O.P.I.'s Jade is the new black, the emperor of jades

Ελληνικά/Greek

A bit of fun with a colour I hadn't used in a while!

base: O.P.I. Jade is the new black
marbling: Dorothy L - 213
stamping: Stargazer 237
λεπτομέρειες: A-England - Holy Grail

plate: Born Pretty - L004

Beautiful lavender greys: Sixteen 648 & Stargazer 235

Greek/Ελληνικά

This has got to be one of my favourite combos ever. The base is pale lavender grey and the stamping polish is chrome purple. The way these two colours interact with each other is amazing and ever-changing. The lavender brings out the grey hues in the chrome polish and they both look very different depending on the light conditions. One minute the base looks lighter and the stamp darker, then I’ll walk into a different room and the effect will be reversed and both will look greyer. I step outside and they’ll look purple, sit under the shade and they’ll be grey. They are a colour lover’s dream! 

Base: Sixteen - 648
Stamp: Stargazer -Chrome 235
Born Pretty plate L005

 

 

Retrofuturistic Dreams with Gabrini 49, Stargazer Chrome 236 & Born Pretty L005

Greek/ Ελληνικά

There are so many small cosmetics brands available in Greece and I am slowly trying to discover them all. Today's post is for one such brand, Gabrini. 

I don't think I have found yet a yellow nail polish that applies as well as other colours (I think that's an issue with all yellow pigments), but with careful use of the brush this polish looked perfect in two layers. What has impressed me most though is how good this polish actually is. I took the pictures on the 4th day of wearing it and it still looks perfect! There's only so much a base&topcoat can do and I just didn't expect such a result from a polish I spent a grand total of 1€ to get. Absolute bargain! I am definitely going to get more! 

base Elixir Fast Dry Multi Active Hardener 

Gabrini 3D 49 (2 layers)

stamping plate Born Pretty L005

stamped with Stargazer Chrome Polish 236

topcoat Seche Vite

xxx

Elysse

StarGazer 161: Νebula in a bottle

Greek/ Ελληνικά

Did any of you catch a glimpse of last night’s eclipse? I didn’t since it was downcast here. However, I do have a very starry-night looking polish for you today. StarGazer 161 is one of the prettiest dark blue polishes I own because even though it’s dark, it is a very vibrant shade of blue shot through with a golden flaky shimmer. It looks a lot like blue goldstone which I love. It really is fantastic!

As you can see in the pictures, the shimmer becomes apparent only under direct light. The rest of the time it looks dark blue. For all its beauty, it has a very unfortunate drawback; it is a very thin polish. I had to do 4 thin layers for these pictures and it still isn’t completely opaque under direct sunlight. I usually layer it over a dark blue, but I think this dulls down the vibrancy of the blue somewhat.

 

 

I love looking at 161’s bottle, too. Look how similar it is to the Iris Nebula (NGC 7023). You can get this polish here(non-affiliated link).

Xxx

Elysse

Close up of  StarGazer 161's bottle

Iris Nebula (source)

Fantastic Baby!

Ελληνικά /  Greek

Another one from the vault, one inspired by the many fantastic visuals of the Big Bang "Fantastic Baby" video. I wasn't that keen on the music when I first saw it as kpop is not really my thing, but the style was out of this world. 

Let's see if I can remember all the colours I used for this.
Index

A-England - King Arthur (base), Camelot (black) and Stargazer - 232 (silver) stamping with at least one Βundle monster plate.

Middle

The dark base is Galahad by A-England, the thin shiny stripe is Le chat CM - Ashy Green, the tiny triangle is by a greek brand called Erre Due and I suspect the thick stripe is For Audrey by China Glaze. 

I am not even going to attempt the ring finger though I recognise a couple
Little finger (not Petyr Baelish)
Etude House (white), A-England - Camelot and Seventeen 533.

The video follows, but if you're not used to kpop , listen at your own peril!
That's it from me and T.O.P.

xxx
Elysse

So tonight that I might see

Ελληνικά/ Greek

Mazzy Star’s album “So tonight that I might see” is one of my favourites of all time. I became acquainted with Hope Sandoval’s warm and otherworldly voice in the early 90s along with the rest of the world through the song ‘Fade into you’. One song was not enough to quench my thirst for music that spoke to me; I got the album and have been under its spell ever since.

It wasn’t just the music I loved, as I found the album cover equally mesmerizing. The early ‘90s were not a time where arabesques were popular and purple has always been a favourite colour of mine. It was only a matter of time before I attempted to replicate the design in one of my manicures.

I tried many colours and combinations to achieve this design, it was harder than I initially thought it would be. In the end I used 1 layer of a-England’s Camelot and then I used Stargazer’s Chrome Nail Polish in 235 to stamp a design from the Drikk drk-A palette and in the end I dabbed a little bit of Le Chat CM in True Violet.

