Thursday 25 October 2012

Nail Art for Wear It Pink! Breast Cancer Campaign 2012

Hi everyone!

Yes I know it's strange me posting on a Thursday, this is just a little extra post as I've done my nails tonight, so I thought I'd share them with you.

I hope you noticed my new header!  I'm super-pleased with it, I haven't got all the fancy schmancy photoshop etc, so I was lucky that I'd taken a nice pic of a butterfly on a road while I was out on a walk, and I could add some text with my greeting card software.  Work with what you've got, right?

Anyway, tomorrow is 'Wear It Pink' day at work, you donate £2 and you get to wear pink, pretty much everyone at work does it, even the fellas!  Some people go in fancy dress, but I'm just wearing a pink jumper and some red bootcut corduroys, so fetching lol!  If you want to find out more about this incredibly worthy cause, you can at http://www.wearitpink.co.uk/

But of course I had to do something with my nails - I've kept it relatively simple (for me) and gone with a Bundle Monster stamp BM321 from their 2012 collection.  It was the obvious choice really. 

This is what I came up with:
Breast Cancer Campaign Wear It Pink Bundle Monster Nail Art
I started off with an experimental base coat of Andrea Fulerton Peel Off Varnish in red, which you can't see, because I covered it with the lovely opaque one-coat pinkiness of OPI Mod About You.  If you've been looking for an opaque pale pink, look no further!  This is actually a little bit washed out to how it actually looks, but as it's pitch black outside, this was the closest I could get for you.

Here's a pic of the BM plate - they're so tricky to photograph without getting a reflection of yourself in it!  I nearly managed it:
Breast Cancer Campaign Wear It Pink Bundle Monster Nail Art
To stamp with I used Konad's Princess Polish Psych Pink - I love that name!  It's super bright in the bottle, but a bit more 'normal' bright pink once stamped:
Breast Cancer Campaign Wear It Pink Bundle Monster Nail Art
Ok, get ready for your close up, fingers:
Breast Cancer Campaign Wear It Pink Bundle Monster Nail Art
As you can see, I also blinged it up a little bit with NYC's glitter top coat Gramercy Glitz which is pastel glitter in a peachy clear base.  A top coat of Seche Vite and I was done.  Here's the bottle shot:
Breast Cancer Campaign Wear It Pink Bundle Monster Nail Art
To be honest, I wasn't 100% satisfied with these, the stamping isn't very crisp, there's a little bit of peely bit at the top of my ring finger, and I'd just thinned my Seche, so it blurred the stamping a little bit more....  I nearly took it off and re-did it, but then I realised...

This isn't about me or my nails.... its about raising money for this worthy charity, and if my not quite perfect nails remind of that, well then they're doing what they're supposed to, aren't they?

Until next time.....

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

Saturday 20 October 2012

Black Forest Gateaux Nail Art

Happy Saturday everyone!

Last Saturday of freedom for a while boooo!  And my car didn't get mended haha!  Oh well, the ongoing saga will have to remain ongoing. 

Today's nail art didn't end up anything like I was intending it to, and when I'd finished it, I wasn't sure if I really liked it or not, but I still ended up taking a bazillion photos of it anyway.

My original intention was to paint my nails in an autumny colour, then use some striping tape halway down my nails in a pale colour, then mask off again, add some vertical stripes, then pull the striping tape off, so it all looked clean and nice.  Didn't end up at all like that. 

My first attempt to peel off my striping tape took off my base polish (yes I swore), so I decided to freehand the line.  Then when I came to stripe over it, they came out more bold than I intended, and weren't neat at the top.  So I delineated with a gold glitter striper, and this is what I ended up with:

Black Forest Gateaux Nailart
This is in shaded light, so here we go on our usual tour round the house for my other pics.

This is in the shade in the front garden (I love that licheny wall as a backdrop for nail pics):
Black Forest Gateaux Nailart
This is down at the bottom of the garden where I finally found some sun (the neighbours are probably saying, theres that loony out again taking pictures of her hands, come and look!) especially as I tripped up the step coming back in:
Black Forest Gateaux Nailart
This is me leaning out the front bedroom window (thats the porch roof in the background):
Black Forest Gateaux Nailart
You can really see in this picture why it reminds me of black forest gateaux, the black cherry of the base coat, and the chocolate stripes, makes me hungry just thinking about it!

And last but not least I took a pic under the kitchen lights:
Black Forest Gateaux Nailart
The bit I like most about this is that it's made me realise that this gold glitter striper (that I haven't used before) reminds me very much of tinsel, and I think I'll be able to use this exact same technique, only using different colours, for a really effective Christmas nail art look, exciting!

