I just got the best email and I'm so excited I have to share. I just received my VIP invitation to the grand opening event of the European e.l.f. Cosmetics Store, which opened a couple of weeks ago in Cardiff! I've been totally psyched about this store opening since I first heard the announcement just after I moved to England. Cardiff is a little over an hour away, and I cannot WAIT to see the store! I haven't really posted about it yet, but I'm a huge e.l.f. fan and about 90% of my cosmetics are e.l.f. brand. In fact, part of my Texas haul was a huge e.l.f. order with a ginormous freebie inside, and I will be doing a post about that as well.
So the event is smart dress and I'm pretty sure I already know what I'm going to wear, but now I have to decide how to do hair, nails, and of course MAKEUP. Squee! Looking forward to rubbing elbows with some other beauty bloggers and maybe doing some networking while I'm there, as well. I'm also sure Hubby will be bored to tears with me in yet another cosmetics shop, since he about had his fill of that while we were on vacation.
Either way... that's all I have to say about that. Let's move on to some nails, shall we?
About a month ago, I joined a group on Facebook for nail bloggers called Llama Nails. From what I can tell, this is a VERY talented group of girls and I'm very excited and happy to have been able to join them. Like many other blogger groups, they do challenges, and I'm going to start my first challenge today. Technically, I'm a week late, but since I was in Texas, I think I'm allowed. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to post week 2's challenge entry. Anyway... here's the challenge schedule:
It's going to take some research on some of these themes, but I'm looking forward to challenging myself to do some holiday-themed creations. As you may have noticed, the first week's theme was Oktoberfest.
I started with a base coat of Sally Hansen White On on my thumb, index, ring, and pinky. On my middle finger, I used OPI My Vampire is Buff. I then created the lattice on all but my middle finger with the Kiss striping brush in Soft Blue (from the MDK07 Kit) and then painted down a V using the most center lines of the lattice. On my index and ring, I then used a dotting tool to line the edges of the V with Finger Paint Avant Garde Green.
On my pinky, I created the beer by mixing OPI I Knead Sourdough and Honey Ryder. The foam was dotted on in OPI Solitare. For the pretzel on my thumb, I used OPI A-Piers To Be Tan, and dotted on some "salt" using Solitare.
Now, you'll notice that my middle finger is a crockpot full of mess. It started off really well, using Avant Garde Green to create the bustier portion of the dirndl. I used a white striper to add the "bust" and a center stripe and eyeholes, and a black striper to add the lacing and under-boob. Unfortunately, when I went to matte the entire mani (OPI Matte Topcoat), I forgot that I had retouched the base of the dirndl nail, and it smeared on me, really bad. Admittedly, I cheated in these pics and cleaned up some of the mess in Photoshop but I couldn't clean the lacing up without basically just redrawing the whole nail, so... we're gonna call it artistic liberty touched with integrity. Or something. I don't know. If I'd had all day to do it, I would've just redone the nail, but it was late and I'm still having jetlag rebound issues.
Hope y'all enjoy it.
Much love,
Ali
Please do check out these other Holiday Challenge nails from the lovely members of Llama Nails.