Eyeko Cosmic and Mac Bad Fairy
Hello! I’m back and blogging! Hopefully more regularly now the exams are over and I’m working again. I’m just temping for now, but it’s better to be doing something rather than sitting at home fretting about finding work! I have taken many a picture of my nails and other make up things I’ve used lately, but I’ve only just got around to taking them all off my phone and cropping them. I have enough pictures for about a month’s worth of posts! I have really been slacking on the blogging front *slaps wrist*. I’m all set now, back on the horse, upping the ante, not putting off until tomorrow what I can do today, out of the woods, into the clear, it’s a piece of cake, easy as pie, I’m fresh as a daisy. Ok I’ll stop…I love cliché phrases! I have a thing about them. I love how many they are and that people say them without realising and that you can have a conversation using only clichés and still convey meaning. I’ll stop beating around the bush… :P
I have a couple of pictures with my stubby nails, but they are horrible, so I put this mani up first because it’s much nicer and I have nails again! :D My favourite black polish is Eyeko Cosmic. It’s not a true black, it has lots of subtle multi-coloured micro glitter in it. Inside it looks plain black, but put a light on it and it looks lovely! I tried to capture the glitter in the pictures, the last overexposed flash picture kinda shows the amount of glitter. It’s a great polish, two coats to be opaque, fast drying and the glitter is fine enough so that it’s not bumpy. Also, it’s really easy to remove, no tin foil fingers with this polish!
I also added Mac Bad Fairy as an accent finger colour because it’s one of my favourite polishes and I thought it would look nice against the black. It’s a very thick polish and I find it needs 3 coats to look its best so it feels pretty thick on my nail, but it’s pretty so I don’t mind! Also, look how shiny and non-bubbly my nails are! Really love this Lumos top coat, you can even make out the reflection of my window in the first picture!
Sorry about the overexposure. I never use my camera flash for this reason, it makes everything look this way! It’s not so bad though as it does show the level of glitter in the polish and my middle finger looks quite cosmic and night-sky-esque.
I’m liking accent nails at the moment so expect to see a few more! :) What do you think of accent nails or multi-coloured nails? Do you like them, or do you prefer one colour? xxxx
Deborah Lippmann Bad Romance (take two)
I love this polish, it’s definitely one of my favourites. I have already made a post on Bad Romance, but I had stubby, short nails at the time so I thought I’d put up a better one! :)
Previously when I’ve used Bad Romance it’s needed 3 coats to make sure the black is opaque and it makes the polish a little too thick for my liking. So this time I first put on a light coat of Eyeko Cosmic and then 2 coats of Bad Romance. It’s a shame the black in Bad Romance completly obscured the glitter in Cosmic, it would have looked nice, but never mind, at least it left me with opaque black and the lovely purple glitters without having to do several thick coats of it.
I kept this on throughout revision time so I could look at my pretty nails when I needed a break for boredom! :P These are the last pictures of my long nails before the pre-exam chop down. They are staring to grow back, but they still look rubbish.
Left hand…
Right hand…it has more purple hexagons.
I thought I’d show you both hands because the right had more hexagons. That’s one thing to remember about polishes with chunky glitter or hexagons, you need to make sure you don’t have a finger with no glitter and others this loads! This polish pretty much looks after itself though, I didn’t have to fiddle with it too much to get the glitter to sit right.
I bought myself Across the Universe after finishing my exams, but I haven’t tried it yet. It looks awesome in the bottle though, I’ll put up a post of it soon. I have a cold at the moment, so I’m just sat around sneezing and coughing a lot, fun times! At least I have Spotify and Youtube videos to keep me entertained and occupied. Anything to distract me from this tickly cough! At least it stops me from dwelling on the uncertainty of my future…how gloomy a topic! I never realised how much I liked knowing what my next step was, i.e. school, college, work, uni…now what? I didn’t know what I wanted to do for a job when I was at school and I kinda hoped I’d of figured it out by now. Did/do you know what you want to do? Or am I the only weird person with no idea? :P
Principality of Sealand Nail Art
I’m not sure if I mentioned it, but I went to see Art Brut this weekend! :P It’s not like I mentioned it several times or anything and was all excitable. It was the album launch gig and it was awesome, the new album sounds great. I like getting new albums, but I find it takes me a few listens to get into it. Maybe it was because it was live, but it sounded great from the first listen. Art Brut then performed a second set of all the classics, it was a great night! I loved the Buffalo Bar too, I wish there were decent bars where I live, it’s just scummy student bars, no indie bars in sight, bah! Also, how cute is the hand stamp?! :)
Now the title of this post says what is on my nails, but it doesn’t make much sense why I would paint the flag for the Principality of Sealand on my nails to go to a gig. I shall explain! One of the new Art Brut songs is about Sealand and apparently the Prince and Princess of Sealand were at the gig on Saturday. Sealand is a former World War II sea fort, 6 miles off the coast of Suffolk and it was claimed as an independent sovereign state, you can read more on the SealandGov website or Wikipedia page.
