NOTD: A Damn Good Seeing-To

Got the Model's Own Beetlejuice polishes aaaaaaages ago and left them in a drawer, all alone and unloved. Thought that it was time to give them a damn good seeing-to, what with being on a duochrome thing at the mo. 

Grabbed the Pinky Brown at random, looked at it, pulled a bit of a face and layered it on over a plain black polish. Fingle waggling commenced -- hmmm, yes, this is acceptable :)

Looks a lot like Orly Space Cadet actually, swatched here (phone-cam pic, OMG you can see my thumb). It's not a dead on dupe as it's more reddy than purpley, but pretty close with that resplendent gold duochrome.

Stamped over the beautifuly, shimmering colour with some black bendy lines from Bundlemonster plate BM201, then went over that with some gold stars off a fauxnad plate.

Plugs of the Day were these test-subject Supernova Remnants that matched up with this nail job quite nicely, outfit of the day was black, as it is every day.

Keeping this Pinky Brown for further damn good seeing-tos, it's quite nice, innit.

Easy-Peasey-Teasey Does It Marbling

Wanted to snuggle up and luxuriate in some shade of red. Luckily, OPI Tease-y Does It wanted to snuggle up with me, and I couldn't resist it's wanton charms.

OPI Tease-y Does It. Three coats.

Tease-y Does It is a deep burgundy with a red shimmer that shifts to gold and green in the bottle, but not so much on the nails - you can just about make out the colour-shift in the photo. Application was no problem and it took three coats to get a good shiny finish. Not my usual sort of colour at all, but the red shimmer completely won me over and I, errr, like it.

I can't water-marble, it gives me the right hump, but I wanted to try out some marbled nails with the Tease-y Does It, Urban Decay Twisted (gold) and China Glaze Ruby Pumps (red). The following method came about whilst practising for yet another water-marbling disaster, and I found it to be much easier and less messier than the water-marbling. Not only that but the polishes take a while to dry as well, giving you more time to work. Result! On the downside, it's very slow process as you have to let thick layers of polish dry, this is awful if you're an impatient soul like me.

You will need some polishes, one of those floppy plastic CD containers, a marbling tool/toothpick/watchmaker's screwdriver/small pointy implement and a sharp scrapey thing, such as a razor, knife or Konad scraper.

You will need these things.

1. Draw a large circle with a fairly thick layer of your base colour polish. Try to size it so it fully covers your nail.

It's my rarely seen thumb!

2. Drop a drop of your next polish in the centre of the still-wet polish. It spreads a bit further if you drop it from a bit of a height, and you can spread it a bit further by gently pushing it with the brush/marbling tool. Add another drop if it doesn't spread very far.

3. Same as above with your third polish. You see where I'm going with this, don't you.

Drip the polish, make pattern.

4. Starting from the top, lightly drag your chosen marbling tool through the wet polishes. Looks like a <3, ahhh.

Future Valentine's Day Manicure spotted.

5. Do some more straight lines. Or squiggles, whatever, this marbling is much more fun to experiment with.

Did some more straight lines

6. Now it's time for the hardest part -- letting it dry. It takes ages. Leave it overnight if possible.

7. A few hours or so later, peel a bit using a razor-blade or a Konad scraper-me-do. It should peel off easily, if not leave to dry for a bit longer.

Picking at it, finding it not dry, trying to leave it alone. This is hard.

8. Grab your peeled bit and gently peel it off the plastic with your fingers. Again, if it seems a bit tacky or sticks to the plastic, leave it for a bit longer.

9. Put on a thin layer of top-coat/base colour. Apply the marbled polish on your nail, position it in a way that you like, and trim any excess off with some little scissors. Don't worry if you can't get all of it, that can be sorted with a brush and some nail polish remover.

Oh, that looks so attractive.

10. Apply some top-coat. If you have any peely bits put some top-coat underneath and stick 'em down.

11. Remove the excess, admire your work. I've only done the ring finger on each hand as I am doing things later that will more than likely ruin it all :(

Only did one finger

Removal can be a PITA, depending on the polishes, but the glitter removal trick works well here.

And there we go, easy but slow marbling, and not a spot of Konad abuse in sight. Feels weird.

Best. Purple. Ever.

Have been proper stressed out about things and felt the need to comfort my frazzled nerves with even more purple. Yes, more purple, sorry 'bout that. It's Color Club Alias which is a good purple, it made me quite finger-waggly and smiley-face.

Three coats of Color Club Alias

On initial looks Alias is a dark purple with a bit of a pink and blue shimmer reminiscent of Orly Out of This World. Waggle your fingers a bit and you get a pinky-red to green-gold colour shift, very similar to Orly Space Cadet. Nice.

Finger-waggling in natural light

This polish is great, and is probably my new favourite (can't remember what the old one was but it was more than likely purple).

A flower?

I've kinda been meandering towards the old cigarettes again lately, so distracted myself from the nicotine by stamping over this lovely, beautiful colour D: It came out alright, though, bit of Collection 2000 Alloys 292 (gold) and a flower from GCOCL G16/K04 did the trick rather nicely. Added a rhinestone to fiddle with as well.

Completely ruined it all by fiddling with the back of a computer whilst the top-coat was still a bit squidgy.

