Artsy Wednesday Nailart - Crystals

Hi All!

Here I am again with this weeks Artsy Wednesday.  The last Artsy Wednesday was Disney, and I had quite a good idea for it, but every way I tried to do it, it just came out in a mess.  Eventually I got that stressed out with it that I decided not to put anything at all up.  I think sometimes you have to know when you're beat haha.

This week is quite a straightforward theme of crystals.  I am a total magpie, so I have plenty of pretty shiny things to put on my nails.  The challenge for me was to try to come up with something a little bit original, and hopefully I've managed that.

Here's what I came up with:

The base polish is the lovely A-England Tristam.  Here it looks like it has a silver sparkle in it, but in real life that's a very subtle holo.  This is one coat, and it had enough coverage.  If I intended this mani to last I would still do two coats though, just for the extra wear.

I then stuck some crystal stars straight onto the wet polish.  I got these ones from ebay, in a wheel with different sizes and shapes in it.

Here's another picture:

My nails are far too long at the moment.  I keep waiting for one to break so I've got a reason to cut them down, but they seem to want to stay long right now!  I will have to cut them soon though, because once they get to a certain length typing gets uncomfortable.

I'm sure now that the weather's turned cold they'll start to dry out a bit.  I love this autumny weather, my woolly jumpers are already out, and I've broken out the hot chocolate too, yum!  Hopefully I'll get a lovely crisp day soon to take a walk and get some lovely photos to share with you.

I hope you like my blingy offering!  Don't forget to check out what the other lovelies came up with:

Catrine at Unnaked Nails (link)
Michelle at Labmuffin (link)

Maria at Maria's Nail Polish Blog (link)

Melanie at Nail and Polish (link)
Emily at An Accent Nail (link)
Ameerah at Valiantly Varnished (link)
Anna & Haylee at Makeup and Masala (link)
Rosemarie at Every Little Polish (link)
Anna at Makeup N More (link)

Until next time...

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

A-England Lady of the Lake swatch and Autumnal nailart

Autumn is coming! Yay!  And with that comes the darker colours, which I don't wear haha...

However having said that, I do go slightly darker, and incorporate those vampy colours in my nailart rather than painting them as full nails.

So for my first "less than summery" mani of the season, I decided to use A-Englands Lady of the Lake.  It is from their Mythicals Collection, and of course because I live in the lovely Lake District, how could I resist?  I'm surprised I haven't reviewed this before now, as I've had it quite some time, and I have worn it a few times too, strange...

Well never mind, here it is now.  No sunshine, and I did struggle with shadows in my photos today, but that can't be helped.  Here it is outside:

The formula was ok, a bit thicker than I'm used to, but it lay down to a nice smooth finish.  Because of this, the coats I used were quite thick, so dry time was just medium.  It felt like it would be quite a fast drying polish if I thinned it a bit, but I wasn't in any rush, so I just waited for it to dry.  The brush was co-operative, quite soft, but just right for the formula of the polish.  I didn't need to clean up round my cuticles and as you can see the cuticle line is quite nice and even.

The silver sparkles you see here in the daylight are actually small holographic particles, but out of direct sun they're quite hard to see.  I find this with alot of scattered holos, and it's the reason I usually prefer linear holos for that 'bam' of holo goodness.  However, scattered holos do have their place, and are much more appropriate for places like work, where you can still angle your nails and enjoy them without them being too much in peoples faces.  Also they can be seen as a bit more grown up, but hey, you're as young as you feel that's what I say.  There shouldn't be age restrictions on what polish you can wear no-sirree!

So here it is under the kitchen lights, captured as best I could:

So then I had to decide what nailart to put over this lovely purple.  There was only one colour that came to mind, which I have used it before in THIS post, and that was Estee Lauders Pure Colour polish in Smashed.

So now I had my combo, what design to do?  Well, I was at a bit of a loss.  So I had a google about and I found one that was perfect on Polish You Pretty and I had to give it a try.  Here's the LINK to their tutorial, totally different colours than mine, but I followed the tut pretty much brush for brush.

