A Hot Mess Indeed

Happy Friday!

Today I have my attempt at covering up OPI, I Theodora You from my last post. I have this awesome milky sheer jelly polish with iridescent glitter and irregularly shaped gold glitter pieces that I knew would look perfect over this pink jelly. I was hoping the milky white base in Wet n' Wild's  Mountain High (collaboration polish line with Fergie) would blend in well with the slight streakiness of I Theodora You.

I have tried out Mountain High on it's own but it it way to sheer unless you want total visible nail line. It is quite pretty on it's own, and I know some people can pull it off, but my nails are just brutal this winter, not good to look at au natural at the moment! Anyways, this is one of those glitters you really have to dab on the nail to get a good amount on the nail. So I blobbed on one coat for each nail, and I love the outcome!

Super girly and pretty and it covered up the imperfections from the base polish... That is until it started to bubble! No luck with I Theodora you this time, such a shame. At least I had a day with this look, the bubbles kind of mixed in with the glitter, but it just bothered me to the point of removal.

It was pretty while it lasted :)

One last note before the weekend, inspired by Mardi Gras and St. Patrick's day, for the Month of March I will be sporting green and purple on my nails exclusively. I am doing this on my own but if you'd like to join me let me know, I'd be happy to link your blog in my March posts if your are interested.

HAPPY -belated- NEW YEAR!!

Happy belated 2014, as you may now I am waaaayy behind by a few weeks on my posts but today will be my last catch up post! YAY! Today I have my 2013 New Years Eve mani... Which in hindsight, and after I wrote up the post I realized I took no photos of!! Luckiliy Karen D at Frazzle and Aniploish had the same idea for layering  two awesome Finger Paints polishes together. Read on for a description of the mani and a link to Karen's version.

I used Finger Paints Golden Kisses as my base and topped it with a generous coat of Finger Paints Sugar Cookie for Two, I just love that name :) Both of these polishes are apart of Finger Paints 2013 Holiday collation, Holiday Love Affair. Sugar Cookie for two is a bar glitter base up of matte black and shiny silver and gold glitter pieces suspended in a clear base. The glitter is very dense in this one, only one coat was needed to blend with Golden Kisses underneath. I sealed the mani up with a generous layer of Seche Vite to make everything glossy and smooth. I don;t think I could ever write a post without any pictures so below is another look at Golden Kisses on it's own. Check out Karen's combo of the two here.

Super blingy and shinny to ring in the new year. Since other polish brands have marketed this type of bar glitter as a textured polish, in the bottle it kind of reminds me of a sparkly owl or something lol. The bars of glitter representing the feathers, so weird, but I just keep seeing that!

Bottle shot of Sugar Cookie for Two.

Swatch of Sugar Cookie for Two on the far left.

Since the Golden Kisses was starting to chip under before I layered Sugar Kiss on top it didn't last too long and I started picking at it right away. Still super pretty though. I did some friends manis on New Years Eve as well and layered a sheer nude accent nail with a thin coat of Sugar Cookie for Two, looked super elegant and not so much a textured, hair polish as a nice pop if glitter.

Your Present Required

I am on a glitter kick lately, I'm not sure if it is the change in weather, or that Christmas is less than a month away but I am going glitter crazy! The only reason I picked up China Glaze, Your Present Required, was for the various sized white glitter, they totally remind me of snow! But taking a deeper look in to this polish, it has such a great grouping of colours for the holidays, purple, blue, copper and gold!

I saw a beautiful combo of this glitter over top a nude base on Instagram last month, I should have taken note of who it was but sadly I have forgotten. I'm unsure of the base used in the mani I used for inspiration, however I recreated this look with what I had on hand.

I used three coats of Zoya, Danielle as the base and layered one thin coat of Your Present Required on top in a dabbing motion. Surprisingly this glitter was dense enough that I got the perfect amount of glitter on each nail with minimal effort. What's even better? This truly dried to a high gloss shine all on its own! Most glitters in my collection require a top coat to add a glossy finish, however this polish was perfectly glossy all on its own. My photos show no top coat, however I added one the day after application to ensure the glitter was fully covered and did not pop off.

I really love this look and do not want to remove it even though it is starting to show some wear. The nude base is simple and elegant while the glitter adds an unexpected holiday twist.

Orange Jelly!

I have a nice bright orange jelly today! I purchased this polish a while back and must have forgotten about it, Orly Crush on You is a medium orange jelly. I had no problems with application, it went on smooth and and was self levelling. I used two coats on my nails.

I wanted to do some jelly layering so I took Essie's As Gold As It Gets, from the Luxeffect line and applied it to the tips on each nail. As Gold As It Gets is a gold flakie polish. Once that layer was dry I added one final coat of Crush on You on top.

The final result is subtle, but interesting. I may go back and try something else with this as a base ;) Stay tuned!

Flakie Refresh!

