Guest Post: Nail Jems

Hi ladies! I've got another guest blogger for you today, this time we're graced by Jem from Nail Jems who has been inspired by some Aboriginal art! I love the colours she used in this mani, and I'm sure you will too! So without further ado, let's take a look at Jems' creation!

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First of all I would like to thank the lovely Rachel for allowing me to do a guest post for her amazing blog, I am new to blogging and this is only my second ever guest post, so it's an honour to be featured amongst such talent!

Rachel asked me to do something along the lines of favourite techniques or tools, and one tool that has become very important to me and is so versatile for nail art is my dotting tool. I have used it in so many ways, but I have never done a dotticure before!

I confess that I am not a big fan of polka dots and for this reason I have avoided the dotticure so far, and then I realised that if I didn't like polka dots I was just going to have to get creative, and as I moved to Australia recently I took some inspiration from Aboriginal art! Aboriginal art is amazing, they create an entire image with millions of tiny little dots, and as the Aboriginals are tied to the land much of their artwork is based on Australian nature. So I decided to adopt their dotting method of creating art and did my first Aussie themed dotticure, and I have to say, though not a fan of dots I love it!

Each nail represents a different aspect of the Australian Terrain.

The index finger represents the sun

The middle finger represents the sea

The ring finger represents the hinterland, which is a region of forest covered mountains seperating the coast from the desert behind (which is where I live!)

The little finger represents the desert.

On the thumb nail I decided to feature an Australian animal, and though it's not the most famous Aussie animal, it is my favourite and that's the snake. They are rife here and I have a 3 meter long carpet python who lives in my back garden and showed up as an uninvited guest to my wedding!! This makes me happy, if I didn't move around so much I would have a real pet snake! I love that there are so many here, but some are very dangerous and I have had to attach a venemous snake chart to my refrigerator to know what to keep away from when they show up on my patio!

This was a pretty tricky mani to do as I had to get the dots small enough to form a visible pattern on such a small area as the nail, I think I managed it quite well for a first dotting attempt!

I used a lot of colours in this mani so I will list them all here:

Sun: Sinful Colours ''Hazard'' and Sinful Colours ''All about You''

Sea: YSNY 018, LA Girl ''Mermaids Lagoon'' and Sinful Colours ''Cinderella''

Mountains: YSNY 016, Chresy (no name) and OPI SkyFall Collection ''Live and Let Die''

Desert: Sally Hansen Lustre Shine ''Lava'' Sinful Colours ''Hazard'' Sally Hansen Shine Tech (red but lable has gone!) and BYS Neons ''Shimmer Golden Sands''.

Snake: YSNY 016, LA Girl fruity in ''Blissful Blackberry'', Sally Hansen Lustre Shine ''Lava'' and BYS Neons ''Shimmer Golden Sands''

Some of these polish such as YSNY and Chresy you may never have heard of as they are budget European brands, and others you may not have heard of as I believe they are Aussie brands like the BYS polishes. All of these colours were dotted onto a white creme base, Sinful Colours ''Snow Me White''

I hope you enjoyed my first ever dotticure! If you would like to see more of my work please pass by my blog and drop me some love at: http://nailjems.blogspot.com.au/ 

Thanks again to Rachel for this wonderful opportunity to share my work with you all! 

Jem of Nail Jems x

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I absolutely LOVE her index finger, however with my current Blue obessesion, the middle finger has to be my favourite. Thank you again to Jem for being a guest on Polished Criminails!

Monthly Haul: June

Hi ladies! I'm still deep into my unmotivational stage where I just cannot even think about swatching/writing posts at the minute, and it's starting to bug me! I have multiple swatches in the vault that need editing and posting, but everytime I go to do it, I find something else more interesting to do. I'm in desperate need of some tips to get out of this rut I'm in, so if you have any tricks, let me know!

This is a little late since we're already 2 days into July, and I usually have these published at the end of every month, but hey. Better late than never right? I've been EXTREMELY good this month with my spending, like ridiculously so. I've actually shocked myself with how little I spent on Nail Polishes in June, granted, I have treated myself to 13 new IBD Just Gel polishes to kick start my Nail Tech kit, but those haven't arrived yet so they'll be included into July's haul.

As always, I'll start with the polishes I personally bought and then show the ones I was kindly sent for review at the end.

