OPI You're So Vain-illa

Greetings All!

So the OPI Coca Cola collection has officially landed. Two iconic brands brought together, and of course as a fan of both (Diet Cokehead right here!), I've been quite excited. I was a little disappointed with a few of the shades (I wanted something super exciting for Diet Coke, not a plain silver foil!), but I still managed to find four I liked.

I love OPI nudes, so I had to have You're So Vain-illa. It's a delicious, creamy vanilla shade that's almost perfect in one coat.

Now for some themed nail art!

I used plate GA32, and wow, are those images tiny?! It barely fit on my nails, which are rather short at the moment. My thumb would have needed triple, or possibly quadruple stamping! When I think about using my old, harder stamper and these plates...I don't know how I managed. It seems almost primitive, compared to my XL images and squishy stamper. Stamping is about 100 times easier now!

It was such a failure on my thumb, I gave up and just painted it red. I'm still quite happy with the finished manicure though. I think it looks very cute!


What are your top picks from this collection?

How Does My Garden Grow?

Greetings All!

I've been feeling a bit lazy with my nail art recently. I seem to be wearing a lot of indie polish, and if I do any nail art, it seems to be just stamping. I'm sure I could be very happy with indies and stamping (I know I could be very happy!), but I still feel like I'm not really putting in much effort.

I've been looking through old nail pictures (because I'm a narcissist!), and I used to put in much more effort! Freehand, gradients, manicures that used all kinds of brushes, dotting tools and household items. I was involved in several challenges last year, and that kind of forced me to try a variety of techniques. This year I wanted to focus more on nail art that I chose myself, so that I would enjoy it more. I'm not enjoying being boring though! This has spurred me on to do something a bit more exciting.

I spent hours on these nails. Hours. Mostly because they included something I generally try to avoid - stamped decals. I hate stamped decals. They take forever, and I suck at them! I consider myself to be a fairly experienced stamper, but decals make me look and feel like a total beginner. I made things especially easy for myself by choosing an image from a cheap stamping plate I got from eBay, which didn't want to stamp at all, and straight up refused to stamp perfectly even once!

I started off with some green, cling film nails.

I used Barry M Gelly in Key Lime as the base, then splodged on dots of this random Color Club (it's either Wild Cactus or Abyss), and 'sponged' it off with cling film (actually, a bit of carrier bag. I couldn't find my cling film). I then repeated the process with OPI Here Today, Aragon Tomorrow. I had to take a few pictures, because Aragon has a sort of powdery, gritty, slightly textured look that I thought looked interesting (when I paint it on my nails, the first coat always looks powdery, but it builds very well). I was tempted to leave these as they are, and I probably would have done, if I hadn't spent so long making decals!

It's meant to look like a rose garden! I used plate QA44 for the decals (it's full of rose designs!!), and Konad Black and Red.

If you haven't made decals before, the process itself is pretty simple. I painted a layer of Seche Vite onto a surface I could peel it off once dry (I used the top of a cotton bud box). I then stamped the rose design with Konad Black all over my dried sheet of SV (I used 12, but I made about 17 just in case!). Once they were dry I filled them in with Konad Red (you don't have to be too precise, just don't go over the outside edges. Once you turn them over, you'll see all the black lines, as the side you paint is the side that goes on your nails). I left that to dry, then peeled them off my plastic, and cut them into individual flowers.

I painted my nails with clear polish, then stuck them on!

Bonus pictures - left hand!

You know I'm feeling pretty smug over a manicure when a) I show my left hand, and b) I try out some fancy hand posing!

It feels good to make the effort. I must remember that!

Leather And Lace

Greetings All!

Today's nails are quite 'me', I think. It feels like forever since I've had leather nails. I love the Nails Inc Leather Effects, to the point where I even have a backup bottle of Noho. I should really wear them more, because they make me feel like a rock star!

Here I've combined Noho with some lacy accents.

This was so difficult to remove. Not physically, but emotionally! The 'lace' is No7 So Simple, stamped with PUEEN27 and Konad Black, then mattified with TarasTalons Gloss Off.

TarasTalons Swatches

*These products were provided for review*

Greetings All!

Sad news. TarasTalons is temporarily closed! Tara has cleared out all her stock, and yes, quite a bit of it has come to live with me. Today I got a lovely big box of polish and nail art supplies from her sale, so TarasTalons will continue to feature frequently on the blog, and we all hope she'll be back soon! In the meantime you can keep up to date via her Facebook page, and check out the gorgeous nail art she does over on her blog.

Before she closed, Tara very kindly sent me some polishes to review. So here they are!

New York Nights, two coats over Calvin Klein Gray Purple.

Very, very pretty. It's a gentle, dream like polish. I somehow missed this one being released, because I'm quite sure it I would already own it otherwise!

Cloudy Skies, two coats solo.

I'm sure I took more than just bottle shots, but they appear to have disappeared! Anyway, Tara is a master crelly creator, and this is no exception. This is the sister polish to Clear Skies, but I think I prefer the cloudy version - not sure what that says about me!

Peter P, two coats solo.

A slightly soupy, shimmery glitter in a soft green base. This isn't really the sort of polish I would choose for myself, but I do like the shade of green.

Finally Villain, two coats over Sally Hansen Thinking Of Blue.

Sparkly! I love this over a dark base, and the villain in me loves the name!

Fingers crossed TarasTalons returns very soon!

An InLinkz Link-up

WORDPRESS:

WAMM With A Polish Addict

Greetings All!

Thanks to Rainbow Collection I have a growing collection of indie polish brands I had never encountered before! It's lovely to discover a whole new range of polishes, although I'm always a little disappointed that it took me so long to find out about them (sometimes I feel like I know nothing about polish!).

