BB Couture - Anger

Pin It

Hey guys,

Another short one, not much in the writing mood.

BB Couture Anger is a beautiful deep dark corn flower blue, leans quite purple. It's full of micro shimmer as well as flaky shimmer like African Queen. I used 2 coats for full coverage, but you can see the cuticle drag. So let it dry in between coats.

Anger - 2 coats - white light

Anger - 2 coats - white light

Anger - 2 coats - white light

Anger - macro

xxx
NPA

Sinful Colors Zeus & Bundle Monster

Pin It

Herrow my pretties,

I told you yesterday that I had finally done a stamping job I could be proud of.

Well here she is; feathers from BM plate 214, stamped using A England Princess Tears on a base of Sinful Colors Zeus

I took these photos right after I finished the stamping just to see if I could get any decent ones under the lamp. Then overnight tragedy struck! When I fight my sleeping pills i get real frigidity and anxious which leads to nail biting on a disastrous scale!!! I no longer have a thumb or index nail on my right hand. Well there is a sliver of a white tip but they're crazily shaped so it'll be a couple of weeks before they are ready for photos again.

The point of that ramble was that  I couldn't get any photos in sunlight today so now all I have are these. The upside is they show the stamping fairly accurate.

I chose Princess Tears because I've seen other bloggers stamp with it and it is similar to Zeus with a purple and pink flash thing going on, only much lighter so I figured they'd go well together. And I love how subtle it is, very forgiving and not too loud.

Seems like whenever I stamp with Konad Special Black I feel self conscious because it stands out so much on my stubby fingers!

Really glad this stamping worked out because it's made me realise how much I love to wear nail art - I really don't want to take this mani off, so I'm repainting my index and thumb!!!

Here is Zeus on its own.

Zeus - 2 coats - white light

Zeus - 2 coats - overcast

Zeus - 2 coats - overast

 Zeus is a beautiful darker lavender (I think it looks a couple of shades darker than the photos show) with pink shimmer that isn't exactly subtle, but isn't obvious from a distance either.

I think it's the perfect Spring/Autumn transitional shade, and I know I'll be rocking it this winter too! The formula was pretty flawless. I imagined Zeus would be a watery PITA but was pleasantly surprised that it covered in two coats and self levelled. Some may find it to be a little thick and sticky, but not in a bad way if you can imagine that!!!!

I've had it on for 3 days now and I only have minor tip wear, definitely not too shabby for a cheapy!!! Thank you Ebay or I would not have been able to get my hands on this beauty. I know most people think it's evil, but sometimes it's my guardian angel!

xxx
NPA

Keeping It Brief with BB Couture AFRICAN QUEEN

Pin It

It's a short post tonight; but I have to share that I did my most successful stamping tonight. It might have something to do with using a subtle holo as the stamping polish or perhaps my 'rolling' technique is improving...

But, right now I've got African Queen from BB Couture for you.

African Queen - 3 coats - white light

African Queen - macro

 African Queen falls somewhere between  dark jade and grass green. My camera's brought out too much yellow in the first photo and leached the colour from the macro!!! So It's closest to the macro only a couple of shades darker in person. It has that beautiful flaked shimmer that I can never resist - possibly my favourite polish finish!!

BTW 1 YEAR BLOGOVERSARY and 301st POST, not bad.

Appreciate all my readers but now I'm off to bed!!!!!!!


xxx
NPA

Quench-ing my thirst! Cult Nails Quench & Dollish Polish Team Salvatore

Pin It

Sunday night! Happy Mother's Day to all the mum's and mums to be out there (even the ones with fur babies!!!).

I know I'd have loved a card/just a smooch with wee Buster - who is now 11 months old, holy crapper-roo! They just grow up so fast, don't they, haha.

Got a bit of a vampire inspired look for you today.

