fifrildi

A Japanese inspired konadicure

It’s been nearly a year now since my three weeks long vacation in the wonderfully confusing and quite spectacular country of Japan. I simply love Japan and miss it so much. Although I realise that I probably wont be going back for several years, me with a baby on the way and all.

Apart from watching every travel and food show on tv from Japan I can express my longing through a Japanese inspired konadicure followed by a cup of green tea.

My left hand

My out of focus right hand

This is three coats of Essie Ballet Slippers with images from Konad plate S9, Konad special polish used for stamping. I’m especially pleased with the kimono clad girl as that’s my very first multicoloured print.

Water marbling

After an incredibly long blogger-hiatus I thought I needed a manicure with both some ooomph and pizzazz to re-enter with. It was either that or abandon this blog project all together.

This is my very first take on water marbling. I was inspired by CucumPear’s awesome water marbling in greenand after having watched about seven videos off youtube about the bothersome art of water marbling I decided to follow CucumPear’s example and start off with painting my nails in the base colour and then marble on top of that.

I thought this was way easier than I had imagined it to be, and cleanup was ok - I just used a cotton bud soaked in polish remover that I held in a pair of tweezers and a q-tip for the details.

For a first try I must say that I am immensly pleased with the result!

A slight bout of pregnancy…

NOTD is OPI’s Cherry much in love. I adore it. Last week’s were Molten Metal and Earth… But I have not taken a single picture. Which is just as well as my cuticles are a mess and my nails are all crooked from me cutting them in haste one evening.

I have no energy left for anything. My tiny, tiny baby in side my belly has stolen all my ernergy and uses it for growing. Which is good because I want a healthy baby!  But until the baby decides to give some energy back it’ll probably be very slow here.

But I am wondering: Which nail polishes should I buy to celebrate pregnancy? There must be some pregnancy/baby themed polishes out there, or?

NOTD - Matte about Carribean Blue

A couple of days ago I got Essie’s matte topcoat Matte about you in the mail. For a starters the name is adorable, but the best part is that this matte topcoat rocks! Today is the third day of wear (the forth day for the polish I mattified) and it’s just some slight tip wear. The finish is now more satiny, but still in the matte family and I have used lots of lotion and spent the better part of yesterday in the kitchen with some greasy abura age.

In the picture you can see how nice and matte Matte about you made my China Glaze Carribean Blue. It reminded me of those blue chalcs I used to draw on the pavement with when I was a kid.

Matte about you is the best matte top coat I have tried, and I love it! I highly doubt I’ll be sporting very many shiny manicures for the next few weeks; with a slight exception of a trip to Iceland (and I still haven’t decided on a mani for Iceland yet - it must be easy to combine with everything, yet be chic and cool as that is the only way to be in Reykjavik: Cool.). Also - at the first day of my new job (which is just two weeks away now) I’ll probably wear very traditional and more professional looking nails - I have to ease them into my nail polish obsession!

Nails of Someday in the past - China Glaze, Who’s wearing what

This is absolutely a very pretty colour, it’s more subdued than what I usually wear, but sometimes all I want to see on my nails are these discreet colours that don’t scream out at anyone. So I’ve also put in a rather large order of sheer’ish polishes from Essie to broaden my Pretty Polish selection.

The picture is from a couple of weeks ago when I still tried to have long nails. The only problem with long nails is that my nails grow so incredibly fast and after just 3 weeks of OPI’s Nail Envy my nails were ridiculously hard. To top that off my nails curves a lot when they grow - you can see it partially on my thumb here, and it drives me insane because I go from perfectly nice tips to these tips that refuse to be shaped in a … uh… shapely manner faster than you can say “glass file“.

So now they are short again. I’m so fickle.

Anyways. The colour: Pretty, yes? Pretty, pretty, pretty.

NOTD - China Glaze In the Lime Light

I guess I’m forgiven for this being the NOTD of Friday. Today’s NOTD is actually Essie’s Jelly Apple, but I’m not entirely happy with it - could be that it’s not as jelly’ish as I wanted it to be, or could be the gigantic smear on my right thumb since I was a huge klutz yesterday. Yes. Huge. I also burned my right hand on a cup of coffee (1/3 cup of coffee to be accurate, the rest managed to stay inside the cup). Anyways - Jelly Apple will accompany me on today’s sushi adventure, smear or no smear. I am totally beat after spending an hour at the gym with high intensity, that aerobics instructor of mine does earn her money’s worth!

