I saw this “How I did my make up in school”
challenge that’s been making the rounds on youtube and really wanted to do a
similar thing for nails, though I’m going to stretch the time-frame a bit. I
even tried to do it using the same tools and methods I used back in the day
(late 90s-early 00s) and it proved to be so much fun. I can tell it’s going to
be a chattier entry than usual so I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane
with me.
First of all I was a really late bloomer with regards to make up and polish. In
fact I used to hate both and if you knew me then, you wouldn't believe my love
for them now. Though I always had long nails, usually square or squoval as that
was the fashion back then, I never wore any polish and avoided beauty shops
like the plague. Pearly polishes, pinks and corals were just not my thing and
vampy colours were too scary for young me.
That all changed in my last year of high school when iridescent polish became
very popular. Anything iridescent catches my eye and the allure of iridescent
nails was too strong. I went to a beauty store to find iridescent polish and *boom*
that was it. I fell in love with all the new unusual colours that were out back
then and while I started with what we’d now call an iridescent top coat I soon
moved on to the sparkly dark blues, the purples, the blacks and glitters. I
think I ended up having more than 25 polishes at a time when it was unusual to
have more than 5. It was true love and I wish I hadn’t thrown away those
bottles years ago. I’m going to talk about each style individually, though the
order is not chronological. I think Hole's Violet is an appropriate song to listen to whilst reading since I loved it in HS, it's sufficiently angsty and both Courtney Love and Melissa Auf Der Maur are two of the many uber cool, wonderful and complicated artists of that time.
Thumb: The Distressed nail(A-England
Camelot & OPI Kyoto Pearl)
I really didn't like pearly polish, but my godmother had bought me two. I had
to find a way to use them and the distressed nail was born. I wiped off as much
polish as I could and then brushed it over. I haven’t done this in
years and with the wide OPI brush I couldn’t do the half-butterfly shapes
I could with the much thinner brush. Plus, the OPI polish is too smooth, the ones I had had a more obvious pearl in. Yes, I am complaining that a polish is too smooth.
Index Finger: Kitty Cats (an ancient Revlon
& A-England Camelot)
I love cats, so putting kitty paws and cat shapes on my nails was a very
logical step. I used to do a cat on one nail and kitty paw trails on the
others. It was done with toothpicks or old pens, I didn't even know things like dotting
tools existed as there were no tutorials back in the Pleistocene. The base
colour is similar to one of my favourite nail colours ever, Bourjois Bleu/Or, a colour I talked about on my very first post on this blog. This Revlon is a similar colour, but
has none of the iridescence & none of the magic unfortunately.
Middle Finger: Scotch Tape(OPI Moon Over Mumbai & a disappointing Shu Uemura one)
Scotch tape was my favourite thing to use. I did all sorts of shapes with it.
The base colour has the blue iridescence that I liked. The
dark purple has a little bit of glitter in, but the ones I had and loved had
loads more. They were like Essie’s vintage Starry Starry Night in different dark colours and I loved
them so! I also had a glitter polish with star shaped particles and would place
a couple here and there. I have nothing like that now, so I drew a star
instead.
Ring Finger: Using
glitter gel pens(Korres Spring Lilac)
This was a bit after high school, but I could not exclude it. My flatmate from
uni that knew my love for stationary gave me a set of glitter gel pens as a
birthday present and we soon discovered that you could use them to draw on your
nails and the ink kept its shape, it didn't pool in seconds and it didn't
spread when you put a top coat on it. We went squiggle crazy for the rest of
the year. It was our ‘thing’ and it was fun! I couldn’t
find any pens now that I could do that with so I used a cd-marker and nail
polish.
Pinky: Pure Black(A-England Camelot)
I was intimidated by plain black for the longest of times. I would wear sparkly
black, and dark purple, but not black. And then I randomly bought a black
polish, wore it and could not look away. There was nothing to disguise the
absoluteness of this colour. It even looked cool when it chipped. I wore black non-stop for years after that and it coincided with the time I stopped doing nail art up till the time I
discovered nail stamps many years later, but that’s a different story.