I couldn't not attach a song to this post now, could I?

What do you think?

Elysse

facebook * twitter*email

*Non-affiliated links

My Inner Monologue, Stargazer - 234, Sparitual - Body & BM201

Greek/Ελληνικά

Inner monologue

Thought no1: I really feel like doing something pink. How odd...

Thought no2: Why haven't I used my Stargazer Chromes as a base colour yet?

Thought no3: I really like this design, but the lines always come out too thick. Maybe if I tried stamping with a matte polish?

And here's the results! I did the swap in colours on the middle finger to show you how thick the lines on the design come out with a normal polish. I didn't use top coat over the matte stamping and the whole thing lasted flawlessly for the better part of the week. I think this is one of my favourite manis so far. I was looking at my nails so much when I had it on!

Stargazer - 234

Sparitual - Body

BM201 plate

Stargazer 132: the Decadent Beauty

Greek/ Ελληνικά

I haven't started a post with music in a while so here's some good ol'American Punk. Punk was never as big in the USA as it was in the UK, but Ain't it fun by the Dead Boys must be one of the best songs of the genre. 

Is the polish I have for you today punk-appropriate? I think it is. There's something unusual about Stargazer's 132; this decadent beauty is much more complicated than it looks in the bottle. Ιt is one of those indiscribable colours that seem to change a lot depending on the light and colours around it. It's a little bit metallic grey, a bit pale golden, it leans towards green, sometimes it looks delicare and others it takes on a rather industrial roughness. Stamping over it is always a pleasure as the results vary a lot depending on the colours you use. 

It's a sheer polish as it takes 3 good coats to reach full opacity (4 if you do thin layers) and come to think of it, I should try it over black. I am almost certain the results will be interesting!

This polish is definitely worth more of your attention!

direct sunlight

sunshine(shade)

artificial light

sunshine (shade)

sunshine (shade) angle 1

sunshine (shade) angle 2

artificial light

Fleur-de-lys fun with A-England and Drk-B

Ελληνικά/In Greek

This fleur-de-lys design was the design I was craving the most out of the Drikk Drk-B plate. And it goes do well with A-england - Order of the Garter!

natural light(indoors)

I leave you with some appropriate music!

Lazy Days of Summer Challenge Day 1: Beach Theme

In Greek/Ελληνικά

I decided to be a bit more social with my blog and what better way is there than to enter a challenge? I asked Karine [check her blog out if you haven't, it's great and she's such a lovely person!] a while ago about this and she introduced me to the 'Lazy Days of Summer Challenge'. Now this challenge couldn't be more different from what this summer has been so far and will probably continue to be: wet and busy.

Here is my entry for the beach theme. I had waves crushing on a sandy beach in mind when I did this. I used Olay - 685 Eternal Gold, a beige with gold that is just like a sandy beach under the sun, as a base. Then I used a combination of dark and light blue chrome polish (Stargazer 233 and 236) and Drikk Drk-B plate for stamping. I really like how it came out. 

Orly - Nite Owl and Drikk Dkr-B

In Greek/Ελληνικά

The Dkr-B plate has finally been released! I was so looking forward to it as I loved the designs from the previews we were getting from time to time. I orderd my plate from Ninja Polish and I have to say I was amazed with their service since it got from the US to the UK in 3 working days. Excellent service!

For this I used Orly's Nite Owl as a base and stamped it using my old faithful, Stargazer 232. It's funny how it looks like it has an almost blue hue compared to the warm silver shimmer of Nite Owl. On the nail it looked more silver and made the shimmer look a bit goldish. For the owl I used my other old faithful Le Chat CM nail art 04 Brown with some details using Stargazer 233, a chrome blue.

Artificial Light

Aren't the designs beautiful?

Comparison: Orly - Mysterious Curse(Dark Shadows Collection), Orly - Royal Velvet and Stargazer - 317

Greek/Ελληνικά

Hello my dears!!

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.

Stargazer 317 Ultra Cover Nail Polishes

Last year I saw this polish here and really really liked it. Purple with a blue sheen, what's not to like! However, when I ordered it from the Stargazer shop, what I received was completely different. The one I received is a bright pink with a multichrome shimmer that shifts from pink to purple, the same kind of shimmer you find in Stargazer Ultra Cover Nail Polish 305. I looked around on line and in the end I found the version of 317 I was originally looking for, but no further details as to why or how they are different.

The odd thing is, even their barcodes are exactly the same. I thought I should point this out on a separate post in case someone is looking for the Stargazer Ultra Cover Nail Polish 317 and ends up having the same problems I did.

direct sunlight

direct sunlight

Natural light