Update: Stash list

Since I moved to England last year in November I have been storing my polishes in boxes. This to make it easier to pick them up and move again. This was never suppose to be forever. It's been a great experience, trying to live in another country. It's time for me to move back. Back to Norway. 

I will still visit England as often as possible. I love the shops here; the factory stores, the local markets, towns, and the hills. I have had so much fun. Shopping for nail polishes for friends back in Norway, running around shops with three and four lists with names. I have truly enjoyed it. 

8 months ago, it has been like a very very long vacation. It's time to get back in the saddle, and get back to office-work. Once a Secretary, always a Secretary. 

Before I moved I had barely broken the 150 mark. Now? I counted 279 just before the weekend, and I have picked up 3 polishes since then. 

And I will use this opportunity to show them all to you.  

I recently bought two new boxes for storage. These are double the size of the ones I have been using up until now. I had 8 small boxes.

SmartStore Classic, bought at Clas Ohlson. Very sturdy, and kept my nail polish safe when I flew over to England last year. 

A mountain of polishes.

Sorting polishes after colours is tiring work, Chance is taking a nap after all that work.

All dusted and placed in their new homes. Top right you can see my foils and some leftover greens since their box was full. Might need to get another large box for the greens. 

Blues!

Lilac and Purple!

Brown, Nudes, Greens, Pinks, Black and Greys!

Reds, White, Topcoat and Basecoats, Orange, Yellows, Glitters and other toppers.

Foils, Beads, and four greens that didn't fit in the Green box.

Wondering what colors I got?

Here is the link to my spreadsheet.

Rearranging my stash of plates

For a long while now I have been wanting to do something with my plate storage. 

I went to Poundland and found this small Photoalbum that was 2 for £1. 

Finally.

20 sheets of plastic pockets

What you need

Glue the outside well, and wrap it in the paper, just like you would with a library book / school book. 

Minor wrinkles, but it looks alright.

Glue the edge on the inside and voilà.
I'm stacking them double in one sheet, and only storing one set/collection of plates in each album.

Additional / Optional. Trace the middle on each sheet, and show each pocket into two (horizontal) Cut it open in the top of the lowest part (if it is open in the top of the sheet) to add the plate.
I recommend not storing two plates in each pocket, as that can be very heavy for the plastic.


Previous posts about organizing and how I have stored my collection.

• Declutter the collection
• New Storage for my collection
• Organizing a collection

Watching the Space Debris

This is a part of the Llama Nails, Nerd Challenge. Second challenge is: Space.
One of the W7 polishes I recently bought was Space Debris. I wanted to do something special with this polish and grabbed my hex glitters for some added "debris".

First I started with two coats of Space Debris, and then I added some red and copper hex glitters on my nails and finished it with another coat of Space Debris. 

I suppose this is what you call a: Glitter Sandwich (?) 

Cheeky Girls Challenge: Ship o'hoi

It's time for another Cheeky Girls Challenge. Summer hit in an a ship loads of other challenges so we completely lost track of this one. But we are back. Today me and Mishka from Lacquer or Leave Her! will be showing you two different ways of using this plate.
We selected the ship image on this plate.

To be honest. I did one ages ago (03. may), but wasn't very happy with how it turned out, so I got two for you today.

Let's start with my fail manicure.
I used Sinful Colors - Kissy, it took three coats for full opacity. Then I stamped with Mash - 50, using Wet n Wild -Black. I finished it off using various versions of Cheeky plate - CH49. Two full stamps and two isolated pictures.

Taken and edited 3rd of May, so still with the old watermark.

That's just too messy. Can't use that. I was thinking. See those tiny black spots on my skin? That's thorns. I was gardening like crazy, and had loads of tiny thorns all over my dinky little hands. I feel so sorry for them.

So, when I chatted to Mishka recently, we agreed to take this challenge up again, and really stick to it, and finish the series. We are on CH49, not that many plates left. If you are interested to see all the manicures I have done using the Cheeky Summer Collection you can either enter Cheeky -> in the search box over here, or you can visit my FB page, and there is an album there with all the pictures. 

And now for the second manicure made using the CH49 plate from Cheeky Summer Collection. Let's make this one count shall we?

