NOTW: Snow-day Snowfall

Hello dearies! Welcome back to Curly Polish!

Today I have another snowy Snowfall mani to share with you, since the UK was hit (a few weeks ago now) with a freak snowstorm. Snow is not common in the south of England, because it is normally too warm... but today my mani matched the weather *nerdy squeeeee*!

My sincerest apologies in advance for the photos for this post; I had a massive fit of the shakes (too little food and sleep!) when I took these photos, and despite having taken about twenty, NONE of them were in focus, which sucks because this was beyond gorgeous IRL :-( 

This being said, I did the mani and took the photos...

... so let's take a look anyway :-)

The best pic I had... and it's still blurry *le sigh*

This is one thickish coat of Sonnetarium Snowfall over a purple gradient created with Collection 2000 Purple Rain (base colour) and Rimmel Black Cherries (gradient), which gave this mani an awesome wintry depth ^^ I did need to dab a little in places to get a nice even distribution of snowflakes, but that's mainly because I decided I wanted a saturated snowstorm look. I think the mani worked really well and I couldn't stop staring at my fingers, but the mani didn't last long...

Indeed, for this mani, I used the Essence All Aboard glue base coat (which, btw, has everything that pva glue doesn't!), and then I was stupid enough to wash my hands between coats cos I popped to the loo, and the base coat melted... so I had to do ANOTHER layer of the glue basecoat on top, and then my mani sorta popped off my nails a bit sooner than planned :/

This post also sucks slightly since I forgot to include a swatch of the base colour (I'm sooooo sorry). I think that there is a decent-ish swatch in this post, however, so all is not lost :-) ! What I can show you is a work-in-progress shot; this is my pre-clean-up gradient pic, which truly does neither polish justice, but will have to do:

The perfect base for Sonnetarium Snowfall...

This was a highly successful mani, despite the photos, and despite the fact that it was a short-lived success. I also now know to set aside a decent amount of time when doing a glitter mani with the glue base coat - hand-washing ruins glue!

What have you layered Snowfall with? Holla back 'cos I wanna know!


'Til next time, curlettes! :-)

Keep smiling!

- Skye x

NOTW: Sonnetarium Peppermint Kiss

Hello my lovelies and thank you to my new followers - welcome, welcome, welcome :-)

Today I have another Sonnetarium polish to show you: Peppermint Kiss. First off, let's take a look at the polish:

Shrinkage alert!

Prettiness ^^

This was a surprise mini that I found in my Sonnetarium Snowfall package from Sharla-Elyn, and at first I wasn't sure whether it was my colour or not. Green AND red AND white in a milky pink base? Odd, for sure. However, after I had this on for an hour or two I was loving it! Application is a bit tricky because the base is sort of a crelly, and so it looks streaky at first - but don't panic! It evens out beautifully :-) I wore Peppermint Kiss over a pink creme base coat (swatched below), which makes it look mid-pink, but I think it would look lovely alone and would probably need 3-4 coats to reach its full, milky opacity. I think that the polish will suit me better on its own in the summer when I'm looking a bit toastier :-) This a totally unique polish and I can think of several holidays for which it could be worn, including one that is fast approaching and shall not be named.

One more point worth mentioning: in the pictures above I wore this polish with my new HK Girl topcoat. I'll save the post about that for another day, but I'm not overly enthused about this so-called "wonder-coat". Needless to say, I got MASSIVE shrinkage with this mani within an hour or so of application (and I wrapped my tips with each colour!). Not good. It's a shame because I loved this mani but ended up having to remove it the next morning because the shrinkage was bugging me so much. Urgh.

Finally, here's a swatch of the base colour I chose:

Pardon my cuticles!

As you can probably tell, this is an OLD swatch from the vault that I did several months ago, but never posted. I did try to get a better one this time around, but the pva under the creme looked nasty :P As such, please ignore my odd nail shape, poor picture quality and iffy cuticles. Probably the best bit about this swatch is the cuticle line which looks damn near perfect! Still, at least you can see the colour :-)

Funnily enough, I never have staining problems with this colour on its own, but with the glue basecoat it turned my nails a sort of mango-pink orange. Very odd! It sorta looks like I have oxygen poisoning (nerdy scuba joke), but luckily I'll be covering my talons with polish most of the time so no one will see :P


What do you think of my second Sonnetarium polish? When would you wear it? Let me know in the comments!