I used the polish straight from the brush in the bottle to apply half moons of Smashed on my nails:

And then on their tutorial, they use a contrasting colour to make dots.  Well, I wasn't sure what colour to use, and while I was deciding, my lovely childhood bestie got in touch.  Her favourite colour is turquoise, and that also goes well with purple, so there we go, decision made!

So, as per the tutorial, I dotted around where the two colours meet, and this is what I got:

The turquoise I used is Maybelline Express Finish in Turquoise Lagoon.  I've used it in the past on my sunflower nailart tutorial HERE as a base, but not as an accent until now.  I topped it all off with a coat of Seche.

Here's another pic:

The dots on my other hand (which I did first) were larger, and I don't think they look as good, so I do recommend using a smaller dotter, or a toothpick, if you're going to have a go at this look:

I did then make an effort to capture the holo of Lady of the Lake, and lovely glittery depth of the juicy blackberry colour of Smashed.  I didn't like Smashed as a full nail colour, it's a jelly-like finish, and as such I couldn't get it as opaque as I liked, but I love it layered like this.

Here's the close up:

Pretty hey?  Even still I'm frustrated at not being able to capture the sparkliness, but it's close!

Here's the super-closeup:

Hooray!  At last I showed the holo!  I know that Adina, who produces A-England polish, does so with alot of care and attention, and I really wanted to show its true beauty.  Admirably for the creator of a thriving company, she is still taking a hands-on approach with both her customer service and product feedback, and it really shows.

I bought Lady of the Lake from the A-England website LINK which currently only ships to the UK due to Royal Mail postage restrictions, but if you're international you can still order HERE to get your lovely A-England.

As much as I'll miss summer and its long lazy days, I'm happy to see Autumn arrive.  It's my favourite season, with its vibrant colours and crisp mornings.  I'm chosing to ignore the thought of dull rainy days for now!

Are you an Autumn lover like me?

Thanks for reading, and until next time...

MASPOOASE x x x

~Wendy~

A-England Princess Sabra - Review and Nail Art

Hiya again!

Today has been a day of excesses for me.  I stayed in bed too late, went shopping and spent too much, came home and ate too much junk food, and didn't get any housework done.  Slapped hands. 

Well, never mind, on the positive side, I've FINALLY bought myself a pair of work shoes that actually fit me, rather than struggling on with the ones I bought before Christmas that are way too narrow, and making my toes swell up.  I just didn't want to think I'd wasted my money as they cost me £40, but I've finally admitted defeat and thrown them in the bin.

Also, it's impossible for me not to buy polish at the moment, as spring is coming and all the pretty pastels are in the shops.  I adore pastels, and I bought 3 from Marks & Spencer which I'll swatch for you another day, they're so pretty in the bottle I hope they don't let me down.  I've also ordered Essie's Borrowed and Blue, as it looks like the perfect powder blue I've been looking for, fingers crossed!

Anyway, on to business.  Recently A-England had a fab sale where all their polishes were reduced to £6 each. Two of them I bought straight away, Princess Tears and Princess Sabra, and three, Tristram, Dragon and Lady of the Lake I ordered later.  Princess Tears and Princess Sabra were delivered on Friday, so I swatched Princess Sabra yesterday.

A-England have a lovely way of creating a background story for all their polishes, Princess Sabra's story on the website is "The heart-stoppingly beautiful daughter of the king, whose misfortune it was to have her name drawn as the next sacrificial victim of the dragon".  The founder of A-England, Adina, has based the colour of this polish on the eyes of her cat, Tristam.  She describes it thus:  Alluringly feline golden olive bronzite, the sacrificial Princess constantly shifts with her elusive, myriad hues.

So let's get on with the swatches.  Here's how it looks out in the garden.  Yesterday was cloudy and overcast:

It looks to me like a greenish toned antique gold.  This is two coats over basecoat with no topcoat.  The formula was nice, and has seemed pretty consistent across all the A-Englands I've tried so far.  Dry time was medium/fast. 

There is some scattered holo in this, but don't buy it expecting a holo fest, or you'll be disappointed.  However the best thing about it was that it's kind of metallic, and no brush strokes!  I hate brush strokes, I think it completely ruins any look of sophistication a polish might have.

