52 Week Pick 'n' Mix Week #7: Wild Animals

I've been slacking on my 52 week challenge, but this week I have actually done both prompt in two different manis. Prompt one is Wild Animals and the Golden Oldie prompt is Yellow.

So first up is Wild Animals.

I instantly knew I was going to try out the cute animals tutorial that Jacki from Adventures in Acetone did a long time ago, they are so darn cute. In particular the monkey. What I didn't do was follow it :D - I was watching The Flash together with hubby while trying to do the monkey design - and we watched it on the computer and my phone was down so I did them from memory.

As you can see I got the proportions warped a bit, the upper face is a little too wide so the lower face is almost the same width. Not that it isn't cute to look at, but it looks more like a teddy bear than a monkey :D

I used Illamasqua Nurture as base, YSL La Laque no 36 Rich Coffee and Zoya Pasha for the monkey.

I loved doing these even though they weren't quite successful - and I will definitely follow Jacki's animal tutorials again :).

Take a look at the wild animals and yellow manis the Nail Tarts have come up with this week.

Golden Oldie Thursday #36: Ignored for too long

Ignored for too long? Most of my polish get to be ignored for too long :D. So I just opened the top drawer in Helmer 1 and found two gorgeous YSL polishes: Wintergreen and Moonlight Blue.

In the bottle they look extremely promising, on the nails it is a totally different story. That shimmer is almost gone :O.

They are a dream to work with!! High pigmentation means they are both one coaters though I used two layers as usual.

I decided to give them a good stamp!! With MessyMansion plate 16 and BarryM Silver Foil.

Look at that bottle shimmer!!! Wah for it not translating to the nails!!!

Do you have any ignored polishes? If you do, which?

Have a look at what the other girls have ignored for too long:

An InLinkz Link-up

Golden Oldie Thursday #26: Turqoise

Another favourite colour of mine for this week's GOT polish challenge.

Found YSL Turqoise Utopique in my drawer that I wanted to use as base, it was actually the first I thought of when I saw the challenge theme.

For some reason these pictures lost a lot in colour when they got uploaded to my Google account. WHERE DID ALL THE GREEN GO?????. It really is turqouise and not this dusty blue meh kinda polish...

As you can see I did a waterfall mani - I love them big time :D - and I got to use my new nail art brushes that I bought from StylishNailArtShop which I will have to get used to, because they weren't super easy to work with

These were the polishes I used:

YSL Utopian Turquoise, ChG Keep Calm, Paint on, ChG Kinetic Candy Zoya Wednesday ChG Grape Juice

Remember to check other turqouise manis - they are awsome

An InLinkz Link-up

Fancy Friday #58: Ice Cream

This was a fun challenge and since I have the Ice Cream polishes from BarryM I sure knew which colours to use here :D.

YSL Rich Coffee, nails inc hampstead gardens, BarryM Berry Ice Cream, Strawberry Ice Cream, Mint Green, Blueberry Ice Cream, Leighton Denny Indulgence

Did a french tip with hampstead gardens, and then used a thin striper brush dipped in YSL Rich Coffee to do the waffle pattern. And used a dotting tool to create the scoops, sprinkles and jam.

 

I am not totally convinced about the HK Girl top coat, it acts very strange if the mani is uneven in it's structure - and I don't always get the high shine effect that is raved about...

Hurry over to see what the rest of the Fancy Friday girls have come up with ;)

Is, Is, Is, Is...det er hvad der er på bloggen i dagens anledning. Jeg har alle BarryM Ice Cream lakkerne så de er taget i brug her ;). Jeg blev en smule issyg da jeg så dem da de var færdige...

An InLinkz Link-up

Fancy Friday #42: Love is in the Air

And my second Valentine's day mani is part of the Fancy Friday challenge - if you need to recap why this is a darker version of a Valentine Mani you can go read my little rant here.

As I wrote in my last Fancy Friday challenge I wanted to try the fan brush gradient with regular polishes so I did that as a base. I started with a layer of China Glaze Pelican Gray and when it'd dried I used the tutorial at Neverland Nail Blog I talked about last week using Pelican Gray, YSL Gris Orage, and Dior Gris Montaigne. The look can best be seen on my ring finger on the picture below:

It became the perfect base for the rest of this mani I think, I'm just bummed I totally forgot to take pictures of it. I love that the effect is so subtle that you hardly realise it is a gradient.

I used MoyouLondon Princess Plate 10 for the girly skull and heart doodle stamp and VividLacquer plate VL007 for the kissy lips - and like my other VDay mani I also used Leighton Denny Indulgence as stamping polish here.

And La Pièce de Résistance: Elevation Polish Yeti's Broken Heart - an awesome glitter topper with a wide variety of white matte glitters and heart shaped glitter in white, black and purple. Add a little bit of holographic micro glitter pieces and you got a killer polish. I think it is a brilliant polish with a slight nudge to all the Valentine frenzy...

