Pink Wednesday: China Glaze Sugar High & CND Violet Shimmer Effect

Happy Wednesday everyone. For today's mani I have a swatch of China Glaze's Sugar High I got in one of my hauls sometime ago but hadn't yet had the chance to try it.

Sugar High is a medium creme pink from the Up & Away Collection. The name suits the polish really well because it does make me think of candy every time I look at it.
I had seen this polish on other people's nails and read a few reviews before buying it, and it looked much more of a bright hot pink than it does on my nails! When I first opened the bottle I could almost see the hint of neon everybody talks about but on my nails I could detect a hint of coral instead.
This polish is loaded with pigmentation and was fully opaque in 2 coats, no problems with streaks either.

I had a bottle of CND Effects Violet Shimmer on my shelf that I've never used and just wanted to experiment a little so I layered it over Sugar High. I think it would be much more evident and looks better over dark colours where the shimmer really has a chance to pop, however I also think it looks good over Sugar High. It turned it into a very shiny neon and although I had trouble getting this on picture, it was very evident outdoors in direct sunlight.

From the Vault: Sheer Pink & Black Fishnet Nails

I like to share my successes as well as my disappointments with you - enter the Fishnet mani!
When I saw this on a YouTube tutorial by Glamerous Gabby I thought it was such a good mani (and still do despite the outcome). I loved the whole idea and look.
I did this mani over a month ago and realised the mistakes I made but I didn't discard the pictures because there was something about it that I still really liked. My Fishnet is a little messy but I still love how it looks on the nail:

xoxo
:-)

Glittery Pop Fiction!

I painted my nails with Miss Sporty Pop Fiction yesterday (and ended up doing my toes as well) but this morning before I went out I had to fiddle around with it. Why oh why can't I leave a pretty colour alone!!

I sponged some Zoya Trixie half way up and then some Orly Glitz & Glamour on the tips before stamping with BM01. To be honest I have no idea what I was trying to achieve! Usually when I start a mani I already know what I want to do with it but sometimes when I'm pressed for time, my ideas are all over the place and then this happens:

xxx :-)

Miss Sporty - Pop Fiction

Hope everyone is having a great Saturday :-)

Today I just wanted to show you a great blue creme I got the other day during my trip to Boots - Miss Sporty Pop Fiction! I couldn't wait to try it so I removed yesterday's Mavala red mani!

I really like Miss Sporty because their polishes are generally good quality (I've never really had problems with their formula) and you can get 3 for £5. Other than only being 7ml bottles (booo!!), one thing I like about these polishes is the flat wide brush. It's so manageable and fans out even wider, covering more nail plate, yay! It's a little bit similar to the Sally Hansen Insta-Dri brush but doesn't pick up great big globs of polish!

The formula is highly pigmented (what I would expect of a creme) but I didn't expect it to be this creamy considering it's a low cost end brand.
I was searching on Wikipedia List of colors for a name for this blue because I'm really bad at giving names to colours other than what they actually are (I got this idea from Deniz but don't know how to colour drop as she does!) but the closest thing I could find was Brandeis Blue which means nothing to me...so... it's just a nice bright blue that I really like!! Lol!

xoxo

NOTD: Mavala Party Time with Tips & Flowers

Hi everyone. I wanted to try the new Mavala polishes I hauled the other day and because I haven't used a red in quite some time, I went for Mavala Party Time first.
Party Time is a bright  jelly red in all it's squishy glory and dries glossy (even more so with a top coat). In certain lights for some reason, it almost looked like it had hints of deep burnt orange.
When I first unscrewed the cap, I thought it looked like a creme but oh no! I was quite surprised by the sheerness of it because it looks so pigmented in the bottle! I applied 3 coats and there is still quite a lot of VNL which I'm not a fan of. However, I love the little cute bottles and the brush is of very good quality and manageable.



Overall I quite like this polish but I wasn't too keen on the VNL and the sheerness of it. I used BM218 to get rid of some of the VNL and also to practice my stamping. I don't do it enough and most of my stamps come out crooked!

xoxo :-)



Missguided - Misstique Leopard Print Tutorial

On Monday I showed you guys the two new polishes from Missguided's upcoming collection: Misstaken and Misstique. You can have a look at swatches and manis with those here.
Missguided have now asked me if I could post a short and simple tutorial of how I achieved the leopard print mani. I know all my lovely followers already know how to do leopard (of course!) so this is a post for all the Missguided Facebook, Twitter and Blog followers! :-)

Once you have applied a base coat, start off by painting your nails with the base colour of your choice. In this picture I used Missguided Misstaken:

 

The easiest and my preferred way to add leopard spots is to randomly dot small "blobs" of polish on the nail. These can be whatever size you like depending on what look you are trying to achieve. You can either use a contrasting colour to your base colour or complementing colours also make for a good look. I used Missguided Misstique for the spots:

