Revlon Parfumerie in Surf Spray, Stamping and Colour Matching

I'm gonna include three bits of information in this post so I'll try to keep it as concise as possible. 

First and foremost, I'm gonna show you another one on the Revlon Parfumerie polishes I have recently acquired. Surf Spray is a slightly-leaning-towards-aqua blue shimmer with light blue and purple almost flakie-like, tiny glitter. It is a rich colour on the bottle but it doesn't fully translate to the nails; not that's a bad thing, it looks different than expected but it's still pretty nonetheless. 

Surf Spray is very sheer and it can take 3-4 coats to reach full opacity; I may have cheated a little and put some undies on to make sure this dried quickly and I didn't use too much of the polish.  Can you tell I used two different polishes for the base?

There's not a lot of difference but if we must, I used Max Factor Mini Nail Polish in Candy Blue on my middle finger (left in the below photo) and Essence's Let's Get Lost on my ring finger (right). I could see a very slight darker duochrome effect with Candy Blue but that might have to do with the fact that CB was the darker base.

After all that, I used one coat of each base colour and one coat of Surf Spray on each nail. There was no change on the depth of the polish whether it had the 4 coats or the undies on. The formula is pretty good and stays where one puts it with the brush. It can get a bit streaky but careful application can solve the problem, if that's something that bothers you.

Oooh! I forgot about the scent. Surf Spray could be interpreted in a lot of ways but these guys seemed to go along the way of washing powder and marine scented hand wash. It's one of the scents that has grown on me and it's not overpowering, so leaving it on makes me feel like I have clean hands when they may not actually be. :/

Now for the stamping, I used an old Sally Hansen in Antique Bronze that I bought for stamping about a year ago because of the colour but it turned out too sheer; now that time has passed, it has gotten a tad thicker and it starting to stamp well on certain colours. The design came from MoYou's Suki Collection - 04 plate and I'm not sure if you've noticed but my pinky and ring fingers mirror the pattern on my middle and index fingers. Super revolutionary, right? I topped it all off with one coat of OPI Mate Top Coat. 

Now for the last part of the post I'm gonna keep it super positive. I am rubbish at picking colour combinations. I usually have to consult a trustworthy colour wheel to see what may look good together and pray that it actually turns out OK. That was until today. Looking for colour wheels on Google, I went past the first couple of results and discovered this interactive colour wheel by Adobe. I would have never thought of the combination above by myself so I was super happy that I could choose a colour close enough to the base and discover that a brown would be a good combination. Considering the base was a shimmer, I figured a simmer would be good. Voila! A good combination.

I've been playing around with it all afternoon and picking polishes from the rack to see future combination and I'm pumped to get some those out. Thank you whomever come out with it!!! I'm hoping by putting this here it might help someone else, maybe...

That's it from me, I wanted to keep it short and I'm still babbling on.

Till next time, 

Laura

YouTube Inspired...

Hello, hello! I'm sporting a couple of broken nails and it might be a while before they recover to a bloggable length so I'm bringing out some manis from the vault. 

We all love nail art, right? That's the reason why we are here on this wonderful thing called the internet right now. Not to be left behind, big cosmetics companies have jumped on the bandwagon and created YouTube channels to promote their products. I enjoy watching beauty/nail vloggers on the video-sharing website but all the Google algorithms have caught up on this preference of mine so I'm constantly bombarded with the aforementioned companies' ads and videos. I usually skip them as they lack the genuineness and creativity of the vloggers and they seem over-stylised which really puts me off; there's a reason why I'm on YouTube and not on your site!

For some reason or another, I ended up watching one and liked the colours they had shown together. Being the rebel I am (teehehe), I didn't go buy their products but instead used some older polishes from different brands to recreate the very simple tape mani they had presented.

I started with one coat of Maybelline Mini Colorama in Peach Cocktail, let it dry then taped off half my ring finger nail and applied one coat of Max Factor Mini in Purple Haze. I added a coat of Seche Vite to all my fingers and let it dry before applying stripe of Sally Hansen's Big Money over the very rugged edge I created on my ring finger. 

Tadah! Super awesome and original. 