Some-Bling for the Weekend

It's time for the final installment of "What's in the Boots 17 Gift Set"! TFFT! Just need to swatch this Boots 17 Fast Finish Peacock and the attractive Gift Set box will be mine.

Two coats of Boots 17 Fast Finish Peacock

Good, bold colour, fantastic shimmer, meh application. I've never really gotten on with these Fast Finish polishes, they don't seem to glide as nicely as the Lasting Fix ones.

This is what a shimmery, glittery sea of yeah baby looks like

I decided to bling it up the Peacock a bit with some Sinful Colors Nail Junkie, which I felt was one of the better decisions I made this weekend. This glitter polish was just stonking over the Boots 17 Peacock, absolutely stonking -- it was like looking at a glittery, shimmery sea of yeah baby. Like every other polish job that I've loved and adored, it got slightly damaged by my usual clumsy cack-handedness, and needed some repairs. Glitter and Konad made this easy.

Reminds me of a 1980's Miami Airport

Found this peacock design on GCOCL G18/K06 and thought that it would look alright in gold, so used some Collection 2000 Alloys 292 (gold, discontinued available for cheap on eBay) and stamped away. Really liked this one, shame it got ruined by sandpaper.

Ghaki

Over the next couple of days I plan to be wearing this:

OPI At Your Quebec and Call Swatch

It's Opi At Your Quebec & Call and I've no idea where it came from, it just appeared in my posh nail varnish box. As you can see it's got a nice bit o' shimmer to it but I'm not sure what colour to class this as, it looks like a khaki-gold. Ghaki, maybe? I'd never normally wear this colour but it's alright it is. Could be better, though.

Some HB plates from Nailart & Mehr arrived the same day as the new Bundlemonster plates and it was their turn for the Stompystampy treatment. I loves me some tribal so dug out plate HB43.

Tribal cover-up makes everything alright

It took me ages to pick a pattern, and in the end went for the tribal knotty design. Gave the nails a bit of a stamping with Collection 2000 Alloys 292 (gold), went over that with Superdrug MUA Shade 2 (black) and now I like this colour, it's really quite \m/

I Am A Glorious Tiger

The blue chrome job of the other day didn't last long due to me being rather ungainly with my hands, so I thought an Eastery colour may be in order and picked out the Nubar Purple Beach. This is another one of Nubar's wonderful duochromes with colours ranging from purple to gold to green, and I don't mind telling you that it looks fantastic.

Nubar Purple Beach Swatch. Sunlight.

Nubar Purple Beach Swatch. Shade.

Formula, brush and all that were lovely, it's just my application was a bit meh as it was applied whilst sitting on a swing lounger in the very hot sun (which was actually quite a challenge). Also, some bits have been patched up as I kept whacking my hand on a light whilst playing Dance Central (which is awesome). Ungainly, see. Pictures aren't the best either as I was wearing a cowboy hat and huge aviator shades when I took them Bo)

Today's Konad-job was inspired by a bizarre conversation about tigers. During this conversation I decided that it would be brilliant to be a tiger that was the same colour as my nails, as I'd be able to hide in gold grasses, green grasses and, errr, purple grasses. Thereafter, a Konad of glorious tiger was made.

It would own if I was a tiger and was gold and purple with black stripes.

Used the Konad m57 plate and some Superdrug MUA Shade 2 (black) for the stamping as I'd got a new bottle, though something seems to have changed with the polish and it doesn't stamp as well :(

Happy Easter!

Should Have Stuck With The Giraffe

Needed to take my mind off teh ills today as they completely suck and I've had enough of it and I've had to have cigarettes again, so picked out a colour at random. This Collection 2000 Hot Looks 10 Wink wasn't the best colour to pull out, TBH, it's a bit fugly.

Collection 2000 Hot Looks 10 Wink Swatch. Shakey hands = shakey application

What can I say? The bottle was the worst of the eBay specials and the colours had utterly separated -- I had to shake it for ages to get some sort of uniform colour going. I wish I hadn't, it's horrible.

I thought a tiger print would hide the minging colour, and went for Konad plate m57. It had vanished. Bummer. Unthwarted, the tips got sponged over with some Collection 2000 Alloys 292 (gold) and stamped in black with the giraffey pattern from Bundlemonster plate BM10.

Then the m57 plate turned up right in front of me on my desk, it was just sitting there, chilling. Git. It wasn't there earlier. I decided that a snakeskin thing with the fishnet pattern may work better than the giraffe look. It didn't.

WTF is this? Waaaay too many black patches.

Not 'appy with it, mate, but at least it comes off \o/

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!

Guitar Hero Metallica Killed My Nails

It was those HOPOs on Demon Cleaner's expert bass part that finished them off, it snapped the corner bits so they flapped about. I could hear them click away and everything, but it was ignored as I had me groove on. Bunghole :(

Orly Space Cadet from the Cosmic FX collection. Bloomin' gorgeous.

A quick filing and very dodgy repair job involving teabags and nail hardener made them a bit happier, albeit a bit lumpy, and a spot of the luverly Orly Space Cadet almost made them pee their pants with joy. It has some rather sexy duochrome going on there, flashing purpley-red into gold and maybe bits of green, it's got a little pink shimmer, and it isn't my usual sort of colour but I loves it. It really is rather fab.