It had been quite some time since I had
done nail art of any sort, but the other day I met up with some friends, had a
totally girlie day of pampering and playing with beauty products. By the time I
got back I felt really inspired to do something playful and here it is, a
stamping design that owes a lot to Sanrio’s Little Twin Stars.
My nails are shorter than usual at the
moment which meant I could use a design from the Bundle Monster BM20 plate. The
pastel yellow base is Korres’ 34 – Pastel Lemon and for stamping I used various
mixes of:
Speaking of stars, tomorrow and the day after (11&12/08) the Perseids
Meteor Shower will be at its peak. Do you plan on staying up and watching the
falling stars? Here’s a link to read more about it if you like.
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'm so sorry for being absent for almost two weeks, but I've been having such a nightmarish time with blogger and Google Friend Connect! I couldn't make them work at all and after trying out a million different things, they just went back to normal as if nothing had happened.
I couldn't even enjoy the first time I've ever been featured on another blog! The Driveler Kate from one of my favourite blogs, drivel about frivol, featured me along with other great bloggers in this post. Thank you so much Kate for the feature and your kind words! I really loved the idea of the Liebster Awards and I've been around to look at some of the features, though of course GFC wouldn't let me follow any at the time *ugh*. I will have a look around again though! I also see I have some new followers; hello new followers! I will in time do my own nominations for the Liebster award, but for the time being I have a comparison for you that I'd prepared ages ago.
Mysterious Curse, Royal Velvet, 317, Natural Light.
Check out the colour shift of the shimmer on the StarGazer bottle!
Along with Buried Alive, I also ordered Mysterious Curse from the Orly Dark Shadows collection. I could tell it was somewhat similar to another polish I had from the Spring 2011 collection, Royal Velvet, I just wasn't expecting them to be almost identical. So, here is a comparison I did between those two and another similar polish,Stargazer 317 version 1.
All three have a deep purple base with a lot of fine shimmer in that shifts from bright pink, to blue. The pink shift is actually a lot stronger than what you see in my pictures, but my camera consistantly fails to capture it. They are practically dupes and their only differences are:
*Orly Royal Velvet is much less pigmented than the other two (requires 4 coats at least as opposed to 3) and harder to apply. It's a pooling nightmare as you can see in the pictures.
*Both the Orly polishes left behind red staining in spite of using a base coat.
*Stargazer 317 has a lot more shimmer in and a slightly darker base colour. It is also more pigmented, you could get away with only 2 coats of it if you're careful.
Mysterious Curse is a better polish than Royal Velvet as it is more pigmented and more manageable, but I can't help being very dissappointed in Orly who came out with -practically-the same polish twice in a year. If the Stargazer 317 was easier to find, I would undoubtedly point you to its direction as it is much better and a lot cheaper at the same time. What a shame it's not!
Paper swatch along with some more colours, natural light
One coat/ 3 coats, artificial light
First coat
Natural light
Artificial light
Artificial light and as much of the pink shift as my camera could capture.
Recently Orly brought out a small collection of polishes inspired by the film "Dark Shadows".I have yet to watch it, but I got excited about the collection nonetheless. I wasn't that crazy about the creams, but the shimmers seemed interesting so I went ahead and ordered them.
'Buried Alive' is a brown shimmer. In the picture it looked a bit more interesting than in real life I'm afraid. I thought it was going to be a bit more 'lit from within' as a shade, but it's not. The base colour is a very yellowed out brown which brings to mind things that are unpleasant, even with a ton of shimmer in it, but it loses 'look' that when you apply more layers.
It's an ok shade, I didn't like it as much as I thought I would, but it has some major drawbacks. It requires more than two layers for full opacity, it's very runny and hard to avoid pooling around the cuticles as you can see in the pictures, and when you try to clean them up there's a slightly yellow stain left behind which doesn't go away unless you scrub-scrub-scrub. I'll try it again in Autumn, since it is a very autumnal shade, and maybe I'll like it better then.
Artificial light
Natural light(overcast)
I tried comparing it to other brown shimmers I own, but I can't say it really looked like any of them.
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!
When Orly released the Winter 2011-12 'Birds of a Feather' collection I was excited about one polish, Nite Owl, because everybody kept saying that it's like a beige 'Pixie Dust'. 'Pixie dust' is one of the polishes from the Summer 2009 collection 'Once Upon a Time' and it is my favourite light grey polish. It has gorgeous glass flecks in which give it an unusual texture and glow, without being sparkly. The promise of a beige version had me full of anticipation (every time I use this word, in my mind I pronounce it like this, am I the only one?)!
Unfortunately, it wasn't so; Nite Owl doesn't have the asymmetric glass flecks of Pixie Dust, but a rich fine silver shimmer. Don't get me wrong, I still love it! Nite Owl is beautiful on, again it's not sparkly and it doesn't give you the trouble that sparkly polish gives you when you try to remove it. It's just not 'IT'.
Here's some bottle comparisons of the two polishes. The light grey is Pixie Dust and the beige is Nite Owl.
