Artsy Wednesday - Three Colour Nail Art

These Wednesdays come around quick!  This weeks theme is three colours.  I've had these pics ready for a few days, then nearly forgot to write my post, silly me!

I won't bend your ears too much this week, a cold is hovering about, and it's doing it's best to get me.  Early night and cosy jim jams for me tonight.  Oh, the high life...

Without further ado, here's the nails:

I'm quite pleased with how these turned out, considering they didn't take me very long to do.  I started off with a base of Nails Inc's You're a Peach, which came free with Glamour Magazine quite a while back.  Then I drew a stripe down the middle of my nails with Layla's holo polish Coffee Love.  I'm not in love with the full nail application of the Layla holographic polishes, they're too prone to bald spots, but for this purpose it worked just fine.

I then made a border down the sides of that with my Precis brown striper polish, and there we have it!  A coat of Seche topped it off.

No sun today, but of course I can still find a place to show you that full holo goodness:

There we go, much better! I enjoyed wearing this very much, it felt just right for this late summer/early autumn time.

Here's one last pic, close up:

Don't forget to check out what the other talented ladies have to offer.  It's always amazing how different our designs are with the same brief!

Catrine at Unnaked Nails (link)
Michelle at Labmuffin (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)
Anna & Haylee at Makeup and Masala (link)
Rosemarie at Every Little Polish (link)
Anna at Makeup N More (link)

Until next time...

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

Striped Nailart Feat. Estee Lauder Smashed and Pretty Jelly Grape Escape

Hi everyone, happy Monday

I hope you're all well, and that you've had a fab weekend.  I've had my first day back to work today after my week off, shock to my system!

Still, I do feel all nicely refreshed, and I had a lovely time in Torquay.  I think once is enough though, there was quite a bit to do, but it was all driving distance rather than walking distance, and Torquay is hilly!  I didn't feel like I'd missed any gym time that's for sure.

The weather was so-so, we had some sunny/showery days, and a couple of miserable days.  I still managed to get sunburned on the Dartmouth ferry crossing, but only on my face because I was all wrapped up in my coat, as it was freezing.  It wasn't even a sunny day, I've been told since that if you're going on the ocean to always wear extra sun protection, as even when it's cloudy the suns rays bounce back off the water and you get twice as many rays.  Live and learn.  Well, I do anyway.

Anyway, the break has done me the power of good, and I'm back and raring to go.  The mani I'm sharing with you today was actually done before I went away, but I ran out of time to write up the post.  Usually when this happens, I lose the love for the mani, and end up not writing the post.  But this one came out so awesomely I'm eager to share.  Check out this little beauty:

I took ALOT of pictures of this, but you'll be glad to hear I whittled it down to just my favourites.  Funny enough, this Estee Lauder purple polish is one I loved when I first tried it, then never really bonded with it.  I reviewed it originally (here) and that's actually the only time I wore it.  I don't wear many darks anyway, and being a three-coater, it's never going to climb high up my pile.  That sounds wrong haha.

However, during some recent experimentations, I've discovered that its slight sheer-ness makes it ideal for doing layered stripey looks like this. 

The base for this mani is my awesome bottle of Pretty Jelly Grape Escape, which I loooooovvveee:

You can just see on my thumb the holo loveliness peeking through.  In real life this is super-holo, and a fab formula.  I reviewed it in full (here) where you can see the full holo in the sunshine, and fall in love with it like I did haha.

Happy news is that the plan is for some Pretty Jelly polishes to be available to buy internationally outside of the US via http://meimeisignatures.com/ and you'll know when this happens as I'll have new polishes to show you.  Thanks to the beautiful and talented Amy at Gotham Polish for the heads up!

Then I used striping tape to mask off my nails, and then applied the Estee Lauder.  Here's another pic, I tried to capture the holo at the same time as catching the flecks in the Estee Lauder:

I loved this so much I kept it on for the best part of a week, until some chipping made me take it off, and I wasn't bored of it, always a good sign!

Here's one last pic, in the sunshine this time:

Pretty Jelly polishes are 3-free and cruelty free, and can be bought (if you're in the US) (here) at $10 each for the large size and $5 for the small size.

You can get the Estee Lauder polish from Boots (here) like I did, it's now £14.50.  Not cruelty free sadly.

I think this has given me new hope in my too-large collection of sheer polishes.  At some point, I will separate them from the lovely opaque 2-coat polishes that I love, and put them in their own section to be used for things like this, and sponged gradients.

What do you think, is this a look you would try? 

Until next time...

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

Pretty Jelly Fairy Ring Review and St Patricks Day Nailart

Hi there everyone,
 
It's the weekend at last.  Here I am again with a polish review and some nail art for you.  Today I'm going to show you Pretty Jelly's Fairy Ring.
 
I've already reviewed some of the other Pretty Jelly holo polishes in the past, Diamond S-teal-er , Grape Escape and Bullet Rouge and I've enjoyed them.  When I saw this mossy green, I couldn't resist!
 
Pictured below is two coats, using Sally Hansen Miracle Cure as basecoat, and no topcoat.  Application was well behaved and lovely, and as a result I didn't require any clean up before taking these pictures.
 
In the shade, it's a pretty and soft mossy green:

There are some greens that don't do my skintone any favours, even though I still wear them of course!  This is not one of those, I found it very flattering.
 
