Blue, Matte, Glitter and crackle!

This is quite an indulgent manicure, but like I said in my previous post, I wanted to make myself feel better!
First off, I painted my nails with Claire's Accessories matte blue. I seriously love Claire's nail polishes, they are so cheap and they rarely disappoint! This matte is lovely. It's not a true matte finish, more of a pleather look and it's beautiful. These pictures are after just 2 coats.

Next, I used OPI Last Friday Night from the Katy Perry collection to add some glitter. This is 2 coats:

After this, I threw on a thick coat of China Glaze's Crackle Glaze in Crushed Candy

You can't really see it very well, but I topped the whole lot off with a coat of Seche Vite to make everything smooth and even, and then No. 7 Matte Top Coat to make it all matte.

I'm reading: Blue, Matte, Glitter and crackle!

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

A vampy, dark Valentine's Day look

This look was really simple to do, nothing too it at all.
First I painted my nails with OPI Chip Skip and my favourite base coat, OPI's Nail Envy for dry and brittle nails to prep and prime my nails for painting. This is the routine that I use for every nail look.

Next, I painted my nails with Nubar's Midnight Matte
 This is the first, and currently the only, Nubar polish that I own. I love the shape of the bottle, I love the shape and size of the brush, and I love the consistency of the polish. It's not too thick and not too runny, and it gives a very good coverage. It was almost perfect with just one coat, and if I was a little more skilled with a brush, one coat would have done, but I put two on because I'm a shaky, messy painter.
The dry time for this polish was really quick, but I think that's just standard for matte polishes. I'd really love to get my hands on a few more Nubar polishes.

Next, I used french tip stickers and OPI's Rising Star from the Burlesque collection to create red tips over the black matte. Rising Star is a lovely jelly red colour with a dark pink shimmer to it.
Over the midnight matte, which has a matte, silver shimmer through it that looks amazing, the red of Rising Star was made a lot darker than how it would normally look. This worked well for the vampy look!
After the Rising Star french tips had dried, I grabbed my nail gems and added a little heart to my ring finger on each hand. I used my No.7 matte topcoat to adhere the gems and a tiny bit of Seche Vite top coat to make the gems shiny again.

I'm reading: A vampy, dark Valentine's Day look

Matte Top Coat: A comparison

I love matte nail polishes.

The very instant I saw a swatch of matte nails I knew I had to have it in every colour. I wanted matte everything! YouTube make-up guru Petrilude mentioned a brand of polish named ManGlaze, and at the time they were doing a matte black and a matte grey. I bought both.  A little while later they came out with a matte topcoat, and yes, I HAD to have it! When UK brand No. 7 brought out their matte topcoat, I bought that also.

 (Please ignore the teeth marks on my ManGlaze, the top was on very tightly when I got it... heehee

Matte-Astrophe: I have tried this matte topcoat many times, but I always got some kind of veining on my nails, where most of the nail would be matte, but there would be veins where the shininess of the coloured polish would be peeking through.

It certainly wasn't what I expected, I thought that I was applying the polish wrong, so I tried and tried again. I have only been able to get a nice, smooth coat a couple of times, but I can’t remember what base colour I was using at the time.

No. 7 Matte Top Coat: The formula of this top coat was a little thinner than the ManGlaze Matte-Astrophe, at first I thought that this would reflect in the finished product, but oh boy it didn't! Application was easier than Matte-Astrophe, due to it being thinner in consistency, it felt very smooth as it went on and I found it easy to get a nice coverage very quickly. It dried a little slower than Matte-Astrophe, but the result was the same matte finish BUT there was no veining! Every single nail was completely covered in a smooth matte finish, and it was beautiful! This was the matte top coat I had been looking for!

So No.7 wins this round for a nice, smooth and flawless matte finish.

 By the way, flaky polishes look so good matte!

 With Matte-Astrophe, I thought that I was applying the polish wrong. Maybe I was putting it on too thick, or maybe I was going over the nail with the brush too many times, but when I was able to apply the No. 7 top coat successfully, I thought that maybe my bottle of Matte-Astrophe was dodgy.

I was almost resigned to just throwing it away, but I really loved the design on the bottle, the name and the name of the brand, so I decided to look it up online.

The ManGlaze website does state that you do get that crackle effect on some polishes and a smooth effect on others. They don’t give you any hints as to which polishes to use, in regards to shimmers or crèmes for example, but they do encourage you to tell them about good combinations that you discover.

Now, I’m not entirely sure, but I don’t think that was in the description when I bought Matte-Astrophe. If it was then I wouldn’t have bought it as it was not the finish that I was looking for.

However, now I know that that's what it's supposed to do, I've decided I'm going to persevere with Matte-Astrophe and try and wear a crackled matte coat to see if I can fall in love with it.

It is certainly something unique, I have never heard of a matte coat that can crackle before and now that I have nail wheels, I’m going to be doing some hardcore experimenting to see what I can come up with! And of course, my dear readers, I will let you know the results and conclusion of my experimentation as soon as I have them.

More pictures:

I love the art work on ManGlaze polishes!

 This sticker upsets me:

I'm reading: Matte Top Coat: A comparison

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