Barry M Blue Moon and Some Daisies

Greek/ Ελληνικά

I finally got the Drikk Drk-A plate! Yay!! I had wanted that plate since I first saw it because I find the desings much more to my liking than other sets. I will review the plate in dew time, when Drk-B gets here,too. For those of you who are interested in them, it used to be that you had to fill in a google doc to get it straight from the makers in Brazil, but the people at Ninja Polish have made both the Drk-A and the Drk-B plates easily accessible from their website. I ordered from overseas and it only took 6 working days to get here!

I started with a happy little design since it's been so hot these days. It's the first true spring/summer pastel I've worn in a long time, but the cuteness of the design helped the transition. 

The base colour is Barry M - Blue Moon (np317). I can't say I liked it very much as a texture I'm afraid. It proved a little difficult to work with, but I guess that's what happens with most pastels. In the bottle it has a blue sheen, but that's not apparent on the nail at any point. 

Then I used the beautiful Mavala - Cyclades Blue (167) to get the daisies on and with a dotting tool I added yellow dots here and there.

I hope you're enjoying the good weather!

How to: use nail guides for various styles

Greek/Ελληνικά

In my last post I mentioned using nail guides to recreate the 30s-40s half moon manicure.  I don't know if you've seen nail  guides, they are basically stickers you can use to help you with creating the perfect French manicure. I thought it'd be nice to write about them since I don't think they get enough love. They seem a bit unnecessary, but they can be a great help. 

Nail guides come in sheets like this. They are very well separated and are made of a thin plastic which means they don't rip easily, they can however stretch and lose their shape if you are too rough with them. The ones I have are classic oval shaped, but I have seen them in many other shapes, straight, toothed, wavy etc.

Before I place them on my nail, I prefer to put them on my hand to get most of the glue off. If I stick them straight on the nail, chances are they will stick on too well on and I'll ruin the mani when I try to remove them as I'll have to aply more force to take them off. Like this there's enough glue left on to stay in place and they are very easy to take off. 

 

And here is how you can use them. On the left is what I did to achieve the 30s-40s half moon manicure and on the right is how you could use them for a French manicure (sort of). You paint over them and when they are a little bit dry, you remove them carefully. Knowing when to remove them is important because is you remove them too soon the polish may dent or move and if you remove them too late, when the polish has dried completely, it will break off. I would say that a little over one minute is the right time.

I hope this helped a little! Remember that there's always a learning curve and don't give up!

Happy New Year with a Half-Moon Mani

I know it's a bit late, but I couldn't post the first post of this year without some wishes! I hope you all had a great time during the holidays. I spent most of mine in bed with a flu. Horrible times! 

I wanted to start the year with something absolutely feminine. I needed it after spending so many days looking dreary and I also wanted to try something new along the same feminine theme and here it is! A half-moon manicure with a red-black polish! 

My colour of choice was Barry M - Red Black which I think is the prettiest of all the almost black reds I have because it's the one that leans the least towards burgundy/purple. It just looks like what the name suggests, a red with a lot of black mixed in. Of course I know it's supposed to be a dupe for Chanel - Rouge Noir, but as I have not had the pleasure to try it, I can't attest whether that statement is true. I am sure I will in the future and I'll post an update. It's a comparison I long to make. 

Frankly, I loved it. I didn't think I would like it as much as I did, but it was one of those times that I couldn't stop looking at my nails. I really enjoyed it!

Since it was my first time recreating the Dita Von Teese favourite and I don't have an obvious lunula (the half moon) to paint around it, I decided to use nail guides. You can find a guide on how to do this here. I still had to do some small corrections, but the guides made life easier!

Unfortunately along with the beauty of this colour comes the usual Barry M price that I've mentioned in the past: stained nails. I had told myself I wouldn't keep this mani for more that two days in order to minimise the damage, but it was too pretty to ruin and I kept it on for four days. The results are obvious in the next picture. My nail bed normally is a single pinkish colour with white edges. The base is still the normal colour and the rest, where the polish was, has a yellow disgusting overcast. I need to find a three-free polish like this soon! 

I hope we all have a happy 2012, even if the usual prophets say it will be our last! It won't be the first time they're wrong! 

Aromatic Navy Blue

Barry M - Navy is a rich true navy blue with super fine blue shimmer that makes it very special. It looks sophisticated and very grown up, but there is a major disadvantage to it; it stains big time. In the two years I've had it I've only worn it five times (this being the fifth), four of which within the first month after I got it. My nails by the end of that month were yellow and horrible which is something I had never had before. And yes, I was wearing a base coat under it. I often like to have my nails bare and back then I simply couldn't because they looked disgusting! 

I had really missed it, however, and I have yet to find a navy blue as vibrant and cool so I decided I would only wear it for 2 days and I would use an extra coat of a sheer polish over my top coat to keep my nails doubly protected. Here it is!

Fluorescent light

Then the next day I noticed an uncanny similarity between my polish and the lid of my Guerlain Shalimar perfume. The fine shimmer makes the polish look like a metallic sheet on your nails, and it is a couple of tones more cool than Shalimar. They are unquestionably pretty together though!

Natural light (cloudy)

November blues

I couldn't decide which winter colour to wear when I was looking at my pretty bottles and I was drawn by something that doesn't scream 'winter' i.e.dark and warm. If you think about the beautiful Christmas decorations that are almost everywhere right now, it sort of is. Icy blue fairy lights look so magical! I don't like multicoloured lights, but clear and icy blue are so beautiful!

As I don't like colours with too much white or too light on my skin I chose Periwinkle blue; it is cool enough to be icy and not sky blue. Here it is then, China Glaze - Peri-wink-le stamped with a design from bundle monster plate BM07 using Nubar - Dark Castle (the near black) and Barry M - Navy (the dark blue).