Hi Guys!
How are you doing? I'm back again, this time with a product review and a bit of nailart for you.
This Essie set was a super-kind gift from a work friend who has been to America on her hols. She picked this up for me and I was intrigued! As I've been out of the nailart scene for a while due to many changes in my home life I hadn't heard of this set and couldn't wait to try it.
I especially didn't Google it before I tried it, because I didn't want to go in with any preconceptions. I have had Essie polishes before, which I have reviewed elsewhere in my blog, but have never really been blown away by any of the ones I have tried. But this set looked like fun!
So here's what I got:
I like the look of the packaging, and as you can see, there is a standard sized bottle of white basecoat, called White Page, and 3 minis of the watercolor polishes, a yellow called "muse, myself", a pink called "love sheen", and a purple called "no shrinking violet".
On the back of the pack is the instructions on how to use them. Apologies for the light shining on the box:
I decided not to go with the design they suggested, as I wanted mine to look a bit more random.
I started by applying White Page. This is one coat:
As you can see, it was a bit streaky. It dried to a sheen rather than a shine. If it was wall paint, think "eggshell". I applied another coat after this. It was reasonably fast drying, and by the time i'd done both hands, I didn't have long to wait before I could start again on the first nail.
Then I went on to randomly blob on No Shrinking Violet. I did do them in the order suggested on the box, just in case there was a reason for that:
As you can see, very random. I didn't go OTT with the first colour, because I wanted to leave room for the others.
Then on with Love Sheen:
Again just random blobs. Was expecting a bit more merging between the two, but was pleased that the pink didn't completely obscure the purple.
Next on with the last colour, Muse, Myself. Not sure why it's called that, I'm guessing some kind of pun on amuse myself:
Sorry for the blurry pic here, I'm guessing it was getting too dark by that time. However when I went outside to take a better one, I dented my middle finger on the door **CRIES**:
So there we go, that was all of the colours on. I was a little bit underwhelmed at first, but actually as the day went on, I got quite attached to it. The colours really complemented each other, and in different lights there were different effects.
OBVIOUSLY I was not satisfied to stop at this, so I decided to stamp over it. I went with GALS stamping plate GA22:
I went with the sun image on the right hand side of the plate.
And here we have how it came out:
Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Yes, I can hardly see it either! I have no idea why it came out so pale. It was fine on the stamper, and I tried both Konad stamping polish, and OPI Alpine Snow, which I've successfully stamped with before, and had the same result with both.
Here's a picture in different lighting. You can "kind of" see it here:
This isn't to say that I don't like it. As Bob Ross would have said, it's a "happy accident". I like the mixed up look of it, but it definitely isn't what I expected, or aimed for.
As I always do (when I remember), here is a pic of the brushes. Weirdly the brush in the mini is larger than the brush in the full size polish:
So what did I think?
Obviously as this was a present I don't know what it cost, but knowing the cost of Essies, I'm guessing it was mid-range. A bit more than Rimmels, but a bit less than OPI's.
It does have a lot of potential, and I will experiment more with it. However, I haven't been blown away I'm sorry to say. I know that the colours are intended to be sheer, but for me, they were a little *too* wishy-washy. Even over white, the yellow is very subtle.
It does however create a lovely girly pastel look, and with some holo glitter and a bit more imagination on my part, this set could really make something incredible (and I'm sure some people have done so).
In summary, it was a kind wonderful gift from a lovely person, and although I haven't got the best out of it on my first try, I am sure that I will have something better to show you in the future.
Thanks for reading, and until next time...
MASPOOASE
xx Wendy xx
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 there lads and ladies!
I hope you're having a great weekend? Mines gone really well, only a teeny tiny bit of shopping, despite it being payday, so I'm back on track with my low-buy. Which is a good thing.
Todays nailart idea came a little bit out of the blue. I was just sitting here wondering what to put on my nails (as you do), and I decided I was in a neon mood today. You'd think that I would have thought this while the suns shining, but oh no, not me, I had the idea in a torrential storm.
So anyway, I do have a few neons, but they're all sheer and need undies, which gets on my nerves. I only have a couple which can hold their own. This is one of them, Pixi No.14.
In real life this is so much brighter. Almost hurt to look at it, bright. This is only one coat, which is why there is VNL, but in 2 it's opaque. However I knew I'd be going over it anyway so didn't bother.
