Something Blue… Layla CE82

So I’m flying off to Finland this afternoon and have just one last pale blue polish to show you before I make my choice of which polish to take for my wedding day. This polish was labelled “Ceramic Effect” but I’m not sure exactly what that means. At first I thought it might be some kind of crackle effect but it just seems to be normal nail polish. It is nice and shiny if that’s an effect. Anyway, this polish needed three coats to look good and has very nice coverage with the three coats, looking even and streak free. I think the colour is a little bit too much towards the green side of the pale blue spectrum to be perfect for my wedding.

Ciaté Mini Mani Month – Cupid’s Arrow Caviar Pearls and Something Blue… Blueberry Muffin – Models Own

This is a combination of the two things I’ve been working on recently. First I swatched Blueberry Muffin by Models Own but somehow the photos got deleted off the camera… By the point we realised that I’d already got the Cupid’s Arrow caviar pearls that came on day 23 of the calendar out and so this post has to show both!

The blue is nicer than I thought and the formula was better than I thought! I’d bought this polish back in the summer when I came to the UK and had used it then and decided it had the most horrible texture I’d ever tried! Now I’m not so sure – it really didn’t seem that bad when I used it to do this swatch. It didn’t dry all that fast but went on well and looked smooth after two coats so I have no idea what I was complaining about last time!

Cupid’s Arrow caviar pearls were pretty with a nice combination of colours and are seen here without topcoat as I didn’t intend to wear them for any length of time.

Something Blue… Dollish Polish: Drop your Sword

I’d swatched this polish several weeks ago but somehow we managed to mislay the photos. We checked all the different memory cards for both the cameras my fiancé has, various files on the computer but the pictures had vanished into thin air. I was debating on whether to re-swatch it as I knew I probably wasn’t going to use it for the wedding. It’s a very pretty colour and I love the mix of large and tiny gold glitters but it’s very sheer and would need a lot of coats to get the look I was hoping for for the big day.
I knew I would definitely come back to it in future though as I haven’t played with sheer polishes that much and want to experiment with them more. And just as I was thinking about how I could experiment with sheer polishes the obvious idea of layering them came to my mind. I looked at my nails which had Ciaté’s Fit for a Queen on them and thought these two might just be a beautiful combination. And they were! One coat of Drop Your Sword over Fit for a Queen looked fantastic and I loved the effect of a sheer blue over a sparkly silver. Suddenly Dollish Polish’s pretty blue was back in the running for my wedding nails.

Something Blue… Picture Polish – Geode

Sky wasn’t the only pale blue I ordered from Picture Polish. I’ve been thinking about doing a simple glitter gradient over the pale blue for the wedding day among other ideas, so I thought I’d try a couple of pale blue polishes which already have glitter in them.

Geode is really lovely. It has a nice smooth texture not chalky or runny and looks really nice after 2 or 3 coats. It’s a lot more interesting than it first appears as it has several different size and shapes of glitter in it – blues, gold and tiny gold micro glitter. I really enjoyed seeing it in different lights and noticing different aspects of it. The blue is a really nice shade too, a great balance of warm and cool.
My fiancé also really seemed to like this one (or perhaps he was glad it wasn’t just another plain pale blue for him to photograph!)

I think this polish would be a good one for a glitter based design but I really need to get a clearer idea of what I want to do over my blue polish. It has to be something fairly simple that won’t take me hours to do the night before or the morning of the wedding. I’m not into stamping so it needs to be a simple freehand design or something involving glitter or gems. If anyone has any fun ideas leave me a comment!

Something Blue… Picture Polish – Sky

Next up for my potential wedding nails was Sky by Picture Polish. I wasn’t sure about this one as the bottle looked like quite a bright blue and not pale enough but I’d seen swatches which made it look much paler. I’d also seen swatches which made it look like quite a strong blue so I thought I ought to test it out for myself.

