Cottontips Earrings

 Glisten & Glow HK Girl Top Coat

 Polish Armoire 'Opal Asylum'

 Pure Color 10 Nail Art Brush

L.A.Girl 'Ombre' Nail polish kit

The giveaway is open for 2 weeks from today and the winners will be notified by email within 2 days of closing. They then have 1 week (7 days) to respond or another winner will be drawn. Good Luck everyone!!!

Italian Marble Nails

Just after I finished these nails I noticed quite a few people on instagram had had very similar ideas - maybe a new trend emerging?
The technique I used has been around for quite a while and the results are always fun and interesting. You can get so many different looks from this one technique, if you want to try it for yourself click here for an easy to follow tutorial (not affiliated with me in any way)
For my look I first painted all of my nails (after a base coat of course) with OPI 'Black Onyx' and applied a coat of fast drying top coat to speed up the drying process for the next step.
Once everything was completely dry I cut some pieces of washi tape and taped off the triangular sections on my nails. I placed drops of OPI 'Alpine Snow' and 'Black Onyx' into the open section of my triangles one at  time, covered them with a piece of plastic sandwich baggie and kind of 'smooshed' the polishes gently for a second to blend them, removing the plastic then the tape straight away for clean lines. The thing I love the most about this technique is if you don't like it the first time, just add another drop or two of the colour you want and smoosh again ;)
After I had finished all of my 'marble' triangles and let them dry I outlined them with a thin line of silver acrylic paint and then sealed it all in with my favourite top coat, HK girl from Glisten and Glow.

I'm really quite pleased with how these nails turned out :)

 

Thanks for joining me, have a wonderful day wherever you are!

K xx

Heroes in a half shell and long lost loves - TMNT

When I saw there was another incarnation of one of my favourite cartoons of my (relative) youth, I knew I HAD to do some nail art to celebrate!  I can still name all four of them too, can you? (No googling!)
Although I'm a bit old school and much prefer the cuter version of the late '80's than the more 'realistic' looking ones of 2014.
I mean let's face it, there's nothing 'realistic' about four turtles living in a sewer, eating pizza and taking instruction from a rat!!?! lol Even so, it's still one of my favourite old cartoons and although I always enjoy doing my cartoon nails, this is definitely one of my favourite mani's I've done to date.


Polishes used:
OPI - 'Alpine Snow'
Orly - 'Iron Butterfly'
Glisten and Glow - 'HK Girl top coat'

There's method in my madness .... somewhere

On my white nails I started with their  heads, simply because I'm impatient and wanted to see how they would look and I still hadn't entirely decided what I was doing in the background - Pizza?Sewer bricks?Pizza?Sewer bricks?Ooh maybe a star burst?
Happy with my turtles I started experimenting (turned out I liked the sewer bricks best) and ended up entirely covering my base polish with my acrylic paints lol talk about doing things the hard way ;)

On the Orly nails I very carefully painted the new TMNT logo with acrylic paint. Considering how much my hands shake, I'm really pleased with how it turned out :D
I sealed everything in with two coats of My HK Girl top coat to help extend wear - especially where there's a lot of paint at the tips.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

(heroes in a half shell)

 Thanks so much for stopping by, have a wonderful day wherever you are :)

When all else fails ... Nail Art!

So I mentioned a while ago I was in the middle of trying to buy my house. It's all very complicated and stressful and it's getting very drawn out and I'm really not a very patient person, nor am I very good with not knowing what's happening where, when, why and how. Basically I don't handle stress very well or stress doesn't handle me very well, either way I've been a bit of a wreck. I've tried all sorts of different ways to relax and de-stress but my mind seems to want to ping back to catastrophising - that is totally a word by the way
Anyway, the only thing I have found that really seems to settle me down is ...






wait for it...







