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Purple

31 Day Challenge, Stamping, Uncategorised

31DC2012: Violet Nails

20th October 2012

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If you couldn’t tell I’m totally obsessed with skittle manis at the moment. We’re on the last day of ‘plain colour’ challenges today so the frequency of skittles will probably decrease severely over the next couple of challenge days as it’s just a nice way to spice up a plain colour.

For today’s nails I used two coats of Models Own Purple Grey as a base. This is where it gets complicated! On my forefinger, I added two coats of Sinful Colors Daddy’s Girl. On my ring finger I stamped the fishnet design from Bundle Monster Plate BM209 with Barry M Lilac Foil and on every other finger, I used two coats of JENsations Fantasy. Phew!

I’m very excited to see Cris and Rie’s manicures today. I do love me some purple nails!

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Glitter, Swatch, Uncategorised

JENsations Purple Rein Swatch

28th September 2012

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I don’t know if everyone’s realised, but nearly all of my blog posts have a ‘cut’. This just means that there’s more pictures and normally a description of the polish and technique used in the manicure to see if you follow the link at the end that says ‘click here to see more…’. I’m not trying to trick you, it just makes the page load quicker if I don’t have all the pictures on the front page!

Today I have another swatch of a JENsations polish. I often find glitter toppers a bit tricky to apply, I always end up with buckets of clear polish piled on to my nails and no glitter in sight! For chunkier glitter like this, I’ve started painting it on to a sponge, waiting a few seconds for most of the clear polish to sink in to the sponge and then dabbing on the glitter. So far, it’s worked very well for me!

These swatches are a ‘dabbing’ of JENsations Purple Rein* over two coats of A-England Guinevere and topped with two coats of Essence Better Than Gel Nails.

You can buy Purple Rein from Jen’s Etsy shop. Each bottle is $8.00 or approximately £5 plus shipping.

*This item was sent to me for review. All opinions are my own. See my disclaimer for more information.

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Swatch, Uncategorised

Barry M Gelly Collection Swatches: Plum, Watermelon, Blood Orange, Blueberry and Blackberry

16th September 2012

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Today I have swatches of 5 shades from the upcoming Gelly collection* from Barry M. Despite the name, none of the polishes actually have a ‘Jelly’ finish so don’t get too ahead of yourselves like I did and start planning your Jelly Sandwich recipes!

I’m still mighty impressed with the polishes though – their formula is creamy, easy to apply and shiny as hell! I didn’t use a top coat in any of these swatches. For realz!

This is without a doubt the longest post I’ve ever published (there are a whopping 25 photos after the cut) so sorry if it takes a while to load! I promise it’ll be worth it!

Plum

Plum is exactly what it says on the bottle – a perfect plum purple. Swatches are two coats.

Watermelon

This shade is a deep teal green. Very rich and regal, it’s very much a winter polish. I used two coats for this swatch.

Blood Orange

I would describe this colour as more of a post box red. It’s really just a classic red polish which is kinda hard to come by these days! It’s the most jelly-like from the collection as it’s slightly see through (if you look carefully, you’ll see my nail line right through the polish). If you’re fussy about this, a third coat would cover it but I stuck with 2 this time.

Blueberry

I think this is my favourite from the collection. Sky blue works well to describe the shade, it’s so soft and almost powdery. I haven’t had much luck with pastelly blues in the past but I think I’ve finally found one I’m happy with. It took 3 thin coats to apply streak free but 2 thick ones would do the same job.

Blackberry

This is a close contender for the title of my favourite. I used two coats for these swatches.

It’s royal blue with a teeny hint of purple which reminds me of indigo denim. It’s almost a TARDIS blue.

There are a total of 9 colours in this collection. The others are Pomegranate, Satsuma, Prickly Pear and Grapefruit which look something like this….

Barry M Gelly Nail Paints are £3.99 each and will be available on the Barry M website from September 21st.

You can pick them up in Superdrug from September 26th and Boots from October 3rd.

*The items in this post were sent to me for review. All opinions are my own. See my disclaimer for more information

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Stamping, Uncategorised

Feather Nails… Finally!

28th August 2012

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I’ve been in love with feather nails ever since I saw them on Chloe’s Nails over a year ago! I’ve tried many many times since then to recreate something similar but always failed miserably. Well when I was in the craft aisle at my favourite junk shop recently searching for anything I could stick to my nails, I spotted these purple feathers and knew I’d be attempting the ‘feather nail’ again.

