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~

Holographic Floral Nailart Inc. Artsy Wednesday - Vintage

Hi there Guys and Girls, I hope you're having a great Sunday.

I've had a pretty good weekend, I bought Zoo, a book by James Patterson & Michael Ledwidge, which was about all the animals in the world going bonkers, unfortunately I found I couldn't put it down, and I finished it this morning, so I will have to by another book now!  Also I bought some art stuff, which I'm pretty excited to play with.  I need another couple of days in the weekend to fit everything in.

This morning I woke up, and the sun was beating through the curtains, and I looked at my poor bare nails, and thought HOLO, because that's what us naileys do.  If you're one too, you'll obviously know this.

And also, as you can see from the post title, I couldn't do this weeks Artsy Wednesday, as it clashed with my blogiversary post (link) so while I was lying there in bed, I was thinking up with something that ticked both boxes.  Hopefully this manicure does that, I think it does anyway:

I see now that my cleanup wasn't brilliant, how come I never notice in real life, only when I come to resize my photos?  The base polish for this manicure is Jessica's Hologram Chic in Disco Diva.  I did a full review of it (here) but if you don't want to click about, here's what it looks like by itself:

This was two coats, over the basecoat polish that came with it in the Hologram Chic kit, and application was lovely, no bare patches or streaking.  The holo is much stronger in real life, but as with all holos, it's a bit camera shy.

I think the vintage look shows a bit better in the shade, it reminds me a bit of seventies wallpaper:

I used Nails Inc's Chelsea, which looks black in the the bottle, but as you can see it's really a dark plum, to stamp over the silver base, using Bundle Monster plate BM-224, and then used quite a few of my Pretty Jelly holos and A-England Holy Grail (the old version) to fill in the centres of the flowers using my trusty purple dotter.

Here they all are:

Left to right, top to bottom:
Layla Hologram Effect in Retro Pink - full review (here)
Nails Inc Chelsea - see how black it looks in the bottle?
Bundle Monster plate BM-224
A-England Holy Grail - swatches and review (here)
Jessica Hologram Chic - full review (here)
Pretty Jelly Glamorous Thief
Pretty Jelly Grape Escape - review (here)
Pretty Jelly Bullet Rouge, one of my favourites - review (here)
Pretty Jelly Fairy Ring - review (here)

And, I'll leave you with one last sunshiny pic, happily I've got my cuticles back to the point where I don't need to mess about with them in my editing program, which makes the photo part of blogging MUCH faster, thank goodness.  Sally Hansen's Healthy Cuticles Now certainly seems to work.  I should do a post about it.  How many times do I say this?

Don't forget to check out what the other girls in the Artsy Wednesday goup came up with for their vintage nails

Catrine at Unnaked Nails (link)
Michelle at Labmuffin (link)
Alanna at Pretty Purple Polish (link)

Maria at Maria's Nail Polish Blog (link)

Melanie at Nail and Polish (link)
Jessica at Beauty Gnome (link)
Emily at An Accent Nail (link)
Ameerah at Valiantly Varnished (link)

They're all great designs, and I hope I can keep up with them all and their creativity!

So, what do you think, do you think of holos as soon as the sun comes out like I do?

Until next time...

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

Pretty Jelly Bullet Rouge - Review and and Nail Art

Hi everyone!

Hope your Saturday's going well.  I've had a day of biscuits, Dexter, and swatching, so I'm a pretty happy bunny, as you can imagine. 

I'm managing to stick with Detox January, no alcohol so far this year.  Saturday mornings are so much easier this way, I'm starting to wonder whether to stick with this all the time unless I'm going out.  And seeing as I don't go out much AT ALL, that would mean hardly any drink.  Perhaps that's a good thing, as I don't seem to be missing it much.  We'll see, I might change my mind completely on the 1st February haha.

Today I bring you a review of a polish that's part of a set unfortunately not available in the UK.  Luckily for me I have a good friend in the States who sent them to me, a million thanks to Wes at Polish Me Manly

This is an indie line called Pretty Jelly and this holographic collection is called Glamorous Thief.  The first polish I've chosen to swatch is called Bullet Rouge.  The name would make you expect it to be red, and indeed on their website it's described as a magenta-red, but to me it looks more like a slightly muted fuschia, and in some lights a dusky pink. 

