Polish All the Nails

Ok! Long time no see, blah blah, look, new glitter!  CAN YOU EVEN WITH 24 DIFFERENT COLOURS OF 1MM SQUARES???!!? SPARKLY, SPARKLY SQUARES.  Seriously, the glitter is so sparkly and the squares nice and even, you can create even the most intricate patterns.  OMG I SHOULD DO MARIO.  Shh, pretend I didn't say that.  Anyway, shall we look at the newest glitter available at The Sparkly Shop ?

I don't know what it is, but there's something about hex glitter that is very pleasing to me.  The tessellation, the way the colours can interlace, it's just great.  The problem is, the tiny glitter - my favourite - is actually quite difficult to find. The red, especially, difficult to track down.  I FINALLY FOUND SIXTEEN COLOURS BIATCHES.  THUS, RAINBOW-Y-EST RAINBOWS EVER AND I'm sharing too at the The Sparkly Shop ... But we're here for this rainbow today.  LOOK AT THIS WOULD YOU.

Imma pretend I haven't been a bad blogger who doesn't post much and instead focus on showing you something I'm proud of.  Many of you know I started a shop with a friend of mine a while ago, selling all the glitter and charms that magically accumulated at my home.  The Sparkly Shop is doing super awesome, especially with our monthly subscription boxes .   I want to keep everyone stocked in new and exciting things so I'm now making Fancy Nail Vinyls!  These Art Deco Wifi Symbols work really well in a reciprocal gradient.  Let's take a look, shall we?

Oh hi!  Did you have a good holiday/break time thing?  I did.  I did lots of sleeping which, when it's cold, is just about my favourite thing.  So cozy, with so much cat hugging time cos she's cold too.  I've been doing some nails but I've just not been super feeling many of them.  My real nails have having a bit of a rough time with the weather and then using acrylics doesn't help in the long term.  Anyway, time for some eye-meltingly bright neon watermarbling!  With gold unicorns !  Cos they go with everything!  Woo!

Ever have those days where you just can't make up your mind?  Of course you have.  That's me with these nails.  This is the first time I've tried a glitter placement on pointy nails and it's surprising how much the shape can affect a gradient.  I was going to go with the gold-green-blue gradient but then the black and white was cool and then I'm like ooo purple and stuff whatever.  At least the glitter is good.  Let's take a look at Rainbow Indecision Nails, shall we?

I've been working with hex-shaped glitter for years now and let me tell you, switching to triangles is quite the revelation.  There are so many new patterns and shapes to make, especially when you have fifteen colours to play with.  My current favourite thing to do is to make aztec-inspired patterns, mostly because the triangles in said pattern are such a PITA to create by hand.  So, let's take a look at my latest triangle thing, shall we?

Stars! Yeah! Woo!  I used to hate star glitter cos you'd always get bits sticking up and catching on everything.  Turns out that doesn't happen when your stars are teeny and adorable.  Yess.  It also makes me feel clever when I use matte glitter over holo polish.  No idea why but I feel like I'm inverting a paradigm.  And then I get to feel even more superior for spelling paradigm correctly the first go.  IM SMART GUISE.

Ok!  So.  Stuff.  I've had an interesting few weeks lately.  My mum came to visit and we got to surprise her with a trip to Curacao and it was so awesome.  I saw soo many fish, seriously, if you like diving or snorkeling even a little it's like paradise.  All this plus work means blogging is hard so here's something I did a little while ago.  It's glitter, but it doesn't take a million years to do.  Hooray! Sparklies, stuff, blah let's go. 

Ermerger guys, I don't have any glitter on me!  Well, I do, just on my nails.  I always have glitter on me.  And cat fluff.  It's funny how often my bf comes home with glitter in his beard.  That means it's been there all day... Anyway, new nail vinyls mean something a bit different.  I swear I'm not actually obsessed with mermaids, it just seems like it... Anyway, again, shall we?

Less complaining, more nails is now my motto and dammit that's a thing I'mma do.  Let's call these my nails for the Flowers prompt of the 31DC2014.  I rarely have a concrete idea in mind when I do my nails and this a good idea of how an idea evolves into pretty decent nails, if I do say so myself.  Let's take a look, shall we?

