GOT Polish Challenge: Orange

I'm back on the challenge after a two week hiatus, I'm not super excited about these nail but I knew I had to get myself back on the GOT wagon. 

I actually didn't think I had Golden Oldie orange so I had to have a double look through the rack, which led me to realise I had this beautiful colour Tangelo by Ulta3. I'd also been wanting to do these nails by Pshiiit for a while so today was as good of a day as any to try it out, or so I thought.

I started the base with one coat of Sally Hansen in White On and one of Seche Vite, let that dry and taped off the triangles on the free edge of my nails. I used one coat of Tangelo and ripped off the triangles asap before adding some lines along the inside of the triangle with Sally Hansen's Lustre Shine in Lava. Once all these layers were dry, I used my  black Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen to create the edges and patterns. Topped it all off with a coat of Seche Vite.

After I finished this manicure, I realised my Golden Oldie orange was actually Carrot Top and not Tangelo. They sit next to each other on the rack and Tangelo was the closest to me. Would I call that lazy? Maybe. Then I had to check when I had gotten Lava, turns out I got it about 10 months ago so it doesn't really fall in the category of the GOT. BTW, neither of the two oranges showed to be colour accurate in the photos.

To add to the nail fail of today, I noticed there were some cracks on the black paint. I can't quite remember if that has happened before but I'm sure I will remember now.

So that's my go at orange tribal nails. I know I haven't them any justice so I'm tagging this post as an official Nail Fail. :) Let's hope I can come up with something good for the rest of the challenge.

Till next time, 

Laura

GOT Polish Challenge: Dots

It's almost time for the next prompt of the Golden Oldie Thursday Challenge but I figure since I had this mani done and photographed since Wednesday, I might as well post it. 

So here it is my GOT dots manicure. I brought out a heap of old polishes that I've been wanting to use together again and I'm fairly happy with the result. 

White base: Sally Hansen in White On

The following five are all Face Of Australia polishes from their Pastels collection, which came out in Nov 2012 and were all under $2 cheap :)

Light Blue:   Once in Once In A Blue Moon 

Purple:        Boys'N'Berries

Pink:           I'll Take You To The Candy Shop

Orange:       Would You Like Some Orange Sherbet?

Yellow:       Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy

Once I was done the dotticure and added a coat of Seche Vite, I felt my nails looked unfinished so I added one coat of OPI and I Juggle... Men, one of my first OPI's, and one coat of Rimmel Pro Matte Finish top coat. I bought both sometime in Sep/Oct 2012 but the one that I have used the most has been the Rimmel top coat. I have used it in a good amount of posts in this blog and it's the one that started my love for any polish that's satin/matte. So if I was to pick the top Golden Oldie polish of this post, this top coat would be it. I know, it's not a colour but it's a good polish.

I had some trouble photographing the pastel colours as they looked extra pale against the white so I had to colour tweak the photos a little bit. I tried to keep it colour accurate but get it to have a little more contrast and I managed to get my hands to look red (or should I say super tanned?) in the process. It's about the polish, right? Not my hands.

Till next time, 

Laura

33 Day Challenge: Shapes

Today's vague 'shapes' prompt was a little bit too much for my over thinking tendencies so I jumped on Google to give myself some direction. One search lead to another and I ended up with an idea completely different to what I had googled but it all turned out for the best. Have any of you girls played with a tangram at some point in your lives? I remember having a couple when I was younger and when I got my first smart phone, one of the first games I downloaded was a tangram. I finished 200 levels of this puzzle in less than a week and went ahead and got myself another app that had different shapes. Thinking about it, it's kinda lame how excited I am about tangrams and doing a mani about them. Well, lame I will be because I really liked putting the shapes of the tangram on my nails.

