NOTD: Duck egg shell nails

I've seen these speckled nail varnishes floating around on blogs for a while and - if I'm completely honest - have never been that keen on them.
But then when I popped into Boyes a few weeks ago I saw this cheap W7 Salt n Pepper nail polish and thought I might as well give it a try for under £2.
I tried it on my toenails, as a top coat over a pastel blue (I was fully expecting it to look awful so I thought at least it would be hidden inside my shoes!)... But I'm amazed to admit I actually quite like it!
I'm not sure if it will ever be a staple in my nail collection, but it's nice for something different once in a while.
On a side note about W7 too, I was quite impressed by the texture of the polish and it didn't feel too cheap as I was applying it. Will definitely be keeping a closer eye on W7 in the future!

My craft room: Part Two

I've been busy over the last week, sorting out all my paper and ribbon and glue and glitter, trying to organise all my crafty bits and bobs into some sort of logical order. It's a lot more work and effort than I thought!
But in the meantime, I've also been cleaning and reupholstering a second-hand office chair (which my parents have had since before the beginning of time) using some gorgeous spotty fabric that I'd forgotten I had.
I'm halfway through now, with just the back panel left to re-cover. It was hard work (and there may have been a few expletives aimed at the staple gun which only worked approx. 40 per cent of the time) but my lovely boyfriend stepped in and gave me an extra pair of much needed hands. I think it looks good so far and I'm looking forward to seeing it pride of place in the new room!

How d'ya like them apples

My boyfriend bought me this as a random gift and I love it! I was a little confused at first, but it's basically little notelets that look like apple slices, and when you fold it out it looks like an apple!
What can I say, I'm easily amused...

NOTD - Valentines Day nails

I painted my nails red and sparkly on Saturday for a night out with the girls. It was starting to get chipped and I wanted to rejuvenate it for Valentines Day, so here is what I came up with:

I used a heart shaped hole punch and sticky address label to make heart shapes, which I stuck on the nails to protect the red sparkles underneath - then painted my black nail polish over the top (Nails Inc Black Cab).

If you're trying it yourself I'd recommend having the heart overlapping the edge of your nail so you can peel it off easily :)

My craft room: Part One

I haven't been able to do much crafting/creating recently as I still need to set up and organise my craft room... Which seems a bit of a chore!

My stuff is all packed away, including my sketch books and even my pencils - so all I can use atm is my phone and my old laptop.

The new furniture is in place, I just need to figure out the best way to organise it... If you have any tips for me (or examples of your own crafting storage??), I would love to hear from you!

Here are a few pics.

Pancake day!!

It's Shrove Tuesday today, and I've been waiting (not so) patiently all day to get my hands on some pancakes! I got a bit carried away with the excitement so didn't take any photos, but here's a quick shot of the aftermath...

Look what arrived in my office at work...

Yum! This box of Fancie cupcakes arrived in the office today! We had a Victoria, a MintChoc, as well as a chocolate and raspberry one, a peanut butter one, a caramel one and ... I can't remember what the sixth one was.

For some reason I really fancied some mint choc flavour so I pounced on the bright green icing. The others were gone within seconds. The cake was delicious!! And I would highly recommend. They've won quite a few awards and I reckon those awards are pretty well deserved.

You can check them out at www.fancie.co.uk and they're also on Twitter and Facebook.

Love is in the air: pre-inked stamps (for love notes?)

These have been around for a while, but I've only just come across these Love Heart stamps by SuckUK.

You can buy these from between £5 and £9 (£7.50 on SuckUK's website). This 3-in-1 stamp lets you stamp your own Love Hearts anywhere and everywhere you like (I'm planning on attacking post-its, my calendar, people's faces...)

The three messages read 'call me', 'love you' and 'smile'. I'm not sure how much use I'd get out of the 'call me' stamp, but I think the others are quite sweet.

I think these would be cute on little notes, maybe to jazz up the 'please could you put some washing in' or 'please remember to feed the cat' notes and take the edge off the nagging tone..? :)

Cheap earrings and sensitive ears: is clear nail polish the answer?

I have a long-running love/hate relationship with cheap earrings. They lure me in with their prettiness and sparkles and then ATTACK my earlobes from the inside and make me feel like my ears are about to fall off.

But I recently heard there's a solution to all this madness, in the form of clear nail varnish. Apparently if you coat the post/hook of the earring with clear nail polish, it protects your ear from the metal underneath. I was amazed that I hadn't heard about this before as it could be the answer to all my (admittedly only earring-related) problems! So naturally I had to try this out for myself.

The method
I took the nearest clear nail varnish, which turned out to be my Sally Hansen hydrating base coat, removed as much as I could from the brush, and painted a thin layer on the hooks of my earrings. It dried pretty quickly as it was such a thin coat, but I propped them up on a clean coaster for a while just to make sure. I rubbed them with my finger to make sure there weren't any sharp bits, then I tried them in my ears later that night.

The results
Normally if I put non-gold earrings in, they start aching immediately and become unbearable after about 10 minutes. With these earrings, I didn't feel anything for about an hour, and then my left ear started aching (but nowhere near as much as normal). The right ear was still fine, but I took both of them out at this point as I was out in public and didn't want my ear jewellery to be lopsided!

The conclusion
I've decided the most logical explanation is I could have missed a small bit on one of the earrings. That's the difficulty of clear nail polish!

But the results were certainly interesting and I think I might follow up this experiment with a second coat of polish and test it out in the safety of my own home (where jewellery lopsided-ness is less of an issue).

My first ever Graze box

I've been meaning to order a graze box for ages, just to see what they were like. I love the idea of receiving a random gift through the post (so I have a tiny obsession with the idea of subscription boxes!)

One of my friends gave a me referral voucher for two free boxes at Christmas, so I thought it was the ideal time to give it a go.

The first one came through the other day, and both myself and my boyfriend were really excited to open it up and see what was inside.

I was a little disappointed to see the flapjack as I'm not really a fan, but I tried it first to get it out the way... And I have to say it was delicious! Really impressed.

I must admit I wasn't fully convinced originally that the boxes were worth their price, but after actually receiving one myself, I have a feeling I might be buying a few more after the free boxes are finished...

Things I've done today while waiting for an IKEA delivery...

We've ordered some new furniture for our spare room and I'm really excited because this means I'm finally getting a crafting station!

So I've sacrificed a day of annual leave to sit at home and hold a vigil until the very important lorry-of-IKEA-goodness arrives.

And I'm bored out of my skull.

Things I've done today while waiting for the delivery:

• Made 4 cups of tea
• Drank 3.5 cups of tea
• Done 2 loads of washing up
• Completed 3 levels of Lego Harry Potter to 100%
• Put 1 load of washing into the washing machine
• Given my hair a trim
• Eaten 1 packet of Worcestershire sauce crisps
• Given myself a full face of make up
• Tried out my new mascara
• Caught up with The New Normal
• Installed a ton of updates on my laptop
• Cleared a pathway through the house to the spare room

And now I'm sitting on the sofa staring out the window, willing the truck to arrive.

I may have also done the one thing everyone does when they're bored (admit it, you know you have too) - taken a load of photos of myself on my iPad pulling different faces...

On a side note, I'm quite impressed by the IKEA delivery system - I got a call around half 9 saying they'd be here in about an hour and it was great to have a bit of notice. They arrived at about 10.45 and carried all the boxes up to the spare room for me. Dead pleased!