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~
Hi again!
Hope you're having a great weekend
So, this story starts with me in my beloved TK Maxx.... just browsing around in the nail section, as you do, when I came across a Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen in gold. It was only £2.99, so I thought I'd give it a go, and as it happened I really liked it!
I had a look on Amazon UK to see if there were any more colours made, and there were, so I got a few more. There were none with free shipping, so all in all I paid about a fiver each for the others. Here's what I've ended up with:
As you see, as usual I went a bit mad haha! Obviously at some point in Rite Aid in the USA these have been half price and in a gift pack. Good job I wasn't buying them as a present. I bought the silver one from a different seller and the packaging on that one was all neat and tidy and nice. I didn't get a black or a white because they were alot more expensive or in 2-packs. Who needs 2?
These are:
08 Gold
05 Blue
07 Silver
04 Hot Pink
10 Purple Violet
06 Red
I thought the best way to show you the coverage and finish was to paint two nails in a dark colour and two nails in a light colour, so I used my new OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls (2 coats) for the light, and my Collection 2000 All That Jazz (one coat) for the dark. I used the same colours on the other hand only the opposite fingers, and I really liked the look, I'm going to try it as a proper mani at some stage. But for today, they are just canvasses:
My Boyfriend Scales Walls was OK to apply, but because of the hype surrounding it I was expecting more - I know, never happy. It was how I was expecting Alpine Snow to be, not bad application but took longer than I thought to dry.
So first off I did some (very wiggly) stripes, thick and thin, with all the colours, on both the light and the dark. The sheerest was the red, which reminded me very much of tomato soup, and the most opaque was either the pink or the blue:
The white polish canvas wasn't quite dry, if you look carefully in the thick silver stripe you can see where it dug in a bit. As you can see, the gold is more of a copper really, but pretty anyway.
And heres some nail art to show you what you can do with them:
Once it was dry I topped it off with a coat of Seche Vite, and that's how it's shown here. I wasn't very pleased with the cocktail glass on the index finger (yes, that's what it is!) but the rest came out ok. My favourite is the stars and dots.
And in the best 'showing the brush' tradition, here's what the nibs look like:
They feel a bit like a felt pen to use, and theres a ball bearing inside that rattles when you shake it up and down to mix up the lacquer inside. You press the nibs in if you want to work more polish down onto the nib, but so far I haven't needed to do that, except for the first use.
All in all, I like them. They're definitely great for doing tiny dots with no fussing and worth owning just for that alone. They didn't have very good reviews on Amazon, and if I'd read those before I got I the first one I wouldn't have bought them, so I'm glad it happened the way it did. I just have to hope that a black and a white one are on special offer at some point!
I hope this helps someone who's been considering them, or just been interesting for you generally, am planning some cuticle and nail care product reviews soon, and will have some Essie swatching to do if I ever get a day when I'm off when there's some good light! All to look forward to :-)
Until next time....
MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~
Happy Christmas Eve!
I'm off work at last hooray! This morning was my last shift until the New Year, so I'm very happy about that!
I dodged the elves challenge. I was completely uninspired by it, and I didn't want to sell my blog short by just bodging something in order to have something to post, so I just didn't do it. It's a shame to not have done them all, but there you go, that's life sometimes. There are some manis from this challenge I've been really pleased with, and others I wouldn't have ordinarily put on my blog in a million years, but it's definitely been an experience, and I'm glad I've taken part. After this one there's only Santas left for tomorrow. Hopefully I can get that painted up and prepared today, because I'll be out most of the day tomorrow doing my own Santa duties. Ho Ho Ho!
Tinsel as a challenge can only really mean one thing - bar glitter. Luckily for me that means not much decision making because I've only got one bar glitter, a £2.50 silver holo one from Claires Accessories. I've found Claires polishes to be a bit hit and miss, so I thought I would double up this nail art post with a review of this polish.
