iPhone 3GS: First Impressions

Last Friday, I made a split second decision to go and get myself the iPhone I've been hankering after for months on end. Himself said later that night that the kitchen looked like I'd just dropped what I was doing and headed out the door. Which, um, is pretty much exactly what happened.

Hey, I may be incredibly dithery when it comes to making decisions but once they're made I don't hang around.

I'm mostly delira with my new 16GB toy, but there are a few irksome things about it that I do not love:

1. I bought it in white, thinking that the black was boring and everywhere and very bloke-y and white would be a bit different. However, I now understand that far from having a white-backed phone with a black screen, I have a white-backed phone with a black screen with a great lump of chrome between the two that ticks me off mightily. The black is more streamlined. It is more chic. It is not a teensy bit chavvy looking and way too girly. (It's exceedingly unfortunate that I forgot how much I dislike girly tech gear until after I'd torn open the box.) I dislike the white so much, I have another tab open in Mozilla at the moment to order a cover for it ASAP. Please. Don't make my mistake.

2. The way the SIM card tray works is pure stupid. For my money, it's not a bit intuitive. You get this little paperclip type gizmo that comes complete with a diagram that makes no sense - ok, stick the very tip of it in the little SIM tray hole and... what? Use it as a lever to hoist the tray out from the body of the iPhone? It was only when the paperclip slipped in Himself's hand and was pushed all the way down into the hole in the SIM tray that we totally accidentally figured it out. Oh, it ejects! Great. Next time you're going to be so scabby with your instruction manuals, Apple, maybe don't skimp on the arrows. Or alternatively go all out and use your words.

3. This business of having to hook it up to iTunes to get started is a pain in the hole. I didn't really appreciate that this was a "must do", since the laughably teeny "Finger Tips" quick start guide that comes with the phone makes it look like an optional, wanna-sync-your-music-and-contacts? extra. I brought my iPhone away with me to Galway last weekend where it was about as useful to me as a National Geographic subscription would be to the dog, since I hadn't also brought my haz-iTunes-laptop. I didn't think I needed it. Sure didn't I have a shiny new superPhone?

4. Oleophobic coating my ass. I cannot keep it free of fingerprints, but at least I finally understand my purpose in life: to spend my days in a vicious cycle of wipe/smudge-with-fingerprints/wipe. Aaaah. No amount of handwashing to make sure that every last molecule of natural oil has been stripped away before touching it seems to make a difference. I now have a third Mozilla tab open to look at screen protectors, which I'm hoping will help and which I hear Steve Jones is set to outlaw shortly. And here I thought I was a control freak.

5. It's too wide for me to operate single-handedly - I can't grip it in one hand and use the thumb on that same hand to navigate, which is a first for me. And my hands aren't *that* small.

6. No buttons = no possibility of doing anything without looking at the screen. I used to be able to dial numbers and send surreptitious texts on all my old phones purely by touch.

7. The letters on the keyboard are kinda teeny tiny and very crowded in portrait mode. Even for my fingers, which wouldn't need one of Homer's dialling wands for any other phone.

8. Don't plan on leaving home for more than a couple of hours without your charger. Even with just light to moderate use, I'm only getting one day of battery life - and I'm switching it off completely at night.

Now, according to the online User Guide, my iPhone is missing some stuff. Like, a dock, so that it could stand upright and thus out of the way of scratches when charging or plugged into a computer. And a polishing cloth, so that I would have a dedicated piece of fabric for wiping away those effing fingerprints all the livelong day.

But hey, what am I bitching about? Didn't I get two supremely useful white Apple stickers instead?

Score.

What's That? Irish Blogging *Not* Dead?

Well. Did you have a nice weekend?

I got the hair fixed on Friday (went back to the salon who had done the blondifying, they were all very nice about it) and then headed wesht for the 2010 Irish Blog Awards in Galway on Saturday night. 

Proceedings kicked off with the Longlex Ladies' Wine Tea Party, organised by Ms. Sabrina Dent and hosted in the swanktastic Linda Evangelista suite of the G Hotel where it was mirrored sliding salon doors and mirrored walls and super lavish opulence and zebra heads (well, just the one, really) a go-go. Ciara rocked some fab teal eyeliner that made her blue eyes go "bing!" Elly got herself some deadly neon pink nails. Jennifer reckoned the zebra was giving me and my stripes the gladeye. Myself and Martha wondered how the zebra would look with a hat. And maybe some sunglasses.