Nail Art! Well yeah, you kinda knew that was coming didn't you? I just get transported to another place when I'm painting. My breathing slows down, my jaw un-clenches and my mind clears of everything but what I'm doing right now. There's no sense of urgency to it, just slow careful strokes and then waiting for each layer to dry before moving on to the next. A forced stillness. Careful consideration of each line or dot, the concentration of painting with my non dominant hand so they both match. and the satisfaction when the final top coat glides on. The best kind of 'Therapy'

Here's what this week's therapy produced:

Inspired by Kimiko7878 on Instagram

 

The base polishes used in this design were Orly 'Iron Butterfly' and OPI 'A Grape Fit' with the details being added with my acrylic craft paints and my pure color 10 nail art brush. It was all finished with two coats of Glisten and Glow HK Girl top coat.

I really enjoyed painting this one, maybe I should do more florals?

Thanks for reading. Have a wonderful day wherever you are! :D

One Stroke, We have Success!!!

After watching probably hundreds of tutorials on the one stroke painting technique, attempting too many times to count and failing miserably. I came across This tutorial by Tartofraises on You Tube - she's an ahmaazing French nail artist with incredible brush control and she makes everything look so easy - anyway, I figured I stood a chance at success with this design so off I set.
I painted my nails with a base of OPI 'My Boyfriend Scales Walls' and added a coat of China Glaze 'Matte Magic' held my breath and jumped in.
AND IT WORKED!!!
It even looks pretty good (if I do say so myself, which I obviously do because I just did :P ) I just used my regular acrylic craft paints, nothing special and a flat brush approximately 5mm wide that came in one of those cheap nail art brush sets that you buy online.
I added some slightly OCD paint 'splatters' to add a bit of colour and then topped it with two coats of my fave top coat - Glisten and Glow HK Girl. Why always two coats? Because I hate my nails not being completely smooth and often one coat isn't quite enough to take all the bumps out. Plus it gives it added protection and wear time, I can usually get a week out of my mani's with the two coats but everybody's physical chemistry will be different ;)

Such a proud moment!

 

Thanks for taking the time to read, have a wonderful day wherever you are! ♥

Me and you and a dog named Chester

At the moment I'm in the middle of applying for a mortgage to buy the house I live in. Well...... I already own the house I live in but it's a long story :/ Anyhoo  the bank are taking their sweet time making a decision, or at least letting me know what's going on with the process.
About the only thing that's been keeping me sane during this whole thing (and it may sound silly to some) has been my nail art.
The simple repetitive process of applying the polish, the forced calm while you wait for each coat to dry. Then the drowning out of the rest of the world as you concentrate on those tiny strokes that will (hopefully) become something beautiful and worthy of being grabbed and exclaimed about.
When I'm not painting my own nails I'm practicing on false nails, testing out new and different designs and techniques.
It's still Winter here in New Zealand, so during the day it's just me and my dog Chester

 inside by the fire having in depth conversations (he's more of a listener than a talker) solving the world's problems as I paint.
He usually gets the best spot in front of the fire, but I don't mind, my paints dry too fast there anyway ;)

This is what today's efforts have produced:

Over a white base I sponged a gradient of Essie 'Where's my chauffeur?' and 'Absolutely Shore' then added a coat of Glisten and Glow HK Girl top coat to blend. With my fine detail brush and acrylic paints I added my daisies first, then my swirled 'roses' and some little dots of babies breath to fill in the gaps. Two last coats  of Glisten and Glow HK Girl top coat to give it a smooth finish and a gorgeous shine!

I hope you're having a lovely day wherever you are! ♥

My First Blog Post Ever .... please be kind :/

Wow, so I'm actually doing this, starting my own blog.
I guess I should start by introducing myself? Obviously as the title would suggest my name is Kyleigh, I live in the beautiful small town of Motueka located in top of the South Island of New Zealand.
I love everything nail related and have a particular passion for nail art. I currently own around 900 - ish polishes (I'm actually too scared to do a proper count ;) ) and I have recently converted a spare room into my polish room (so they can breed in private ;) )
I'm a collector of everything Wonder Woman or English Bull Terrier related.  I have an 8 year old EBT named Chester who is basically a 3 year old in a dog suit who is a constant source of amusement!
I'm fast approaching my midlife crisis - a.k.a. my 40th birthday in October (Aarrrggghhh!!!!)
Below is a little taste of things to come, I hope you'll join me on my journey into blogdom :)

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