Crafts + Nail Art = Happy Me. Does it make a happy you?
So this is the results of a combination of feather polish and sealife water decals. I hate wearing feather polish as it’s just so dang catchy on everything unless you smother it in topcoat, but even then there’s still a risk. Is it worth it?
The polish I used is ‘Need for Tweed’ by Ciate, which I got from their mini-mani month calendar. The water decals were bought from BPS in pattern: YE-345.
So this is the first time I have used the ‘acid wash’ technique. I used ‘Iced Frappe’ for the base (two coats), then ‘Candy Floss’ (two coats) and then ‘Pillow Fight’ (two coats). I enjoyed doing this technique, but there were a few factors that could have enhanced my experience;
1) More patience – I didn’t wait until each coat was dry, therefore by the 6th coat when I dabbed on my acetone soaked cotton bud it dragged rather than removed in some places. This also could have meant I wasn’t dabbing gently enough.
2) It could look more effective with other colours, but as I’ve said I’m getting through all my ‘yet to try’ minis from the Ciate calendar.
I’d totally love to try this technique again though!
So I don’t usually use nail stickers, I used to love them but got really put off by the fact they can curl when you apply a top coat. However when I saw that this Ciate colour was called ‘Starlet’ I couldn’t resist paring it with some stars. ‘Starlet’ is a two-tone shimmer polish – a blue-purple with sometimes green. It took three coats for full opacity which isn’t too bad. The top coat didn’t curl these stars but it does look as if they could have done with two coats to seal them in smoothly.
So you know one of those designs that your brain just seems to automatically do when you’re not thinking about it. Well this is one of those designs. When I was done sticking the tape down, and took a look at my fingers I was like ‘Oh no, not this again’. Honestly it’s almost exactly the same as this design from last year. Shockingly uninspired.
So yup, still trying to get through all the polishes I got in my two Ciate Advent Calendars. I really liked both colours and would definitely wear/use them again. The purple is called ‘Talent Scout’ and it did apply a little thickly but smoothed out fine when I applied my top coat. (Usually I’m complaining about how thin the Ciate polishes are ha!) The coral, which appears a lot more pink rather than orange in reality, is called ‘Play Date’ and it applied really well – only one coat! My water marble wasn’t too hot, I had to do some patch jobs in places where I ended up with bubbles but I think I got away with it?.. I then applied a top coat and some studs because it was looking a little bland.
So ‘Chinchilla’ is a really nice grey, blue. However, I can’t tell if it makes my hands look older. (If a polish can do such a thing, I have been a little lax on my moisturizing lately so it could be that too…) ‘Twinkle Toes’ is a loose silver glitter, which of course created a terrible mess, and didn’t photograph well. That’s not to say it’s disappointing, as it’s lovely and sparkly in reality just too messy for regular wearing. My striping tape has also arrived so expect plenty more straight line designs!
So I managed to scored off 4 polishes with this design, leaving 19 more bottles from the calendars to try out! The base colour is ‘Loop the Loop’, the sort of duck egg green is called ‘Apple and Custard’, the dark green is called ‘Tweed and Tails’ and the only one left is called ‘Hidden Gem’. I used my new Seche Vite (how do you pronounce that by the way?) and it’s great. At first it made the nails look fuzzy, not smudged but just odd – but then it kinda cleared up and it dried pretty quickly and with a nice gloss. Yet another great bargain from TKMaxx!
So I’ll admit it I was a little scared to try out the bottle of ‘Dallas Dolly’ loose sequins. Silly I know, but the fear of them being rough and catchy was freaking me out. Today I built up the courage and decided to pair it with a loose glitter ‘glitter all the way’, and ‘Encore!’ – a strange orange with a brown hint.
To my wonderful surprise the sequins actually lay flat (with a tiny bit of coaxing) and were small enough to fit to the curve of my nail rather than sticking out everywhere too. I then added two top coats, as the first one seemed to almost disappeared and all was well, phew! The loose glitter was lovely, obviously it went everywhere and will probably remain on my clothes and couch for a few months now, but I had no issues with roughness as it’s very fine. Again the first top coat was soaked up by it so a second had to be applied. I think the pairings work, but it has created more of an ‘Autumnal’ look.
So I thought these two colours looked amazing together as a gradient! The pink is ‘Main Stage’ and the orange is ‘hopscotch’. Once I’d painted them on I didn’t really know what to top them with, I went through a few ideas (stars, Christmas trees, love hearts) before settling on a kind of scaley, henna look using my matte black. I also added some ‘cuticle art’ to make it more interesting. Cuticle art, love it or loathe it?
