Couleur Inc Iris stamped with Pueen 44

Have a couple of posts to catch up on so hoping I can clear my backlog soon (-.-)" Here is Couleur Inc Iris, a very dark navy blue (such a misnomer right? :p), which I got as it reminded me of Chanel Blue Satin.

I stamped with Sally Hansen Silver Sweep + Pueen 44, and added Daiso holographic glitter polish for a starry night look :)

I also tried out Revlon Liquid Quick Dry but it was a major fail. Click below for plain swatch and the result of the quick dry.

Catrice In the Armee Glow with OPI Live & Let Die

I had Chanel Alchimie in mind when I chose this, but unfortunately, it's not a dupe :(

This is 2 coats of Catrice In the Armee Glow, a khaki green with strong gold shimmers, with OPI Live & Let Die drawn on directly with brush (thin enough as it's a mini) and Sally Hansen Golden-I with striping brush for the gold stripes. Application wise, it is fine, but I wish Catrice In the Armee Glow was cooler in tone. The gold shimmers were very prominent on the nails, so not exactly what I was hoping for, sigh....

Anyway, click below for more pics

Catrice Heavy Metallilac with Sally Hansen Golden-I half moons

Still no inspiration for any nail art so decided on simple half moons. The half moons are done using Sally Hansen Golden-I, a shimmery gold foil and the purple is Catrice Heavy Metallilac, a medium purple with pink shimmer.

Click below for more pics.

Sally Hansen All Yarned Up over Essence Grunge Me Tender

I was curious about Sally Hansen Fuzzy Coat series so when I saw it on sale, decided to try one out and picked Sally Hansen All Yarned Up as I figured that the multi-colored matte bar glitter (blue, yellow, peach) will go with more colors? :p

So here is 2 coats of Sally Hansen All Yarned Up over 3 coats of Essence Grunge Me Tender.

Click below for more pics

Sally Hansen Confetti Punch over Couleur Inc Baked Alaska 61

Here is 1 coat of Sally Hansen Confetti Punch, which is is a magenta fine glitter/small hex glitter and blue larger hex glitter, over 2 coats of Couleur Inc Baked Alaska 61, a dusty plum with gold shimmer. The latter is lovely and quite cheap, big 3 free and with nice consistency ;)

Click below for more pics!

Pink and orange checkered nails with stamped bow from KKCenterHK plate

Was in a mood for a sweet looking mani and since I received the stamping plate (NNAIL-SPPMF08) from KKCenterHK which had a cute bow in it, decided to do checks + bow :)

The pink is Couleur Inc Botein, orange is Essence Peaches and the gold stripe is Sally Hansen Golden-I.

Please click read more for pics of the mani without the bow and of the stamping plate!

Nubar Rockin' the Garden & Essence Miss Universe

Here is Nubar Rockin' the Garden on the index, middle and pinky and Essence Miss Universe on ring finger. I sponged on Sally Hansen Celeb City before sponging Essence Miss Universe on the non-accent fingers and drew on flowers with acrylic paint (I think my brush was too thin so it looks rather feathery? -_-"). Lastly added a square stud surrounded by blue rhinestones on accent.

Please click read more for more pics.

BYS Magenta stamped with Sally Hansen Pink Satin & China Glaze Passion

This is BYS Magenta (one of the color changing series), topped with Essie As Gold As It Gets (which is sadly not apparent here), stamped with Sally Hansen Pink Satin + BM206 and China Glaze Passion + BM313 and mattified with Rimmel.

I tried this polish out as I figured my nails were long enough to possibly see some gradient as the tips would be cooler in temperature. Please click read more if you want to see more pics of Magenta and my review.

Etude House Fashion Queen dark jeans nails

I had previously shown the bottle and sticker shots of Etude House Fashion Queen collection and have finally sat down to use it.

Above is 2 coats of the darkest shade, dark navy blue with lighter blue glitter. 3 coats would have been better as it is quite sheer but I was rushing for time. The beige on the ring finger is Orly Nite Owl, my first nude shade and it is a great nude with silver shimmers, one of my favourites. Was trying to do stitches across the nails with Sally Hansen Celeb City but probably should have used a finer brush. This is already with 1 layer of top coat and still kinda gritty, so would probably need a gel kind of top coat if you wanna get it smooth.

Below is a pic without top coat, which is grittier and less shiny. In the pic on the box, it looked gritty as well so maybe Etude House actually meant it to be a textured polish?

Btw, this is the first time I'm using nail stickers and they were thinner than I thought they would be. Love the zipper sticker, hehe, will place them on more fingers another time....

In any case, I like this dark blue with hidden shimmer and the jeans theme goes well with my dress down Friday coming up ;) Can't wait for the weekend...

Thanks for viewing!

Revlon Scandalous stamped with BM316

Colours used:
Base - Sally Hansen Pat on the Black
Glitter polish - Revlon Scandalous
Stamping polish - Sally Hansen Pink Satin
Plate - BM316

Pat on the Black is an extremely dark plummy creme, and is under the Complete Salon Manicure line, which meant that I had to deal with the wide brush which I found quite hard to control (>_<)

Anyway, I used it as I wanted to make sure I didn't need to layer too much and actually I think Scandalous might not have required it, I probably could have gotten away with 3 coats of it alone.

