; Plisherrific: June 2012

Jun 30, 2012

Completely Dotty - Mode, Bys, Ulta3, LA Colors

This is my nail art entry to Concrete and Nail Polish's Nail Art Contest. The theme is a nail art that we think she'll like. I have noticed a trend on April's blog towards blue and pink manis, as well as freehand nail art. I thought dotticure nail art would be something she might find interesting then!


Nail polish used here:

Blue - Mode Hook Me Up
Pink - Bys Colour Change Bright Pink
Black - Ulta3 Black Satin
White - LA Colors French White

The mani started as the following:


This is obviously an indoors picture, because I do most of my nail art at night. I did half of these with tape, and the other half freehand. It's a little bit shakier freehand, but not too noticeable and I'm really just too impatient to wait for the polish to fully dry before I can use tape, even with the use of fast dry topcoats.

After that, I just went wild with the dots.


I dropped a blob of nail polish on a plastic 'palette' - or anything plastic, really - and went crazy with my dotting tool. I need steadier hands, and I really should get an extra dotting tool because I'm trying to make smaller dots with a tool that isn't catered for dots that small.

I don't plan a pattern, but I try one out on one nail first and then, I just replicate it to the others. They look similar, but they're not exactly the same because the size of my nails vary too much. I thought it would be interesting to leave the accent nail a little different.


My thumbnail was something different, because it was waaaay too wide compared to the rest of my narrow nails.

I need more practice with dots!

Jun 28, 2012

Sweet Lemonade - Amy's Nail Boutique Pink Lemonade and One Sweet World

As mentioned, here are more swatches for nail polishes from Amy's Nail Boutique!

[Ring finger: Pink Lemonade + One Sweet World
Others: Five thin coats of Pink Lemonade]
How delicious is this? Very delicious! Amy's Nail Boutique Pink Lemonade has pink and yellow matte glitter, which is fascinating, because the polish looks orange overall. The orange is just purely the combo effect of the yellow and pink. It looks like candy...delicious, delicious candy! Similar to Cotton Candy, Pink Lemonade required five thin coats for full coverage.



[Ring finger: Pink Lemonade + One Sweet World
Others: Five thin coats of Pink Lemonade]
The ring finger has mixed layers of Pink Lemonade and One Sweet World. What a party of colours! I love how the combination turned out!



[Ring finger: Pink Lemonade + One Sweet World
Others: Five thin coats of Pink Lemonade]
Under indoor, fluorescent lighting, the colours are gorgeous! The yellow is just so bright and lovely! If I didn't want to swatch other colours within the same week, I would have worn this for so much longer!



[Ring finger: Pink Lemonade + One Sweet World
Others: Five thin coats of One Sweet World]
I added One Sweet World to my shopping cart on a whim, but it's another surprise favourite (so many favourites!)  Doesn't it look like a pretty green field? One Sweet World is actually a mix of blue, yellow and pink matte glitter. One Sweet World looks more neon then Pink Lemonade, probably because the blue and yellow were nicely bright. It needed four thin coats for full coverage. 


[Ring finger: Pink Lemonade + One Sweet World
Others: Five thin coats of One Sweet World]
The ring finger is a mix of alternating One Sweet World and Pink Lemonade coats. I love how this mani looks because it's bright and colourful, with the ring finger having the same feel but also providing an interesting contrast. 



[Ring finger: Pink Lemonade + One Sweet World
Others: Five thin coats of One Sweet World]
I don't have anything else to say, except I really like One Sweet World, and mixing it with Pink Lemonade is an extra bit of delicious. :D

Jun 25, 2012

Concrete Shine - Essence The Dawn Is Broken + Color Combos CTW507

Another scheduled post from me! Current location: probably at Tokyo Disneyland being confused and bombarded with light and sound! =X 

One collection I really liked this year was Essence's Vampire Love collection. I almost bypassed it because of the "vampire" bandwagon hype... but thank goodness I didn't! Managed to pick up all the ones I wanted from it and here's one of them!

[Bottle to nail: Essence The Dawn Is Broken]
Essence The Dawn Is Broken - a concrete creme with tiny black and silver flecks! From what I've seen on blogs online, people seem to either love it or hate it... As for me, I love it - it's totally my favourite from the collection!

[2 coats: Essence The Dawn Is Broken]
The formula is absolutely perfect - full coverage in two coats, dries smooth and relatively quickly.

[Essence The Dawn Is Broken (2 coats) + Color Combos CTW507 (1 coat)]
I added a bit of sparkle using Color Combos CTW507 - check out Jme's gorgeous photos of this glitter polish! The fun thing is that this glitter is virtually invisible at particular angles when it's a sort of translucent purple... but shift the angle...

