Polish All the Nails

A while back I invested in a nice lighting setup.  Being two panels of fluorescent lights suspended facing either other, it gives nice, even white light that makes colours look true and my skin nice.  My problem is that  having no direct points of light, I lose all my holo-y goodness and that makes me sad.  Which is why I've had this post sitting for a few days as it makes sad.  The glitter used here is my favourite blue holo hexes and in these pictures it just looks shiny. It's the same type of glitter as this mani .   To start, I used Revlon Beguile, a blue-purple duochrome.  This one needed three coats as it's a little sheer.  On my ring finger, Sally Hansen Celeb City as I wanted to try something different for the accent nail.  Then, using my usual technique , I added the glitter.  I did a slight variation this time - using Seche Vite as the glitter base as opposed to my usual no-name top coat.  If you're going to use Seche Vite, just add a little patch at a ti

I went on a bit of a Zoya rampage the other day.  Trade Secrets is my main source, living in Canada, and I've been trying to avoid it lately as I'm trying to be a proper adult and not spend all my disposable income on polishes.  Anyway, I was there and magically five Zoyas came home with me and that's that.  Let's take a look at one of the standouts, Zoya Fei Fei. I was particularly attracted to Fei Fei as there's so many different colours in would could have so easily been just another glass fleck polish.  On close up, there's blues, greens, yellows and greys that all come together in a shimmery blue-grey.  Because I can't just do a swatch, it seems, I thought I'd throw in a half-moon.  I recently found my binder reinforcement labels and used them on top of Rimmel Black satin to create the moons.  One coat of Fei Fei was enough, surprisingly. The Verdict:  Pretty!  And half moons.

As I just mentioned in the other post I did five minutes ago, I love trawling ebay for glitter.  I have an entire small gift bag full of different pots of glitter and I love it so much.  My latest favourite is a holo small hex glitter in gold.  It's so sparkly in person, it's all I can do not take a bath in it or just throw it all over every single thing I do.  Today I wanted to do a full nail with it and wanted to use a base polish that would match it in terms of sparkly holo goodness.  Of course that would have to be China Glaze I'm Not Lion from the On Safari collection.  It may not be the same gold but I love it all the same.  To start, I added three coats of I'm Not Lying to each nail.  It's the most amazing ultra-micro soft gold holo polish.  My lightbox completely saps any and all holo-ness so I attempted to use a flash to capture the sparkly.  It worked but makes my fingers look horrible!  I don't photoshop my fingers and it's amazing the diff

When I get bored, I go to ebay, search for very specific glitter types like "large hex glitter", "square glitter" and so on, filter by "Buy it Now" and sort by lowest price including shipping.  Voila!  Tons and tons of interesting glitter for $2-4 delivered! They may take a few weeks to show up but it means you get surprise packages which I love.  So my most recent dalliance got me a 12 pack of small hex glitter.  I had a whole plan to use it to do rainbow zig-zags but the glitter was just a little bit too small and irregularly shaped.  I got a little frustrated and just threw a whole bunch of glitter on.  Turns out, this is a pretty good way to go! I wanted a colour that went with my chosen fives glitters and Orly Spark seemed a reasonable choice.  Spark is a nice sunshine yellow creme, needing a reasonable three coats for even coverage.  Next, either using the base colour or a thick coat of top coat, press a finger into the pot of glitter and then d

Guess what everyone?  I'm going to review some indie polishes that you can actually buy without having to wait for email messages!  Yay!  And sparkly too!  Imagine all the holo glory as while my lightbox produces lovely even white light, it saps any and all rainbows from manis, leaving me to try to take pictures in my kitchen like a barbarian.  It may not sound that hard but when you use a manual focus 60mm macro lens that has a wafer-thin depth of field, it's not the easiest.  Anyway, let's take a look at two, that's right, two, beautiful polishes from JENsations , Stars in Space and S'mores. First up, Stars in Space.  I started with two coats of Zoya Caprice, a very bright purple creme that you'll be seeing a lot of as it makes for a great base.  Next, two coats of Stars in Space, the most fabulous mix of silver holo glitter.  There's stars, squares (man, I love square glitter), hexes and micro glitter.  I liked this one as there was enough glitter on

