Poké-polish…

So it was only natural to pick up a few polishes in Japan, so why not choose some pokemon polishes! A shop called ‘its demo’ seem to have a massive pokemon colab deal which included some super cute stationary, accessories such as keyrings etc, as well as cosmetics for example eye shadow pallets, lip balms and polishes. (Admittedly if I didn’t know it was a colab I would be tempted to think it was some knock-off stuff,  with the pokemon slightly altered so as to not infringe copyright issues.)

I picked up 2 pokemon polishes, which unfortunately don’t seem to have names only numbers, and a grapefruit handcream which smells lovely. I’m not a huge make-up wearer so as cute as the pallets were it would have been a waste of yen.

The first polish I chose to use seems to relate to pikachu as the glitter mix includes lightening bolts and it’s definitely a glitter topper so I created a yellow base for it.

I sponged a few coats of the glitter on first to create a more densely packed look and then one final brushed on coat to help seal in all the glitter. Looks cute right! Its definitely a novelty polish as I’m not sure how often I’ll wear it but for 450yen (about £3) why not huh.

I couldn’t just leave it as a ‘swatch’ so I painted the ‘its demo’ style pikachu. Unfortunately mines is looking a little uncomfortable about something, maybe even in pain… Sorry Pikachu.

 

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Falling Leaf…

So I’ve been really embracing Autumn this week. I feel summer delivered good weather and good times, and therefore I’m happy to get on with the seasons to come. Sometimes, especially in Scotland, we’re a little cheated by the summer weather due to it’s unpredictability but not this year.

I find Autumn very beautiful. Most of my flowers are dying off, but I’ve looked at them for months so now it’s nice to see the Cyclamen peeping out with their wonderful shades of pinks and purples. Even though the leaves on the trees are actually dying, their death attire is gorgeous. And I’m lucky enough to have a wonderful view of the edge of a forest from my room window so I can’t help but appreciate the beauty of it.

Anyway, can we put that ramble down to a ‘the weekend is here’ drink, here’s some nail art.

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.

OMD3 – Day 14 Fish…

So for this prompt I went for JellyFISH. Still counts right, even though they’re technically not fish? I’ve previously hand painted some Jellyfish, but for this design I chose to use some BornPrettyStore Jellyfish Water Decals* and they did not disappoint!

I chose to use them in a ‘pond mani’ meaning I applied a decal, layered glitter polish on top, top coated it all and then repeated a few times to give the effect of depth. The pictures do make it look a little flat but trust me, in reality it looks super cool.

The decals gave me a little bit of a shock at first when they arrived – it looked like they’d forgotten to put the decals on the sheet or something, but then I remember they were white! White on white could be an issue but fortunately you can see them if you turn the sheet towards the light as the decals shine differently, meaning you can chose what shapes you want to use.  Once the decals have been in the water they actually get easier to see meaning you will always pick up the design you want anyway.

Fortunately BornPrettyStore decals are super easy to use (so I’d ignore the strangely translated instructions on the back); you just cut round the desired decal, submerge it in water for around 10 seconds, slide it off the backing paper, apply it to your nail and then gently dab away any excess water. Always top coat it to seal it onto your nail of-course.

If you look closely you’ll see that for the first layer of jellyfish have short tentacles which is how the decals actually are. For the second and third layers I painted some tentacles on to them to add extra interest – it works really well don’t you think!

I’m so impressed with the sheet of water decals – it includes coral, starfish, seahorses, ‘beach’ words, shells and jellyfish meaning it’s a very versatile sheet to have! Expect to see me using them again. If you fancy adding these decals to your nail stash or anything else from BornPrettyStore you can use my code ‘AZYW10’ to get 10% off all full priced items.

‘Kuraokami’…

So continuing the creations using my Ciate Nail Lab, the next polish is called ‘Kuraokami’. Of course the name of this polish has continued with my theme of being dragon related: ‘Kuraokami’ according to Wikipedia “is a legendary Japanese dragon and Shinto deity of rain and snow”. Hence why this polish is glittery and cool in temperature! (It was actually really hard to find a dragon for snow – plenty for sea, air, earth, etc but no snow?!)

The photo shows three coats of ‘Kuraokami’ over no base colour, as you can see it’s not quite opaque but I didn’t dare put on any more layers as it might have taken forever to dry.

‘Kuraokami’ was created by mixing two polishes – ‘Amazing Gracie’, a pinky white, and ‘Ferris Wheel’, a cool blue. As well as the bar glitter named ‘Galactic’ and a white glitter named ‘Daydream’.