I took a make up sponge and dabbed a gradient with OPI Alpine Snow on the tips of my nails. I despise sponging as it's so messy, but I couldn't get around it with this idea I had:
And then, the tip of my nail wasn't coming out white enough, so I went over it again just using Alpine Snow with the brush from the bottle to get it properly white. This shows the most on my little finger.
So, once I was satisfied I stamped over the white, using the same Pixi polish, with Gals stamping plate GA14. How weird that they're both number 14? I never realised until now, it must have been meant to be.
So after a coat of Seche, and some clean up, this is how they turned out:
They actually came out nicer than I thought they would. I thought they were going to look really messy, but they don't look too bad.
But then, I still wasn't satisfied! I've rekindled my love for matte top coats at the moment (expect to see more soon) and so I decided to give this one the un-shining treatment. Here's how it looks:
Yep, that's better! And because the only camera in the world that seems to be able to pick up colours properly is my rubbish resolution phone camera, here's what it sees:
Bright eh?
So, I'm liking this alot, just what I was in the mood for. I love it when that happens.
What's on your nails today? Do you know of any opaque neons I need?
Until next time...
MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~
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~
Here we are at Wednesday again, the weeks are whizzing away! I can't believe it's May already.
The Artsy Wednesday challenge this time is to create nailart based on a colour you usually hate.
Well, I don't hate any colour, but the colour I like least on me, and wear the least, is red. I get lobster fingers extraordinaire. I don't know who said it, but somebody wise once said "there's no such thing as the wrong colour, just the wrong shade", and I agree wholeheartedly with this. If I am going to wear red, I'll usually stick with maroon reds rather than bright primary reds.
So, to stick with the theme, I've used the bright primary reds that I don't usually wear in this challenge. It's two designs for the price of one this time. I did one design, and although I liked it, it didn't seem very inspired so I did another one which I preferred. But as I've done them now, I may as well show you both.
Backwardly, I'll start with the second design, as it's the one I prefer. It's a take on the the Russian Doll design which I originally did (here) and I kept telling myself I'd return to. Despite the fact that it's not perfect, I love the colour combo. The red is Nails Inc St James, and the pink is Sinful Colours Innocent:
I have to admit, if I'd have remembered how long Innocent takes to dry, I'd have used a different pink, but am loving the raspberry ripple colour combination.
Here's a pic in the shade:
This design was really easy to do, and it doesn't need any nailart tools at all. All you do is paint your nails red, use the pink to paint them again, but a bit further inside your nail leaving a border, then the red over the top of that, and keep going until you have a design you're happy with. A top coat to smooth the layers (I used Seche Vite), and you're done. In real life this was a super punchy design, and I'd like to try it in some other colour combinations.
So, the original design I did was a stamping design. I painted my nails with a different red, Rimmel Lasting Finish in Double Decker Red. I tested a few polishes over it, and the one I liked the most was Nails Inc Old Park Lane. You can see a swatch of Old Park Lane (here) if you want to see it full nail. Here's how my design looked:
I used some studs (which I got from Amazon) on my ring finger, and I tried to mirror the stamping design. The plate I used was Gals GA3, which kind of reminds me of either leaves, or the pattern you get in metal stairs on fire escapes. Either way it goes nicely with the red I think. Here it is in the shade:
My cleanup wasn't brilliant, but never mind. I'm considering getting some neat acetone so cleanup is a bit more straightforward, but for some reason I couldn't find it in Superdrug or Boots, so it looks like I'll have to order it online.
As I said earlier in the post, I didn't feel that this stamping design was 'Artsy' enough, but actually looking at the pictures, it's starting to grow on me.
So what do you think, do you have a favourite? Is there a colour you usually keep away from like me with reds?
Don't forget to check out what all the other Artsy Wednesday girls came up with:
Michelle - Lab Muffin http://www.labmuffin.com/
Alanna - Pretty Purple Polish http://www.prettypurplepolish.com/
Maria - Maria's Nail Polish Blog http://mariasnailpolishblog.blogspot.co.uk/
Melanie - Nail & Polish http://nailandpolish.blogspot.co.uk/
Jessica - Beauty Gnome http://beautygnome.blogspot.co.uk/
Emily - An Accent Nail http://anaccentnail.blogspot.co.uk/
Ameerah - Valiantly Varnished http://www.valiantlyvarnished.com/
Until next time...
MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~
Hi everyone,
Hows your Sunday going? Happily for me the roads here are back open, so I'm not trapped indoors anymore. So OBVIOUSLY I've been shopping.
I was asked recently by the beautiful Catrine at Unnaked Nails about nail stamping. I said I would do a post about it, and I'm a woman of my word, so here it is. By the way, if you like nails and beauty, and you don't follow her, you're missing out, her blog is fab.
While I was out shopping, I was in Poundland looking to see if they had any Sally Hansen polishes lurking around as they sometimes do (none this time), and I saw their nail stamping kit. I've been intrigued to know if this was any good, and so far I haven't seen any comparison posts from the blogs I follow. So thought I would kill two birds with one stone, and do the comparison along with a quick 'how to' about nail stamping.
So here's a pic of the Poundland kit still in its package, alongside the Konad equivalents:
I knew as soon as I saw this kit, that I already owned the Konad plate that they've produced a dupe for, so it would be a good chance for me to show them side by side. And here they are:
As you can see, the Konad plate M20 on the left, and the Poundland plate B17 on the right, both have identical images on them, and the plates are exactly the same size. The Poundland plate didn't have any backing on like Konad plates do, but actually the edges weren't too sharp so it wasn't so bad. I got some quite bad cuts from the original Bundle Monster plates so I know how dangerous they can be! I've discovered that it's quite difficult to take photos of highly reflective things without appearing in shot haha. As you can see the Poundland scraper has a plastic blade, which is quite handy because both my Konad scrapers have metal blades, which work brilliantly, but can scratch your plates. I wonder how they can get away with directly copying things like this without infringing copyright?
So anyway, let's see if the results are as similar as the plates. Firstly I painted my nails using Marks & Spencers Limited collection polish in Pale Lavender. Then I used a coat of Seche Vite, and I was ready to stamp. I'm using Barry M Gelly in Blackberry to stamp with.
Here's the outcome:
Pretty impressive! Konad is on pointer and middle finger, and Poundland is on ring and little finger. I chose these two images because they both have fiddly lines in them, which can easily go wrong in cheaper plates. I actually think the floral design on the Poundland plate came out better, but certainly Konads butterfly image is crisper. This could of course been because of the plastic scraper.
The both stampers seemed to work as well as each other, the Poundland one didn't feel as firm or tacky, but worked just as well.
In summary, if you don't own any Konad, but want to try stamping on a budget, this Poundland kit is definitely worth a go. I couldn't tell the difference between my nails in real life, and it's no harder to use than Konad. It's a go-er!
So then, this is all very well, but how do you use it? I've put together a mini photo tutorial below, but there are tons of videos on YouTube. Soguesswhat11 is one of my favourites.
Preparation:
After applying your base coat, paint your nails with the colour of your choice. I then apply a coat of Seche Vite. Then WAIT. Your polish has to be hard dry before you can stamp on it. I usually do this and wait at least a quarter of an hour, even with Seche, because if you dent your colour coat with your stamping, there's usually no rescue and you'll have to start again.
Also the Seche acts as a barrier between your colour coat and your stamping. This is expecially handy if you mess up a stamp, because if you're careful, you can sweep off the dud stamp and apply another coat of Seche to have another try without having to do your colour coat again.
If your plate is new, there could be a plastic film cover stuck on the front of it, which you'll need to peel off.
1) Load some polish on your image. You don't need to totally cover it, but you can if you want:
Some polishes work better for stamping than others. All the Barry M Gelly ones I've tried so far have worked well. As a general rule, the more opaque the polish is, the better. If it's a one coater, it will probably be good for stamping. Any polish that's gone gloopy is usually good too. I do own some Konad special stamping polishes as they came with the kit I bought, and if I want to stamp in white, I'll use the Konad one as it's the most opaque I've found so far. The only real difference between the Konad polish and regular polish (that I can see) is that the Konad polish is thicker, and it dries slightly matte.
