31DC2013 Day 7 : Black & White < a nightmare beckons >

So, I'm a little late to the party. A lot late actually!
I was travelling the first few days of the month and that threw me off, so this is my first official post for the 31 Days Challenge.

Qn:  What's Black and White and haunts your night?
Ans: Jack Skellington!

Jack Skellington is of course the main character from the Tim Burton movie 'The Nightmare Before Christmas', and his love interest in the movie is Sally, a rag doll.

This is the original inspiration for my Black & White nail art.

This picture shows Jack and Sally in silhouette and I believe the creator is Corpse-Boy from the Deviant Art site. So hauntingly romantic!



And here's my interpretation:

In keeping with the Black & White theme, I chose to accompany my nail art with a polish that has a gray base (black mixed with white, geddit? ;P) with black and white shards.  I used "Concrete Jungle" by The Polish Well


This is so amazing! It has a good jelly formula, with silver shimmer and definitely noticeable, but not in your face B&W shards. Love this polish to bits! There is one negative though. The bottle that the polish came in, has a really really really short brush, which makes life REALLY difficult. I kept mis-aiming the mouth of the bottle and getting polish all over the table. 

The Polish Well brush

Comparison with an OPI brush

See what I mean by the extremely short brush? If The Polish Well is able to get some new bottles in, this would be perfect!


I'm definitely going to try to make up for the challenges I missed. Subscribe to my blog posts so you don't miss any of them!

Phantom of the Opera - review and nails

Recently, one of our local newspapers Today, organised a contest to win tickets to the Phantom of the Opera musical. It was a really simple contest, you just had to answer a question along the veins of "What is your favourite song from the musical and why?".

So I entered, and I was one of the winners!
I had to schlep all the way to MediaCorp to collect my tickets but hey, getting to see the musical again for free is a great trade-off!

The Tickets

As you can see, these are the cheapest, possible seats in the house, lol. They are ordinarily priced at $55 apiece but hey, at least I wasn't sitting in the absolute back row. ;)


 Pre-show Dinner 

Ah, Marina Bay Sands really has no cheap options for food. We settled on Din Tai Fung, a tried and tested option. I was really anxious about getting seated at the theatre comfortably before the show started so I practically ran to the restaurant. Alas! As we were nearing the restaurant, I could already see people milling around the entrance. This meant a wait, but how long? 30 minutes PLUS an additional 30 minutes wait after getting your table if you want their famous Xiao Long Baos .  :(

Ah, I wasn't up for walking around any more to look for food options and we felt it was probably going to be a similar situation elsewhere. So, settled on this.

Thankfully, the staff at DTF are really efficient and we were seated and served very quickly, within the promised time frame.

Here're our noms!

Beef noodles

• Oily like mad and rather tasteless. Beef was pretty tender though.

Chicken wantons

• Nice! Made me feel better about missing out on the Xiao Long Bao!

 MBS Theatre 


Our view of the stage, far far away

Well, since I didn't pay for the tickets, can't complain!
I came prepared with binoculars though! ✌



   My mani 

Of course, I had to have some appropriate nails for the occasion.

I used my go-to black a-england's Camelot as the base and painted my interpretation of icons from the musical.   

What do you think? :D



 The performance 

The musical is staged at the Marina Bay Sands (MBS) Grand Theatre, performed by an international cast.

What I am grateful for:
- no phones went off during the performance. Hooray!
- The seating of the theatre was in a staggered manner to minimise the chances of your view getting blocked

Not so great:
The Grand Circle where I was seated, opens to a non air-conditioned area of the MBS property. So before the performance started and all through the first act, it was really HOT!

Claire Lyon, who plays Christine had a great voice, as did all the other performers. However, the most important role of the Phantom, played by Brad Little, was kind of disappointing. Sure, he had great acting ability, but in musicals, acting is nowhere as important as the ability to sing. And alas, he does not quite possess the lung capacity I had hoped. Couldn't really reach the high notes. So that was definitely a let down.

All in all, I'd give the performance a 7. It was definitely enjoyable but I wouldn't shell out the dough for top tier seats.

Now the songs from the musical are stuck in my head. :P

Polish Together - International Ice Cream Day 2013

Oh, what really says summer better than picnics, ice cold drinks and ice-cream?


21 Jul 2013 is International Ice Cream Day and our theme for this Polish Together event. Woah, ice-cream! The possibilities are endless, what with the menagerie of flavours and toppings available out there.


I was looking through pictures of ice-cream on the internet for some inspiration for this theme and pictures of my favourite brand of ice-cream kept popping up. So I thought, why not try to do a nail art design inspired by the artwork on the ice-cream tub?


So here's a picture of the artwork of my favourite brand of ice-cream.

And here are the nails inspired by it.

These nails represent my favourite ice-cream flavour from Ben & Jerry's! Can you make the connection to the tub design? :D


Have a great ice-cream filled summer everyone!


polishes used
blue:   Nubar - Faded Jeans
beige: OPI - My Vampire Is Buff

Girly Bits - Razzle Dazzle

Good Lord, is this polish sparkly!


An oldie but goodie. Girly Bits has so much fantastic stuff and this is definitely one of her classics.


Pink scattered holo, with a menagerie of glitter bits going blue/ red/ yellow.

Accent nail art is just something simple, using a couple of dotting tools and black polish.


Love this polish! It's a must have!

Ilo Ilo wins at Cannes Film Festival!

Oh, it's a glorious day for Singapore. We have our first ever win at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival! "Ilo Ilo", by director Anthony Chen has won the Camera d'Or prize!


This was a quick celebratory mani done after I heard the news. It is a copy of the mani Zoey Deshanel originally did for the Golden Globes Awards 2013.

polishes used
Base: China Glaze - White on White
Gold: Essence - 121 Gold Fever



My lines are a little wonky, oops! I still hope you guys like this mani though. Here's to many more film awards to come!