Principality of Sealand Flag
So there you go and here are my nails! I first painted my nails with 17 Knockout Red, a great one coat red. Then due to my lack of quick drying topcoat I waved my hands around for awhile. I left it about 30 minutes to make sure it was dry. I didn’t want to tape off the ends and then to rip the tape off and take the base polish with it! It was fine luckily :) so I taped off the nails at an angle and painted the tips with Models Own Snow White, which could have done with another coat as the red does show through a little, but because it such a small section I left it. Again, there was more waiting and hand flapping. Finally I taped off a smaller chunk for the black tips for which I used Nails Inc London Nights. More flapping…than before bed I throw on a quick topcoat to make it shiny because the 3 polishes had slightly different finishes and it looked a little bit strange. At last I was done!
I did this all in the evening and I cannot take pictures without daylight due to a cheap and nasty phone camera, so theres no step by step shots unfortunately. When I have a job in the summer the first thing I intend to buy is a nice camera so I can actually take pictures at other times rather than a couple of hours around midday! :) Also, I realised I can’t take picture outside in the sunshine. All my outside pictures of London are all bleached out. A camera is definitely high on the want list!
This is possibly the most time I have ever spent on one manicure! I really like it though, it came out better than I thought it would. I must invest in another quick drying topcoat to speed up the drying time so I can do this kind of thing more often :) I’m getting better at placing the tape so I don’t get any polish bleeding under it, my last attempt at a tape manicure resulted in me having to paint over the join between the colours, so this is a great improvement! :)
I had a lovely time in London, it was just a shame I couldn’t stay for longer. I stayed in a hotel I like in Regents Park so spent the day after the gig floating around the park in the sunshine, it was lovely, I didn’t want to leave! I did get rather toasted though, so my skin is now a normal skin colour compared to the blueish tinge I normal have going on. Should have packed suncream instead of 4 pairs of socks! :P
Hope you are all enjoying this lovely weather, now to catch up on the many blog posts I’ve missed! Have a lovely week! xxxx
Illamasqua Gamma with Nails Inc London Nights Tips
Hello to my new followers! I’ve been very happy this week as I’ve had a few new followers, it makes me happy that someone wants to read my driveling nonsense! :D <3 I was a bit bummed after I posted the first picture of myself a few weeks ago and I lost a follower, how depressing it that? :p Oh well, I’ll try not to scare the rest of you lovely people away!
My last nail post was Illamasqua Gamma and I didn’t want to take it off. It had no chipping or tipwear after 4 days with no topcoat, quite impressive! So, I decided to jazz it up a little with some black tips.
I taped off the ends at random angles and painted on some Nails Inc London Nights. It’s a shiny black one coater, perfect for taping. I accidentally put the black on a little thick on some nails so when I pulled the tape off it looked a little scruffy. It looked really obvious next to the bright orange so in order to fix my now scruffy looking manicure I finally got the nerve to give the paint brush a go! I have a load of paint brushes I bought from The Works years ago when I used to paint a lot. I think they were £1 for 5 different thin brushes, bargain! I used a thin angled brush and Models Own Sterling Silver and dabbed a line of silver along the join to disguise my untidiness. I do have a very thin stripe type brush, I think I’ll try that one next time. I was dabbing more than brushing so it’s not perfect. For a first attempt it isn’t that bad though. In person it looks okay because no one looks that closely at my nails, so I’m happy with it :P
Here is a picture as proof that I did that on both hands! It took quite awhile and I think I was getting the hang of it while doing my right hand. I think if I do this again I’ll section off larger bits, it’ll look better :)
What do you think? Do you use paint brushes to do any nail art? I’ve seen the Models Own nail pens, has anyone tried them and how are they? :)
Hope you are all having a lovely week so far! Sorry for my absence lately. I have a lot more free time now that it’s the Easter break, so hopefully I’ll be posting more often! xxxx
Eyeko Vampira and Mac Bad Fairy Tips
I’ve had one of those weekends when you feel really crumby and just sleep and melt into a non-existance. I’m feeling better now…in time for Monday morning ofc :P
I’ve been watching lots of dvd’s this weekend and I’ve got back into watching excessive amounts of X-files after Channel One was axed by Sky last week. Where will I get my Star Trek fix now?! Bah! I was really enjoying watching the old early 90′s episodes, they were super cheesy. I’ve also been listening to David Ford constantly, my LastFm account makes me look a bit obsessive. :s I cannot wait till his gig at the end of the month.
