Black baroque on nude.

Another week of overtime, another week of not enough light. However, after the gorgeous but attention-grabbing neon gradient of the previous week, I decided to go with a palate cleanser (and chopped my nails back a bit!)

This is three coats of Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri in Petal Pusher, then the details were painted on with black acrylic paint and a small brush. It was inspired by a manicure I've seen by the awesome Mr Candiipants do over on tumblr, I didn't check back for reference but I based it on what I could remember!

It did turn out quite pretty and delicate, and I really enjoyed wearing it. Lots of people at work thought it was "that black crackle stuff" though, so next time I might need to make the flowers more obvious! Ah well!

Neon lights at twilight...

I had -so- many compliments on this manicure, it was crazy! Sadly, my photograph does it no justice; I'd had a really busy week and the only times I was at home, it was dark! So this is a snapshot of it underneath my room light, which isn't the greatest for swatch photos, but it's all I could do.

The gradient is done with China Glaze neons; Hang Ten Toes for the pink (plus two coats for the base), Beach Cruise-R for the purple, and Splish Splash for the blue at the tips. The blue ended up turning into more of a dark purple due to the pink base, it was really pretty! The difference between HTT and BC is much more obvious in person too, if you own these two you'll know what I mean!

I topped it off with a quick glaze of Silver Star by Kleancolor; it's a lovely sparkly glitter, a little sparse but it works well in situations like this one! It was so bright and eye-catching in person, I really need to try it again sometime with better lighting for the photo!

Pokemon - With Love, From Kingler

Hey there! Not actually my nails this time! My sister requested Kingler (from Pokemon!) on her nails, as she has an in-joke about it with her boyfriend. Naturally, I was more than happy to oblige! :D

The shimmery background is one coat of Models Own - Indian Ocean. The pink shimmer really comes out on its own! The orange is a cheap one called Hip Hop from Collection 2000 - it stains a bit, but we weren't using it for much, so it wasn't a problem. Black lines are done with a Models Own nail art pen, the white is my trusty Natural Collection Nail Tip Whitener polish from Boots. :P

She wanted the rest of the nails painted a watery, sparkly blue (we went with one coat of Models Own Blooboo and one coat of Models Own Indian Ocean), but I forgot to take a picture. Oops!

I really liked how it came out! I might try Pokemon nails on myself sometime soon! :D

Splash of bright pink on a nude canvas...

Well as much as I loved my last mani, what I really did -not- love was the bright aqua stains that Custom Kicks left on my poor nails. No amount of scrubbing would relieve them, so I knew I'd have to paint over until it grows out, sob. I wanted something nude and neon with flowers, but the idea I'd previous had was rendered useless by the stains, so this is what came out instead.

The base is two coats of Nails Inc - Basil Street, which is the closest I have to a nude colour in my collection. Really it's a little too biscuity, I need something a touch lighter and pinker, but it'll do until I find the holy grail. <3 The flowers are just painted on with China Glaze - Hang Ten Toes, a nice cheery barbie-pink neon with a touch of effervescent shimmer. Details are drawn in with a Models Own black nail art pen, which is looooovely for dotting and drawing with. :D

Prayers for kicks? Custom rain?

Oh, Pahlish. <3 Every swatch I've seen has never done a Pahlish justice; they are just -so- much prettier in person, photography cannot accurately capture the sparkly wonder!

This may have just shot up into my top 10 polishes, I love it that much. This is two coats of Pahlish - Prayers For Rain over one coat of China Glaze - Custom Kicks. Prayers For Rain is a stunning mix of holographic teal hex, iridescent blue-purple squares, tiny iridescent green-gold hex, tiny blue & green hex, all in a teal jelly base.

It is -gorgeous- in person, honestly, my pictures cannot show you how beautiful it is. Every time I move my nails, the iridescent glitters change colour and flash blue and gold and green, and the holographic hex sparkle at me and it's just like wearing teal jewels on my fingernails. I love it! <3

Application was a dream to boot; smooth, even coverage, the jelly isn't streaky and the glitter doesn't clump or drag. Just looooovely sparkly goodness.

