Hi everyone, happy Monday
I hope you're all well, and that you've had a fab weekend. I've had my first day back to work today after my week off, shock to my system!
Still, I do feel all nicely refreshed, and I had a lovely time in Torquay. I think once is enough though, there was quite a bit to do, but it was all driving distance rather than walking distance, and Torquay is hilly! I didn't feel like I'd missed any gym time that's for sure.
The weather was so-so, we had some sunny/showery days, and a couple of miserable days. I still managed to get sunburned on the Dartmouth ferry crossing, but only on my face because I was all wrapped up in my coat, as it was freezing. It wasn't even a sunny day, I've been told since that if you're going on the ocean to always wear extra sun protection, as even when it's cloudy the suns rays bounce back off the water and you get twice as many rays. Live and learn. Well, I do anyway.
Anyway, the break has done me the power of good, and I'm back and raring to go. The mani I'm sharing with you today was actually done before I went away, but I ran out of time to write up the post. Usually when this happens, I lose the love for the mani, and end up not writing the post. But this one came out so awesomely I'm eager to share. Check out this little beauty:
I took ALOT of pictures of this, but you'll be glad to hear I whittled it down to just my favourites. Funny enough, this Estee Lauder purple polish is one I loved when I first tried it, then never really bonded with it. I reviewed it originally (here) and that's actually the only time I wore it. I don't wear many darks anyway, and being a three-coater, it's never going to climb high up my pile. That sounds wrong haha.
However, during some recent experimentations, I've discovered that its slight sheer-ness makes it ideal for doing layered stripey looks like this.
The base for this mani is my awesome bottle of Pretty Jelly Grape Escape, which I loooooovvveee:
You can just see on my thumb the holo loveliness peeking through. In real life this is super-holo, and a fab formula. I reviewed it in full (here) where you can see the full holo in the sunshine, and fall in love with it like I did haha.
Happy news is that the plan is for some Pretty Jelly polishes to be available to buy internationally outside of the US via http://meimeisignatures.com/ and you'll know when this happens as I'll have new polishes to show you. Thanks to the beautiful and talented Amy at Gotham Polish for the heads up!
Then I used striping tape to mask off my nails, and then applied the Estee Lauder. Here's another pic, I tried to capture the holo at the same time as catching the flecks in the Estee Lauder:
I loved this so much I kept it on for the best part of a week, until some chipping made me take it off, and I wasn't bored of it, always a good sign!
Here's one last pic, in the sunshine this time:
Pretty Jelly polishes are 3-free and cruelty free, and can be bought (if you're in the US) (here) at $10 each for the large size and $5 for the small size.
You can get the Estee Lauder polish from Boots (here) like I did, it's now £14.50. Not cruelty free sadly.
I think this has given me new hope in my too-large collection of sheer polishes. At some point, I will separate them from the lovely opaque 2-coat polishes that I love, and put them in their own section to be used for things like this, and sponged gradients.
What do you think, is this a look you would try?
Until next time...
MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~
Hi there!
The sun came out :-)
This means it's holo time! The next one on my to-try list is another polish from the Pretty Jelly Glamorous Thief collection that I bought recently. I've already reviewed Bullet Rouge from the same collection, and you can see that post HERE
I was in two minds as to whether to swatch any polishes this weekend, as I still have that slash on my cuticle, but as I don't feel like I've seen any sunshine for MONTHS, who knows when my next chance will be? So I decided to go for it, and cover up the slash with my watermark, YOLO, right?
So here's Grape escape in all its sunshine-y glory:
Awesome, eh? It's a lovely mid-toned purple, leaning to the lavender side, and really wearable. I still haven't managed to catch the real life holo loveliness properly, as it looked much more holo than it appears in these pictures. Definitely this could be office appropriate though, as in the shade it looks just as pretty but in a less 'disco' way:
This photo also shows the finish nicely too. This is two coats over regular base coat and no top coat. The formula was lovely to apply, and very forgiving, as I dug the brush into the first coat accidentally when I was applying the second coat. Other polishes could have made a bald spot clumping argument about that, but this polish said 'hey mistakes happen, let me smooth that out for you', and it did, nice. It left the brush (which was one of the thin-ish type, not pro-wide or flat) at a nice controllable speed and didn't flood or clump. Dry time was medium-fast. I like alot.
As a large swathe of the UK, including us here in Cumbria, have had alot of snow this week, I thought I would carry on the theme with snowy nail art. Looking through my stamping plates, I was surprised to realise I only have one full nail snowflake plate design, so it wasn't really a hard decision which one to use. Bundle Monster BM-323. I tried a few different polishes with this plate. Barry M Indigo worked really well, but it wasn't really the look I was going for.
The Essie Borrowed and Blue I bought from Amazon was delivered this week. I have been so disappointed with it. The colour is really pretty, but the formula is awful! Plus I thought Essies had wide brushes now, and mine has a thin brush in. Clumpy, floody, just a bottle of yuk. So imagine my happy surprise when I discovered it stamps perfectly!
Here's what I came up with:
As you can see from the photo, I'd lost the sun, so I took a pic under the kitchen lights so the holo could come out to play:
I'm really pleased with how this came out. It's definitely gone onto my list of 'lets do this one again' manis.
And just because I can, here's a picture of the polish nestling in the snow:
Just one little green shoot sneaking up past the cap, spring is trying to peek its way through!
Pretty Jelly polishes can be bought in the US HERE for $10 each, they are 3-free and cruelty free, so it's all good.
What do you think? Do you own this one?
Until next time...
MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~