I started out with two coats of Depend - 246. I think this is the second time I use this polish. Kid you not.
I then grabbed a handful of different colors and got a palette out for some mixing. The colors where as following (I don't have a step to step guide for this).
Sinful Colors - Exotic Green
Beauty UK - Glam Nails Nr. 67 - Bon Bon (sheer orange)
Claire's - 152 (sheer sheer bright yellow)

Since all the colors are somewhat sheer, they work great for this kind of projects.
Mix mix mix and look what we get.
Then I stamped using W7 - White.

And there we have it. A fresh, summer-y pirate manicure. For Mishkas manicure head over to Lacquer or Leave Her!. 

Step out of the box

Often when we talk about being creative, we talk about "stepping outside of the box". To be honest, we now spend so much time "outside the box", I'm not even sure what's in the box anymore. It's like a Schrodinger's Cat thing.

It was the night before Summer Solstice, I was sitting up late watching the night sky.
I came up with this piece of nail art.

What do you think? I know, It's super silly. HaHa.

Where's my Salt N Pepper?

Again?! Ms. Secretary, there is another glitter polish manicure here. 

It was one of those days, I just couldn't for the life of me get a decent picture of this white polish. Sinful Colors - Snow Me White, just didn't want to get photographed. So let's skip that step, and get right to the step where I add W7 - Salt n Pepper. 

This is two coat of Sinful Colors - Snow Me White, one coat of W7 - Salt n Pepper.

I decided to go for an accent and at the last minute picked up my brush and write a little on my nails to finish the look. What do you girls think?

I'm very proud over how awesome my & is looking.

I'm... not so sure about this step.

It's a Rain Forest Safari

Lets go to the Jungle!
Or something like that. This polish has it all. This is so cool, I brought it with me home.
My nail polish collection weight more than me... I think I have hit 300, but can't say for sure until I get my spreadsheet updated.

Barry M - Watermelon makes my nails look so perfect it's insane. EVERYONE should own something like this. The Gelly collection is amazing. I need more of them, thats for sure.
I wasn't actually gonna get these, but I was sent a huge shopping list by a blogger in Norway to get for her in the UK, and most of the Gelly collection was on it. I know she has good taste, so I grabbed one. Only one.
And it was this one.
I love it.

One coat of Barry M - Watermelon, and one coat of Maybelline - Rain Forest Canopy.
I did an accent version of this manicure as well, and not just a layered look. So you can see that the colors are just made for each other.

Pre-topcoat.

After topcoat.

Urban Nails - Review and Swatch

I went to Primark in Manchester and found this little duo.

Let's get our hands dipped in, and see how it looks.

First thing that I notice is that the main color in this set is a sheer sheer jelly. In the description on the back of the box it says to use two coats. Looking at the illustration, you can see that there is no way you will be getting that kind of coverage with two coats. I went on and used 4-5 coats to make it cover more like on the picture. So you get the idea how sheer it is. 

The glitter polish has white and black bar glitters, and white and black medium hex glitters, and tiny tiny round white and black glitters. The description on the box says to use one coat with glitter. 

Dancing in the Moonlight

Dancing in the moonlight
everybody's feeling warm and bright
its such a fine and natural sight
everybodys dancing in the moonlight

we like our fun and we never fight
you cant dance and stay uptight
its a supernatural delight
everybody was dancing in the moonlight

Yeah ... This polish makes me happy. Its the W7 - Moonlight!

I started off with 3 coats of Barry M - Lilac Foil. After 3 coats its still a bit streaky. For the accent I used 2 coats of W7 - Moonlight.
So I decided to have a little moonlight, for Midsummer Festival. For Summer Solstice.

My ship is loaded with Kiwi

I fancied using some of my fimos today, and grabbed them all and spread them out on my table.
I have a few. Last year I was given some fimo stick by a girl I bought some polishes off. One of the sticks have a kiwi image on, so I decided to use that.

Not long ago I purchased Accessorize - Dragonfly. Mishka from Lacquer Or Leave Her! wanted me to swatch this one first, so here it is.
 A milky green polish packed with small round blue glitters. I used three coats of it, and left the long finger for an accent. For the accent I used Sinful Colors - Exotic Green, and I then added three slices of kiwi on top.

A note to be made. This polish; Dragonfly .. it's a bugger to get of, it might just be my basecoat or just my nails or whatever, but I was really struggling with removal here. But look at it! It's a stunner. So worth it!