2) Scrape away the excess polish:
As you can see, I'm holding my scraper at a 45 degree angle, which seems to work the best. You do want to have your plate resting on something absorbent (kitchen roll is best but we didn't have any), because when you scrape to the edge, the polish will go off the edge and onto whatever you're resting on. You don't want to press down too hard or you'll scrape too much polish off your plate and you'll be missing bits of your design when you come to stamp it.
3) Pick the image up onto your stamper:
Hold your stamper above the image and then press straight down onto your image, and then straight up again to pick your image off the plate. Don't use a rolling motion at the point or you'll have a bigger chance of getting a smudgy image. Actually this is the point where alot of people get their stamping technique wrong, before they've even got close to their nail.
4) Have a quick check of your image:
All too many times I've missed this step out, and regretted it. As you can see, I've missed the bottom of this image, so I would clean my stamper and have another go. To do that you just rub it on a cotton pad with polish remover on it. I usually rub it on the palm of my hand afterward to make sure it's dry. If you rub it on a cotton pad at this point, it would probably pick up lint, but a paper towel would be ok. If it's not dry and you try to stamp with it, the polish remover would spoil your stamping.
5) Stamp your image:
Here's where you want to use a rolling motion. Starting at one edge of your nail, press the stamper onto your nail and roll across to the other side. You don't need to press too hard, that's another common mistake people make when they first start stamping. If you press too hard there's more chance that your image can be distorted, whereas if you just gently place it on the nail, it settles more evenly. You also don't want to wait too long between picking up your image and stamping it on your nail, because if it dries it will stay on the stamper and not transfer onto your nail.
And so onto the next nail. Depending on how gloopy your polish is, and how quick/perfect you want to be, you might need to clean your plate between every nail. It's not messy to clean the plate anyway with a cotton pad and polish remover, and remember to give it a quick dry too. I usually just have one wet and one dry cotton pad on my workstation, and rub with wet then dry.
So when you've done all your nails you can topcoat if you wish. Topcoat does give it a nicer finish. It's another common preconception that you have to topcoat. You don't. It's still polish that's on your nails, so it's not going to wash off in the bath or anything. If you topcoat too soon, you'll drag your image and ruin your design. If you wait an hour or so you'll probably be ok.
And there, you'll be done! Here's a manicure a I did using stamping and dotting. You can see the post I wrote on it (here)
I painted a third down my nails, stamped the flowery line, and then dotted below that. It didn't take very long, and I think it looks pretty good, even though I do say so myself.
So what do you think, have you tried stamping, or is it something you'd like to have a go at?
Until next time...
MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~
Hi there!
The sun came out :-)
This means it's holo time! The next one on my to-try list is another polish from the Pretty Jelly Glamorous Thief collection that I bought recently. I've already reviewed Bullet Rouge from the same collection, and you can see that post HERE
I was in two minds as to whether to swatch any polishes this weekend, as I still have that slash on my cuticle, but as I don't feel like I've seen any sunshine for MONTHS, who knows when my next chance will be? So I decided to go for it, and cover up the slash with my watermark, YOLO, right?
So here's Grape escape in all its sunshine-y glory:
Awesome, eh? It's a lovely mid-toned purple, leaning to the lavender side, and really wearable. I still haven't managed to catch the real life holo loveliness properly, as it looked much more holo than it appears in these pictures. Definitely this could be office appropriate though, as in the shade it looks just as pretty but in a less 'disco' way:
This photo also shows the finish nicely too. This is two coats over regular base coat and no top coat. The formula was lovely to apply, and very forgiving, as I dug the brush into the first coat accidentally when I was applying the second coat. Other polishes could have made a bald spot clumping argument about that, but this polish said 'hey mistakes happen, let me smooth that out for you', and it did, nice. It left the brush (which was one of the thin-ish type, not pro-wide or flat) at a nice controllable speed and didn't flood or clump. Dry time was medium-fast. I like alot.
As a large swathe of the UK, including us here in Cumbria, have had alot of snow this week, I thought I would carry on the theme with snowy nail art. Looking through my stamping plates, I was surprised to realise I only have one full nail snowflake plate design, so it wasn't really a hard decision which one to use. Bundle Monster BM-323. I tried a few different polishes with this plate. Barry M Indigo worked really well, but it wasn't really the look I was going for.
