Mini Tux Mani - A recreation of Zooey Deschanel's Golden Globes nails

Last week at the Golden Globes, Zooey Deschanel not only rocked a beautiful Prada dress, but her nail art also received due attention! Sporting mini tuxedoes on her nails, Twitter was awash with pictures of the little beauties. So, I did what any budding nail artist would do, and recreate them. They're super easy to do- just follow my pictures:-

You will need:-

A matte white nail varnish and a black nail art pen.

Step 1)

Paint your nails a matte white lacquer (I used Barry M Matte white, and did three coats to achieve full opacity)

Step 2)

Using the brush part of your nail art pen, paint a thin curved black nail tip, as you would with a French manicure.

Step 3)

Using the dotting tip, do two- three dots. These are the 'buttons' of the tuxedo shirt.

Step 4)

Now to make the 'bow ties'. The easiest way to do this is to draw a figure of eight with the dotting part of your nail art pen, and then to colour it in.

Then, finish with a shiny top coat once the details are dry!

Spring nail look using Barry M Nail Paint in Peach Melba

The weather has been absolutely ghastly here at the moment, so I decided to brighten my day with an injection of colour. I have had Peach Melba knocking The flowerynail stickers I placed on top of the polish are now quite old so I wanted to get them all used up. I can't remember where I got these from, but I imagine you can get similar stickers/decals from eBay.

Right Hand

Left Hand

Thumb

So whaddya think? I think the Peach Melba works really well with the purple and the white flowers, but I'm not so sure about the yellow flowers. Ah well, at least it brightened up my day!



No7 Vital Brights Spring 2012 Collection

I don't have the time to swatch/ experiment with these little beauties at the moment, but I thought I would just post pictures of the packaging. Beautiful, isn't it? Spring must really be on its way judging by these blooms!

Vital Brights Cream Blush in Blooming Pink and Vital Brights Lipstick in Blooming Pink



Cream Blusher in Blooming Pink. It looks even brighter in real life!

Cream Blush close up



Lipstick in Blooming Pink.

I shall be swatching and and reviewing these in a couple of days' time, so keep your eyes peeled! What do you think so far of these colours? Isn't the packaging gorgeous? 

OPI and Nicki Minaj Collaboration- Swatches and Review

I have always been a fan of Nicki's music (and an even longer fan of nail lacquer), so when I saw that OPI had collaborated with her to create a six- piece collection, I knew I would want to add it to my personal collection.

The six shades are (l-r): Pink Friday, Save Me, Super Bass Shatter.

(l-r) Did It On 'Em, Fly, Metallic 4 Life (miniatures)



The collection comprises of  three creme lacquers: Pink Friday, Did It On 'Em, and Fly; two glitter lacquers: Save Me and Metallic For Life; and a shatter topcoat: Superbass Shatter.

Here are the lacquers on my nails:

Pink Friday: a glossy bubblegum pink creme (excuse the chip on my middle finger

Fly: a glossy light teal creme





Did It On 'Em: a glossy bright limeade green



Metallic 4 Life: a black base with small silver glitter and large circular silver glitter bits. This was super difficult to photograph, especially for such a noob like myself!



Save Me: a clear base with micro silver glitter, blue bar glitter and holographic bar glitter. I have blurred the second and third pictures so you can see the holo effect better.

And here are the lacquers with the Superbass Shatter topcoat on:

Pink Friday with Superbass Shatter. Hopefully you can see on these pics that the Superbass Shatter has a microfine pink shimmer to it. (You might need to enlarge the pics to see this)

Superbass Shatter over Fly

Superbass Shatter over Did It On 'Em

Superbass Shatter over Save Me - this was kinda difficult to photograph, apologies. I wasn't sure whether I liked this combo or not, the shatter top coat on top of the glittery Save Me kinda gave it a weird looking texture, as you can see in the first picture. I did not even try Superbass Shatter on top of Metallic 4 Life for this very reason.

The formula and application of these was a mixed bag. The cremes were not as opaque as I might have liked, Pink Friday was particularly sheer and required three coats. I did three coats for Fly and Did It On 'Em, although I could probably have got away with doing just two. The brush on these was fine, no problems with that. The drying time on the creme lacquers was good.

The creme colours are nice and fresh for spring, however they did have a tendency to make the skin on my hands look red. These would probably suit someone with a cooler skin tone more than me.

The two glitters are probably my favorites from this collection. These applied beautifully and dried fast. Once dry, the glitter didn't feel rough, which some glitter lacquers can do. Again, you can build up the opacity with these- I did three coats with both lacquers in these pictures, but a fourth coat would make them even better (if you had the time!) Two coats of these lacquers just didn't build them up enough. I personally think Save Me would be best reserved as a top coat for other lacquers. That blue bar glitter would really pop on top of Pink Friday (might try this in a separate post!)

The Superbass Shatter is probably the best shatter top coat I have worked with. Once the base lacquer is completely dry, Superbass Shatter crackles really well, giving thin crackled detail (unlike some cheaper crackle top coats, which can just look globby.)

All in all, I do like this collection, despite the cremes making my hands look kinda red. The colours are all funky and fresh and seem like a breath of fresh air after all the reds and dark colours I was rocking over the festive season. Spring 2012 is here with a boom ba doom doom bass!