I wore this ring all the time during the last year of HS
Remembering and reminiscing about all this was fun, I don't get nostalgic very often. However, I can't believe I haven't used some of these techniques in so many years. I need to incorporate bits of all of them to my current routine!
Another one from the vault of unpublished
images, one that takes inspiration from Byzantium this time. Having been raised
in Greece anything to do with Byzantium was always connected with religion in
an almost oppressive way. It took me quite a few years to see beyond that and
appreciate those times and all their cultural output more.
The design of this plate reminded me of the
cross-shaped stained glass windows that are so common in orthodox churches. The
base is the amazing inky blue with reddish shimmer O.P.I - Every Month is
Oktoberfest and the stamping was done with the chameleon of greens a-England -
Dragon. I couldn’t believe how different Dragon looked here and how much it
shimmered and sparkled. The pictures don’t do it enough justice!
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):
This is one of the oldest comparisons I haven't published since the pictures were taken back in April so excuse the dry cuticles and not very smooth application. I wanted to get Mavala - 251 Cedar Green and Mavala - 247 Mosaic Blue for some time and when I finally got them, I discovered they were exact dupes of colours I already owned, O.P.I. - Here Today...Aragon Tomorrow and Ciaté - 3 am. Girl respectively. All four polishes are great and there's really minimal differences between them.
Mavala - 251 Cedar Green andO.P.I. - Here Today...Aragon Tomorrow are very dark greens. Both require 3 coats for full opacity, though they always retain a certain jelly-ness. Both have a small amount of shimmer in that is barely noticeable in the bottle, but keeps the polish from looking too flat on the nail. The only difference I noticed was that when used for stamping, Cedar Green's pigmentation was smoother.
Mavala - 247 Mosaic Blue and Ciaté - 3 am. Girl are midnight blues, both require 3 coats for full coverage and, like the previous couple, they have a certain jellyness to them without being true jellies. Mosaic Blue has a bit of the shimmer like the other two, whilst 3am.Girl doesn't. Again the only marked difference was when I used them for stamping where Mosaic Blue is a little bit darker.
I am so tired of this November weather. I really needed something sunny and playful and since I can't make a quick escape to somewhere warmer and sunnier, I settled for a sunny colour on my nails with a bit of stamping to make it more interesting.
The base colour is Bourjois 39 Jaune Trendy, a lovely warm mustardy yellow that is rather goopy and I think I should add a few drops of thinner before I use it next time.
Then I put nail guides on to limit the design on the top third of the nail only and stamped it with Konad White stamping polish using Bundle Monster plate BM21. I finished it of with dots of greens and blues. From thumb to pinky they are: OPI - Jade is the New Black, China Glaze - For Audrey, China Glaze - Flyin'High, W7- Stellar, China Glaze - Aqua Baby.
This is Eleonora di Toledo, one of the great ladies of the Renaissance, wearing one of the most important dresses in the history of art made from a fabric that was extremely hard to make (it required six different processes to make it), expensive (real gold thread amongst other fine raw materials) and politically significant; the epitome of a 'statement dress' if ever I knew of one.
I have loved that portrait and that dress since I was very young when I used to see it in a book my uncle had given me from the Uffici Gallery in Florence. I saw the portrait again recently and really wanted to recreate part of the design on my nails. The end result is not fantastic, it looks a bit tribal instead of soft and organic, but I am pleased with it since it's only the second time I've used brushes and acrylics and going from cats'whiskers to a renaissance pattern is a giant leap. I've also learned a lot about the sort of brushes I need to get/make. I am really enjoying the learning process and a difficult pattern like this is a pleasant challenge.
With my non-dominant hand I tried to make a netting with pearls like the one she had on her hair and at the top of the dress.
I also managed to pleat a 5-strand braid!
The breakdown
Base colour: OPI Skuls and Glossbones
the black colour is acrylic
Golden colour: Ciate - Gold Digga
Pearls: one drop of Jessica - 687 Au Natural and one drop of OPI - Kyoto Pearl on top.
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!
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