Aussie Christmas - 25/12 Your Choice!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY! :D I hope you have an amazing and safe Christmas and spend it with the people you love!!

I ended up skipping the challenge on the 23rd 'Santa's Swimsuit' because I tried a few designs and they just turned out horrible so I gave up. :( lol. Sorry! I skipped my own challenge LOL.

Today's post is a scheduled one because I obviously don't have time to blog on Christmas Day! lol. I have seen so so so many cute Christmas manis this year so my head has had so many ideas swimming around and not enough time to create them all!

I decided to recreate this design by Michelle at Cosmetic Cupcake! It's one of the cutest Christmas manis I've seen!

On my pointer I used 2 coats of Sinful Colors Sugar Sugar which is a perfect Christmas red, and topped that with 1 coat of Ulta3 Luck Of The Irish* and 1 coat of Disco Fever*.

My middle finger is 2 coats of Butter London Pillar Box Red and 1 coat of Femme Fatale Cosmetics Shimmering Snowcap which reminds me of snow! :)

On my ring finger the base is 2 coats of Butter London Pillar Box Red, Ulta3 Lily White for the white fur on Santa's suit, Ulta3 Black Satin for his belt, and Essence A Piece Of Forever* for the belt buckle. :)

My pinky is 2 coats of Butter London Pillar Box Red, 1 coat of China Glaze Ruby Pumps and 1 coat of Ulta3 Disco Fever*. This combo is so perfect for Christmas time!

I also found a really awesome Australian Christmas Tag going around so I thought I'd put that at the end of today's post! :D I'm not sure who created this, sorry!

The Australian Christmas TAG!

1. What is your favourite thing about Christmas?
I love being with my family and THE FOOD. Omg we always have the most amazing food. Mmmm. <3 I also absolutely LOVE Christmas lights. <3 They're amazing.

2. Seafood or traditional Christmas?
Traditional definitely. :)

3. Christmas Carols, love or loathe them?
I like the newer, modern ones but the old stuff is boring to me LOL.

4. If you like them what is your favourite?
Idk if this even counts as 'carols'.. but I like the Christmas songs 'Last Christmas' especially by Taylor Swift and the Glee version too. I like all of the Glee Christmas songs actually.

5. Do you wish it snowed here at Christmas or do you like it hot?
I'd love to experience a winter Christmas once in my life but I do love my hot Aussie Christmases! :)

6. What nail polish do you plan on wearing on Christmas day?
Well when this goes up I'll be already wearing something but right now as I'm typing this, I have no idea!

7. Do you put the tree up on December 1st?
Well usually we put it up early in December, but we only just put ours up last weekend actually LOL.

8. What is your favourite Christmas memory?
My brother and I used to make a "plan" on Christmas Eve for what we'd do on Christmas morning. Because we'd usually wake up at like 6am and get in trouble from our parents because we were too noisy LOL.
And one Christmas morning before we went to my auntie's house for lunch, my brother said something to my sister and she threw her cereal bowl at him. HAHAH. I'll always remember that. I don't even know why I find it so funny!

9. Do you have any Christmas traditions?
Hmm.. Not so much anymore. :( I used to go with my dad and siblings at night on Christmas Eve to see Christmas lights but for the last 4 or so years, I've been at church. But I now go to see Christmas lights with my boyfriend around Christmas time. :) We went like 4 times this year lol!

10. What is on your wish list this year?
My number one gift on my list is a new camera for blogging! The one I've been using for the last few months belongs to my mum and we usually want to use it at the same time lol. So I'd really like one of my own!

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to you all! :) Thank you all for following my blog and all your nice comments, it means soo much to me. :)

*Products marked with an asterisk were provided to me for review but this does not influence my opinion in any way. My reviews are 100% my honest opinion. For more information please see my Disclosure Policy.

Aussie Christmas 21/12 - Gold

Hey hey! 4 sleeps till Christmas! :D I am so excited! Usually I don't do anything Christmas-y until the night of Christmas Eve when I'd usually go to church but this year I'm doing Christmas-y things every day starting Sunday (possibly Saturday..?) which will be awesome! :)

For my "Gold" nails I decided to do some stamping! I'm obviously not great at stamping, and I only own 5 or so plates but I love the look of it.