'Til next time, curlettes :-D

- Skye x

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You can buy Sonnetarium polishes from the (incredibly kind and sweet) Michelle at http://www.sonnetarium.net/all-products. Sonnetarium are just about to release a new spring collection inspired by fruit yoghurts, some swatches of which you can find on their FB page here :-)

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NOTW: Sonnetarium Snowfall!

Hello, my lovelies!

***Warning: Long and picture-heavy post***

How are you today? I hope you're ready for a wordy post because I have nothing but love for this next polish :-)

Today's post is dedicated to Sharla-Elyn who was lovely enough to take part in a surprise swap with me :-) Sharla-Elyn really wanted me to send her some Max Factory Fantasy Fire (see my post for this gem here), and this lovely lady decided to make the swap fun by selecting something from my wishlist (on the left) which she had delivered to me direct in the UK - without telling me what I was gonna get! After weeks of anticipation, my polish eventually arrived just after Xmas and I was stunned to find that Sharla-Elyn had killed my BIGGEST lemming ever: Sonnetarium Snowfall!!! I was totally speechless because I've *needed* this polish since I saw it swatched by Manicurator over purple - the perfect accompaniment!

Let's take a look at the wonderment that is Sonnetarium Snowfall:

IT'S SNOWING ON MY NAILS!!!

*.* Love this so much <3

Here, I've layered *one* coat of Snowfall over two coats of Rimmel At Ease, because I was in the mood for a subtle nudey mani. DOESN'T IT LOOK LIKE SNOW?! I just adore this polish and I really think Michelle of Sonnetarium outdid herself with this one. I could just stare at it ALL day. No other snow polish comes close! This polish is *packed* with glitter and is incredibly versatile; I can't think of a single colour it wouldn't work with - even white would look delicate and beautiful! Furthermore, this polish has hidden depths. Not only are there large, small and tiny white glitters, there are also these incredible iridescent glitters that take on all sorts of funky shades (green, blue, pink/purple, copper etc.) depending on the light. I'd say the dominant colour is copper in my photos but the flash is definitely an entire rainbow :-) I can't wait to layer this polish over everything else I own!

To get a smooth surface for my mani, I first layered two coats of Rimmel Matte polish over Snowfall, and this looked kind of funky in itself, so I took y'all a picture of that too :-)

Matte polish really brought out the copper tones
of the iridescent glitter!

Of course, due to my schizophrenic polish nature, I eventually tired of the subtle colour of this mani and wished that I'd chosen something more exciting to match my new polish. However, I recently discovered an amazing tape technique from cutepolish - the girl that brought us the OPI Spotted cheat method - and so rather than remove the mani, I just had to try it out on top! For this effect, I used my crocodile zigzag scissors from my kiddies craft scissors set :-)

Pardon my tip wear! Also: notice the snowfall iridescence :-)

Isn't this cool (yes, it's busy, but I didn't want to remove the snow)?! The colours are Maybelline Turquoise Lagoon and Collection 2000 (Hot Looks) Lemon Soda, and the technique was really simple (though I foolishly ignored the two-layer rule for the yellow) - I can't wait to try it out for an entire mani :-)

Finally, here's a swatch of the base colour At Ease:

Signature shot :-)

This is the most colour-accurate - a warm, dusty brown.

Funny story - I actually bought this thinking it was a nude colour for me (I'm actually browner than you ever see in my photos). I initially went in store to pick up Caramel Cupcakes instead, but then I hesitated and this was the result (yeah, I know, I'm colour blind!). At first I was really angry at myself for wasting my money, but I've since realised that this is a really versatile colour, so I'm actually really glad to have it as part of my collection. This is two coats without a top coat.


So what do you guys think? I truly think that Snowfall is one of my favourite polishes EVER and I think I will almost definitely need a back up. I can't thank Sharla-Elyn enough for somehow intuitively knowing how badly I wanted this one and I'm sure hours of fun will be had combining the polish with all manner of colours :-) Sharla-Elyn - you rock :-D

'Til next time, curlettes!

Stay tuned over the next few weeks for a few more awesome tape manis that I'm especially proud of :-)

- Skye x

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You can buy Sonnetarium polishes from the (incredibly kind and sweet) Michelle at http://www.sonnetarium.net/all-products. Sonnetarium are just about to release a new spring collection inspired by fruit yoghurts, some swatches of which you can find on their FB page here :-)

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