TPC: Squishy Water Marble

The third Tri Polish Challenge post still features the only yellow polish in my travel stash: Rimmel Lemon Drop. Try to bear with me!

 It's been a long time since I did a water marble. The main reason, I think, is that the water where I lived simply wouldn't cooperate. Now that I'm back in Spain, I simply had to try one.

For this marble I used OPI Y'all Come Back Ya Hear and the ubiquitous Rimmel fruities Lemon Drop. I painted the base with Lemon drop, but it turned out so streaky even after three coats, that I came to think of a marble. And I'm glad I did!

 The marble is far from perfect, but I like how squishy the mani looks. Like fruit candy! Omnomnom...

An InLinkz Link-up

TPC: Dot dot dot

And here comes my second take on January Tri Polish colours. I'm still going strong with the only yellow polish I have in my travel stash...

For todays challenge I made a simple dotticure ombre - which turned out a bit controversial.

The base is Rimmel Fruities Lemon Drop, and the dots were made with Revlon Red gradually mixed with Lemon Drop.

I had high hopes the mix would become the orange creme I don't have here with me. I have never been so wrong! You should have seen my facepalm, when I saw the mix was turning into pink!!

I hope this is still passable for the January Tri polish challenge, where the colours were red, orange and yellow! I mean, it's still made with yellow and red polishes only! What do you think?

Y - You're a Cracker

And here comes the second to last post in the ABC challenge!! As you might have noticed, I had to skip the letter X, as I didn't own a polish beginning with that letter. I could have cheated a bit and take any X by Sephora polish, but I take pride in sticking to my principles. If I decide it's the name of the polish that counts, the name it is then!

In this manicure I used Rimmel You're a Cracker* (three coats) and  L'Oreal Fluo Azur* (four coats).

*These polishes were acquired as presents /sponsorship at the reunion of bloggers of Pirkanmaa region*

I was not completely happy with these polishes: They required a coat too many, and I thought the namesake polish would turn out more orange and not so red versus the blue - it was truly completely orange in the bottle. (You didn't think that I or other bloggers would write we love a polish just because we got it for "free"?) The application was good, though, especially with the Rimmel one.

After I added simple stamping from BM312 using Konad white special polish I was happy again. The pics turned out great (according to my own low standards, that is...) and I wore this mani for days.

All is well that ends well! Let's hope for that for the whole challenge :)

Starring: Zoya Faye

This is a definite in-between mani. You know those days, when you want to do your nails but you have something special coming up in a few days where you have your manicure planned? The days when you know the manicure you create will live for maximum 24 hours? When you're afraid you'll like the mani too much and it'll ruin your outfit planned ahead if you don't remove it? You don't?!? Well, Ive got some to share...

 

This mani is based on four coats of Zoya Faye. Yeah, four coats... Imagine me just wanting to throw together something quick, and having to paint four coats to achieve any cover-up at all. Luckily the awesome golden shimmer was more than worth it all!

To decorate, I added some sponging with faye mixed with an age old Rimmel dark plum polish. Finally I slapped on some stickers (maybe originally a present?). And that was it, for the next 24 hours.

 Just see the shimmer in this next pic!

Cleanup after the sponging was a breeze. Might be because of my new favourite nail polish remover with ingredients listing looking like this: Dimethyl Ketone, Aqua, Glycerin, Tocophery Acetate, Parfum, Cl 19140. That's some good stuff, made in Turkey!

I've read somewhere, that Zoya Faye is one of those polishes any serious nail addict must own. I agree. It's definitely unique. Next time I'll use it for layering, though...

Day 3: Yellow Matter Custard

I decided to do my yellow nails with Rimmel Fruities Lemon Drop, which I now regret. Application was challenging; the polish was thick, pasty and chalky. This resulted to four coats and lots of words I don't normally use. The lemon scent didn't last too long either.

If I wasn't thinking of covering the tips with something else, I'd definitely have started over.  But I've wanted to do a paint drip mani for ages, and now I finally did. I used Nicole by OPI Black Cat-cha Later and a number 2 nai art brush.

BCcL is a beautiful dark brown shade with loads of burgundy shimmer. I've never used it as a whole mani, but I definitely should. It took it home from a shopping working trip to Atlanta as a part of a gift set alongside with a beautiful glass flecked red holiday polish I absolutely needed just then. (Actually I remember brushing one coat of it over an expired pink leopard mani and getting enthusiastic compliments, but that's a different story.)