Last week I had a post on here that just went crazy, and that would be  this one here .  The diamond shape glitter was just perfect for making the geometric 3D cubes that I'd tried a few times to create in paints.  As I like to take something successful and run it into the ground, I thought I'd try it again.  Didn't really work as well the second time :( To start, I added two coats of American Apparel Neon Yellow.  It's pretty good as far as neons go in terms of not being a streaky mess.  Once dry, I added my stickiest top coat to my thumb, and got to work on my thumb.  I didn't really have a pattern for the cubes in mind so it evolved organically.  The result was a pyramid that I didn't hate so I carried on with the rest of the nails.  If you're going to try this, make sure you have TONS of top coat on your nail and that each piece of glitter is stuck down, the diamonds will catch on everything if you don't.  Once done, add a thick coat of Seche Vi

It sometimes takes me a few goes to find the right complement to a polish.  I'll try a few different combinations and it just won't be quiiiiiiite right.  I've had Nailventurous (now Ninja Polished owned) Humblebee sitting on my desk for a few weeks now and I've tried a bright background, a black background and a few others and nothing would both go with the glitter and not swamp the black.  The other night I thought I'd give it a shot with a similar lime green - Revlon Zealous - and I FINALLY feel happy with the combination :D To start, I added two coats of Revlon Zealous, a yellowy lime green polish with a gold shimmer.  It's a super pretty polish on it's own but you'd probably need three coats as it's a tiny bit sheer.  Next, on with two coats of Humblebee.  Omg I love this polish so much.  It's a mixture of yellow-lime-green matte and black glitter.  I mean, come on, that's amazing.  The glitter is ever-so-slightly more yellow than Z

This far into the blogging game, I'm getting pretty good at tempering my expectations.  I need an amazing polish in a store or on the internet, as much as I want do get all excited, I know that it's probably not going to be that good.  The shimmer, the duochrome, the glitter, none of it will show on the nail quite as well as it does in the bottle.  That's ok, I'm an adult and can handle it most of the time.  UNTIL SOMETHING ACTUALLY LIVES UP TO MY EXPECTATIONS AND EVERYTHING ELSE IS RUINED.  Seriously, look how amazing Ninja Polish Alexandrite and Color Changing Garnet are.  For a start, just LOOK AT THESE.  They are glass-flecked, duochrome-glitter filled duochromes that actually change colour.  When was the last time you saw that?? Alexandrite goes from green-blue-purple while Color Changing Garnet goes green-gold-copper-red.  The colour shift is complete too, just look at the thumb below.  Anyway, the mani itself started with two coats of Rimmel Black Satin, one

Sometimes, I like to set myself little challenges.  Never very hard ones as I do my nails quite late at night, but challenges all the same.  My challenge last night was to see just how much glitter I could fit on my nails.  I will have to do more tests, but I think this is approaching the upper limit of how much glitter can fit on nails :D To start, three coats of Urban Outfitters Afterhours, a very slightly pink-tinted holo silver micro glitter. This polish is super pretty on it's own, super sparkly with all the holo-y-ness in there.  It's pretty much opaque in two coats too, but I felt like adding a third.  Next, a coat of Quo Pink Champagne, also known at Orly Be Brave, from the Flash Glam FX collection.  This polish has pink holo bar glitter in a clear base.  I'm always on the fence about bar glitter because it's a bit of a PITA but it fit with the glitter theme I've got going here.  Last but not least, I added a coat of China Glaze Techno to finish off.  