I also developed a fascination with subtitles. I dry my hair in front of the TV in the living room. If I dry my hair upstairs the room gets to hot and I keel over. My hair is getting long and taking ages to dry so I’ve been putting the news on with subtitles while I dry my hair. Everyday without fail there are always mistakes in the subtitles. Some are just silly and don’t make sense, but sometimes you get a word that is wrong that changes the whole meaning of the segment and totally throw me. This one occurred this morning:
“The floods are already effecting poems in Australia.”
After my double take I saw that ‘poems’ should have been ‘homes’, but my brain had already decided that all these Australian poets were writing lots about the floods. It made perfect sense. The floods are absolutely horrible and I assume poets will write about them, but I doubt that would make international news…
Anyway back to random rambling that makes slightly more sense! :)
This is another random taping of nails manicure. I really enjoy doing these and they are a great idea when you have premature tip wear on the polish you have on, but are too lazy to remove it just yet. :)
Here is Eyeko Vampira as the base. I had some minor tip wear on my index finger, but I had to be quick to go ot to a birthday party. So doing the tips was a great answer to my problem!
I taped off the tips are random angles used Mac Bad Fairy. Over black Bad Fairy looks good with only one coat, which is quite important when using tape. I normally just tape it off, slop some polish on and take the tape off straight away. If you let the polish dry a little, the polish will probably come off with the tape, not so good when working with a polish that needs multiple coats.
I really liked the combo and I got quite a few compliments on them. Bad Fairy really shines under those harsh bar lights!
I would definitely do this combo again, but maybe do the tips all the same or another pattern, the colours really looked nice together! :)
Now for lots of pictures! I hope you all had a lovely weekend! :)
Nails Inc Chelsea Park Gardens and Barry M Nail Effects Crackle
POST 100!
I recently indulged in a Nails Inc offer in which you pay £10 for 5 polishes. 1 will be Chelsea Park Gardens, 1 will be either a basecoat or a topcoat and the other 3 will be a random selection. I received this little bundle. They came really well packaged in a silver bubble wrap envelope (seen in background) which I blinded myself with several times while opening! I received Kensington Caviar Basecoat, Chelsea Park Gardens (neon pink), Soho (sheer coral pink), Pallmall (sheer pearly white pink) and London Nights (black).
The basecoat arrived covered in gluey finger prints, though it hadn’t leaked and a bit of remover cleaned it up. I didn’t clean it up for the picture as I was shocked by there being daylight outside and I wanted to get some pictures before it faded.
I wasn’t sure I’d wear Chelsea Park Gardens. I knew it was a neon pink, but I couldn’t find any good swatches online. When it arrived I kinda liked it, it isn’t a flat neon colour, it has a shine to it, almost duo coloured. It’s hard to describe! You can probably see better from the pictures.
The below picture is my nails tipped out of the sunlight
And this picture is tipped into the sunlight. It has this shiny pink glow to it when the sun hits it, even though it is a matte finish.
Chelsea Park Gardens dries really quickly as most neon matte polishes do. I only used two coats, but it could have done with three. I’m really pleased with this polish in the end! I wouldn’t normally rave about a neon polish, but I really like this one because it isn’t just a flat colour.
I didn’t put a topcoat on this polish. I was in a rush when I applied it and didn’t have time for a topcoat. I went to a winter BBQ and I did manage to chip a corner, but it held up pretty well seeing as I spent most of the night playing with the fire pit! The next day, while nursing my hangover I decided to put a coat of Barry M Nail Effects Crackle over it. I don’t use my crackle polish as much as I should and I’ve seen it look quite good over neons.
Again I left the topcoat, so the base colour and the crackle are both matte. I quite like it. It ends up more of a satin finish in the end due to me putting hand cream on, but I still liked it! :)
I’ve been wearing this for the last three days. It’s in a pretty sorry state now due to the lack of topcoat, but I’ll definitely be using these polishes together again. I’m really surprised by Chelsea Park Gardens, it’s a really nice polish! :)
And now for something completely different…This is my 100th post! Crazy stuff. I’m pretty poor at maintaining blogs usually, I’ve had many over the years, but this one is the only one to make it to 100 posts and to last 9 months! I’m pretty pleased. :)
I think the main reason I have managed to keep it going is due to the large amount of wonderful people who also blog. I love to read all the different blogs and to read any comments that are put on my posts. Thank you all for being so lovely! I really appreciate your comments :D
I have a little bundle of items I’ve been saving up from various offers I’ve snatched up during exam time (always a good shopping excuse! :)) and I wanted to do a little giveaway as a way of saying thank you to you lovely people! :) I’ll put up a proper post about it in a little while.