I started with two coats of Sally Hansen's White On and a coat of Seche Vite and let that dry completely. I then used striping taping on my fingers to create the shapes of the puzzle, one finger at the time. Most of the colours I wanted to use were a bit sheer, so instead of putting layer upon layer of the same polish, I used some undies on all fingers but my thumb. Colours used (base first, top colour second) on each finger:

Pinky:  Sinful Colours in Innocent and Topshop in Eclipse

Ring:    Max Factor Mini in Purple Haze and Topshop Plume

Middle: Essence in Flashy Pumpkin and Sally Hansen Lustre Shine in Lava

Index:   Max Factor Mini in Candy Blue and Sally Hansen Lustre Shine in Scarab

Thumb: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Golden-I and Revlon in Fire Fox 

I didn't use any topcoat after creating the shapes to keep the slight 3D effect they have. 

This is the picture I based the tangram shapes on. There are a lot of variations of this puzzle but this configuration is the one I remember playing with. Disclaimer: The shapes in my manicure are for illustrative purposes only. Scale may vary in real life . :)

Source

Only shot I got in sunlight. I think the colour's a bit off but it shows the shimmer well enough.

In a slightly related note, there is a Topshop opening tomorrow in my city and I am sooooo tempted to go raid their polish display but I'm thinking that may be a bad idea. I may end up poor and I hardly have any  polish rack space as it is... This story will continue.

Check out the other ladies' manicures for today's prompt. 

Till next time, 

Laura

33 Day Challenge: Abstract

Abstract: Thought of apart from concrete realities, specific objects, or actual instances.

Well, that left the prompt for today on the 33 Day Challenge extremely open for interpretation. I had lots of ideas after I looked up the definition for this prompt on the dictionary. I knew what abstract meant and was aware of the heap of art/music/scientific models that are considered as such but there's something about looking up the meaning of the word to leave no doubt on the mind. I ended up going with one of my first ideas which was to recreate the abstract painting Blue Poles by Jackson Pollock. Or at least use the colour scheme and splatter the polish on my nails. 

There are a few reasons why I chose to base my manicure on this painting. Blue Poles resides in the National Gallery of Australia and was bought in 1973 for about $1.3 million, which at the time caused outrage. 

'How could you pay that much money for something that is not even art?' 

Source

I've been wanting to go to the NGA for a while but Canberra, the city where the gallery stands, doesn't have much else to offer me at the moment and there are other places I'm saving up to go to. I will go soon and look at this 2.12m x 4.89m beauty. I might even cry a little... from happiness of course. 

Another reason is the technique Jackson Pollock used to paint his canvas by laying them on the floor and dripping the paint with various instruments. This is said to reflect the realms of unconscious experience but also respond to contemporary life. I'm quoting him here, 'The modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any past culture'. To me that's a way of looking forward, a point of view that acknowledges the past but recognises the need to move on. I'm guessing saying that while everyone criticises your 'art' either takes a lot of confidence... or arrogance. I find it all so inspiring either way. That's why I would cry from happiness when I stand in front of it. *shakes off the emotion a little*

Back to the nails, the last reason why I wanted to have a little Blue Poles in my nails is that I have never done a splatter manicure before. I have tried but using a straw never gave me any splatter, it only gave me blobs of paint onto paper not my nails. I came across this Spanish-speaking Mexican beauty Youtuber, Yuya, that did a splatter manicure with a bobby pin and it seemed a little more controlled. *Edit* I originally couldn't find the video where she showed the splatter manicure but thanks to Brethil from Druid Nails, I have searched high and low and found it. Click here to watch the video. The splatter manicure starts at about 2:30 and Yuya recommends blowing into the bobby pin as if you wanted to blow bubbles *Edit*.


I gave it a go with this manicure and I'm happy with the way they came out. Mind you, the paper I had underneath my nails ended up with more polish than I did. 

