Orange and White nail art

Hi there!

Hope you're having a great start to your weekend.  Today should have been my first lie in for 12 days, so typically I woke up at 6.20am and couldn't get back to sleep!  I lay there with my eyes open for about half an hour, and eventually gave up and decided to get up.  And of course I've spent those extra hours productively, by painting my nails.

Ever since I did the L'Oreal Masquintense review (link here) I haven't been able to get the orange and white packaging out of my head.  So I've known what colours todays manicure was going to be all week.  I wasn't sure whether to do dots, stripes, or stamping though.  As my last couple of nail art posts have been stripes, and I wasn't really feeling dots today, I decided to go with stamping.  I picked a swirly image from Cheeky plate B, which I bought from Amazon, here's the link if you want to buy it, it's priced at £6.99.  The images stamp well, and it's good that there are 42 images on the plate, but I'm not sure I'd use all of them.  However I'm using one today!

For my white base, I wasn't sure whether to use OPI's Alpine Snow, or OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls.  I did a comparison on the two here but in the end I decided to go for My Boyfriend Scales Walls due to its better formula.  This means that I'll probably end up never using Alpine Snow as a base coat again, but it does come in handy for dotting etc.


Then I got out my oranges to see which ones stamped best.  In the end it was a toss up between two.   Essies Orange It's Obvious, which you can see here  and Color Clubs Wham Pow.  The Color Club is more neon though, so it won.

And here's what I ended up with:

It's not perfect, but I like it!  It's actually more neon than it shows in this pic, but still wearable.  Nice and jolly, which is always a good thing.

Here's another pic, closer up this time:

As you can see, I smudged the middle finger, and took a chunk out of my base coat at the cuticle on the same finger.  I also missed a spot on my little finger, but, hey, you get the idea!  I'll stop picking holes in my manicure now haha.

And here's how it looks to the outside world, seeing as I obviously don't go around holding a bottle of polish in my hand all the time (actually, I'm not sure that's really true...):

I like it because to me it looks like water marbling, without any of the mess.  I love how marbling looks, but I just can't bring myself to dunk my whole finger in a sheet of suspended polish and then spend time cleaning it back off again. 

I like this stamping design more than I thought I would.  I have a feeling you'll be seeing it a few times this summer, in different colours, and maybe gradients too.  Hopefully a bit more tidily done than this one!

Until next time...

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

Gradient Dots Nailart

Morning All!

How you doing today?  I've got a hangover haha!  Too much gin last night by far.  Have had some toast and LOTS of tea and am starting to feel vaguely human again.  One of the good things to come out of last night is that I ordered the Models Own Fruit Pastel collection, and then forgot, so when I woke up this morning and checked my emails, it was a nice surprise!  Lucky that's all I bought really.  I once bought all my sisters birthday presents while under the influence and had them shipped directly to her, she got some strange things!  Mind you I bought her a 'grow your own unusual vegetables' kit this year, and wasn't even drunk, I'm definitely a random gift buyer.

Also I was shocked to see that there were some of you lovely people that I'm not following!  Hopefully I've rectified that now.  If I've missed you, just give me a shout!

Another good thing to come out of last night was todays mani.  The checkerboard mani I wanted to do came out all wrong, so after going online and buying some stamping plates so I can do that mani properly, I decided to go with dots instead.  I feel like some of my nailart on here recently has been a bit lacklustre, and so I didn't want to post something that I wasn't totally happy with.

I wanted to make them a little bit different, so instead of redipping my dotter each time to keep my dots uniform, I loaded a decent amount of polish on the dotter and dotted straight down my nail without reloading it.  Here's what I came up with:

The base for this mani is Nails Inc The Southbank, a perfect light grey to use as a base for nailart.  As you can see, I've smudged my little finger at some point during the night, and my middle finger dots went a bit Siamese twinly, but never mind, that's life.  My awful middle finger cuticle is starting to heal now, but am still painting it out so you don't have to witness it's ugliness.  I believe I used two coats of The Southbank, but it could have been one because the formula is brilliant, and (due to gin) I can't remember haha.

This lovely fuschia is Nails Inc Devonshire Row.  It's one of my favourite polishes, and I use it alot.  You can see more nailart using Devonshire Row on my posts (here) and (here) if you like.  It also made my All Time Top Ten Polishes post (link)

The yellow is Color Club Almost Famous from their Poptastic Collection:

Such a punchy bright yellow!  I don't think I've been disappointed with any Color Club polishes I've bought yet.  I think in celebration of Easter I may do a comparison of the yellow polishes I own, will see how the weekend goes. 

And finally, here's the two polishes together, the sun's out at last, hooray!

So jolly!  Just looking at this combination makes me smile, and now thanks to the wonder of nail art, if I feel a bit down, all I have to do is look down at my nails and cheer myself up again.

How about you, what's your favourite colour combo?

Until next time...

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

Snooker Loopy! Nail Art

Hi everyone!