[Essence The Dawn Is Broken (2 coats) + Color Combos CTW507 (1 coat)]
Voila! Check out the gorgeous blue and green flashes! Excuse the terrible pics, this mani is a little old and I hadn't quite figured out how to properly photograph glitter by lamplight yet... ;)

I'll be back next week, woooo!


Jun 24, 2012

Funfair + Patriotism? - Amy's Nail Boutique Cotton Candy and Patrio

Matte glitter, oh my! I have a new obsession and I have been satisfying it at Amy's Nail Boutique, which means swatches!


I like the labels on the bottles. They vary, and some of them come with little patterns - little bees! a flag! - which just add to their adorableness. I have used some of these before taking the photo so don't worry, the bottles come full. :)


[Five thin coats of Amy's Nail Boutique Cotton Candy]
Amy's Nail Boutique Cotton Candy is a blue and pink matte microglitter. The blue actually has a little gleam to it, which makes it more striking. Cotton Candy is a sweet combo. The blue does overpower the pink a little from a distance, I think because the blue is a touch brighter. 


[Five thin coats of Amy's Nail Boutique Cotton Candy]
It doesn't dry very gritty, but I don't think the polish has a high enough glitter to base polish ratio. What you see are five thin coats, and it was still difficult to cover the tips entirely. I tried painting with thicker coats, but it just made it very gloopy at three coats, and I didn't have full coverage yet at that point. Next time, I'll try this with coloured undies, because I still do like how the glitter looks!


[Four thin coats of Amy's Nail Boutique Patriot]
Aaaaaahhhh, Amy's Nail Boutique Patriot was an unexpected favourite! Why did I get a mini bottle of this instead of a full bottle? It's so gorgeoussssss. The white and red are microglitter while the blue consists of slightly larger hex glitter. The contrast is gorgeous and I just kept thinking Captain America when I looked at my nails (because I'm a dork, fine, fine). 


[Four thin coats of Amy's Nail Boutique Patriot]
I didn't get full coverage of Patriot on my tips, but mind you, this was using a mini bottle's brush. 


[Four thin coats of Amy's Nail Boutique Patriot]
Just as gorgeous under natural lighting. It looks a little like paint splatters and someone actually stopped me to ask how long it took to paint on all the different colours, ahaha. I think because it's matte rather than shiny, glitter doesn't come to mind immediately. 

Overall, I love this matte glitter nail polishes! Watch this space for more swatches of the other colours from Amy's Nail Boutique!

Jun 21, 2012

Where being flakey is good - Barielle Elle's Spell, Nfu Oh 59, Hits Speciallita Flamenco

I'm not quite sure how I ended up with three red nail polishes with flakies, but I might as well compare them!

[Index & Pinky: Two coats of Barielle Elle's Spell
Middle: Three coats of Nfu Oh 59
Ring: Two coats of Hits Speciallita Flamenco]
Barielle Elle's Spell is a warmer deep red, with gold-green duochrome flakies. It's a more opaque shade, and as such, the flakies don't come through as much. But I do like the colour best. Nfu Oh 59 is a colder red jelly with gold-green duochrome flakies, and needs one more coat than Elle's Spell to become completely opaque. But this means its flakes are more obvious. Hits Flamenco is a bright chilli red with gold-green flakies...though the flakies don't change colour much from gold when on the nails. 


[Index & Pinky: Two coats of Barielle Elle's Spell
Middle: Three coats of Nfu Oh 59
Ring: Two coats of Hits Speciallita Flamenco]
[Index & Pinky: Two coats of Barielle Elle's Spell
Middle: Three coats of Nfu Oh 59
Ring: Two coats of Hits Speciallita Flamenco]
To be honest, if you have either Elle's Spell or Nfu 59, I don't think you need to get the other. They aren't identical, but they're close enough. Hits Flamenco is an altogether different animal, since it's so much brighter than the other two shades. 


[Comparison between Nfu Oh 59 and Barielle Elle's Spell. 

If you look at the bottles, you can see that Nfu 59's flakies do shine a little bit more green than Elle's Spell. I do think it's the opacity of the base.

Even after writing this up...I kinda want more flakies. :P

Jun 18, 2012

Rainbow Night - Orly Lunar Eclipse + Spectraflair topcoat

Scheduled post time!! I should now be somewhere in London wandering around, possibly annoying the Guards at Buckingham... or shopping my little heart out on Oxford Street~ =p

[Orly Lunar Eclipse (3 coats) + Spectraflair topcoat]
Anyway, here's Orly Lunar Eclipse from the gorgeous Cosmic FX collection layered over with a Spectraflair topcoat. Lookit all the shiny!

[3 coats: Orly Lunar Eclipse]
On its own, Lunar Eclipse is a bright blue (brighter than in my photo) with purple and pink glass fleck. It looks like a blue-to-purple duochrome in the bottle but comes out mostly just blue on the nail. Still very pretty regardless!

