Topshop Marble Accent

I'd like to think I'm not terrible at marbling so I decided to give it a go today with some Topshops polishes I had yet to publish in this blog. Today was as good as any other time so here we go.

I started with the idea of marbling all my fingers but only the first finger worked. The water and polish weren't cooperating in the following attempts and, as I wanted to keep the mani as no-frills as possible, I decided to only paint my digits with the colours I had used for the marble. On my middle finger and thumb I used Wisdom and Gilted for the index finger and pinky. The pink from the marble is Glitz, which is not quite as glittery as the other two but it still worked with the other two colours. Topped it all off with a coat of Rimmel Pro Matte Finish.

 

I'm having some trouble describing the qualities and composition of these polishes as I have found there aren't a lot of mainstream brands that do this sort of finish. I would describe them as jammed-packed superfine glitters/shimmers suspended in a similar colour base that you can't even see from how dense the glitter is. There at least two colours of glitter in each polish, which gives them a multidimensional colour and the ability to show different colours in different lights. Did I mention they're all almost one-coaters if applied carefully? What about the fact that the formulas are so amazing I didn't do any clean up? No? Like most Topshop polishes, the drying time is longer than average but they are DURABLE. They spread nicely in the water but then again, took a little longer to dry on the surface and I think that's where I failed with the rest of the fingers.

I'm enjoying this thing called photo-spamming, so click on the page break for more photos. 

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

Bejeweled: Take 2

I was supposed to have uni this morning but the floor where I was going to have class flooded and the class got cancelled. What is a girl to do with the time she would have otherwise spent commuting? Well, if you're reading this I'm sure you know the answer.

I present to you and uber-speedy manicure. I used two coats of Sally Hansen Gem Crush in Bejeweled, a small purple and larger pink glitter that takes two seconds to dry. Ok, maybe it takes fifteen seconds but you get the gist. I then applied Rimmel Pro Matte Finish topcoat but I didn't see a lot of difference as this polish dries fairly matte by itself.  Finished by stamping with Konad Special Polish in Black using Bundle Monster's BM-212 plate. I'm not sure what the motif actually is but the abstract look can also look good.

What do you guys think? I actually have done a post about 10 months ago with this polish but it was terrible! Think glittery cuticles, awkward hand position, a loooooooong post where I just kept blabbing on. You could say I'm trying to redeem myself with this one and hopefully the other one can be forgiven.

Either way, I love this polish and it's glittery goodness. I'm off to keep studying.

Till next time, 

Laura

Max Factor's Fantasy Fire

I'm sure we're all aware of the existence of Max Factor's Fantasy Fire. When I first saw it in real life, I fell in love with its rainbow coloured shimmer and jelly appearance. It was perfect in the bottle and I wanted the effect on my nails. 

I actually purchased this bottle a little while ago for 72 cents at Big W but had waited a loooong time as I couldn't really justify spending $5.95 for such a little bottle. 

Aren't those colours pretty? 

I've tried a few ways to use Fantasy Fire to maximise the amount of colours seen and so far, layering over Max Factor's Purple Haze has worked best. This polish has a very similar to the jelly in Fantasy Fire so there's no streaks or bald patches. I used two coats of Purple Haze and two coats of Fantasy Fire in the swatch below.

I have to admit, the polish in the bottle is amazing but it didn't blow my mind once it was on the nail. You could say I was... disappointed. Only one colour shimmer can be seen from a particular angle and to see the others, you need to move your hands around so the light hits the nail differently. Too much effort in my opinion. 

In one last effort to fall in love with it, I applied my trustworthy Rimmel Matte top coat.

Much better...

I'm sure that if my nails were cubical, all the colours of Fantasy Fire would show like they do in the bottle. Until then, I'll just have to  live with the matted version and hold that little bottle up to the the light to admire its greatness.

Do you guys own Fantasy Fire or any of the many similar polishes out there? Are you in love? How do you wear it?

Til next time, 

Laura

Australis Milky Way: It's Almost A Trap-Eze dupe

It's been a while but instead of making excuses, I'm getting straight onto the post.

Indie polishes have always caught my attention but I was always demotivated by their high prices, inaccesibility (eg. not being able to be posted to Aus) or the long postage times. I would rather turn up to a shop and get the polish then and there or get it from a seller on eBay that I know will arrive in my postbox in 5-7 days.