I started this months purchases at Harlow & Co. after they had a restock of some shades I'd been after for a while. Of course, I had to spend over $50 to get the free shipping, not doing so would have been silly, right?! I picked up 2 KBShimmer polishes in Pastel Me More and Squared Away, 2 Happy Hands polishes in Motherboy and Flowers On The Highway and because I'm wanting to expand my piCture pOlish collection and have been wanting this polish for a while, I snagged Blogger.

I then placed an order on Superdrug online for the two limited edition BarryM polishes whilst they had their free shipping promo. I also ordered NYC - Raindrops which I completely forgot to photograph, however on the bottle, it actually says Blue Sky, so I have no idea what went on there.

Whilst browsing the magazine isles in my Supermarket, I saw that Marie Claire have partnered with Ciate again and are offering 2 mini polishes with every purchase. Unfortunately there was one magazine left on the stand so I wasn't able to see which other choice there was! This is Cookies and Cream with Shooting Star caviar beads.

I'm sure you're all aware if you've seen my last few Haul posts, I'm a little obsessed with NYC at the moment. They're so cheap and amazing quality for the price and I just love their colours. When I heard they'd released a Foil range, I knew I wanted to get them to add to my 'stamping polish' collection so when I saw them in Superdrug on a 2 for £3 offer, I grabbed them all and a couple extra too (I ended up doubling up on one polish I bought so I gave it to a friend).

That concludes the purchases for this month, how good was I?! I'm thoroughly impressed with myself. Now let's get onto the polishes I have kindly been sent for review (which I'm slowly and surely getting around to doing, desperately fighting this lack of motivation I currently have).

I was contacted my Dazzle Dry in the UK to ask if I wanted some of their polishes to review. After seeing so many positive reviews about this brand, I jumped at the chance to try them out. Although I haven't swatched them properly yet, I have worn one of their polishes for a lengthy amount of time and I have to agree, they're amazing! I'll try and get the review of these up as soon as possible!

Jacava (for some reason I've always thought it was Javaca) contacted me at the beginning of the month asking if I'd like to review one of their polishes. After seeing them at Professional Beauty in February and hearing about them on Lucy's Stash, I was curious to see what they're like, so of course I accepted. I do have this polish swatched and will hopefully get around to posting it this weekend, so stay tuned for that!

A looong time ago, I signed up for Rainbow Honey's blogging community thing and had completely forgot I had even done so until I was contacted with a Press Release and that my goodies were in the mail! The best thing about this package? I received all 3 of the polishes I really wanted (with the exception of I Miss You)! As with Jacava, I have these swatched and will have the post published most likely on Thursday! Again, look out for that!

That concludes my Haul for June, again so sorry it's a bit late! Did we purchase any of the same polishes this month? Let me know in the comments! I'm already a little excited to show you July's purchases, I've been a liiiittle naughty. Until then.....

Guest Blogger: Lucy's Stash

Hi ladies! I'm honoured to have such a talented guest on my blog today! I'm sure you're all aware of Lucy's amazing Nail Art creations and if you aren't where have you been hiding?! I'm always in awe of her creativity and a little jealous of how long her nails are! Mine seem to chip/snap off once they get to a certain length :(. Anyway, without further ado, let's hand the reigns over to Lucy!

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Hi everyone,

I’m Lucy from Lucy’s Stash and I’m excited to be doing a guest post for Rachel! I’ve chosen to do a mix & match geometry nails so there’s a lot going on.

Firstly I’ve painted on two coats of A England Fated Prince and let it dry thoroughly. Then I could start painting the nails using Rio Beauty black and white nail art pens from one of their sets. They are the classic nail art pens with small metal tip and a thin brush under the cap.

If you read my blog you know I’m not a big talker so let’s check out the pictures ;)

I’ve done a tutorial for the Jonqal pattern on the thumb and also a tutorial for the pinkie Checked pattern. Hope you like it!

Blog: http://www.lucysstash.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lucys-Stash

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucysStash

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I love, love, love the design Lucy used on her thumb! I may just have to give it a try using her tutorial. A HUGE thank you to Lucy for taking the time to guest blog for me! I know she's a super busy lady! As always, links to her social networking sites are listed above! Stay tuned to see who will be featured next!