The autumnal equinox is this Wednesday
which marks the official end of the summer and the start of autumn. I know everybody
gets excited about autumn, but where I live it’s a bit impossible to be excited
about autumn in the middle of July in the midst of a heat wave. Today is
probably the first day that feels a bit autumnal here, chilly enough for a
jacket and still pretty much sunny.
Alligator Purse (613) is one of the unsung heroes of autumn by
Essie. It is now part of the permanent line thought it first came out in 2007, before the
nail blogging world exploded making certain shades iconic and our list of ‘must-haves’
longer and longer. On the website it is described as: “this luxurious creamy
burnt orange polish is the perfect couture accessory and your favorite(sic) new
arm candy.”
To me it looks like a brownish red which it
brings to mind 70s films like ‘Last Tango in Paris’ with its heavy orange hues.
It dries a couple of shades darker than it looks in the bottle and when the
light hits it it looks almost brick red. It’s a perfect autumnal shade!
I shall leave you with a beautiful song by
Dusty Springfield about the end of the summer. I hope we all have a great autumn!
who knows if the moon's
a balloon, coming out of a keen city
in the sky-filled with pretty people?
(and if you and i should
get into it, if they
should take me and take you into their balloon,
why then
we'd go up higher with all the pretty people
than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away into a keen
city where nobody's ever visited, where
always
it's
Spring) and
everyone's
in love and flowers pick themselves
I love this e.e. cummings poem so much. It
feels so light and fresh, you’d never guess it was written 90 years ago.
The first sign of spring round where I live
is the almond blossoms that suddenly appear at the end of January. They come so early that
sometimes I can’t tell straight away whether the branches are covered in flowers or
snow. This design was part stamped (Konad m66 plate) and part hand-painted. The
base coat I used is Nailtek Foundation III and the top coat is Seche Vite.
base colour: Korres – 82 Ciel
branches: Le Chat CM – 4 Brown
flowers: Konad White, Korres – 17 Candy Pink, Essie – Plumberry
iridescent accents: Misa – Radiant
I have kind of disappeared from this blog, and somehow I always make it back for Hallowe’en. I am starting to believe I may be the phantom of the blogosphere! MWA HA HA HA…
I was only planning on doing some basic Halloween themed stamping, ideas started forming in my head, one thing led to another and I ended up painting them all by hand. It was good fun! They weren’t supposed to be this side up which is how I ended up with the anti-gravity blood. I was going to fix it, but I like it like that. It's more ghoulish!
The nail polishes I used are (thumb to pinky):
Etude House – WH702 with brushstrokes of Korres – 32 Light Mocha
OPI – Stranger Tides, the perfect ghoulish colour
Etude House – WH702 with drops of Essie – 381 Fishnet Stockings as blood
A-England – Camelot, the perfect black for the darkest of nights
Korres – 51 Tempting Coral.
The details were done using acrylic paints.
I couldn’t leave without an appropriate song so here is Tom Waits. It’s the song I was listening to while the idea for the meeting of preternatural creatures on my nails came.
XxX
Elysse
A few months ago a dear friend of mine went to Korea. She’s one of those people that wherever she goes pleasant surprises happen and they are the stuff we talk and laugh about for years. I wonder what stories she’ll have to share when she comes back from her travels later this week. Along with her amusing stories she also brought back a ton of presents, some of which you will be seeing eventually. Not the chocolates, though. Those are already gone.
One of those presents was a colourful cosmetics bag. I love unusual combinations of colours, and this is definitely a winner combination. It’s one of those combinations that when you hear about it, it sounds like it wouldn’t work, but then you see it and it’s beautiful, vibrant, it makes your day just looking at it! I aim to become brave enough to combine colours that way.
Something that beautiful of course had to be translated to a mani and here is my attempt, along with the colours I used to achieve it. I chose the plum tree pattern from the Konad plate m66 as the fabric has a similar embossed floral pattern, though you can’t see it in the pictures. The colours I used were (thumb to pinky):
I think I making an introduction to my posts the melodic way, so here's some Olga Guillot for your pleasure.
One of the presents I received these days-today actually, but I'm trying to play it cool like I didn't 'aww' when I saw them- was O.P.I.'s Dutch Treat Minis with 4 mini bottles from the Holland Spring 2012 collection. I wasn't planning on getting any to be honest, not because they don't look nice, but because they don't look too different from colours I already have. I still might get Gouda Gouda Two Shoes because I can't resist a goldish aged pink and I have nothing similar. Much as I would love to have all the hues and versions of colours I love, I've decided to be rational; if it's not different enough for a non-colour addict to tell them apart, I won't get it, i.e. no Thanks a WindMillion for me since I have these.
Nail polish is nice, all cosmetics are nice, but (a)they have an expiration date (polish, eyeliners and mascaras 'die' so soon!) and (b)they tend to look dated after a few seasons since textures and colours change dramaticaly over time. They become better and better with much fewer harmful chemicals over time which is good. Enough with the rant though, here we go!
(natural light, shade)
The colours included in the collection are:
I Have a Herring Problem
Pedal faster Suzi!
Kiss Me on My Tulips
Red Lights Ahead...Where?