The Essie Borrowed and Blue I bought from Amazon was delivered this week. I have been so disappointed with it. The colour is really pretty, but the formula is awful! Plus I thought Essies had wide brushes now, and mine has a thin brush in. Clumpy, floody, just a bottle of yuk. So imagine my happy surprise when I discovered it stamps perfectly!
Here's what I came up with:
As you can see from the photo, I'd lost the sun, so I took a pic under the kitchen lights so the holo could come out to play:
I'm really pleased with how this came out. It's definitely gone onto my list of 'lets do this one again' manis.
And just because I can, here's a picture of the polish nestling in the snow:
Just one little green shoot sneaking up past the cap, spring is trying to peek its way through!
Pretty Jelly polishes can be bought in the US HERE for $10 each, they are 3-free and cruelty free, so it's all good.
What do you think? Do you own this one?
Until next time...
MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~
Hiya again!
Today has been a day of excesses for me. I stayed in bed too late, went shopping and spent too much, came home and ate too much junk food, and didn't get any housework done. Slapped hands.
Well, never mind, on the positive side, I've FINALLY bought myself a pair of work shoes that actually fit me, rather than struggling on with the ones I bought before Christmas that are way too narrow, and making my toes swell up. I just didn't want to think I'd wasted my money as they cost me £40, but I've finally admitted defeat and thrown them in the bin.
Also, it's impossible for me not to buy polish at the moment, as spring is coming and all the pretty pastels are in the shops. I adore pastels, and I bought 3 from Marks & Spencer which I'll swatch for you another day, they're so pretty in the bottle I hope they don't let me down. I've also ordered Essie's Borrowed and Blue, as it looks like the perfect powder blue I've been looking for, fingers crossed!
Anyway, on to business. Recently A-England had a fab sale where all their polishes were reduced to £6 each. Two of them I bought straight away, Princess Tears and Princess Sabra, and three, Tristram, Dragon and Lady of the Lake I ordered later. Princess Tears and Princess Sabra were delivered on Friday, so I swatched Princess Sabra yesterday.
A-England have a lovely way of creating a background story for all their polishes, Princess Sabra's story on the website is "The heart-stoppingly beautiful daughter of the king, whose misfortune it was to have her name drawn as the next sacrificial victim of the dragon". The founder of A-England, Adina, has based the colour of this polish on the eyes of her cat, Tristam. She describes it thus: Alluringly feline golden olive bronzite, the sacrificial Princess constantly shifts with her elusive, myriad hues.
So let's get on with the swatches. Here's how it looks out in the garden. Yesterday was cloudy and overcast:
It looks to me like a greenish toned antique gold. This is two coats over basecoat with no topcoat. The formula was nice, and has seemed pretty consistent across all the A-Englands I've tried so far. Dry time was medium/fast.
There is some scattered holo in this, but don't buy it expecting a holo fest, or you'll be disappointed. However the best thing about it was that it's kind of metallic, and no brush strokes! I hate brush strokes, I think it completely ruins any look of sophistication a polish might have.
It doesn't completely do my skintone justice at the moment, but I think in the summer when I get a bit of colour it will be perfect. Here's another outdoor pic:
Try as I might, I couldn't really get the holo to show in my pics. Here's the nearest I got, you can kind of see it up near my cuticles:
To jazz it up a bit I used some small circle stickers to mask off an area of my nail, then stamped using the snakeskin effect on Bundle Monster plate BM-215, and an Elf polish called Chocolate, along with NYC polish Canal Street blobbed randomly. As it was I needn't have bothered doing that as the mottled effect I had planned didn't really show, but hey-ho it was worth experimenting because you never know:
In my impatience I smudged my index (pointer) finger with my SV topcoat, but it's not too noticeable, so I didn't bother to re-do. Here's a final pic, taken under the kitchen lights. Again, the holo allllmost comes out to play:
All in all, I like this polish. I don't own anything like it, and I think it's going to make a versatile neutral-ish base for a lot of looks. I can also see this coming out alot around Christmas time (I know it's a long way away, but planning ahead), and already I'm wondering what it might look like with Nubar Black Polka Dot over it, also safari/animal prints... and so on.....
It's available with free international shipping for £9 on the A-England Website HERE.
What do you think? Are you a fan of gold toned colours? I am, even though they don't do me any justice haha, I keep at them!
Until next time...
MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~