Thanks again for taking the time to read and/or comment on my blog! xxxx
Deborah Lippmann Bad Romance
Recently Deborah Lippmann polishes are being sold by House of Fraser. I heard ages ago that it was going to happen, but it seemed to take forever to go live. However, luckily for me just I was getting stuck into a mountain of uni work it was officially put online! Without guilt I bought myself Bad Romance as a congrats to myself for completing and handing in my literature review. For £16 though, it was a pretty pricey polish! I had seen lots of pictures of Bad Romance and I loved it. I love black polishes, esp with glitter in, and this one has purple glitter and hexagonal pieces too!
The Deborah Lippmann bottles are quite nice as well. I like square bottles and this one is quite big. You get a lot of polish for your money at least!
The polish is a sheer, black jelly base with purple glitter and purple hexagonal glitter. They are both quite sparse and easy to layer. I put on one coat and it is really lovely to apply, but you definitely need two coats or more for the desired effect. After two coats you are left with a good black base with the glitters floating in the black jelly. With some polishes you can sometimes get horrible glitters that can sink into the base and look crumby, but this has a lovely effect with the glitter very visible, but still floating in the base. Its difficult to describe! It dries quite quickly and isn’t at all bumpy. You just have to be careful that it dries between coats or you end up moving the glitter around too much. It wasn’t too hard to make sure there was a even amount of glitter on each finger. It is really a lovely polish!
I wouldn’t buy a Deborah Lippmann polish normally due to the cost, but this is something special. It’s a nightmare to photograph without sunlight, but in the sun it looks gorgeous. I had lots of comments about this polish when I was wearing it, I think just because it’s a little different. I was dreading the removal, but it wasn’t too bad. I did need to leave a soaked cotton pad on my nails with the trusty tin foil method, but it was easy to remove after a minute or two. :)
All in all, this is a lovely polish! There are some similar style polishes by Deborah Lippmann such as Across the Universe which is the same as Bad Romance, but with a blue base and blue/green glitter. I’d like to get it eventually, but for now I think this will be my go to polish when I’m not sure what to put on. :)
EDIT – Apologises for lost comments due to a website disaster!
Eyeko Vampira
I am having a manic week this week. I’ve spent the last 3 days re-writing my literature review from scratch. It may have been a painful few days, but it’s all come together quite well! I’m pleased that I only have a few more hours of work to do on it and with 2 days left till hand in, I feel quite organised for once! W00t!
To celebrate I had a lovely pizza delivered and I am now finally going to watch Wonder Boys, a film a friend gave me to watch, with my Moskovskaya vodka. I feel quite relaxed for someone who has 2 big hand ins on Thursday and 2 exams next week. Maybe my stress levels peaked and are have been at this level for so long I have become accustomed to it? Meh. I’m sure it’ll be fine. Anyhoo, before I disappear for the next 2 weeks for exam time I have an old NOTD for you all.
This is Eyeko Vampira. I bought this awhile ago with Eyeko Cosmic, but I never took any pictures of it. It is a red glitter in a sheer black base which after 2 or 3 coats is opaque. It is very similar to Cosmic, but with red instead of multi coloured glitter. In dull light the colour looks plain black, but in the light you can see all the red glitter.
I really like this polish. Vampira and Cosmic are my go to polish for black nails because they apply really nicely and I like the the subtle glitter. I tried to capture the red glitter in the pictures, but it’s winter so light is limited. I have been trying to decide whether to invest in a daylight lamp. I want one not just for picture taking, but mostly because I’ve been getting eye strain from working in dull light. They seem a bit pricey though, they are about £40 on Amazon. Hmm, think what else I could buy for that :p
I wish any of you who are experiencing the pain of exam time good luck! It will all be over soon! I’ve scheduled a few posts for over the next 2 weeks, but I probably won’t be commenting or reading so many of your lovely blogs until the stress is over, which sucks :( Wish me luck and see you in a little while! xxxx
Leopard Print Nail Art
Weekend time! I had a lovely lie in and now I’m ready to tackle my essays of d00m! I set the heating all wrong for weekends so I got roasted in bed this morning for several hours, but at least the house is warm!
Here is some nail art! *gasp* Now, I’m not all that good at nail art, in fact I’m awful, but I felt like something different on my nails. I see the leopard print pattern quite often on other blogs and it seemed quite easy from tutorials, so I gave it a go!
