Patchwork nails
After seeing patchwork nails post on Karen’s blog (Frazzle and Aniploish) I thought it was fantastic! I would never of thought to put tape on my nails to section the colours, I just assumed it would ruin the polish, silly me! I followed the same tutorial as Karen from Chloe’s Nails and gave it a go! It worked out pretty well, better than I expected! I just used ordinary cellotape, I had some thin tape lying around which is about a centimetre wide, which made the sectioning quite easy. I think I would have struggled a little bit with thicker width tape. Anyhoo, this is what I ended up with!
I went for a frosty Christmas patchwork manicure. :) I used Models Own Feeling Blue as a base (2 coats) and put on a coat of Essie Good to Go. When that was dry I cut a short piece of tape, about 5 cm and stuck the tape to my palm 3 times to make it less sticky. I then placed the tape at an angle near the bottom of my nail and carefully painted a thin coat of Models Own Blue Moon and then peeled the tape off while it was still wet. I repeated this on all my nails and by the time I had done them all the first ones were dry and I could section off the tip at an angle. I did the same as before, but used Models Own Sterling Silver. I thought it worked out pretty well and I really enjoyed doing it. :)
I even managed to do both hands to a similar standard! I was imagining a disaster on the right hand, but because of the tape, no matter hope sloppily I applied it, it worked out ok! :) The only thing I found to be careful of was when you position the tape you have to make sure it is really flat to the nail. One of my thumbs and a couple of fingers were a bit…not crinkled, but not completely flat when I curved it round at an angle on my nail. When it wasn’t completely flat it was difficult to get the polish right to the edge and not have it run underneath the tape a little. All in all, a successful attempt, I will definitely use tape for sectioning again. I think of all those poor french manicures that could have took less time and looked better with a bit of tape I had in a draw! :P What do you think? Do you use tape in your manicures? Or do you think you will give it a go? I’d love to see! :D
Eyeko Vintage
It was my last day of summer work yesterday, I’m quite sad about it. I don’t want to go back to being a student! Nine more months and I’ll be free of lectures/exams/essays, can’t wait! :) I have cognitive heavy modules this semester so I’m quite happy about that, but I do have a 9am Monday morning lecture, groan… :( I’m looking forward to my third year big project though. :)
So it’s my last weekend of freedom, I intend to watch a lot of bad films and completely veg out and hopefully I’ll be able to get up on Monday to be in for 9, going to be difficult as I have been getting up at 10-11am (closer to 11 really) everyday all summer. My natural sleeping patterns don’t seem to align well with the 9-5 world. How about everyone else? Morning larks or night owls?
On to the mission!
Untried No. 1!
I’ve had this awhile, swatched it on one finger, but never wore it as a whole manicure. I’m on a mission to try all my untried! So here is the first one, Eyeko Vintage. I like Eyeko polishes, especially the blacks such as Cosmic and Vampira. This polish has the same consistency, it’s a little watery, but easy to handle. The first coat is pretty much bleurgh…very transparent and streaky, but after added a second coat it turns into this…a nice soft, vintage mint green shade.
I really like the colour, but I don’t think it suits me. It makes my skin look very yellow. I think that’s why I’ve been avoiding it after my first swatch of it. It’s a shame because it’s a really nice green and a nice polish! I was tempted to put GOSH Rainbow over the top to see what that looks like, but I’m low on remover and didn’t want to be battling to remove it later on! :) Anyway, I’m going to leave it on and see if it grows on me. How do normal people (i.e.people with a brain) decide if a colour will suit? I look at the picture and it doesn’t seem too bad, but when I have in on my nails all day it just doesn’t look right.
I Love Halley’s Comet…Orly? Ya rly!
I ordered this as a present to myself for finishing a particularly horrible piece of work. I wouldn’t normally spend more than £5 on a polish. The Orly Cosmic Fx polishes have been on a lot of blogs lately, they do look great in the bottle, but I was never swayed by any pictures of it on the nail. I really liked Halley’s Comet though. It hasn’t had a lot of blog love because it is a dupe of a couple of other polishes, e.g. OPI and Zoya
Seeing as I have neither I was happy to get the Orly one! I really love this colour, the polish, the bottle, everything really! I love turquoise shades and I love sparkles, so I’m very pleased. :)
There were two things I found irritating about this polish,
1- how difficult it is to photograph! It looks really nice irl. It is smooth and very shiny, and has a nice blue/green shimmer dependent on the light.
2 – It was horrible to remove. It is definitely a sparkly-flakies type polish and it was highly pigmented. This lead to not only a battle similar to a glitter to remove and it tinted my fingers very blue! It’s worth it though! :) I really like this Orly polish and will consider getting more if I want to treat myself again. This is two coats which dried really quickly and smoothly.