Tru bronze...

Part of my ongoing excitement as I work my way through my gorgeous new HARE polishes! <3

This little baby is Cast In Bronze; a mix of large and small copper hex, copper squares, tiny gold microflakies and fine magenta pink microglitter in a dusty mauve jelly base. Application was a little thick, rather like Amethystos, but not unworkable. You could add thinner if you wanted to, I just don't really mind the glitter bombs being... well, glittery!

I didn't fancy Cast In Bronze alone, it didn't sit well with my skintone! However, I'd been dying to try it out over a purple, so out came Zoya Tru, a gorgeous purple creme with a pinky-gold shimmer. The perfect partner for my HARE!

One coat of Tru, one coat of Cast In Bronze, and ta-da! Manicure was done. Unfortunately I hadn't been able to catch any decent sunlight out of working hours here in the UK, so the photo is not quite as crisp as I'd like, but hopefully it's enough to get the idea across. :)

Reverie In Rubellite

The rest of HAREs arrived the other day! Oh, the excitement! My glittery army of awesomesauce is slowly growing. (Insert crazy polish lady laugh in here please.) <3
This gorgeous lady is HARE - Reverie In Rubellite, two coats with no underwear. It's a beautiful berry-plum red jelly, packed with orange hexes of multiple sizes, tiny pink glitter and teeeeny gold microflakies. Honestly, it's so pretty in person, the pink and gold flashes really catch your eye when they're in the light, and even when they're being shy, the orange is punchy enough to make up for it.
If you -wanted- to wear underwear (perhaps to save the beautiful polish), I'd say OPI's Houston We Have A Purple or any dark red colour would look gorgeous underneath this. :)
Formula is standard HARE brilliance; smooth, easy to work with, no clumping of glitter at the tips or anything. Just lovely. <3

So apparently there's this thing called Amethystos...

... and it's very, very sparkly. <3

This is two coats of HARE - Amethystos, no undies. Even though it looks more like four coats, with the depth of all that beautiful glitter! <3 It has silver, pink, champagne gold and iridescent blue hex, silver squares, and what appears to be a tiny sparkle of some sort running through it. It is a glitterbomb and a half in a lilac-purple jelly, I love it!

Being such a glittery thing, it is a little on the thicker side, and it doesn't flow quite as easily as my other HAREs. It's still lovely though, and you can understand why it's a bit thicker; I'm sure if it bothered you that much, you could put a few drops of thinner in, but I'm happy enough with the finished result that I didn't mind a bit of careful application.

I managed to get my hands on this polish through my very lovely, very wonderful friend Liz (<3). I'd missed out on ordering in the first Llarowe restock of that day, and wasn't about to stay up until 2am to catch the second one. However, she very sweetly grabbed this one for me and sent it my way; you wouldn't believe how excited I was when she tweeted me about it! <3333

The sky was pink...

This is two coats of HARE - The Sky Was Pink. No undies, just beautiful glittery jelly goodness.

Now I'm not normally a 'pink' kinda girl. It doesn't normally suit my skintone, and I'd usually prefer a nice deep raspberry as opposed to a girly candyfloss pink. This, however, is just pure unadulterated awesome. <3

There is a lot of fine hot pink shimmer that doesn't show up in this photo, but it's there, trust me (you can see a little bit of it at the tip of my pinky nail). The polish is so pretty in person, and sometimes in low lighting or at a distance, it even looks a little more blue than pink. It's just gorgeous.

I could waffle on some more about how much I love, worship and adore my HAREs, but I'm sure you get the idea already. <3

Fire in the taco bell!

I'm starting to think I have a problem with collecting indie polishes. I've been trying several brands over the past month, but honestly, my main contenders appear to be Pahlish and HARE.

The above is two coats of Pahlish's brand new formula of Fire In The Taco Bell, over two coats of OPI's Y'All Come Back Ya Hear. Fire In The Taco Bell was one of the first indie swatches I saw that really made me want to take the plunge and buy from independent polish creators; imagine my disappointment when I found out it was discontinued!