BUT... it's only in the light that this polish comes into it's own, check out this baby:

And because I can, here's another picture:

Check out that holo!  Awesome!  You can see the holo quite nicely in lower light in real life, I just couldn't get my camera to pick it up.
 
As you probably know, it's St Patricks day this weekend, and as I'm already wearing green on my nails I thought I'd spice things up with a bit of Ireland-inspired nail art:

That fab green glitter I used to do the dots with is China Glaze Running in Circles. It's pretty much Ruby Pumps, only green.
 
I used Barry M Spring green to draw a line down the left hand side of my nail, I didn't bother with striping tape.  Then I used this Color Club gold glitter striper to draw a line next to that.

Then I added the dots with a dotting tool and my fingers were done

I wanted to do an accent nail on my thumb, so I decided to paint the Irish flag.  Again I didn't use striping tape, but for this one I kind of wish I had as my lines weren't perfect:

The green is Barry M's Spring Green again, and the orange is Max Factor's Bright Orange.  Despite saying I don't like this orange, I do find I go back to it alot for nail art, so it can't be all bad.

Everything got a coat of Seche Vite at the end.  As a little extra positive, the holo wasn't completely killed by top coat, which made me happy.

You can buy these polishes by going to the Liquid Jelly Etsy shop 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.

 

So what do you think?  Do you own any of these polishes?  Would be interested to hear what you think!

 

Until next time...

 

MASPOOASE x x x

~Wendy~

Valentines Nail Art - Ideas for short nails

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~

Christmas Nail Art Challenge - Day 3 - Candy Cane

Happy Friday!

Today I discovered something about myself.  I'm not very good at diagonal stripes. 

I thought todays challenge would be quite easy, but instead it's taken me 3 different manicures to get to one I'm even remotely happy with.  I was going to try again, and decided against it, this challenge could never end if I carry on like this!

I didn't take any photos of my first two attempts.  The first was just a scraggy mess as I didn't wait long enough for my base coat to dry and my striper smudged it.  My second attempt actually came out pretty good, but I smudged it with my topcoat, so disappointed by that, BAH

So, this is my third attempt, the diagonals took me so long on time 2 that I decided to go with normal stripes on this one.  This is what I did:

I used an unnamed Essie white to draw high french tips, then used a red striping polish to draw on the stripes.  Then I used a glitter striper to tidy up the top.  Here's another pic:

And one last pic:

One of these days I'll do a Christmas manicure I'm completely happy with, although it has to be said I've had this one on an hour now and it is kind of growing on me, I'm enjoying the bare tops, and at least it wouldn't grow out!

Once again here's a reminder of what's to come:

Am looking forward to see what everyone else has done!  Check out their links below

Until next time...

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

Nailart: 3 colours, two different ways

Morning All,

I know it's only 11am on Saturday, but so far this weekends going brilliantly!  Finally I've finished my physio for my achilles problem, and she said I can try a small run, so off I went this morning, and it was awesome!  They're are still a bit sore, and she said I can only go once a week at first, and not far, but it's soooo good to get back out in the fresh air and out of breath again.  Also, that means no more Saturday working yaaaaayyyyy!!!!

But enough of me, onto the nail art, that's what brought you here, right?

Friday night is nail art night for me, and last night, I knew I wanted to do something stripy, but I wasn't sure which colours etc to use.  So I went upstairs, tipped a load of polishes out of their baskets onto the bed and just picked about, and experimented on a nail wheel until I found a combo I liked.  A very happy hour that was!

So here's the first look I came up with:

This is the look is was going for when I ended up with my Black Forest Gateaux nailart (LINK), I've finally sussed out tape manicures after some good advice from Sammy at The Nailasaurus (LINK). 

She suggested I use Seche Vite over my base colour, wait five minutes, and then only lightly apply my tape, and then I wouldn't get the problem I'd had, which was my base colour coming up with the tape, and she was spot on!

Firstly I used a base coat, then a base colour coat of Nails Inc Devonshire Row.  This is one coat, and that was enough, one coater, great formula, gotta love it.  Then I taped off the top of my nails using a cheap Wilko rip-off of Scotch Invisible tape.  I stuck the tape to my hand a few times first so it wasn't super-duper sticky.

Then I striped all the stripes completely in white.  Firstly to make sure they were evenly spaced, and secondly so that the white base would make the yellow show up nicely, and for once, all my ideas worked out first time.  If I were to to it again, I'd maybe be a bit more careful with my stripes, but that's just the perfectionist in me coming out.  Heres another pic of it:

Now, as much as I like this look, I decided to do something different on my other hand.  I went a bit more freeform this time.  Like the last look, I did the whole design in white first, then went over some of it with the yellow.  This is what I got:

This shouts 80's to me, and Inkynails13, one of my Twitter friends, called it Punk Tiger Nails, and I LOVE that description, it's just right!  The slightly scrappy overlapping works in its favour I think.  Heres another pic:

I actually want to try this design again in true 80s colours, black, grey and red, would be fun!

Here's the polishes I used:

I am really liking the fact that I've got a different design on each hand, but using the same colours to tie the two together.  I think this might become a regular thing for me!  Which one's your favourite?

So to carry on this super duper weekend, am off shopping, where I may happen to stumble over a polish or two...

Until next time....

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

Black Forest Gateaux Nail Art

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~