Chill Out polishes with french tips

Hi all  

Don’t you just love polish swaps? Last year I did a swap with a lovely lady from The Netherlands and she sent me a couple of “Chill Out” polishes which were promo polishes and had no other details on them. I’ve tried to Google them and couldn’t find any info but here is a pic:

 

 

There was a gorgeous orange shimmer and a lime green shimmer. They are to die for! I wish I could get more of these babies but I’m happy hoarding these two beauties.

I finished the look off with black tips.

 

What do you think?

Em

Love Thy Polishes

Time to toot my own horn a bit. Toot toot!

 

I want to show you some of my custom polishes in my new Love Thy Polish brand.

I went to the Market Day here last Saturday to sell polishes and painted my nails skittle-style using my polishes to show people. A lot of people really appreciated being able to see the polishes on real nails! I did have them on a nail wheel but we all know it’s just not the same!

Anyway, without further ado…

Royalty, Struttin’ Like a Peacock, Toxic Slime, Smurfin’ it Up.

 

Fairy Lights, Girly Girl, Kiss Kiss, Crazy for Coral.

 

Thoughts, suggestions, comments please?

Em

essie Life Saver with Konad

I wasn’t sure about this polish. Sure, it looked great in the bottle but I thought the beautiful shimmer in the bottle would disappear once on the nail.

Luckily, I was wrong  

This is essie Life Saver:

A gorgeous orange with gold microshimmer. It is STUNNING! The subtle shimmer really tones the polish down and makes it something a little different.

This was three coats because I’m pedantic and had a couple of tiny bald spots after two coats. Gorgeous formula, as I’ve discovered most essies have!

 

And what goes so well with orange?

Tiggerrrrrr! Konad tiger full nail design in Konad Princess Special Polish (Warm Black).

I LOVE IT It’s so fun and eyecatching but not TOO out there and garish like some oranges are. Definitely my favourite orange by far!

I wore this to the Christmas pageant here and got so many compliments!

 

Have you done any Konad-ing you love lately?

Em

Halloween nails–Ulta3 Carrot Top with Bundle Monster

I’m finally posting my Halloween nails (only a week late!!)

I’m really not happy with how they turned out, but I’ll show them anyway!

 

Meh. This is two coats of Ulta3 Carrot Top, which is a really cool neon dark purple with a hint of red. I love this colour! I thought it would be way too bright for me but somehow it works.

I stamped with Bundle Monster for most of the nails but the spiders are Konad. You know what? Everyone raves about Bundle Monster but I just don’t get it. It is SO much more effort to get a clean image from their plates and some images don’t transfer at all! It’s so frustrating and quite often I ruin a perfectly good mani by stamping Bundle Monster over it and the image smudges or doesn’t transfer. It’s so irritating. The ghost smudged whatever I did and I tried to make it better by adding eyes but it so didn’t work. Ah well, better luck next time!

 

Em

Water Marble nails using Ulta3 Spring Collection

Beware: Messy nails ahead.
I tried water marbling for the first time last weekend. While I have a lot of improvements to make, I am actually weirdly proud of what I did and can’t wait to try again.

I used some colours from the Ulta3 Spring Collection for this marble pattern:

I used Blue Marlin, Tahitian Lime, Tangelo and Frangipani.
I used room temperature tap water in a plastic cup and toothpicks to swirl the polish into patterns. I used scotch tape to tape around my nails to protect them.

Here is my left hand:

You can really tell this was the first hand I did. Note the thumb: this is a result of sticking the sticky tape too close to the nail and when I ripped it off, I wrinkled half the polish. I also felt like part of the design wasn’t dark enough, so I dipped it again. That’s what that ugly murky colour is. Note to self: Never double dip!
The pointer finger was poor placement on my part. It made me realise I needed to make better designs.
My middle finger got smudged while I pulled the tape off. Note to self: Pull the tape AWAY from your nail, not towards! And it’s much easier to cut the tape off rather than rip.
I love the design on my little fingernail. This was the kind of thing I wanted to achieve on all my fingers!

And here’s my right hand:

Love the thumb, although the blue is a little washed out. I’ll need to make sure I use more highly pigmented colours next time.
My pointer finger, again, was poor placement and not enough colours. My middle finger wasn’t great either.
The ding in my ring finger was because I didn’t let my white base coat dry enough and I smudged it while marbling my other hand. I had to paint over it and it dried funny Love the design, though!
And my little finger also got a ding in it because I was too sloppy pulling the tape off.

I learnt a few things while water marbling which should help so much in my next attempt:

• Make sure you let your base coat dry properly.
• Make sure you get your tape close enough to your cuticles/edges of your nail but not ON the nail
• Cut the tape off carefully to avoid smudging
• Use highly pigmented colours or it could look washed out

That’s it! Hope you enjoyed seeing my first attempt at water marbling. I promise the next attempts will be better!

Em