[Orly Lunar Eclipse (3 coats) + Spectraflair topcoat]
I jazzed it up with a layer of Spectraflair topcoat for some extra bling! Overdoing it, maybe...?

[Orly Lunar Eclipse (3 coats) + Spectraflair topcoat]
But how could I resist double shiny! ALL THE WAY!!! =)

Jun 14, 2012

Fish Food - Nail-Venturous Floam, Ulta3 Pacific Fever, Essence Viva La Green

I was lucky enough to be at my computer when I received a notification from Ninja Polish that Nail-Venturous' Floam was in stock! This was several weeks back now, but I'm only just getting around to my swatches. In this post, I try out two different undies for Floam.

[Nail-Venturous Floam with bottle]
[Three coats of Nail-Venturous Floam]
I love Floam because of how colourful it is without being glittery and it has been on my lemming list the moment I saw the first ever swatch. But Floam needs three thin coats for full coverage, and the more coats I used, the grittier it became as well. This is definitely a top-coat eater, so you'll need a thick top coat - or two - over it.


[Thumb: Nail-Venturous Floam over Ulta3 Pacific Fever
Others: Three coats of Nail-Venturous Floam]
On my thumbnail, I used Ulta3 Pacific Fever as the base coat, with one coat of Floam over it. Pacific Fever is a medium jade green polish with a gold shimmer through it. Against the other Floam-only nails, you can see that the one with Pacific Fever as the base does look a little darker. Perhaps two coats of Floam would have been better!


[Pinky: Nail-Venturous Floam over Essence Viva La Green
Others: Three coats of Nail-Venturous Floam]
In this one, my pinky has Essence Viva La Green as the base, with one coat of Floam over it, while the other nails have three coats of Floam. I think the colour difference is almost indistinguishable! Viva La Green is a bright pastel green, and seems to make a good match to Floam, if you want something that blends in, rather than have Floam pop even more.

With a base colour, Floam is definitely less gritty and is easier to remove too. More layers of just Floam does give the mani a little more depth though, so there is a trade off.


[Three coats of Nail-Venturous Floam, with dress!]
I was so excited when I received Floam that I even colour-coordinated my clothes to the polish. I wore my only dress that had bright green running through it during my first day with Floam!

The reason why I call this entry Fish Food is because Floam really reminds me of bright fish food of yonder days. :P

Jun 12, 2012

Plisherrific's First Giveaway - WINNER!!


Hi everyone! Thank you so much for joining our first giveaway - it was a great experience for us and we certainly learnt a lot about the process. =) The question about a suitable theme for a nail art competition had lots of fun answers - from what I can tell from the responses, lots of people like seasons, animals and flowers!! 


Now... enough about that! I'm sure all of you want to know who the winner is! If you've checked out the giveaway post, you'll find that it's already been picked randomly and announced there through the Rafflecopter widget.  Altogether we had 863 entries and the winner is...

#804: NARMAI NAN!

Congratulations, Narmai!!! Narmai was super fast at getting back to us with contact info so we didn't have to deal with re-drawing a winner. =) She also has her own blog, so check it out here! These are the polishes that she has won:-


Thank you again to everyone who entered. If you did not win, don't fret! We most definitely have more giveaways planned for the future!

XXX,
Jme + Ev


Jun 11, 2012

Bright Copper Kettles - BYS Colour Change Copper


Our giveaway is ending in a couple of hours! If you haven't already, hit up our giveaway post to join!

Aren't long weekends great? =) In my case, I'm catching up on planning my trip and scheduling posts for when I'm gone, phew! Today I have a colour change polish to show you - BYS Colour Change Nail Enamel in Copper...

[BYS Colour Change Nail Enamel in Copper]
This one is a coppery colour when warm and a soft purple-brown when cold. Eeeps, look at that bubble on my ring finger!

[Bottle to nail: BYS Colour Change Nail Enamel in Copper]
Here is how it looks in the bottle. It's a thin formula but non-streaky and needs about 3 coats to reach this opacity.

[3 coats: BYS Colour Change Nail Enamel in Copper]
Unfortunately, I'm one of those people who always has cold hands! I don't use colour change polish much because it's almost always stuck on the "cool" colour for me...

[BYS Colour Change Nail Enamel in Copper: Copper (warm) and brown (cold)]
[3 coats: BYS Colour Change Nail Enamel in Copper]
As always, colour change polish looks better on longer nails so that the temperature difference and colour change is more obvious!

Jun 10, 2012

Plisherrific's First Giveaway - Last Reminder!




Time sure flies! I almost missed the fact that our first giveaway ends tomorrow! :D  If you want to get the following polishes, go here and join up!

1. Jordana Glitters Cosmic - A blue, green and silver hex glitter explosion.

2. Claire's Mood color changing nail polish in Calm/Wild - Changes from pink to purple depending on the temperature! Not an easy polish to get anymore.

