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

33 Day Challenge: Indian

I had all these wonderful ideas for today's challenge prompt but none of the great ones turned out great or made it to the nails. I chose to interpret Indian as 'from India' and considering how rich the culture is, I had no problem coming up with ideas (after a bit of Googling). There was going to be tigers but that didn't work, I moved on to flowers then jewelry but I had to settle for a fabric pattern I found on Pinterest. It turned out better when I close the browser before saving the pin and I had no way of showing you. Anyway, this is my interpretation of Indian. 

I started with two coats of CoverGirl's Wine To Five and BADLY free handed some gold reeds with A Piece Of Forever from Essence. To stick the studs, I applied a coat of Ulta3 in Clear but as I mentioned before, this dries up way too quickly and I have to keep applying coat upon coat. I had a look at my very small stash of topcoats and saw my nail foil glue. I figured it would work for the smaller studs as it would stay sticky for a while and the adhesive was strong enough. Oh goodness! Why didn't I think of this earlier? I applied all the studs on my middle finger without having to reapply the glue. When I was done, I applied a top coat to seal all the studs in and get rid of any stickiness that was still lingering around.

I liked the way it looked without top coat better but I managed to get some fluff stuck on the glue on my ring finger. You can see below. At least I learnt to work continuously when I'm working with it. I applied one coat of Seche Vite on all my fingers.

I'm not in love with the design from up close, it's a bit crooked and the little round studs bled their colour when I applied top coat but I discovered another use for nail foil glue in nail art. Oh! And the need to keep practicing my free handing skills.

Check out the other ladies participating in the challenge.

Till next time,

Laura

Pastel Dry Marble Skittle

Most of the manis I've done in the last two weeks or so have involved lots and lots of coats of nail polish and Seche Vite. I enjoyed doing them very much but they took a long time to create and the layers started to peel from how thick they were together. I decided to create something a little simpler and quicker for today's manicure. 

What's the best way to create nail art with lots of colour but none of the thickness or the effort? A dry marble skittle manicure! 

Index finger: Two coats of Essie in Penny Talk

Pinky: CoverGirl Outlast in Everbloom 

Middle and ring fingers: The two polishes above and CoverGirl in Mint Mojito on a Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On base. I created the dry marble using this technique. The marble was really shiny without top coat but it was really uneven, so I topped all off with a coat of Seche Vite.

Yeah, I know, my clean up was shocking but the detail of the contrasting green and rose gold looks really good, doesn't it?

I think I met my goal of creating a simple mani even though it wasn't that well executed. I may need to change my clean up brush and be a little more patient when it comes to removing little bits of polish stuck in the cuticles. 

Hey guys! It's...

Source

Have a good one!

Till next time, 

Laura

Practice Makes Perfect. Part II

I've only done three water marbles in my life and this last one was surprisingly satisfying. I'm not saying it was perfect in any way but it gave me enough confidence to keep doing it. This morning I was feeling brave and thought I''d do a marble as I hadn't done since November and I'd read in a few blogs the CoverGirl Outlast range was pretty good for marbling. I had three untried ones so off I went. 

I present to you my two-finger, dry-cuticled matte marble.

If you cover up the cuticles, it doesn't look too bad. : )

I used a coat of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On as a base for all my fingers to make the colour pop. The other polishes as follow:

Pink:               CG in Everbloom

Orange/Coral:  CG in Coral Silk

Green:            CG in Mint Mojito 

Top coat:        Seche Vite (for durability)

Matte topcoat: Rimmel Pro Matte Finish 

This experiment was originally going to include my ring finger as an accent and the rest of the fingers would be polished with the colours of the marble. When I did the ring finger I ended up with a decent pattern so I thought I'd marble the rest as well. My subsequent attempts were big failures. I left it for half a day and came back later to it but only my middle finger was acceptable.