It doesn't completely do my skintone justice at the moment, but I think in the summer when I get a bit of colour it will be perfect.  Here's another outdoor pic:

Try as I might, I couldn't really get the holo to show in my pics.  Here's the nearest I got, you can kind of see it up near my cuticles:

To jazz it up a bit I used some small circle stickers to mask off an area of my nail, then stamped using the snakeskin effect on Bundle Monster plate BM-215, and an Elf polish called Chocolate, along with NYC polish Canal Street blobbed randomly.  As it was I needn't have bothered doing that as the mottled effect I had planned didn't really show, but hey-ho it was worth experimenting because you never know:

In my impatience I smudged my index (pointer) finger with my SV topcoat, but it's not too noticeable, so I didn't bother to re-do.  Here's a final pic, taken under the kitchen lights.  Again, the holo allllmost comes out to play:

All in all, I like this polish.  I don't own anything like it, and I think it's going to make a versatile neutral-ish base for a lot of looks.  I can also see this coming out alot around Christmas time (I know it's a long way away, but planning ahead), and already I'm wondering what it might look like with Nubar Black Polka Dot over it, also safari/animal prints... and so on.....

It's available with free international shipping for £9 on the A-England Website HERE.

What do you think?  Are you a fan of gold toned colours?  I am, even though they don't do me any justice haha, I keep at them!

Until next time...

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

A-England Holy Grail - Review, Swatch and Nail Art

I can't resist a bargain. It's just one of those things, I can't help myself.  Even if its something I don't really want, if it's super cheap, I'm there.

So, when I found out a-england were selling off their Holy Grail polishes for £5 a bottle with free shipping, I was so excited, I had my laptop open and was on the website faster than Usain Bolt running away from an angry bee!

If I remember rightly it was because this polish is being discontinued, and as of today (29 Sep 2012) it's still there on the website waiting to be snapped up.

It came in a couple of days, considering it was free P&P I was expecting it to be sent on the back of a trained snail, but no, just as fast, if not faster, than any normal shipping.

So without further ado, lets get on to the pictures:

The formula was thin, with a little bit of VNL on the first coat, but it was nice and obedient to work with.  I found the brush ever so slightly on the soft side, but it worked well with the formula. The first coat did emphasise ridges, but the second coat covered that all up nicely.  Here's another picture:

It did threaten to blob once during application, but never actually did, and there were a few quite faint brush strokes left.  I couldn't decide if I had VNL or not after 2 coats, which means I probably didn't, but I ended up doing 3 coats anyway just in case.  Sometimes you don't see any in real life, but then they show up in the photos which is weird, and I didn't want to take the chance. 

Dry time was medium, maybe five minutes between coats, with a final five minutes to set it, and I still ended up with a little dent, but that happens sometimes when you're moving your hands about to take the pics.

Here's a picture under the LED craft light, I think it shows the finish well, the polish formulation is *very* shiny but offset a bit by the shimmer:

And then, me being me, I decided to do some nail art on it.  As it's a very yellowy gold, I wanted to make my fingers into bumblebees, but despite doing some test nails, I just couldn't get them to look as good as I wanted, and couldn't see any tutorials on YouTube that had the finished look I wanted, so ended up doing something else:

When I started off doing it, my intention was to do a paisley look, well, as you can see that didn't quite work out.  However I like the blobby look of this, so am going to pretend it's what I intended all along haha.  It's actually the first time I've used the pen nib bit of my Rio nail art brushes, as I've only ever used the striper before and it was actually nicer to use than I thought, I'll have to try something else with the other colours I've got.

Heres another pic, this one taken outside:

And finally, the obligatory brush shot:

And there we have it!  I actually don't think this colour works particularly well with my skintone, but that's obviously not the polishes fault!  I actually already have a gold I'm more than pleased with, but I couldn't resist the temptation to try out the a-england formulation that everyone seems to love at such a bargain price.  I'm glad I did, because I do like it, and if I see one of their polishes in a colour I want (all their recent releases are a bit dark for me), I won't hesitate to buy it.  At full price.  And thats saying something coming from me ;-)

Until next time.....

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~