NOTW: And then a Bluetiful mermaid appeared...

Why, helloooooo my lovelies!!!

Today I have a blueeeeeeeetiful polish to show you (pun intended! hehe). Behold the wonder that is KBShimmer Pastel Me More!!!!

Pardon my cuticles! I got overexcited and
forgot to moisturise before I snapped away!

Sooooo shiny!!! <3 Like a mermaid's tail :-) 

This is a beyond gorgeous glitter topper from my favourite ever brand, KBShimmer. Pastel rainbows just gleam from your nails when you wear this polish, and the glitter is so shiny that my fingers looked like mermaid tails/dragon scales. This has been one of my favourite manis EVER! The polish itself is extremely special to me. Some of you may know that Essie Rae, previously of iheartprettypolish, recently went on a blog hiatus. This lady is a marvellous one with a heart of gold; I was heartbroken when I missed out on Pastel Me More at Harlow & Co., and then found that this polish was being discontinued. Since I couldn't get hold of the polish anywhere, Essie sent me her very own bottle for the price of postage alone - all the way from Minnesota, USA! Now that Essie has decided to take a break from plogging, this polish will be all the more special to me, since it reminds me of a lovely plogger friend I came to like very much in the short time I knew her. Thank you so much Essie for this polish, and for all the encouragement and kind words! I hope you have fun doing whatever you do next :-)

Also in this post is a Curly Polish EXCLUSIVE: my first ever attempt at a macro shot of any polish! It's not very good, but I did try... I wish I could work out how to make it bigger without it going blurry!

My macro sucks, but you can at least see the beautiful variety of glitter colours in this gorgeous topper. The polish is, in my opinion, entirely unique, and I'm so proud and honoured to have been able to make it part of my vast KBShimmer collection.


Finally, as always, let me show you the base coat for this mani, Essence I'm Bluetiful:

First off, I'm really sorry for the quality of this pic; I had such bad shakes when I was trying to take it! This was honestly the best shot I could come up with. This was a polish I ended up keeping because a swap fell through. I wouldn't normally buy this kind of thing for myself, but I actually really liked it! As you can see, the polish has quite large specks of silver glitter, and looks much bluer in direct light. It's actually a very versatile, changeable colour, and was a real surprise to wear.

Sooooo that wraps up this week's NOTW post :D KBShimmer Pastel Me More has officially fed my appetite for glitter toppers! I need moaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar!!! What are your fav glitter toppers? PLEASE lemme know in the comments! :-)

'Til next time, curlettes,

- Skye x

NOTW: Across The Universe in style

Well helloooooooooo, ladies (and gents?) *Old spice guy* ;-)

***Warning: very picture-heavy post***

Have I got a zinger for you today! If you follow me on FB, you'll have seen a few months ago that I finally used Enchanted Across The Universe (had been waiting for some sunshine) - and I was totally and utterly blown away. I genuinely couldn't get focused on work for a couple of hours after I put this polish on, because it well and truly knocked my socks off. There are A LOT of pics of this one because I just couldn't believe how awesome it was. You've been warned:

My taping... in blue

My thumb in ALL the colours *.*

...pink holo!!!!

Did I mention the polish is a holo?

 

Blue holo...

It's a multichrome too!

...golden blurple <3

Pink and purple...

Pretty, pretty polish <3 I've never really understood the hype surrounding Enchanted Polish, and I only picked this polish up on a whim from another of Debbie Crumpet's blog sales some months back... but I TOTALLY GET IT NOW!!!!!!! I turned into a total magpie for the duration of this mani and chewed the ear off anyone who would listen about it, basically going ZOMG LOOK AT MY RAINBOW MULTICHROME HOLO NAILS *ahhhhhhh!* You all need this polish. Seriously. Go buy it.

All the colours!!!! :D

Multi-coloured HOLO goooooodness!!!

