Hum-drum - Maybelline Lavender Love

Today's photos are a bit meh, but let's roll with it...

[Bottle to nail: Maybelline Color Show Lavender Love (2 coats)]

This was done a month or so ago and I just made myself do a simple mani to get myself back to it... I picked a nice creme polish to ease myself into it. This one is Maybelline Color Show in Lavender Love.

[2 coats: Maybelline Color Show Lavender Love]

It's a nice medium lavender, slightly dusty but still nicely pigmented. I used two coats of polish and it dried quickly, nice and glossy. My nails were pretty terrible then so you can sort of see it in the photos, apologies!

[2 coats: Maybelline Color Show Lavender Love]

I don't really have too much to say about this really, it's a pretty basic shade! But that's always good for... you guessed it, stamping over!

Painted Weave - Revlon Budding Chrome, The Face Shop GL111, Revlon OceanChrome, Australis Goth Rock

This look I'm sporting today can be achieved with stamping, or with nail art stencils, if you know what I'm talking about. Today, I'm trying out the latter.

[Painted Weave]

What is the proper name for this? Nail art vinyls? Nail art stencil vinyls? Nail art template stickers? Well, as you can see from the photo below, they've used the name 'Nail Art Hollow Sticker'. Sounds weird. I think I prefer nail art stencil vinyls. But in the end, a photo speaks a thousand words:

[Silicone nail art mat and nail art hollow stickers]

I usually don't get very crisp results from nail art vinyls when I use them straight onto my nails. So this time, I thought I would try the nail art stickers on a silicone nail art mat. The stickers were just so much easier to deal with, understandably, when applied on the flat surface of the silicone mat.

[Nail art hollow stickers applied onto the silicone nail art mat]

I cut up the vinyl based on the dotted lines they provided and stuck them onto the silicone nail art mat. I'm only using 6 pieces here because they're pretty large, so I figured that other than my thumbs, the other pieces will cover two nails each.

Side note, I really love the holo on these vinyls. So pretty! Even if they all get painted over in the end!

[Manicure in progress]

I don't actually have in progress photos since I had to move pretty fast. If you do this too slowly and your nail polish dries too much, you end up peeling off your nail polish as well from the mat when you pull off the vinyl.

So here are the steps I went through, with references to the photo above.

1. Stick the vinyl onto the silicone mat, as shown in (A). Now paint over it to cover the hollow parts. In this case, I painted over it in a gradient of colours  
2. Peel off the vinyl which leaves only the pattern behind, as you can see in (B)
3. Paint over the pattern left behind with your base shade, as shown in (C)
4. Leave it to dry completely. You will know it's completely dry when the patches of nail polish are completely flat against the mat. 
5. Peel off these nail patches from the mat carefully. Bend the mat to help the peeling off endeavour. 

[Homemade nail art patches/decals]

And voila! I did cut the nail patches into rectangles, so they would look so much prettier for my photos. :)  Then I used a clear base coat on my nails, let it dry enough to be slightly tacky and applied the nail patches on. I used a combination of stretching the nail patches and nail clippers to cut off the excess nail polish.

The nail polish I used for the mani were:

• Revlon's Budding Chrome - a light peachy chrome nail polish that rather overwhelmed everything
• The Face Shop's GL111 - a pale gold foil 
• Revlon's OceanChrome - a teal chrome 
• Australis' Goth Rock - a near-black maroon nail polish

[Revlon's Budding Chrome, The Face Shop's GL111, Revlon's OceanChrome, Australis' Goth Rock]

I do like using the nail stencil vinyls on the silicone nail art mat. I think the results are a lot neater, with crisper lines. With gradient manis and nail stencil vinyls done straight onto the nails, I often feel like the process is usually rather messy and requires quite a bit of clean up after. With the use of the nail stencil vinyls on silicone nail art mat, the mess was constrained and easier to deal with.

I just really like having these new tools to work with now!

Fall Maple - Revlon Parfumerie Autumn Spice, Hit the Bottle A Glint of Gold, Born Pretty BP-L026

Keeping up with my unimaginative-ness, I expanded on the autumn theme from last week...

[Autumn Leaves]

...and what better way than with some maple leaves!

[Bottle to nail: Revlon Parfumerie Autumn Spice (2 coats)]

Once more, my base from last week was Revlon Parfumerie Autumn Spice, a glowy brown glass fleck scented polish.

[Bottle to nail: Hit the Bottle A Glint of Gold (stamping); Plate: Born Pretty BP-L026;
Base: Revlon Parfumerie Autumn Spice (2 coats)]

I used Hit the Bottle A Glint of Gold - a gold holographic stamping polish (yes, that's right!). Formula was great, stamped with absolutely no issue. However, I reckon it would be far more impressive if I had chosen a fuller pattern instead of a lineart type stamping pattern. Next time!

[Base: Revlon Parfumerie Autumn Spice (2 coats);
Stamping: Hit the Bottle A Glint of Gold, Born Pretty BP-L026]

This lovely maple leaf design is from Born Pretty stamping plate BP-L026 which has a nice variety of floral/leaf prints.

[Base: Revlon Parfumerie Autumn Spice (2 coats);
Stamping: Hit the Bottle A Glint of Gold, Born Pretty BP-L026]

I'm fairly pleased with this one - it's actually quite subtle in real life and the maple leaf design is only visible on closer examination. It's dark and autumny while still incorporating sparkle!

Cream to Candy - Dance Legend 194[Dan

Back to the basics, but with a little more fun involved. This is Dance Legend 194, from their Sun Shine collection. The Sun Shine collection consists of nail polish that change colour under UV rays. So its colour changing properties are dependent on sunlight rather than an increase in temperature.