Turned out it had been discontinued for formula problems (a curling type of glitter), but thankfully Shannon worked her glittery polish magic and fixed it, and therefore we now have the brand new version. Despite not being a lover of orange (by a long shot, seriously, it and I are not normally friends), this is looooovely.

Look at the squishyness! Look at the bright, happy, party vibe of it! Look at the tiny glowing gold specks, and the iridescent violet hex squished inbetween the orangey goodness, and the fuchsia squares. Squares! Have I mentioned how much I love polishes with different sizes of the same colour glitter? Sigh. So pretty. <3

An afterglow bouquet.

Long time no see, blog! Apologies for my absence, but I've been geeking out over GW2, and it hasn't really left me any time to blog! Nevermind, on with the pretty pictures!

Above is one coat of the gorgeous HARE - Afterglow over one coat of Rimmel - Blue Vogue. You can see in the bottle that Afterglow has a much lighter blue jelly base, but I really wanted the tiny purple glitter to stand out more, so I layered it over a darker colour. I really like how it came out!

The flowers are painted on just with the edge of the polish brush, in (Boots) 17 - Orange Soda, and dotted with Kleancolor - Metallic Fuchsia. They look really cute from a distance, and a little messy in these close up shots, but you know how macro picks up all the little flaws!

Afterglow is another feather in the cap of HARE polishes, for me; beautiful smooth application, the glitters just flow out and place themselves, good dry time and gorgeous colour schemes as always. <3 I really can't get enough of these, I'm so excited for her new Fall collection coming up soon and the re-release of her older colours (I must have Pegasus!).

I'll try to get around to posting the slightly overdue September haul and a quick & dirty gallery of my recent (and not always interesting) manicures soon!

August 2012 - New Additions...

So, really, I have been quite bad this month. Oops. Nevermind, the rest of you can live vicariously through my lack of impulse control. :P

First up are my very first HARE polishes! I was lucky enough to catch a flash sale on her etsy,  which resulted in Dog Day Dream and Why So Igneous? making their way into my grabby little hands. :D

 

 

See how pretty they are? The shiny beautiful polishes? Mmmmm. <3 I've only worn DDD so far, but I've painted both Katti (the flamingo queen) & Jade (the wife) with Why So Igneous? this week! :D

Click the cut for more polish bottle pr0n and the rest of my haul.... <3

A dog, a hare, a dream and some purple jelly...

I am so bad with updating my blog. Weep. I almost always take pictures of my manicures, but writing them up and actually posting seems to take me forever! Anyway, the most recent polish I have fallen in love with (and therefore jumped my own post queue with) is this little gem, Dog Day Dream by HARE polish.

Look how sparkly it is! So much depth! So pretty! Also, so easy to apply; the formula is fantastic, not too thick, not too thin, smooth and almost full coverage in two coats. The picture above is two coats of Dog Day Dream over two coats of OPI's Houston We Have A Purple (a plum-purple jelly, seen in the bottle I'm holding there).

DDD is so sparkly in real life. Not an immediately flashy, "OI I'M GLITTERY", just a lovely continuous shimmer of light, no matter how you angle your nails. The bottle is quite mesmerizing as well, one of those ones you keep tipping and staring at with an expression of vacant joy while the glitter moves. Or is that only me? :P

I was extra excited because this (and Why So Igneous?) are my first HARE polishes, I managed to snag them on a recent flash restock on etsy. I really hadn't expected to be able to get hold of them for ages yet, but apparently luck was on my side, and here they are! The brand is wonderful; the bottles are adorable too, they have little bunny stickers on (bottle shots to come in the next haul post). In fact, I loved these two so much that I ordered The Sky Was Pink from llarowe yesterday, haha. I can't recommend them enough, so if you're thinking about taking the HARE plunge, go for it! :)

Space, the final frontier...

Okay, apologies in advance, I have had a bit of a busy week and I'm a little tired, so this post might be a bit rubbish! For a while I'd been wanting to try out galaxy nails, but always felt a little daunted by the idea. So basically I had to paint tiny galaxies on my hands? Pretty, but challenging. However, my urge to have space-age nails overwhelmed my performance anxiety, so armed with some sponges and some determination, I went to work.

