So here's an official post, with pictures and reviews and everything. Who'd have thought!? I'm not a fancy blogger who gets collections sent to her, so more often than not, I won't have an entire collection to post. Just what catches my eye. For now, I will also just be showing swatches of the manicures I give myself, since I don't have the time to swatch collections as they come out. I will do my best to work up to this stage!
So keeping all of that in mind, here are some random manicures I've sported recently.
First up we have butter LONDON's Henley Regatta.
Henley is a very fine glitter polish that dries just a tad on the sandpaper-y side. Made up of blue, green and turquoise tiny circular glitter in a clear base that builds up nicely, this one was hard to capture in the camera because of the crazy sparkle! My nails had broken during some pretty heavy lifting a week before I took this, so I decided to bling them out for maximum impact! Poor little short things. This was 3 semi thick coats and a top coat of Seche Vite.
Next is another blingy mani, this one I did for my birthday last fall! OPI's Bring On The Bling!
ALL glitter. This was part of OPI's Holiday Burlesque Collection they put out last winter. A crazy mashup of gold, blue, pink, green silver and orange circular glitter in clear base, this one did NOT disappoint! It made me feel pretty pampered and flashy for my birthday. Of course, I went apple picking for it, so it wasn't that hard! This was THICK for glitter, and I've found myself adding thinner to it here and there to thin it out a bit. It built up coverage very nicely, I think this was 3 coats. But that was SOLID glitter. Very gritty, I think I did 2 coats of topcoat. I believe at the time I was still using OPI's regular topcoat. Seche would probably have only been one good thick coat.
Here's my Firecracker nails for the Fourth of July this year...
Pardon my dry cuticles. My other hand was all bandaged up after I had to get stitches from a broken wine glass (DO NOT BUY IKEA WINE GLASSES!!! It just popped when I was cleaning it and the ER doctor asked me if that's what cause my laceration! Said he sees it all the time! YIKES!) so I wasn't able to really lotion or moisturize it very well. But I refused to not have festive nails! For this I used the following, from thumb to pinkie - Zoya Rica, Zoya Charla, Nicole by OPI Dandy Lion, OPI Grape, Set, Match + a thin coat of Sparkle-licious, and Zoya Apple. Then I put a layer of OPI's Servin' Up Sparkle over all of them to make the fireworks come to life! I LOVED this manicure and was sad I got a job interview a few days after the Fourth and had to take it off. Rica and Apple are from Zoya's Sunshine collection from this summer and Charla is from Sparkle, their summertime offering in 2010. Dandy Lion was a L/E, Target exclusive color from the spring/summer this year. Servin' Up Sparkle and Grape, Set Match were from the OPI Serena Williams England duo collection, also out this summer. Sparkle-licious is another blingy masterpiece from Burlesque. Gold, purple and blue glitter, more sparse than BOTB, but oh so pretty. Very Mardi Gras. I couldn't get my camera to behave in direct sun, so this is a shady pic.
I call this one Sea Level
Illamasqua's Radium from their spring Toxic Nature collection peeks out from under OPI's Blue Shatter. This one got a lot of second looks, it's a very funky mani! Even though I used a basecoat, Radium stained my nails something awful. Yellowy and sad looking when I took it off. I also could NOT get the pointer finger to cooperate when I was doing the mani! You can see where I smudged it a little before it fully dried by the cuticle. By then I'd done it 4 times already by itself so I just said WHATEVER and let it be. Thankfully I mostly got away with it haha! I debated on whether to use the Blue Shatter or the Turquoise Shatter, I'm glad I went with Blue. I figured combining the two would create turquoise and it did! Very pretty, I'd have liked this more if it didn't stain the ever-living out of my nails... (Sealed with Seche Vite)
Keeping with the bright trend, here's Zoya's Phoebe
Part of their Mod Mattes 2011 summer collection (they had 3 summer collections!) Phoebe is easily my favorite of the 3 mattes. Her collection mates are a neon hot pink and a tennis ball yellow-green that are both straight cremes, but Phoebe has some amazing silvery shimmer in her veins! I don't think I took a good picture of her with a top coat on (don't use a top coat with mattes unless you want to get rid of the matte-ness of it) but the silver is amazingly shiny with that on. As is, I think it makes the neon stand out even more! Almost like it's glowing, like a glow stick. Every time I caught a glimpse of my hands with this on, it stopped and admired it for a bit! Love this one!
I will have more later, but it's dinner time now so that's all for now! Hope you enjoyed them. Please feel free to leave any comments or suggestions! Thanks!!