Lastly, I had to include a pic of my yellow nails with a vintage stocking box (containing three pairs of authentic unused stockings!) I grabbed from the jumble sale stuff of my friend T. First I felt weird with my yellow nails (I never wear yellow), but I was OK with them after I started to think the colour as a faded vintage yellow. However I never got the Beatles' song "I Am the Walrus" out of my head: "Yellow matter custard, dripping from a dead dog's eye, Crabalocker fishwife, pornographic priestess, Boy you've been a naughty girl, you let your knickers down..." How lovely... (Did you know, by the way, that this song was banned by the BBC for these very lines?)

Age of Aquarium

This is a mani I made for my second cousin S, who needed something bright to act as an insect repellent. (Disclaimer: Not sure if nail polish really works that way.) I graciously let her choose the key colour and the theme, which turned out to be "something marine".

I'm sure I've seen these tropical fish/aquarium manis before, but was still quite surprised how well the micropearls in the index and pinky imitated the air bubble effect. Base colour is Rimmel 60 Seconds Sky High, stamped with Konad Pearl wihte special polish and the plate m27. Topped it all off with some glitter, namely Wild and Crazy Super Star and a quick dry top coat.

In these pics S is holding a fish food can. It's not a very good match colourwise, but the theme is perfect!

The last close-ups were taken against the roof of my parents' car in the middle of our road. That gave the neighbors yet something to wonder.. And the car wasn't even moving! Telling them about my hobby would spoil so much fun.

Pink Bling

I've been in want of bling lately, and here's what came out of it. On the base there is three coats of Wild and Crazy Cyber, which on it's own is far from opaque. The nice duochrome flash of blue and purple is clearly visible on the nail, though.

 I was about to make a mosaic mani with scotch tape, but had run out of tape so I resorted to stamping. I used BM plate 225 with Sinful Colors Cream Pink and Rimmel Fruities Strawberry Fizz randomly dotted around the plate before sweeping. Finally I added some rhinestones (from eBay) and off I went.

I've loved this pattern from when I first saw it, but I've had my doubts about it really working, because the stamping colour pools are so large. All those silvery lines you see on the nail are base colour, everything else is stamped. When I initially tried out some polishes for this stamping I was overwhelmed by the stamping potential of the Cream Pink and other Sinful Colors neon polishes. They are a treasure at that price, and worked with this image a lot better than Konad Princess stamping polishes in purple.

On the thumbnails I did a diagonal stamping with the bit of the tape I still had left, and lined it with baby pink micropearls. Of course I poked both of the thumbs somewhere before the topcoat was dry and had to reorganize the pearls. The result of that and added topcoat is sooo visible in the pic. Yuk.

Here are the polishes I used. You won't believe when I tell you the Cream Pink really is a dark pink NEON, not just your regular innocent pink polish she pretends to be in the pic. You sneaky thing!

Sorry about the lousy quality of this pic (I only had my phone with me), but I simply had to include it. Don't you think the champagne bottle duvet cover is the perfect accessory for these nails? Let alone the contents...

Aqua cue

The colour scheme that inspired me was once again from Abby of Lovely in Lacquer. See the post and her great blog here! I think it's one great idea to use colour cues from interior design, art or whatever as the source for manicure ideas. Abby even picks the suitable polishes for us and encourages to share ideas how to use them. I didn't use any of the polishes she thought of, mainly because I didn't have so many of them :) I think I was able to add up to her polish list the missing dark teal (Rimmel Sky High) and dark gold (OPI bling dynasty). I just wish I'd been able to create the wonderful brushed effect the colours in the cue pic had, but I just ran out of ideas. Could have freehanded something with a brush I guess..

This is two coats of Rimmel 60 Seconds Sky High with 2-3 coats of NfuOh 39. I almost chose Cnia Glaze For Audrey as the base, but the slight grey hue in it made me choose Sky High. I wanted the brightest base possible for this Nfu baby. See how it shines!

Stamping is made with Konad white special polish and fauxnad m66. You can see in the close-ups how my Konad white is screaming for thinner. The dots are China Glaze Ahoy!, OPI Bling Dynasty and We'll Always Have Paris Suede. All topped off with NfuOh Ultra Shine topcoat, which is a joy to use with stamping. It's not as shiny, though, as I like my topcoats. Maybe I'll try some other topcoat on the top of it next time.