Flowers from Korea

Στα Ελληνικά

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):

Essie – 563 Bachelorette Bash

Butter London – Dosh

Orly – Everything’s Rosy

OPI – Kyoto Pearl 

Bourjois – 39 Jaune Trendy

Nails Inc – 050 Tower Bridge (for stamping)

Nails Inc - Covent Garden Ballet and Black Roses

Greek/Ελληνικά

A manicure I did on a friend of mine and liked it so much I did it on myself, too. The sunshine is perfect to show off the pink-bronze shimmer in Nails Inc's Covent Garden Ballet. The black is Le Chat CM nail art - Black and the plate is Dkr-B. 

Nails Inc 4 Piece A Listers Nude Collection

Greek/ Ελληνικά

I was craving this set since I saw swatches of Covent Garden Ballet a few month ago and I got it at the asos sale for £15.50. What a bargain! Getting four great polishes for little over the price of one! 

First, it's Covent Garden Ballet shot through with a delicate grey with pink-bronze shimmer. It's adorable, what more can I say! We need more delicate beauties like this. 

Next is Ledbury Road, a metallic taupe colour that looks like two of my favourite eye shadows.

In the bottle it looked a lot like my Shu Uemura ME 860 (2nd generation) ...

...while on the nail it looks more like Shu Uemura Ir 850 (2nd generation). I love them both of course so I can't help liking the polish that gives me the rather odd opportunity to match my nails to my eyeshadow. 

Lower Sloane Street is a soft caramel nude cream. It's pretty, it's easy to wear and work appropriate. A nice basic colour.

And lastly there's Mayfair, a pearlescent off-white. Even though I'm not a huge fan of white, I like this one because it's not stark. It's a little bit muted to be stark and in spite of the pearlesence, there's not issues with brush strokes. The only problem I had with this was that it's a bit goopy, not goopy enough to complain though!

UK readers: Nails Inc Polishes with this month's In Style

Oh! Joy! I was immediately drawn to this month's In Style when I saw it from a distance cause it features one of my major girlcrushes, Eva Green, and then I noticed that there was also a free nails inc. polish! I must say, those are not really my kind of colours, I picked the purple one as I liked it the most and I don't have one that light, but the other two I wasn't keen on.
The colours are:

• InStyle Bluebelle, a light periwinkle purple (the one I got)
• InStyle Peach Sorbet, a light peach
• InStyle Powerpink, a warm mauve pink

via

Here are some of the pictures from the magazine, just cause she's gorgeous. By the way, her make up is by Lisa Eldridge! Click here to watch a behind the scenes video.

         

Nails Inc - Duke of Wellington Place a.k.a.I created a swamp (monster)

I went a bit abstract this time. I've been too stressed to sit down and think of a design, I just wanted to make something. It looks a bit like a swamp at dusk, but it's fine! I started with a dark blue-ish grey (nails inc - Duke of Wellington Place), then dotted it with a golden olive (China Glaze - Peace on Earth) and then added details with a blue/teal/lavender multichrome polish (Leighton Denny - Your Planet or Mine). It's a shame the sun wasn't out and I couldn't show the other colour shifts in Your Planet or Mine. It really brought the whole thing together and made it interesting. I'm glad I thought of adding it because I was one step away from calling this mani a failed experiment and removing it.

Natural light (cloudy gloomy weather)

Artificial light

I'm also thinking of making a lightbox. I'm tired of this glare in my pictures! It's annoying.

Cool Dark Green: Nails Inc - Foubert's Place

Back in winterland now I wanted something greyish, but not grey (is it making any sense? haha). Along comes Nails Inc - 470 Foubert's Place to satisfy my craving. It is a very greyed out dirty khaki cream and it dries greyer on the nail than it looks in the bottle. Compared to my other greens and khakis, it looks brownish grey. I think it is the green version of $OPI's Metro Chic. FP is as greenish as MC is purplish and both seem so dirty-pretty. As one would expect, it's very difficult to photograph it. I did my best though!

The application was dreamy and the brush is excellent! In this picture I haven't done a clean up around my nails and I am not usually that good at not making a mess of my cuticles!

Of course this called for a stamping session. I wanted to continue the mediaeval theme and picked a luxurious looking golden stamping polish that I have from Konad. In the bottle it's camel/beige with pretty little yellow to light green shimmer particles. I used Bundle Monster plate BM203 for this one. 

Close up of the shimmer in the bottle. It wasn't too apparent when I stamped it, but as soon as I put on a top coat it came to life! It's brilliant!