Then it was on to the Radisson for the awards themselves. Now, this blog didn't make the final cut for Best Personal (ultimately won by Xbox4NappyRash, congrats!) but Beaut.ie was up for and won Best Beauty/Fashion Blog for Kirstie and Aisling, yay... 

... aaand then went on to take the Grand Prix overall Best Blog gong!

Myself and Aisling were literally stuck to our seats with a mixture of shock and delight when that last Gong of Gongs was announced, but as the designated hardware collector I had to shake myself and head back up to the stage for another what we'll loosely call "speech". Mostly I opened and closed my mouth and assorted noises came out. Jesus. I have no real recollection of what I said, perhaps mercifully, but I'm fairly certain that I forgot to thank SpinnakerPro and WHPR for generously sponsoring the categories (Best Beauty/Fashion and Grand Prix respectively).

So, apologies and thanks!

Once all the heavy lifting was dispensed with (seriously, that Grand Prix trophy weighs a shagging ton) it was time for cocktail sausages and deep fried prawn yokies and assorted dips and chats with Darragh and Rosemary and The Internet's David Maybury and his lovely missus and waving at White Rabbit NI and admiring her excellent bunny badge and then more chats with more assorted but universally lovely blog folk and their mates. 

After that, the plans to retire to the lounge in the G and be vay refined and quaff some champagne fell by the wayside as I er sort of accidentally got involved in dancing the rest of the night away.

 

Pic is Eolaí's

"Cos this is Thriller, Thriller night... Badum dum dum duh dum..."

All in all, a most excellent evening. Cheers again to Damien for putting the whole shebang together!


All pix are via Rymus unless otherwise stated.

Tress Trauma Thursday

The eagle-eyed among you will notice a deviation from my usual Thurday alliteration. There'll be no Talon-tastic post today, I'm afraid, because I am too busy crying into my computer at the state of my hair for any NOTD fun 'n' frolics.

I am just home from the hairdresser, and since it's a little over six months since I last got my hair done you'd be forgiven for thinking that whatever way the gruaig is now, it's surely to Christ better than when I crossed the threshold of the hairdressers at 1.30pm this afternoon.

Ahaaahahaha haaaaaaaaaaaaa.

No. It is not. So that's saying something.

I asked for a mix of lowlights and highlights, with the emphasis on lowlights to tone down and move away from the old blonde. The hairdresser and I discussed whether I'd like to stay somewhere near the colours I'd gone with before - cue holding up ends to roots - and I said no, even that was too bright. Words like "honey blonde" and "dark blonde" and "light brown" were used. Lovely, I thought, but more of that anon.

I asked for a trim, keeping my current long layered stylee but just taking everything up by half an inch or an inch. Sounds safe enough, right? Well, the trim I received was wojus. I was given the same style as the 11 year old girl whose locks had been given the chop while my colour developed - a straight across blunt cut, swiftly followed by the usual "Is that alright for you now?"

Used to people doing things like point cutting and feathering and razoring and slicing and dicing and, y'know, shaping hair properly as the norm, I was a bit shell-shocked. I had to ask her to chop into the ends to take the blunt look off, "because my hair is so straight that I don't tend to wear it in quite such a blunt cut" I said apologetically. Like a fecking eejit.

I had to dredge up quite a bit of assertiveness to ask her to go again when Round 1 only included the bare front of my hair.

I'm still not happy with the cut, but I couldn't bring myself to really get into it with great heaps of customers piling up in the waiting area right beside me and silently willing me to eff off.

Ah, but the colour, sez you! Is the colour lovely? It sounds lovely. Does it make up for the "cut"?

No. Not so much.

In the light of the salon, it looked okay - a bit more similar to my existing colour than I'd have liked or was expecting, but sure at least the roots were gone.

In Real Life, it is the blondest I have been since 2003. I haven't revisted that level of blonde - until today - for the simple reason that it doesn't suit me and washes me out. My hair is now full of lumpy, chunky, ash/white blonde multi-stripes that are as close to "honey blonde" as I am to being named the next Pope.

Himself is, of course, providing a sympathetic ear. Not. "Just go back into them and tell them you're not happy with it!" sez he. Simples. Only... I cannot complain in person to save my life.

I am seriously contemplating making a pilgrimage to Donnybrook tomorrow and begging Wilde to squeeze me in to fix it.

That'll learn me to shop local.

Bankers.

I have just managed to lodge a cheque in AIB Portarlington! And it only took me three tries.