Now let me 'briefly' discuss the other impressive part of this mani - it's my first EVER striping tape mani! This striping tape was sent to me as a RAOK by Anita Marie Roberts a looooooooong time ago, but this is the first chance I've had to sit down and use it properly. I googled pictures of striping tape manis for inspiration, and this is what I came up with. I just ADORE this stuff! It wasn't nearly as difficult to use as other bloggers made me think it was, and I'm thrilled to bits that I have two or three reels of the stuff to play with - thank you so much Anita :-)


Last but most certainly not least, I bring you the base colour for this most wonderful of manis - Collection 2000 Blue My Mind (#12):

Indirect light

Direct light

Now, the left-hand photo is a bit 'lobster', and the right-hand photo is deathly pale, which means that the colours in these pics aren't quite right, however, as you can see, this is a beautiful, deep, rich blue shimmer polish, which though not duochrome, looks like it's in a blackened base until you get it in the light. This polish is one of my favourite blue polishes, and was the perfect accompaniment for ATU. The only downside to it is probably the brush; it's far too wide for my nails which means getting a good, clean line is tricky. I had a lot more clean-up to do for this mani than usual! Fortunately, this polish is most definitely worth the extra effort :-)


Which Enchanted Polish do you think I should get next? Let me know in the comments!

'Til next time, lovelies :-)

- Skye x

NOTW: Lemming killed - Fingerpaints Twisted!!!

Hello lovelies! How are you today?

I am VERY happy, because today I get to reveal to you that I finally own one of my greatest lemmings EVER - Fingerpaints Twisted!!!

Ever since I discovered flakies two years ago, I've been obsessed with tracking down my favourite ever flakies collection - the LE Fingerpaints flakies collection. Everyone knows that these polishes are like gold dust; sold only in the US, and only for a limited time, I couldn't have picked a more elusive collection to love. I almost nabbed the entire collection just a few months ago, but the nasty, nasty RM stole my preciouses :( Fortunately, this event had a silver lining: a couple of lovely ladies in the British swap groups on FB came to my aid and declared that they had BN Fingerpaints flakies just sat unused in their collections. As a result, I now own Twisted (and Asylum - post pending) courtesy of the lovely Debbie Crumpet. Thank you SO MUCH, Debbie, for making this polishaholic's dream come true ^^

Now let's take a look at some photos:

*.* Opalescent beauty...

No words...

Swatches of this polish are dime a dozen, but generally involve Twisted layered over deep, dark colours like navy/midnight blue and black. As such, I thought I'd try something a bit new and inventive and layer the polish over a nice green. The above swatches are 2-3 coats over Catrice Sold Out Forever - and the result just blew my mind! In some lights you could barely see the flakies, and in others you got this wonderful opalescent effect which just kept growing on me as the week went on - this mani rocked and y'all know it. My epic quest for Twisted? I regret *nothing*!

Finally, as always, I'd like to show you the beaaaaaautiful colour that I paired with Twisted. Just look at it:

Beyond gorgeousness!

Catrice Sold Out Forever is a gorgeous, delicate sage green which I've been eyeing in my stash box for a wee while now; I bought it last summer in Austria for a swap which fell through, and it's been calling to me ever since! Although the formula was just that tiny bit too thick (a common Catrice trait, I've noticed), self-levelling was great and wear time was excellent. What's more, it compliments my olive skin tone perfectly; I genuinely don't think I could have selected a better muted green for myself (my photos are slightly off - the colour was slightly deeper IRL)! I actually don't own many green polishes, and have been considering branching out to find good ones, but for now, this has definitely sated my appetite for green fingers.


To wrap up this week's post, I have not one, but TWO questions for you:

1. What's your favourite green polish?
2. What do you like to layer with your flakies?

Let me know in the comments :D


'Til next time, curlettes :)

- Skye x

NOTW: Pastel mishmash

Well hi there, peeps! How you doing? :-)

Today I finally got on the Easter/spring bandwagon and decided to do a pastel sponge mani! As y'all know, I loooooove sponging, so I was really looking forward to this one. First off, let's take a look at the finished mani:

Water-colourey pastel nails!

I was especially looking forward to doing this mani since I decided to use my new makeup sponges! I normally do all of my sponging using a cheap old kitchen sponge from Asda (Walmart in the US?). However, I'd really like to do a sunset gradient at some point, and I know that I can't do this with a kitchen sponge, so I picked up some makeup sponges from Boots.

