Fresh new nails for a fresh start

Hello lovelies! I hope you all had a lovely Xmas and that you are recovering from the festive season.

I'm not having the best of weeks and so I don't have any swatches or art to show you today. Instead, I thought I'd show you my natural nails. This is all mine, with one coat of Essie's nourishing base coat:

As you can see, I officially have my 'winter skin' now, so you can't really see my olive complexion anymore. And this picture is why I don't do bottle shots:

Unfortunately, I managed to break my right thumb nail on our dishwasher just before I took this picture, so I'm planning to nub all of these, but my nail care regimen appears to make them grow like weeds, so it's no biggie. 

Sorry for not posting anything more elaborate or interesting, but I'm just having a rotten week and I don't have the energy to do anything else.

Try stay happy, guys and girls. That's all anyone can hope for.

'Til next time.

- Skye x

Merry Christmas 2012!

Hello my lovelies! Welcome to my blog :-)

This is going to be a short post because our family is settling in for Christmas this evening (having now recovered from our 8th shock survival of the end of the world since 2000!!!). 

I would just like to show you what will be on my nails this Christmas Day:

Left hand (those aren't bad cuticles; it's bad
glue clean-up - sorry!)

Right hand :-)

This is three-four coats of KBShimmer's Wrapper's Delight with one coat of top coat (though it needs a couple more coats for smoothness), and as you can see, the glitter payoff was incredible. I love that this polish contains an equal amount of each colour of glitter - although it looks more red/gold in some lights, my nails just look like pure tinsel!

What's more, this is a VERY special polish indeed; not only is it GORGEOUS, it is also a charity polish from which some the profits went towards buying toys for Toys for Tots earlier this December. I think this was a really lovely gesture from Christie and I'm proud to wear my polish knowing that my money gave a child a toy this Christmas. I hope that she'll do the same again next year :-)

I'm not going to be around for the holidays now, so I'd like to wish all of you a Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy Kwanzaa and Happy Holidays, as well as a happy and healthy New Year 2013! Most of all, I wish you peace and contentment - because that's all we can really hope for in life :-)

As this is getting a little hippy right now, I'll close with a picture of our Christmas tree this year:

Beautiful tree, crappy picture!

Our family have a tradition of decorating the tree with Disney ornaments. We don't have them all (because my ma stopped getting new ones when we got big), but we have A LOT of Disney on this tree. If you blow the pic up big you'll spot a lot of old favs (no new Disney rubbish like Lilo and Stitch here!). 

Merry Christmas and I'll see you around New Year :-)

Stay happy!

- Skye x

Keeping it Simple: Festive Accent Nails

Hello lovelies! Welcome back to my blog. 

Today I have a very short post for you :-) This is Kiko 221 (Light Satin Beige) with a KBShimmer No Whine Left accent nail:

Keeping it simple!

I'm a bit sad because the picture doesn't capture the beauty of either polish, really; I'm sure that this mani would have looked more impressive in the sunshine, but all we have right now is rain *le sigh*. 

For the record, the Kiko polish is a sheer champagne glass fleck/shimmer polish, and this is about four coats. The polish is actually a favourite of mine, though it suits my summer fingers better. In the bottle it looks quite silvery, and even has subtle purple and green specks in it (you'll have to take my word for it!), but in artificial light it looks quite golden. 

No Whine Left is shown here in about three coats plus several layers of shiny top coat. I did think about putting KBShimmer We Three Blings over the Kiko to make this mani more Xmassy, but I was too frightened of the removal to attempt it and ruin my nails just before Xmas.

Speaking of removal...

Victory!

...I mastered the glue base coat! 

This time, the glue dried in about 5-10 mins and then I could get on with my life (yessssss!). I think the trick was not to apply lots of thick heavy coats, but to apply the one thick-ish coat, wait a few minutes for the water in the pva to evaporate, and then repaint only those areas around the edges of the nail that already had a super-thin layer of dried glue. I also didn't use my base coat over the glue like last time. 

