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).
I really felt like doing something freehand
this year for Christmas and I wanted it to be sparkly as well. Morgan Le Fay, a
beautiful shimmering polish, over black was my starting point and then I added
little colourful details here and there.
direct sunlight
artificial light
artificial light
All polishes used for this manicure are from
A-England (non affiliated link)
Base: Camelot
Designs: Morgan Le Fay, Perceval, Order of the Garter, Holy Grail (old version)
Top coat: The Shield
I hope you all have a Merry Christmas/
Happy Holidays! XxX Elysse
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!
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.
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!
My favourite fruit is a type of grape that grows in Ancient Olympia, where my parents come from and where I spent every summer of my childhood (and yes, technically I am an Olympian, though not so much of a godess). They are black seedless grapes and usually you can fbuy them sundried as currants, but I always preferred them fresh as they have a gorgeously sweet taste and their smell is intoxicatingly summery. I also love their texture. They look like they have this pale lavender dusting that if you touch it you see the deep purple of their skin. They are an aesthetic and gustatorial pleasure! Here is my attempt at it!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dear reader,
I suggest you press play and let your mind wander far far away to a land of myths, folklore and legends, the land that A-England draws inspiration from.
As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I purchased the Jubilicious set of polishes from a-England and today I am going to be reviewing them. There's going to be plenty of pictures, a lot of descriptions and a lot of love in this post.
The Jubilicious set includes Order of the Garter (originally from the Legend collection), Morgan Le Fay and Perceval(originally from the Mythicals collection). Deciding to get these was quite a risk for me as I don't easily like shimmer polish and metallic reds are were a big no-no for me. I have another couple of their polishes which I absolutely adore and I knew I would love Order of the Garter, so I took the plunge and I am so glad I did. I can't stop looking at my nails!
I also overcame another pet peeve of mine by using different base colours for a mani. I like stamping and designs, but accent nails and different coloured nails(e.g. skittle, ombre manicures) usually make me feel very uncomfortable; not so much this time. The designs I chose to do are emblematic of the UK, a fleur-de-lys and a Tudor rose; I know Tudor roses usually have 5 petals which would have been difficult for me to do, but I found a reference for four petalled ones.
As always, I didn't practice before attempting this. Every time I want to do a difficult design that I should practice drawing at least one of twice before attempting it on the nail, a Californian voice in my head says "Duuude, life's too short! It's time to rock'n'roll!" and I just go straight at it.
OoG, MLF, P natural light
All of them have the buttery, applies-itself quality that they've become famous for. What I came to love more about them though is their uniqueness. A lot of thought has gone into them and that is something most apparent when you're dealing with shimmer polishes. Shimmer in a polish changes the colour quite dramatically and the colour and pigmentation of the base can make a shimmer fly or die. I'm happy to say we have some amazing fly-ers here!
Order of the Garter (OoG) was the only one I was certain I would like. Its gorgeous blue colour and subtle blue-green shimmer made me go back again and again to the website trying to decide whether I should get it or not. I'm glad I waited and got this set in the end. OG's base colour, surprisingly, is not a clean-cut blue, but a light greyish blue, a periwinkle that leans more blue than violet. It's not very pigmented and requires 3 thin coats for full coverage, but that is a very good thing in this case as the light base allows the shimmer to show through from all 3 layers thus getting a gloriously complex blue polish! Oh, and it doesn't give you lobster hands in case anyone is worried.
Morgan Le Fay (MLF, only one letter short of 'milf' which the legendary Morgan probably was) is a sheer shimmery topcoat. When used on its own you'd probably need 4 coats at least for a not-so-visible nail line and it will look whitish shilverish with tiny occasional flashes of pink and green. When used over another polish, somehow it looks frosty light blue. To recap: when you want to have fairy like fingertips, use it on its own; when you want Ice Queen fingertips, layer it over a darker polish.
Perceval (P), the one I thought I was not going to like, but became my favourite of the set. As I mentioned before, I don't like metallic reds; they are too Alexis Colby for my taste and I already have a metallic red I regretted buying in the past. Perceval is a horse of a different colour though and most of my pictures failed to capture it accurately; it's not a true red, or a vermilion like the legendary Perceval's armour was supposed to be. It has purple in it and it's one of those polishes that appear darker on the edges, 'lit from within'. Frankly, as soon as I applied it, it reminded me of a crimson rose; it has that amazing rich rose colour that changes with every angle and a soft velvet look. As if that's not enough to love it, in low light settings it has a certain glow about it which makes it even more amazing. I throw my glove at anyone who thinks Perceval is 'just another red'.
If you managed to read through this post, bravo! You must be a knight of NI! Now for the pictures.
Ps-I think I will fall victim to Jubilove after all. If I had it. the fleur-de-lys would have had a Holy Grail line across instead of red, and the rose would have a Holy Grail centre. Merlin would have to wait for his turn. Why didn't I think of that earlier?
Natural Light
Direct sunlight
Direct sunlight with flash
Direct sunlight
Mine! Mine! Mine!
Thumbs up for MLF looking blue over black matte
Base colours are more true to life in this. Perceval I love you!
On the sample you can see how OoG evolves with 1,2 and 3 layers. The '4' is irrelevant.