Polish Addict Nail Color is one of those brands. A few months ago it was unknown to me. Now I have a cute little collection of ten! Turns out I'm quite a fan of their bright colours and liberal use of glitter. I didn't really notice my collection building up, but they just keep falling into my basket.

I've already blogged about Banana Colada as a work-appropriate polish, and today I have something even prettier, and even more appropriate for work!

This is three coats of The White Queen, The Red Queen.

A light, beigey nude with teeny red glitter, golden shimmer and a pinch of gold holo sparkle. I'm in love! It's soft, and quiet, and so, so pretty. It's been on my nails since Saturday, and I'm not even tempted to take it off yet.

These are my new, even shorter nails by the way. I'm not really a fan - I keep repeating my new mantra 'the shorter the nail, the larger the choice of stamping plate'.

Stamping With The Barry M Summer Mattes

Greetings All!

Bit of a different post today. Last month when I was swatching the new Barry M Matte collection, my stampy sense started tingling. They're all fairly opaque polishes - would they stamp? I spent an afternoon investigating, so here are my 'test stamps'.

Something I Thought Of While Falling Asleep...

Greetings All!

As a polish addict, I spend quite a bit of time thinking about nail art. Either actively, when I think about what to put on my nails, or more passively, when ideas just come to me. I get a lot of ideas when I'm lying in bed, but I have a terrible habit of not remembering them. In fact most of my ideas get forgotten, unless I write them down, or do them pretty much straightaway!

I managed to remember this idea, and recreate it the next day. I usually think about nail art in terms of colour, then try and find a polish or polishes that best matches the shade I've pictured (that's why I have my polishes sorted by colour, rather than by brand), but in this case I was very specific about which three polishes I wanted to use!

Three polishes normally means one thing around here - gradient!

I feel like I haven't done a gradient in a while (actually, I know I haven't!). My three specific polishes are Barry M Turquoise, Barry M Gelly in Damson, and Barry M Bright Purple.

I also added stamping! MoYou London Pro XL07 and Barry M Silver Foil.

Here's to ideas when you're half-asleep!

Nails Inc Sao Paulo Streets, Plus Stamping, And A New Nail Length!

Greetings All!

I've been threatening it for a while, and here they are - my new 'short' nails. Well, I did consider them short until yesterday, when I broke one at work. So now my actual nails are even shorter than this *sigh*. It just had to happen!

The Nails Inc polishes that came free with Instyle magazine have already been all over the blogosphere (the British bit at least!). I was a little late to the party, mostly because I'm not really a Nails Inc fan. However they had one copy left when I was out shopping, and it was the shade I liked. I took that as fate, so bought it!

The shade is Sao Paulo Streets, which I initially thought would make a good work-appropriate polish. It is a little bit more colourful than the nudes I normally wear though - in different lights it looked pink, lilac and grey. I also found it a bit too much on it's own - even on my shorter nails, it seemed like a massive, sprawling canvas just crying out for a bit of stamping!

I chose Seventeen Smoke Signal to stamp with, as I thought black would look too harsh. It stamped horribly though! I have used it before successfully, the excuse I'm going to go with is that it dries quite slowly, and the plate I used (MoYou London Pro XL 12) is quite deeply etched, so I think it was too thick a layer. That sounds like a legitimate excuse! It almost works though.

Do you have any brands that you just can't love for some reason?

B Squared Lacquer - Midnight

Greetings All!

Today I have a very pretty polish I picked up from Rainbow Connection. I'm not sure how I was supposed to resist this, as it has stars! And circles. And a black base. You can basically put any glitter into a black base, and I will buy it. One thing I am always going to need is black nail polish, so it's important that I have a lot of different variations. It makes them easier to justify!

So this is Midnight, 2 coats over black.

Plenty of gold and silver glitter, in a variety of shapes. Lovely stuff!

TarasTalons Theme My Talons - Dexter Swatches

Greetings All!

Last month I showed you the contents of May's Theme My Talons box. I promised swatches 'soon'. Cut to three weeks later! I'm so behind that the June box is already available on Tara's Etsy and website (and it is amazing). They're available as a subscription, or as a one off treat, and they're filled with polish and nail art bits, all set round a theme.

Today I have swatches of the Dexter themed polishes. Unfortunately I only have three out of the four - my camera really doesn't get on well with Tara's holo polishes. At all. Even pictures I took in sunlight didn't show any holo, which is disappointing. I do keep meaning to get a better camera (my one is rubbish at everything - it can't handle holo, red, purple, some greens, it's temperamental with lighting), but basically each month I have to choose - new camera, or more polish. Guess which one wins!

On to the swatches.

Feather Nails!

Greetings All!

Regular visitors will know that on a Monday I usually try to post a work-appropriate manicure. I know many of you are lucky enough to be able to wear whatever you want on your nails at work, and that the meaning of 'work-appropriate' varies, so I just wanted to clarify that I mean the stereotype of no bright or dark colours, no fun etc. Neutral colours, subtle nail art. I am in no way suggesting that that's what we should all have to wear!

Today, however, I have something completely different. This is my first ever attempt at feather nails! I bought a Ciate Feathered Manicure Set from Fragrance Direct a while ago, actually I ended up buying all three sets (they're only £5.99 each, and I have seen them elsewhere online for £20!). I had previously bought packets of feathers, but I much prefer these kits. The one I've used here, All A Flutter, has different coloured feathers, scissors, a base colour and top coat, and a file block, so it has everything you need!

This is my first attempt, so it isn't perfect by any means. That's what has put me off sharing it, but I'm planning another one soon (because nothing says Summer like brown feathers!), so here it is, imperfections and all!

I decided to use OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons as a base, instead of the polish that came with the set (it was shimmery). Some of the feathers are a little bit straggly, but I don't think it's too bad for my first try (I expect perfection every time. I just never get it!).