Nail Strips - One Week On!

Last week, I tried  Sally Hansen Salon Effects Real Nail Polish Strips for the first time. (The blog post is here). So, one week on, how are the nail polish strips holding up? I think they are doing quite well! 


They didn't like being soaked in warm water on Friday, and I got a couple of little chips. I also broke my thumbnail >.<:

But I patched them up with some carefully applied dots of white and pink nail polish, and put a glitter coat over the top...

One week after I first applied the nail strips, and with some tiny patches and a glitter coat, they look like this - 

It's a little sad that my nails grow so fast - as they are beginning to grow down the nail a little bit after just a week, but I love them! The have lasted really well, compared to most regular nail polishes that I have used =D. (I even cleaned out under my bed, and got strapping tape stuck to them - and they didn't chip or lift!) I confess - I think I am addicted to Sally Hansen nail polish strips now - I went back to Priceline, and they had them on sale (equating to 'buy one, get a second one at a third of the price'!), so I now have four more designs to try out =D. 


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Manic(ure) Monday =D

For this weeks' manicure, I used Sally Hansen Salon Effects Real Nail Polish Strips. They were a lot easier to use than other brands that I have tried before. You basically just peel off the pre-shaped strips, and stick them onto your nails, filing off the excess! (Although, for some of my nails, I squared off the cuticle end with a sharp pair of scissors before applying, so that they fitted better). 

The polish strips are thin and stretchy, so they bend to the shape of you nails. This means that they stick better than the thicker strips do - and you don't get those annoying unsmoothable crinkles at the edges! =D They have no drying time, and no nasty nail-polish smell! 

A downside is that you only get 16 strips in a packet, which makes them fairly expensive, when compared to nail art pens or polishes that can be used multiple times. That being said, I plan to buy more! 

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My Life with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome; A Collage

My name is Adrielle, and I am 26 years old. I have a connective tissue disorder called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS). I dislocate 1-2 joints on average every day, and am getting worse as I get older. I snapped these pictures over the last 5 months. So far, this year has been the year of the ribs, wrists, fingers, jaw, foot bones, knee (actual total knee these days - not just the patella :S), hips, thumbs, toes... ugh - do I need to keep listing? I think you all get the idea... lol! 


Anyways, you can read more about EDS by following the links below =) 

• What is EDS
• Rei's Life with EDS video
• My old blog post 
• Merilizzie’s blog post
• American National Foundation
• What the Hell is EDS
• EDS Support in Australia
• PubMed Health
• Wikipedia Article

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Glitter Nails!

This week, my mum and sister came home with some new glitter nail polishes for me! Since my hands have been better lately, I have been experimenting with nail art - and I REALLY LOVE glitter! 

I started off with a layer of my enduring favourite - Revlon Glimmer Gloss...

... then, I did two coats of the new Sally Hansen Gem Crush glitters! They are really glittery, and dry flat (some glitters can be lumpy/scratchy - but these aren't!). I think it will take practise to get the glitter layers even, but I love the way they look! 

Manicures from bed are definitely on my favourite spoonie pastimes list, hands allowing! =D


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Another Drawing Experiment =)

Tonight, I conducted another drawing experiment =). I started by drawing an outline in Serif DrawPlus Starter Edition (although it tended to crash fairly often on Vista, I am giving it another try on Windows 7... so far, so good! I like the self-smoothing crayony/paintbrush tool).  


After exporting the image as a .png from DrawPlus, I took the outline over to Photoshop to colour in =D. To start off with, I shaded-in the outline using a method that is sort of based on a tutorial by Gwiddon. I ended up with three layers of shadows. Once the shading was done, I painted some colour layers underneath the shaded and outline layers of my drawing, and played with some filters. 

I like experimenting =D


~Adrielle =)

Floral Nail Art

I painted my nails last night =D. I used some Manicare Nail Art pens (in black, gold, purple and white; they can be a pain to prime and use, actually - but when you do get them working, they are pretty nice - it is just really hard to get them working!), BYS Nail Art laquer (a pink and a purple), Coral Colours blue nail enamel, and my favourite Revlon Glimmer Gloss (I have 5 colours - I used pink and blue in this design). It has been years since I have done a design like this, but I think it turned out cute =D

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Super Addy

So, over the last couple of weeks, I have been drawing Super Addy - myself as a superhero =D. The idea came to me because I was feeling so bad with EDS, arthritis, ME/CFS and FMS. I thought - if I was a superhero, I would have magical braces that looked pretty and actually worked - and of course, I would be able to fly and have a cape as well! 


The Superhero Addy idea seemed like a good opportunity to practice using some of the tools on photoshop that I haven't used before. Here is how the experiment went:

I like the way she turned out =D

~Addy =)