Sure what else have I to be doing with myself other than spending my days driving up and down to the bank in hopes that I might catch it off-guard at an open moment, ha?

I first tried to lodge my cheque yesterday. I pulled into the first parking spot I came across, paid my 20c for a parking ticket (yes, you have to pay for street parking in Portarlington nowadays. Oh, I'm sure the takings will be spent wisely) and headed over to the bank.

Where I was met with closed AIB blurple double doors. I checked the time. It was 12.47. "Fuck's sake" I thought crossly to myself, reckoning that they'd shut up shop early for a 1 o'clock lunch.

That kind of carry-on is not ok in a small country branch where I've never had more than three customers ahead of me at any given time, I fumed, especially when each of those has taken about 30 seconds to serve.

The second attempt came early this afternoon, and before I set off I hopped onto the AIB website to check their opening times. Helpfully, it told me that the branch is open "10.30 am to 3.00 pm (excluding lunch)" on Wednesdays. Maybe lunch is a moveable feast? Maybe it's like a fun little challenge for customers? "Ah go on, have a guess what time we'll be shut for lunch at!"

I was taking no chances, so I drove by the bank to make sure those blurple doors were thrown open. Yes! They were! I parked right around the corner, raced to the parking machine, threw a ticket up on the dash and sprinted back to the bank.

Closed.

At 12.29.

I swear to God it was like one of them was keeping sketch and they closed the doors for the laugh just as I rounded the corner.

I rang Himself and effed and blinded about the whole thing, giving out about them not even having the opening hours (including lunch) up in the window so that customers might know when to try again. As it is, they're just short of hanging out the windows and shouting "better luck next time, suckers!"

Well, just before 3 o'clock today, I Quick Lodged my cheque and located the branch opening times (turns out lunch is 12.30 - 1.30, FYI). They're conveniently stuck up on a glass door inside the foyer.

A door which is not visible to those without x-ray vision when the main exterior blurple doors are closed.

Complete genius.

Hell-o, sailor...

I've had a whole heap of gift vouchers burning a hole in my pocket since Christmas, but thankfully I managed to offload some of them over the weekend. Huzzah! Above are my new shoes and new frock (yes, I sometimes accidentally say frock. No, not just online) which I am deeply in love with and thinking of wearing to this Saturday night's Blog Awards with some navy tights and the only red lips that truly suit me.

The frock is kind of hard to look at, though. All those stripes make for some sort of optical illusion that makes the eyes water a bit if you stare at it for too long, but er maybe that's just as well because it is very flipping body-con and not at all what I'm used to!

Tweet Deals from Lidl

The robins in our garden (there are three of them) have been throwing me some serious evils this morning. The tits are ticked off. The starlings are teaching each other insults to hurl at me.

All this aggro is because our bird food supply has run dry, and so has the supply of people food I've been using to fashion tasty tidbits in the last few days. It's an out and out disaster.

Handily, a Lidl special on food for the birdies kicks off today, so I will be heading over to my local store with the quickness in a couple of minutes before the pair of rogue ringneck doves take to bombing the place.

Talon-tastic Thursday: Two Ways with Barry M Grey #293

Today's post is brought to you by a bottle of nail varnish that almost ended up in the back of a bin lorry.

For reals.

I accidentally threw out this Barry M Grey, €4.50, just a couple of hours after buying it, and then had to go through the recycling bin to find the Boots bag in which it had concealed itself. I've never owned a grey nail varnish before but bought this one on a total whim and now really, really like it, so it was well worth having to root through empty milk cartons to secure its recovery.

Here it is on its tod...

... and doing its thang as a poor man's version of the YSL Stormy Grey that Kirstie used to create a gorgeous sparkly tipped mani:

Of these photos, the first pic is the best representation of how this colour - I'd call it a mid-grey with blue undertones - looks In Real Life.


What nail varnish or other lovely make-up bits are you wearing today or planning to sport at the weekend?

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh!

Tá súil agam go mbeadh Lá Fhéile Pádraig shona daoibh.

Anois, go forth and paint your nails and suck down green milkshakes until your brain freezes over!


Pic via Hairy Baby.

Were you lucky? Well were ya, punk?

The virtual tombola that is random.org has been given a good whoosh (Mike Murphy would have been delighted with it) and a winner has been chosen for the Reebok giveaway!

So our victor is... Hermione!

Congratulations to you, missy - you might just drop me a quick email at lyndarthemerciless@gmail.com when you get a chance so that I can get you all set up with that spiffy new kit.

