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

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

Matte Glitter Gradient and the Terrible Smudge

It stopped raining around this neck of the woods and I thought, 'Fast, go out to enjoy it before the sun sets!'. It sort of happened coz I jumped into the car and went to the local shopping centre to run some errands. In said shopping centre, there is a Priceline and we all know how dangerous going in there can be when one is sucked into that place. I went in anyway and I came across a new-in-Australia Sally Hansen range. If you haven't seen the bottles, the Fuzzy Coat range is a dupe to Nails Inc Feathers collection at a more affordable price. Surprisingly enough, I resisted buying it for a multitude of reasons, including the lack of price on the display, even though I've been looking the top coats for a while.

Another reason I decided not to buy it was my realisation that I have a lot of un-blogged polishes and that need a go before I start buying polishes that you can only show once. Originally, this was going to be a splatter manicure but my first try was a disaster  and I ended up smudging it so much I couldn't save it.

Instead, I went for a simpler technique like a glitter gradient that I had never actually tried, successfully or otherwise. I started with two thin coats of Maybelline's Electric Blue and one coat of Seche Vite for quick drying. For the glitter gradient, I used a Leighton Denny polish in I Am Diva  and put a drop of this dense glitter near the cuticles and brushed it up the nail with the polish brush. I stamped my ring finger with Bundle Monster's plate in BM-206 with essence's Silver Twister. Topped it all off with Rimmel and Essie matte top coats, each in two fingers (can you tell the difference? I still can't!).

There are a lot of things wrong with this manicure. For starters, I was impatient with the Electric Blue and touched it to see if it had dried. It hadn't and I created a massive smudge. Second, the glitter gradient is very sparse to be considered such and lastly, the stamp is crooked and not centred, even though I tried really hard.

A much better angle for this mani.

I couldn't bear having two unsatisfactory (in my standards and probably a lot of others') manicures  in one day and decided to still post this. 

Squint your eyes and it doesn't look that bad.

Anyway, this is what happened when, after touching the wet polish, I tried smoothing with my fingers AND applying a coat of Seche Vite. I have found this topcoat can fix mistakes if applied quickly after the smudge has happened, unfortunately, it didn't work for me this time.  

I have come across a few pages in Pinterest where they recommend licking your polish into place. I always had the idea that polish shouldn't go anywhere near your mouth so I skipped that one.

Do you have a fail-safe fix for polish smudges? If you can't fix them, would you rather leave them or start over?

Till next time,

Laura