Pokemon Theme: Lapras…

So does anyone else think Lapras has a bit of a sassy bitch face going on? She’s got that whole mean, skeptical look over the shoulder vibe.

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A Mermaid’s Treasures…

So here’s the design that I created with the three polishes from my ‘A Mermaid’s Life‘ set, displaying how well they work together. Isn’t it just beautiful! I found them so pretty that they became a serious driving hazard. I used ‘A Mermaid’s Tale’ as the base, then coated them in  ‘A Mermaid’s Tears’, finally painting them with ‘A Mermaid’s Dream’ in an ombre style. The pearls and sea-life studs are from BornPrettyStore.

It’s got such a beautiful depth to it, and is super shiny in reality. I’ve actually been wearing them since Wednesday because I can’t bear to take them off. They are also surprisingly chip free, considering I’ve cleaned out my four guineapigs, water changed my 6 fish tanks and been in the pool teaching.

Below shows my layering of the polishes before the additions. It’s a weird one because in the photos the base (A Mermaid’s Tale) looks a lot more blue than it is, it definitely has green and gold tones.

A Mermaid’s Life swatches…

So I got a little impatient waiting on my nails to grow (I managed to break two so they’re a little stumpy), and decided to ‘swatch’ my handmade polishes today. I write swatch with the inverted commas because I’ve never really swatched before, and to be honest I didn’t nail it. Most swatch photos I’ve seen are photographed really well; the products look lush, the persons nails are long and there’s loads of shots at different angles. Unfortunately you’re getting my 2-dimensional, stumpy nails to look at.

(For those of you who don’t know, ‘A Mermaid’s Life‘ is my first trio set of handmade polishes. I wanted it to tell the life story of a Mermaid so it includes her tales, tears and dreams.)

First up we have ‘A Mermaid’s Tale’. This is a creme polish, made from mica powder; it dries super quick and has a sort of matte finish. On the left we have two coats and the right is one coat. I felt you could really get away with only one coat of this polish as it has a pretty good coverage. It’s super smooth and displays gold/green tones depending on the light and has a beautiful, natural shimmer. Even though the polishes can all be worn individually, I created this one with the idea of it being the base colour.

Secondly is the ‘A Mermaid’s Tears’. Some of her tales are a little sad I’m afraid. It’s made from  ‘ultra fine’ (0.008) hex glitters, it’s the glitter topper of the trio. But it can be worn by itself – it gives your nails a little bit of glittery interest without being overwhelming. It dries a little ‘gritty’ so does need top-coating and due to the glitter being in the iridescent category it can be pink/blue/green/purple/and so on which is okay for me, but could be misleading as in the bottle it looks true blue! (I got too carried away and painted all my nails with a second coat, so had to do a weird mashed together photo for a fair comparison. )

Finally, it’s the jelly of the trio – ‘A Mermaid’s Dream’, full of glittery goodness. I used a blue tint, teal stars and silver square glitter for this creation and personally it’s my favourite. One coat looks a little rubbish, but two coats is certainly wearable if you’re wanting to wear it as a solo polish. Even though this one does dry smooth (and relatively quickly actually) I would still recommend a top coat due to potential pokey-outy star points that could catch *shudders*. I felt my brush loaded fine with the square glitter but I did have to fish around for the stars, I suppose that could be due to their shape and size though – I’ve never used a polish with stars in it to compare it to though!

Can I just add how cool it looks with a matte top coat applied! This is two coats ‘A Mermaid’s Dream’ and one matte top-coat. You can really see the glitter and I much prefer it to the glossy look.

Still with me? You’ve probably just been looking at the picture right. As I previously said, they were designed as a trio for the option to layer together. In the following picture, I have layered the dreams on top of her tale on the left, just her tale in the middle, and then tears and tale to the right. I LOVE how the dreams and tale look together. What’s your favourite out the trio then?

I played with them further, but what I came up with will be revealed on Friday, mwahahaha. I will give you a slight peek though, what a tease… This is tale, tears, and then dream painted as an ombre effect.

A Mermaids Life…

So I can only now reveal what I’ve had up my sleeve for a few months – ‘A Mermaids Life’ giftbox set by WonderfulWolf. I made it as a Christmas gift for my boyfriends sister, hence why I had to keep it quite for a while as I didn’t want the surprise to be ruined.

I bought my polish making supplies from Connii at Cosmic Glows. She was super helpful at advising me what I needed and recommending products to use as I did feel a bit like a ‘deer caught in the headlights’. There are so many pretty glitters and tints in the shop that my mind went wild, but after a few days of looking through them, I decided to go for a blue/teal theme. That seems to be my default colour unfortunately.

So after a little bit of mixing and pottering about (glitter was everywhere for a while, don’t get me wrong Connii packages them up really well – it’s more to do with me being careless), I managed to come up with three polishes that look and work like a trio. The idea is that they can be layered, or worn individually – there is a jelly, a mica creme and a glitter topper.

For a while they were nameless, then I visited a shop in Edinburgh and found some beautiful shell purses which is when the idea struck me – they were going to be about a mermaid! When I came home and looked at them a little more, I thought the title for the trio should be ‘A Mermaids Life’ – her dreams, tales and tears, as well as her treasures which is where the little shell purse came in! I filled it with little ocean charms (from BornPrettyStore) to wear with the polishes. I think it’s so cute and feel that it all works so well together don’t you think?

Now that I had the polishes named and the treasures secured it was time to put the set together. I used a little gift-box that are also in the Cosmic Glows shop for holding the polishes. Up until now it totally hadn’t crossed my mind how I was going to label the bottles, and my end result is not the greatest (by this I really mean it ended up looking rather amateurish). I went for a pretty standard look – my logo on the front and the name of the polish on the bottom. Then I wrote a little piece for the back of the box explaining the nice bits; handmade, 5 free, cruelty free and vegan! I just wish my handwriting was neater or that I had the time to print the labels out…

I’d love to make this set again to firstly improve the package design and secondly to actually have a play with the polishes myself! I was only allowed to play about with the test mixes that I created on some tinfoil, so to have a go with the whole set would be really cool. Anyone else dabbled in polish making?