So. Back to Friday. Friday was my last day at my job an I wanted to go out with some pizazz - a combination of so long and thanks for all the fish, I’m out of here, and let’s hope the grass will be greener at my new job. The Husband got to pick my colour and he went straight for China Glaze In the Lime Light.

And it was perfect!

Well, it would have been more perfect if it isn’t for the fact that I have a clumsy gene or something so I managed to get a dent in one of the nail. But, please, look beyond the dent and marvel in the hidden shimmer that this neon-dries-matte-is-transformed-by-top coat has! It’s marvellous and captivating and I spent large parts of my last day fluttering my fingers in front of my face with a happy sigh…

NOTD - OPI Hey! Get in Lime!

It feels like fall here in Norway. It rains and rains … and did I ever mention that it rains? It drives me nuts and have given me a lingering cold to boot. I’m not a happy cat, and sport my wellingtons more often than not. I did buy some very nice and very pretty and rather expensive sandals this year, but they’ve only been worn once.

So - The least I can do was make my nails happy. I missed out on the MAC Peppermint Patti train and am too much of a cheapskate to pay lots of cash for it on the Bay of E. I got OPI’s Hey! Get in Lime instead and I must say it’s a perfect shade of mint, so I’m happy now. To make summer happen on my nails I added some flower decals I dragged home from Japan.

I felt pretty! Oh so pretty!

Left hand

Right hand

No China Glaze today…

…or Seche Vite.

It has come to my attention that the American International Industries (AII)no longer wants their products to be shipped from e-tailers outside the US. And since Norway is firmly placed outside the US these news are unwelcome to say the least.

I have tried to use my google-skills to find out why they have stopped all e-sales but I either my skills are not good enough or they have not given a reason - it’s not like they have to if they don’t want to. The only reason that have come up as plausible through speculation is that they want to charge European prices through retailers. Which sucks as most of these brands are not readily available in Norway and the place that does sell China Glaze in Oslo (Kicks) do not have a full catalogue nor do they get new collections fast. And to boot the price pr bottle is more than $20! And not a bottle of Seche Vite in sight anywhere in Norway!

To me this equals somewhat of a catastrophe. Some might think this is overreacting, but bear with me - nail polish is after all a major hobby of mine, and it’s not an interest that gets funnier or more exciting by having to hunt down common brands and then pay through the nose for them on evilbay. Money spent that could have gone directly into the pockets of AII, so to me this makes no business-sense what so ever.

Boo boo on AII!

A cake for a 3 year old

One of my nephews turned three last week, so my husband and I decided to make him a special treat: A chocolate cake based on the ever popular Norwegian children’s book character Gråtass. Gråtass is a tractor commonly found on Norwegian farms, and my nephew loves these books - and the real life tractors as well.

For this cake I bought a tractor shaped pan from Wilton. I had never used any of the shaped pans from Wilton before so I was very apprehensive when it was time to remove the cake from the pan, but it came out nicely.

Then I decorated the cake with coloured home-made butter cream until my piping hand nearly fell off. I also made a total mess of my smallish kitchen mixing all the different colours and stacking stuff all around. But it was great fun, and even if it had been double the work it would have been worth it. Nothing says “job well done” like a three year old when he realises his uncle and aunt had made a Gråtass cake just for him!

The now famous Gråtass cake

NOTD - Orly Mint Mojito

Well, this is actually yesterdays NOTD. I was inspired by the sudden burst of summer (In  Norway we are always a bit shocked and overjoyed whenever we have actual summery weather during the summer months. It’s hard to live in the North…)

Recently I saw some pictures of MAC’s Peppermint Patti and my lemming for that particular colour came back in full strength. I had bought Orly’s Mint Mojito because it’s rumoured to look pretty much the same, but after comparing my nails to online pictures I think Mint Mojito is way greener. A pretty colour, but greener.

To make it even more summery and festive I put on some hearts and shimmer from a polish I bought on vacation in Japan. I think it looks great, but now that I have removed the polish I can see that my nails are severely discoloured where the hearts were. My nails look like I’ve been a heavy smoker for 40 years or something. I don’t even smoke!

Mint Mojito had great wear on me, I removed it today because I was bored of it not because it had chipped or anything, and I’v had in on since Wednesday. I have noticed thought that all my polishes seem to get better wear after I started using OPI’s Nail Envy under my regular base coat.