It's been an incredibly cloudy and dull day here today, with flakes of snow, not a day to bring out the best in holo's, but here's what it looks like in cloudy daylight.  As you can see, the holo doesn't show so much in that light but I think it gives a good idea of what the base colour looks like without the sparkles.  This is two coats:

Application was lovely, this is my first indie polish, and I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was easily as good as any others I've tried, including the high end brands.  The formula was quite thin(ish), but opaque in one coat, however I did two to give me the depth of colour I wanted.  As you can see it self levelled nicely over my ridged nails, and dry time was medium-fast, I was very pleasantly surprised!  It reminded me alot of A-Englands formula.

But, of course, none of this is its piece de resistance.  First and foremost its main appeal is that it's a holo, and we need some better lighting to show that.  Ideally I would like to wait for a sunny day and do this properly, but as this is January in the North of England, I think we'd be waiting a while.  Therefore I've gone back to my trusty kitchen under-cabinet lights, and we'll just have to imagine a lovely sunny day instead:

Pretty eh?  As I mentioned, this is two coats, over a regular base coat and no top coat.  As much as I love looking at super duper swatches that make polishes look awesome, I'd like my swatches to accurately represent as best I can what you can expect if you buy this polish and get it home.  Too many times I've been disappointed by a polish, because I've bought it on the back of a swatch which probably had aqua base, four coats of colour, and Seche Vite on the top.

Because I can't get enough of the holo loveliness, here's another pic:

There is more holo to this in real life than shown in these pics, my camera just didn't want to pick it up.  The brush was quite thin, which was strange to work with after all the pro-wide brushes out there at the moment, but it didn't hamper the application in any way.

 

So me being me, then I wanted to do some nail art over it.  I've re-found my mojo for stamping lately, so I got my plates out:

I used Konad special polish in black for the stamping.  The bows are from Konad plate M59, and the hibiscus on my accent finger are from Bundle Monster plate BM-318.  I didn't get the bows on straight, but they are a definite improvement on my past efforts to line stamps up so I must be learning something.  I kind of wish I'd done the flowers on all the nails because I really like how they came out, but I'll try that another day. 

 

Heres another pic, I'll make this the last one, I promise!

You can buy these polishes by going to the Liquid Jelly website HERE the full size bottles like the one I got are $10.

 

The polishes are 3-free and cruelty free, so you can shop with a clear conscience.

 

I also have the other three colours from this collection to swatch, so watch this space!

 

Are holos amongst your favourites too, or do you prefer glitter for your bling fix?  What do you think of this one?  If you have any polishes similar to this, I'd be intrigued to hear about them, I don't think I could ever have too many.

 

Until next time...

 

MASPOOASE x x x

~Wendy~

Lace Dots Pink Nail Art

Hi everyone!
 
Naileys you can look again now :)
 
Today I've got some nail art for you that was inspired in no small part by a Youtube tutorial from nailart guru and all round lovely lady, Plasmaspeedo.  I'm a massive fangirl of her videos.  If you want to see her tutorial, HERES the link.  I asked her if it was ok for me to do some nailart based her her design and she said no problem, so here it is!

I wanted a nailart look that I could wear to work, and that means no crazy colours, so I selected Nails Inc Marble Arch, which is a nice light cerise, or punchy pink, whichever way you like to look at it.

I did divert slightly from her tutorial, here's how it ended up, and then I'll get on to how I did it:

Apologies in advance for the quality of the step-by-step pictures, my camera was on the wrong setting and I didn't notice until after, doh!

So firstly, after my basecoat, I applied one coat of Marble Arch just on the bottom two thirds of my nail.  I didn't use tape, just freehanded because I'd be covering up the line anyway:


As you can see, it's by no means perfect, but that was just as good as I needed it to be.

Then, using Konad White stamping polish, and Bundle Monster plate BM-324, I covered the line across the top.  I believe the plate is from the 2012 collection:

Again, not perfect, I haven't done much stamping lately, and am way out of practice! Also I was a bit impatient and smudged the polish on some of the nails, but c'est la vie.

Once I'd finished stamping, I made my dots, using quite a small dotting tool, and OPI Alpine Snow:

And there we have it, all it needed now was a top coat (I used Seche Vite), and a clean up and you're good to go!  Here's a final pic:

I'm really liking this! It's girly and fun without being too cutesy, and it wasn't too hard to do.  If you haven't seen any of Plasmaspeedo's nailart tutorials yet, check them out, I'm sure you'll love them as much as I do.

Until next time...

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~