First Non Konad Nail Art

Recently I have seen several pictures of some simple geometric nail art that I thought I had a pretty good chance  of replicating.   The first was the Zoya nail designs for the Leanne Marshall show during fashion week in NY.
The second are the designs that All Lacquered Up reported were being used by CND for the Diego Binetti show.

I liked the look of both of these but I had no idea how to accomplish either (I can't freehand) until I discovered this manicure from On Beauty and Polish and the swoop technique from Lacquer Laine.

I really liked the idea of a holo design (mainly because I thought it might hide an goof with the shininess) so I started with a base coat of China Glaze DV8.  Let me take a minute here to rave about how incredible DV8 is.  This is hands down my favorite holo that I own.  Some holos don't really look holo in certain lights but DV8 glimmers in dim and bright light, artificial and sunlight.  Aside from the holo...the color is fantastic.

China Glaze DV8 (2 coats) with top

Next, I used French manicure strips to tape off part of my nail and painted the bottom half with China Glaze LOL.  I used 2 coats because my first coat was a little uneven, this mad the overall manicure a little thick but it still looked pretty good.

CG DV8 and LOL

I was happy with how this turned out but as the day went on I felt more an more like a court jester because the colors were so bright.  Next time I am going to try it with more subdued colors or only one bright one.  Its interesting that the linear holo pattern stayed the same even though it was bisected in the middle of the nail.  Does anyone else have any unique ways to use french manicure strips?

Sinful Colors Fall '09 Haul - Part 2

Day 6 of swatching Sinful Colors...

All I have left are pearl/frosts and glitters in clear bases.  I bought the frosts thinking I might be able to Konad with them before I realized how thin and sheer most of these polishes are.  I wasn't particularly excited about testing these out but I figured they would be a good base to Konad over.


Social Ladder is a sheer pale pink with a slight iridescent shimmer.  It takes 3 coats to achieve bottle color and I still had visible nail lines.  If I was looking for a sheer nude color or for something to use like a CND effect this would be a decent choice.  It is a however streaky and doesn't apply evenly. 

Social Ladder 3 coats with top coat

Tokyo Pearl is a creamy white pearl that is extremely streaky.  I mean streaks galore.  Even after three coats I still had obvious brush strokes and had already developed bubbles.

Tokyo Pearl 3 coats with top coat

Next is Out of This World which on the first coat had potential to be out of this world, it is a sheer silver base with tiny micro glitter that is very sparse.  The microglitter is silver iridescent and in certain lights looks like a holo.  Unfortunately once you put a 2nd or 3rd coat on it just looks like blah silver polish with some lumpy bits.  As a sheer over a regular base I think this would be great.

Three coats Out of This World and top coat

All About You is a brassy gold glitter in a clear base.  The bottle is densely packed with glitter but this is not a polish that is going to give you full coverage alone.  I used three coats here and it is still completely sheer though from a distance my nails did look gold.

All About You 3 coats, excuse the smudge these
were fairly thick coats in an attempt to get full coverage
and I smudged one picking up the camera.

Nail Junkie is AMAZING in the bottle, truly amazing.  A mix of chunky turquoise glitter and iridescent hexagonal glitter this polish has glints of gold, pink silver and green when it reflects light.  It gives full coverage in three coats though there is a visible nail line in bright light and the occasional bald spot, with four coats this could be covered up.   Sounds great right?  It should be but on me it is just....off.  I don't know if its the color or the texture or what but this polish looks awful on me.  I look at it in the bottle and LOVE it, I put it on and bleech.  I think I will try one coat off it over a really dark purple like OPI Siberian Nights and see if that makes it usable.  Right now its in my Franken supply drawer.

Nail Junkie 3 coats.  I know my cuticles have polish
on them...its hard to get motivated to clean them
when the polish looks so bad I know I am taking it off.

So 10 bottles of Sinful Colors late and I have learned to be a bit more selective with my drug store purchases.  Some of these I love and some were a complete disaster.  I did see two bottles on the display last week that look like duochomes so I will probably be stopping back as Walgreens for a new haul sometime soon.