On a stranger note…I’m not sure how anyone else pronounces it, but from my many geeky times online I only associated O RLY with…
YA RLY!
NO WAI!
Models Own Top Turquoise and Emerald City
I cut my nails off as I needed to type quickly…don’t they look sad? :( I think I went a bit too short. :S
Here is Models Own Top Turquoise and Emerald City on ring fingers. I keep wanted to write Emerald City as Cathedral City…as in the cheese…I don’t know, it’s worrying how minds work sometimes.
I love turquoise as a colour. It reminds me of my boyfriend as he always wears bright shirts and he has lots of turquoise ones. :) ….I also think of weird things like a social influence study testing minority influence. This is pretty interesting in it’s own right, but not really related to my turquoise nail polish…or is it?
This is quite a green turquoise. I would normally label turquoise as a blueish hue colour. It’s definitely turquoise, but not like the Tiffany turquoise, this is a bit darker, more green. It’s strange, the more I look at it, the more I doubt I know the difference between green and blue! …maybe it is due to the Emerald City green sparkles making me perceive the green more.
Moving on… Emerald City is a pretty green glitter and I really like it here. This is three coats to give full coverage. It’s very sparkly and I think pairs well with the turquoise.
My apologies for the psychology/colour perception nonsense. I work with a lot of vision geeks and the psychology of perception is fun for me from a science point of view and from a more philosophical ‘do we actually see what we see’ angle. It’s fun! For example:
Did you know you only have colour vision in the centre of vision and the rest is just made up by your brain? To test grab two pens/sticks/whatever you can find that are two different colours. e.g. a big red pen and a big blue pen. Mix them up behind your back so you don’t know which pen is in which hand. Hold your arms out to your sides with a pen in each hand and keep looking straight ahead. Move your arms forward slowly until you can make out you have something in your hands from your peripheral vision. Try to tell which colour pen is in which hand while keep looking forward. If done correctly you should not be able to identify the colour as the colour receptors in your eye only exists in the centre of your vision. I love this stuff, it’s weird to think that what you see is mostly made up by your brain fudging information together.
Only two weeks to go till uni. I’m glad uni is starting again, I will be happy to learn new nonsense! :)
Models Own Mystic Mauve and Sterling Silver
More foils from my Models Own haul! This is Mystic Mauve with Sterling Silver on the tips. I actually painted is in semi darkness, it got dark while I was doing it. I was distracted as I was watching a Star Trek marathon on TV, so I pretty much did a couple of nails per advert break. :p So I wasn’t sure of how this was going to turn out!
Luckily, it turned out well and it is super shiny! It took ages to get a picture were there wasn’t a a reflection or glare.
I only used one coat because whenever I do two coats of any Models Own foils I seem to get a lot of bubbling. One coat is enough as long as you don’t miss any bits. Other people may have better luck at applying foils than me, I’m no good at thin layers of polish, gloop! :)
Also, shhh! I’m feeling guilty having just bought a Urban Decay Naked palette. I know I shouldn’t, but … ok I have no defence.
Models Own Lili’s Pink and Pink Fizz
Here is what I wore all week. I really liked this. It is two polishes from my Models Own haul. This is Lili’s Pink and Pink Fizz on ring fingers. Lili’s pink is the same as other Models Own foils, e.g, Champagne, Blue Moon etc. I really like them, they dry quickly and if your careful you can just do one coat and it looks great. All the foils are based the same and when you remove them you find that the colour comes off the nail, but you are left with a silver shiny foil base. It’s not hard to remove, but I assume all of them have the same base with different colourings added.
Lili’s Pink is slightly different to the other Models Own foils in that it is quite a neon type pink and as with most neons, it dries to a satin finish (I took a picture, but on a day without sun, so it looks awful). I don’t mind a satin finish, but I do like my topcoats. :)
Incidentally this was the first time trying out Models Own 3 in1 Base, Top Coat and Gloss. I only used it as a top coat, I still have plenty of my favourite base coat left. It’s a good topcoat, quite watery so you can just slop it on, but dries fast and to a nice shiny smooth finish.
Pink Fizz was really nice too, there are 3 coats on my ring fingers, for full coverage. 1-2 coats is fine for a sparkly layering. It’s not too thick after 3 coats, which I love. Some glitter polishes need so many coats for full coverage, you end up with thick polish nails, and I’m sure that’s fun to remove! I do loved the colour of the sparkles , a rosey gold colour, very pretty. I was tempted to do my whole hand glitter, but chickened out.