- First, the base – I put on a coat of Models Own Top Turquoise and waited for it to dry which didn’t take long as it was only 1 coat.
- Then, the spots – I put some tiny spots of Essie Bermuda Shorts over the nails, I went for about 4-5 spots per nail.
- Next I put a quick drying top coat over the top and let it dry to make the next stage easier.
- Then for the black outlines of the spots – I know Models Own have just released nail art pens, but there a bit pricey for how often I’d probably use them so I got out my Topshop Liner. It’s a wet felt-tip pen type eyeliner and it is ideal for this kinda thing. I drew the outline about 3/4s of the way round each spot at different angles and because I was drawing over a topcoat if I messed it up I simply just wiped it off and did it again, it made the whole thing so much easier! After doing my left hand (I’m right handed), I let the pen dry and put another coat of topcoat on and it was finished!
Doing my right hand was a bit of a disaster as I seem to have no fine motor control in my left hand my poor OH was drafted and instructed to draw them on for me. He didn’t mind and made quite a good job of it, his years of Warhammar painting as a child obviously paid off! :D
I really like it. I wore it for about 5 days and I think I’ll definitely try it again with different colours. It’s a bit more time consuming than a normal manicure, but it doesn’t take to long and I think it’s quite sweet. I’d love to try Konad, but I think I’d probably just make a mess, for now this suits me fine! :)
Have a great weekend everyone! Is anyone feeling christmas-y (not a word, but I can’t think of a better way to say it! :p) yet? I went shopping for food in West Quay yesterday and all the decorations are up (giant balls…strange) and the shops are full of christmas goodies. M&S is full of christmas food and even haggis is back on the shelves! I don’t feel christmas-y yet, it still feels like it is the start of term, I’m sure I will when I put the the lights up at home. Our place is too small for a tree, but I’m set for lights and tinsel! Does everyone else decorate their house for christmas? :)
Barry M Nail Effects Crackle
Hello! I’ve been busy with my lectures for a couple of days, now I have the rest of the week to work at home. :) I said I wouldn’t buy any more polish till I had tried my un-loved-un-tried ones, but I had to get this one and show you all as I think it is pretty cool. It is a bit gimmicky, but what the hey! I like gimmicks! :)
This is the new Barry M Nail Effects matte black crackle polish (long name!) over Ciate Dangerous Affair (free with November Marie Claire). I love this effect. I wasn’t sure at first, the randomness and unpredictability of the crackle effect was putting me off. However, now I’ve seen it, I love it. I think my love for it will be dependent on the colour combos being used, but red and black, I <3!
I really like the black matte, I tested a thumb (bottom corner of second picture) with a gloss topcoat, but it didn’t look as good. I think the red looks like lava and the matte black could be burnt ground. I quite like that. Even when you watch the effect happen it kinda looks like the burnt earth splitting and lava coming through. I’m easily entertained.
I apologise for the cuticle smudges, but I painted these while trying to haphazardly paint and film myself, with only a phone and a box. So the cuticles aren’t as neat as they could be! However, I did get some fab videos of how I applied the polish to get this effect and how long the polish took to crack (see below). The polish takes less than a minute to dry. Once it’s finished cracking, it’s dry. I took a shower right afterwards and they looked just as good when I got out as when I had just painted them.
Barry M say you should not overlap the colour, but I think this is more advice than a rule. I think it means that once the bit you’ve done starts to dry and crack you shouldn’t go over it again, as it will not look as good. If your quick and just painting your nails normally with a little overlap it still works fine. The warning of no overlapping had me mess up my first nail (the thumb that I put the gloss topcoat on, see thumb in picture above), it went really crackly and looked a bit rubbish. I was too slow and too careful I think. Whereas on my other fingers I just painted as I would normally and they looked far better, more blocky, which I prefer. It also took me less time to do and just felt a lot easier without worrying about this overlapping business.
Anyway, here are some videos of me using the Barry M nail effects polish. Now…this was shot with HTC Desire, it was on a shoe box with the lens hanging over and I just painted my nails under it. It’s a bit MacGyver, but it did the job ok, apart from the being able to see the shoebox on the right hand side of the screen, ignore that! :P Speaking of gimmicks, what do you think of videos in blogs like this? Are they useful or just taking up space?
The first video shows me disregarding the Barry M overlapping suggestion as I didn’t have enough polish on the brush on the first go.
Lastly, in ‘Goldilocks and the three bears’ style, this one seemed juuuuust right. Enough polish on the brush to cover my nail in one go and not too messy.
If you find this post interesting please feel free to follow my blog for more of the same! :)
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