The Nudes

No, there are no naughty pictures in this post but there are photos of a very new thing for me. Nude colours. 


I've always been a fan of bright pinks, scarlet reds, royal blues, deep purples, glittery blacks; whereas pastels, beige and pale brown tones usually went unnoticed and if I ever glanced twice while shopping, they would be put rejected for the more luminous shades. This doesn't only happen with polish but with clothes, shoes, homewares, anything that I would pay for basically.


However, after trying your Butter London Yummy Mummy, I thought I could give this look a go. I went to Target to see if I could score any bargains but I couldn't really find anything I liked within my low budget. To the rescue came that little underrated Essence Cosmetics stand. Essence released a Nude Glam collection for the northern hemisphere's spring for this year, which includes 7 polishes of the nude sort. The one that got my attention was Toffee To Go. It wasn't too pink, too brown or too shimmery and I thought it would be suit my skin tone.  

To be completely honest, I couldn't bear the thought of not having colour or sparkle on my nails, so I added  OPI Save Me from the Nicki Minaj Collectionas an accent on my thumb.


Here it is, my first (and almost) full nude. I used three coats of both Save Me and Toffe to Go. On the thumb, I used three coats of Toffee to Go with a wiggly-lined piece of sticky tape after letting Save Me dry. It was all toped off with two coats of quick drying top coat.

I loved this mani but... The Essence Toffee To Go was a pain in the ass to work with. It was streaky, the formula was thick (how can those two go together?) and it took forever to dry. If you were to zoom on my the above picture, you might be able to see a lot of hair marks on the polish even after I applied two (two!!) pretty thick coats of top coat.


Needless to say, this came right off and got replaced by another sort of nude mani. For this one I used three coats of  OPI DS Classic and a bronze foil for the accent nail.

I was a lot happier with this and, even though the foil didn't last more than two days, I would like to say this is more my kinda nude. 


One last one because I liked it that much.

That's all from me. So until next time,


Happy polishing!!

In Memoriam of the Skittled Mani *Edited with photos*

This is a rather sad post for me as I am mourning the massacre I created while trying to revive a four-day-old skittled mani (the one i got with all your awesome nail polishes on Friday night). I thoroughly enjoyed having ten fantastic colours on my nails all at once. I never thought it could be so much fun!!! 

So after the four wonderful days, I noticed there was considerably nail tip wear on the glitters, which accounted for at least three of my digits. I thought a tape mani a la Chalkboard Nails* would hide the tips and give the colours that I was wearing a new life. Off I went to grab my striping tape and carefully pressed it onto my nail, cut it and re-pressed it to make sure it was stuck. I applied a thick-ish coat of Rimmel 60 Seconds in Black Out on the worst tip wear offender and quickly peeled it off. Oh, big mistake. There were no lines, just blobs of black polish over speckles of colourful glitter. 'Oh well!' I though, 'Let's try the next one'. I let it dry for about five seconds but I still ended up with a mess. 

What to do but keep trying? I grabbed sticky tape and tried to do one of these on my ring finger. It seems like I placed the sticky tape bits too close together, maybe there was a bubble in the polish or I didn't wait long enough but the half the black came off with the tape. It looked baaaaaad... Plus there was no contrast with the dark blue I was wearing and it was too far down on the nail for it to look good. I tried the last method once more on my thumb and it worked so well, I almost top coated it. Pity, the rest were so unpleasant to the eye. It all had to come off! I didn't even take a photo of it! 

I shall remember it anyway with this small tribute. 

The colours of American Apparel in Supernova have everything my skittled mani had, lots of colour and lots of glitter!

I need 4 coats to get a (mostly) full coverage and each coat dried surprisingly quick. I was done in about 20 minutes including top coat and by then it was dry to the touch. This polish is surprisingly smooth without top coat and there's no need to fish out the glitter if the brush is inserted into the bottle fully for each application. Enough of my words, I shall leave you with some pictures.

*Chalkboard Nails gives credit to Nailside for the idea of the tape mani, however, I liked the former's idea of using striping tape as I have no patience to cut so many strips of such small width. Anyhow, if my attempts keep failing with striping tape, I might have to follow the sticky tape route.

That's all from me and until next time,

Happy polishing.

My First and Oh-Not-So-Fabulous Marble

Wow!! It's been almost a month since I wrote that first post. I think the blogger in me needs a little more discipline. Mind you, I could argue that I like to be informed about what I am doing and that the last month has been spent 'researching' other nail blogs, looking up for countless hours YouTube videos for inspiration and sussing out the market so this nail hobby is as least detrimental to my bank account as possible. 


So, to show some of my findings, I'll start with something that caught my attention in YouTube for two reasons.The first one being the endless possibilities that this technique can create and the thousand of tutorials found in said website. As you may have guessed from my title, I'll be showing my simple version of the marble.

Ta dah! Here it is. I started with my pinky and finished with my thumb, hence the different pattern in my smaller finger. I firstly tried to use Ulta3 polishes for the marble but the colours would not disperse! Not by shaking the cup, moving the polish with a toothpick or even, may I say? My finger. By the time I finished playing with it I ended with these colourful lines as a pattern and I thought I would give it a go anyway. If you look closely at the pinky it looks like an eye, a very colourful eye though, and that's why I decided to leave it.  

I wanted to keep trying and get the actual marble effect on my nails. From all those YouTube videos that I've watched, I gathered China Glaze and Sally Hansen are really good to try out in this technique. Not even OPI makes the cut, apparently. I was lucky enough to own one (just one) China Glaze in 108 degrees and one Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Red Carpet.They a both have very fine glitter but they are noticably different. Phew!

So the process started and went quite well from there. I even managed to create a pretty flower pattern without planning it! 