[Indoors: Dance Legend 194]

The photos above are how Dance Legend 194 looks when it's out of the sun. It's a pale milky beige with pink, blue, pale gold and red glitter. Even without the UV colour changing aspects, I always love nail polishes like this, with glitter in an opaque base.

Now here are a series of photos of the nail polish changing colour when I was out in the sun.

[Outdoors: Dance Legend 194]

The first photo was from when I was under a tree, so under some shade. But it was a very sunny day, so UV rays everywhere. You can see the nail polish has gone from the pale cream colour to a pale pinkish colour.

The next three photos were taken under direct sunlight. In the second photo, you can see that the left half of my nails are a darker pink, probably because they were exposed more to direct sunlight. You can see the colour progressing to a darker pink in the rest of the photos. The last photo is as dark as the nail polish ever gets under the sun.

So it's a pale cream colour out of direct sunlight, and a bright fuchsia shade once it's under direct sunlight long enough.

I love these type of nail polishes. It's colour changing which is always fun, and the colours it goes through are lovely.

Gingerbread Crisp - Revlon Parfumerie Autumn Spice

Slowly trying to get back into the swing of things - I thought I'd get in a nice autumny manicure while it's still autumn here!

[Bottle to nail: Revlon Parfumerie Autumn Spice (2 coats)]

Yes, I'm not being particularly imaginative! But here's Autumn Spice from the Revlon Parfumerie range. Isn't it gorgeous!

[2 coats: Revlon Parfumerie Autumn Spice]

Autumn Spice is a rich glowy golden brown glass fleck polish. The golden sparks actually flash pink at different angles, which you can sort of spot in this photo. Formula is pretty much perfect and you could get away with just using one coat. I wanted a deep finish so I ended up going with two coats.

[2 coats: Revlon Parfumerie Autumn Spice]

Now, the Parfumerie range is a scented polish collection, so what does Autumn Spice smell like? Well, I was a bit worried at first because strongly cinnamon-like scents tend to put me off, but this was a pleasant light spicy gingery/cinnamon scent to me. You can only really smell it if you bring your nails up close for a sniff, so definitely not too overpowering! The scent only really lasts a few days though!

Chocolate Covers - Sally Hansen Purple Potion, Revlon LilyChrome, Sally Hansen What In Carnation

On a very random starting note, the purple of this nail polish exactly matches the colour of the Cadbury chocolate bar wrapper, which is why this nail polish reminds me so much of Cadbury, hah.

[All nails other than the ring finger: Sally Hansen Purple Potion, Revlon LilyChrome
Ring finger: Sally Hansen Purple Potion, Sally Hansen What In Carnation]

This mani is a result of my playing around on the silicone nail art mat again. I used Sally Hansen's Purple Potion for Cadbury purple nail polish and Revlon's LilyChrome, for the silver chrome nail polish. On my ring finger, I did try something different by using Sally Hansen's Purple Potion with Sally Hansen's What In Carnation, a very pale lavender creme polish.

As you can see, the lines of nail polish when used with a chrome polish like LilyChrome are very crisp and sharp, while this nail art done using creme polishes produces a softer look, as shown on the ring finger.

Here's all the nail art mani I did on the silicone mat. I like to play around with patterns and different nail polish combination too. I basically apply stripes of nail polish and then pull through the stripes with the tip of a tooth pick. Then I leave the nail polish to dry. In the photo above, I had already peeled them off the mat, which is why they're scattered everywhere.

[All nails other than the ring finger: Sally Hansen Purple Potion, Revlon LilyChrome
Ring finger: Sally Hansen Purple Potion, Essie Private Weekend]

On the ring finger for this one, it's really quite a mess. I used Purple Potion with Essie's Private Weekend, a white creme polish. I really did muck up the creme polish nail art, I think because they were just too watery and I had applied too much of it. Also, the creme nail polishes are very thin. If you want to create nail art like this on a silicone mat, apply a clear base coat first and leave it to dry. If you don't, the nail art you created could be too fragile to handle and can split down the seams without the dried base coat to hold it all together.

[All nails other than the ring finger: Sally Hansen Purple Potion, Revlon LilyChrome
Ring finger: Sally Hansen Purple Potion, Sally Hansen What In Carnation]

I really do like this colour combination. :)  And the outcome doesn't look too terrible either!

Orange-sicle - Dance Legend Hen Party

Things have lightened up a little recently but I've still been too busy to attempt any nail art. I did manage a pretty sparkly untried though!

[Bottle to nail: Dance Legend Hen Party (3 coats)]

This is the lovely Hen-Party from Dance Legend's City Lights collection which consists of jelly polishes loaded with tons of shimmer and square glitter pieces. 

[3 coats: Dance Legend Hen Party]

Hen Party is a bright coral jelly polish jam-packed with iridescent gold square glitter and fine shimmer that shifts between blue and magenta (it's hard to tell!). All the gold glitter makes it look a lot more orange than it actually is! It definitely leans a bit more pink in real life.

[3 coats: Dance Legend Hen Party]

It's a really good jelly opacity for getting nice depth with the different layers of glitter. This was three coats because I wanted a richer shade, but two would've been enough for full coverage. I did find that this was a teeensy bit prone to flooding, so just be a bit careful not to overload the brush as it does spread all over..

[3 coats: Dance Legend Hen Party]

All these photos except the last one above were taken in indirect lighting to properly show the detail of the glitter. This last one though is just direct light and you can see that it's just super glowy.

I think this is an interesting polish, but I don't think it suits my mood at the moment. I haven't quite figured out yet what does though! We'll see...