GOT Polish Challenge: Blue

Blue polish has always had a special place in my heart, especially if it's a shimmery royal blue polish. When I saw the GOT blue prompt, I immediately knew I wanted to bring out Aruba Blue, which was my first Essie and its purchase marked the beginning of my polish hoarding habits around mid 2012. I painted my digits with the polish but then I remembered I had purchased Maybelline Mini Colorama in Electric Blue, another royal blue shimmer, back in 2010, so that one should take the crown as the Golden Oldie blue. I'd always worn unusual shades in my lifetime (greenish gold polish at 13, anyone? Yes, it was the 90's) but Electric Blue was my first fashion colour. I wasn't just a kid playing with colours anymore, I was a grown woman making a fashion statement with my nails in a world of nude pinks and black. Yes, I chose to be different. Haha! Polish has been in defining times of my life and I may be reading too much into it. :)

I'm actually using both polishes on the photo below for comparison, Aruba blue on the index and ring fingers and Electric Blue on the pinky and middle finger. Not only was the former my first Essie, it turned out to be my first stash dupe. Even worse, I ended getting Sally Hansen's Azure last year without having memory of why I bought it and now have three royal blue shimmers. At least I won't run out any time soon...

I wanted to make truly old school, so I brought out OPI's beautifully coloured Turquoise Shatter and tried to create a lightning bolt/tape mani. Once upon a time, I tried to reuse this shatter by applying it directly to the nail, without base coat, so it wouldn't crack and after two coats it looked opaque. I top coated it and happily went on with my day but when I removed it I ended up with the brightest blue nails I had ever seen. I took out the bicarb soda and lemon straight away and scrubbed and scrubbed thinking that I was gonna have blue stains for a while. It eventually came off and a big lesson was learnt. Crackles are done unless you are doing an golden oldie mani. Btw, when I said once upon a time, I meant yesterday... :/

I'm gonna have to face it, even though I love these two colours together, this wasn't my best work for a number of reasons. 

• I used a crackle that was lumpy. 
• I painted my dominant hand as I broke three of my blogging nails baaaaaaadly over the last five days. I have little round nubbins at the moment and I don't think they look bad, they're just too short. 
• There are awkward hand poses and fluff in one of my photos. 

Next week, I'm up for dots and know exactly what I'm gonna do. Hopefully my nails are ok by then

Check out the rules for the challenge and some more awesome blue manicures below.

Until next time, 

Laura

Holographic Stamping Because Why Not?

Stamping with holo polishes has been around for a while and in my slow fashion, I just got to try it out. The original plan was to create a tone-on-tone mani but as most of my plans, it went out the window when I realised I only have two holos, one black and one silver, and the black one was calling my name. I'm pretty happy with the resulting mani so I'm about to photo-spam you.

I started with two coats of CoverGirl's Constant Caribbean, swatch included at the bottom of the post, and used the scaly/feathery pattern (is that what this is?)  from the BM-410 plate to stamp with Ozotic in 528. I topped it all of with a coat of Seche Vite.

Of course, the photos were going to be taken out in the sun to show the holo particles. You can sort of see the linear holo effect that 528 would normally have. 

Excuse the dirty cuticles, the black holo was really hard to clean up!

I took some photos in the lightbox and I was happy to see there were some rainbow coloured particles from the holo. Nothing impressive but they could still be seen.

This is Constant Caribbean by itself and even though this is a gorgeous colour, the formula is very streaky so it seems to be a good base for stamping.

That's all from me today, I'm glad i was able to keep this short and simple and let the pics speak for themselves.

Till next time, 

Laura

GOT Polish Challenge: Stripes

When I saw the 'stripes' prompt for this challenge I knew exactly what I wanted to do and I did it, but it didn't turn out quite the way I was imagining in my head. I took photos of it and all but I don't think I'm ready for it yet. I'll leave it for later... I started again with naked nails and brought two older polishes that I knew I liked and went well together. 

For the base I used two coats of Ulta3 in Bouquet, a lovely fuchsia crelly with lots of blue shimmer which was purchased at the beginning of 2012 for about 50c. I then brought out the striping tape and created an unintentionally uneven diagonal stripe pattern on middle and ring fingers. I used Sally Hansen in Bejeweled for the textured stripes and created a glitter gradient with the same polish on the rest of my fingers. I topped my pinky and index with a coat of Seche Vite.

Bejeweled was one of the first swatches I did in this blog back in June 2012 but it was so terrible I redid a swatch here. It's always been one of my favorite polishes because of the combination of colours, how quickly it dried, the relative easiness to remove this super packed glitter and the texture. I liked the way the glitter didn't sit smoothly on the nail and I believe this is the polish that started my luuuurve for textured polishes, even though this isn't labelled as one.

This was a bit of a rushed job but I'm still happy with the way it come out, I can't stop running my fingers over this textured stripes. 

Check out the rules for this challenge and other striped manicures below. There are some real winners in the.

GOT Polish Challenge: Pink

In my endeavour to post three times a week, I have chosen to take part in the Golden Oldie Thursday Challenge from The Crumpret's Nail Tarts group on Facebook (rules at the bottom of the post) as an incentive. I have a lot of polishes that have been left on the back burner as new pretty, mostly textured polishes have come into play, so this challenge seems to be a really good way to re-shopping the stash. 