Here's the polishes I used:
Black Forest Gateaux Nailart
Color Club Gold glitter striper (came in a set from TK Maxx)
Precision Nail Art Striping Brush in brown (bought from Amazon UK)
NYC polish in Canal Street (Bought online at Superdrug and reviewed HERE )
Color Club Perfect Mol-Ten bought at TK Maxx and reviewed HERE )

And there we have it, thats todays nails!

I hope you enjoyed looking at them, and until next time.....

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

Friday 12 October 2012

Nail Polish Review NYC Canal Street

Hi there everyone,

Back to normal with a proper weekend, YAY!  Also my car is booked into the garage on Tuesday to hopefully get mended, so it's all looking up!

Today I'm reviewing a nail polish that I wouldn't usually pick up.  I'm not really one for dark polishes, and I only have owned one NYC polish up to now, and that one I wasn't really keen on, but this one caught my eye as I was on my internet 'looking for browns' spree.  As it happens, when it came, it turned out to only be brown in certain lights, but that doesn't matter because I love it!

Feast your eyes on this beauty:
nail polish NYC Canal Street Swatch and Review
Gorgeous, right?  I took so many pictures of this, but as it's so overcast now when I get home from work, it's hard to get a good shot.  Here's one I took in the garden:
NYC Canal Street Swatch and Review
The bottle colour in this shot is very representative of the 'actual' real life colour, kind of a rich burgundy wine colour with lots of copper shimmer going though it.  These pictures are two coats, with no topcoat. 

The formula is an absolute dream, first coat no VNL, and you could probably get away with one careful coat, but I did two, and it pretty much covered the ridges on my nails and gave a great finish.  It seemed quite thin, but managed to be opaque, a win-win.

Dry time, about two minutes for the first coat, five minutes for two coats to get touch dry, and fifteen to 20 minutes to get completely hard, thats pretty good going.  I would say, yes, fast drying.

Here's a close up of the beauteousness of the polish in the bottle under the craft light:
NYC Canal Street Swatch and Review
No photoshop here, I just put it on a jiffy bag and took the pic, and this is what I got, lovely!  I love my camera, I do

Speaking of which, showing you this perfect autum nail colour, it reminds me, I went for a walk last weekend and I took some nice pictures, I thought I'd share some with you

I thought this one came out nicely, the way the light is catching the leaves:
And this one, which made me a bit hungry on my walk!
And I don't know what this plant is, but it's pretty:
Anyway, I digress big time, back to the polish!  Here's the brush shot.  The brush was a flat style brush, not too wide and was quite firm.  It worked well with the formulation of the polish, no blobbing:
NYC Canal Street Swatch and Review
So anyway, as you might be able to tell, I really like this polish.  And do you want to know the most amazing, jaw dropping, supercalafragislisticexpialadocious thing about it?

YOU CAN GET IT RIGHT NOW ON THE SUPERDRUG WEBSITE FOR £1.79 WITH FREE SHIPPING !!!!

Hurry though, you've got (I think) until the 24th October to take advantage of the free shipping, after that they charge £3.00, but even then it's not so bad.  Or of course you could always do it the old fashioned way and actually go to the shop using your body...

If I'd paid £10 for this I would be perfectly happy with it, and not feel hard done by, but to get it at this price is an absolute steal - BUY BUY BUY!!!

Until next time, when I might have calmed down a bit.....

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

Sunday 7 October 2012

China Glaze Kalahari Kiss Blossom Nail Art

Hello again!

I was up early this morning, so had time to do some nail art.  This is one I've seen quite a bit round the net, although not for a while, so I can't really give credit for it to anyone, although I'm pretty sure Indigo Nova has a YouTube tutorial for it (I think she has a new name now though).

It actually wasn't what I intended to do when I painted my nails initially, it just kind of happened, but it wasn't a bad thing because I'm really pleased with how they turned out:
China Glaze Kalahari Kiss Nail Art by Maspooase
Here's what I did - NOT a tutorial:

1) Painted my nails with Kalahari Kiss
2) Used a green striping polish to make random branches - this was very easy to do
3) Used a dotting tool and Barry M Peach Melba to dot the flowers on, easy but time consuming
4) Used the smaller end of the dotting tool and Rimmel Coraliscious for the flower centres
5) Waited 5 mins, then top coat of Seche Vite

All done!

I took alot of pictures of this, but will only subject you to one more, speaking of which, I joined Instagram, went out on a walk today and took some great pics, so will see if I can add them, I don't know yet if there are picture size rules or whatever, but will suss it out!  Heres the other pic:
China Glaze Kalahari Kiss Nail Art by Maspooase
I think I'm going to risk it and wear it for work tomorrow, I might get away with it because it's quite light coloured, only one way to find out!

Until next time.....

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~