Sunday Sparkle: Fairy Tears – Giddy Polish

Here’s the second polish from Giddy Polish’s Magic collection. It’s described as having “a light grey base, filled with beautiful bar glitters and different sizes of silver glitters”. The bar glitters are pink and turquoise and there is plenty of glitter in this one. Again, I noticed a lot of the glitter had sunk to the bottom and I couldn’t seem to get it to re-suspend but even one coat of the polish looked very glittery and with two coats, which I would expect to use with most glitter polishes, it looks great! It’s also very easy to apply and can be painted on without having to worry too much about the even distribution of glitter on the nail.

I like the cloudy grey base. Here I layered the polish over Sally Hansen’s Licorice which is a very dark grey, but the pale cloudy grey base of this polish really lightened it up. I have a feeling this would look nice over a silver base and might try that out next time.

It’s a very pretty polish and an unusual colour combination, so nice to have something a bit different in my collection. I don’t think I love it quite as much as Emotion Wizard which I swatched here last week, but it’s a fun and slightly more subtle glitter which is very wearable.

I bought this polish and the others in the Magic collection from The GiddyDesign store on Etsy.

Finger Food’s Theme Buffet: Dots and Stripes

I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to do for this prompt, so started browsing through a whole load of dotty and stripy manis to see if something might jump out at me. And the one which stood out was this gorgeous mani by Nuthin But A Nail Thing. I loved her combination of dots and stripes and though it looked fun and playful at the same time as being a really cool looking design.

The only thing was it meant using tape, again. That’s my third taped mani this week! And it was also my most successful! maybe I’m actually starting to improve!

I painted all my nails orange and then randomly placed the striping tape to mask stripes of different widths and painted the gaps black, white and gold like in my inspiration mani. After that I added dots along the length of the stripes with two or three different sized doting tools.

Now the weird thing about this mani is that I used a white polish (My Boyfriend Scales Walls by OPI which is my go to white) and it somehow transformed into a pale yellow. The orange paint was 100% dry. I’m sure of this because I painted them orange the night before I did the stripes and dots, so there was a good 12 hours drying time plus a top coat between the white and the orange. Still it started to look a bit yellow just minutes after application, even stronger by the time I took the photo, and later on they were a fairly bright yellow colour! I’ve never had that happen before!

Despite ending up with yellow stripes rather than white ones, I enjoyed doing this mani and was pleased with the result.

I used: Tulip – Rituals, Lady in Black – OPI, My Boyfriend Scales Walls – OPI, A Piece of Forever – Essence.

GOT Polish: Purple

Can you believe I got the tape out again!?! Two manis using tape in one week is unheard of for me! I’m proud of myself for keeping on trying with tape. I tend to have more success with striping tape than normal stationery tape and get slightly cleaner lines.

I also find sponging over tape to be less messy, stressful and likely to lead to disaster than painting over it. I liked the idea of a regular looking crisscross pattern rather than random laser line taping this time and am pretty pleased with the result. My tape lines are still not perfect but they’re not looking too bad!

I used : Holland Park Road – Nails Inc, Impulsive – Revlon, Do You Lilac It? – OPI, My Boyfriend Scales Walls – OPI

Techniques Challenge: Distressed

I couldn’t decide whether to try dry brushing or acid wash nails for this day of the challenge. After a lot of browsing of other people’s manis I saw way more dry brushed nails that I liked the look of than acid washed nails. I figured that acid wash must be tricky to get looking really good and would be better to attempt on a day when I have more time.

I started with a white base as I wanted to use some neon polishes and make them nice and vibrant. Most of the tutorials I saw for distressed dry brushed nail emphasised how important it was not to go over the top or you were likely to end up with a big sludgey mess. Of course I managed to do way too many layers and too much blending of different colours almost immediately and had to try and figure out how I could save the mani. I decided to just keep on layering the dry brushing, adding in some white layers now and again to stop it getting too dark and to bring out the neon shades more. And I think it worked in the end! Yes, it’s not as sleek as some of the pretty manis I took inspiration from (like this one by Chalkboard Nails) but they’re meant to be distressed, not sleek, right!?! For some reason this mani made me think of patterns on eighties ski jackets but that’s probably just me!

I used: My Boyfriend Scales Walls – OPI, Lime. Cocktail – Sephora, Blue Collar – Orly, Notting Hill Gate – Nails Inc, 420 – Flormar, Lady in Black – OPI

Tri Polish Tuesday: Green, Purple and Blue Colour Blocks

I made a promise to myself to try and get over my issue with using tape. I’ve never been very good at it, had a couple of disasters and generally don’t like the fiddliness of it. However I also know that taped manis can be absolutely stunning and I’m often wowed by what other people can create with tape, so it’s time for me to learn to love tape.
I thought colour blocks would be a good place to start and found this beautiful mani on Pinterest which I thought I’d try to recreate.
I was patient beyond what I thought I was capable of, as this required taping twice to create the design. My patience meant that the tape didn’t destroy my base colour, however I’m not sure if it was crappy tape or just my technique but I still ended up with far from crisp lines which I ended up fixing with a striping brush. So this turned out to be a mix of free handing and taping to get the effect I wanted.
I still have a long way to go if I’m ever going to love using tape, but plan to try at least one taped mani a week until I master it (or tear my hair out in sheer frustration!!!)
I quite like the result , especially with the matte top coat.

