Canberra Cavalry Season opener

A quick scheduled post for tonight, because I'm currently out at the season opening game of baseball.  My husbands team (yes he is still playing in the national league dispute his very veteran status) the Canberra Cavalry is playing Sydney tonight and tomorrow.  Just like I did last year with my series of Cavalry nail art, here is the different design I have come up with this time.

I used Ulta3 Lily white, Picture Polish Citrus and Ulta3 Black Satin.  I did all the lines free hand using a line striper brush. So just when I thought I was all done wearing orange now that Halloween is over, I have to pull out my orange shades again.

Here's hoping they start the season with a win, and for anyone in Australia that's interested in sports, you can watch a highlights program of baseball, featuring tonight's game, next Thursday 8 November 4-5pm on Fox Sports.  I must remember to IQ the show, cause really how often does ones husband appear on Foxtel (plus I can show the video to the kids to explain why Daddy isn't home again - yes, gumpy baseball wife coming out in me again).

Cavalry baseball nails #5

Today was the last home series for the local Canberra Cavalry in the Australian Baseball League.  The team were in second place on the ladder before the series and now they are tied for third place with three other teams.  The boys lost four straight games on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, so in an effort to change things up a bit, I painted some Cavalry themed nails, grabbed the kids and headed out to the last game today.

For past reference here are Cavalry Nails #1, Cavalry Nails #2, Cavalry Nails #3 and Cavalry Nails #4.

Let me say I'm no Jane from Nailside when it comes to tape manis! The macro zoom does me no favours, cause you can see all my bleeding lines and dodgy black stripes. But from a distance these looked really awesome and I had several comments!

I did one coat of Ulta3 Lily white, one coat of Kleancolor metallic white, then did the taped sections using Kleancolor metallic orange.  I used a long striping brush dipped in Kleancolor metallic black as the pin stripe. The a coat of Seche Vite top coat.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, my nails clearly made all the difference again today cause the boys finally came away with a win!

Easy Nail Art Stamp revisited with baseball nails #4

I posted about these soft nail art stamps back in March. If you've read that post you'll see that I didn't have much luck using them.  I received a follower request asking me to do a follow up review.  So here goes.

We had another home series with the baseball on the weekend, so I had to think of something new to do with my nails.  I've already done Cavalry Nails #1, Cavalry Nails #2, Cavalry Nails #3.  This seemed like a perfect time to pull out the baseball soft nail stamp.  I chose to do a very simple design with one colour, just to see if I could get it to work.  The bats as an accent nail on one hand and the ball as an accent nail on the other hand.

There is now a lot more information available on the interwebs about this product.  It's generally known as ENAS, which stands for Easy Nail Art Stamp. I have also watched a number of video tutorials and read other people's reviews, so I felt much more prepared to attempt this again.

Here are my two stamps.  I just used konad special polish in black, painted over the design lightly then blotted it off on paper.  It hardly used any polish, certainly no more than a regular konad design anyway.

Here is my first transfer, photo taken imediately after application before top coat.  I was so freaking happy because the design came out perfect!!

And now the ball on the other hand.  Yep, it was pretty much perfect too!

Here is my final look.  I wore JOSS brand polish in Wipe Out, which is a bright neon orange creme.  I then layered one coat of JOSS Duotone Pink Sparkle.  It was so amazingly bright, retina searing bright!.  The duotone top coat shifted from pink to orange, so depending on the angle my nail were either slightly pink toned, or flaming hot glowy orange.  I topped everything, including the stamp, with a coat of Seche Vite.

 

And now something special for you today, a picture of my right fingers.  Rarely seen, these nails are nearly always shorter and with filed away sides where they peel.  But at least this proves that I'm not a one armed mutant. 

I've since done another really cute design with another of my ENAS, although again it's only a single colour stamp.  I will share that tomorrow, along with some tips of what I have now learned my use of ENAS.  This weekend I am definitely attempting a multi coloured stamp design.

Cavalry Baseball nails #3

I said I was going to do Canberra Cavalry baseball nails for every home game, so here are the nails I wore for this weekends home series.

The team finally got white uniforms for home games this season, so because they were wearing their whites, I decided to as well (with an accent nail).  I don't do accent nails very often, but I really love them.  I think I will do them more!  

I also layered a Spectraflair top coat over the white.  It looks amazing.  Holo topcoat over white certainly curbs my lemming for Glitter Gal Light as a Feather.

The orange polish is Picture Polish Citrus.  It's the perfect bright orange creme.  A lovely summer colour.