For this week, I chose two Nails Inc pink polishes I got in a mini-bottle gift pack from some UK Black Friday sales. That's how I know how old they are and that they are both the same age, I also know I have tried them but haven't blogged about them. On my ring finger, I'm wearing three coats of Elizabeth St, a creamy pink nude that is quick drying and one of the better nudes I own. On the rest of my fingers, I wore four coats of Notting Hill Gate, a neon pink, which is nooooot colour accurate in the pics below. I didn't mind doing so many coats as each one didn't take very long to dry and with the help of Seche Vite, all four coats were dry to the touch within 10 minutes. I forgot how good neon colours can look against my skin so I might bring them out more often, plus it's summer on this side of the world. What better time to use them, right?

I knew I wasn't gonna be able to leave the plain colours, as pretty as they are, and I added some water decals and triangular studs I got from eBay. I went for a tough/sweet sort of look and I'm not quite sure if I achieved it but I am happy with the result.

Wanna check out some more pink manis? Click on the links below; there are some talented ladies in this challenge.

Till next time, 

Laura

January's Tri-Polish Tuesday

I'm back on The Crumpet's Tri-Polish Challenge for this month. The rules have changed slightly from last year allowing a little more flexibility. Different polishes can be used as long as one sticks to the month's colours and only one mani has to include all three colours, the rest of the month's manis need to include at least two colours. Also, as the name suggests, instead of doing the manis on the last two weeks of the month, they will be posted on Tuesday. 

Why not start with the one with all three colours? I wanted to do a mani that would mirror the colours and curve from the pinky and index fingers on the middle and ring fingers. So this is what I came up with...

Polishes used:

Orange:  Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Sun Kissed
Yellow:  Ulta3 in Honolulu
Red:      Essie in Silken Cord
Black:    Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Black Out

I used a dotting tool to create the leopard spots and striping tape to create the concave lines. The lines on the middle and ring fingers were free handed. Topped it all off with two coats of Seche Vite. 

This is a very out there mani for me but I really like the combination of colours and the way the lines on the pinky and index fingers frame the spots. However...

I did a mani with leopard spots a little while ago here and I remember them being a very easy to not get wrong. I don't think some spots are terrible but there could have been a bit more separation between the black edges to have a little more definition. Like the from my index finger

I'm looking forward to creating more manis for this challenge so much, I already have a few things lined up.

Till next time, 

Laura

It Was On A Starry Night...

You may be familiar with 'Dia de los Reyes Magos' or Day of the Three Wise Men, which is celebrated in some Latin American countries and parts of Europe on the 6th of January, as far as I know. The Wise Men would be the ones that would bring presents to kids instead of Santa Claus, however, the custom has changed, depending on who you ask and some kids get presents on Christmas and today. The adults get to eat 'rosca de reyes', a cake in the shape of a ring with crystallized/glazed fruit and whatever other food the host of the wants to serve. On the nails, I figured showing the star that guided the Three Wise Men to Baby Jesus to give them the gifts would be suitable for the occasion. I must be honest though, I intended to post this at Christmas time but never got around to writing up the words for the photos but it turned out for the better.

I  started with two coats of Butter London's Union Jack Black and saran-wrapped one coat of Max Factor's Extra Frost to create the night sky. I let that dry and used striping tape to create a thin triangle along three of my fingers to create the tail of the star... or comet, whatever you wanna call it, and used Essie's Good As Gold to colour it in. Topped it all off with one coat of Seche Vite.

I had some gold star studs but the mani would looked a bit odd with two different tones of gold so I painted the star with the Essie polish and let it dry for about half an hour. I had to bend the star a little bit so it would fit properly on the nail without snagging onto e v e r y t h i n g like some larger studs tend to do if left flat. I attached it with a drop of Seche Vite but I did it when it wasn't quite dry/tacky so I got some of the Good as Gold on the base. 

That could be considered star dust from the comet... Yeah... It could.

I had a bit of trouble photographing the prettiness of this mani so I tried it with sunlight (photos above) and in the lightbox (photo below). Oh! I also dented my index finger twice, once with a ring because I thought it would be a good idea to take off a ring while the polish was still tacky, and the second from moving my hands around normally.

I was really happy with the way this mani looked, the depth of the 'sky' and the continuity of the comet's tail did it for me. I even kept this for FOUR days. 

Hope you guys have had a good and safe holiday season. Here in this part of the world we've been having 40 degree days, which feels totally like summer.

Till next time, 

Laura.

Happy New(ish) Year!!!

Happy New Year everyone! Thank you everyone that has clicked on anything that has led to this blog for the last year, it's very encouraging when you guys not only visit our page but also comment and seem to like what we do in this little corner of the internet. I hope everyone had a good and safe start for 2014... 

I know. I know, I'm late for the wishes. I really feel like I have lost some of my nail art mojo and whatever I attempt looks very simple, unfinished or too rough. I created a few New Year's manis but they weren't outstanding so I gave it another go after a quick getaway and I think this attempt it's simple but OK.

I started with three coats of OPI's Emotions and stamped over it with Essie's Nothing Else Metals using images from the BM-404 for the flowery pattern and BM-420 for the mask. No base or top coat used.

I was really impressed on how clear the mask came out; it could be that my stamping skills are now awesome or the newer set of plates from Bundle Monster is really well etched... It could be both. :)

Since it's a new year and all, I wanna put out there two blog related thoughts that have been hanging around my head for a while.  

1. I'm gonna post at least 3 times a week on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. There are a few challenges that should help me keep this up and leave me with a free day to do whatever I want. Doable, I think.

2. I'm not buying any more stamping plates until I have peeled the blue plastic film off all the ones I currently have. Plus I just put an order through for some MoYou plates so I should be set. Otherwise, I'll just be hoarding plates and not using them. That's not the spirit, is it? 

I'm looking forward to 2014, I hope you guys are too!

Till next time, 

Laura