Today I have a mani refresh with Orlys Androgynie, although I was liking it as is with the subtle glitter, I wanted to add a little more sparkle to it. So what did I decide to add on top? Some Finger Paints flakies! First I layered one coat of Asylum down then added one coat of Flecked on top of that.

Asylum is in both photos above

Asylum is a multicoloured flakie, I see mostly red, orange and blue and purple. Flecked is a green flakie that shifts through teal and blue. I found Flecked to be more of a dense flakie when compared to Asylum.

Flecked is in the photo above only

I really like the overall look, although there are many colours combined I still find it to be quite subtle.

Flakie Friday

Happy Friday! It's finally the end of the week, woohoo! Today I have a fun flakie for Friday and a bunch of photos to show you the cool colour shift.

I layered Funky Fingers Motley over Orly's Le Chateau. I applied 2 decent coats. Once coat affered a good amount of flakies but I really wanted my nails to be packed with them so I added another coat. I finished this mani off with a coat of Seche Vite for extra shine.

Lamp Light

I had originally thought that the flakies were just blue, but straight on they are blue and green. On different angles you can see light turquise, deep indigo and purple. I have included MANY photos in different lighting to show off the colour shift as much as possible.

Natural Daylight, Overcast

Super cool, huh? not too much more for me to say here, I think the photos speak for themselves! This next one was a bad pic, it was actually accidentally taken with the flash but it shows off the depth nicely, so I chose to include it even though it is super overexposed!

The rest of the photos were taken while waiting for the bus on the way home from work lol.

Hope you have a great weekend :)

Belated Christmas Mani

I can't believe how far behind I got on posting this, but here it is my Christmas Mani. I started of with a couple of coats of a Joe Fresh polish which I was very unimpressed with, Dupioni. I got this in last years holiday pack, and it was probably the one I was most excied about. I used the sponging technique to even it out, but ultimately decided to layer one very thin coat of holo goodness over top:

That is still the mystery holo polish I posed about before, I already have the post written up for this polish, you can expect to see that up early next week while I catch up on the rest of my holiday manis this week.

Back to my Christmas mani, I then topped everything off with 1 good coat of China Glaze's Party Hearty and Seche Vite to dry all the layers as fast as possible.

You can't see the holo too much in these photos, but it was there. It actually appears very pretty during mass on Christmas Eve, the lighting was perfect.

I wore this for a while after Christmas, I really enjoyed wearing it :)

Merry Christmas Eve!

I celebrate Christmas on both Christmas Eve and day so I am excited about dinner tonight with my family. I have a quick mani for you today, I'm still trying to figure out what kind of Christmas mani I'd like for tonight and tomorrow. Any ideas or suggestions? I will probably be painting my nails late morning/early afternoon so any ideas would be greatly appreciated :)

On to what I have on my nails today, I was still wearing China Glazes Holly-Day, and decided to layer a new polish over it, a no name from forever 21. It looks identical to L.A Girl's Crowd Surfing from their Rock Star collection. Is comes in a very similar bottle also!

This L.A. Girl dupe can be described as a sheer green base with micro green shimmer and opalescent flakies! this is super awesome layered , it's so thin I'm not sure you could wear it on it's own, but looks great over a darker green as you can see.

This reminds me of a green Merry Midnight, I guess that's fitting for today, right :) Merry Christmas!

Bluebell Fail

So I decided to layer Kleancolor's Chunky Holo Bluebell over NYX Girls Ink Heart. Kleancolor's smell... lol they are strong, but worth it for some of the interesting polishes they have. It looked super cool, but I think I layered on the coats a little too thick.

These photos are taken with 2 thick coats of Bluebell. It looks alright, right? It took a long time to dry, I will have to be a little more patient next time and build up the polish in thinner coats.

As you can see in the photos, this polish is pretty saturated with glitter for only 2 coats, Although I wouldn't recommend wearing it on it's own. Now for the unfortunate part...

This is what I woke up to the next morning, you may have to enlarge the photo to see the crazy bubbling I got :( It was so gritty to the touch, and it totally ruined the effect of the glitter. I couldn't take it anymore so I removed it that night, so sad!

I hope that it was just my rushed application and too thick coats that made the polish bubble. It was also hot when I woke up the next morning, do you think my body temperature could have effected the polish? Has anyone else had any problems with Kleancolors bubbling?

Color Club Wild and Willing - Layering Experiment

Hey Ladies,

Today I have a quick layering experiment with Sally Hanson, Sequin Scandal and Color Club, Wild and Willing.

In the bottle Wild and Willing is this great copper multichrome that flashes green, yellow and gold. The formula is quite thin, this is why I chose it for layering.

Once I added just one coat over Sequin Scandal, the colour took on a whole new look!

This almost reminds me of space cadet! The dark base brings out other shades in Wild and Willing, primarily purple .

This look was great, so many colours at once and I love the flakie/foil texture :)

... but it was still missing something ...

I'll show you what I added to this mani tomorrow. I loved it so much I kept it for a full week!