And thanks so much to everyone who entered, I wish there had been a prize for everyone in the audience. Fingers crossed that there'll be more competitions like it in the future for y'all!
 

WIN A NEW BUM! (Sort of.)

Since I have now gone the gym on two consecutive Saturdays and actually did a home workout yoke one day last week (the dog thought I'd lost the plot completely), I am all about the fitness and the health and the wellness today at the moment. Sadly, my ancient runners are wicked effing uncomfortable and my one pair of tracksuit bottoms that aren't completely covered in paint are a size too big and about a foot too long and look completely clown-like on me.

Handily, the nice people at Reebok are coming to my rescue. 

Knights in shining armbands, if you will. 

I've been asked to trial a pair of their shiny new EasyTone runners which, as far as I can make out, are MBT-type yokes. (But better looking. More "normal footwear", less "orthopedic device".) There's talk of things like "28% more bum muscle activation" and "11% more muscle activation in the calf muscles and hamstrings". 

Minimise my gluteus maximus, tone up my thighs, and get fabulous calves to boot? Yeh, I'll take some of that pleasethankyouvermuch.

They're also going to tog me out in some snazzy Reebok training gear. New (presumably non-paint splattered) trakkie bottoms ("training pants" is the more correct term, according to the press release), a new t-shirt ("training top"), new sleeveless hoodie or jacket ("sports top"), new sports bag (er, "sports bag") and a pedometer will be winging their way to me shortly.

Yes, yes. Hard life. Now, before you start darkly muttering things like "it's alright for some", I have another bit of news. Reebok are going to hook you up with your very own pair of EasyTones and your very own kit pack! Complete with pedometer! Wohoo!

Sure we'll have lovely arses like yer woman here in no time at all.

"So, all I have to do is stand here with the telephone cord 
wrapped around me and my arse, like, tones itself? Cool."

UPDATE: 

This giveaway is now closed.

Thanks to everyone who entered! I'll be announcing the winner tomorrow (Tuesday, 16th March).

TO ENTER:   Leave a comment on this post. Simples!
 
(I was going to make you complete a tie-breaker or something similarly arsey, but then I remembered that I'm not actually a total wagon.)

THE DEETS:  Giveaway is open to anyone with an Irish address (north or south) and closes 5pm, Monday 15th March. One entry per person, please. Winner will be chosen using random.org. There is no cash alternative and my decision is final. The winner will be provided with registration details for Reebok's EasyTone website so they can choose their preferred style/size of runners and kit and leave feedback on their experience.

Good luck!

Those new Discover Ireland ads really do work!

I mentioned in passing the other day that we took ourselves off to the Cliffs of Moher last weekend. We charged up the iPod, gathered together an armful of CDs, got the car washed on the way out of the town (I do not understand the practise of getting the car washed before a long drive. Sure it's about to get utterly filthy again within minutes, non?) and then we were on our way.

It took about a bajillion hours to get there, but I did not mind in the slightest. I love going for drives, especially big long drives, especially when the weather's fine and I'm not doing the driving. One of my absolute favourite things is curling up in the passenger seat with my probably-too-big-for-my-head enormous sunglasses on, controlling the music selection and singing along to The Barenakedladies and other stuff I haven't listened to in maybe 10 years, chatting with Himself and looking out the window and thinking how incredibly gorgeous Ireland can be in the sunshine.

{Himself & the hound at O'Brien's Tower}

{this ledge is now fenced off & inaccessible, which I'm delighted about. some

of my scariest childhood memories involve being on a school tour with us all daring 

each other to look over the edge down to the sea, *hundreds* of metres below}

News from the 2010 Irish Blog Awards. *Faint.*

I was offline most of yesterday evening, entertaining Mam and the little sister since it was her birthday yesterday. I was also busy making her birthday card, because both she and Mam are into cards in a big way.

They're the sort of people who will spend ages reading the verses inside of birthday/anniversary/Christmas/congratulations on your new hip cards in Easons or wherever, choosing a card with just the right message for other people, and genuinely appreciate a handmade card. I also had to make her present, which was a voucher that entitles the bearer to one (1) Micky Bubbles ticket since I don't have a printer that would have enabled me to simply print the feckin' Ticketmaster confirmation email.

And I made the envelope for said voucher. Oh, I'm fancy alright.