The wear time was probably about 3 days (probably because I like hot showers) and the glitter popped right off my nail in one big sheet - I didn't even need my orange stick! My nails actually look really moisturised too. This is definitely a keeper :D I love that I'll now be able to use a main mani colour and then change my accent nail according to my mood ^^ 

Have you tried the glue method yet? And what do you think about these champagne shades? Yea or nay?

'Til next time and stay happy :-)

- Skye x

A Christmas mani: snowflakes!

Hello lovelies! I seem to have picked up several new followers so welcome one and all :-) I hope you like what you see here.

Today I have a wintry mani to show you that I created for a guest post for Katherine Reed's blog Nail Art and the Sims. Katherine asked me for something Christmassy, and so I chose to do a snowflake mani. As you all know, I've been dying of jealousy with all the beautifully stamped snowflake manis around about at the moment, so this seemed like a good choice – even if it’s not totally original. Looking back, this isn't really a Christmas design (it’s more of a seasonal one), but hopefully my nail art efforts will make up for that haha.

As I had to write an entire post for Katherine, I thought I’d just show you the finished masterpiece ;-)

Snowflakes are finally MINE!!!

This is the most intricate nail art I’ve EVER done, so I’m really pleased with how it came out, even though I had super shaky hands when I did it (it’s an intermittent problem and was a real issue when I did the mani).

If you want to read my full write-up, head over to Katherine’s brilliant blog to see my post :-) In the write-up, I discuss my thought process for the design, as well as the polishes I used. I also show a couple more pictures of the finished mani (which really show off the incredible contrast in my gradient), as well as a pic of my work in progress (which is real pretty, if I do say so, myself!). Finally, I have a swatch of the blue shimmer that I used as a base coat – which is a real winner from Collection 2000!

I hope you enjoy reading my post and hope to see you here again soon :-)

Stay smiley!

– Skye x 

My first colour block mani

Hello lovelies - and welcome to my new followers! I hope you enjoy my blog :-)

Firstly, I'd like to draw your attention to the layout of my blog - some of you may have noticed that it has now changed! I now have a 'Pages' bar underneath the blog title, and the bar contains a *mystery* page which I'm planning to update over the coming weeks. Ohhh, the excitement! ;-)

Onto the mani :-)

Today, I'd like to show you possibly the biggest fail of a mani I've ever done, logistically. This was my first attempt at colour blocking, and also my debut with a PVA glue base coat, and it was plagued with disaster from the word go.

The polishes used were:

• Rimmel At Ease (brown)
• Collection 2000 Buried Treasure #25 (gold base)
• Kiko 238 (red base)
• KBShimmer We Three Blings (gold topper)
• KBShimmer Berry Christmas (red topper)
• Model's Own black nail art pen (striper)

First, here's some pics (sorry for the quality - I took them very late at night with my phone and so they're a bit blurry):

 

Please ignore my fail-striping...

A different angle so you can see the holo glitter...

The entire mani was a logistic fail and I'm almost embarrassed to tell you that this was my good hand... if you want to know why this mani caused me so much grief, just read my rant in italics below!

<rant> Firstly, after spending all weekend clearing out old polish bottles to fill with PVA, I discovered that PVA doesn't like to be decanted into tiny polish bottles, so I gave up once I half-filled one. Such a waste of time! I then found that it took well over half an hour for the PVA to dry on my nails before  I could begin colour blocking (which also took forever, of course). I did O.K. with my freehand diagonals (freehand because tape would lift the PVA - grrr why didn't I think of that BEFORE starting) but then got my black striper out and found that despite usually being able to make elegant, thin lines, I only managed thick ugly ones, which sorta ruined what I'd achieved so far. 

Since it took so long just to get the base layers down, I ended up staying up stupidly late (pushing 4/5am my time, only to discover that I'd truly planned everything wrong; I wore some of my new skinny jeans that day - the ones with the stiff top button - and, naturally, I totally ruined two nails just trying to get the things off. I tried saving the mani with some extra top coat but when I woke up in the morning I'd somehow ruined another two nails in my sleep and ended up removing the mani almost immediately - meaning it lasted a whole nine(!) hours altogether, eight of which I spent sleeping! 