This time I finally succeeded and now all I want is MORE FEATHERS! It is very tricky to get a feather stuck to your nail but once it’s there you’ll never want to take it off.

Erika has a great method for feather nails that involves glue which you can see here. It’s kind of hard to explain how I did this myself. I painted on the base colour of No7 Lucky Lilac and let it dry completely, then I used one coat of clear polish and stuck the feather on to that. Once the clear polish was dry and the feather stuck quite well, I painted on another coat of clear polish following the flow of the fibres to smooth it down. I just kept adding layers of top coat and gently pressing down the feather with a toothpick until I was happy!

The rest of the nails are stamped with Bundle Monster Plate BM-212 and Cult Nails Vicious. I used a dotting tool to add accents of A-England Princess Tears and finished it off with a top coat of Sally Hansen Hard as Nails.

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Uncategorised

The Poor Woman’s Velvet Manicure

26th August 2012

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We probably all remember Ciate’s last great invention, the Caviar Manicure and Imma try really hard not to bang on about those emails and that drama. Well they’re back again with the Velvet Manicure and I’m sure we’re all familiar with Ciate’s MO of taking something that has been done before, packaging it in a pretty bottle with a bow on top and selling it at 9250% the price of the exact same thing bought elsewhere. I actually did the maths on that one! So you won’t be shocked to hear that you can get the Velvet look for a teeny fraction of the price at home.

In all fairness, I watched Ciate’s Velvet Nails tutorial video and it does look like their product is finer and more like a powder than the Flock I bought from Goldleaf Craft Supplies on eBay, but I doubt that anyone will be looking close enough to tell.

I used Models Own Purple Grey as a base colour. For the accent nail, I painted on my second coat of colour and let it dry a little before pressing the Flock on with my fingers. I didn’t get great coverage around the edges and I think that’s because I let it dry for too long so there wasn’t enough wet polish there for the Flock to stick to. I used a Fan Brush to swipe away all the excess, although as you can see, I missed a few bits!

This is Burgundy Flock from Goldleaf Craft Supplies on eBay and it cost me £2.89 including shipping for 75ml/10g.

And here are the maths behind my 9250% claim. It is based on my best guess at how much Velvet comes in the kit as I couldn’t find that information anywhere on the internet! I hope it’s clear enough but to sum up, if you were to purchase 75ml of flock (that I paid £2.89 for) at Ciate price, you’d pay £49.95 for it. Ouch.

*£9.00 is half the full price of the Velvet Manicure kit. 13.5ml is the capacity of a Ciate Bottle, I do not know exactly how much Velvet comes in the kit.

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Galaxy, Glitter, Uncategorised

Galaxy Nails!

24th August 2012

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I’ve been meaning to do some galaxy nails for aaaaages! Whenever I’m in the process of doing this nail art, I’m always super disappointed with the way it looks so sometimes I give up before I’ve even finished. I have to remember that it never looks good until that final layer of glitter goes on and you take a proper look at them from further away.

The base colour is Look Beauty’s Nail Pop in Glamrock and the colours I used for sponging are Barry M White, Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream and A-England Princess Tears.

I used NYC Starry Silver Glitter for some extra cosmicness and finally added some Holographic Glequins before applying my Cult Nails Wicked Fast top c

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Gradient, Stamping, Uncategorised

Purple Paradise Skittle Manicure

15th August 2012

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I haven’t been my usual unproductive self this evening. I’ve managed to book my coach to London on Saturday for The Nails Show, make a YouTube video AND paint this design on my nails! I’ve literally been dropping off to sleep all day in the most inconvenient places, so I was determined to get an early night but that idea went out the window as soon as I hit the internet!

This is my new W7 Purple Paradise that I was telling you about yesterday. Although it’s a brand new bottle, it’s not a new shade to me as I’ve been in love with it for years and this is my fourth bottle!

The leopard print from Bundle Monster Plate BM221 and the tribal print are Barry M Lilac Foil. For the gradient and heart design from Red Angel Plate RA114 I used A-England Princess Tears.
The holographic glequins are from Born Pretty Store and I used two top coats of Cult Nails Wicked Fast.

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