I really liked this look, I didn’t want to take it off. The 3 coats of glitter (plus base, pink and top coats) on my ring fingers made it even harder! :/ I really liked that the Pink Fizz is a rosey gold colour and I found it matched really well with my engagement ring, which is rose gold. Something to remember to wear when I actually get round to booking the wedding. So far I’m pretending I don’t have to do it, I can’t organise my own lunch never mind a large gathering of friends and two sets of family. EEK! Oh well, just have another look at the pretty nail polish! :)
NOTD Topshop Cloud
Here’s a quick NOTD from last week. Due to the lovely weather, i.e. rain that didn’t stop for 24+hours and horrible wind, I went a bit grey. This is Topshop Cloud. There’s not a lot to say about grey. It’s a nice grey…grey. A good thing was it was the best application I’ve had in ages! One coat, went on easily, no dragging and dried in about a minute. It is a dull colour, but I was feeling bleurgh after just sitting the house, working and listening to rain for a couple of days. I think this would be great for formal work-wear though, quite professional and a different option to beige/nude.
Conversely, the weather today is lovely! I have a lovely sparkly pink going on today! I shall take some pictures later. It’s very bizarre how the weather seems to effect everyone’s moods. I dislike being hot and melted, but at least sunshine looks nice when you look outside! :) I need to finish some writing before tomorrow so better get back to it.
NOTD Models Own Purple Grey + CND Amethyst Sparkle
I said when I found sunlight I’d put up pictures! Luckily I had to be up early this morning for participants and we had a lovely dose of sunshine early on, before the rain…
As featured on many blogs recently here is Models Own Purple Grey with a coat of CND Amethyst Sparkle over the top. My before sparkle pictures were poor so I gave up on them, but the base colour hasn’t changed much, it just has the added sparkle.
I really like it. I liked Paradoxal when I saw it, but would never part with money for the Chanel price. So I’m quite happy for a dupe! I like the way the sparkle is very obvious in the light, but when indoors/in shadow it isn’t as noticeable so you can still appreciate the purple grey base colour. All in all, I really like this look! Plus, it makes me want to buy more of the CND effects polishes. Question is what colour of my Models Own haul do I want to try next!?
NOTD Rimmel Shocker
After the very pale previous polish of Utopia I saw this in Boots, Rimmel 60 seconds nail polish in Shocker. Much nicer than Utopia and very bright! This is probably my brightest nail polish I own, it’s very shiny too, these pictures are without topcoat.
I really love this polish, it was cheap, it’s bright and shiny and the application was great. It’s one of the Rimmel 60 seconds polishes and has one of those fat-one-coat brushes. I was convinced I was going to make a mess with such a full brush, but it was actually really good! I had hardly any clean up to do and normally I’m pretty messy. The polish probably wasn’t dry in 60 seconds, but I did notice it dried a lot quicker than other nail polishes I own.
Here’s the fat brush! I know it doesn’t look like a giant brush, but you can feel it is thicker and holds more colour than a normal brush.
Anyway, Monday morning, back to work! Working from home today as I can’t bare to go out in this muggy/rainy weather. Every time I walk home in it lately I end up with a headache or even more fun a lovely migraine. I just have to resist the call of poor daytime TV, shouldn’t be hard to do!
Models Own Utopia and Snow White
The Models Own facebook sale started yesterday! It lasts for 7 days. Just use code FACEBOOK50 to get 50% off your order (£20 or more) on checkout. 50% is great as being a pauper, sales are the only time I can get a couple of polishes.
In a Models Own mood I decided to have a go at a couple of my ‘un-tried’ polishes. Now I bought Snow White and Utopia at the same time months ago. Snow White because I didn’t have a good white for french nail tips and Utopia as I liked the colour. However, when it arrived I thought it was a pretty unwearable colour. It’s a very light purple/grey/white colour. It’s that pale it makes my whitish/blue skin tone look healthy!
Seeing as I’ve been nursing another migraine (annoying muggy weather) and being bored at home I thought I’ll give them both a try. Sorry about the sloppy application, I thought I’d take it straight off, but I quite liked it in the end. It is one coat of Utopia with a slop of Snow White on the tips afterwards. It looked alright, but I think I stuck the topcoat on too soon and got a little bit of bubbling, silly pastels!
So, what I thought would be horrible wasn’t too bad. However, when I was taking photos it just looked bizarre because it didn’t look right being shiny, if that makes any sense. The colour are so chalky looking shiny seemed strange, so I suck my Topshop matte topcoat on. This really made the manicure for me, I think Utopia looks really good as a matte.
One more because I liked it!
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