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!

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

Those Crazy Rainy Days of (English) Summer

Greek/Ελληνικά

Gosh, it's been so long since I found time to write a post, and even now it's going to be very brief! I wanted to post this mani that i made for the LDoS challenge ages ago. It's for day 11, Summer days. Well, all through the summer I don't think we've had a whole day where it didn't rain, so there you go!

Base colour: Borghese - Castello Blue, a very difficult to work with colour, but I did manage to make some 3D clouds with it because it's so thick.

Darker Clouds: konad m79 plate, Mavala - 218 Minsk with a little Olay - 680 Warm Platinum on top.

I hope you get a clear view of the full moon today!

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.

Eleonora di Toledo Nails

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.

Eleonora di Toledo, Bronzino portrait

A dress recreation. Picture via

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.

If chaos looks lovely...

...surely it can't be bad! After wearing Mavala - Platinum Marble for a couple of days I had had enough of the pearl shine; shimmer tires me quickly I'm afraid. I filed my nails and since the polish was still in a good shape I decided to give it another chance. Out come my two trustees, Manglaze  - Matte is Murder (matte black) and Fuggen Ugly (matte gorgeousness), and taraaa! Beautifully chaotic mani! I loved the feel of it, especially on the second day when it became smoother, but was still matte. It looked amazing! Excuse the dry hands. The weather is so cold at the minute, it's almost impossible to keep them hydrated no matter what I use. 

 (natural light)

  (natural light)

(artificial light)

Mavala 175 Platinum Marble

This little gem of a colour from the Winter 2012 Paradox/Paradoxe collection by Mavala caught my attention straight away. It's in that region of colours that you can't quite describe as what you see depends heavily on the light; it can look greyish, lavenderish, brownish, pinkish and all of these together. Of course catching it all with my camera proved to be impossible. It is packed full of a super fine shimmer which makes it look like a pearl. I know a lot of polishes have a 'pearl' finish, but this actually looks like a pearl and (hooray!) it's not at all streaky.

I was a bit disappointed with the pigmentation though. I did 3 coats for these pictures and it still wasn't fully opaque. The good thing is that because of its shimmery finish the nail line is not as visible as it would be with a cream polish. It is a shame though.

On with the pictures!

Bottle Comparison: Orly - Pixie Dust and Nite Owl

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.

 (natural light)

A Pretty Greige

Etude House is a Korean brand and they make a lot of pretty polishes some of which I own. This is the brand's pretty greige (for the unversed amongst you greige = colour midway between grey and beige), otherwise known as Etude House - WH708 creamy grey. I don't have any other greiges to compare it to as I was pretty happy with this one's colour. I have used it again here if you want to see more of it. It was a bit thick when I got it so I added a few drops of nail polish restore and now it's much better. The brush on these polishes was a pleasant surprise as it is flat and easy to work with and doesn't splay. This is two coats without a top coat. 

 (artificial light)

 (artificial light)

(artificial light)

I bought this and many others from this ebay seller and have always received excellent service and many Korean gifts! 

Ceramics

I've missed the decorative motifs in the old buildings at home in Athens (Greece) and I wanted to create something quite earthy, ceramic looking, like a decorated tile.I really wanted this to be matte because I prefer the natural matte surface of ceramics to the polished one; they feel more primitive in a nice way. By touching their rough surface you realize that you're touching a piece of moulded soil and it is as beautiful as it is simple. 

Base colour: Etude House - WH708 (greige)

Stamping colour: Olay - Terra

And of course Manglaze - Matte-astrophe to complete the look. 

Bourjois: Rose / Or 39

 ελληνικά

One of my most loved polishes is a nail polish from more or less 10 years ago by Bourjois called Bleu/Or. It was a colour that had become my trademark since I used to wear it all the time and people would always comment on it. It was a proper little chameleon that depending on the light conditions and angle it could look anything from taupe, to steel grey, light gold or iris blue. I went through three whole bottles of that magic polish and I was heartbroken when I couldn't find it any more. I don't know why I ever got rid of the last bottle. Ah! The days when I didn't know about nail polish restore.  

Recently I decided to look on  e(vil)bay in case there was any of it there. Unfortunately I didn't find any, but I did find its two sisters, Rose/Or and Violet/Or so I bought those two. I remember them sitting side by side in the display! Alas! Poor Bleu/Or! 

Rose/or is a pink champagne gold and it's the base colour in the picture. The colour doesn't shift much, but it is quite nice and discreet. I was pleasantly surprised to find that these polishes do not have Toluene and Formaldehyde, which you wouldn't expect from polishes that old. It does take a while to dry though, even with a fast drying topcoat. 

I used Bundle Monster plate BM223 for the design. For the ring finger I used Mavala Minsk polish while for the rest of my fingers I used Sephora by OPI Metro Chic. I couldn't believe that MS looked so light when used for stamping!