I used sticky tape to cover my cuticles and fingers from the excess polish that floats in the water. My cuticles were pretty dry to start with and this step made them worse. Hand cream and cuticle oil helped them a little and I thought they were OK until I took the photos. Went back for more oil but winter might be taking its toll on my skin.  

When I started marbling I had my white base on ready but not the sticky tape. I started dropping polish into the water and created the pattern above. I then tried to quickly tape up my finger but wasn't too worried as I figured the thin layer of polish would just dry a little and would still stick to my finger. The polish dried but it got a very thin layer of water on it which got stuck in between the marble and the white polish. Weird, hey? Having water stuck between layers never crossed my mind. You can see the water stains  in the green part of the marble. When I applied Seche Vite the bristles touched a very thin part of the polish and some water spurted out and left the white showing. 

When I tried doing the other fingers, I taped my fingers first before putting the polish in the water but then it would take forever to dry and I would have to leave my finger in the water so it wouldn't mess up. It did anyway. 

If you look at the bottom part of these two nails and ignore the water stains/dried cuticles, it looks pretty and soft. Doesn't it? Haha!

At least I've learnt:

• I might will need some nourishing treatments for my hands and cuticles. Maybe some overnight treatments with cotton gloves?
• To be prepared when covering up your cuticles. Either sticky tape or Vaseline will work but I need to make sure I do it before I start dropping the polish in the water.
• To be patient when I have my fingers in the water. It's water marbling and it is time consuming but the results are worth it!
• To use a thick layer of top coat to avoid bristles touching the polish and draggin/removing it.

I'm hoping to try this again very soon because I really like the look of the marble. I know you either love doing them or hate the whole process? Which one do you do? Do you have any other tips for a good (eventually awesome!) marble?

Till next time, 

Laura

Practice Makes Perfect

Yes, practice makes perfect. I've learnt that in many occasions and that's the reason I'm posting this fail of a manicure. 

It all started with CoverGirl's Always Naked. I bought four of their new Outlast range at Coles for $13.30. That works out less than $3.50 each and an absolute bargain so I went for colours I didn't have. 

I first applied two thin coats of Always Naked and a coat of Seche Vite. The formula was pretty good but it was taking forever to dry. I managed to put a few dents in the polish before I put on the topcoat so I decided to cover them up with something colourful to go with the nude/bright trend I've seen floating around. I brought out my trustworthy Dollar Nail Art foils and chose the one called Marbles to create half geometric moons. The application was less than perfect, I'm not sure if it was the glue not drying properly or my skills but it didn't look pretty.

Anyway, I decided to bring out my black stripper and try, try to cover up the edges. At this point I knew I had made a mess but I thought maybe if I seal my tips with similar-to-each-foil polishes it'd look better. No, no it didn't. I topped it all off with a coat of piCture pOlish Revolution. This was the end result.

I actually debated (in my head) whether to post this mani. I mean, it looks pretty terrible but decided I'll put it up anyway and keep practicing so in a few months (hopefully), I can come back and show you the good version of this mani. I could do one of those Now & Then posts that are floating around the blogsphere. 

I'm keeping it short and looking at my nails from afar. They're not too bad that way.

Till next time, 

Laura

CoverGirl's Constant Caribbean

Something simple and straight to the point today. I present to you CoverGirl in Constant Caribbean, a bluish teal shimmer. Like the other two CoverGirl polishes, this formula was great, only had to use two thin coats for opacity, shiny without topcoat and it dried quickly; for a person with no patience, that is VERY important. Did I mention I love the colour?

Unfortunately I have an issue with this almost perfect polish. Check out those streaks!!! I tried to avoid them by doing thin coats on all fingers but they still showed up badly. In my index finger, where they are more noticeable I applied a medium coat to see how it would show. Boy, you can see the streaks on that finger! Let's be honest, no one's gonna look that closely and judge us for having streaky shimmer polish but it's still a tad disappointing that I didn't get the perfect mani.