All of the nails have a basic black coat underneath (my standard, trusty Rimmel - Black Out), with a bit of white sponged on (Natural Collection - Nail Tip Whitener :P). The purple nails then had Zoya - Tru, Zoya - Valerie, and China Glaze - DV8 sponged on in bits across the nail. The green nail had the same treatment, but with China Glaze - Lighthouse, Zoya - Ivanka, and China Glaze - DV8.

Once that was done, I lightly sponged a few dips of CND - Sapphire Sparkle across the top, for extra bling. Using a dotting tool, I put a few little white 'stars' (might try to make them more star-like next time, haha!), then covered everything in one coat of China Glaze - Fairy Dust (and, obviously, my beloved Seche Vite to finish). Ta-daaaaa! :D

Despite the trickiness, I'm quite happy with how they turned out! Next time I might try to leave a little more black space (especially obvious on the green nail!), use a smaller dotting tool for the stars and/or embellish them a little. (And maybe if I'm feeling super geeky, I'll paint a tiny Starfleet ship somewhere in there.)

So there you go! Galaxy nails! I have a red accent finger on my right hand instead of green; polishes used were Sally Hansen Nail Prisms - Golden Tourmaline, China Glaze - Lighthouse, and Zoya - Valerie. :) (Maybe a bit tooooo close, LOL, but all the other photos were blurry! Sorry!)

Arista has big hair...

So this week's manicure is three coats of OPI's Big Hair, Big Nails. It's a jelly (or 'sorbet' if you're OPI and you like to sound pretentious), which means it has this gorgeous juicy glossy finish. Name stupidity aside, I'm really, really starting to love these OPI jellies. <3
The jelly sandwich filling on the ring finger is Sea Lore's Arista. I honestly have not been able to find or take a photo that truly shows how sparkly this polish is in real life. See those large, paler hexes? They're actually holographic, and they still flash & twinkle beautifully through the jelly in person, but on camera? Nope, too shy, no dice. :(
Quick recap of other news; my Andrina manicure lasted all week while I was on holiday, which is pretty impressive! Also, I am a bit nervous about posting my upcoming stash hauls, as I have gone a little bit mad. :/ This month and next month may be a little... uh... packed. :3

Andrina gradient and Sea Lore love!

The short; Creme gradient done with Models Own - Utopia, Barry M - Berry Icecream, Revlon - Rock. Topped with one coat of Sea Lore - Andrina. <3 (The tiny shimmer flecked throughout? That's Andrina too. <3)
Also, my camera seemed to be having trouble with this set of purples; it is pulling a little tiny bit too blue in this picture, apologies! Imagine a bit more royal purple and a little less blue-purple. :)

The long;
So recently I went on a massive indie polish splurge, and one of the most exciting ones I stumbled across was a relatively new company called Sea Lore. It's run by a sweet, delightful lady called Jamie (although previous to this knowledge, I had just been calling her "magical mermaid nail polish lady", which also worked for me).

Her polish collection is called Triton's Daughters, and since I'm a fan of glitter -and- Disney, how could I resist? I swiftly ordered mini bottles of Andrina (the first swatch to catch my eye), Alana (so pretty and delicate!), Adella (step out of my comfort zone, but more on that shortly), and Arista (red! holo glitter!).

These bottle shots were taken in my rubbish lightbox (I opened the parcel late evening after work, so no sun), so they're in no way as representative of the awesome shimmer of joy that is in these babies. I am sorry, I will try to learn better photography skills just for these. <3 Having only briefly swatched them on one nail each, and spent a lot of time oohing and ahhing at the bottles, Adella surprised me by being a bit of a runaway favourite. I'm not usually a great fan of gold or lime green, but this polish is -gorgeous-. It'll very probably be my next manicure, but I digress. LOOK AT THE SPARKLY PRETTIES.