Have I mentioned what polishes I used? Started with a two coats of Sally Hansen in White On and the splattered the coloured polishes in the following order:

• Maybelline Color Show in Impeccable Greys
• Maybelline Color Show in Fierce N Tangy
• Ulta3 in Crazy
• Essence in Absolutely Blue

I finished it off with one last splat of Impeccable Greys to have a closer representation of the painting. I had a mess all over my hands so I grabbed a cotton round and cleaned them up with pure acetone. I managed to clean up around my cuticles with the cotton round and I'm thinking this was easier than sticky taping all my fingers and then trying to remove it. 

I smudged my middle finger and tried to patch it up with extra grey splatter but it's jut making look messy.

I'm happy with this splatter mani and I hope I have made some justice to the painting. Please check out the other ladies' abstract manicures.

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

33 Day Challenge: A Pattern In Your House

Well... Day 12 of the 33 Day Challenge called to use a pattern in your house to do some nail art. I looked around mine and all I could see were the plain bright or earthy colours but no patterns, even the towels and sheets are all one single colour. I found this pillowcase that colourful that I bought ages ago at the back of the cupboard and saw the manicure for today straight away. 

 The polishes I used are: Sinful Colors in Hazard, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Pacific Blue and White On and finally China Glaze in Sweet Hook. Topped it all off with Seche Vite before letting it all dry for the next step. I hadn't shown striping tape in a mani for a while so I decided to do the smaller stripes of the pillowcase with it. I have 20-ish rolls of this tape and I'm sure that's almost a life time supply; I guess I better start using it.  

The execution and clean up wasn't great but it served its purpose. This mani reminds me of a school sports shirt or flag, at least the three middle fingers do. Maybe if I could reuse the polish base for another mani... 

Here's the pillowcase. I just realised I should have turned the pillow around so the colours would correspond to the ones on my nails but you get the idea. 

Check out the other talented ladies in the challenge.

33 Day Challenge: Mexican

I had high hopes and lots of inspiration for this prompt. I don't think I've mentioned it but I was born in Mexico and lived there for more than half my life (just!) before moving to Australia. This should have been my scene!!! I thought of a lot of possible designs I could create and settled for one idea  but the execution was poor. Actually, it was OK until I added top coat. Have a look for yourselves. 

I based my design on my home state's traditional dress called 'China Poblana'. The (short version of the) legend says there was a Mongolian princess that was kidnapped at the age of 8 by 17th century Portuguese explorers and eventually taken to Mexico to be sold as a slave. Due to her beauty, she was originally going to be sold to the viceroy of New Spain but a higher bidder came out of Puebla where she was finally taken. She was given the Hispanic name Catarina de San Juan and was sort of adopted, but remained a slave, by the Soza family and was taught how to saw, among other things. Even though the origin of  the dress is very hazy, most versions of the story say that Catarina was the designer of the dress, which was a fusion of her natal Mongolian attires and Mexican influences. When the patriarch of the family died she was sent to a convent and after she died at the well into her 80's, she was worshiped as a saint in Puebla until the church banned popular saints. There are as many variations to the legend as there are variations of the dress and I don't claim to be an expert. That's the story I remember from school and bits I researched on the world wide web.

Back to the nails, I used a heap of polishes and tools so I'm just going to list them.

Light Green:  Ulta3 in Jelly

Dark Green:   Ulta3 in Frog Prince

Red:             Revlon in Fire Fox

'Skirt' glitter: Rimmel in Disco Ball 

White:          Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On

Yellow:         Ulta3 in Honolulu

Gold:            Sally Hansen in Golden-I
Light Brown:  Essie in Hot Coco

Topcoat:       Seche Vite

Smallest and small dotting tools and striping tape from eBay. Sticky tape from the supermarket. :)

This is one of the many versions of the dress. 

Source

I also included my thumb to represent the ribbons that are braided on the hair. I find thumb shots awkward so please excuse the following bad photo.