Finally, I found that despite trying to make sure my glue base was fairly thick, I damaged some of my nails (mostly around the edges) when peeling off the glue, which is sorta the reason I don't like the foil method. Since I stayed up so late trying to do something arty and fun, I felt very frustrated and a little disappointed about all of this. I'm also annoyed that I have ten glitter polishes in my collection that I was hoping to be able to wear whenever I want, but it now seems I still can't do this without damaging my nails in some way. GRRR. </end rant>

Now, given that this post is a ball of negativity right now, and in the spirit of positive thinking, what silver lining was there to all of this? I got to try out two of my Xmas KBShimmers (Berry Christmas and We Three Blings), which were both absolutely gorgeous (I will definitely brave swatching them alone sometime), and I discovered that Berry Christmas is a perfect match for a new and adventurous lipstick I bought recently! The lipstick in question was Clinique's Mighty Maraschino Chubby Stick and is a little out of my comfort zone, but I've been trying to revamp my image lately and so I decided to take a risk. I think I actually really like it (even though my ma hates it...). I think I'll wear it at Christmas with my KBShimmer Wrappers Delight. What y'all think of the lipstick?

(NB: I'm really tired, so please forgive me the picture quality!)

Nice pic

Silly pic (nice pics are hard...)

You know, from a distance the mani actually looked OK - too bad I didn't have time for it to grow on me :-( Better luck next time, I guess!

Thanks for stopping by and hopefully I can show you something better next time!

- Skye x

Max Factor Fantasy Fire

Why, hello! Welcome to my blog :-)

WARNING: seriously picture-heavy post (but it IS fantasy fire...)

Today I have a polish for you that truly needs no introduction (although I'm a tad verbose, so there'll be one anyway). The reason for my choice: a friend of mine at my local Clinique counter spotted it in my basket whilst I was in Boots the other day and told me I HAD to wear it next time I go in store so she can see what it's like on the nail. Her face when she saw the bottle was FULL Gollum! I wish I could have got a photo to put on this post, but I'm sure she'd have killed me for that ;-)

A crude artist's impression of my friend's face - with surprisingly little artistic licence!
(with thanks to Google and www.prettypurplepolish.com for the best bottle shot I could find)

I wanted to show my friend the polish in its best light, and spent a lot of time googling different undies to figure out which would be best, but in the end, I decided to take some inspiration from Liesl Gutierrez on the PAA FB group and swatched it alone in all it's glory. As we all know by now, this is a very sheer polish, and so I eventually decided to experiment with how many layers it would take to get full opacity. The magic number? Six (in most lights). A lot of people will be absolutely aghast that I 'wasted' that much of this tiny bottle of polish, but I can replace it any time because I honestly have it coming out of my ears here; clearly there aren't any polishaholics in my area!

This polish has so many different sides to it that I took about FIFTY (50) pictures of my nails before eventually narrowing them down to the following (so please don't be offended that there are six)! All of the swatches below were photographed WITHOUT a top coat - this polish is unbelievably glossy!

Enjoy :-)

Ooooo

Ahhh

(Slightly blurred) close up!

Multichrome goodness: enlarge to see the green!

The full spectrum under fluorescent lighting (sorry
for the quality - had to be quick whilst the Dr was gone)!

This is what six layers of FF looks like in natural light - BLUE!

I've had this polish in my collection for some months now (used once before), and if I'm honest, I don't love it as much as I'd like to - it's just not the same on the nail as it is in the bottle. That said, I'm happy to keep experimenting with different undies until I find the perfect combo.

What's your fav undie for this polish? Let me know in the comments!


[EDIT: Bonus nail art!] 

I wasn't going to show you this, or even do this(!) but I sat down last night to remove the mani and started playing around with my new Models Own nail art pens. I originally planned to try drawing a snowflake because I am just dying with jealousy with all these beautiful winter manis out there right now, but I ended up getting side-tracked and this is what I came up with:

Close-up: I did art!

Matte and multichrome!