I hope you are well today.  Its been snowing here today, thankfully it's stopped now.  I love looking at the snow, but I HATE driving in it.  Last year it snowed, then froze, then snowed again on top of that, it was flippin deadly.  My car broke (again) on Thursday night, the bonnet  (hood) catch broke and it wouldn't close properly.  Thankfully I managed to get booked in to the garage on Saturday morning and they mended it, but that was when I was going to blog so didn't get the chance.  I did manage to squeeze in a little bit of polish shopping though, so will do some swatches later this week :)

It's been a frustrating weekend for me nailart-wise though.  It seems that I've had some brilliant ideas, but making them work on my nails has been a torment.  Sometimes they've looked ok and I've smudged them before I've photographed them, or they haven't looked anywhere near as good as they did in my mind.  There's a design based on a photo that I'm dying to do, but I really want to do it justice, and what I've produced so far is.... well, you'll see.  When I do finally get the design I like, I'll put the fail in there too to show you.  Also I've been doing my Valentines experiments.  Have come up with a few maybes, again, will include them once I get the design I like.

Anyway, on to what I have managed to produce today.  The snooker has started this weekend, and I LOVE it!  You get to know the players, and that makes the psychological element of the game even more fascinating to watch.  My favourite player is Ronnie O'Sullivan, he's the bad boy of snooker, gotta love that.

So, as I was watching the snooker I thought to myself, why not do some snooker nail art?  So I did exactly that.  Unfortunately by the time I'd finished it was dark outside, so please excuse the indoors photos.  Maybe one Sunday when I'm at a loose end, I'll do this again and put some daytime pictures in here too:

Pretty sure I got all the colours of ball in there!  These are the colours I used:

Here they are, lined up on my mantel piece.
White: OPI Alpine Snow
Black: unnamed from Simple Pleasures Halloween Scented collection, review HERE
Pink: OPI Mod About You
Blue: Barry M Cyan Blue
Yellow: Rimmel Sunshine
Green: Barry M Spring Green
Brown: Nails Inc Ganton Street
Red: Rimmel Double Decker Red
For the background 'baize' base, I used a Color Club green which I believe to be Twiggie from their Poptastic Collection, but have thrown the packaging away so can't be 100% sure.  I wish so much that Color Club put the names on the bottles.

Anyway, I'm rambling again, here's another pic:

As you can see, I was a tiiiny bit impatient with my topcoat and slightly smudged a few red balls, but in real life you don't see that.  Nowhere to hide with these close ups!

And finally, here's the BBC Snooker theme tune, the video to it is so clever and creative.  I always get excited when this comes on!

So, are you a snooker lover or a snooker hater?  I admit nail art and snooker aren't usually talked about in the same breath, but I love both!

 

Also, one final, final thing...  I noticed I've passed 50 followers, this is a really big deal for me.  I'd like to thank you, each and every one, from the bottom of my heart, for sticking with me while I work out this weird and wonderful world of blogging.  It really means alot, and I hope to keep you all entertained for as long as you'll have me!  Thank you again XXX

 

Until next time...

 

MASPOOASE x x x

~Wendy~

Millennium Nails Nail Striper Review and Comparison

Happy Weekend to you!
 
Typically, as winter is pretty much here now, and everyone is rocking their cool dark mani's, I've been digging pastels and neons!  Yes, it may just be the contrariness in me, but what the hey.  I've also been having a bit of a stripe frenzy.  These two things came together and demanded that I buy a pastel yellow striping polish.  Could I find one on the whole of the internet? NO!
 
I do own some striping brushes, and some pastel yellow polish, but for some reason I really can't enjoy striping like that.  It's alot of messing about, cleaning brushes with polish remover while wearing the polish and trying not to smudge anything.... too much hassle for me!  So striping polishes are ideal, all packaged up nicely, and when you're finished, just pop the lid back on and you're away!
 
So anyway, I couldn't find a pale yellow one.  Lots of pastels in green, blue, pink, but no yellow.  I decided what I would do is buy a white one and add some yellow polish to it, voila! A pale yellow one.  Now as this is obviously a bit experimental, I don't want to buy an expensive striper, but likewise, I don't want a rubbish one either, as some of the stripers I've bought in the past have been a bit pants.  So I found this cheap one on Amazon, only £2.39 plus £1.55 P&P, there weren't any reviews for it, and I couldn't find any on blogs anywhere (hence this review), but I took the plunge anyway. HERE'S the link
 
I thought I would show a comparison against my trusty Color Club white striper, which I love, to give you an idea of the quality, and actually I quite like how it came out, which surprised me, as I'm not a great fan of red nails on me.

Without further ado, lets get on with the pics.  I used the Millennium Nails striper on my index and middle finger, and the Color Club striper on my ring finger and little (pinky) finger:

As you see, there is a TINY amount of difference.  The Color Club is slightly more opaque, and where the lines begin at my cuticle is a bit neater.  This is because the Millennium Nails brush wasn't completely even at the tip, am wondering if I can maybe give the brush a bit of a trim with my nail scissors to improve it.

