Polish All the Nails

So it's totally Day 2 of my Screw-it challenge - where I do what I want, as long as I post!  We'll just pretend for now that I posted yesterday, and didn't nap instead.  I love napping.  Anyway, I saw on Instagram a while back that holographic studs existed and once I'd resuscitated myself, I had to buy them.  I can't remember where now, just google it.  I tried them out once before but was kind of disappointed because they seemed all plasticky and not all that holographic!  Turns out, they have plastic over them.  Peel off and BAM most holo.  So let's take a closer look at these, shall we?

Can I ask you guys a question?  What do you like to see here on my blog?  Do you like swatches, glitter placements, taping, acrylic free-hand painting, dots, watermarbling or a general mixture?  Cos I do a lot of glitter placements, obviously, because that's what I like.  Do you like them too or should I make an effort to do other things?  I'll <3 you forever if you leave a comment below.   With that being said, let's take a look at another glitter placement! At least it's with a holo base colour, and half moon chevrons!

You might notice I've been a little light on the posts lately.  I have a good reason!  Recently I was contacted by an agency in New York that wanted me to help them make content for Revlon's new Tumblr !  Of course I was going to say yes.  My first entry went up last week and I'm quite proud of it.  As a side note, I wouldn't totally hate it if you liked it on Tumblr , because I like winning, even if it isn't a competition.  THIS WILL BE THE ONLY TIME I ASK THIS, I SWEAR.  Anyway, that hasn't been leaving me a ton of time to do complicated things so it's down to whatever strikes me at the time.  In this case it was an attempt at a black-on-black texture thing with Ozotic 623.  

I can't even write an intro here about how I can't write an intro about glitter any more because there's not much else to say because I've written that too.... let's just look at the sparklies, shall we?  I swear I'm not sick of doing this yet, let's hope you aren't either :)

I've had this little pot of blue glitter for quite a while now and I have to say it's up there with my favourites.  It was the glitter I used in this glitter mani, the first of mine that truly got sort-of internet famous.  I don't get to use a lot because it's the only glitter I have in that particular size.  When I want to test out a new polish that's a good complement to said glitter, you best I'm going to bust it out.  Turns out it goes super awesomely with Floss Gloss Fastlane. 

I think you know by now that if I could, I'd just do glitter all day, every day.  A girl has to try something different every now and again though so after browsing around for a while (mostly google images for "nail art") I came across this  post by 10 Black Canvases.  I just had to try! To start, I applied two coats of Rimmel Black Satin.  I first started with white acrylic paint but it's so hard to get smooth I switched over to using L.A. Colors nail art polish in white.  I found I was able to get nice, smooth lines if I wiped all the polish off the brush then worked from a little blob of polish on a piece of plastic.  That way you can just dip the very end of the brush in and work from there.  I started from the cuticle on each nail, working upwards.  I did shamelessly copy the design from above but it's so awesome how could I not??

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.

I have something of a love/hate relationship with half moons.  For the longest time there was something about them that skeeved me out but then I got those binder reinforcements and actually tried it and was surprised by the results.  Ever since, every time I use just a single colour my brain goes "Psst, hey, what if you did a half moon thing on this?".  Why I chose to do it over glitter is beyond me as now I get all the pain of removing this without the full glitter effect but foresight has never been my strong point.   This initially started off as a straight review of Dollish Polish I'll Have What She's Having, an absolutely pink glitter bomb.  There is every kind of pink glitter in here, it's awesome.  Application was tricky though as this is super thick and likes to drag around the cuticles.  I had to shake the bottle between fingers, it's that thick. For some reason though, mostly because the glitter dries fast, I decided to do a black half ...

I had something of an adventure this morning.  I'm an Australian living in Toronto.  On a recent bus trip to the US, the green thing in my passport was left in and apparently the only way to return it is at an airport or a border.  I took this to mean I should go to Buffalo! For an hour and 20 minutes.  On the bus.  Buffalo isn't the best but at least I got more polish!  I also found some reinforcement labels which leads me to today's mani featuring American Apparel Crescent Heights. Let me preface further discussion by mentioning how much I usually don't like half-moon manis.  There's something about them that usually freaks me out.  Not wanting to just do a half-moon with the labels, I thought I'd try multiple stripes.  First up, I started with two coats of Crescent Heights, a really bright lime/grass green.  As usual for AA polishes, application was really good.  I then stuck on the label and painted with a coat of Rimmel Bl...