Ratty spam

I adopted my two new little guys last weekend and it has been a blast with all five of my guys! There was some distrust in my cage at first, but they soon discovered that new friends are great and I found them this morning all sleeping on top of eachother.

So here it is, my ratty pic spam!

Tchaikovski, Noah and Chuck having dinner

Ahwww little Tarzan is getting squished!

There's no better pillow than a big warm fuzzy rat butt

See? They both had to try it

With these tiny rats, it's hard to take pictures. They never sit still! And they're so fast, OMG! When taking pictures, they're in frame one second and gone the next, like this:

I found the guys laying together this morning, it was just the cutest!

Chuck and Tchai

Noah using Tarzan as a pillow

If you didn't see any pictures of Merlin, that's because he's still having some arguments from time to time. He's okay with the little guys being there, it's just that they're not totally happy with him yet. When he comes close, Tchai immediately starts to scream like an idiot and that ticks Merlin off. He chases them around the cage a bit, all the while Tchaikovski is screeching his little lungs out, but no one gets hurt. I've found one tiny scratch on Tchai and I think his brother did that while roughhousing. So it's fine by me. It's getting better, they haven't woken me up in two nights with their screaming. Merlin just doesn't want them around when he's trying to sleep. So he finds a quiet spot to sleep and lies down there.

I can understand that. What I don't get is why Noah and Chuck don't get mad when the little ones climb all over them, with their paws all over the big one's heads and backs and Noah and Chuck get a tail in their face every so often. I'd go nuts :-p

Well, I'll keep you updated on how the rittens are doing. Aren't they called pups in english?

Nail fail: candy hearts nail art

Yeah, I know what you're thinking: she has a lot of those! Nail fails, I mean. And you're right, I do. But it's so much fun sharing these with you and hoping we'll all learn something from it. I also love seeing other people's nail fails by the way. So don't be embarrassed! We all make mistakes :-p

After two weeks of not painting my nails (try that one for a challenge, bet you can't), it was time for some awesome nail art. It just didn't turn out the way I planned, thanks to my sleepy head and my bed sheets.

My big example was this cute nail art by Leslie on Polish Art Addiction:

The letters and the hearts were done using a stamping plate. It's so sweet, isn't it? Ambitious me was thinking she could draw it all by hand. Hmm let's see how that turned out...

The hearts were pretty okay, they were just a bit too small so the text would have to be even smaller. I knew without trying that it wouldn't work. Too bad!

What was the bummer in this nail fail was the fact that I went to bed before the polish was absolutely 100% dry. I thought it was... The sheets pressed into the polish and it made the manicure look awful! I even had some hearts smudged but I haven't been able to find any spots on my sheets, thank heaven.

Even the pink background polish was pressed, even though that had been dry for over 2 hours. I tried to make some words in the hearts using a white marker but that failed, too. Oh well, it's just something to laugh about! This just goes to show how talented Leslie is. You should really go check out her blog to see the other amazing nail art designs she comes up with!

Gymnastic nail art

After two weeks of not painting my nails, I thought it was time for some simple, but beautiful nail art. I've used the pink Etos polish (also a prize in my giveaway) and Black Cab by Rimmel London. The silver I used is from Luminelle (Yves Rocher).

Hahaha I tried taking pictures of both hands, without the help of anyone else. It didn't go so well, as you can see below :-p

My boyfriend thought it was based on a logo or something, according to him it looked like a band uniform. That triggered my association with a gymnastics outfit. So that's what I'm calling this one! After wearing this a while, I thought I'd spice things up a bit with Lady Luck from the Sally Hansen Gem Crush collection. It was awesome...

Now it looks even more like a gymnastics outfit! Hahaha but soooo pretty :D I just LOVE Lady Luck layered over pink. It just looks so stunning. 

The Gem Crush collection dries REALLY fast. It's also kind of matte when it's dry. I haven't tried a top coat over it yet. 

Do you think the nail art looks like a gymnastics outfit? Or do you have some other idea when you see it?

My entry for a nail art contest

I entered a nail art contest held by The Nailasaurus a while ago and it just went into the voting stage. I feel guilty asking you to vote for me so please, do it only if you actually like my nail art and want me to win. No hard feelings if you don't!

You can log in using your Facebook or Twitter account, use this link to vote for my design:
http://www.loadnvote.com/contest-entry/spring-flowers-mattified-background
This direct link gives me extra points and can be done once a day per person.

Ofcourse, it would only be fair of me to give you the link to vote for other contestants! See all entries in a side-by-side voting system here: http://www.loadnvote.com/contest/top-nail-design-0#title

Kreativ Blogger Award

Kelly from Dysfunctionally Functional awarded me with this Kreativ Blogger Award. She was 'wowed' by my version of the comic book nails. Thanks Kelly!

The rules for the award are as follows:

Thank the person who gave you the award and link back to the awarding blog.
Answer 7 questions about yourself.
Provide 10 random factoids about yourself.
Hand the award to 7 deserving others.

