Sunday 29 March 2015

Making Glitter Nail Polish on a Sunday Night

Sunday night blues are the worst, you know it, I know it and I'm pretty sure that that person sitting next you to on the train on your early Monday morning commute knows it.  So, seeing as I was suffering from those dreaded Sunday night blues earlier this evening (mostly due to the fact that I have to be up at 4:50am tomorrow morning for work), I decided to have some nail polish-related fun and create my own glitter nail polish. 




Back in the January sales, I purchased Ciaté's Nail Lab which was reduced from £80 to £25.  BARGAIN.  This nifty nail kit supplied me with paint pots, top coats, test tubes, a funnel, a scooper, 6 mini nail polishes, recipe cards, labels and LOTS of glitter. 


Ciaté's Nail Lab in all its glory!

Making up the nail polish was so easy and fun, I cranked up the music and felt like a mad scientist (of the nail polish-creating variety.  It's actually a very common type of mad scientist.) as I commenced upon my glitter nail varnish-making journey.  I decided that I wanted a super sparkly silver glitter with holographic confetti strands so I selected my glitters and added them to my test tube using the funnel and then gave it a good shake to mix up all the different glitters.  Once I was happy with my glitter mixture, I simply poured it via the funnel into one of the top coat nail varnishes, shook it up and it was good to go. 


If chemistry had been a bit more like this at school
then maybe I would have enjoyed it more!

I won't lie to you, by the time I was finished, it did look like there had been a fairy house party that had got out of control in my kitchen thanks to the amount of glitter that had spread all over the table and on the floor.  It's easy to clear up though with a wipe down of the table and a quick sweep of the floor so it's hardly a big deal. 



'Sunday Glitz'
One homemade glitter nail polish ready to go!

 What I love about this kit is that it includes labels for you to name and label up the nail polishes that you have created, I named mine 'Sunday Glitz' because, well, it was glitzy and it was Sunday.  I'm pretty deep.  I also used Ciaté's Paint Pot in the shade 'Looking Glass 131' as my base colour under my glitter to make my nails look even more sparkly and eye-catching.


Ciaté's Paint Pot in 'Looking Glass 131'

I have to say as great as Ciaté's Nail Lab is, I'm not sure that I would have paid top dollar for it as £80 seems quite excessive and I definitely would not have been impressed to have seen it go into the sale if I had paid so much for it in the first place.  However, £25 is a steal for such a great concept and piece of kit - not only did I feel mighty creative when making up my nail polishes but I also completely forgot that it was the end of the weekend because I was so caught up in my mad scientist ways (I genuinely should have been wearing a white lab coated, goggles and maniacally giggling away).

My finished nails with Ciaté's Paint Pot in 'Looking Glass 131' as it's base colour
paired with my homemade glitter nail polish top coat in 'Sunday Glitz'

I also purchased Ciaté's Flower Manicure kit in the same sale which I'm going to try out next weekend for Easter so I'll be sure to let you all know how I get on with that but I have a feeling that I'm going to love it just as much as their Nail Lab so you've been warned!


So proud of these beauts!

Monday 2 March 2015

Growing Up and Becoming an Adult

Lately I've become increasingly aware of time slipping through my fingers with not just me, but everyone else around me, growing up and becoming an 'adult'. 

I'm not ashamed to admit that being referred to as an 'adult' has, at times, caused an odd and unexpected wave of panic to rush through my brain and forced me to acknowledge the fact that I am an actual, real-life, official grown up.  I think that a lot of that panic boils down to the fact that I spend more time watching Disney movies than watching documentaries, reading Roald Dahl books instead of listening to Radio 2 and wearing blouses that feature cat-face pockets instead of blouses without cat-face pockets.

 
Cat-face pockets - the pinnacle of my existence to date!
Essentially, it's like my whole being is rebelling against the prospect of admitting that I am, in fact, a grown up now and have been for the last however many years or so. 

Of course there are plenty of great things about being an adult such as not having to have a curfew (I still get a buzz out of staying up past 10 o'clock on a Sunday night.  I'm a rebel through and through.), being independent and, most importantly, having the space and freedom to define yourself and figure out exactly who you are.

The adult world is scary though, when things go wrong you can't blame them on anyone else but yourself and long gone are the days when your parents would write you notes to get you out of PE (or in my case, to tell my school that I was allergic to the mashed potato served in our school canteen*) or pick you up from school when you felt ill.  This being said, it also forces you to take ownership for yourself, when things go wrong you, and only you, can rectify the situation and vice versa, when things are going well, you know that you achieved that success all by yourself which can be a very powerful feeling. 

However, just because I, or anyone reading this post (all two of your probably!), may be considered part of the 'grown up community', it doesn't mean that we can't still acknowledge those things that brought us joy in our younger years - for example, have you tried reading 'Alice in Wonderland' through adult eyes?  It's like a whole new experience, a weird and slightly darker one, but a new experience nonetheless.


So, if you ask me, it's all about growing up in the least adult way possible by not cutting out what made you happy in days gone by, and so if that means that you'd rather listen to 'Now That's What I Call Disney' instead of Radio 2 then hats off to you, because you truly are the best kind of grown up!

*Disclaimer:  I wasn't actually allergic to mashed potato, I just did not appreciate the lumps in it, although I'm pretty sure that the dinner ladies were on to me about this as the replacement for the mashed potato was one huge, under boiled potato instead!  Those pesky school dinner ladies!