The highlight of this mani was actually reusing Peach Cocktail. When I bought it a few years ago, I had no idea what a good formula was but I remember it being runny and having to use a 2-3 coats to get it completely opaque. This time it applied in one beautiful, buttery coat and the flakies/shimmer still showed up within the depth of the polish. Man... this polish has turned out so good, I didn't even have to clean up. I can just hope all my bad formula polishes do the same in a few years.

Is that shimmer on my thumb? At least you know, I don't retouch my pics...

If anything came out of watching that nail-polish-company YouTube video was the rediscovery of some cool polishes. And also having some vault manis for rainy days. I'm still gonna avoid them as much as I can though.

Till next time, 

Laura

33 Day Challenge: Favourite Pattern

Day 29 of the 33 Day Challenge is here. I seem to have gotten on the 'creating OK nail art bandwagon' again and I'm pretty glad because I'd been looking forward to the favourite pattern prompt for a while. I didn't even have to think about this one. I  love houndstooth anything, even this Lady Gaga ensemble (I wouldn't wear any of it but it's cool) and I'd been wanting to do a nude/neon houndstooth manicure for ages after seeing it in a blog (the name, I cannot remember and I can't find it on Google) and thinking it was the coolest thing in the world. However, I didn't own a good nude or an opaque enough neon colour to recreate what I had seen but thanks to my little haul last week, I have finally created a mani inspired on that one I saw many moons ago.

I started with two coats of My Island Home (MIH), a great-nude-for-my-skin-tone, textured polish from Face Of Australia, and let it dry for about an hour before I started stamping. It didn't need to dry for that long but I find the texture shows a lot better when the polish has fully dried. And I wanted to be absolutely sure I wouldn't have to redo the base from stamper pressure smudges. I have ruined bases many times that way and it looks like I have learnt a lesson. :)

For the houndstooth pattern I used the BM-322 plate and one coater polishes. From green to orange I used: 

• Essence in The Green & the Grunge
• Sinful Colours in Blue By You
• Max Factor Mini in Purple Haze
• Konad Special Polish in Red
• Essence in Flashy Pumpkin

Hold on, wasn't this supposed to be a nude AND neon manicure? Well, yes but... The one coater-ish neon pink I have didn't stamp that well and it looked like a greyed out pink over MIH. Plain black houndstooth was gonna be boring so I created a sort of rainbow effect with two of my new polishes and some old ones I knew were one coaters and had the potential to stamp well over the nude. I even gambled a little and brought out the shimmer Blue By You because I wanted sparkle. Look at it below, it worked and it looks so pretty in the sun.

Sun. I finally had the opportunity to do my mani early in the day and come out to the sun to take photos. I get to sit on the grass, enjoy the birds singing, the wind in my face, listen to the peace and quiet of the outdoors and not feel guilty that I'm procrastinating uni work. Yay for summer holidays!

On with the manicure... I didn't use any topcoat because I LOVE the texture of MIH but it makes me sad the stamping will come off quicker because of that. 

Did anyone notice that the pattern on the index finger is upside down compared to the rest of the fingers? Applying the colours to the plate to create the rainbow was sort of automatic but when I thought about it and was about to stamp the index finger, I thought I had it the wrong way on the stamper and redid it. I only noticed it when I was taking photos. I'm gonna say that's an accent finger. That'll work. ;)

I also noticed this mani fitted that prompt for Friday very well but I have no idea what I'm gonna do for that one. I'll have to do some brainstorming. Until then, check out the other ladies' manicures.

Till next time, 

Laura

33 Day Challenge: Geometric

This idea I had of catching up on the challenge this week sort of went out the window and I happen to be running a day late with the prompts that I haven't skipped. Anyway, the prompt for day 23 for the challenge was geometric. I'm trying to stay away from just stamping as much as I can so I was a bit short of ideas. I had this triangular origami box lying around and I thought that would be a good, simple idea to recreate. OK, so the execution wasn't great and I managed to take a chunk of polish of the green part on the index finger as I putting the bottle of topcoat back in its place but I figured it was still decent enough to put it up (and I didn't want to miss another prompt).

I started with two coats of Essence's Piece of Forever, let it dry then used striping to create a triangle. I painted W7's It's Pink, Max Factor's Purple Haze and Ulta3's Frog Prince outside each side of the triangle and used a Topshop black stripper for the inside lines. I topped it all off with one coat of Seche Vite.

