Leafy Greens - Born Pretty 101, Hit the Bottle Teal-riffic

Last week was a successful stamping manicure, this week is a little bit less successful...

[Fail foliage]

[Bottle to nail: Born Pretty 101 (2 coats)]

I had a lovely lush green image in my head, but it didn't quite work out how I imagined!

I used a colour change polish as my base - Born Pretty 101, which shifts from a yellow-green when warm to a grassy shade when cool. 

[2 coats: Born Pretty 101]

Unfortunately my photos of this polish aren't great because it was stinking hot and I could not get it to properly shift to the 'cool' colour! Oh well, I admit I wasn't the most careful with application since I knew I was gonna stamp over it anyway..

[Bottle to nail: Hit the Bottle Teal-riffic (stamping); Base: Born Pretty 101 (2 coats)]

..which I did! With Hit the Bottle Teal-riffic, a green shimmer with a brilliant blue flash in light, and Born Pretty round stamping plate BP-19. 

[Base: Born Pretty 101 (2 coats); Stamping: Hit the Bottle Teal-riffic]

I had issues stamping for some reason and I wasn't very patient at the time (possibly because it was so hot!) so I'm not very happy with this look. Possibly that the stamping shade and base shade don't go together well (one leans warm, the other cool) and also scraping too much off the plate and not getting a nicely filled in design.

With that in mind, I'll definitely give it a go again soon though!

Green Screen - Dance Legend Annihilation

The most beautiful kind of annihilation...

[Dance Legend Annihilation]

...is from Dance Legend! This is Annihilation from Dance Legend's Round Space collection. It's a vibrant green jelly nail polish with silver and gold holo round glitter and smaller hex glitter.

[Dance Legend Annihilation]

I love Annihilation. It's just so bright and the round glitter makes it stand out from most glitter polishes. You don't need to fish out the round glitter and the nail polish applies smoothly and builds easily to opacity.

Exotic Diamond - Maybelline Passionate Plum, Hit the Bottle Copper Haired Girl

Once in a while I do get my stamping sort of right! Here's my follow-up to last week...

[Up the contrast]

Blurple and copper, I was super inspired to do this colour combination. By what, I have no idea... but I do like the contrast!

[2 coats: Maybelline Color Show Passionate Plum]

Here's a quick refresher again of the base shade - Maybelline Color Show Passionate Plum from my post last week.

[Bottle to nail: Hit the Bottle Copper Haired Girl (stamping);
Base: Maybelline Color Show Passionate Plum (2 coats)]

This is the same plate I've featured a few times recently - Born Pretty plate BP-L004. Really like the patterns on this one! I especially like this positive-negative space thing going with this design.

[Base: Maybelline Color Show Passionate Plum (2 coats);
Stamping: Hit the Bottle Copper Haired Girl]

I stamped over Passionate Plum with Copper Haired Girl from Hit the Bottle. What a lovely shade, and beautifully opaque even over the deep base.

[Base: Maybelline Color Show Passionate Plum (2 coats);
Stamping: Hit the Bottle Copper Haired Girl]

I was pretty happy with this stamping manicure. Of course, there's still lots of room for improvement! What you can't see here is all the botched attempts where I scraped too much or too little off the plate... Well, practice makes perfect so I'll keep going...

Sea Scales - Polish Me Silly Blue Lagoon

I'm still on a multichrome flakie craze!

[Polish Me Silly Blue Lagoon]

This is Polish Me Silly's Blue Lagoon, which is a blue-greeny multichrome flakey in a clear base. The colour-shift is very obvious and so very pretty, helped along by the fact that the flakes are large and opaque. You can apply Blue Lagoon over any light or dark base polish and not lose the vibrancy and colour-shift properties, unlike the translucent colour-shifting flakies.

[Polish Me Silly Blue Lagoon against black base polish]

The flakie per bottle density is pretty good. You can't get to full opacity on flakies alone unless you dab them on a lot but they look stunning against most base polishes with colour.

I love the intensity of the colour-shift! I thought Blue Lagoon might be a tad boring and typical of colour-shifting flakies but it turned out to be pretty eye-catching and gorgeous.

Glorious Grape - Maybelline Color Show Passionate Plum

Just a plain swatch today, a basic shade even, but what a beauty!

[Bottle to nail: Maybelline Color Show Passionate Plum (2 coats)]

There are probably a million blurples out there, and I've probably got more than one in my collection... but this one is such a no fuss, glowy shade that I'm glad I decided to grab it!

[2 coats: Maybelline Color Show Passionate Plum]

This shade is Passionate Plum from the Maybelline Color Show line. This was two coats, nice and opaque, good dry time and glossy finish.