7 Answers to Questions About Me

1. What is your favorite song?
My favorite song? I really don't know. I had 'Jingle Bell Rock' on my mp3 for years, and never got tired of it. I'm also nuts about Disney songs. And Eurovision songs. But what makes a song special for me is the memory that I've attached to it. I have certain songs for when I was on vacation in Sweden, songs for a really hot summer and songs for when I started a new year of school and there was this cool guy in my class :-p When I hear them, they take me back. So yeah, I guess those are my favorite songs.

2. What is your favorite dessert?
Anything sweet. I like chocolate chip cookies, lemon sherbet and tiramisu. Yum!

3. What do you do when you're upset?
I vent to my mom. Or I grab my stuffed animal (yes, I still have him and we are both loyal to eachother) and watch a tv show that I've watched a billion times already and that I know the words to.

4. What is your favorite pet?
Rats! Really, stupid question to ask me.

5. Which do you prefer, white or whole wheat?
White, although some things taste better on whole wheat.

6. What is your biggest fear?
That my parents die before I'm ready to say goodbye (will I ever be?). I have so much to learn from them and I still really need them. I guess that's okay at 22. Or at any age for that matter. 

I also don't want my parrot to die, I've had nightmares about it (about my parents dying too). I know I'll have to experience losing him some time in the future because he has already reached the age of 42 and he gets grumpy when he misses his afternoon nap. 

I'm not so scared of dying myself, I just won't know it. I can't miss myself when I'm not there anymore, you know?

7. What is your attitude mostly?
Happy, shiny, loving pretty things and talking. ALOT.


10 Random Factoids About Me

1. My stuffed animal from my youth is a seal. I've named it Seabert, after a cartoon. He still sleeps in my bed (except when I have my boyfriend to cuddle with) and he smells best when he's freshly washed or when he has spent some time in the sun.

2. I once ate a bug. Not by accident. Give me a break, I was 2!

3. I once ate soap. Also not by accident. Same age. 

4. I cried when one of the fishies in our pond died from the heat. That was just a few weeks ago. 

5. Before I get in my car to drive somewhere, I have a little bit of a panic moment when I think of having to find a place to park. 

6. I love to watch movies and tv shows again and again and again. They make me feel comfortable and I like knowing all the words. 

7. Beautiful things have a way of hypnotizing me. There's this light art festival every year in a city near here. I went there on a date with a guy once and he kept having to pull my arm in order to get me back to reality. 

8. I have a hard time telling people what books, movies, music or games I like. I'm afraid they will judge me, I think they will define me by what I like when really my taste is so diverse that you can't fit it in a box. 

9. I have very thick hair and I get a lot of compliments. I do nothing except wash it and once every few months I have it cut. Also, I have some lighter strokes in my dark blond hair, and people, even one of my friends last monday, ask when I got it dyed. I've always had my own hair color. 

10. I have a thing about smells. I like to smell the fresh air, I can smell rain in it. Certain perfumes give me the idea of liking someone or not. I guess everybody has that to some degree, but for me it's really strong. I didn't like my Seabert when he didn't smell right, although usually that was my own fault for putting him in the fridge 'so he could eat fish'.

7 Deserving Others and, Simply Put, Why

I'm doing this one Kelly-style. The post about this award has been sitting in the 'concept' bin for a week now, because I can't pick my favorites from all the wonderful bloggers that I follow. So if you are here, it means you're awesome and you deserve this award!

Swatches - China Glaze DV8

As my nails are taking a vacation, I'm bugging everybody around me to paint their nails. I went to the zoo with a friend and yes, I took my polish with me. Don't tell me you're not just as hooked on polish as I am!

I took three different polishes and she chose China Glaze DV8. And who wouldn't? It's so pretty and holographic :D Her fingers and especially the area around her nails are in bad shape. She's all about the sports so she doesn't care about her nails. I've found out the hard way it's just impossible to keep your mani neat when going indoor rock climbing.

In the sun, the holographic effect becomes way more visible:

Pretty!!! Still, these pictures don't do the polish justice. I guess I'll owe you girls some better swatches. And better nails to do them on :-p

Nail mail: China Glaze Ghoulish Glow

I needed some new nail wheels and I thought that while I was paying postage for a package anyway, I might as well make us of it. I like novelty polishes and I had my eye on Ghoulish Glow from the Haunting Halloween collection by China Glaze. It's a glow in the dark polish and I've always been a glow in the dark kinda gal. I love disco lights and special effects, so this is just perfect for me :D 

This is the bottle in broad daylight, sun was pouring through my windows. It's a matte bottle and the polish looks a bit yellowish. 

When exposed to sunlight for a minute, it looks like this:

And after the first few seconds, the glow fades and looks like this:

The second kind of glow holds a while and wears off slowly. I'll post the swatches soon!