Before I added a topcoat of Seche Vite, there was a bit of texture on my index and ring fingers, which looked a lot better than the smooth versions. I added a final coat of Rimmel Pro Matte Finish to try and save it but it just made my mani chip very quickly. :(

I'm not sure what to think of this mani. I kinda like it because it made me think outside my comfort zone, especially the index that represents the shirt, but it doesn't look great altogether. If I hadn't applied topcoat, I would've been happier. I guess that teaches me to photograph every step of the mani!!! 

Check out the other talented ladies of the challenge.

Till next time,

Laura

Pastel Stud Wheel by Born Pretty Store

I'd consider myself a fan of Born Pretty Store but I haven't gone past ordering the basic gold studs and glequins from them even though they have a MASSIVE range of nail art supplies and they are so cheap. A month ago, I placed an order for a heap of different rhinestones, a textured polish and colorful studs, all which I believe are recent additions to the website.

Today, I wanna show you the Pastel Stud Wheel, which actually has a much longer name here, that I have fallen in love with. I can be indecisive when it comes to handing over my cash for products, i.e. shopping, and I have to make sure I'm getting the best deal. I was particularly happy with this wheel because it has two shapes in six different colours each for US$7.59. If I was to buy a one colour and one shape I'd have paid  US$2.99 on special (US$4.99 otherwise), but there would be no variety and I wasn't guaranteed to like them. 

I'm loving this idea of doing skittle manicures to show more colors and it almost makes me feel like I have created nail art :) . Here's my latest.

The accent nail was supposed to be covered in the pastel studs but I started to get slightly frustrated so I kept it simple.

I start to believe photo spamming is the way to go for this blog, so please click on the page break for more photos and materials used. :)

Dior Inspired: Or How I Had A Little Breakthrough

I have so much stuff to put up I wanna show you guys, including new nail polishes, nail art that I've created and a few random nail related items. I thought I would start at the beginning of my list and show you some nail art that I'd been thinking of executing for a little over a month. Well, I actually did execute it but I wasn't very happy with the results so I had to start over a couple of times.

This mani is based on a dress by Christian Dior from his Fall 2013 Couture collection. I wanted to recreate the textures and line of the dress along my four fingers.

Close?

Source

For the satin finish, I started with three thin coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On and let them dry thoroughly before applying two coats of OPI's I Juggle... Men. I've had the latter for a little over a year and the formula has thickened and I think (...think) that the coverage of translucent glitter  is a better because of that.

To mirror the sequins from the dress, I tried creating a my first ever franken but for some reason or another, it didn't turn out as good as I hoped and its glitter coverage was poor. I bought a multi-coloured glitter that had the colour range that I was looking for but then again the coverage left a lot to be desired.

I decided to layer the glitters instead to make the 'sequins'. After sticky taping my fingers in the different designs. I sandwich a coat of China glaze in Electrify within two coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Rockstar Pink. I removed the tape immediately after applying the last coat of glitter and the lines still came up acceptably crisp.

After the three coats of glitter, I applied one coat of Seche Vite to even it all out. I tried to be very careful to make sure I wrapped my tips with glitter to have a full coverage but it seems like the Seche Vite caused some shrinkage and pulled the glitter back.

As a final step, I used Rimmel Pro Matte Finish top coat on the white to give the finishes a little bit more contrast. 

Yes, my pinky is looking chunky. In my first try, it looked like a thin french tip and not like the dress. I had the idea of taping my finger again closer to the cuticle and painting over it, thinking that it would dry a little flatter. :( It looked better than it would have otherwise so I let it be.

  

Now for the little breakthrough. I'm particularly happy with this manicure for the reason that I managed to clean up white polish AND keeping the edges tidy and wearable. It took a lot of patience and time but I did it!!! 

The above photo shows my second attempt but it felt incomplete, I had tip wear after about half an hour after finishing the mani and look at the clean up on my ring finger... I had to re-try it. I'm very glad I did. My first attempt was majorly smudged and wasn't even worth photographing.

I hope you guys enjoyed this mani. It was really fun to do, even if it took me three tries to come up with something I was satisfied with.  

Till next time, 

Laura