The Princess and The Frog

We are having a Princess and the Frog themed day at work, so I have painted my nails accordingly!

I started with my Chip Skip and Nail Envy for a base coat (both OPI) and then China Glaze’s Entourage.

Entourage is from the Kicks collection of Summer ’09. It’s a bold lime green colour with shimmer. The consistency of this one is quite thin and runny and it took 3 coats to get a nice coverage.

On my ring fingers, I added No. 7’s matte top coat, Entourage looks amazing matte! After that, I got my Konad out and used the red Special Polish and stamped a little frog (plate m30) and some hearts (plate m3) above his head.

On the rest of my fingers, I added OPI’s What’s Dune. This polish is AMAZING as a top coat as it’s incredibly sheer and it’s holographic, albeit a more subtle holographic than the later DS collection, but it really adds sparkle and depth to your polish. This polish is from the ’03 (gasp!) It’s Summer For Shore collection. I’m certainly impressed with this polish if it’s still alive after nearly 8 years!

I love this manicure, it's so cute and goes perfectly with the theme of the day!

I'm reading: The Princess and The Frog

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