I find this sort of colour always gets a lot of attention and gets a lot of compliments, even from guys. So I'm gonna move on and enjoy this polish. 

Bottle shot for show. I just discovered that, like Chanel bottles, the cap comes off to reveal a more manageable brush. I don't really feel the difference and I like the bottle better with the cap on. That's just me.

Hope you enjoyed my short series of CoverGirl polsihes. Let me know. :)

Till next time, 

Laura

CoverGirl's Midnight Magic

In the last post I showed you guys Cover Girl's Wine Stain, which was absolutely amazing. At the same time, I purchased Midnight Magic by the same brand and of course, I had to show you.

This polish seems to be a gunmetal silver jelly with tiny iridescent flakies and multicoloured glitter. I say it seems because the base can change from a lighter grey to a oil-slick black to almost a mossy green, depending on what light is being reflected. 

Swatches were done with two coats and no topcoat.This formula was great. There were no flooded cuticles, no gloopiness or thickness and it dried quickly and super smooth, which can be unusual for glitters. It was just perfect. Another big tick for the new range of CoverGirl's polishes.

With low flash

With strong flash

I would love to show you what this polish looks like in the sun but as I started writing this, a massive storm popped out of nowhere, taking the sun away with it. Instead, I'll show you the accent I created with striping tape and Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Night Flight. Finished the mani by top coating only the ring finger to smooth the black polish out.

So original, right? I still love the way it looks. I hope you guys like it too.

I'll have to update you with bottle photos as it's looking kinda dull without that sun. Watch this space.

Till next time, 

Laura

CoverGirl's Wine Stain

I have vowed to myself to only buy new polish if I have worked extra hours and the desired bottle has a shade I have nothing close to. Saying that, I still like going into Target and look around at the stands and see what's new. In my last trip, I came across CoverGirl's new range of nail polish which 'Dares to go topless with our new nail polish formula that combines a base coat, high gloss color, and a chip-resistant top coat in one simple step'. I must say their range of colours is not completely unique but there are a lot of pretty shades in the bunch of 45 options.

Since they were half price, $3.47 per bottle to be precise, I decided maybe I should go through the bin the polishes were in and get one or two. I ended up with three. So here's the first of the bunch. I present to you, CoverGirl's Wine Stain. Two coats and no topcoat. 

With a stamp, since this is how I wore it out. 

I don't think any other name could have described it any better. I love the deep colour it holds but that's not where it stops. This polish has an amazing formula that applies like butter and, could you please look at how shiny it is without topcoat? You could almost say it's a jelly but it's highly pigmented, not a lot of light goes through this polish, it just shines!

One other thing this polish promises is that you don't need to use a base coat, which in my case, I use to avoid nail staining since my nails are painted 99.99% of the time. As I was trying to clean up, I noticed this maybe a slight stainer. Ooops! I guess I'll have red bed nails for a while.

 Lastly, it should create a chip-resistant manicure. As I use my hands for manual work, I noticed a tiny little chip on my index finger after a day, but the rest lasted three days before I got bored and had to move on. Not bad either way. I also noticed this polish, even after a day, had a very squishy texture. This meant that there were small dents on the polish that weren't greatly noticeable but dulled the shine a little bit. Not an issue, but I hadn't come across this before, not even with actual jellies.

Overall, Wine Stain is a stunner. After a quick Google search on CoverGirl polishes, I found a lot of lacqueristas telling horror stories of previous polish releases by this brand. I must say I am extremely happy with this polish and would highly recommend it. As previously mentioned, they are ridiculously cheap at Target for $3.47 for 11ml or you can get them 2 for the price of 1 at Priceline. I don't think they've changed the stands to fit these polishes, so you'll find them in bins.

One last thing. I also love the shape of the bottle. It looks a lot like the Chanel bottles and I can tell you I have had a better experience with this.

Bottle shots for comparison.

Till next time,

Laura