Black, with a touch of suede and matte

So my nails are painted again this week. I decided to actually make the time on Monday, because I figure I don't know how much longer I can keep painting them. I'm hoping to take a few bottles with me, but even if I can figure out the logistics of transportation, I will be sadly low on variety. As it is I'm still torn between 'absolute favourite colours' and 'a range across the spectrum'. I could do either - the former will mean I will be missing colours like yellow and orange, but the latter means I might not be able to take my very favourite colours. The decision is hard.

Fortunately, as I do have so many things to do right now, I always have a few stock patterns in the back of my head. Fairly simple designs that can look quite striking with the right colour combination. And I often like to have quite different polishes within the patterns - iridescent under something quite plain, without any shimmer. I took this idea again this week, but I went with something I think I must have done before, because it is such a good idea. But I can't remember ever doing it quite like this. Basically, I got my favourite shimmery black - Baby It's Coal Outside - and did 2 coats, with a top coat. And then, with one of my nail art brushes, I painted a design (a very simple design) over it, using La Paz-itively Hot - Matte and OPI Ink - Suede. The reason I did the top coat before I painted on the design is quite simple - if you paint top coat over the suede or matte, it loses the effect and just looks like normal nail polish. And I have been known to do that, because they are both such great colours, regardless of whether they're matte/suede or sparkly. But I didn't want that effect this week; this week I wanted to effect of something sparkly on the bottom with something very flat on the top. And it worked! Though, I don't think it comes across as well in the photos as I would like. It's hard to get the sun to really pick up the shimmer while also showing the matte effect well in a picture. And, we haven't been getting much sun where I am anyway, which made it even harder.

But I did try...

Whoops, slack

So, no nail polish post OR ice cream post this week - slack I know.

There is no ice cream post because last week I decided to make Peach sorbet instead. Mainly because I bought the can of peaches back in January, and I'm moving overseas soon so it feels a bit...wrong...if I don't at least make the effort. In my defense, I also (at the time) bought a can of peach and mango, which I very quickly turned into (a very delicious) sorbet. But it's a bit involved, so I wasn't in a hurry to do it again. Plus at the time, there were so many ice cream combinations to try - I hadn't yet perfected my condensed milk/cream mix. But now, I really feel I should. It's just, that on top of that, it's really time consuming. You have to make a sugar syrup, you have to pulse the peaches, you have to mix and chill for hours (as the sugar syrup is hot), and I'm working so much that I don't really have the time. Not that I would blog it anyway - it's just a bit boring.

And my nails...well, I took my nail polish off yesterday and found that I was nearly out of my nail polish remover wipes. As I'm leaving in a little over two weeks, buying anymore doesn't feel very sensible. I could use cotton balls, I suppose, but we currently have one. And then there are the cotton pads for make up removal (which I tried and are excellent), but that somehow seems like a waste of money, because they're so lovely and soft for make up removal. So when I was working this morning, and because I had no real plan in my head, I just decided to give my poor nails a break. It does seem a bit of a waste with the eminent move, but there you go.

Cake inspiration

So I decided to paint my nails yesterday with very little idea of what I wanted. I was out most of the day before and went to bed with a massive headache. And woke up with it too. So I hadn't really had the time to devise anything. Sometimes I have it planned a week in advance, but usually, if I want to do something fancy, I have it worked out the day before. But yesterday was just impossible.

I sat there this morning, thinking about what I wanted to do. Rifling through my memories to see if there was anything I could use. Colour isn't usually an issue, because, with the exception of Emerald green, I can do most shades, or pretty close. My lack of Emerald is the downpoint of my nail polish life.

On Sunday, I was at the Ekka - or the Exhibition to those not from Queensland or Australia. I went on a bit of a whim - I haven't been since I was in single digits, and even then I only ever went for the showbags, as rides have never held an attraction for me. But I have fond memories of wandering around with my brothers and my uncle, with my arms tired from carrying showbags, as we (or possibly I) did insist on getting them first. The logic being, of course, that if we didn't get them first, they might sell out. But when my middle brother started going with a mate, he used to take my list of showbags and buy them for me. And after Sunday, I feel I should probably thank him because I had no idea it was such a struggle.

