A cutesy, girly, pink Valentine's look

This is a very pink and pretty look for all those girly-girls for Valentine’s Day.

It’s 2 coats of Barry M 279 Bright Pink topped with Eyeko’s Chi Chi polish, which is a clear top coat with pink glitter within. I topped that off with No. 7’s matte top coat, then used sticky tape as a guideline and painted tips with OPI’s That’s Hot! Pink which is a darker pink than the Barry M and I left the tips shiny.

Pretty short blog post really, I can’t say anything more about this manicure because I hate pink. I didn’t realise that I hated pink until I started this manicure. It came out exactly as I imagined it would, but I just do not like it. Unfortunately, I seem to have a fair few bottles of pink polish. Time to ditch them?

I'm reading: A cutesy, girly, pink Valentine's look

Theme: DC Comics - Harley Quinn

I have decided to set myself a challenge: Come up with manicures to represent members of the DC Comics Universe. I love comic books, mainly DC comics and a little Vertigo, and some Tank Girl.. But anyway, this is going to be a really fun theme for me! 

Here's Part 1: Harley Quinn, The Joker's Moll

I was in town the other day and I decided to treat myself to a new graphic novel. I got Gotham City Sirens: Songs of the Sirens because Harley Quinn is one of my favourite comic book characters ever. I also picked up some standard red nail polish because I had a nail idea that I wanted to create.

Harley Quinn's costume is black and red and usually has sets of three diamonds, either red on black, or black on red. Of course, that depends on the artist, and that's only in the comic books, she had a new costume for the game Arkham Asylum and yet another costume for the new game Arkham City.

I painted my nails with a base colour, red on my thumb and ring finger and black on the rest. On my ring finger, I cut very thin strips of tape and laid them out on my nails to create the diamond shapes and went over the top with black, then immediately removed the tape. Cutting the tape so thin and then laying the tape down was incredibly difficult, and I was having a really bad nail day as I kept making the simplest mistakes, like smudging the base coat and painting my cuticles!!

I'm pretty impressed with the result.

The black I used is Eyeko Cosmic polish, it has fine pieces of different coloured glitter in it, and in hindsight, I really should have used just a plain black polish as Harley isn't glittery, but her personality sure sparkles! The red is from Barry M. My base coat is OPI's Chip Skip and OPI's Nail envy, and the top coat is Seche Vite dry fast.

In general, I love this manicure and I love Harley.

I'm reading: Theme: DC Comics - Harley Quinn

OPI Light My Sapphire and Water Marbling

This is OPI's Light My Sapphire. It's a deep, dark midnight blue that was released as part of the Night Brights collection.

The colour is actually so dark that it looks black in the shade or in a dimly lit room, you need some good light to let the blue shine through, but when it does shine through, you can see that the polish has a very fine shimmer to it.

I've had this in my collection for quite some time but have never gotten round to using it until today.

The brush is a good size for my quite-small nails and the texture of the polish is perfect, not too runny and not too thick, just a lovely creamy consistency.

It starts to look good after just one coat, but two coats is required to reach its full potential. The pictures I have taken show how it looks with 2 coats.

OPI's Light My Sapphire is a great colour to go for if you want a vamp look but don't want to go for black. It is also a great base coat for Konad, water marbling (As you will see after the pics!) and other nail art techniques.

Here are my pics:

2 coats of OPI Light My Sapphire topped with one coat of Seche Vite.

With Flash

No flash, just natural light

Of course, this was a bit plain for me right now, so here's my second ever attempt at water marbling.

Water marbling is a pretty popular nail art technique now, if you google it you will come up with loads of blogs and vlogs that will provide you with a tutorial. I don't know who originally came up with the idea, but it's truly a nifty idea that has infinite possibilities and always gives you unique nail designs.

Here I've used OPI Light My Sapphire as my base coat, and then I added LMS, OPI DS Shimmer and Eyeko Rain polish to the water and dipped my nails in.

Unfortunately I haven't quite mastered the technique of water marbling. I ended up with a few bubbles on my nails and a few smudges where the polish didn't adhere quite right. Aside from the few minor mistakes, I really love how this turned out. Holographic polishes, such as OPI DS Shimmer, are great to water marble with as you get that eye-catching swirl of holographic shimmer through the polish. I think I've developed a love for water marbling with polishes that are similar in colour, the navy and pale blue mix so well!

I’m quite tempted to add some Konad stamps over the top in silver, or a few swirls of blue glitter…

I'm reading: OPI Light My Sapphire and Water Marbling