Scandalous is gorgeous, fine + medium hex magenta glitter in sheer black jelly base and I was sorely tempted to leave it as it is, but in the end, itchy stamping fingers won out and decided to add a little stamping at the tips. Thankfully it didn't end up overly complicated and also still left plenty of Scandalous for me to keep staring at :p

PS: I now freely put on glitter polishes after I learnt of the PVA glue method and I will attest that it does work :D See below:

You can read more about it in prettypurplepolish's post.

Thanks for looking!

Hot pink nails with houndstooth print BM322

Colours used:
Base - Miki neon pink
Stamping polish - Sally Hansen Pink Satin
Plate - BM322

Miki was a brand of polish I picked up in Australia, as I wanted a set of neon colours and they were cheap. It dries to a matte kind of finish and the brush was quite hard to work with, especially since the cap was squarish.

I like the houndstooth design very much, but realised I needed to align it really straight, otherwise it will have no resemblance to houndstooth once it's slanted (I kept thinking of camouflage somehow), which was what happened to my left hand that is not shown :p

Thanks for looking!

Revlon Mischievous stamped with Sally Hansen Silver Sweep + BM321 and mattified

Colours used:
Base - Revlon Mischievous
Stamping polish - Sally Hansen Silver Sweep
Plate - BM321
Matte top coat - Rimmel Mattifying Topcoat

Silver Sweep was another polish I read so much about but not sold here like Revlon Whimsical, so again, luckily, when I was overseas, I saw it and grabbed it :D

Mischievous is a medium taupe, leaning towards purple and 2 coats was enough for me. Silver Sweep as testified by many bloggers, is good stamping polish and I'm glad to finally have a silver stampable polish. Rimmel does the mattifying quite well and I'm happy with this cheaper alternative to Essie Matt About You.

The stamping this time is a little patchy but still passable and I must admit I love general full nail designs, as I hardly need to align them at all, hehe....

Essence Sure Azure stamped with BM312 and BM311

Colours used:
Base - Essence Sure Azure
Wavy lines - Essence Let's Get Lost and BM312
Flowers - Sally Hansen Pink Satin and BM311

I thought Let's Get Lost would work as a stamping polish as it was opaque in my previous post but it didn't stamp as well as I hoped, probably cos of my poor stamping skills and thin lines involved as well (-_-)"

So I decided to add flowers to it to help distract and cover up the mess, and thankfully, Pink Satin stamps very well and helped to make it look halfway decent so that I didn't need to remove and redo my nails *phew* :p And I guess I ended up with a bit of a wallpaper-ish look?

Sally Hansen Golden-I stamped with BM210

Colours used:

Base - Sally Hansen Golden-I

Stamping polish - Essence Galactic Black

Stamp - BM210

Don't think this picture shows it sufficiently but Golden-I was more shimmery. 2 medium coats shown above. You can have another look at Golden-I in this post where it was sponged on. Galactic Black was actually fainter in real life so I decided to invest in a black Konad polish after that :p 

Update: I have better plain swatch pics of Sally Hansen Golden-I here.

Have gotten 2 sets of plates from Bundle Monster so you will be seeing quite a number of stamped manis in the future!

Purple silver pink cloud mani

Here's another cloud mani, with more differentiated colours this time....

Colours used:

Base - Three Beauties Radiant Lavender

Middle - Sally Hansen Celeb City

Tips - Essence Meet Me Now!

Radient Lavender is rather sheer and could have benefited from another coat (I put 2 for this) but it is quite pretty - shimmery purple, with flashes of magenta. Celeb City is a standard shimmery silver and although others have managed to stamp with it, I never had any success :( Meet me now is a purplish pink creme and applies quite well. 

That's about it...thanks for looking!

Pink striped with daisies

Wanted to practice stripes and flowers so here was the result....

Colours used:
Base - Couleur Inc Botein
Stripes - Sally Hansen Golden-I
White - Golden Rose (can't find name)
Blue dot - China Glaze For Audrey

This reminds me somewhat of Kate Spade, what do you think? :)

Metallic pink gold gradient - Sally Hansen Pink Satin and Golden-I

Colours used:
Pink - Sally Hansen Pink Satin
Gold - Sally Hansen Golden-I
Glitter - Essence Make it Golden

Pink Satin is an opaque cool pink metallic and only required 1 coat. It works well as a stamping polish, which will be shown in later posts :) Golden-I is a shimmery light gold which is quite sheer, had to sponge a couple of times to get it to show up more clearly. Make it Golden is pretty dense with fine gold glitter and hexes and this is 1 coat with no fishing of hexes required.

Guess I really should buff my nails before applying metallic polishes (>_<) but I always wondered, what is the limit to buffing? Kinda afraid it will make my nails too thin or brittle.....

Essence Cafe Ole with silver gradient tips and square studs

I got another pack of studs from Born Pretty Store, this time square, silver and larger, though I probably should have bought gold ones since they will become silver after you remove them (which I would reuse :p). But I guess at least the silver goes quite well with the nude.

Colours used:
Base - Essence Cafe Ole
Gradient - Sally Hansen Celeb City

Cafe Ole applied well and only 2 coats were needed. The square studs were more prone to falling off than the gold round ones I had used previously as they were larger and more raised, but they still lasted a couple of days. Think studs are an easy way to dress up your nails and a good addition to your nail art arsenal, provided you don't have the tendency to pick them off your nails :p