Firstly I thought I would try it over a range of colours, so I used 2 coats of each:
White - OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls reviewed here
Black - L'Oreal Color Riche in Black Swan
Red - Maybelline Express Finish Cherry Red shown here
Silver - Jessica Hologram Chic Disco Diva reviewed here
Here's how it looks in all its Christmassy glory:
This is two coats of the bar glitter with a color club top coat. Dry time was medium. I found that I only got a decent amount of glitter onto my nail if I put the brush back in the bottle and gave it a good shake for each nail. Just dipping the brush back in the bottle without shaking it meant I just seemed to get clearcoat and not glitter. I also moved it around a bit on my nail as just brushing it on made all the bars face one way and that made my nails look hairy, which is the bar glitter look I hate.
The holo isn't as wow in ordinary indoor light, but it is still there:
But outdoors in daylight it really comes into its own:
If you want a really smooth finish to this you will need at least two coats of top coat, or perhaps one thick coat of Seche. With one coat of normal top coat I could still feel texture there.
I'm quite surprised because I thought I would like this best over black, but in fact it looks best over the most similar colour, the silver. I think this is probably because I'm not that mad on the bar glitter look anyway, and to just get that bling of mad holo is much more 'me'.
I also liked it over the white, it was quite a futuristic look. Am considering the silver for New Years Eve, I think it would be quite fitting and fun.
And there we have it, I hope it was tinselly enough for you!
Until next time...
MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~
Hi All!
It's Saturday and I'm off work, so happy! Even better, the suns out, and that can only mean one thing, SWATCHES!!
This is a post I've been meaning to do for a while, then I saw that someone navigated to my site while looking for a comparison, and I felt all bad because I hadn't done it yet, and it spurred me into action. So whoever you are, anonymous, thank you for the boot up the bum that I needed.
Looking at the two in the bottle, it's obvious why people can't decide between them:
In this, and every, picture, My Boyfriend Scales Walls is on the left, and Alpine Snow is on the right.
So lets get into it on my nails:
As you can see, Alpine Snow on the right, is ever-so-slightly brighter. This picture is a pretty good representation of how it looks in real life, indoors but in the light from the window.
Formula wise, you can see that I had a little bubbling issue with My Boyfriend Scales Walls, I didn't have that last time I used it, perhaps I shook it a little too vigorously. These pictures are all three coats, and I didn't need to do any clean up.
Lets have another pic. This one's in the sunlight:
I think this one shows the shine nicely. You can see on my index finger that My Boyfriend Scales walls shows more shine than Alpine Snow.
One last pic of it on my nails, this one in the shade:
Getting back to the formula, they are slightly different. I prefer the formula of My Boyfriend Scales Walls, because it's less self deleting than Alpine Snow, and it seems to self level better. Also, I'm pretty sure I had to add some thinner to my Alpine Snow when I first got it to make it more cooperative.
Brushwise, theres not much in it. If I HAD to chose between them, My Boyfriend Scales Walls brush is a tiny bit better, you can see the difference between the formulas quite well in this next pic, look at the difference in how each polish clings to the brush:
The coating on the brush is denser on Alpine Snow (right), and that gives you a pretty good idea about the application.
They both needed the three coats for perfect coverage, dry time was identical and medium/fast.
I would actually say that this is the one time where I'm happy to own both, even though they're so similar, as they both have their place in my collection. Alpine snow where I need a bright white, especially for nail art and dotting, and My Boyfriend Scales Walls for all over nice shiny and level nails.
But, if you can't afford both, and so I absolutely have to pick, I would say to choose My Boyfriend Scales Walls, as it's a bit more versatile. I bought both of mine from Amazon and paid about £7.50 each.
So there you go, comparison done, I hope you liked it!
Until next time....
MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~
.jpg "OPI Alpine Snow vs My Boyfriend Scales Walls")
.jpg "OPI Alpine Snow vs My Boyfriend Scales Walls")
.jpg "OPI Alpine Snow vs My Boyfriend Scales Walls")