Team Salvatore over Quench - white light

Team Salvatore over Quench - white light

I saw a blogger (can't remember who now sorry) had layered Team Salvatore over a red polish - which I hadn't actually thought of, I thought that the red of the glitter and polish would clash, see I'm a silly billy! Anyway, it looked gorgeous so I followed suit.
And what is more appropriate a base for a Vampire Diaries inspired polish than Quench - a rich red creme from Cult Nails?!
I just used 1 coat of Team Salvatore on top of 2 coats of Quench and didn't have a top coat on in these pics. I quite like the look!

Here's some swatches of Quench on its own:

Quench - 2 coats - shade

Quench - 2 coats - sunlight

Quench - sunlight - closeup

Quench has a really nice 2 coat formula, with an amazingly shiny finish. I had sort of hoped it'd be a bit bloodier but it's a pink leaning red, still very pretty and a bit of a classic.

Enjoy what's left of your weekends!

xxx
NPA

Epic Layering - for a lazy polisher like me!

Pin It

A little background to my layering:

My nails have been a fright of late, due to the far too much swatching, peeling off my glitters (yikes!), and skipping the nail balm/cuticle oil routine. So I needed to keep them nails painted to strengthen them, and stop removing the lacquer every 5 seconds!

How did I manage to keep the same polish on for a full 3 days? By layering another polish on top every day!

Here's what they looked like step by step:
 Day 1:

The Dream Girl - 2 coats - white light

The Dream Girl - 2 coats - white light

 The Dream Girl from Spooky Bones - a brand I found on etsy - is a dark muted purple shimmer. In low light it looks a lot like the colour of pencil lead with a purple tinge. The shimmer is really pretty, as you can see in the (crappy) photos, it is green and pink and makes what could be a blah colour come alive!
I had a bit of cuticle drag probably because I didn't wait long enough between coats. I just left it like this because  knew I'd be layering it.

Moonbow over TDG - 1 coat - white light

Moonbow over TDG - 1 coat - macro

Next, I applied 1 thin coat of Specialita Hits Phenomena Moonbow on top and put on 1 layer of top coat. Moonbow is a colour shifting glitter top in a clear base. The colour shift is seriously gorgeous in this one! The dominant colour is the blue & green you can see in the centre of the nails and that shifts to purple & pink. But there is also some gold and orange visible at certain angles which just equals GORGEOUSNESS!

I didn't particularly like how sparse the glitter was, but it was getting late so I left it like that for the first day.

Day 2:

Moonbow over TDG - 2 coats - white light

Moonbow over TDG - 2 coats - white light

Moonbow over TDG - 2 coats - macro

 So, the next day I added another coat of Moonbow and was delighted with the results. It certainly looked better on the base with more glitter. I only regret not getting any photos showing the pink & purple colour shift better! It's a bit difficult to do using my lamp :( 


Can you guess what I did next?

Day 3:

1 coat Hefesto added to the mix

I added a holographic top coat of course!!! Specialita Hits Hefesto arrived a couple of weeks ago and I actually didn't touch it until this manicure. I think I must have been trying to preserve the tiny 6mL bottle it came in!!! And JAYSUS it looks amazing!!! From an average distance it really looked like a dark purple multichrome linear holographic. Then when I looked close I could see the individual glitters peaking through and all the colour shifting and rainbowness of it all blew my mind!

I really couldn't believe I hadn't done more layering in the past. I'm just seriously lazy. And I adhere to the 'take off the last thing you put on' rule when it comes to clothing, makeup and jewellery because whenever I add that 1 extra bit of pizazz to a mani it usually ends up ruining it! Not in this case though!!!!

Now here are a bigillion more pics for you to ogle!

 

 Crazy awesome, right?!

And here's a bottle shot

L-R: The Dream Girl, Moonbow, Hefesto

I've recently bought quite a few layering polishes (like colour morphing top coats) so I really ought to try out more combinations and share the results with you all.

BTW keeping my nails painted for 3 days straight really helped them so I'm going to try to keep on leaving manis on til they grow out and are stronger!

xxx
NPA