Perplexed

Just look at this lovely shade :) it honestly is "perplexing" to explain.

I won this lovely polish, along with two others from Karen over at Frazzle and Aniploish. It total, from left to right I won: Perplex, Back With Envy and Carbonite, all dupes for Chanel polishes :) Thanks again, I love them all :)

I was super happy to win these because I could not find Perplex anywhere in Canada, and I wanted it so bad. This was the first colour I put on after Halloween, I was so excited to try it out all through October :)

The formula seemed a bit thick, but the good kind of thick that is seasy to work with, only 2 coats were needed. It also dried a bit darker than the bottle colour.

Now I'm not sure if it was the fault of the polish or the top coat, but i did get some bubbling. You can't see them in the pictures, because I discovered a way to get rid of them. If you are interested in trying this out yourself, let me know and I will put together a quick and easy tutorial.

I added a bit of thinner to the polish to help with bubbling in the future. if it was the Revlon's fault. This polish is amazing though, it different lighting the base which I would describe as a taupy purple, gets lighter or darker, and in some lighting you can see the purple shimmer, in others you cannot. Very pretty, if you come across it I would suggest picking it up.

Glossy

Hello! Kind of fell out of blogging again for a week, not too bad I guess but it feels like forever now! I do have a lot to show you and catch up on, so I guess I will get right in to it. Last Monday I showed you all my Halloween mani, today I have Fortune Teller glossy :)

I'm pretty sure I only used two coats for this one, the formula wqs excellent, not issues at all with placement of the glitter, and overall it came out pretty smooth. I added a top coat of course, Seche Vite, which added to the over all glossiness :)

I also have a few other fun things to share that I didn't get to show you around Halloween that I will get out of my system now. Do you remember my pumpkin mani with the Del Sol polish? well, I used the foil method for removing the glittery polish,  look what I got when I removed the felt:

I thought this was funny lol.

And last, but not least, some treats I made for Halloween, caramel apples. This was my first time making them and they were super easy, way easier than candy apples, and probably a little better on your teeth ;)

So that's all for Halloween stuffs, I do have a lot to show you coming up however; hauls, giveaway winnings and of course, swatches :)

Happy Halloween!

Better late than never, right ;)

I'll keep this one short, Fortune Teller mattified with Essie's Matte About You top coat. I stamped my ring fingers with Bundle Monster plate, BM 224, the little ghosty. I then painted in the white ghosts with my Sally Hansen glow in the dark polish and mattified those nails as well.

Pretty simple, nothing over the top. I love how the orange multi-size glitter looks matte, like they are frozen in time!

I used 2 coats of China Glazes Fortune Teller, 2 coats of Sally Hansen's glow in the dark over the ghosts and 1 coat Matte About You.

 my camera did not want to focus on the little ghostie, although it glowed a lot! Finally figured out haw to get the bottle in full focus though ;)

Happy Halloween :)

A Halloween Tutorial - Pumpkin nails

Happy Friday! The Halloween weekend is almost here, and today I have a quick and easy tutorial with a slight twist from Asami's Pumpkin nails. It's basically the same idea, but I'm providing you with an alternative way of creating the jack-o-lanern face. Insead of using dry polish strips or halloween nail plates, I came up with an interesting way to make your perfect jack-o-lantern design . Below is the final look.

And this is all you need:
- A coloured nail polish you'd like for the design
- A top coat
- A plastic bag
- A pair of sharp scissors (small ones work best)

Tweezers will also be usefull!

First you want to grab your plastic bag and paint it generously with whatever colour you'd like to create your design in. I used Wet N' Wild's Ebony Hates Chris.

Once the polish is completely dry, you want to gently peel it off of the plastic and cut out your jack-o-lantern shapes.

Use your tweezers to place your shapes sticky side down on your nail.

Once you have all the pieces in the right place, you can finish everything off with a top coat!

Super easy right?! The design posibilities are endless and you can even create a whole pattern with polish on the plastic and transfer it to your nails.

One final Halloween inspired mani on Monday :)

Trick, or Treat?

I can't express how much I love this polish! I thought I wouldn't get around to wearing it this year because there are only so many days left of October and it has been nothing but rain and overcast days.

Trick or Treat from Del Sol when in natural light is a sheer orange jelly base packed with orange and holographic glitter. I mostly see the green particles from the holo glitter, and it looks awesome! The great thing about Del sol polishes if you didn't already know, is when you are exposed to UV light, i.e. the sun, the polish changes colour!