3. Essence Make It Golden - Gold, gold, gold in hex and microglitter.

4. China Glaze DV8 from OMG collection - A mid blue-green holographic polish that has been discontinued and isn't easy to find.

Looking over Ev's banner art...I wonder why she always draws me looking like a complete nutter. :(  I'm totally not that c-c-c-c-crazy!

Jun 8, 2012

Friday Favourites - Orly Au Champagne

I have all kinds of white nail polish - creme, shimmer, jelly. They're very useful for nail art and layering, but this one, I loved wearing on its own!

[Indoor: Two coats Orly Au Champagne]
I don't like anything that is too chalky white, and I do find some white nail polish tend to be a bit streaky - it's an unforgiving colour I feel. However, Orly Au Champagne is gorgeous to apply and gorgeous to look at. It has a clean, subtle white shimmer, and dries semi-matte. On its own, it looks like clean, powdered snow!


[Indoor: Two coats Orly Au Champagne]
With a coat of gloss over, it looks just a little bit brighter, and pretty in its own way. You can click on any of the photos for a better look at the shimmer. My index finger in the above picture has a little topcoat on the skin which is reflecting in the light. Ugh... Sorry about that.


[Outside: Two coats Orly Au Champagne]
It looks just as clean and nice under natural lighting. From far away, you can't see the shimmer, but the nail polish still has a softer look to it than you don't see in whites as solid as this one.


[Outside: Two coats Orly Au Champagne]
What's strange about Au Champagne is that in its bottle, it's actually quite...bleh. It's an off-white, almost beigey colour and looks old. On the nails, it's so much cleaner and whiter. Straaaaaange.

Jun 7, 2012

4 out of 365 - Funfetti, Summer Dream, Mint Chip, Cotton Candy

I have here swatches of four nail polishes from indie lacquer seller 365 Days of Color. One of the recent trends seem to be creme polishes with glitter in them, with the glitter appearing matte since they're mixed in with the creme polish. I love this look!

[Ring finger: Two coats of 365 Days of Color Summer Dream
Others: Three coats of 365 Days of Color Funfetti]
Funfetti is a tonne of colourful hex glitter, with some square and bar glitter, in a white creme base. Some of the glitter look holo in the bottle, but on the nail, they're not with the white over it. I quite like it that way!

Summer Dream is the pale blue-teal version of Funfetti. It might look duller against Funfetti, but I think it's just as pretty actually. The both of them look a little like modern day abstract art, and because they don't look obviously like glitter, I had someone ask me if I painted the patterns on!


[Ring finger: Two coats of 365 Days of Color Summer Dream
Others: Three coats of 365 Days of Color Funfetti]
The only downside with Funfetti and Summer Dream are the bar glitter. You might be able to see one or two on the Funfetti nails where they are lying on their side and curled. It seems it's now a known issue where some - not all - of the bar glitter curl. I had an odd few that lay flat the first day, but curled up at the ends the next day to poke through the white base. Odd! I clipped the ends off, because even though only a little pokes out, they're pointy and scratchy.

The exterior of Funfetti and Summer Dream are pastel creme prettiness, but they're total glitterbombs at heart, so be sure to wear a base coat!


[Ring finger: Three coats of 365 Days of Color Cotton Candy
Others: Two coats of 365 Days of Color Mint Chip over Essence Viva La Green]
365 Days of Color's Mint Chip is an unexpected favourite. It has small, black square glitter in a very pale green base, and it really, really, really looks like chocolate chip mint ice-cream! How delicious! The colour was just a tad too pale for me, so I used Essence Viva La Green as the base. Mint Chip is very nearly opaque at two coats, so it was just enough to let a little green through.

Cotton Candy has blue and dark pink/red hex glitter in a white base. The glitter coverage was a little sparse for me, sadly. I could sort of tell by eye-balling the bottle, but attempts to shake the bottle furiously didn't work either.


[Ring finger: Three coats of 365 Days of Color Cotton Candy
Others: Two coats of 365 Days of Color Mint Chip over Essence Viva La Green]
The black glitter sinks to the bottom of Mint Chip, but a couple shakes bring enough to the top for a good coverage. You can see that the Mint Chip mani here is a shade greener than the colour in the bottle.


[Three coats of 365 Days of Color Mint Chip with a bottle of Mint Chip]
I did Mint Chip with no undies on my right hand. You can see it's just a little paler than the mani in earlier photos, and it's closer to the colour in the bottle. The polish in the bottle looks almost white with just a touch of green, but it's not that light on the nails.

I bought full bottles of Funfetti and Summer Dream, and minis of Mint Chip and Cotton Candy. I kinda wish I went with a full bottle of Mint Chip!

My right hand has sort-of-round nails and my left has squoval nails. I can't decide which look to go with, and there's still a big chip that I'm nursing on my left hand!