Ratty names

Last weekend, I visited the little rats of which I get to adopt two guys! I had to travel quite a while by train to get there, then I took a bus and we still had to walk for a bit, but it was worth it, because oh boy! Those little rats are just cuteness on a stick. They have tiny little buttons for noses and the cutest bums. They fit right between the couch cushions and they were so fast! And really soft ofcourse, their tails are still rosy and smooth and their nails don't scratch (yet). Ahwwww I'm sorry I'm drifting off.

I wanted to show you what I did with my cage. I have a Ferplast Jenny (cheap yet relatively spacious) and the bottom of the cage is just grey. Every time I get a new ratty inhabitant, I put his name in black letters on the front of the cage. Like this:

As you can see, there's still room for two more. I set my limit at 5 rats, that way each rat gets his fair share of attention from me and they have a nice group to play with each other. The new names look like this:

So now I have Chuck, Noah and Merlin (Merlijn in dutch), and they will be accompanied by Tchaikovsky and Tarzan.

Most of my names have come from tv shows. I've named my pets after characters from my favorite tv shows ever since my brother named his mice after the A-team. He didn't care that they turned out to be girls (those were some really tough mice, hihi). I didn't get to name most of my rats because they came from the pound. So I got a rat with the name Wizze, because he peed on everything, and Fidge, because he couldn't sit still. After that I got Zorro, named so because he was very brave and Hogan, after Hulk Hogan (the wrestler) because he liked to jump from a height on top of his brothers. I loved my ratty Frodo, he was adopted by someone else first, named after LOTR, as was his brother Sam, and then he was rejected again. That gave me the opportunity to give a home to this funny, loving and a bit crazy rat.

My boyfriend commented that I have mostly names of big figures, be it from movies and tv or from history and culture. The nest letter was T, so I had to get two names with the letter T. After Tesla, Tühring, Timon and many other names, Tarzan and Tchaikovsky stuck with me.

So that's my ratty story! There were no pictures of cute rats this time... or were there? Check out the little ratties below!

Gradient & stamping attempt

I told you about my mom being an absolute honey, right? It gets better! She offered to lend me her nails while mine are taking a break.

I haven't had the guts to try stamping on my nails, but as long as it's my mom walking around with a nail fail, I think I'll give it a shot. Her polish will chip and peel within two days anyway, so it won't be so obvious.

I started out with a gradient. I thought I'd make sort of a sunset, but after I started, I realized I just have the one orange polish and only two yellows. So I had to make do with what I did have.

I tried stamping and I let my mom pick out the design. Again, I had to work with severely limited resources: I only have a single stamping plate and one red stamping polish. I will try stamping with the very opaque Gosh polishes that I own. 

Stamping didn't go exactly as I wanted it to, but better than I had hoped. Picking up the design got easier when I used my right hand for swiping and my lefty for picking up the design. It made the process faster. Placement is still a big problem for me, though. 

There were two fingers (out of the 8 because two nails have some problems and shouldn't be polished) that were actually kind of nice. The thumb design didn't transfer exactly right, but was placed pretty well, while the pinky was transferred nicely. 

Yay! I took the biggest step yet in my nail art career, stamping! One small step for nail artists, one huge step for Narmai! 

And of course a huge hug and a big thank you to my mom, who let me ruin her nails :-p

Sowing my wild oats..

... or my tame ones. My brother suddenly had the crazy idea to grow some edible plants like herbs and even vegetables. I'm an absolute disaster when it comes to anything green. I'm great with animals, but my plants keep dying. There is one thing I do seem to be able to keep alive, the easiest plant ever: garden cress, or tuinkers in my language.

I thought I'd give it another try so I sowed some rucola/arugula too. That one will take a longer time to give me something to eat (oh no, how will I survive) but I'm curious to see how it will grow. 

The bucket thingy came out of our shed, it was a miracle I can find anything in the mess in there. The little signs were made by me and me tinks I loves dem. They're simple, but so cute!

Oooh I just can't wait for these little buggers to sprout! They will make great sandwiches :-p

Dandelion nail art

First, I want to show you some swatches of one of my home made polishes. It's kind of a light peach color with a tiny bit of shimmer in it. The model in my pictures is my mom, I finally got to do her nails! She's a homemaker and spends a lot of time cleaning the house, so her fingers were in bad shape. She never files her nails, not after cutting them or even after they break. She told me she hates the feeling, but not the way I do it. She's such a sweetheart *love*

My mom doesn't like flashy nails. She wore one of my darker red polishes once for about three hours, then I had to take it off. She likes this shade, though, and I even got to do some nail art. My mom is a tiny woman, she's not very tall and not fat either. I wanted to make something to reflect this so I chose a dandelion with spores flying in the wind. She wouldn't sit still because she was chatting with me and playing a game on the iPad so it got kind of smudged :-p But still, I think it's a nice manicure for a honey like my mom.

By now, the polish has chipped and peeled and it looks awful :-p But it was great for a while and I like that I made my mom happy. I think I'm going to use her nails more often while mine get some rest. Whose nails do you like to do (except your own)?