Shipping, even internationally, was fast and lovely. The polishes came wrapped in glittery tissue paper, with little Ariel and friends stickers all over them. And sweets! :D She also had a promotion where the first 100 people to make an order over $20 got a handmade polish ring of their choice (I have an adorable ninja octopus stamped over Aquata - photos in the fangirl post to come!) Communication is spectacular; swift replies, plus she's a total sweetheart and her polishes are both gorgeous and professional looking, even down to the adorable little bottles. Seriously, I cannot recommend this lady and her beautiful polishes enough. I'm hopefully going to make another fangirl post later this weekend swooning over her some more.

Go forth! Buy the pretties! You know you want to!

Jul 2012 - New Additions....

 It's that time again! Bottle porn, stash pictures, new additions... whatever you want to call it, it's a lot of new polishes for me! :)

Ballet birthday cake!

Well hello bloggers! I have a backlog of other manicures to post, as well as a stash update for this month, but I am honestly quite terrible at being organized. Recent computer issues combined with crazy overtime at work and general laziness = Manda is a bad blogger. Apologies. :)

Anyway, my nails have been very good and strong recently, and got so long that I couldn't actually type properly at work anymore! I have tried previously filing them to keep them at one length, but I quite like having varying nail lengths over a few months. I find different styles look nicer on certain lengths, so I get to try them all!

My darling flamingo queen Katti accompanied me on a scary adventure to a beauty supply store today, where we got lots of exciting polishes for cheap! Woo! (More haul posts on that to follow.) One of them was a recent hardcore lemming of mine, OPI's Don't Touch My Tutu!.

This manicure is two coats of Don't Touch My Tutu!, one coat of Ibiza Mix by Models Own, and then another coat of Tutu. I thought it looked vaguely like an indie polish I've seen somewhere on the internet called Jawbreaker, I think? My sister said it looked like pop tarts or birthday cake, which was fitting as it's my mummy's birthday today! :D

June 2012 - New Additions...

 

I thought about putting the text first, but that picture is awesome enough to head up a post on its own. Hell yeah. So, my stash update of additions for the month of June. Technically almost all of these are birthday presents, but they were all ordered or sent in June, so they can count for that. Haha! Okay, onto the sexy bottle photos!

The first post!

Dun dun dunnnn. I always find the first post kinda intimidating, a bit like the first page of a sketchbook. What do you do? What if it's not good enough to be the first post? Oh well, best just to get it over with.

I've had a nail tumblr for a while, but I thought I'd branch out into blogspot too; partially out of curiosity, partially because I'm hoping it'll be easier to keep up with my favourites as well! Also because I'm stupidly verbose and waffle on all the time, and I just kinda feel like tumblr isn't a talky kinda place (except maybe to shout "OMG WHAT IS THIS BRILLIANCE I CAN'T EVEN YOU GUYS!!!!!1!1!"). Anyway, I'd imagine everything will be crossposted to both, just means more watermark-changing for me. :P

Anyway, I recently managed to get my hands on the wonderful Sticks N Stones by Cover Band Lacquers, via Ninja Polish. It's my first indie polish, but I'm now starting to think that perhaps it's just opened the door into a slippery slope of spending all of my money on indie lacquers. Sigh. I guess there are worse things to spend my money on, eh!

Enough talk! A picture!

Ha! Neon eye-searing brilliance! Yesssss. Obviously I couldn't decide on which colour to use, so I thought, hey, skittles, yeah. Polishes are, in order;
Blue; China Glaze - Splish Splash
Green; China Glaze - I'm With The Lifeguard
Yellow; China Glaze - Sun Kissed
Orange; Models Own - Beach Party
Red; Models Own - Hedonist

Appearance of the lesser-spotted right hand;

The lighting on this one is atrocious, the sun had already gone down here and my bathroom is the only place my flash wouldn't go off. (My boyfriend has very nicely built me a lightbox now, so hopefully I won't run into this problem again!)

Colours here are not really true to themselves, but as follows;
Purple (thumb); China Glaze - Beach Cruise-R
Pink; China Glaze - Hang Ten Toes
Blue/teal; Rimmel - Sky High
Pastel lavender; Nails Inc - Bluebell

Now, just to work out where this supposed "read more..." button is...