Day's 17 & 18 - Inspired by your favourite Blogger and Art!

I've mentioned The Nailasaurus many a time before in my Blog and here's another shout out in Day 17's theme. This design was to be inspired by your favourite blogger, and although I follow many Vloggers (I think that's because I'm lazy and want to watch rather than read) I do keep coming back to The Nailasaurus and her Blog.

This is my interpretation of her Streaky WaterColour Nail Art using a couple of my lovely Models Own Hyper Gel polishes. This Nail Art is so easy to do and so unusual and different. I kinda like these abstract patterned nail art. Will definitely do this one again.

Next was inspired by Art and I started thinking of the Zoya polish I bought all those months ago called 'Monet' that I had neglected and NEVER worn. Shame on me. I went one step further and painted my interpretation of Monet's Water Lilies on my fingers. Here's the pic:

And here's my nails:

Uncanny, I think you'll agree? But seriously, quite happy with how these came out too. Maybe a little much for a day in the office but certainly for a special occasion. I used a similar technique as the Water Colour manicure. I painted a white base on all my nails and watered down all the colours I used with Acetone and built them up to create this impressionist piece of art.

Zoya Gem - A Disappointment

Time to try out my latest purchase. Zoya's 'Gem'! What a disappointment, that lovely gold shimmer you see in the bottle doesn't show up on the nail at all.

The colour, although gorgeous, shows up very purple on the nails and not at all the deep red you see in the bottle either. I tried an accent nail in China Glaze's 'Electrify' to try and bring some sparkly to the manicure, but I think the red and the gold glitter are completely the wrong colours to pair with this polish.

I cooked dinner after painting my nails and chipped the hell out of them, so redid the accent nails with Color Club's 'The Uptown' which works so much better!

This is a flaky polish in a sheer purple base, I swatched it over a blue polish to see what effect it would give. The gold/copper flakes you can see above looked pink over the blue polish, so something to experiment with. 

I do like the combination above, just disappointed with the lack of dimension on the Zoya polish. If it had looked as good on the nail as it did in the bottle, no glitter would have been needed!

Alien Nail Fest

This Bank holiday weekend I went to visit some friends down South and took along with me some polishes to create this matt finish manicure I saw on Pinterest. 

My friend agreed to help me with the task, and we practised with variations of top coat under the glitter or over the glitter, in the end we did two coats of Illamasqua's 'Faux Pas' topped with OPI's Matt Top coat and sponged OPI Silver Shatter and Orly's 'Fowl Play' on to the tips of the nails.

It didn't quite work out as the image on Pinterest but I really like how the Shatter looked when sponged on the nail and not painted. I'm going to try this effect on it's own with the different coloured shatters I've not used yet. So anyway you can see here that you can tell where the glitter has been applied as the tips are shiny but putting the matt top coat over the glitter really didn't work either, not sure how to make this work.

So I also did my friends nails and she wanted a gradient, so we used a pale mint green polish, Illasmasqua's 'Muse' and a Revlon, I think, polish in a dark blue to create the gradient below.

This was a practise to see if the colours would blend before doing the whole manicure, worked out pretty well I'd say. Then we topped off with a shimmery top coat to seal the design in and give an extra sparkle.

Whilst down South we ventured into London and taken to a Whole Food's Market in Kensington. This place is amazing, so many different brands and foods that you don't see in everyday supermarkets. Every kind of cheese, spice, pulse and grain you can think of, a real foodies paradise... They also sold Nail Varnish...

I restricted myself to one. They stocked Zoya, Butter London, Spa Ritual and one other brand I can't remember the name of. I wish I'd bought the Spa Ritual one I had my eye on too, but I'll settle for this polish called 'Gem' from Zoya.

Look at the colours in the bottle! It looks like a nebular of something equally spectacular in space somewhere. However it does NOT translate onto the nail. As always the formula on Zoya polishes is perfect and the colour is gorgeous, you just don't get the gold swirly cloudiness on the nail.

Glitter Gradient

Fancy night out last night to a rather fancy restaurant, and wanted to do something sparkly with my nails to match my dress.

Plumped for Zoya's 'Toni' as the base colour, a lovely rich dark burgundy with matched the colour of my dress perfectly and such a great polish. Practically a one coater if you know what you're doing. I don't so had to touch up a few patches.

