33 Day Challenge: 3 Colour Gradient and Pattern

I'm back on the challenge which means I have a lot more free time to play with polishes :). I was a bit conflicted with the three colour gradient and a pattern prompt for day 22 of the challenge because my gradient attempts can be a bit of a hit and miss and I had just done an awesome one a couple of weeks ago. I created a three colour gradient last night but it turned out to be a miss and I couldn't recycle the last one because it didn't have a pattern plus that's not really the point of a challenge, is it?

I stuck to what I knew would work for me and chose three Topshop polishes for the gradient and striping tape. I started with a two-coat base of Queen of Green (QoG), which you may have guessed is the green closest to the cuticle. I then sponged on, from cuticle to tip, QoG, Wisdom and Zodiac and smoothed out the gradient with a coat of Seche Vite. I  wanted to put a little extra effort on the pattern side of the prompt so I tried to create some triangles with striping tape but as I was putting on the tape on my ring finger, I knew the triangles (some just polygons) weren't gonna be regular shapes. I applied one coat of Ulta3 in Black Satin over the tape and sealed it with one last coat of Seche Vite.

I wish I had done the green strip a little bigger so the difference between Zodiac and QoG would a little clearer. QoG is a silver based pastel green shimmer and Zodiac is greenish gunmetal grey shimmer with gold bits in it and they are both beautiful but I couldn't quite capture the beauty of them.

Or did I?

I really like the way this mani looks but it was a pain in the ass to clean up. Have you ever tried to clean shimmer polishes? The shimmer goes everywhere and it sticks to the skin like nothing else. I used PVA around my cuticles to avoid some of the mess but the cuticle lines weren't as clean as I'd like them so I took out the acetone. Bad move. After I managed to get as much of the shimmer of my fingers as I could with clean up brushes and cotton rounds, I still had silver bits all over my fingers. I had to use a nail brush to scrub up my fingers and use some cuticle remover to get rid of the stray shimmer. Lesson learnt: If I'm playing with shimmer polishes, I need to be ready to do a lot of clean up.

I just realised tomorrow's prompt is geometric but hopefully I can come up with something good and get my nail mojo back. Till then, check out the other timely participants of the challenge.

Till next time, 

Laura

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.