Deep Red and Shimmery, Honest

Needed something red and shimmery to match my red, glittery plugs — Boots 17 Fast Finish Dazzling Ruby fit the bill quite nicely. It’s a deep, red shimmer and it’s very nice, actually. I went for three coats then took pix.
I couldn’t get a good photo of this one and had to adjust the colours in Photoshop to get it to look less orange, which is why the picture looks a bit odd. That, and my lack of photographing skill. You can’t see the shimmer all that well either, but it is there in real life, and it is fab.

Boots 17 Fast Finish Ruby Dazzle Swatch

I Konaded the tips using a tribal pattern on Bundlemonster BM07 and some Superdrug MUA Shade 2 (it has nearly run out!). I dotted the centre of the pattern with some more black and went over it with a rosy coloured glitter. It looks silver. Couldn’t get rid of the orange tint in this picture at all, so imagine it a bit pinker.

Tribal Tips and Glitter.

Gorgeous polish, it’s just a damn shame that I can’t get pictures that do it any justice :(

Missing One Smash Gate @ Downtown Paradise

We’ve got some seriously grey weather going on at the mo, so a sunny bright colour was required. And this BYS Mystery yellow from the BYS Chrome Pack is sunny, bright and, errrr, very yellow. It might be BYS Bottle Blonde No 180, then again, it might not. I do try to help.

BYS Mystery Yellow Swatch. Four /good/ coats.

Fantastic colour but a bit horrible to apply. It was a bit too sheer for my liking that needed four rather healthy coats to reach opacity, and it went on a bit streaky. I’m not sure why it was in a so-called Chrome pack, as it’s a creme. Oddness.

I wasn’t too happy with the finish and reached out for the stamper …

I hadn’t given any of the Bundlemonster full nail designs a go yet, BM20 was today’s choice, accompanied by the long-suffering Superdrug MUA Shade 02 (black). Blimey, these designs are small — I feel like I’ve got MASSIVE man hands now. I had to try and double stamp on most of my fingers, which is really hard to do with straight lines. I messed up a few nails and quickly repaired them by stamping on the Fauxnad m42 (Konad m28) skull in black, then the Konad Special White polish.

These are inspired by those crash gates in Burnout Paradise, they are.

I coloured in the eyes and removed the eyepatch with some white acrylic paint and skulls saved the day again! I’m kinda wishing that I’d only stamped one nail as all these stripes are a bit much, they do my nut in a bit when I move my fingers.

Goldfingahs!

I got given a Boots 17 gift box a while back and hadn't worn any of them for my giving-up smoking plan. Until now.

Nightshade was my first pick, mainly because it was black. The bottle makes it look as though there's a very dark bluey-green sheen to it, but I've not really noticed it on the nails.

Boots 17 Fast Finish Nightshade Swatch

My lovely son got me some Boots 17 Crackle Top Coat for Mother's Day that was begging to be put on over all that shiny black. This went on fairly thickly with some diagonal brush strokes.

Nice Crack

I don't normally wear gold at all -- I can't even remember the last time I wore it, so gold fingers was a bit of a :0 for me. Quite like it, though,and I've not Konaded it. Shock! Thanks muchly, lovely son, you rock!

Bling-a-bling-blang my blang-a-long-ling-long

Still haven't heard from BYS about the mystery chrome pack, but I'm still going to wear it. Going for the dark pinky-red today.

BYS Chrome Pack Dark Pink Swatch

The colour comes out really bright on my camera for some reason, it should be a bit more subdued than that. It's not all that chromey either TBH but it's a nice enough colour. Not really the sort of colour I have on my nails. Hair, yes, but not the nails.

I needed glitter, lots of glitter.

I'm useless at taking pix of glitter

Saffron Colour 09 was the perfect glitter for the pinky-red base, the colours matched almost perfectly. I put on two coats then started getting a bit twitchy for the Konad. Oh, 'ere we go ...

I initially resisted my newest addiction by sponging the nail tips in the BYS dark pinky-red, and it all looked really, really good. I know this because I kept looking at it, thinking, "ooh, that looks nice". However, the camera disagreed and reluctantly squeezed out the blurry glitter pic on the left.

I Konaded it eventually, using the stars on Bundlemonster plate BM14 and some Stargazer Chrome Silver 232 polish, which is the bollocks for stamping with, the silver comes out beautifully -- it's much better than the Konad Special Silver polish, in fact. It's also very reasonably priced and available from Stargazer or eBay, wahey!

All blinged up for the weekend.

Slightly Better Denim Nails

I've had a go at doing denim nails before, but the pictures were embarrassingly bad so I'm trying again with a better camera.

I started out with three coats of Constance Carroll 332 Blue Candy, which is still a nice light silvery blue and a good base for the denim. Here's a better pic than last time.

Constance Carroll Blue Candy Swatch. Again.

I found a paintbrush with stiffish bristles and stippled over the base with Superdrug MUA Shade 1. A small amount of white acrylic paint was gently sponged over the dark blue, then more of the Blue Candy was sponged over the top. I squished the layers of colour down with my fingers to smooth it out a bit and got a bit messy.

Apply dark blue, the some white, then some more light blue. Messy.

Not a lot of Konad Abuse today, just a quickie on each ring finger. Today's Konading Combo is Bundlemonster BM08 and some Konad White Special Polish. The centre of the flower was filled with Saffron Colour 13 (silver) and the petals were quickly shaded with some Orly Winter Wonderland.

Slightly Better Denim Nails

I originally applied a matte top coat but it made the blues look really dull so I put some clear nail varnish over the top to give it a satiny effect. Looked OK after that, and matched me jeans, yay.