My base colour is Essence Walk On The Wild Side, a nice dark green with a lighter green shimmer. I then stamped over it with Essence A Piece Of Forever from the Breaking Dawn pt 2 collection. It's a warm metallic gold. I would never wear it on its own but I heard it was nice for stamping so I kept it for that purpose. :) I used Fauxnad plate M57 from Born Pretty Store.
Now I know that my stamping is not very good! But I actually also think it may be the quality of the plate I used. Please also excuse my index finger. I screwed it up a few times. :( I still need a lot of practice with stamping I think!

I can't remember if I mentioned it, I don't think I did, but I'm probably not going to post any "new" nail posts for a week or so after I finish the Aussie Christmas Challenge because I am just not liking my nails right now. :( I'm never happy with the shape or length. This doesn't mean I won't be posting  anything, it'll just be NOTDs I never got around to posting, etc. :)

Aussie Christmas Challenge 19/12 - Candy Cane

Hey guys! To start off, yes, I know this theme isn't very "Aussie", but I think almost every country that celebrates Christmas would have candy canes and I had to put at least a few "traditional" Christmas themes in the challenge! ;) Oh. And I changed my nail shape again. Ha! I didn't do a very good job as I'm now seeing in my photos though...

The mani I'm showing you today for the Aussie Christmas Challenge was not what I had originally planned on doing. :( I had planned a really cool-looking water marble and of course, being a water marble, it didn't go to plan at all. I spent 3-4 hours on it before I gave up and decided to do something else!
The mani I decided to do in the end, was inspired by THIS MANI by Chloe's Nails, which I have been seeing all over Pinterest and the rest of the internet! I think her stripes look absolutely flawless and perfecto!

I started off with two coats of Ulta3 Lily White and then taped off my nail using regular tape for the stripes, and painted over the nail with China Glaze Ruby Pumps, which is now one of my all time favourite polishes! After pulling off the tape I had a few mistakes but they were easily fixed up with a white striper. :)
As you can see though, I did have a little smudgey problem on my index finger because of my topcoat. :( I tend to stroke with the brush too many times.

Less than a week until Christmas! Woohoo! Have you done all your Christmas shopping? I don't really wanna go anywhere near the shops until the new year now. It's too hectic at this time of the year!

Aussie Christmas 17/12 - Beach

Hey hey! Today's challenge prompt is Beach! :D I like the beach but I don't love it. I really dislike sand, haha. It gets into EVERYTHING! And also, the beach is usually pretty windy which can be annoying. But I do hope to go to the beach sometime soon because it's now the summer school holidays here so all my siblings are home for the next 6 or so weeks!
So anyway, my beach mani is inspired by all things beach related. :)

On my pointer I used a base of Face Of Australia Once In A Blue Moon topped with China Glaze Snow Globe and then used a dotting tool with Essie Van D Go to paint two little starfish! :) I actually used a tutorial for this, by MissJenFabulous on YouTube.

On my middle finger I was inspired by my sister's new rainbow striped beach towel! I used Ulta3 Lily White for my base, and then freehanded my stripes with a striping brush using Butter London Pillar Box Red, Ulta3 Tangerine Tango*, Frangipani, Sea Breeze Swirl*, Face Of Australia Once In A Blue Moon and Ulta3 Flirty Bikini*. (I will have full swatches of the 3 Ulta3s* soon!).

My ring finger is inspired by the water and sand, which is probably obvious. ;) There's also a little heart in the sand, aww. :P I used Essence Sleepy*, as my base and freehanded the sand with Essence Iced Latte using the regular polish brush. The little heart was done with BYS Fairytale Florals. I used Ulta3 Lily White for the line where the sea hits the sand.

And lastly, my pinky nail is a beach ball! This looked harder than it actually was to do! I used a striping brush with Ulta3 Blue Marlin, Frangipani, and Butter London Pillar Box Red and the base colour was my trusty Ulta3 Lily White.

Phew, that's a lot of polish for one mani haha!
Hope you enjoyed! :)

Aussie Christmas 15/12 - Christmas Tree

Hey guys! :) Today's challenge prompt is "Christmas Tree"! A coincidence because today we put up our Christmas Tree! :) Well, actually, I didn't even know my siblings were putting it up so I didn't help. :(
I'm annoyed I didn't get this up by midnight. :( Haha.

For my mani I used three coats of Sally Hansen Brick Wall on my pointer, middle and pinky, topped with 2 coats of Rimmel Ruby Crush. You could use ANY red user this Rimmel glitter because it almost fully covers the base colour!

