Mermaids and the joy of sheer stamping

Greek / Ελληνικά

Sometimes shopping your stash is a great idea cause you discover hidden gems which you hadn’t fully appreciated the first time round. This ancient Rimmel 819 –Green with Envy polish is one such case. I re-discovered it this spring and I’ve since worn it 5 or 6 times wondering why I hadn’t previously worn it more often. It’s a super shiny teal with a blue-green duochrome pearl in. My camera really can’t capture it’s shine and beauty, it looks almost chrome or molten metal.

I usually wear it on its own, but this time I decided to go up a scale in the mermaid-o-meter and do some scaly stamping. I used Models Own - Chrome Gold, a cool gold that wouldn’t contrast the teal, and stamped it first with A-England - Proserpine. The stamp had thicker lines than I wanted, but I still liked the idea of adding a bit more texture to the design so I stamped it using Green with Envy on same plate, which was sheer enough to make things more interesting without swamping it. 

I will go on pretending I am a mermaid now!

XxX

An easy manicure and the konmari method

Ελληνικά/ Greek

After my last post, which I really enjoyed, I went through my file of pictures that I had been meaning to blog about and did a nice sort-through. I think it might be the effect of reading the book of the moment, Mari Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, but I deleted a lot of unpublished pictures and now posting feels less daunting. Has anyone else tried the konmari method on anything?

In the two years I haven’t been posting regularly so many things have changed. A lot of the blogs I follow are not even active any more or haven’t posted in over a year. I am also quite frustrated with blogger cause I can’t see my followers which have surprisingly increased (thank you!). I wish I had picked a different blogging platform to be honest cause blogger is always giving me a headache.

Amongst the old pictures I sorted through, I found a few I still want to post so here goes. The base on this is an old Rimmel (850 Hard Edged) from the time when 15ml per bottle was standard. It’s a very pretty duochrome with a black base and shimmer that goes from magenta to copper to golden. So mesmerizing! I tried to take a picture of it displaying as many colours as possible without the photo being completely unflattering or breaking a finger.

I used Ciate - Gold Digga and a bronze mini by Borghese with a dotting tool to create a really simple pattern. You don’t even need a dotting tool, a toothpick and a pen will do for such patterns. Dots are the easiest way to make your manicure more interesting.

Happy Easter to those celebrating it!

XxX
Elysse

Retropolish: Seventeen Super Shine #471

Greek/Ελληνικά

I thought I'd create a special tag for my older polishes that may or may not be discontinued. I'll kick off this journey through my collection with a Greek polish by the company Seventeen (nothing to do with the UK 17 brand). These polishes unfortunately don't have names, only numbers, but they have an near infinite variety of colours. No 471 is a bit tricky to describe as depending on the light it looks from purplish to steel. It doesn't shift like a duochrome, the change in colour is much more solid with this one as you can see in the pictures. So pretty!

natural light (shade)

incandescent light

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

Nubar Wildlife & Stargazer 234: Green and Pink in Las Vegas

Στα Ελληνικά

I haven't been using my duochrome/multichrome polishes much lately. They'd be wasted in such overcast weather as you really need natural light to appreciate their colour shifts. I was a bit tired of creme finish polishes though, which is why I decided to use a polish with a strong shift. Nubar - Wildlife is the polish I chose and it did not disappoint-quite the contrary. I decided to go all out and stamp it with Stargazer 234 (pink chrome) using a design from Konad plate m83.

This design somehow makes me think it belongs on the walls of a 70s hotel in Las Vegas where they would play Tom Jones-type songs. 

Take care!

xx

Edit: I had to add a video in the end. The post felt empty without it!

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.

Comparison: W7 Metallic Mars, Nubar Iris Dust and Moon Eclipse (Moon Shadow)

Some time ago I found this pretty little multichrome, W7 - Metallic Mars. Lulled away by the beautiful colours I could see in the bottle, I took it to the counter straight away and failed to notice how similar it is to Nubar - Iris Dust. My dislike of having similar colours was not as fast as my 'pretty colours-must have' impulse, which was also assisted by the minimal price of £2. All that is of course to your benefit since I get to do this comparison so you don't have to be fall into the same trap I did. I added Moon Eclipse (former Moon Shadow) in the comparison just for reference. 

Open the pictures as a new tab if you want a closer look, all the pictures are taken under natural light. Let the madness begin! 

The verdict

Nubar Moon Eclipse is different enough, so I am going to focus on the other two. Consistency-wise Metallic Mars requires 3 layers while Iris Dust 4-5 for full opacity. Both colours have the same type of tiny shimmer particles I spoke about here, however, W7 Metallic Mars'base is a warmer tone than Nubar Iris Dust. When they are showing the pinkish colour, Iris Dust looks a tiny bit cooler than MM and when they are showing the golden colour, Metallic Mars looks bronzier. Frankly, even side by side you can see the differences are minimal, they are close enough to be considered dupes and I don't think you need both.

Have a nice day!

Nubar Duochromes Swatches Galore (picture heavy)

By now it is a well established fact: we all love the Duochrome colours by Nubar. They are beautiful and if anything, describing them as 'duochromes' undermines their beauty as there are more than two colours that they shift to and from. 

What I noticed when I saw them all together was how similar they all looked in their bottles. It was hard to tell them apart which was rather odd given that they look very different on the nail. Upon swatching them I realised why; most of them have the same multi-chrome shimmer in them that shifts from a light green to a bright pink and the only reason they look different on the nail is because they have a different base colour!

That of course is not true of all the duochromes, but of the ones I have the ones that have this green-yellow-pink shimmer are Indigo Illusion, Purple Beach, Moon Eclipse (new name for Moonshadow), Iris Dust and Wildlife. The only one that has a different kind of shimmer is Gold Leaf which has a kind of shimmer that doesn't shift so much but goes from gold to bronze.

I have swatched them on white paper first to make the difference of the base colours more apparent. It also lets the shimmer separate a bit from the base colour and it shows through a bit better that it does on the nail. After the paper swatches I swatched them on my nails. I thought it would be useful to anyone who might want to see them compared all together. It was a bit hard to make all five catch the light in the same way and therefore show a similar colour shift, but I made an honest effort! Also, I haven't included Gold Leaf in most of them since it is quite different. 

And now, the pictures! As always, the pictures are larger if you download them

The colours are:

Nubar - Gold Leaf (GL) 

Nubar - Moon Eclipse (Moon Shadow's new name) (ME) 

Nubar - Indigo Illusion (II) 

Nubar - Purple Beach (PB)

Nubar Iris Dust (ID)

Nubar - Wildlife (W)

The base colours (artificial light)

 (artificial light)

 (artificial light)

 (artificial light)

 (artificial light)

 (artificial light)

 (artificial light)

(artificial light)

For the nail swatches, I did 3 coats of all of them apart from Iris Dust that needed 5 coats. 

 (natural light)

 (natural light) 

 (natural light) 

  (natural light) 

 (natural light) 

 (natural light) 

 (natural light) 

 (natural light) 

 (natural light)