When China Glaze came out with their Cirque De Soleil collection and introduce the indie look to the masses, I was pretty happy to know that I would be able to go for the look without the wait or price tag. Unfortunately for me, my trustworthy eBay seller has had It's A Trap-Eze, the one that caught my attention the most, out of stock for a while. 

I was ready to patiently wait for it be restocked as I wasn't really in a hurry to purchase it. However, a few weeks back, I went into Priceline and found this little beauty. Australis' Milky Way from their A Galaxy of Nails Collection. Close enough, I thought and took it home.

The swatch below is four coats and the formula was a little gloppy, you can see it on my pinky, but was still rather managable. No top coat used for the photos below.

 

I ended up using my trustworthy Rimmel Pro Matte Top Coat and I liked the way it looked much better. It made it look smoother and the layers of glitter were a tad more visible. 

The thing that I like about Australis is that they keep up with up-to-the minute trends and create similar, if not exact, dupes of popular polishes. They are available in more than one place; Kmart, Priceline, Target and Big W all stock this brand and unless you live in the middle of the Australian desert, they'll be near you. Lastly but not least, they are very affordable. I picked up this bottle for $7.95 out of complete impulse but I'm sure if I had waited a week or two, I could have gotten at least a couple of dollars less. 

Bottle shot for show.

Even though Milky Way is not an exact dupe of China Glaze's It's A Trap-Eze, I'm very glad with my purchase and I might give It's A Trap-Eze a miss.

Til next time, 

Laura

piCture pOlish Kryptonite by More Nail Polish

About a month ago, Cathy from More Nail Polish hosted a giveaway and I was lucky enough to get the fourth out of four prizes. As you may have imagined from the title of this post, the prize was a bottle from piCture pOlish's Collaboration Shades in Kryptonite.

This bottle is my first piCture pOlish lacquer and I will tell you it is amazing!!! The dark green jelly with large flakies has no fault in my eyes. It dries relatively quickly, it is opaque in two coats, it is super shiny by itself and the combination of flakies and jelly gives this polish so much depth. I wanted to do some nail art with it but my limited imagination and the richness of colour/sparkle of the polish didn't give me a lot of options. A swatch wasn't going to be enough, mostly because there are tons of them on the net. So, I just added a coat of my trustworthy Rimmel Pro Matte Finish top coat. We all love matte flakies, right? Or am I too late for that trend?

 Showing off the flakies.

A shiny swatch of this polish can be found here. 

I loved this polish so much I might go to the piCture pOlish website and get some more.

Ooh, I just checked and they have polishes for as little as $6.50. good thing it's payday today. Or is that bad?

Til next time, 

Laura

essence Marble Mania's Silver Twister

I've had this terrible lemming for two metallic stamping polishes for quite a while. I know Essie's Metallics collection has had some good reviews on their own and as stamping polishes and they have a variety of colours that go beyond the usual gold and silver. Unfortunately, living in Australia means that they won't be available in stores for a few more months at least, if at all. I've also tried eBay, e-tailers, forwarding services from the USA. It's all either too expensive or they've sold out.

I also looked for Barry M Foil Effects and found them in stock at Ninja Polish at a fairly good price but the shipping cost was the same as the polish. So I kept looking and I've  bought  about three pharmacy gold and silver polishes but they're all too sheer for stamping properly.

In one last bout of hope, I went to Target to see if there was anything new. When I came across the essence stand, there was a display of polishes for their Marble Mania collection and saw this little beauty:

From what I see in the Essence website, this collection is mostly about nail art rather than just marbling. There's even a kit with two sponges (for gradients), orange sticks, a striper brush and a booklet with nail art ideas for sale. I didn't see the kit in Target but it doesn't really surprise me as it can be a bonus just having a few of the polishes available. 

I do this thing with bottles to see how sheer they are where I turned them a few times  while on its side and see how well they coat the glass bottle.With all the other polishes that I had bought for stamping (that didn't work out), you could see the polish in the bottle through the glass but not with this one. I had hope again and as I turned the corner I saw the essence Twilight Collection polishes. This collection has a very streaky, one-coater, gold polish that is amazing for stamping. It deserves a post of its own. There was only one bottle of each, so I snapped them up and run to pay for them.

