Hi everyone!
Back to normal blog posts again at last. I really enjoyed the nail art challenge, and have met some lovely new people because of it. A big thanks to the organisers Pink and Polished and Overpolished for organising it and doing such a great job.
This is a post I've been wanting to do for a while, I have probably about 250 polishes, which is a puny amount to some people, and alot to others, for me its not enough as I'm still missing some colours, and I don't have many of the 'famous' ones. I've finally managed to get the Layla flash black holo polish that I've been craving, and I can't wait for it to come. Nail mail is possibly my most favourite thing in the whole world! I've also ordered some nail art supplies, and a few experimental purchases, which I'll share with you if they're any good.
Quite a few of these polishes, being my favourites, will have their own post, and where they do, I'll link to them so that you can see more photos and probably nail art involving them. It was soooo hard to wheedle my favourites down to 10, and then put them in order. Unless stated, none have a top coat, and all have a base coat of Sally Hansen Continuous Treatment Growth base coat, just because it's the one I'm currently using up. It's taken me two days to do these swatches, how the big bloggers keep up I've no idea, there must be a knack to it.
So, I'm rambling again, without further ado, lets get on with it (imagine the Top of the Pops music here):
Aaaattttt 10:
NAILS INC WARWICK STREET
This is two coats. It used to only need one, but I thinned it out a bit too much. Very fast drying, and manages to be work appropriate with a twist. I imagine the finish to be how the new 'cement' line will look. You can see from the bottle that it's really cute red glitter in there. THIS is the link to the post where I first swatched it. Needless to say, a fab formula, which glides onto my nails, which is part of the reason I love it
Aaaaatttt 9:
JESSICA HOLOGRAM CHIC DISCO DIVA
This one nearly didn't make it into the top 10 because it's winter, therefore no sun to make it look good. I debated to and fro for a while. But it is one of my favourites, so deserves to be there, and holo is always a good thing. It comes with its own base coat, which I used. A full post including nail art on this polish can be found HERE and also on my dalek nails HERE
Aaaaattt 8:
COLLECTION 2000 HOT LOOKS MINT MOJO
This is one of only a few polishes that I've ever bought a back up of. The formula is lovely, but because I've had it a while I had to thin it, and got carried away. Therefore I had to do three coats instead of the normal two. Of course it will thicken up again eventually and it's so fast drying it wasn't really a pain to do. It's everything that I wanted Essies Navigate Her to be, without the yukky formula. Not a dupe though as this is paler and milkier. Superbly shiny as you can see.
Aaaatt 7:
NAILS INC DEVONSHIRE ROW
I love the formula and finish to this. You could easily get away with one coat if you have smooth nails. Mine are quite ridged so I did two to get a nice finish. Crazy reflections! I used it as a base for THIS nailart
Aaaatttt 6:
OPI MOD ABOUT YOU
For me, this is the perfect light pink creme polish. First coat is a bit streaky, the second coat is opaque perfection. Dry time is medium to fast. I used it as a base for THIS nailart.
And now we go into the top 5!
Aaaaatttt 5:
COLLECTION 2000 HOT LOOKS ALL THAT JAZZ
A lovely graphite grey shimmer, the formula to this is flawless. It virtually applies itself, again you could get away with one coat of this if your nails are smooth. This is two coats. I did a full review post HERE and I used it for my halloween nails, which were one of my favourites HERE
Aaattt 4:
NAILS INC ALBERT PLACE
Another one coater for smooth nailed people. I did two coats to get a nice finish. It's kind of the blue version to Devonshire Row, similar colour tones. It's the perfect sky blue, and I used it as the base for my skyscraper nail art tutorial HERE
Aaaattt 3:
NYC IN A NEW YORK MINUTE CANAL STREET
This was a super lovely online surprise buy. I did a full review HERE it's fast drying and lovely to apply
Aaaattt 2:
OPI MY BOYFRIEND SCALES WALLS
If you've been following me for a while, this choice will be no surprise to you. It's just off-white enough to be wearable, and for a white the formula is lovely. Similar to Mod About You, coat one can be a bit streaky, but coat two sorts that out nicely. I've used this one lots, and I did a comparison post to Alpine Snow HERE
And now we get to the numero uno spot.... I picked... drum roll.....
Number 1:
NAILS INC ELECTRIC LANE
Typically I picked a polish that's difficult to photograph! It's a holographic glitter topcoat. I can't imagine my polish life without this little magical beauty. I do own a backup of this, and I will need to use it soon as I'm nearly at the bottom of this one, which is unheard of for me. I've taken two pictures, as it's number one it's allowed, over Devonshire Row and Albert Place. You will see that it does change the colour of the polish slightly, but it also gives it a super duper glitter holo finish which I love. Removal isn't too bad for a glitter, but it still does take a little bit more elbow grease than a creme (of course). It glides on, but it does dry slightly matt. If you put a top coat on it really makes it pop. These pictures are taken without though. It dries in a flash too
You can see the holo awesomeness on my little finger - just love it!
Here's a lineup of all the polishes I've used in this monumental post, boy oh boy it's going to have alot of labels haha
These are my desert island polishes,the ones I would recommend to anyone starting out. They all have great formulas, and I haven't needed to do clean up on any of these swatches. If you see any of them for sale, snap them up!
I hope you've enjoyed this post as much as I've enjoyed making it. Do you have a top ten post? I'd love to see it!
Until next time...
MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~
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:
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:
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:
Ok, get ready for your close up, fingers:
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:
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~
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~
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:
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:
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:
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:
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~
