Polish All the Nails

After the reasonable success of my last dry marbing experiment, despite the emotional pain inflicted on my camera, I decided to give it another shot, this time with raaaaaaaiiinbows.  I fear that, while very rainbowy, I've made a huuge mistake that kinda ruins it. First up, I got out my handy sandwich bag and painted a rainbow strip with five different LA Color Art Deco Colors I found at Honest Ed's for $2 each.  Once each stripe was done, I took a toothpick and dragged it through all the colours.  Awesome, wicked sick, I even made enough for if I messed up one and left it on an angle like last time.  Chopping a bit off one end, all ready to stick on my heavy coat of Seche Vite.  Here I come to a cross roads.  Blue end or red end at the cuticle?  Shoulda chosen blue because now it looks like I have the most terrible cuticles.  And now my ring finger hurts from trying to get the red off :( The Verdict: I like the colours an...

In an effort to keep showing you new and different manis (I'd totes do a glitter mosaic every day (and totes is ok to use, I checked :) )) I've been trolling through ebay and ordering things to stick on my nails.  It's surprising the amount of stuff you can get sent to you for maybe $2, including shipping.  I ordered striping tape, fimo sticks, fimo pre-sliced pieces, stickers, you name it. I've had these pretty fimo flowers sitting on my desk for a while now so I though I'd give them a try. First up, two coats of Revlon Silver Coin.  I couldn't find my Sally Hansen Celeb City but Silver Coin does well for a silver.  It's not as sparkly as Celeb City but application was decent at two coats so..there you go.  One thing I learnt with these is that you have to really let the base colour dry before you start on the fimo.  Once it was dry, and using nail glue, I stuck each piece on to my nail.  They actually held on quite well.  I was able to do l...

Ok ladies, I have something of a first for you today: I'M ACTUALLY USING A POLISH I'VE REVIEWED BEFORE AHHMAHGAHD.  I was thinking doing a gradient mani when I thought I'd see how my favourite holo polish - Ozotic 534 - looked over black, as a gradient.  Holy crap balls guys, WHY DIDN'T I DO THIS SOONER. First up, two coats of Rimmel Black satin.  Next, painting some polish on a make-up sponge, I dabbed the holo polish 2/3rds of the way down my nail, for each nail.  Then, same again, but only the tips.  It just looks so amazing barely have words.  So much fun to photograph.  My camera likes holos and black :).   The Verdict: This came out so amazing, I love it.  Just a smattering of rainbows...

Oh, my camera.  First neons, then fuchsia and now more reds, it just can't cope.  I've tried setting the white balance, the shutter speed, changing the lighting, all to no avail.  Bare with me with the pictures?  The thumb shot is probably the closest to real life, if that helps. Anyway, let's take a look at the beautiful Pretty & Polished Swing while I take my camera to counselling. Swing is a really beautiful polish, a red jelly with black, white and pink glitter smattered throughout.  It wasn't the easiest thing in the work getting the glitter out of the tiny bottle though so I did things up with a middle layer of Pretty & Polished Valentino as I just love black and white glitter so very much.  Application of the polish itself was good - this is three coats with one of Valentino in the middle - but the glitter was so hard to get out.  I just love how much of a jelly this one is.  You can see all the layers at various leve...

Ok so I've managed to restrain myself from doing a glitter mosaic for a little while now so brace yourselves, here comes another one!  I was looking at the pots of glitter I knocked off my desk last night and noticed I hadn't done the fuchsia so why not?  I even had the perfect base color, a misc Color Club I picked up from Winners a while back. I tried two things different with this mani: first, I applied the normal two coats and then used a third coat, one third of my nail at a time, to stick on the glitter.  I did this as I couldn't find my normal "sticky" top coat.  DO NOT USE SECHE VITE TO STICK THE GLITTER ON.  It dries too fast, wrinkles and will make you sad.  See my tutorial here on how to apply this in full.  The Verdict: These nails look like they belong to my Jem doll from the late 80's.  Foil-like, hot fuschia, awesome.   This  is what I mean. **** GUEST BLOGGERS***** I still neeeeddd yooo...