This one has got to be the most drastic I have seen from this brand. When in the sun, the base colour shifts to a deep dark purple/black jelly. The sun was out yesterday and while I was at my desk at work I put my hand close to the window and it started to change! I really love the look of the colour when in the sun. I wish it was more sunny lately!

  

I couldn't get the colour shift to photograph accuratley, it is actually quite darker than the picture displays.

I applied 3 generous coats over OPI's ridge filler and didn't have any issues with VNL. I sealed everything off with a top coat, I suggest a super glossy one as it adds to the depth.

I love each colour on its own and even the shift in between, definitely a must have for Halloween :)

Halloween Nail Art Attempts - Part 2 + Glow in the Dark Comparison!

Today I have the second attempt of nail art I did over the weekend. I call this an "attempt" as I was not really happy with the final outcome. I love the idea, but I had some issues that I will discuss coming up.

The main idea was to have a glow in the dark manicure with a cool design on top. In order the get the best glow, I used a while polish for my base. I used 2 coats of Sally Hansen Salon's All the White Stuff. To make my mani glow I used my Sally Hansen glow in the dark polish because out of all the ones I own, this one seems to glow the best. I applied 2-3 coats.

Now, here is where it gets tricky... I picked a fauxnad plate with circle designs that look a bit like eyeballs and started stamping. Unfortunately, I got what I paid for from this Konad dupe plate, as it was really hard to pick up the full design. That combined with the base nail polish being not fully set is what made this a fail. Although I actually got through it and even finished it off with rhinestones, it still didn't look right to me. The only polish that would stamp properly was not a true black like the Konad polish which happened to be to thick to get in to the tiny intricacies of the design. I think if I had waited a day in between applying the polish and stamping it would have came out better. What do you think?

I also have a quick comparison of the glow in the dark polishes I own, from left t right I have Sally Hansen New Lengths Ceramics, Wet N' Wild Fantasy Makers, N.Y.C Frightful Fingers and a random polish from Dollar Giant (Which is now been bought out by Dollar Tree in Canada) This is obviously how they look in the bottle normally.

And here they are in the dark.

I have a feeling that the Sally Hansen and N.Y.C polishes are the exact same. I got them from the same place and at the time they were distributed, they were so out of Del Laboratories. Out of the 4 I own, these 2 have the best glow, I'd suggest 2-3 coats over a light colour for the best results.

The Wet N' Wild has an impressive glow also, but not so much in the photo. This is because all of the glow particles have settled to the bottom, and unless you shake it vigorously for who knows how long, you will not get the glow . Its funny how you can see the bottom of the bottle glowing though lol. I got this one last year, so I wonder if this years batch is different? The cute bottle obviously makes up for it though ;) When I used this last year I only applied 2 coats.

The dollar store polish comes in last for me. Besides smelling super bad, you need too many coats to get this one to glow. I think I needed at least 4 and it still wasn't as glowy as the others :(

Halloween Nail Art Attempts - Part 1

Over the weekend I had some free time and decided to try out some nail art ideas I had. For the first one I will be showing you today I took inspiration from this video from Andria (AKA, plasmaspeedo, YouTube). I had never done a gradient sponge mani before so I decided to try it. It was actually pretty quick and easy. It was really fun and I'd love to try it again sometime :)

Basically, the gradient is supposed to represent the sun setting, or in my case rising, with the foreground in the shadows.

The colours I used for the gradient were:

China Glaze - Lemon Fizz
China Glaze - Papaya Punch
OPI - Paploma Purple

I basically removed the rubber part from my Konad stamper, cut a cosmetic sponge and fit it in to the handle :) This really helps to keep your fingers clean while stamping. I layered the 3 colours 1 below the other on sponge then proceeded to sponge the colour on to my nails. I did this 2 times per nail to build up opacity. I also got some other regular sponges from the dollar store to try out, I noticed the actual Konad banded ones looked closer to the one I have in the photo below (dollar store). I haven't tried it yet so not 100% sure if it works as well as the cosmetic sponge.

Once that was dry, and it dried super quick, I cleaned it up a bit and took out some of my Bundle monster plates from the second setfor some nail stamping with black polish. I used bats, a "haunted" house and turned the pumpkin vines from the pumpkin patch stamp in to spooky trees! (BM-213 and BM-224)

 

I didn't apply a topcoat to this one, and if I were wearing it for a long period of time I think I would try a matte top coat to give it that dull, dark, Halloween feel :)

 

Stay tuned for some glow in the dark comparisons tomorrow, as well as a glow in the dark mani :)