I used: Do You Lilac It? – OPI, Southwark – Nails Inc, Knightsbridge Green – Nails Inc, Lady in Black – OPI

Sunday Sparkle: Emotion Wizard – Giddy Polish

Today’s glittery offering comes from Giddy Polish – a Norway based indie polish which I came across while browsing Etsy for European indies. I treated myself to the Magic Collection which consists of 4 gorgeous looking polishes. This is the first I’ve actually tried on my nails.

It is described as “a seagreen base, filled with lots of blue and green glitters, in different shapes and sizes.” I layered it over Don’t Mess with OPI by OPI and the picture shows 4 coats of Emotion Wizard. I could have used fewer coats and it did look good after 2 or 3 but I wanted to try and get more depth in the glitter and jelly.

At first I was disappointed because a lot of the glitter seemed to have sunk to the bottom, especially the larger pieces and even with a bit of fishing, shaking and stirring I couldn’t get to them. But as I layered the polish on I decided it really didn’t matter because I really liked it the way it was! I liked the combination of glitter sizes, shapes and colours in the cloudy base and it was very easy and smooth to apply (once I stopped worrying about the larger pieces of glitter) and I loved the depth that multiple layers created.

I’m looking forward to trying out the other polishes in the Magic Collection!

Finger Food’s Theme Buffet: Flowers

I had grand plans for this mani but by the time I got round to doing it I was feeling pretty exhausted and decided to keep it simple. I was excited to use a new polish I’d recently bought from Liquid Sky Lacquers so figured that with such a gorgeous base colour I could get away with some very simple white flowers.

Raspberry Dawn – Liquid Sky Lacquer, My Boyfriend Scales Walls – OPI, Yellow – Sweets Sweet, French Quarter For Your Thoughts – OPI

GOT Polish: Skittles

I’m really pleased with this one and loved having it on my nails for a day! I decided to do a skittles mani using three of my very favourite polishes with different techniques on each nail.

Some of these are techniques I’ve loved from the very first time I tried them, namely water-marbling and gradients. I do a lot of gradients because it’s an effect I really love.

Striping tape, on the other hand, is one of my most hated techniques as I frequently mess it up. So I’m absolutely thrilled to have succeeded this time with relatively clean and straight lines! A couple of weeks ago I promised myself I’d work on striping tape manis and improve my skills – this is step one! Look out for more striping tape nail art coming up!

Stamping is the newest technique for me and I only own a couple of stamping plates. It might not be a perfect stamp, but at the moment I’m happy just to get the polish picked up and relocated to my nail!

This mani put a big smile on my face today even though it’s been a long and tiring week.

I used: Baker Street – Nails Inc, For Audrey – China Glaze, My Boyfriend Scales Walls – OPI.

Techniques Challenge: Quilted Nails

I had a bit of a fail on this one. After looking at several tutorials I decided to use the technique of pressing dental floss or the edge of something into a layer of not quite dry polish. I made a horrible mess of it – my lines didn’t come out looking smooth, I tried various implements to make the lines with and they all looked a bit sticky and uneven. I was starting to despair when I finally decided to use the caviar beads which I was going to put in the corner of each little diamond shape, along the messy ridges I’d created.

As soon as I started doing it, I knew I’d left quilted nails behind and had moved onto a completely different technique and style. However I thought it was seasonally appropriate as my purple nails with bead lined diamonds looked quite carnivalesque.

It still isn’t my proudest achievement, the lines aren’t very straight and my diamonds are of varying sizes, but it looks a lot better than when I was attempting to create indentations for quilted nails. Perhaps I need to spend a bit more time watching tutorials and come back to quilted nails another time.

I used: Violet Femme – Picture Polish, Cupid’s Arrow Caviar Pearls – Ciaté

Tri Polish Tuesday: Green, Purple and Blue

I’m a day late on this one, but I’ve been improving on getting my posts out on time and regularly this year, so one little slip up doesn’t matter too much…
I absolutely love the colour scheme for March’s Tri Polish Tuesdays. They’re all colours I own loads of different shades of and enjoy using.
I decided to go with pastels shades for the first mani this month and liked the idea of a gradient across my nails.
I think it worked pretty well and I’m happy with the result but it wasn’t as simple as I thought it would be. I started with a white base and it took 5 rounds of sponging to get the colours to come out this strongly! Usually when I do a gradient three layers are enough, two if I’m using very vibrant colours. It also created way more mess than any other gradient I’ve tried and these pastel polishes were not easy to clean up! But it’s a pretty, girly and relatively subtle mani to start the month!

I used: Mojito – Rituals, I Scream: Ice Cream! – Catrice, Play it Blue – Catrice