On my thumb and ring finger I used 2 coats of OPI Designer De Better (Am I the only one who thinks that's a weird name..? Or maybe I'm just slow and don't get it hahah). Then for the Christmas tree I used a striper to paint it, with Essie Mojito Madness. For the baubles and star I used Ulta3 Blue Marlin, Frangipani and Butter London Pillar Box Red. I also dabbed some of Ulta3 Luck Of The Irish all over the place. Haha.

Hope you're having a great weekend! :)

Aussie Christmas 13/12 - BBQ

I am so sorry to the ladies who joined this challenge. I don't know what was going through my head when I created some of these themes. LOL. Well, it was 1am when I was coming up with them so that might explain it. Even I, the person who came up with these themes, couldn't come up with a design when it came around to this point in the challenge. :( SORRY.

So, of course being summer time now in Australia, we have a lot of BBQs! :) Lots of people have a big barbeque with their family on Christmas Day, but my family actually doesn't do a barbeque on Christmas Day, we usually do a roast lunch/dinner like most people would probably do in the US, being winter, but I absolutely loooooooove my roast Christmas dinner. :D My family has a lot of barbeques in summer time though, where we "chuck some snags and shrimp on the barbie".... LOL. Just a note for all of you non-Aussies: we don't say "shrimp on the barbie", OK?! :P I've never heard someone seriously say that in my whole life. We call them prawns, not shrimp. LOL.

So because I couldn't come up with an easy-to-do barbeque nail art design, I decided to try and franken the perfect barbeque sauce colour! I've heard that OPI's Mrs O Leary's BBQ is a great barbeque sauce colour but I don't own it.
Polishes I used:
Ulta3 Mulberry, Flashback Fuchsia, Bo Peep, and Black Satin, and Essence Fateful Desire as well as a little bit of clear topcoat.

I don't know how close I got to Mrs O Leary's BBQ, but I still like the colour! lol. I tried to make it as brown as possible but if you can believe it, I don't own a warm brown polish that isn't a shimmer or something. :O I fell in love with this franken I made! I will totally wear it again!

Aussie Christmas 11/12 - Elf

Hi! :) I have my 'Elf' mani for the Aussie Christmas Challenge for you today! :) I was so excited about this one because elves are so cute, and one of my favourite Christmas movies is "Elf"! :D

I actually used a tutorial for this one, a Halloween tutorial! But I tweaked the colours to make it a Christmas mani!

Sorry the photo isn't the best. :(

Colours used:
Butter London Pillar Box Red
Essence Bashful
Ulta3 Black Satin
Ulta3 Antique Copper
Essence Make It Golden

So if you couldn't already tell, they're elf shoes! :D I am so happy with the way this turned out! I love it!

Here is the video tutorial I used! It's by PackAPunchPolish on YouTube! She also has a blog and Instagram so make sure you go follow her, she's amazing!

Hope you enjoyed today's Aussie Christmas Challenge! :)

Aussie Christmas - 9/12 Green

Hey hey guys. :) Hope your weekend's going well so far!

Today's Aussie Christmas Challenge prompt is 'green'. Pretty easy after all the difficult ones the past week.. I'm sorry to all the ladies doing the challenge! I underestimated how difficult some of the prompts are! :P Oh well, it's meant to be a 'challenge' right? ;)

I'm kinda loving gradients. For today's nail art I did another gradient! For the french base I used 2 coats of Essence Sweet As Candy. It was still a bit streaky at 2 coats, I probably could've done a third.
I then sponged on Piper Polish Peace, Love and Rainbows* a little more than halfway up my nail, concentrating it most on the tip. I then did another layer of sponging, only on the tip. It looked a bit less gradient-ish than I wanted it to but I still like it.
Then I topped the whole mani with Ulta3's Luck Of The Irish, a really pretty green glitter! :) I did one coat over the whole nail, and then added a bit more glitter closer to the tips.

Holding China Glaze Ruby Pumps - so Christmas-y :)

Have a great day! :)

Aussie Christmas - 7/12 Summer Sunset

Today's Aussie Christmas Challenge mani is gonna be kinda similar to my 'Pool Party' one... Sorry! I didn't really think about it enough. x)
I think almost all of us will do really similar manis for today's challenge prompt. :P

Before I show you the mani, I wanted to say that yes, I'm experimenting with a new nail shape. I have a more rounded shape now. I think it's a bit more flattering on my hands but I'm not totally sure how I feel about it just yet. My nails grow fairly fast anyway so if I end up hating it, it won't be long before I can file them square again. :)

So anyway, I chose to do a sunset-esque gradient accent nail! I don't think I did a super good job of it looking like a sunset but oh well, I still think it's pretty. :)
The polishes I used were Essence Break Through, Cotton On Neon Orchid and Ulta3 Frangipani with a regular kitchen sponge for the gradient. It actually worked a lot better with the kitchen sponge than previous gradients I've done, which I've used a cosmetic sponge for.