After my little adventure, I started trying a few colour combinations and found out the best ones for the silver polish was a dark, matte base, at least for my skin anyway.

Polishes used:

Purple: B Collection by Bloom in Dubai

Silver: essence in Silver Twister

Top Coat: Sally Hansen Insta-Dri and Rimmel Pro Matte Finish

I did two coats of Dubai followed by Sally Hansen Insta-Dri so it would dry quicker and I could get on with the stamping. Then I applied the Matte top coat before stamping with the silver using Bundle Monster's BM-207 plate. I didn't add any top coat after that and I'm regretting it as there is already some tip wear on the stamping on my thumb.

I don't know if you've noticed but the angle of the hand is different to the way I usually do it. Turns out, I did a terrible job with my stamping and there were bumps and non-stamped edges so I had to turn my hand a little to hide the imperfections.

What do you reckon? Am I overdoing the matte top coat? Should venture into the shiny side?

Till next time, 

Laura

Too Random Skittle

I've had a few terrible manicures in the last couple of days that were not even worth photographing. I'm talking about extremely flooded cuticles that couldn't be fixed, crooked stamping, smudging of such said stamping, terrible colour combinations and bad gradients. 

This is the first one that looked sort of OK, even though I'm not completely satisfied with the result. I tried using differents textures ( a cream, a metallic and a glitter) in blue, green and pink that I thought would look good together as a skittle mani. Tried tying it all up by having a striped middle finger but the job was kinda dodgy and there's a piece of stray glitter on my ring finger that I couldn't remove!!!!

Anyway, I'll do and learn but here are the pictures.

The obliged matte top coat, which in my opinion, makes polish look a million times better. 

Polishes used:
Pink: B Collection by Bloom in Cologne 
Blue Glitter: Essence in Blue Addicted
Metallic Duochrome: Topshop in Eclipse
Top Coat:   1st pic: Sally Hansen Insta-Dri
                 2nd pic: Rimmel Pro Matte Finish

There you have it. I'm gonna Google Colour Theory and maybe learn a little about what looks good together and keep practicing with that tape.

Till next time, 

Laura

Are you ready for another one?

This is the mani I did today. Going to keep this blurb short and simple and show you what I've done straight up.

As a base I used one of the new essence bottles called Boho Chic. It's a beautiful peachy base with gold flakies. To tell you the truth it doesn't look that awesome in the bottle but the main reason I got is because I saw it in Oooh, Shinies! and this girl can make anything look good. I even added the matte top coat to make it look like hers. I also added the fan from BM-204 stamping plate with Maybelline Wet Shine in Succulent. I've had this polish for about six years and it does a pretty good job at stamping. Then again, I don't think they're sold anymore!!!

To seal in the stamp I used Sally Hansen Insta-Dri for the first time and I can tell you it blew my mind on how quickly it dries. However, the gold flakies made the manicure look kinda dirty, so I then followed the steps of Oooh, Shinies!. Have a look.

It looks waaaaaaaaay better matte. What do you reckon? Shiny? Matte? Let me know.

Until next time, 

Laura

End of Semester Manicure

Well... Technically the semester isn't over and still have about four pieces of assessment due in the following two weeks but I couldn't wait to post again. 


I've been wanting to do this fish braid technique for ages but I didn't find the time or I had disastrous attempts at it. As always, I found on YouTube on MissJenFABULOUS channel, and I loved it. Here's my attempt.

I got home on Friday night, after having three assignments due that day, and started making the braid on my ring finger which took  F O R E V E R and painted the rest of the nails on Saturday morning.  

Polishes used:

Purple: Dubai by B Collection by Bloom
Pink: Cologne by B  Collection by Bloom 
Gold: Goldie by Bloom Cosmetics
Top Coat: Rimmel Pro Matte Finish

I've also learnt the very important lesson of cleaning up the cuticles and how much better it can look when the polish is fairly even. I grabbed an old eyeliner brush and tried it out. It's OK but i don't think it will stand the polish remover for much longer. So it'll be my quest to find a good one.

I'll leave it short and sweet for today,

Till next time.