Hi there again!
It's a late one today, has been lots to do this weekend. Christmas trees are up, and I feel like I've hoovered up about 10 times in two days. Christmas is so messy! But hopefully all nice and jolly too, so a happy trade off.
I don't usually enter into these nail art challenges, because I feel like I HAVE to do them, and then my creative juices totally dry up, but this one sounded like fun. Here's what I have to do:
As you see, today is Christmas Tree day. I was thinking of all sorts of 'outside the box' ideas, but in the end I decided to just paint on some Christmas trees haha.
I started with a base of Revlon Matte Suede polish in 863 Ruby Ribbon. It's a very thin polish, and I've been exasperated with it before, but today it seemed to co-operate a bit more readily than usual. It could even be because it's colder? Not sure, but not complaining! I used two coats, but forgot to take a picture, very remiss of me.
Then I used a small nail art brush and some green acrylic paint to draw in the Christmas trees, and used some glitter stripers to dot on some Christmassy bling! I took alot of photos, but I'll try and pare them down (not sure if I can haha):
As you can see, I didn't top coat because I liked the texture, but if I wanted to keep this on I would have to topcoat it, because I doubt the acrylic paint would last long! Possibly you could just topcoat the trees. Also if you do topcoat Ruby Ribbon, it gets a nice shimmery sparkle to it. I hate the way my index finger seems to want to go off in a different direction to all my other fingers, it's so contrary!
The picture above shows the design best, but then I got a bit arty with my photos:
and here's another pic:
This nail art was pretty simple to do, and only took half an hour from start to finish. Acrylic paint is actually cheaper than alot of nail polishes, and if you mess up you can wash it off with water if it's not completely dry. It also doesn't dry as quickly as polish so you can work with one blob of it on a plate and not worry about having to work too fast. Although, as you can see, it doesn't dry flat like nail polish does, but that's not too noticeable with topcoat on.
So there we go, one challenge down! I've enjoyed it for my first time, it's a bit daunting thinking about all the others, but will give it a good old go! Next one is on the 5th, a holiday song? hmmmm....
See the links below for other people taking part, have you got your tree up yet?
Until next time....
MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~
Hi everyone, sorry for making you wait until after the weekend for my regular post...
My blogging routine is all over the place, I had to work pretty much ALL DAY on Saturday, and then dash to the shops, by the time I got home it was late, and there's just no light left in the evenings now to take my pretty photos with, bah. Sunday gets written off with visiting relatives each week, I took some polish to see if I could do some swatches, but I wasn't able to.
So, I've ordered a cheapie lighting photo set up thing from Amazon, hopefully that will mean I can do swatches in the evening and still get half decent colour accurate pictures, that way I'm not just stuck with blogging at weekends, I'll review it anyway when it comes, so you can see if it's worth getting or not.
But... it's not the weekend now, I hear you say? Well, I've tried to be a bit cunning. I painted my nails last night, took the photos in my car on my lunch break, and now I'm doing the post in the evening, so it's taken 24 hours to get to the point where I can actually write my post, and I have no idea yet if my photos will be any good. If not I'll just have to do my best with the kitchen lighting.. sigh...
Anyway, let's get on with the swatches and review!
I bought this polish in store from Superdrug and paid £6.49 but I've looked and they don't have it on their website. However I've seen it much cheaper than that when I just looked on Amazon, LINK here - isn't it always they way?
OK then, I've just looked at the photos I took today and they're awful, sigh.... off I go to try and take some half decent ones in indoor lighting, wish me luck!
Here's the first one:
The colour is warmer than it's showing here, think a taupe-y grey rather than just a flat grey. As you can see I added some nail gems, I absolutely love the look of them against this polish, they remind me of drops of honey. They're actually faceted, but I used so much top coat to try and keep them on that they've become cabouchons lol! The topcoat I used was Sally Hansen Insta-dry, which is another polish I'm not so keen on, but it needs to be used up, which is why I used it. I actually got alot of bubbling in my topcoat, which is why all my day time photos looked so awful but actually in real life they're not so noticeable. You can see them around the gems in this next pic though:
However, with using so much topcoat, it's been 24 hours, I've washed my hair, peeled the potatoes, been typing all day, and I still have all my gems, and no chipping on my nails, so it has its benefits.
On to the review. I love the colour, but I hate the formula! It managed to be runny, patchy, floody and bumpy, worse on the first coat, and with another coat and a bit of clean up it was a half decent finish, but not as good as I would have liked. The fact that I even bothered with a clean up and didn't just take it off is a testament to how much I like this colour, the photos really don't do it justice, so frustrating! Dry time was medium to fast.
So here's a picture of the brush sitting on top of my glamorous (lol) pine tea caddy, it was a little bit too soft for my liking, and added to the application issues:
And finally, for completeness, here's a picture of the gems I bought. I bought them from Amazon UK HERE is the link,
I didn't have any problems with the speed of shipping etc, and they were less than a fiver, bargain! :
So, to sum up, if the formulation were better on this polish, I would wear it all the time! Such a shame, but I will still struggle on with it, because when I'm wearing it, and I look at my nails, it makes me smile.
And after all, that's rather the point, isn't it?
Until next time....
MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~