It has a very nice formula and applied easily and evenly needing only two coats. It also had a beautiful shiny finish without a topcoat and dried pretty quickly. However I’m not sure the colour is what I’m looking for. It’s slightly on the greenish side of blue rather than the pinkish side and I don’t think it’s that flattering to my skin tone. It was pretty cold when I took the photos for this and you can see my hands looking a bit pinker than normal which looks a bit strange against this blue. If my hands look like that when it’s well above freezing in Spain can you imagine what they’ll be like on my wedding day when it may get down as low as -25C!?!

I will of course wait to do a final comparison before deciding which blue to choose but I don’t think it’s going to be this one.

Something Blue… Catrice – Play It Blue

I remember this Catrice Candy Shock collection coming out earlier in the year and thinking the blue would be great for the wedding and waiting for it to come to the shop near me that stocks Catrice products. Of course it never did. So I ordered it from the internet but even then I had problems getting it as the delivery company held onto it for a couple of weeks saying they had left me a voice message asking me to contact them. Finally I got my hands on this polish and was keen to try it as quickly as I could!

The texture was quite different from the other blues I’ve tried and I needed 3 coats for it to look nice. It dried fairly quickly and had a semi-matte finish but not in a chalky way as I sort of expected it to. I quite liked the finish but want shiny nails for the wedding so put a topcoat over it for the photo here and for ease of comparing all the blues I’ve tried later on. I like the colour – it’s quite a cool icy blue but not in an unflattering way. I’m not sure if I like it as much as the Essie but I’ll wait til I do a proper comparison before making my choice. I still have a few more blues to swatch before then!

Something Blue… Essie – Borrowed and Blue

Next on the list for my wedding nails is Essie’s Borrowed and Blue. It’s very similar to the Zoya Blu which I tried a couple of weeks ago but maybe a little cooler in colour whereas the Zoya had a pinkish hint to it which just made it a bit warmer feeling.
In terms of usability the Essie polish wins hands down – it dried so quickly which is exactly what I need when I’m getting ready for my wedding and has a very nice smooth finish. I also felt that the first coat felt a lot less streaky than the Zoya maybe because it wasn’t as thick.
Anyway – as you can probably tell I’m quite a fan of this polish and there’s a good chance that it might be the one coming out to Finland with me at the end of December!

Something Blue… Essence – If I Were a Boy

Continuing with my quest to find the perfect blue I thought I’d try the palest blue in the range of Essence polishes. I could see it was a lot darker than the Zoya polish I tried last week but thought if the tone was right I might not mind it being darker.
The formula was a little nicer than the Zoya polish and it was almost opaque in one coat – hardly any streaks at all and quite a nice shine to the finish. I gave it a second coat just to make sure it looked good and even on every nail. It dried fairly quickly but the colour reminds me of blue tack. That’s not necessarily a bad thing and I’m sure I’ll use this polish loads in nail art but I don’t think it’s the one for the wedding. You can see that compared with the dress fabrics it’s a bit too bold and doesn’t have the pretty icy qualities needed for a blue snow wedding!

Something Blue… Zoya Blu

This blog has never been about swatching polishes as I’ve always tried to have a clear focus on nail art and although I do sometimes have plain colour on my nails I don’t tend to photograph and post them. At the moment though, I’m on the hunt for the perfect blue for my wedding nails so I thought I’d share that on here and do my first bit of swatching on this blog.

So this is Zoya Blu which was the first pale blue creme I saw and thought might be perfect for my wedding in 2 months. Zoya is not a brand that’s easily available in Spain so I had to order it from the USA. It is indeed a beautiful blue and I may well have found the perfect blue on my very first try (although I’m definitely going to try a few others just to make sure!)

It has an almost pink-ish tone to it which makes it a very soft colour and flattering to my pink skin tone. I applied two coats which gave great coverage – at one coat it looked ok but a bit uneven. The formula was a bit thick but generally I didn’t have problems with the application although you can see a slight bit of wrinkling on my pinky finger – this might be because the coats went on thick and I was impatient waiting for them to dry. This is my big negative point for this polish – it took ages to dry and obviously I don’t want to worry about smudging my polish on my wedding day.

Overall I though it was a gorgeous colour but I’m hoping I might find something equally beautiful with slightly quicker drying time and less thick formula.