Then over the top I'd daubed some of this lovely light gold glitter to create a gradient effect. This is from a brand I found at Tesco called Along Came Betty and the polish is called 'Swag'. It's a mini polish and came is a set with duo-chrome polish called 'Dollar'.

The right hand actually came out much better than the left, as I'd got the hang of it by then. I used a cut up make-up sponge to smudge the glitter polish once applied to the bottom of my nail. I was a bit heavy handed with the first hand and needed to cut a smaller piece of sponge so the glitter wouldn't end up over the entire nail.

Happy with result and eager to try some more gradient/glitter combinations with blues and purples, my favourite colours.

Zoya Dream

I road tested one of my latest purchases this week, Zoya's 'Dream'. What an amazing polish, so glad I was able to source it after some time watching items on eBay.

This really does look like the night sky on your nails, the finish is amazing and the micro glitters really catch in the light. I used two coats above with a Color Club quick dry top coat, on reflection three coats would have given better coverage. But just two coats did give a level of depth that I was looking for. Interestingly enough the formula is quite sheer, I guess to give a that gelly sandwich look, where the glitter looks like it's suspended in the polish.

Take a butchers at the sparkle on these nails and the level of colour you get from the holographic effect. An absolutely gorgeous polish, really easy to work with and has not chipped in the four days I've been wearing it. I do find that Zoya polishes are on the more expensive side, especially trying to obtain them here in the UK, but I do find the quality and wear top notch!

Mini Manchester Haul - Color Show, Butter London and Essie

Last week when in Manchester I was very disappointed not to be able to find the Nail Polish in TK Maxx. This week I found what remained of it near the tills!

I picked up (above) Butter London's 'Henley Regatta' a green and teal micro glitter in a clear base. Sorry about the chipped nail on the swatch. Bargain price of £4.99 when these usually retail at anything from £9 upwards.

I also bought Essie's 'Where's my Chauffer?', Essie do a very good line in blue polish and this is no exception. Almost a one coater, but as the polish is a very light shade of blueish/green two coats won't hurt. This was £3.99, perfect for Spring!

I was also after some new blusher, trying to find a berry toned blusher recently has been a challenge, and finally picked up a Maybelline blusher in Plum which is close to what I'm after. Superdrug was doing buy one get one 1/2 price on all products, so picked up one of their polishes from their Crystallize collection I think. I've never seen these before, this one is called 'Nearly Black'. It's a textured black glitter polish with micro glitter in cooper and green/blue. Really hard to tell, but gorgeous. All swatches are without top coat.

Then to my delight, a seller on eBay who was selling some of the Zoya polishes I've had my eye on, had 'Dream' on their list. I thought they had made a mistake, as when I checked back later pondering on buying 'Payton' also it was Sold Out.

Anyway sure enough the polish arrived yesterday and a little disappointed with the swatch as it's not as deep or sparkly as I expected. But it's by next manicure colour so I'll try 3 coats and top coat to see if I can get the effect I'm after.

Wine Shimmer

I've had my eye on a few Zoya polishes, which you CANNOT get over here in the UK. The main polish being a blue polish with a holographic glitter running through it called "Dream". It looks like the night sky! You just can't get it in the UK, even online (Tell me if you know otherwise). All Ebay sellers of this polish are overseas and you have to pay shipping too.

Zoya also do a number of other polishes that have the same effect but in various colours, to get a good look at these including Dream, check out Hannah Eve's Zoya "Color Your World" Haul video. 

So I had an idea, I have a dark red and a dark blue Zoya polish and topped with some Color Show glitter gel polish I thought I could recreate the same effect and it ain't half bad. The manicure above is one coat, yes one coat of Zoya's 'Toni' topped with Color Club's "Wine Shimmer". Not the best capture on camera, but you can see the variation in colour in the holographic glitter in the bottle, and on the nail. I just haven't captured the range of colours. In the right light you can see blue, green and gold, not just red. I bought the Zoya polish on Ebay and paid about £9, and Boots were doing 3 for 2 on all Color Show polishes so I bought "Wine Shimmer" this dark red jelly like polish with holographic glitter, "Ocean Blue" the same formula in a dark blue and the last one is a holographic glitter in a clear base called "Glitter It".