Thursday, February 19, 2009

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"

7 comments:

Kendy said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Genie Sea said...

Your beads are so beautiful, they belong in a museum :)

The nail polish is fun! I love the blue one. :)

angelinabeadalina said...

Dammitall, I swear my blogroll doesn't let me know when you have new posts...here I've missed a bunch in a row again. Well, I love all the stringer work! You had to have been practicing that, because all the curves look so smoothly done and all the straight lines are so crisp...from my experience, that doesn't happen when you haven't been practicing but it does happen when you practice and get in a groove. That Island Haze set is gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. The amber ones were the same! And the A-team focal and set is so damn cool. LOL, the kids and Ricky watch the A-team once in a while when they run across it at night. James and Kate love it as much now as I did then-- except I watched every single week and adored every last one of them :) Face, mmmmmmmmm. Uh, what were we talking about? So, let me just say again that you are rockin' that stringer, woman!

Unknown said...

these are pretty...

my sis once caught her fake's on fire behind the flame .. it was scarey but really funny..
OK I LAUGHED MY ---- OFF

mona & the girls

rosebud101 said...

Great nail polish, Deb! Love the beads, too!
http://www.rosebud101-fortheloveofbeads.blogspot.com/

Unknown said...

just popped over and saw your feature... MUST FEEL AWESOME...

you are right next 2 our
fearless leaders at Gaffer
John L & John C.... wish I was there...
should we trade spaces for a day or 2....I hear it's so pretty there..
always room at my house..
all my love
mona & the girls...
ps hope you see some sunshine today.

Deborah Lambson said...

My gosh woman..how do you torch with those?! gorgeous beady set you got there.:)