Do you understand the pressure for someone like me to have a challenge prompt like "rainbow"?? It's a lot of pressure.  I love rainbows and do rainbows a lot so having to do rainbow on command is hard.  So I have these triangle studs I haven't used yet.  Two problems, why not make a solution?  TRIANGLE RAINBOW STUD NEON THINGS YES.

Hot damn do I love neon studs.  I mean, look at how awesome they are and are .  And saying hot damn.  But mostly neon studs.  They have this awesome smooth texture and THEY FRICKING GLOW UNDER BLACKLIGHT.  The only way these could be more awesome is if they were somehow holo too but I think I can survive.  I really should come up with a new pattern....eh.  I have soooo many too, if you're interested ..... NEONNNNNNNNN.

Laura is a happy Laura cos Laura has shiny dinosaur nails!  Woo!  I have fought long and hard with these metal whatevers and I finally defeated them.  Which means I get dinosaur nails!  They're even better when they're paired with a sparkly multichrome polish, even if it is brown.  Rawr, I'm a Laurasaurus :D 

TRIANGLES.  TRIANGLES.  THEY ARE AMAZING.  Also, still surprisingly pleased with the Sally Hansen Miracle Gel polishes.  SHINY.  TRIANGLES.  BAM.

Nail foils are so amazing in theory.  Super shiny, super holo and really quick to do.  However, as soon as you move or apply top coat, they die.  Thus, the eternal quest to find a top coat that doesn't ruin the finish of the foils.  I FOUND IT.  Sally Hansen Miracle Gel top coat DOESN'T KILL FOILS.  To prove it, I thought I'd have a go at doing nail foil stripes and it turned out awesome except for where I kept trying to cover up the gaps.  SHINNIEEEESSSSSS!  Oh and of course I need charms . 

Can I just first up how grateful I am to everyone being so supportive of The Sparkly Shop?  We've just passed our first monthaversary and it's just been amazing.  So thank you!  The triangle glitter sets though, hot damn.  I had a feeling they might be popular just because you don't see it very often but the orders have been ridiculous!  Since I did a full coverage one the other day, I thought I'd show you something you can do with it that doesn't take quite as much time. 

It's hardly a secret how much I love sparklies.  If it were at all practical, I would make my middle name Sparkly.  Laura Sparkly Tucker.  That does have a nice ring to it.  Anyway, this adoration of all the sparklies means just about my favourite thing ever is dazzle glitter .  It's like a bunch of tiny pieces of glitter were smushed together into a larger piece.  And oh, so sparklies.  I've done red and silver manis using this glitter before so that's the perfect excuse to use the pink.  That makes sense, right? 

So I conceptually get dotting tools.  They're a good idea and some people have done amazing things with them but I just can't get a satisfactory result of them.  The dots are  never completely even.   That's usually when I say screw it and use glitter.  I LOVE YOU AND YOUR CONSISTENCY GLITTER.  Especially circle glitter.  And unicorns always make things better.  

GLITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.  I'm Australian so it's still aaaaaaar.  It's been a while since I've done a good mermaid glitter placement so I did that.  Some of the macro photos show why it's not the best idea to try to do glitter placements when you're tired cos they go a bit wonky but over, sparkly.  So the question I get asked the most is where I get my glitter from.   WELLLLL on Friday you can get some from me.  At The Sparkly Shop .  In very limited quantities because I may be a glitter hoarder but I'm not that much of a glitter hoarder.  Also charms.  Anyway, on to the pics!

I don't have quite the same volume of time free to do my nails I used to, because I now have to commute 20 whole minutes to get to work and I keep falling asleep at crazy early times.  This usually results in me slapping on the nearest polish I can get away with two coats of and then accenting with as many charms I fancy at the time.  Charms are the best for making your nails fancy with no effort what-so-ever.  Yesterday I felt like wearing smiley-face charms with pineapples on top.  It took stablenails on Instagram pointing it out that I'd inadvertently created minimalist Carmen Miranda nails.  THIS PLEASES ME, THANK YOU STABLENAILS.