Extremely Overdue Procastinated Post

Ok, to begin with - I haven't dropped off the face of the earth (although the enormous amount of time that has passed since I last posted, it must have seemed like it)
A fair while ago, someone posted up information that Viva La Nails had available a sample pack for bloggers, all you had to do was once you recieved your samples was to write a review and to link back to Viva La Nails.

Here is a link to where I ordered the sample pack.

I immediately signed up, and recieved the sample pack quite quickly, even considering the fact that they are based in the UK, and I am in Australia.

Here is what they sent me, which is a totally generous amount of stuff for samples.

And this is where the procrastination set in.
All this really cool stuff, what to try first, and what to do with it.

Here was my first attempt.
Wet N Wild Wild Shine Sunny Side Up


Which probably wasn't too bad (except the humongous ding on my first finger :( )
After this fail, I decided that I needed to take the time to do it properly rather than do a half-assed fail quick manicure.

Basically, that is why I haven't been blogging - I felt that my next post should have been about this, but getting started was the hardest part. Like homework or housework, it needs to be done, and once it has been done it is great, but starting it is the hardest part.

I had also been discouraged by my lack of photographic skills, I would do what I thought was a cool mani, and when I went to take pics, they came out plain awful.

I have since bought a new camera, so crappy photo's (other than operator error) are no longer an excuse.

I am still working on may lack of nail art skill though.

Here are the recent attempts to display some of the samples sent to me.
These decals looked really cool, I just couldn't decide which base colour would work well with these until I was wearing a Butter London polish (Fash Pack) that came free on the front of the Harpers Bazaar magazine a while ago.
When I first used these, I mucked up and put the image face down on my nail and dampened the back of the paper - and had the decal's blank side looking at me. I then realized that you have to dampen the paper backing, and slide the decal from the backing to your nail.
This is the first time that I have used this type of decal, and except for the misaligned one on my ring finger I am really happy with the way that these turned out.
I am particularity happy with the way that the Butter London Fash Pack compliments the colours in these decals, it looks like they were made to go together.

Two of the items that really had me stumped on what to do with them were the tiny small pale blue glass beads and the pink crushed shell.


These were fiddly. To apply, I used a toothpick with Blu-Tack on the end and used this to pick up the balls and stick them onto the topcoat.
I noticed later that when the balls are located on the coloured part of the french, it looks like they are a slightly different colour than when they are on the white, as they allow the colour to show through.



Show allThe crushed shell was another one that I hadn't a clue what to do with.
I ended up deciding that black goes with anything.
On the first three fingers I had a layer of wet topcoat, and individually placed pieces of shell with my bluetacked toothpick.
By the third nail (it was nearly midnight then) my concentration was slipping, so with my pinkie nail I had the bright idea of sticking my topcoated nail into the crushed shell.

F. A. I. L. This resulted in a thick lumpy mess, as you can see. It might have worked better if I let the topcoat partially dry before dipping my nail so that it didn't end up a thick gluggy mess, or if I had the patience to individually place each bit.

Along with the samples that I was waiting for inspiration to strike with, there were some decals that I was "saving" to use at the right time, eg, a few days off from work so that they didn't immediately get trashed (or attract the attention of the supervisor, lol)

I was particularity caught by the stickers on the top left and the top right of the picture where I show what I recieved.
As soon as I saw them, I knew that they would look stunning over black, so I was just basically waiting for the right time to use them.

So what do I do - get ready and prepare my nails with black polish - and grab the wrong decals :(

These are absolutely stunning, or they would have been, over another basecoat.
By the time that I had realized that I had grabbed toe wrong ones - I had already applied four over damp polish, so, nothing for it but to keep going.


These still came out nice, but just think how gorgeous these would have been over a deep red :(
I am still proud of myself though, this pic is absolutely no clean up. It does look a bit messy, but compared to how much clean up that I usually have to do, this is nearly perfect (for me)

Disclaimer - These nail art products were provided to me by the company for review.