Another 99p manicure!

Remember the star spangled manicure that I did here? Well, I was in my local branch of discount bookstore The Works and was rummaging around the crafts section when I find these:-

Wiggle eyes! Or Goggly Eyes, which is what I know them as1 I used to make silly greetings cards with these stuck on them when I was in primary school! Fast forward 21 years and I still have a use for these little suckers...

My Monster Mani!

Here are the varnishes that I used: Pinky finger - No 7 Stay Perfect Poolside Blue, Ring finger- OPI Did It On 'Em, Middle finger- Rimmel 60 Seconds Blue My Mind, Index finger- Ciate Paint Pot Jelly Bean.

I don't know why my pinky looks so solemn! 

Monsters Inc was the inspiration behing my ring finger.





What'ya lookin' at?

Needless to say, this was the easiest mani to do! A lick of paint, and then a tiny bit of nail glue to fix the eyes down! I used the Models Own nail art pens to add the details. Simples!

There was also a pack of wiggle eyes with eyelashes available at The Works so keep your googly eyes on my page to see them soon!

Polish Days #1 It's Floam Day!

Hi guys!


I  have recently made some like-minded friends on Twitter who absolutely adore nail varnish! It's through these friends that I became aware of the Ninja Polish website and all the absolutely AWESOME indie polishes on it's inventory.

Then, a little rumbling began about a certain polish...

...FLOAM

Thanks to the lovely Hannah and her blog Polly Polish, we now have Polish Days, in which us lacquer loving bloggers can share our thoughts and pictures on the coolest nail polishes around!

Behold...

Floam by Nail-Venturous, layered over OPI's Did It On 'Em

 As you can see, Floam is a neon green and bright blue glitter (in a colourless base.)What makes this polish so special is that the glitter particles are super smooth- almost like little particles of colour, as opposed to the rough flakes of glitter that we're so used to.

Here it is in direct sunlight:-

Oh yeah! I absolutely LOVE Floam, and I think it looks great over the OPI base colour. I would have done a straight swatch of Floam, but it's so hard to get your mitts on it, I want to preserve every last little drop, hence using it as a special effect top coat.

Here are some of the other lovely bloggers participating in Floam Day: -

Hannah at Polly Polish

Sabine at My Polish Stash

Jen at The Nail Polish Project

Deborah at Love Varnish

Jeanette at The Swatchaholic

You can also check out Floam Day on Twitter #FloamDay

Baby Pinks Comparison

I have recently been thinking of a few nail art designs that I could do for Easter Sunday, and wanted to incorporate a baby pink into the design. Now, I have quite a few candy/baby/sherbet pinks, and I just wanted to do a few quick comparisons.

I started with the incredibly beautiful Curtain Street by Nails Inc- a baby pink with a matte finish.

Depending on your personal taste, you may either like this polish or find it too sickeningly sweet and cutsie. For me, I think the matte finish just gave the polish a certain edge. Of course, one of the best things about mattes is that they don't require topcoat. However, I of course wanted to test how versatile this polish is, and therefore painted a glossy topcoat on two of my nails.

Like it with the topcoat?! I do! Looking at the two glossy fingernails, do they remind you of a certain recent OPI nail varnish that I reviewed here. Yep that's right, doesn't it look uncannily like OPI's Pink Friday? I just had to crack out my bottle of Pink Friday to compare.

L-R

Index: Nails Inc Curtain Street with glossy topcoat

Middle: Chanel May

Ring: OPI Pink Friday

PinkyNails Inc Curtain Street (remained matte)

 I thought I would throw the Chanel varnish into the mix, because in my memory I remembered it as a soft baby pink. But its not. Its more of dusky rose colour that is even deeper looking in reality. Still pretty, but this is a warm shade, whereas the other two polishes are cool. No prizes for guessing the the Chanel varnish suits my skin tone a lot better, and doesn't make my fingers look like little lobsters!

So what do you think peeps? Can you recommend me any soft pretty pinks ready for my easter nail art session? Feel free to leave a comment!

My Nail of the Day: OPI Pros and Bronze layered over OPI Chop-Sticking To My Story!

I recently purchased quite a haul from the Lena White online sale. One  of the polishes I purchased was Chop-Sticking To My Story. It was described as a caramel colour online, but in reality it was much more brown than I was expecting. So, I decided to jazz it up a bit, and add another OPI shade called Pros and Bronze as a topcoat. The orange tones in Chop-Sticking, really made the duochrome in Pros and Bronze stand out. My nails ended up looking like sweetie wrappers- kinda like Quality Street. Yum. I have tried my best to capture the duochrome quality from this polish. Have a look:

Mmm, yes! Just look at that colour! Red, orange and a touch of gold in there. Theylook like little flames of fire. Simply gorgeous. :) Have you had a great weekend, everyone?

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!