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~
Hi there,
Here I am again, have had a day off work today for a dentists appointment, so managed to get some cheeky mid-week nailart in. I can't wait until summer when I get enough light at night to let me post more than just at the weekends!
My index nail finally gave up the ghost, it got a big dent in the weak bit, so I've had to file all the other nails down to match. In a way it's a relief, because I was fed up of babying it along, and now it can grow back nice and strong again.
Also, it's given me a chance to show you that nail art isn't only for long nails!
I specifically haven't included any stamping here, because I think there'll probably be alot of that around at the moment. I actually saw some stamping sets in Claires Accessories today, so if you don't want to buy from the internet, then you can pop to Claire's to pick one up. There was only a choice of 3 plates, but knowing Claire's, they'll improve that if they sell enough kits. I think they were £9.00 (or maybe £12). I don't see them on their website yet.
I've tried to do a few different designs, to hopefully get your creative juices going, I know what it's like when you just have a bleugh day, you look at your polishes and no mojo...
I start with a semi-fail. I found a new shop in carlisle called Fun-2-Do, which has all craft stuff in it. They do have a website, HERE but not every item in the shop is on the site. So anyway, I was in there, and I saw some table confetti, it was little red hearts and they looked like they'd be good for nail art. I've also think I've seen them on Amazon HERE but I can't be definite they're exactly the same ones.
So I used them in my nail art and....
Oh no! They bleeeeedddd.... This is not good, I have a BIG bag of these! So I had to come up with something. The red I used is China Glaze Ruby Pumps, how pretty is it?! Two coats here. It reminds me so much of juicy strawberry jam. The pink is OPI Mod About You. You're going to see alot of that pink in this post, as it's my number one light pink. On my thumb I taped off to do the lines, but on the rest of the fingers I decided that was too much hassle, and just freehanded. A top coat of seche which was intended to make it look prettier haha.
I did do another look, that I decided not to go with, but I managed to topcoat it without bleeding it:
For that look I used Color Club polishes Antiquated and Hot Like Lava from their Foiled Metallics collection.
What I decided to do was to try to take the colour off them with polish remover. Initially I put some in a freezer bag with some polish remover. The idea was to swish them about a bit, rinse them off, et voila! Nice clean non-bleedy hearts. It didn't quite work out, the bag leaked, I lost a load while I was rinsing them, and all in all it was more hassle than it was worth.
It was much easier to give them a rub with a cotton pad dipped in polish remover one by one. Yes it seems like it might take longer, but actually it's not too bad.
So now I have silver hearts instead of red. So I have to come up with a new colour scheme. This is what I went with:
I messed up a bit, as I made the index finger stripe too thin, but hey, we're just experimenting here! The polishes I used were OPI Mod About You (I told you that you'd see it alot) for the light pink, and the darker pink is Nails Inc's Bruton Street. Both have lovely formulas and are topped off with Seche. I could have done with another coat of Seche really, because by the end of the day I'd lost a few hearts.
So these looks I actually did last weekend, and today I did another one. Well, it's two into one really, because there's step one, which is one look, and step two which is different.... I'll just get on with it shall I...
So, because I didn't get my tooth mended at the dentist (had to make another appointment, as it was apparently just a check up appointment that time, sigh), I thought I would go shopping to cheer myself up. And SOMEHOW found my way into Fun-2-Do again. I found some more hearts, and thought I would take a chance. These were the ones I got, they cost me £1.50:
Now, I couldn't find these on their website, or anywhere else for that matter, but as soon as I got home I tested them, and HOORAY they don't bleed! Typically of me though, I decided not to use the red ones today haha. I went for the gold ones, and a Butter London polish called Fiddlesticks that I bought before Christmas and havent used yet.
I thought I'd keep it clean and simple:
This does have a coat of Seche over it, as it dries to a matt-ish sheen. It's got a very similar glitter feel to ruby pumps, only much more magenta. Think raspberry jam instead of strawberry. Also here you can see how short my index nail is now.
Here's another pic as I loved this look so much:
This look worked really well in low light, as the hearts picked up any bit of light and flashed brightly every time I moved my hands.
Then of course, I got bored of being understated and stylish.
So I made another look with it:
To do this, all I did was used a ring reinforcer to mask off the top of my nail, I got mine from Amazon link HERE but you can buy them from lots of places. I then used my Color Club pink striper, also from Amazon, to draw some stripes on the ends of my fingers. I started with the middle stripe and worked my way out to try to get them even. I messed up one stripe on my little finger, but I think this look turned out be pretty, and perfectly demonstrates that short nails don't have to be boring.
And I STILL wasn't finished! I had one more idea. I got my trusty Mod About You out, and Nails Inc's Devonshire Row. The two went so well together, but what to do? Then I realised I hadn't done any dotty looks yet, so I got out my dotter and away I went.
This is what I ended up with:
Now the heart on my middle finger didn't come out exactly how I wanted, but you can still tell what it is, so that's ok. I topped it off with a coat of Seche. As you can probably tell I was starting to lose the light by this time. Probably a better represtentation of the colours is in this picture:
So there you see, on short nails and still pretty. I actually really like these two colours together, and they are going on my 'do this again' list.
And that's it! Which is your favourite? I think mine is the Butter London stripy one, but the dots come a close second.
Have you got any nailart planned for Valentines? Hopefully if you've been stuck for ideas I've given you a bit of inspiration. Please feel free to recreate any of these looks if you like them, and if you do, please give me a shout, I'd love to see!
Until next time...
MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~