  

This was a messy process and most bloggers/creators recommend that you sticky tape the skin around your fingers to prevent polish sticking. However, a few others recommend using Vaseline around your nails for an easier, one-quick-wipe sort of clean up. I used the Vaseline as it was easy enough to spread on my fingers, gentler, more accurate and quicker. Once I was done with a toothpick in the water, I would remove the layer of the jelly on my finger and it worked wonders. I did forget to spread it past my distal phalanx (yes, I just Wikipedia-ed that name) on my ring finger, so i had to clean it up with acetone. 


So here it is, once more. I think I am proud of this creation.

I will try this technique again with different colours and patterns, possibly as a accent... Wait, can you hear that? I think YouTube is calling me for more inspiration.

Till then, happy polishing!

Kids by MGMT inspired nail art

This is one of my favourite music videos, ever. When MGMT first came out, I listened to their first album a lot. This music video was made by a film student with a couple of his friends and some Youtube clips, and has millions more views than the official Kids video. I love the make up and lighting in the video. It's not flashy or professional, but I think it fits really well with the song. 

I haven't watched it for a while but today, I was looking at some flakie nail polish and I realised that it reminded me of this video. So I decided to do an MGMT inspired mani, complete with nooby nail art.

Don't look too closely at my little Abby (left) and Rafael (right). 

I used BYS nail art lacquer in black and white for the faces on my thumbs (with a dash of red and pink for the lips), and Nicole by OPI No Limits as the base coat. Picture Polish Festival is the flakie overcoat I used, and I stuck a few chunks of a BYS gold hexagonal glitter over the top. It's hard to properly capture the effect because I don't have a decent camera, and have to take pictures with my phone camera.

Nicole by OPI No Limits, OPI Lucky Lucky Lavender, Picture Polish Festival, Essie Jelly Apple and BYS nail art lacquer.

No Limits is a deep, inky blue-black that reminds me of the night sky. The flakie over the top made it look like the twinkling lights in the video. I'm still learning how to do nail art but with practice, I'm getting better :)

Welcome... To me?

Well, first of all hello.

For as long as I can remember I have always been a fan of makeup. Stealing my mother's lipstick. Done it. Making a mess with powder in the bathroom. Check. Pretended to go to a party with all that make up on. Yes. It didn't help that my mother used to send me to kindergarten with lipstick on (only for special occasions and always very sheer). I had a definite moment with nail polish in grade six, though. It was sort of love at first brush and the story goes something like this... 

The monthly magazine, that I could afford at the tender age of 12 with my then-non-existent pocket money, featured an article about simple nail art and included a cut-out section of tiny little pictures and letters to stick on your nails. It showed techniques like using sticky tape to create geometric shapes and how to get simple stencils like love hearts, stars, etc. I was in awe, I wanted to do all of it, immediately!!! My sister tried the sticky tape technique while I stuck the tiny letters spelling my name (lucky both my first and middle names have five letters each) on my hands. I stuck them with a very cheap, clear polish and I enjoyed them for my weekend.

The one that enlightened me, just think 1998 version 

When I got to school the following Monday, I got so many compliments, even from the boys!!! I'm sure it was my charming personality that went so well with my fashion forward nails that caused such an impact, however, from that moment on, I learnt a little effort could bring on big rewards when trying to create something pretty (for myself mostly).

For the next 13 years, I experienced with lots of colours, textures, glitters, qualities but it was mostly only one colour/texture at the time. 

The last five months, due to the fact that I can enjoy the post-paid internet and great quantities of it, I have been enjoying the wonders of the many nail art blogs on the web. It is incredibly to see all the designs and translations of trends that women (and I'm sure there are men too, I just haven't found them) have come up with. Also, the variety of nail polishes that exist on the market has left me wanting them all!! Too bad my budget is limited (or is that good?).

So thanks Tasha for coming up with this awesome idea of creating your own nail art blog and thank you further for inviting me to write on it. This is giving a reason to create pretty things at least once a week and test (what I thought was limited) creativity.

SO... After all that banter, here's my first nail creation. 

The first step for this design was for me to learn to paint my nails properly. I used to paint them with heaps of strokes and whatever was left on my skin, I would scratch off after I had a shower. It looked good but I probably wasted a lot of water trying to get my skin soft enough to just scratch it off. I have learnt three strokes will only paint your nail, not your skin, and will also give you a more even coverage with less coats.

After a week of trying (and finally succeeding!) to paint my nails within the lines, I started with two coats of Bloom in Adriana, a bright pink with very fine blue shimmer and a suede finish. It is super quick to dry, so after five minutes I applied L.A. Girl Rock Star in Supernova. This one took a little longer to dry and left it for half a day before applying the next coat. When the glitter finally dried (to the no smudge point), I put sticky tape to 

on half my nail to apply essence Colour & Go in Hard To Resist. Finished it with Cutex Top Coat and done. 

This look reminded a bit of the title card of Saved By The Bell (remember that show?) but after looking it up in wonderful Google, it looked nothing like I had recalled. I'll just say it reminds me of the 80's. The hairy glitter is very 80's, isn't it? 

On one last note, I discover the glitter nail polish though this post. It looks amazing in the photo and was  so happy to know that I could get it at Groove Chermside for $2.50. I could not believe my luck! It looks really good when the light hits it at a good angle but it takes too long to dry and more than two coats are needed to get a good coverage of it. I guess if you have the time, patience and drying drops, this is a perfect. 




I think this first post has pretty much covered everything . A bit of personal information, the actual nail "art" (I'm not sure I should call it that yet) and even a small review.


Looking forward to sharing lots of designs, pretty colours, glitters, tips and all things nails with you.


Till next time.