Though maybe, 20 years ago, it was less so.

The whim was caused by the fact that I am moving overseas in a few weeks. Not permanently, but long enough to make me want to do something really Brisbane-y. Something that just screams childhood memories and 'things you can only do at home'. And among all the things I looked at were the cakes! Or, to be exact, the icing.

And that, in the end, was the inspiration. I saw a lot of cakes that I liked - a few, particularly, in white and black. But one of my favourites, and possibly the most easy to reproduce, was one in dark brown and light pink. It had stripes, it had flowers, and the colours just worked so well together. Funnily, though, they were the colours that could give me the most problems. Light brown and dark pink, fine, I have many. But dark brown and light pink, not so much. I trawled through my polishes - and I really mean trawled - and I finally found what I wanted. Or as close an approximation as I could get.

And then, the other problem was - do I just do stripes on my nails (a bit of an old favourite) or do I try for something a bit more difficult? I decided on the bit more difficult idea, which involved vertical stripes until I got to the white of my nail, which I then painted brown. Depending on how it looked, would depend whether I drew flowers or not.

And I have to say, when I finished the basics, it looked pretty awful. The fact that I was working at the same time didn't help, as I had to paint some nail and then do something else. And vertical stripes aren't easy unless you have a very steady hand. It was just a mess. So I decided to draw flowers on the tip - or at least, a flower - which is when I had my brain wave. Diamantes. I love diamantes on my nails, but I rarely use them because they're a bit of a nuisance to apply. Fiddly tweezers, wet nail polish, so there's a real chance of smudging, it tends to be a nightmare. And by the time I had decided I wanted them, my first two coats were painted and already too dry. So, in the end, my 'flowers' became 5 lines that met in the middle, and on this I pressed a diamante. And I have to say, it adds a bit of class.

Unfortunately, however, it does mean I had to take the picture when they were still a bit messy, generally, as diamantes hate staying on (for me anyway), and generally come off when I'm doing something.

I'm still a bit undecided whether they look great, or whether they look awful...

Lime & Coconut Ice cream

Thursday, so it's ice cream making day again! One of my favourite days of the week - at least, when I have a recipe in my head that I've been wanting to make for a while.

I devised this one last week, at the same time as my chocolate coconut ice cream. Mum had been looking for recipes online using coconut and found a Lime Coconut one. I got very excited, as it is one of my favourite cake flavours, but it was one of those recipes that is 'some lime, some coconut, some vanilla ice cream'. And when it comes to ice cream, that is not how I work. I want to make them from the base up. But I had a big hurdle to get over - I use 600mls of cream, and if I add lime juice to that, it is very likely to curdle. And I don't want curdled ice cream. I decided, in the end, to ignore lime juice and just use the rind. I considered making a sorbet, instead of ice cream, but I wasn't really sure how it would go with shredded coconut. Plus, even though I like sorbet (especially in the middle of summer), I love ice cream.

So in the end, I devised the following recipe, and it worked quite well. The limes I used were quite small - as they tend to be here - about 5cm (2inches) in diameter. I *think* I've seen them bigger overseas, but I could have been confusing that. So if 5cm is what you have over there, you're fine.

Rind of two limes.
1/2 cup shredded coconut
395g tin condensed milk
600ml thickened cream.

I grated the rind off the limes, and mixed it with the coconut and left in a sealed container overnight. I was hoping to infuse the coconut slightly with the taste. No idea whether it worked, but the container smelt good in the morning. In the morning, I mixed the cream and condensed milk in a bowl, and then added the coconut/lime rind, and mixed well. I let it chill in the fridge for 30-45minutes, and then just poured it into my ice cream maker. I was a bit concerned at first that it had curdled, but I think that was just coconut.

And the result was a nice, creamy, lime flavoured icecream. With coconut. It was really quite good - though right now, I am feeling extremely full. The lime was just right (for me, anyway), not too overpowering, but strong enough to be noticeable.

Now, I just have to figure out a flavour for next week...

Simple, elegant design

If anything I do can ever be called elegant!