I'm actually quite surprised, since I figured people prefer to use makeup sponges for a reason. However, I found that the sponge was more absorbent, so colour transfer wasn't as good. In addition, bits of sponge kept breaking off into the mani and I had to keep removing them (grr). Finally, this mani was horrendously messy. I've never understood why people say that sponging or gradients are messy, and now I do: y'all are using the wrong sponge! To illustrate:

A messy work in progress!

I have virtually no clean up when I use a kitchen sponge - and the above photo is only half-way through the mani!

I was originally planning to stamp over the top of this, but I somehow didn't get around to it, and anyway, I quite liked it on its own. If I had to do it again, I think I'd use a kitchen sponge and darker colours, since despite my nails looking like amazing watercolour masterpieces, I missed my usual bright colours! I'd also buy a better white base colour before doing this mani again; I tried using my Essence Stamping Polish in white, but it was too gloopy, so I had to use my white French tips polish from Rimmel, with its tiny, tiny brush! The base coat was just laborious!


Here's the polishes I used:

• Rimmel Nail Tip Whitener (base and mixing)
• Rimmel Show Off (pink - lightened)
• Catrice Salmon and Garfunkel (orange)
• Collection 2000 - Hot Looks Lemon Soda (yellow)
• Catrice Sold Out Forever (green - lightened)
• Rimmel Aqua Cool (blue - lightened)
• Rimmel How Do You Lilac It (lilac)

Pastel goodness! *.*

So what do you think? :-) I'm looking forward to doing more sponge manis with other funky colour combos! What combos would you like to see? :-) Lemme know in the comments!

'Til next time, curlettes!

- Skye x

Children In Need Mani

Hello lovelies! Welcome back to the vets and greetings to my new followers - I hope you like what you see here :)

WARNING: this is a picture-heavy post.

As I have doubled my followers seemingly overnight (to a modest sixteen!), I just thought I'd lay it out for you again. This blog is mostly for me, but as I take pics of my manis and post them to FB anyway, I thought I'd give my photos a permanent home. I'm also hoping that this will inspire and motivate me to try things I've not tried before, especially with regard to nail art. I'm still learning, so things won't be perfect, but I'm well up for letting y'all chuckle at my mistakes ;) I'm actually a freelance translator/interpreter and my business is very young, so I may sometimes disappear - I'm certainly not able to 100% commit to a post a week or a specific day just yet - but I'll try to show you what I do each week because I normally change my manis over the weekend when business slows down.

Before I begin today's post proper, can I just take a moment to say how cool the audience stats are from Blogger?

United Kingdom	145
United States	58
Portugal	14
Trinidad and Tobago	5
Belgium	4
Denmark	4
Australia	2
Germany	2
Italy	2
Netherlands	2

These are a few days old now, but that's THREE different continents already! Isn't the interweb incredible, connecting us all like this?

...ANYWAY...

Today, I have a wonderful dotty mani to show you. You don't know me well yet, but I LOVE dots. LOVE them (really a lot). Here's what I came up with:

The colours are inspired by a BBC charity event that happens once a year in Britain called Children in Need (more info in the link). This year's motto was 'Show your spots!', so my mani is fitting indeed :)

If I had mad nail art skillz I would have tried to draw Pudsey, the Children in Need mascot on an accent nail:

Fortunately for you guys, I know my limits - and also I thought that dots would be more fun because Children in Need only happens on one day (Friday 16th November, this year), and I didn't want to have a yellow bear on my nails for an entire week :P

Finally, I'd like to show you the undies on this one. This was an untried of mine which is really quite beautiful in an ephemeral sorta way. The colour is called Cloud Nine (#20) by Collection 2000 (a fav brand of mine), and this is three coats over Rimmel French Ivory (which was a totally pointless layer that I thought might help me avoid visible tips LOL).

In artificial light

In direct sunlight

Although it's quite sheer, which makes it a PITA to apply neatly (pardon my bubbles, pillow marks and weird thumb dent!), I really like this polish because it kind of glows from within. When it starts snowing I'll definitely have to do some snowy manis with it. I have no idea why I didn't try it sooner!

Hope you like this week's offering and I'll see y'all next time on the interweb :)

- Skye x