Anyway the upshot of all this make and do and having visitors was that it was very late last night when I spotted this tweet from Babaduck:

Turns out http://bit.ly/b9L5fM is a shortened URL linky to the Irish Blog Awards (not so) Shortlists... where Lyndar The Merciless has made the first cut for Best Personal Blog!

Wowza. 

I'm beyond chuffed to be appearing in such illustrious company - famous and much-visited blogs of lovely ladies that I recognise immediately among the 25 "short"listees include Fatmammycat, who I have a bit of a girl crush on, Grannymar, and Sabrina Dent. And the impossibly gorgeous Blanaid is on there too. Eeeexcellent.

So again, a big thank you to whoever nominated me, to those who read this blog of tangents and meanderings, and to everyone who follows or subscribes to it or leaves comments to let me know you stopped by.

I'm off for a lie-down in a cool darkened room until the shock abates a bit.

The 2010 Irish Blog Awards take place on March 27th in Galway.

Talon-tastic Thursday: Paddy's Day nails

Not long to go now until St. Patrick's Day.

Or St. Patty's Day, as our Stateside friends insist on calling it, which sets my teeth right on edge and is one of the top reasons I don't ever want to spend the 17th of March in the US.

Since green is not exactly one of my top nail varnish colours - way too easy to look like you've just finished a good root around in your nostrils or have a particularly nasty nail bed infection, I reckon, regardless of what Chanel say - there are only three greens in my collection.

M&S 'Mint' - another of *those* pastel minis - would be bang on trend and is vay nice and ice-cream-y in its own right:

... but for a more definite green methinks I'll be going with Barry M 'Mint Green' on the day itself. 

Their 'Spring Green', meanwhile, does nothing for my colouring and I find it's an absolute bee-atch for staining, even with a base coat.

Begorrah.

What lovely nail varnish or other beauty bits are you wearing today or planning to sport on Lá Fhéile Pádraig?

Dutch Apple Cake: NYOM NYOM

Himself has been having a fairly blah couple of days in work, so last night I decided to get my domestic goddess hat on and make a lovely steak dinner and baked-from-scratch-with-my-own-fair-hands dessert.

The fact that I had to check which cut of steak would be nicest and seek confirmation of the proper name of the dessert were only minor details, hardly the sort of little things that would detract from one's claims of domestic goddessticity. Ehem. Cheers to the lovely Babaduck for setting me straight on both counts!

So, we were in Lahinch over the weekend by virtue of a spur of the moment "let's go to the Cliffs of Moher today!" decision on Sunday morning. (Serious kudos to whoever's behind the Discover Ireland ads that are playing in cinemas at the minute, by the way.) We had this gorgeous apple tart thing after dinner in Danny Mac's and I was determined to recreate it last night. 

It was like a deep-fill apple pie with a sort of sponge-like crust and no messing about with cloves. Babaduck reckoned this was more correctly called a Dutch Apple Cake, so off I went to find a recipe to play around with, and here's what I did in the end.

Dutch Apple Cake

Ingredients
» 2 eggs
» 20g caster sugar, 80g granulated sugar pulsed in a blender in an attempt to caster-ise it, and 75g rich dark brown sugar blitzed in a blender to remove the lumps and achieve the texture of caster sugar
(or you could just use 175g caster sugar, if you're fancy and not short of sugar in your household)
» 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
» 85g butter
» 75ml milk
» 125g self-raising flour
» 2 cooking apples, peeled, cored and thinly sliced

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 200ºC/175ºC fan/Gas Mark 6. Line the base and sides of a wide baking tin (I used a 9" round cake pan with removable base, which was poifect) with tin foil greased with a little butter. Or you could use parchment paper if you're fancy.

2. Whisk the eggs, caster sugar and vanilla extract in a large bowl until the mixture is thick and mousse-like and the whisk leaves a figure of eight pattern. This, apparently, should take about 5 minutes, but it seriously feels like an eternity. Use an electric whisk or it could actually take an eternity.

3. Melt the butter in a saucepan with the milk, then pour onto the eggs, whisking all the time. Sift in the flour and fold carefully into the batter so that there are no lumps of flour.

4. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and smooth the surface. Arrange the apple slices in layers over the batter. They'll sink a little, but I gently pushed them further into the batter and smoothed some over them as I didn't want apple slices peeking through the surface of my cake.

5. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 180ºC/155ºC fan/Gas Mark 4 and bake for a further 20–25 minutes or until well risen and golden brown.

6. Remove the cake from the oven and allow to cool in the tin before serving with your choice of cream or ice-cream (or custard if you're fancy a bit of a weirdo.)