But, actually, for the price, not bad.  Here's another pic:

The bottle is glass, and not the same one shown in the Amazon pic.  It made me giggle, because the writing on it says "YCC Stripping Pen".  Not a pen, and certainly not a stripper!

Anyhow, for anyone who's interested in seeing the undies for this mani, it's Maybelline Express Finish in Cherry, which is a nice bright red, a bit darker than it's showing in my pics, a bit of VNL in one coat (which is all I used), but for the purposes of this mani that didn't bother me:

And finally, here's a pic of the actual brushes, I couldn't find a pic like this anywhere before I bought the striper, so hopefully someone stumbles across this if they're looking to buy.  Apologies for the slightly scruffy background, it was the only black piece of card I could find:

As you can see, the Millennium Nails one is slightly longer, but both brushes have a nice firm spring to them, and both were nice to hold and use.  Maybe I should have cleaned off the neck of my Color Club one before taking the photo haha.  Amazon says the Millennium has 8ml in it, whereas the Color Club has 7ml.

So, in summary:

If the Millennium Nails stripers came with free P&P, they would be a total bargain.  As it is, with the shipping they pretty much come alongside the better quality Color Club ones, which have free shipping.  So if you're looking at both, I would say get the Color Club one.  I haven't done my yellow experiment yet, but will let you know how it goes!

Until next time....

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

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:

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):

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:

This is me leaning out the front bedroom window (thats the porch roof in the background):

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:

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:

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~

Color Club Foiled - Metallics - Review

Hi there again folks!
Once again I have a nail polish collection review for you.  This time it's Color Clubs 'Foiled - Molten Metal for your nails' collection.  I don't have many foil or chrome effect polishes, so when I saw these in TX Maxx for £7.99 for 7 polishes (although one is a topcoat), I thought it's enough of a bargain to have a go.

So here's the polishes:

And here's how they come packaged:

Now, usually I show each colour, and then explain how the coverage and application, etc was.  I'm not going to do that for this collection for one good reason - the application and coverage was exactly the same for each polish!  I don't find that much in collections, but certainly in this case that's what it was like.

And the good news is that it was really nice to apply, not too streaky or self deleting, and a nice amount of polish came off the brush for each brush stroke.  You do need to make sure you clean off the stalk of the brush though, because I found a couple of times that a blob came down it and blobbed in it's blobby way onto my nail!  Luckily it was pretty easy to swoosh back off with the brush with no harm done, but it was just a slight irritation in an otherwise seamless polishing session.

Coverage is good, first coat ever so slightly patchy, but you could definitely get away with it in a rush, with no VNL to speak of.  I think this is because it contains alot of tiny foil pieces.  All pictures shown here are two coats and thats definitely enough.  To get a smooth glossy finish you would need the topcoat that came with the kit, but I didn't use it for these pictures.  The topcoat is under the sticker in the packaging shot, in true TX Maxx style of covering up the polish with the price sticker.  Dry time was medium-fast.

I'll show them in the order they came in, as shown in the pacakaging shot.  One thing that bugs me about Color Club collections is that they don't put the polish names on the bottles.  I've got so many I can't really swatch as I don't know what they're called.  This time I've tried to get around that by cutting the names out of the packaging and supergluing them on the bottom of the bottle.  Don't know how long they'll stay stuck on, but it's worth a try!

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

The first one is 927 Perfect Mol-Ten - a light pinky tan colour:

I think it would make an excellent base coat for 'lovely but too sheer' polishes, and am definitely going to try using it for that.  Heres another pic, I took loads, but have limited myself to two per colour on the blog, it wasn't easy to pick!

Next up is 928 - Antiquated:

A lovely feminine mid/bright pink - am not usually one for pinks, but this was my favourite of the lot.  Heres another pic:

Next in the box is 929 Cold Metal - a nice royal blue:

I simply couldn't limit myself to two pictures for this one because it appears so different in daylight and indoors, so heres two more pictures :)  one in daylight:

And one indoors, but daylight is shining on my thumb, the difference is clear between that and my little fingernail:

Next along is 930 Hot Like Lava:

This is a paler, cooler toned version of Antiquated, this and cold metal were my joint second favourites.  Heres another pic of it:

Next in the pack is 931 Foil Me Once - an almost duo-toned green:

The fresher green flecks are quite noticeable in the bottle shot above, but they seen to merge together once theyre on.  Heres another pic:

And last but not least, 932 Lumin-Icecent, a silvery light blue:

And here it is again, with the bottle in shot:

And that's all the colour, there was also a bottle of top coat, here's a picture of it, mainly so you can see what the brushes looked like!

So there we have it, one collection swatched and reviewed, and all in all I was pretty pleased with it.  I would have rather had a red in the same tone as the royal blue than two pinks, but then I am a bit fussy!  It makes a good addition to my ever-expanding collection, and I promise that my next post will be something different than nail polish!

Until next time.....

MASPOOASE X X X

~Wendy~