(sunlight)
I Have a Herring Problem is a beautiful medium dusty blue-green colour with glass flecks in, much like the ones in Orly - Pixie Dust, only Pixie's are silver and varied in size while Herring's are blonde gold and more symmetrical. On the nail there isn't significant difference between the flecks since the yellowish tone is cancelled out a bit by the blue. The flecks are more visible in Herring because the base colour is darker, but the ones in Pixie shine more when light hits them due to the larger flacks.They are most definitely not dupes, but they are in the same family. It would be interesting to see whetherI Have a Herring Problem's sister colour in the collection, I Don't Give a Rotterdam!, is a dupe to Pixie Dust. Both are light blue greys, but I suspect Rotterdam is more blue while Pixie is more grey.
(natural light, shade)
The next ones are a bit blurry to show you how Pixie is shinier and how the difference between blonde gold glass flecks and silver glass flecks is not that big.
(sunlight)
(sunlight)
And a close of the flecks:
O.P.I. - I Have a Herring Problem
Orly - Pixie Dust
UPDATE: I had a chance to check I Don't Give a Rotterdam! myself and it's much much bluer than Pixie Dust and they have different flecks. I still prefer Pixie Dust to be honest. I like the flecks better.
Next is Pedal faster Suzi!, a blue/lavender-toned pink with glass flecks just like Herring's, only silver. I really liked it when I saw swatches of it, but I didn't like it as much when I saw it today and even less on me. The colour is just wrong for me, it make my fingers look yellow and sickly. I have nothing similar to compare it with which is probably why I forgot to take pictures of it on its own. Oh well.. NEXT!
Kiss Me on My Tulips is a pretty bright pink. I don't usually go for pinks as you might have noticed, but this one looks ok. I found a colour that I thought would look similar to is, Essie - Bachelorette Bash. It turns out they are not all that similar and when I read their colour descriptions I had a revelation. KMoMT is a bright pink whilst BB is a 'creamy, juicy fuchsia': so there is a difference between bright pink and fuchsia! I always thought they were the same colour, but as I said, bright pink is really not my thing. Maybe on a hot summer's day I'll indulge in these. That's where they belong in my mind!
Last, but not least, is the colour I though I was going to dislike and never want to wear because it's too bright; Red Lights Ahead...Where?. Actually it took me by surprise how fun and flattering it was on! Even better, it only needed 2 coats for full opacity which was a blessing as the two colours I have that were closest to it were an application nightmate. Ciaté - Mistress was too orange and Ciaté - Snatch more red and jelly-like. RLAW can stand on its own in a salmon-infused red happy universe!
I really like using Stargazer Chrome Polishes for stamping, evident by the fact that I got them all, and I wanted to do this comparison between them for a friend. I hope this explains the ugliness of the mani. I was trying so hard to find designs that would make both chrome colours apparent, yet not cover either of them too much that I didn't even notice how incompatible the designs are till after I did it! I guess I was too caught up in the details to notice the 'big picture'! Haha!
The base colour is Essie - School of Hard Rocks and the Chrome polishes are:
232 - silver (the one I think is best and reach for most of the time)
233 - silvery blue chrome
234 - pinky chrome
235 - violet purple chrome
236 - deeper blue chrome
237 - gold (this is not that great on light and medium colours, but works best on dark as you can see here and here).
...is that I always end up with the same blue-based red colour! I love it and I am always drawn to it and in fact I have another two that are exactly this colour, but they are much older so I didn't include them in the comparison. Instead I thought that a comparison between these two Essie colours would be much more useful to you my dear reader.
The first one is Essie - Fishnet Stockings. I think it's from their standard line and it's as classic as a classic red can get. I think it's most famous for being one of Dita Von Teese's favourite polishes and it's no wonder as it is gorgeous and so flattering. It's a creamy polish and very pigmented; with careful application you can even get away with only one coat and in spite of the pigmentation, it's not too much of a nightmare to remove. One of the most stricking things about this polish is that in lower light settings it looks a lot darker than any of this type of reds, so much so that I felt complelled to swatch it next to Ciaté - Dangerous Affair, but they are not as similar as I thought.
The second one is Essie - Limited Addiction. LA is Fishnet Stockings' almost jelly sister. It's the same colour as you'll see, a gorgeous bold red that demands to be called "feminine", only it has more depth due to its almost jellish nature. It was part of the Fall 2010 collection, it needs about 3 coats for a good coverage, but it does make a good mess when removed so be very careful with it.
As I mentioned earlier, I thought it would be a good idea to add swatches of them next to more reds and I picked Creative Nail Design (CND) - House of Rebels and Ciaté - Dangerous Affair. One is lighter and the other is darker. Excuse the sloppy application. I was really tired and had already swatched a lot of polishes that day. Look at my poor cuticles, so dry from the acetone.
"Subtle" and "red" don't usually go together, but in this case I think they do. I have been doing a lot of subtle nail art lately and nude nails which is generally unusual for me, but I've been enjoying it. This particular combination feels so good on! It reminds me of a top I used to have with a similar colour combination and design. Sadly it was ruined by a nasty black sock that found its way to my laundry and turned everything an ugly shade of grey.
The m73 is one of my favourite plates. This floral design is pretty and not too in-your-face floral. It reminds me a lot of designs I used to do freehand. Here it is:
The breakdown
*1 coat of NailTek base coat
*2 coats of Essie - Jazz
*konad plate m73
*Stamping polish: Creative Nail Design - #431House of Rebels
*1 coat of Seche Vite Top coat
Essie's Jazz polish is a beige nude. It's a very flattering colour and I hope they never make the mistake of discontinuing it. It's really classic, beautiful and chic.
Three coats are required for full coverage and it's a little bit runny, but I love it because it doesn't have a lot of white pigment and isn't stark. Not much else to say really, it's just perfect!