I don't normally talk about other blog posts of mine but holy crapballs guys, yesterday was my highest traffic day EVER with this little number .  I thought it was pretty good but just *booom* mind blown.  So thank you!  And since there was glitter yesterday, the only logical thing is to do more glitter today! When they were released, I wasn't especially interested in the China Glaze Summer Neon collection.  I mean, I already have a LOT of neons so I didn't think to look.  Turns out, there are some amazing polishes in there, including the neon yellow pearly polish, Sun-kissed.  Application was really good with this one, only needing two coats and not being all streaky about it either.  When it was day, I used my stickiest top coat and my  usual technique  to add the glitter.  I worked in columns, alternating between holo blue and holo fushcia glitter.  What I wasn't expecting was for them to look like comic book shading when I was done!

I had quite the light bulb moment the other day.  For the longest time I've been attracted to geometric shapes - you might have noticed I like to do patterns and shapes with my glitter and designs over actual things.  I think a lot of this influence has come from the quilts my mum makes.  One of my favourite quilts of hers is  the 3D style cubes and I've been trying to recreate this pattern on my nails for a while now.  Drawing never really worked as I couldn't get the lines need enough.  To the light bulb: diamond glitter is perfect for this and I finally get the 3D effect I've been wanting for so long. To start, I added two coats of American Apparel Neon Red.  Next, because I wanted to improvise with the pattern, I coated my entire thumbnail in my sticky top coat and added the glitter.  I found it easiest to create a cube at the cuticle and build out from there, one cube at a time.  You can find more details on how to perfect the glitter here.  The result is th

I don't know what it is but my safe, comfy place with nail art is always hand-placed glitter.  Always sparkly and easy to get looking neat and orderly, it's always my fall-back.  In an effort to step outside of my comfort zone though, I do sometimes like to try something different.  Thus, cherry nails! To start, two coats of Sally Hansen Celeb City, the sparkly silver foil.  I find myself using this polish all the time as it covers well in two coats, is super sparkly and compliments a glitter top coat perfectly.  I wanted to use it on its own this time and turns out it's great for my cherries.  Next, using a small paintbrush, I added the red dots using American Apparel Lipstick, brown stems in polish that's completely slipped my mind and then the green leaves using American Apparel Crescent Heights.  I did one colour at a time as cleaning the brush is a bit of a pain.  You know the hardest part about this?  Trying to figure out which way up to do the cherries so th

It's tricky sometimes, when I order polishes from Etsy.  I have an extreme affinity for glitter so glitter is what I get.  What do I do though to make said polishes interesting for everyone though?  My answer is usually layer it over an unconventional colour or do a gradient.  The Hungry Asian Vote for Purple gets gradient! My question to you:  what else can I do with awesome glitters other than layering and gradients? Anyway, let's take a look at Vote for Purple.  It's super pretty with a ton of lilac glitter in micro and small hexes.  I chose Sally Hansen Celeb City here cos I thought the silver and lilac would be nice together.  And they are!  For the gradient here, I used my normal technique (kitty, it's hard to type when you're head butting my hands.  I'll pat you in a minute) whereby I paint the top two thirds of my nail, then half, then the top third. With a glitter in a clear base you can get a good gradient going like this. 

I've always liked the look of ombre nails but hadn't gotten around to trying it myself.  Unless the run of colours was perfect, it just didn't look right to me.  On a completely unrelated note, I find I have a lot glass fleck polishes, usually in blues and purples.  I find I have a hard time using them as they don't look good on their own and sometimes I'm just on in the mood for layering.  The other night, however, these seemingly unrelated points came together.  What if I did an ombre with my glass flecks??  YES. First up, a coat of Rimmel Black Satin for the base colour.  Then, from thumb to pinkie, I added two coats of each of Color Club Ulterior Motive, Claire's Cosmic, American Apparel Violet Panache, Spa Ritual Meditate on This and Claire's Moon Dust.  All application was pretty much the same, being all sparkly and good with two coats.