‘Kuraokami’ Nail Polish

‘Kuraokami’ Components

Flower Outlines…

So this design uses one of my new Models Own polishes I bought while on holiday. It’s an amazing chunky glitter mix consisting of silver, gold and pink glitters/flakes, called ‘Hot Stuff’. I loved it as a base so much (three coats over no base colour) that I decided I didn’t want to hide it under very much. I painted some flower outlines as they seemed to suit the girly and fresh feel of the polish – that sounds way too arty farty sorry. Being honest, my mum didn’t believe I had actually painted the flowers myself, which is a fantastic compliment but sometimes people look at you as if you’re a lair. Anyone else have issues with people not believing your nails are your own work?

‘Dragon Fire’…

So this is my third hand-made polish! It’s a fiery blend of reds and golds so of course had to be named ‘Dragon Fire’. I used ‘Mistress’ for the coloured base (red), the red glitter is ‘Ignite’, the gold glitter is ‘Pirouette’ and the gold hexagons are named ‘Bombshell’. This is only one coat, it’s rather dense and with such a strong red tint it doesn’t actually even need a base colour! It’s a shame because the photos just don’t show up how glitzy and rich this mix actually is!

‘Dragon Fire’

‘The Hydra’ Enhanced…

So earlier today I posted my second hand-made polish ‘The Hydra’ and I just wasn’t impressed with it – it felt a bit flat, bland and boring. So after sitting looking at it on my nails for a few hours it clicked to me how to make it maybe a little bit better. I added some ‘Crowd Surf’ a green glitter and boy has that changed the whole look! I actually like it now! So much better right? This is only two coats of ‘The Hydra’ over nude nails, compared to the old polishes three coats, and it doesn’t look as patchy either. However, it’s now super thirsty for top coat – probably because of so much glitter now, so it feels rough after one top coat but would probably be fine after two?….

The new ‘The Hydra’

‘The Hydra’…

So this is my second creation using the Ciate Nail Lab. I was a bit stuck as to what to do next if I’m being honest, I was so happy with ‘Dragon Scales’ I didn’t want the next one to be a fail. I don’t think I’ve quite nailed it this time (ha, how many times do nail bloggers hear that one). I don’t think it’s a very exciting mix, I have however cracked the mixing;

In one of the the empty bottles, intended for loose glitter mixes, I poured in the glitter first (no sticking to the sides, no clogging, etc) and then poured the suspension top coat in. This worked so much better – not as messy nor as frustrating as adding glitter to suspension. BUT! I think I can improve on it still…

At first I was going to name this one ‘Poseidon’ but I kind of liked the idea of sticking with a dragon theme (I love a theme, can’t resist it) and of course a ‘Hydra’ is “a serpent-like water monster with many heads”*. The polish consists of lots of ‘Splash’, the blue glitter, and ‘Prism’, the dark blue bar glitter, and then a teeny tiny pinch of ‘Nightfall’, a black glitter. Then to add a little colour to the suspension I put in more than a few drops of  ‘Power Dressing’. The photograph shows two coats of ‘The Hydra’ with no base colour – you can just see the blue tint. What do yous think of this one?
*According to Wikipedia.

 

The Hydra

The Hydra Mixing Components

The Hydra Pre-mixing

 

‘Dragon Scales’…

So I finally plucked up the courage to make a polish using my Ciate Nail Lab. It includes a good selection of glitters so I couldn’t resist making a glitter polish to start with, I had the idea for this one almost immediately after seeing them. I used ‘Crowd Surf’ (green), ‘Nightfall’ (black) and ‘Bombshell’ (gold hexagons) for the glitter mix and one of the suspension top coats. You only get 6 bottles of it, so eeek! As well as 4 empty bottles but no thanks to anymore loose glitter mixes. Once my creation was mixed, getting it in the bottle was actually pretty tricky and messy. They provide a funnel which is fine but at first the glitter just sits on top of the ‘suspension’, so I added the mixer ball which sat on top of the glitter sitting on top of the suspension, hm. So I jabbed the brush in but that just sort of clogged it up and made it spill over the sides and it was a bit of a frustrating ordeal. So after several repeats of jabbing, mixing, shaking and tapping I eventually got it all in and thoroughly mixed. Hooray! I’ve thought of a new method for mixing my next polish, so I’ll see if that works better. And the name, well that was easy if not obvious – ‘Dragon Scales’!

This is three coats of ‘Dragon Scales’ over Barry M ‘Key Lime’.