Adapted from 'Bake' by Rachel Allen


Now Himself is a bit of an apple tart snob, but pronounced this to be "Ohm-Go-. Del-shus" through a mouthful of cake, and this morning suggested that it might even be nicer than my gooey chocolate puddings. Which I was delighted with at first, and then a bit offended about on behalf of my choccie puds. 

It was particularly yum, in fairness, and much easier than mucking about with pastry for a real tart. I know all the tips and tricks, but I still absolutely FAIL at pastry. Even the Jus-Rol prepacked stuff is nearly beyond my capabilities. 

Here's my finished, just out of the oven Dutch Apple Cake, looking tasty in its tinfoil skirt!

M&S do lovely sink unit, suck at conversions.

Isn't this snazzy? This mirrored bathroom vanity unit will set you back £599 from Marks & Spencer.

Assuming you're a UK, paying-in-Sterling customer, obviously.

If you're living in Ireland and thinking that this would look very nice indeedy in your smallest room, well, it'll set you back €809 Eurobux.

Even with my pass Leaving Cert. maths, it didn't take me long to figure out that £599 ≠ €809.

Xe.com tell me that £599 = about €662 today. Are Marks & Sparks - who offer free delivery on furniture orders from their website but only to UK addresses - seriously suggesting that it costs them the guts of an extra €150 quid per unit to sell these in Ireland?!

Yeh. Exchange rate FAIL, lads.

Gummi Bears... Bouncing Here and There and Everywhere...

... including light fixtures, apparently!

Price is on request from Jellio, so I suspect this might be one for the "when I win the Lotto" list. 

Sure not to worry. 

I'll squeeze it in somewhere between the Aston Martin DB5 and the personal trainer.

Talon-tastic Thursday: Mattified M&S Pastel Blue

While I'm not usually a big wearer of blue nail varnishes, some whim this morning drove me to choose this powder blue from my M&S set of pastels. 

Now that it's on, it reminds me of Spring skies and robin's eggs, and actually I like it far more than I eggspected. (Sorry.) This is three coats and Essie's Matte About You topcoat.

Pastels + matte puts me in mind of those little fairy cake topper sprinkles things that look like they've come out of a piping bag (if anyone knows the correct technical term for these, please do share.) Infinitely preferable to the school flashbacks I get with the blackboard paint effect dark colours + matte provide...

What nail varnish or other lovely make-up bits are you wearing today or planning to sport at the weekend?

Are you lookin' at me?

A sample of this wallpaper is winging its way to me from Cole & Sons. It's based on Piero Fornasetti's Tema e Variazioni plates, each one of which is decorated with a different image of Lina Cavalieri.

I'd love to use it in the bathroom but it might be a bit freaky to have a hundred versions of a 19th century opera singer's face looking at me while I brush my teeth in the morning. ("Did you floss yet?" "Don't forget to leave your coat into the dry cleaner!") 

Maybe I'll just frame a few for the bathroom instead, as placeholders for when I have £95 to fork out for decorative dishes.

Talontastic Thursday Tuesday: Tops & Tails

Yes, yes. This series should more correctly be christened "Random Photos of my Manicures Whenever the Hell I Get Around To It" but that just lacks the snappy alliteration of Talontastic Thursday, innit.

To atone for my sins, today's offering is a double whammy of nail varnish porn. 

First up, a French with a golden-tipped twist, inspired in part by Kirstie's handiwork and in part by the reverse French manis at Chanel's Paris-Shanghai show.

 

No flash, taken outdoors in sunshine.

This is two coats of Chanel Blue Satin topped with Lancôme BB Sand for the tips, and finished off with a layer of Essie Super Duper topcoat. 

I liked this so much that I set about replicating the effect on my toes, only to discover that the contrasting tip colour made my toenails look freakishly short and even uglier than usual. So I took inspiration from the two-tone manis that CND created for Ruffian at New York Fashion Week and got busy creating crescent moon effects along the bases of my nails (which has the opposite effect of elongating nails a bit!)

Now don't worry, I'm not going to inflict a photo of my hooves upon you. Here it is on my claws instead:

No flash, taken indoors by the window on an overcast day.

I used Essie Matte About You topcoat to create the blackboard paint effect you see here. What do you reckon? I think I prefer a glossy finish that doesn't have me itching to scribble on my nails with chalk...

What nail varnish or other lovely make-up bits are you wearing today?