I'm so pleased with how this came out. I was originally just going to draw the bow outline, but it actually looks better filled in and the silver had to be layered up a lot to get to that opacity. Also, isn't the matte Fantasy Fire pretty :D It truly lost nothing of the multichrome and I think I may actually prefer it matte! Finally: this mani was about a week old (WITHOUT a top coat!) - and check out the tip wear! In fact, I made the tip wear worse because I tend to chip off the polish on my tips if any flakes off, and I chipped off  LOTS. I'm pretty sure that this mani would have been indestructible with a top coat!

I realise that this post is both LONG and FULL of pics, but I hope you enjoyed it and will stick around to see what I come up with next :) Needless to say, my posts aren't normally this long!

Thanks for stopping by and 'til next time!

- Skye x

My favourite polish

Hi guys! Welcome to my blog :)

Today I thought I'd show you my FAVOURITE ever polish (colour): Rimmel Black Cherries. I LOVE this polish. I love that it's a warm and rich, dark, vampy colour, I love that it's purple (which is my fav polish colour) and I adore the wine-red shimmer. It just doesn't get enough love; if you google swatches they really are few and far between, which is a crying shame! I actually thought that Rimmel were discontinuing this colour a while back, so I now have two or three backups lol.

Onto the pictures!

When on, I swear that this polish looks like a deep, rich, purple aubergine colour with a red shimmer (a bit like OPI Black Cherry Chutney/Oktoberfest), but in the artificial light it favours the red shimmer and it's really hard to capture the genuine hue. This polish really comes into its own in the sunshine and we haven't had much of that lately :(

The only real downside to this polish is the gloopy formula. Rimmel is normally pretty good formula-wise, but having tried several bottles of this polish I can safely say that it's the colour for some reason. This makes application and clean-up a bit trickier (and you're at risk of ruining the mani even hours later - serious dentage on my right hand!), but it's nothing that a good thinner won't fix. I think I'll add more thinner next time I use the polish so it drags less.

Finally, I have some exciting news! In honour of the arrival of my Xmas polishes from KBShimmer (YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY ehehe so much love for that brand!), I finally broke out my final untried from the autumn collection: Witch Way. Rather than do a full WW mani, I decided to use it over my Rimmel mani to spice up what I'd been wearing for the past few days (lots of pics - couldn't narrow it down any more than this!):

Traditional jumper-shot
(sorry about the uneven surface; might have forgotten my top-coat for this one...)

Oooo shimmery shiny!

Trying to capture the colour AND the glitter... 

What do you think? :) As you can see, I ended up going for a sponge-free reverse gradient/half-moon effect. I've never tried this before and I love the way it came out, although I need a bit more practice to get it looking as beautiful as what I see others do on FB (check out The Clockwise Nail Polish, 9ml Universe and Lucy's Stash)! I actually found it really hard to photograph this mani properly because of the holographic glitter - hence the numerous pics - but hopefully you're pleased with my efforts!

Obligatory sun-shot: this pic makes the polish look browner than it really is... it is honestly purple IRL!

Have any of you tried this Rimmel polish? And did any of you buy any KBShimmers for Xmas? I'd love to hear from you so let me know in the comments below :-)

Thanks for stopping by and until next time!

- Skye x

Product Review: OrigiNails Bubble White

Well hello, ladies ;-) Welcome back - and thank you to those of you who've decided to join the ride!

Today I bring you something a little different - a review of a nail whitening product! I thought this would be a good time to show you this post, as so many people were asking last week how I keep my nails unstained. It's also pretty handy for me, because my mum is REALLY sick this week and I've not really had the time to do much more than take pics for future posts.

So let's get on with the show!

WARNING: Picture-heavy post

I picked up this product on my first EVER visit to Sallys a couple months back (yes, this post has been in editing the ENTIRE time - oops). I was in polish HEAVEN whilst I was in the store and spotted so many lemmings that I panicked and came away with NO polish at all. However, I did pick up this interesting looking packet for about £1.50.

The holy grail of cheap nail whitening solutions?

The instructions - simples!