I would have posted yesterday, as I didn't paint my nails until Monday, but the internet got put back to dial up speed, so I didn't really have a chance.

I went out on Sunday, my usual nail painting day, to buy myself a suitcase for my upcoming move, and as I like to give my nails the entire day to dry I had to put nail painting off until Monday. And as I only have a few weeks left in the country, I might continue this. I find I can still work while I paint my nails (or paint my nails while I work), whereas going out on a Sunday really messes up my nail polish routine. Plus, I have a few craft projects I am madly trying to finish, so Sunday is rather wasted.

But because I was working, I went with a fairly simple design. An old favourite - I love painting my nail base one colour, and then painting the tips in something contrasting. This week, the base colour is a fairly new one from the OPI Katy Perry collection - Not Like the Movies - and the tips are done in a colour I used only in the last week or two - Deer Valley Spice. (For anyone who doesn't know, my nails are only ever painted in OPI)

I'm really happy with it. I also toyed with using my favourite colour - It's All Greek to Me - but it's a little gluggy and I needed something that would dry fairly well. Gluggy on my tips is not ideal, as it would be so much easier to smudge it or worse. But I think Deer Valley Spice - which is slightly darker, purpler than Greek - works really well. And I love Not Like the Movies, because it looks silver/grey in some lights and then green in others. Oh, and it's a bit sparkly, which is my favourite bit.

Chocolate coconut ice cream

Today was another experimental ice cream day. I admit, I experiment with ice cream more often than not these days. When I started, I did follow recipes, and I have made some very delicious things, like this cheesecake ice cream but my plan was always to find a basic ice cream vanilla mix and go from there. And I got lucky, because a few years ago I bought a Nestle Recipe book. One of those ones you get free with a magazine, or something. And it has a few ice cream recipes in there - including my basic cream + condensed milk combination. But it has other things, so when I have an ingredient I want to use, I check it out and see if it has any hints about quantity.

For today's ice cream, I had to look up two different things - how much chocolate to use, and how much coconut, and from there I developed the following recipe:

395g tin condensed milk
600ml thickened cream
200g milk chocolate (I just used Woolies Select)
1/3 cup shredded coconut.

Melt the chocolate over water, mix in the coconut, allow to cool (I probably should have left it longer than 5 minutes, but it still worked), and then mix in the condensed milk and cream. Chill (in my case, for an hour) and put into ice cream maker.


My ideas for ice cream come from strange places; I often just think "what flavours do I like together" and then mix them up and see. But today's came about because my mother bought the wrong sort of coconut for her anzac biscuits. She always uses desiccated, but she accidentally bought shredded. She tried them in the anzacs, and they were okay, but the texture was weird. So she told me to use the coconut. And, because it's me, my first idea was "I'll put it into ice cream!". And I really liked that idea, but thinking about it some more I wasn't sure I wanted an entire coconut ice cream, so I decided to break up the flavour and, being a total chocoholic, I decided to add chocolate.  Very simple, and allowing me to end up with an ice cream rather Bounty in flavour! Which is excellent, because I love Bounty bars.

And now, it just leaves me free for more coconut-inspired ice cream next week.

Red vs white

I went for something a little different this week, a pattern I had never tried before. I got the idea last week when I was painting my nails, because on one finger I managed to quarter my nail with four different colours. It looked good, but it wasn't the effect that I was going for so I had to paint over it. But I liked it so much that I wanted to try it again, and I thought it would look even better in red and white.

I don't know where the idea came from, but I went with it, using Vancouvered in Snow and You Rock-Apulco Red.

As I hadn't tried it before, I used two separate methods to paint each hand. On my left (and therefore easier hand to paint) I painted 2 white bits and 2 red bits. On my right, I painted two coats of white, and then when they had dried, painted in the red quarters. I think, generally, my right hand looks better, as there is fairly even polish coverage over my nails.But it's possible the colour is slightly better on my left - however, there are bits with no colour at all. Admittedly, they're about a millimetre thick, if that, but it does mean they don't work *quite* as well. Still, it's up to you to decide.

And of course, the picture quality really isn't good enough for you to be able to tell. I wish I could say it was a clever ploy on my part, but I've never been great with cameras.