This is the box I based the mani on, I couldn't figure out how to photograph the whole box in my tiny lightbox so I'm just showing you the colours. It's also a bit crumpled from handling it for photographs, so excuse the wrinkles.

I wasn't overly happy with the mani but it was fun to wear for a few hours. Yes, I have taken it off already and started on tomorrow's mani, which means that I may be on time.

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

Cheaper manicure? Show Me

Since there's a minor achievement to celebrate, I wanted to show you a manicure with all my favourite things in a mani; gold, foil finish, bright cremes and the use of tape.

Polishes used: 
Gold: Max Factor Max Effect Mini Nail Polish in Ivory (isn't ivory usually off white?)
Orange: Ulta3 in Carrot Top
Top Coat: Sally Hansen Insta-Dri

I used three coats of Ivory for full opacity but I could have gotten away with two. The Carrot Top is a fairly good one coater, if it is carefully applied. I was inspired by Nailside's tape mani, which I'm sure a lot of us are familiar with. I swear this would have to be one of the quickest manicures I've done in a while.

The best thing about this mani, however, would have to be the price. 

The bottle of the left I managed to snap up for 72 cents at Big W a few weeks back and the Ulta3 I purchased about six months ago at Coles for a whole 95 cents. The grand total for both bottles comes up to $1.67. Not too bad for Australia.

Now, if there's someone out there with cheap manis, let me know. I would love to see them.

Till next time,

Laura

essence A Piece Of Forever

This post is full of cheap goodness. Firstly, we may all know that essence is amazing at keeping up with trends at a very low price. In this occasion, essence has released a collection to coincide with the release of the latest Twilight movie, Breaking Dawn Part 2 (according to iMDb.com, the movie comes out on this Thursday, 15th of Nov. I'm not a fan so I'm not keeping up with release dates for these movies).

The collection has four polishes but the only one that really caught my attention was the yellow gold one that looked thick enough to be a one coater. To tell you the truth, I didn't even pay attention how much it cost when I first bought yesterday. However, I went to Target in the city today and bought another bottle because it's so good for stamping. I just checked my receipt and it turned out to be $3.95. Not too bad.

My other awesome purchase was a Max Factor Max Effect Mini Nail Polish from Big W for $.72. Yep, that is seventy two cents. There weren't that many colours available but I liked the blue enough. 

This was my little haul for the day.

And this is the mani I came up with:


Polishes used: 

Blue: Max Factor Mini in Candy Blue
Gold: Essence The Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part 2 in A Piece Of Forever
Top Coat: Sally Hansen Insta-Dri
Plate: Bundle Monster BM-218

It seemed a little to plain to have the same pattern on all my fingers so added an accent on my ring finger with the gold polish.

I didn't like how it looked so I stamped the blue onto the gold for this result.

I think I like it but I'm not sure. I'll let it grow on me, if not, there's always good ol' nail polish remover and endless combinations of polish colours and finishes!

Just a few notes on the polishes, Max Factor's Candy Blue was a dream to apply with a non-streaky, almost one-coater formula that dried fairly quickly and it worked well for stamping. In the above photos, I have two coats on but I could have gotten away with one carefully applied coat. Love it. The only bad thing I can come up with is that Big W's sale finishes tomorrow and they weren't great at stocking up their shelves with this awesome offer. Oh well. I guess I can do without those extra bottles of polish.

Now, the gold polish. To start with, the colour seems a bit odd, and even though I'm a sucker for gold polishes, the yellow gold hue that it has put me off a little bit. Yes, it is great for stamping and that's basically why I got it... Plus it's essence. Essence = Cheap. 

The other problem I have with it is that the application on the nail is S T R E A K Y. Every single hair of the brush can be seen on the nail, even when dry. You can't see it in the photos above (or can you?). I came across this post from Spektor's Nails, which in turn borrowed the idea from Polish Art Addiction, to avoid those streaks on metallic/shimmer polishes. So I applied a first coat, which would have been enough if not for the streaks, then sponged a second coat on. You couldn't see the streaks but because I used a new makeup sponge, bits of it got stuck to my nail. :(

What do you like better, gold over blue or blue over gold? 

Till next time, 

Laura