Some of you on the PAA group (here's looking at YOU, Bee Justice and Sue Bryant) know that I've had some (BIG) staining issues since I was totally dim and used my KBShimmer Don't Teal Anyone without undies (dim, dim, dim). There are, of course, home remedies for this (think: whitening toothpaste and baking soda), but I never got around to trying either of these before I spotted this product, so I figured: well why not give it a shot? And so here we are today. I'll try to let the pictures tell the story. In case you don't want to read all of this post, I've added a sum-up at the bottom in large font, caps and italics :-)

1. This is what the product looks like - white granules.

2. Before: I only remembered that this pic is important for a before-and-after review after I'd put my hand in the bowl (doh!)

3. OrigiNails in action!

4. After: still yellow :/ 

As you can see, there is virtually no difference between the before and after photos! My nails felt nourished after the process, but they were definitely still yellow, which sucks. It seems that apart from home remedies, the only way to get back to white tips is to go for the chop.

Summary: DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY!

Fortunately (or unfortunately?), I'm quite clumsy and managed to slam my right hand into the door not long after I drafted this post, so I chipped a nail and had to nub the lot. Luckily for me, though, my obsession with Lush Lemony Flutter and Essie's nourishing base coat has paid off and my nails seem to grow like weeds! Indeed, I've already filed them down again about a bazillion times since then to keep them at a manageable length! And you all saw my naked nails post last week - the rest is history :-)

Looking a lot better filed down!

Finally, I have an exciting announcement (for me!). Having decided that I actually really enjoy blogging, I plan to expand my blog from one page to two :-) You'll notice that there is now a slightly different layout and I will be adding to the new Mystery Page gradually over the coming weeks (Oh, the suspense!).

I hope that you enjoyed this LOOOOOOONG post! Have you ever tried commercial nail whitening solutions? What's your experience?

'Til next time :-)

- Skye x

And now for something completely different...

Hey guys!

Firstly: welcome new followers! *pomp and ceremony* Hope you like what you see here :-)

I'm sorry that I've been a less than conscientious blogger lately - work has been a bit manic and it was invoicing week this week which always makes work busier! No rest for the wicked freelancer ;-)

So this weekend, my entire family is out of town, which means I'm all alone in the house. Of course, I've been looking forward to this for WEEKS. I got TONS done yesterday for work (lots of paperwork that has been sat forlornly on my desk for weeks and weeks, invoicing, client Xmas cards etc.), and then in the evening I decided to treat myself. In light of this, today, I'd like to show you something completely different!

As a Brit, I can't help but love Monty Python! Here's their 'something-completely-different' foot :-P

I wasn't going to post this pic but every time I hear the phrase 'something completely/totally different' I hear the Python gang!

So, my treat was a French pedi! This is how my feet ALWAYS look - I like that it makes my feet look super cute (disclaimer: not necessarily discernible from the photos!) and it matches everything I wear, including my mani. It also doesn't notice as quickly when it chips, doesn't stain my nails and can be redone easily at home.

Flex!

I did the full works last night. First, I used Sally Hansen's Cuticle Remover to tidy up my cuticles, which are like WEEDS on my feet (ew - sorry!) and then I had a go at them again after a nice shower, during which I buffed up my feet so they're all soft :-)

Once that was done, I cut the toenails down and shaped them as square as I could get them and then slathered my toes in Lemony Flutter - hell, they deserve moisture too! Then I used my Essie nourishing base coat and began the French!

Polishes used:

• Rimmel Nail Tip Whitener (super thin brush, means I can do it freehand)*
• Rimmel French Ivory (less pink, more yellow - matches my skin tone better)*
• Sally Hansen Double Duty Base and Top Coat

*After a while these get a bit gloopy, but some Mavala polish thinner sorts them out a treat!

I realise it looks like a lot of work - and it is! - but I only do it once every few weeks and I have an appt next week with my podiatrist, so I thought I'd better make some effort!

Basking in the winter sun...

Coming up soon (just as soon as I can sit and edit the pics) are experimental swatches of Max Factor Fantasy Fire, my favourite polish (colour) EVER, a glitter gradient mani using KBShimmer and a mystery product review from Sallys!

Also coming soon: a new mystery page! Ohhhh the excitement! ;-)

Thanks for stopping by :-)

- Skye x