It's been more than a day so you know what that means!  Lacquistry review!  Totes not sure what I'm going to do when I run out of indie polishes to review but in the mean time, I still have quite the stack to go through.  By the way, how do you feel about "totes", as a word?  It's seeped insidiously into my vocabulary of late so please let me know if it's annoying and I'll stop.  Anyway,  let's take a look at a truly beautiful polish, Lacquistry Dirty Rich.   Dirty Rich is a blend of black and gold glitter in an ever-so-slightly dark tinted base.  The effect is incredibly, it looks like some fabulous cocktail dress.  The thing I love about glitters like this is that they dry super fast and are opaque quickly.  Application was really good with this, this is only three coats.  I say only, but that's pretty good for a glitter.  With a coat of Seche Vite on the top and some drying drops to help the process along (they actually...

So this particular manicure has a bit of a story behind it.  I've been making it my mission lately to exercise more and to help me make more progress I've been seeing a great personal trainer.  He's so good, he actually takes an interest in my nails and helps me brainstorm ideas.  His suggestions last night were E.T., angry birds, city skyline and pandas.  That's dedication for you.  Anyway, I had to go with pandas so time for more questionable painting skill displays! To start, two coats of Nicole by OPI "Baby" Blue from the Justin Bieber collection.  Oh how I hate myself for that, but it was on sale and a nice sky blue, so lalalala totes not Justin Bieber.  Next, I painted the head and body of the bear with white acrylic paints, followed by the face, limbs and bamboo.  And the sun.  It came out reasonably cute but I think I prefer my giraffe nails at this point.  It's practice! The Verdict: Cute idea, needs more pr...

You know, I bet my camera didn't sleep last night for sobbing over being made to photograph skin and neon yellow, red, green and blue.  It tried so hard but it turns out that combination makes cameras cry.  I'm sorry t3i, can you ever forgive me? The technique so upsetting to my poor cam-cam was my latest attempt at dry marbling, but this time using the sandwich bag decal technique.  I find that doing dry marbling on your nail can be messy so I whipped out a bag and painted my decals.  With the exception of my ring finger (a victim of a not-quite-flat bag), it came out awesome! With my bag flat (must remember to do this myself) I painted on four thick stripes of my colours, in this case all American Apparels in Neon Yellow, Neon Red, Cresent Heights and Passport Blue.  Before they drived I carefully marbled the colours together by dragging a sewing pin through all the stripes one way, then the other.  Once fully dry (couple hours), I peeled them off th...

Oh yes ladies, it's experiment time! I've been toying with different techniques with tiny brushes lately but am usually hesitant to show you as I'm still working on my skills.  Not levelled up yet, so to speak.  However, I decided to give the whole tribal look a go this weekend and accidentally made quite the interesting look. First up, I added two coats of Joe Fresh White to all my nails.  Then, with a striping brush and starting with my thumb, I painted in stripes and filled in the stripes with different patterns.  Not bad, but I got bored after two fingers so I tried out another of my new Sally Hansen Diamond Strength glitters, this time Multi-Faceted.  Not bad, especially over white.  It comes out a little sparse but dries quickly so it's not an issue to do two coats.  Then, to tie in my ring finger, I added a glitter gradient in Lacquistry Dirty Rich.  All together, quite the eclectic look but sooo many compliments so win!

I've done so many Lacquistry posts now I'm struggling to come up with an original introduction.  It's pretty clear now that I have a lot of Lacquisty polishes, mostly because I got some before she was constantly sold out and am good at jumping on the notification emails from etsy.  I'm sorry to keep going on about polishes that will be almost impossible to get but LOOK AT THIS, HOW COULD I NOT REVIEW IT?? Lacquistry Jessica Rabbit (no, hands, not reddit, rabbit) is the most amazing sparkly red, like ever.  The base is a nice red tint and just packed with all the types of red glitter.  Coverage and application was really good, as usual, getting to full opacity in three coats.   These types of polishes are a little rough but with a coat or two of Seche Vite it's smooth enough.  This is so awesome I had someone do a double take at the them in the elevator this morning.  Win for me!