Rationalization, "Woman Logic", and the No Buy

So it has a full week since I decided that I am on sort of a No Buy until I swatch everything I already have.  It's a sort of  No Buy because I had a Sally Beauty coupon for a free China Glaze with purchase of a bottle of Seche Quick Dry.  I am of the opinion that top coat and base coat don't count on a No Buy, I mean they aren't for pleasure they are necessities.  Right?  Look I know that I live in a world of screwed up logic, my husband calls it Woman Logic.   For example, the classic buy one get one deal.  If I buy a pair of shoes for $60 and can get another pair for half off in my mind I saved 30 bucks.  Makes sense to me, come on you know it makes sense to you too.  In reality I just spent 90 dollars, which incidentally is a lot of nail polish.

Its really irrelevant anyway, because I fell off even my interpretation of the No Buy wagon while at Sally and bought a bottle of CG Stroll and a Sally girl bottle of Shy.  Both were on the clearance table, though I think I saved 70 cents total on both.  I also picked up a bottle of CG Dorothy Who as my freebie with the Seche....and while I was there I splurged on a glass nail file.  I have been having real issues with my nails splitting lately and as I am sure you have seen my normally dry cuticles are HORRIBLY cracked and ragged.

In a normal week I change polish about three times.  In the past week I changed my polish over ten times while swatching the Sinful Color Fall Haul and the ones here.  I think my fingers need a weekend off from acetone.  Maybe I will go look for a new acetone free remover....

Enough rambling, time for the swatches!

Three coats of Dorothy Who and top coat

China Glaze Dorothy Who has been reviewed pretty much everywhere and recently has been getting a lot of comparisons to OPI Absolutely Alice.  From looking at online swatches it looks like Dorothy is more of a medium blue with blue and silver glitter while Alice has gold and what looks like dark blue glitter in addition to some turquoise.  I picked up my bottle of Dorothy and had to wait an ENTIRE week to swatch due to my self-imposed week of Sinful Colors polishes.  It sat in my bathroom drawer taunting me.  When I finally pulled out the bottle and looked at it today I was expecting a true medium blue with silver glitter, at least that's what it looked like in the bottle.  What I actually have on my nails is more of a dark turquoise with some darker blue and silver glitter. I compared it to swatches online and my nails look much more turquoise than those on my favorite blogs.  Not that I mind, I was happily surprised as I am obsessed with all polishes teal and turquoise.

The polish applied smoothly though a bit thick and I was surprised to have full coverage at two coats.  I did a third coat as my nails still weren't bottle true, they still are not after 3 coats and a layer of top.

CG Stroll 3 coats and top coat

CG Stroll reminds me a lot of Ruby Pumps because it is a jelly with glitter.  The color is a deep raspberry wine and the glitter looks gold in some light and raspberry in others.  I couldn't find a magnifying glass to see if the gold was just covered with polish or there are two types of glitter in the bottle.  The glitter seems to be smaller than the glitter in Ruby Pumps and the overall finished look isn't as....well jelly as Ruby Pumps.  The glitter in Stroll seems to lay on the nail rather than the suspended look of Ruby Pumps.  The color is rich and beautiful though and application was smooth.  I see this becoming a fairly popular dark red/berry in my stash.

And last (and certainly least in my opinion) is a Sally Girl mini polish called Shy.  You know those 99 cent minis by the register at Sally Beauty?  I never buy them but it was on clearance and I had just read a mannequin hands article sooooooo.  I understand the point of mannequin hands I can even see wearing a pale nude polish to some events (i.e. as a bridesmaid, at a very stuffy black tie event, job interviews) but I really haven't gotten into the whole movement yet.  I mean I wore nude nail polish when I bit my nails and they were ugly, they aren't pretty now but I'm not biting them so bring on the color.  On the other hand my fingers are STUBBY, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Technically this polish is a shimmer rather than a  creme but the bottle was so tiny it was hard to tell at the store and to be honest if I am going to wear something so boring it can at least be shimmery.  Application was really good and this is only two coats.

Shy 2 Coats with top coat