The next and last step is to outline the random "blobs" of polish to make it look like a more convincing leopard...Lol! DO NOT outline all the way around the leopard spot. You must leave gaps in the outline to make it look more naturally put together (if there was ever an orange and blue leopard!!). Apply top coat to smooth the surface of the spots and make your design last:

To do this, you will need either a nail art pen/ a nail art polish with a thin brush (you can get these at a very low price on Ebay) or if you haven't got either of these, you can use a very thin brush and dip it in the polish you will be using for outlining. The brush pictured below is actually a make-up brush, so if you haven't got specific nail art brushes don't worry as you can still achieve this look :-)

Good luck :-)
xoxo

Pink Wednesday!!! - Medieval Shields (Checkered Mani)

For this week's Pink Wednesday I wanted to show you a checkered mani I did some time ago which was inspired by Erica of course. Her tutorials are detailed and so easy to follow and I love, love, love tape manis because of how easy they are and what you can achieve with them!!!

I was browsing through Jane's blog some time ago and she also mentioned that these look like Shields! They really do actually - Medieval Shields, but maybe not in pink and silver. I doubt ancient worriers would be very fond of these!

For the base colour I used Zoya Trixie. This is a light silver with a sparkling metallic foil finish. It's probably the closest you can get to the Minx or some sort of nail foil look, with a polish! Application was so easy with this one and there was no clean up whatsoever!! One coat of this would probably be sufficient but I applied 2 and removal is nowhere near as arduous as glittery polishes. In fact, it came off like regular polish.
As my CND Raspberry Parfait is a perfect 1 coater, I used it to create the checkered pattern :-)

xoxo

Missguided Splash - New Polish Collection Swatches & NOTD

A while ago, I posted a Cat inspired mani I had done using a nude polish by a company called Missguided . Missguided is an online shop "which provides a range of celebrity led women's fashion clothing."
A representative of the company stumbled across my post and posted a link to their blog and facebook page. I was so surprised and pleased!! They then contacted me requesting if it would be possible to send me their 2 new polishes from the upcoming collection, and if I could review them and do some nail art for their blog readers. Of course I can!!! With pleasure!!!

Here are samples of the 2 colours - Misstaken:

I personally find oranges difficult to work with. Maybe it's because I'm not a massive fan of orange polish on it's own. The formula on this one isn't highly pigmented and so I needed 3 coats for full opacity. Although it's a bit on the runny side, application was smooth and I didn't have trouble with flooding.

Misstique:

I loved this polish!!! Everything about it was great! I was instantly drawn to the colour. I have a lot of blues but this shade of turquoise was just so pretty. The formula is great and it's one of those polishes that can achieve opacity with 1 very generous coat (although I used 2 thin coats). The brushes on both these polishes are quite narrow but when pressed, they spread easily and soak up polish well.

I had previously done a laser mani with Misstique and China Glaze Sugar High (which I will show you later this week) but wasn't too sure how to mix both the orange and the turquoise together.

The logo of the company is Peace, Love and Fashion so I used BM07 on the ring finger against some sponged tie-dye and created a heart with some bullion beads. The black tips I then added look like moustaches...Lol:

The second mani I created with these colours was a leopard print. I never get tired of leopard print in all colours, shapes and sizes. I freehanded this one as everyone knows I'm not the best "stamper" to use the BM plate on this!!

Hope you guys like it:-)

xoxo
Vanessa

More lovely goodies - Mavala, Hello Kitty, H&M, L.A Colors, GOSH

I know I said that I wouldn’t be hauling anymore polish anytime soon but oh well… I got the Mavala on sale and couldn’t help it!!! The hubby bought me the H&M, the L.A Colors and the Hello Kitty polishes – how darling is he?!

I have never tried the Swiss brand Mavala and have heard good things about it so I wanted to try them for myself.  The mini bottles look like such pretty dainty things!! 

I had told my husband in the past that I was trying to get my hands on some “strange” colours, i.e. not your regular reds and pinks and voila…how strange is this terracotta looking H&M polish. The colour is almost so ugly that it makes it beautiful!

Of course I’m not really in need of bright pinks and blues but he knows how much I love Hello Kitty. Yes... I’m 27 but I still have lots of Hello Kitty and Betty Boop stuff…LOL!

And the LA colors – he said he spotted these on his way to a meeting and they were so cheap (which isn’t usual for American brands in the UK) so he bought them. TBH, I can’t wait to try the silver shimmer one called Gunmetal! The GOSH Metallic Purple sneaking into the side there, I bought that in Superdrug...it just looked so pretty in the bottle!

:-) xoxo
Vanessa