[2 coats: Maybelline Color Show Passionate Plum]

Nothing really much to complain about here! If you're looking for a simple blurple for the stash, then this is a great one to have. It also makes a lovely base for stamping, as I'll show you in my next post! =)

Glitter Grape - Emily de Molly Calibrated

I have a number of Emily de Molly nail polishes that I haven't posted up yet and I don't even recall where I got some of them. Some of them are from Ev for my birthday, I'm sure. Anyway, here's another gorgeous one!

[Emily de Molly Calibrated]

Emily de Molly's Calibrated is a deep purple jelly nail polish with pink, purple and blue colour shifting flakies. It's one of the more subtle nail polishes with flakies. With the dark colour, my camera can't pick up the flakies as well. But you can still see the glitter of colour there.

I love the jelly look, which builds up to full opacity in three coats for nails as long as mine, but still has that squishy scrumptious look to it. Purple is always good with me so I like this nail polish, though I do wish the flakies were just a leetle bit more prominent.

Luck and Prosperity - Rimmel Exotica, Hit the Bottle To Have and To Gold, Born Pretty BPL-004

Hiya everyone! Happy Lunar New Year! It's the first day of the Year of the Monkey today!

[All is Well]

I managed to squeeze this post out just in time! This one's a stamping mani that I just did last night, phew~

[Bottle to nail: Rimmel Exotica (1 coat)]

Of course, this celebration calls for a nice rich red base. This is an oldie I dug up called Exotica from Rimmel's Lasting Finish line.

[1 coat: Rimmel Exotica]

Exotica isn't really that exotic! It's a deep red polish with lots of golden shimmer that lightens up the base shade. The shimmer is fairly fine, so you don't see it on the nails much.

[1 coat: Rimmel Exotica]

I only used one coat here which gives decent enough coverage if you're careful. Since I was going to stamp over it, I wasn't too concerned. Dry time was quick with a nice smooth finish - these photos are just base polish before topcoat.

[Bottle to nail: Hit the Bottle To Have and To Gold (stamping);
Base: Rimmel Exotica (1 coat)]

After topcoating the base polish, I then stamped over it in gold with Hit the Bottle To Have and To Gold, a gorgeous rich gold stamping polish.

[Base: Rimmel Exotica (1 coat); Stamping: Hit the Bottle To Have and To Gold]

I was looking through all my plates for an appropriate pattern and ended up using this lovely geometric one. It's from Born Pretty stamping plate BPL-004 again, just like last week's post. 

[Base: Rimmel Exotica (1 coat); Stamping: Hit the Bottle To Have and To Gold]

This is a pretty similar colour scheme to last year's mani but really, what other colours would you use! I'd like to think that I've improved since then, but that may have more to do with the stamping polishes I'm using now...

[Base: Rimmel Exotica (1 coat); Stamping: Hit the Bottle To Have and To Gold]

Hehe, at any rate, I'm committed to this learn-to-stamp business so you'll definitely be seeing lots of stamping manis from me this year!

Bold Binary - Dance Legend Pseudochromis

I bring you Dance Legend Pseudochromis!

[Dance Legend Pseudochromis]

Dance Legend always has goodies. Pseudochromis has black, white and shiny magenta glitter in a pink-magenta jelly base. It was pretty opaque in 3 coats. As always, the consistency is great and the bottle was packed with glitter.

[Dance Legend Pseudochromis]

Pseudochromis might look simple but I love the colour and the speckled look.

Basket Case - Hit The Bottle I'm Pinking of Blue; Born Pretty BPL-004

Here's a quick update on the manicure I posted last week, featuring my attempts at stamping.. still trying to work it out!

[Space Picnic]

Because it was a somewhat off-the-cuff try, I may not have considered my colour choices all too seriously..

[Base: Sally Hansen Spark (2 coats); Flakie: Polish Me Silly Fun House (1 coat; mattified)]

Brief refresher on what we started out with - this is a coat of Polish Me Silly Fun House, over two coats of Sally Hansen Spark, topped off with a matte topcoat.

[Bottle to nail: Hit The Bottle I'm Pinking of Blue]

I decided to use this fancy shade of stamping polish from Hit The Bottle - I'm Pinking of Blue. How cute is that name! Basically this is a shimmer shade that stamps pink over white, with a blue sheen that comes to the fore when stamped over dark shades.  

[Stamping: Hit The Bottle I'm Pinking of Blue; Plate: Born Pretty BPL-004]

When you combine the pink and blue together, you sort of get an overall purple shade, so it's quite an interesting chameleon of a colour.

[Stamping: Hit The Bottle I'm Pinking of Blue; Plate: Born Pretty BPL-004]

Here, I used plate Born Pretty plate BPL-004 with the lattice pattern. I've actually used this before (and quite terribly, at that!) in a previous manicure, so here's your chance to see how it should actually look (sorta..). =)