Inspiration from odd things

I'm the queen of 'odd' - believe me on this. I'm also the queen of 'easily amused'.

Back a few years ago when my nails were long & always painted I discovered what I thought was a really cool product - a colour shifting nail polish. It was imported from Australia, it had to be used over a black base coat, it was expensive & the full effect when painted was stunning.
Like the cars with the various colour shifting paint jobs (Harlequin, Mirage & such) this little beauty became a chameleon & changed it's look depending on how the light hit it.

Bugger the fact that I never wore green, blue or purple (or the hot pink , purple or bright orange of the second bottle...) on my nails, I also happily ignored the that fact most of the nail polishes in my collection were relatively safe neutrals that could be worn with pretty much anything & not scream too loudly - I had to have some of this stuff to play with. After all I'd been drooling over the colour shift paint jobs on some of the newer cars for a while....& this was the next best thing! Right?

Wrong! The nail polish was positively dangerous, I'd have been far safer driving one of the cars at 140kph in the city ;o)
The nail polish was dangerous because I'd find myself attracted to looking at it - especially when driving & every subtle nuance of light would cause those babies to change colour while manoeuvring the steering wheel. I'd find myself flexing & wriggling my fingers just to watch it change, before remembering that 'oops - I better watch the road'.
Yep - easily amused... & distracted it seems.

I eventually restricted it's use to one nail - thereby doing my bit for road safety.

A few days ago I was sorting through my drawers of nail polish bemoaning the fact that they were far too pretty to just dump & I came upon the wee bottles of colour shift polish sitting there amidst the later Holographic & other fancy types of polishes & marvelled at how frou frou this self proclaimed non- frou frou, practical girl really is at heart...in some things. I admired the fact that 5 years down the track this nail polish was still fluid & not set like a sludgy lump in the bottom of the bottle, so I figured I'd paint my nails one last time before trimming them to a respectable length.
I refuse to torch with nail polish on, knowing how flammable the stuff is - & how close I work to the flame. (I also secretly suspect that anyone who torches with acrylic or gel nails on has death wish).

This gives you an idea of a couple of the colours this polish shifts through (it took me ages to get just two reasonably representative shots on camera) & it also shows a cool blue-purple shade. The other colour also shifts, but somewhat more subtly from a champagne to a pale lilac - so the combination isn't as odd as it looks in the photo's. The colours can been seen more accurately on a car here.

All of this, of course, is really just to tell you how the colour scheme for these beads came about.

"Island Haze"