 

Lastly here are all the polishes together that I used for this manicure:

China Glaze Pelican Gray, YSL Gris Orage, Dior Gris Montaigne, Elevation Yeti's Broken Heart, Leighton Denny Indulgence

Ugens Fælles Fredag udfordring er Love is in the Air - det er Valentins dag og det fejrer jeg ikke ;). Jeg kan ikke rigtig få armene op over en begivenhed som er blevet indført af rent kommercielle årsager, en dag som vi aldrig har haft tradition for at fejre før i Danmark. Og nej, vi fejrer heller ikke Mors og Fars dag i den lille familie ;). Men det skal da så ikke forhindre mig i at lave en Valentinsmani med et twist - min base er en grå gradient i stedet for en lyserød eller rød lak, som jo ofte bliver brugt i den sammenhæng, og så har jeg valgt en anti-valentinsdagsneglelak til at toppe et par af fingrene: Elevation Polish Yeti's Broken Heart.

Golden Oldie Thursday #4: Dots

This is some days late, unfortunately one of my girls got an ear infection last week so I was NOT up to blogging. But I didn't want to skip this either since I actually did this mani two weeks ago :D

So this will be a short and to-the-point post.

34 Tulipe Noire - Gold polish from Manicure Couture duo no 3 - 143 Mauve Popeline

One of the other high end brands I love is YSL, these polishes are almost as wonderful as Dior. Or at least the older La Laque ones are. I have to admit I haven't tried them after they revamped the bottles and discontinued the La Laque line, but I really should try them out...

They apply like butter and the crémes are mostly opaque in one layer which is always a plus.

I was going for something sophisticated like Lucy's Stash - her dotticures are always impeccable - but mine ended up a hot mess :D - and I dragged the design on my ring finger. Note to self: Never use Dior fast dry top coat for nail art!!

Fancy Friday #39: Music

The challenge is music - and I stamped. I reused my Dior mani from Tuesday and used the gold polish from my YSL Manicure Couture Duo no. 2 to stamp with. Worked like a charm :D

One of the plates I bought from Moyou London last year was one of the Rockstar plates: Roxy Collection 06, so I immediately grabbed that and looked over the faces. I've been a Prince fans in like forever so I used that stamp as an accent. The other two images are from a random plate I purchased at Messy Mansion, CF09.

So here is the finished look:

Next Fancy Friday is "Something about me" and for that I've got something REALLY exciting to show you!!

Elevation Ama Dablam

I was extremely lucky to get hold of this beauty when Lulu at I Dig Brown Nail Polish aka the creator of Elevation Polish did preorders for the very last batch of this wonderful glitter polish. This is a very complex polish with different copper and teal glitters.

 

For this combination I layered it over YSL 142 Ultra Orange and Leighton Denny Plush Pink.

 

I used two coats for this level of coverage.

 This polish was very easy to apply, there was no need to dab it in order to get this to cover properly. I used one coat of Gelous and one coat of top coat to get full cover of the glitter though I think I could have gotten away with one liberal coat of top coat.

Some of the glitters do have a tendency to "cling" to each other but in my experience it is a common trait in glitter layering polishes when they are packed with glitter the way Ama Dablam is.

 This is really gorgeous, the way the copper glitter seem to light from within in indirect sunlight is absolutely amazing!!

Even in shadow it lights up!

You can purchase Elevation Polishes at Lulu's BigCartel Store, right now there are quite a lot of polishes in stock. She usually restocks new colours the 7th of each month but due to technical issues she has moved this month's restock to the 22nd, that is usually a restock of recurring colours - so there will be loads of polishes to get a hold on. I myself will be getting Marmolada and Jungfrau if they don't sell out too quickly.

Nostalgic Lacquer As If!

I finally found a solution to my frustrations...letting my hubby teach me how to use Gimp :D

One of the earliest indie polish brands to emerge was Nostalgic Nail Lacquers. Erin, the mastermind behind it is a woman after my liking, all sorts of cool 80's and 90's movies and tv shows are her inspirations.

Way back in May I got in on a preorder of Nostalgics and here is the first of the seven I ordered.

As If! is part of the Totally Buggin' Collection and is a clear base glitter polish with white, two shades of pink and black hexes in different sizes, white and black bar glitter and if my eyes are not deceiving me...white shreds.

It is a bit thick but that is to be expected to get proper suspension and you do need to work a little to get a nice even layer. I used the dabble method that kitties from More Nail Polish uses (scroll down to the end of the post for the video tutorial) though I used a lighter hand to get the result you see here - and still some of the glitters seemed to stick together. But you know what? I really don't care 'cause I think this looks awesome!

With flash

For this I used YSL no 39 Gris Orage/Stormy Gray as base colour and I think As If! looks gorgeous this way.

I've been experimenting with my watermark and I'm still not quite satisfied...I changed it after I'd edited these pictures.

 You know I'm not a fan of pink polish but this really is amazeballs.

And by the way if you haven't seen Clueless yet, you need to watch it IMMEDIATELY, not only is it a way funny movie but also one cool Jane Austen adaptation. I will be sure to post some more of my Nostalgics, but hopefully my next post will be something Challenge related ;)