Guys guys guys, guess what: I managed to not over-embellish a polish!  Ok, that might have been a bit over-dramatic, but I'm still proud of myself for not ruining what turned out to be a really beautiful polish.  I scout out a large range of locations for polish so I end up with a ton of cheap polish that I never end up using.  When sorting through my collection the other day though, I noticed this Love & Beauty polish and couldn't help but try it out.   Love & Beauty Royal is a beautiful midnight blue duochrome, with glass flecks that change from green to blue to purple.  Did I mention it's also super sparkly?  The polish itself is a little thin so I layered it over one coat of Rimmel Black Satin.  I'm so glad I did, two coats on top and it was perfect.  I've tried to catch all the colours here but it's really hard.  Looking at it closely while I'm typing now, I can see all three colours but of course cameras are rarely as co-op...

Holy crap balls guys, I'm so happy so many of you have volunteered to help me with guest posts!  I still need more people, doesn't matter your experience level, I'd love to feature as many people as possible. I've been thinking about the best way to do this and I have a few guidelines. Pictures! One of the tools I use to differentiate myself is to use a fancy camera with a macro lens.  You don't have to!  I would prefer it if you used something other than just a cell phone camera but if you can find a way to make it work, that's cool too. I'd like five pictures of each mani you do.  I tend to stick to this progression.  If you can't do because of your camera, just find five different ways to pose.  Longer shot of your nails with the bottle clearly visible Shot of four fingers Closer shot of three fingers Macro shot of your favourite finger.  I usually use my thumb Shot featuring all five fingers Make sure all your pictures are well li...

Why is it whenever I've had a few drinks and I have to walk home I managed to make a detour via a Shoppers?  It's a horrible mistake as my resolve to actually use the polishes I have already is weak so I'm completely vulnerable to, say, a new line of Sally Hansen glitters.  It's ok though, cos they're awesome and one can literally never have enough glitter.  LITERALLY.  That's my new thing, over-using "literally" but literally using it correctly.  It's fun. First up, let's take a look at Diamond Strength White Veil, a most interesting glitter.  I mean, when was the last time you saw a WHITE glitter in a drug store brand?? Along side the white there's also a smattering of gold and black glitter.  I mean, come on! That's so cool!  Application was good, this is two coats over two coats of Rimmel Black Satin.  

Oh, the days before my broken middle finger nail...you know, prior to last Thursday.  Look at it, so strong, so proud, so matching everything else.  Sigh.  That being said, I'm super excited to show you this Lacquistry polish.  I have sooo many Lacquistry polishes and while I love a good giant glitter, she's been doing some amazing things with finer glitters.  Today, we'll be looking at Fireplace. Fireplace is the most amazing collection of black, charoal and silver micro glitters, with a couple of larger black pieces thrown in.  I was a little sceptical of this on the description but it's so amazing on, I think I might actually have to wear this again, which is practically unheard of for me.  Application was really good, what you see below is two coats.  Doesn't it look like I rolled my fingers in the fireplace, but in the best, sparkliest, shiniest way possible?

***UPDATE:  CHECK HERE PLEASE**** On May 11th, I go on vacation to Australia for two weeks.  Considering I just posted my 200th post in less than four months, I need to find a way to keep you all in content while handling slow internet at my parents' house, and travelling in general.  My solution?  GUEST POSTS. That's right, it would make me so so so happy if a couple of you ladies could help me keep my content going while I'm away.  If you're interested, please leave me a comment on this post or send me an email at polishallthenails at gmail dot com.  We have a bit of time so thing about it!  All those people that are featured on here will get a magical surprise polish in the mail! Here's my parents dog, you couldn't say no to him, could you?

Another night, another set of experiments that didn't meet my standards and another fall back to my trusty Sally Hansen Salon Effects Nail Strips.  I like these as they give me the uniform patterns I like without the potential of smudging them with top coat.  Let's take a look at Check it Out.  Dammit I hate/love the puns.  So, I've found that the nail strips can be broken down into three types: glitter in clear, tinted base with one colour pattern and full-on printed.  The former two apply nicely and wear reasonably well.  The latter, however, is really prone to wear.  You may have seen the butterfly pattern?  Yeah, that one barely lasts a day.  This, and the fishnet-patterned Misbehaved both last a couple of days each without any signs of wear. The glitter is somewhere in the middle.  The printing on these I usually better too.   Oh and Rocket the cat was getting in the way so bonus kitty picture!  Scroooolll for moo...