Here is a close up of my accent nail.  This is a water decal that I had made up from a site on eBay.  The only tricky bit is that the decals are on transparent paper, so I have to create a white dot on my nail.  I did this by punching a hole in a piece of paper and then sticking that to our glass table.  I then used that paper as a konad template and put my polish in the hole, wiped it off, picked up the polish circle and stamped it on.  It worked amazingly well.  And the hole punch I had was the perfect size for the shaded baseball on the decal.

Here is a close up of the holo topcoat on the white.  Sooooooo purdy!!!

And now a quick story about the local wildlife.  

Yesterday Mr Three was playing out in the backyard and came sprinting inside.  He told me he saw a really big dinosaur outside.  I grabbed my camera and followed him out.  I asked him where it was and he walked me up to under the apple tree.  "Don't get too close mummy, you don't want it to bite you". Of course there was nothing to be seen anywhere, but we have now figured out that he saw some sort of lizard!  We've had blue tongue lizards in the backyard before, but I'm not sure what this one was.

While out there I heard another strange sound which I investigated.  Sitting on the side fence was this very cute and fluffy baby kookaburra.  The kookaburra's have been laughing their heads off here recently with all the stormy and wet weather.  It's mother and father were flying around in the gum trees too.  I snapped a picture of one of them with a MASSIVE spider in it's mouth, but forgot that the camera setting was only on VGA and not 10MP. D'oh!  But then again, I'm sure not too many of you would want to see that spider in the birds mouth.  We grow them big down here!

The other week when I was playing golf, there was a huge troop of kangaroos (and apparently 'troop' is the correct terminology for a group of them!)  I really wished I had taken my camera to show my international readers just how close the roos roam near us down here!  I want to share more pics of the local wildlife, I hope you all don't mind.

Custom polish - Cavalry Orange

I've posted about my husband playing and coaching baseball before, specifically for the Canberra Cavalry in the Australian Baseball League.  I've done Cavalry nails before, and I'll tell you now, there are going to be several more Cavalry baseball manis over the summer, because I plan to have a different orange baseball mani for every home series.

Orange is the teams colour, which in general terms is rather bright and not really a fashion colour to me.  But in terms of a team supporter colour, it's excellent.  I wore this orange mani to the games last weekend.

Last season I only had one orange polish, Ulta3 Crazy!  This year I have added to that with Picture Polish Citrus and Nics Sticks by OPI Orange you fast, but because I got my new tints I just had to make my own orange holo.

I'm afraid I have a lot of trouble capturing the holo in red and orange polishes.  My camera doesn't get it. I always think I have taken some great shots, then I upload them to my PC and discover you can hardly see the rainbow.

I made this one using Red 6,Yellow 10 and Yellow 5 lacquer tints, suspension base and spectraflair.  

To answer some questions in yesterday's comments, I got the tints from an Australian Beauty supply company who only ships domestically to Australia.  I don't feel comfortable posting their business name up or contact details here, as they are a bulk supply business that doesn't currently deal with small public orders.  However any Aussie girls can email me to find out the details.

Go Cavs!

I have mentioned in the past that my husband plays baseball.  For US readers that may not sound unusual, but here in Australia, baseball isn't really a very popular sport.

Over the recent summer, the Australian Baseball League, backed by MLB, started up again.  There are six teams in the national comp, and despite his age (not that I'm calling you old honey) my husband managed to get quite a few games in with the Canberra Cavalry.

I recently found an e-tailer that could create custom nail art water decals.  I was really excited to see the baseball ones, so ordered a whole stack with the team and player name.

With water decals, they really only work on very light coloured nails.  This is because the water decals are clear and they can't print in white ink. Because orange baseballs would look stupid, I wanted to get neat white circles on my nails.

So what I did was paint my nails orange (team colour), using Ulta 3 Crazy. I then used a hole punch to punch a circle in some scotch tape. I put the scotch tape on my nail and painted the hole with white polish. Then very carefully, I applied the water decal.

I found the decals really hard to work with compared to other ones I have used. If the decal came off the backing paper, it would all crumple up and couldn't be used, I had to carefully slide them off the paper onto the nail.  They also were really hard to move around on the nail. Once placed down they were stuck there.  Other water decals I've used you have a bit of time while your nail is still wet to position it better.

I also discovered that top coat would smudge the ink (as can be seen on the ring finger).  So while not great, the positioning is off and the ink is smudged, I did learn a heap applying these for the first time. 

Come next season I will be the supporter with the fanciest nails!  I'm sure that will make all the difference!!
And now, just to embarrass him on my polish blog, here is a pick of him playing.
 

GO CAVS!