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

33 Day Challenge: Chinese

It's day 13 of The Crumpet's 33 Day Challenge and here I am, still sticking to it. For today's prompt, Chinese, I was inspired by so many things but unfortunately I had no time to execute any of them so I went for something simple that stuck to the theme. I also want to start using my ever growing collection of nail art supplies. I've stalled my polish shopping lately but now I've moved on shopping on eBay and Born Pretty Store for anything that can be stuck to my nails.

To tackle the challenge and start using some of these supplies, I came up with this mani. 

Which was roughly based on this vase. I googled Chinese vases and this one screamed out at me. I'm not sure of the authenticity of the claim that this is Chinese but it seemed to look like other Chinese pottery I have seen.

Source

I started with two coats of Essence in Grumpy over a base coat and once dry, I stamped over it with Essie's Penny Talk using one of the new Bundle Monster Plates, BM-404. I got some eBay-bought flower water decals ready and started layering them on the blue and gold base but they were too see-through to show up on the darker blue base. I quickly painted my ring finger an thumb with two coats of Sally Hansen in White On and applied a coat of Seche Vite on all my fingers. I could just have applied it on my ring finger to get the white drying quicker but I thought I might as well do them all at that time.

Once that was all dry, I started overlapping the flowers and leaves on the white base and applied one final coat of Seche Vite to seal in the decals.

I really like how my thumb turned out but I didn't want to show another awkward thumb photo, so I tried two thumb poses. I like this one better...

... but this shows a lot more detail. I think. What do guys reckon?

 

You can sort of see the blue base on my ring finger under the white. I also managed to bump it on something so the blue flower looks  somewhat shapeless. 

Considering my past experiences with water decals, none of which have been documented in this blog... thankfully, I'm pretty happy with the way this mani came out. It makes me wanna play with all the new sheets I have just received. Stay tuned.

Check out the other talented ladies' manicures.

Till next time, 

Laura