Have a great weekend! :)

Oh also - a reminder! My HTF China Glaze "OMG" auction ends tomorrow night at 11:59pm South Australia time! Go HERE to bid on it!

Aussie Christmas - 5/12 Pool Party

20 days til Christmas! :D WOO! Who else loves this time of year as much as me?!

Today for the Aussie Christmas Nail Challenge, the theme is pool party! Christmas and summer time in Australia usually involves going to the pool, or going out in your backyard if you're lucky enough to have a pool! Or running under sprinklers, which is what I did when I was a kid lol. I've never had my own pool but always wanted one and have always loved swimming at the pool. I'm not a massive fan of the beach, it's alright, but I prefer the pool!

My nail art today is inspired by my board shorts! I was going to use my tankini as inspiration but they're just blue, red and white, like the Aussie flag and I've already done Aussie flag nails before! ;) My boardies are a sunset sort of print, with palm trees all over.

My boardies

I used a base of Ulta3 Lily White, my favourite white. It's almost opaque in one coat! Perfecto. :P

I then did a gradient using Cotton On Body's Neon Orchid, Essie Fear or Desire and Ulta3 Frangipani. The technique I use for gradients can be seen in this tutorial by MissJenFabulous on YouTube. I drew a palm tree on my ring finger using my black BYS nail art striper (which I actually just dropped on the concrete outside and I'm surprised it didn't smash).

This is easily the most vibrant nail art I have ever done, haha! I love it!

Elissa xx

Aussie Christmas - 3/12 Six White Boomers

Today's Aussie Christmas Nail Challenge is a bit of a fail. I thought it was clever as a theme but then I actually thought about it and I was like ... wait how am I supposed to do that on my nails!??! LOL.
I'm so sorry to all the ladies doing the challenge because it's so difficult hahaha.

If you don't know what a 'boomer' is, it's slang for a kangaroo, I guess. Haha. And Six White Boomers is a song by Rolf Harris.
Videos here (Blogger won't let me embed a video for some reason) if you're interested: YouTube Search: Six White Boomers.

If you're not Aussie (or maybe even if you are) you'll probably think it's really strange. :P I guess we can be a strange bunch.

This is the picture I used for inspiration.

... No, it didn't turn out much like my inspiration. LOL.

I did two coats of China Glaze Dorothy Who for my base. It's a freakin' beautiful blue jelly with blue and silver microglitters.

Then I painted six white... boomers (more like blobs!) and Santa in a sleigh, and some stars on my pinky.

Hahahahaha I think it looks ridiculous. Don't judge.

I promise my nails for the other days will be better. :P

Elissa xx

Aussie Christmas - 1/12 Red

Hey guys! Happy December! :D

Today is the first day of the Aussie Christmas Nail Challenge! Woohoo! I had hoped to get it up on here earlier today but I was busy all afternoon!

I wanted to create this challenge because the other challenges out there are all related to winter and it's definitely not winter here haha! We don't really celebrate Christmas that much different than people in other countries though. It's just hot here! I'd love to experience a cold Christmas someday but I really love my summer Christmas. :D

So the theme for today is red. I chose to keep at least a few of the days in this challenge a bit vague so you could go for some really intricate nail art, or something more simple like what I chose to do today. :)

Today's nail art, if you can even call it that, is one of those that is gonna be pretty simple because I didn't have a lot of time to think about it haha.

I started with a base of Ulta3 Antique Copper. It's a frosty metallic coppery gold with what looks like orange microglitter/flecks.
I then used Ulta3 Black Plum and freehanded the half moon. This is why it doesn't look exactly the same on each nail. :P I don't have any of those circle stickers that everyone uses to create this look. I realise that it's not exactly 'red'... It looked more red in the bottle I swear. It's a deep purple-ish red with a whole lotta shimmer!
I wasn't super happy with the way this looked, because they were a little messy. So I put a little bit of Milani Jewel FX in Gold on a piece of paper and used a dotting tool to place the glitters on my nail which sort of covers up the unevenness. :)

This was relatively easy to create and I'd love to try this again with some different colours! :) If you have any suggestions for colour combinations let me know! I'll probably try to pick up some circle stickers I can do this a bit better next time.

Elissa xx