What A Stud - L'oreal Fancy Me

You can't go wrong with red, gold and studs, right?

[Metallica Red]

The base polish is L'oreal's Fancy Me. As you can see in the photo below, it dries matte.

[Two coats of L'oreal Fancy Me]

Fancy Me is a glitter polish, with predominantly red glitter and some gold glitter mixed in. The gold among the red is more obvious in real life as compared to in the photos. Probably all the red glitter just dazzles the camera into submission. You can see a little more of the gold in the photos below.

I dabbed some clear polish on my nails where I wanted the studs to go and stuck on the gold studs one by one. Then I painted quick dry topcoat nail polish over everything to make sure the studs stay on. Without the topcoat, I'm pretty sure the studs wouldn't last a day with me. With the topcoat, they lasted about a week, which is pretty good for me!

[Gold studs on L'oreal Fancy Me]

I find square studs a really easy but cool addition to manis, just to punk rock things up!

Web of Flowers - MdU Black, L'oreal Hello Captain, Born Pretty BPL-029

I received the latest stamping plates when I just painted my nails sparkly purple. I couldn't wait to test out the stamping plates so I decided to stamp over my existing mani. Unfortunately, I had on beautiful and glittery polish which is nice on its own but a little busy as a base nail polish. But I've got close ups and stamps on paper to try to make up for it, so have a look!

[Stamping: MdU Black, Born Pretty BPL-029 plate
Base: L'oreal Hello Captain]

I reviewed L'oreal Hello Captain last week over here, and it really is quite a gorgeous and shiny purple polish that will become a staple in the future. I stamped over Hello Captain with a flowery stamp from Born Pretty's BPL-029 plate. You can click on the photos above for a close-up, or you can view the close-up below.

[Stamping: MdU Black, Born Pretty BPL-029 plate
Base: L'oreal Hello Captain]

It really is too bad that the base is so busy.

I really like this plate, mainly because they somehow manage to be pretty varied in pattern while keeping to the same floral theme. Stamping was easy with this plate, no issues to report even for a noob like me.

The stamping pattern for this mani is the second stamp from the left on the top row:

[Born Pretty BPL-029 stamping plate]

[Born Pretty BPL-029 stamps]

I stamped all the patterns onto paper to the best of my ability. I'm still a newbie when it comes to stamping so I do apologise for the patchy stamping, and the leaked nail polish and missing parts.

From the test stamps on paper above, I can already tell that the sunflowers and both the roses will be my favourite, and I quite like the pattern that is second from the right on the top row. I'll have to try them all some day!

The stamping plate was sent to me for review. You can buy it here, and get a discount if you use the code above!

Purple Power - L'oreal Hello Captain, Maybelling Sapphire Stitch

It feels like a long time since I had purple glitter on my nails, so this was a timely purchase. :P

[Base: Maybelline Sapphire Stitch
Top coat: L'oreal Hello Captain]

I used Maybelline Sapphire Stitch from the Brocade collection for the base coat, which is a very deep purple glitter with gold shimmer. Then I had two coats of L'oreal's Hello Captain from their Color Riche Top Coat Sirene collection as a topper.

[Base: Maybelline Sapphire Stitch
Top coat: L'oreal Hello Captain]

In two coats, Hello Captain almost looks like it completely covers the base coat. I like the final colour, a light-to-medium purple, with this stunning array of glitter. It has purple hex glitter of different sizes, holo hex glitter and silver holo flakes. The bottle is pretty packed with glitter and there's no need to fish to get a variety of different glitter. Over all, I love this nail polish and I kind of want more from this collection!

Royal Blue - L'oreal 811, Femme Fatale Eventide[[

Dooop de dooooooop, time to play with new nail polish!

[Femme Fatale Eventide over L'oreal Color Riche 811]

This is Femme Fatale Eventide over L'oreal Color Riche 811. Eventide has medium gold hex glitter, large gold square glitter, smaller green-gold hex, square and short bar glitter, and small pink hex glitter. Femme Fatale balances their amount of glitter rather well so you don't have to go fishing for their glitter. However, Eventide is not one of my favourites from them because some of their hexes are a bit too curly for my liking, even after top coats.

I wanted to try putting on the glitter in different ways other than just layering it over. So you have the gradual increase to the tips above.

[Femme Fatale Eventide over L'oreal Color Riche 811]

And here I have Eventide as side accents. With glitter, I don't feel that you have to tape it off to paint only a section. I do like how this one turned out. It looks like my blue mani has gold flaked accents. :)

[L'oreal Color Riche 811]

A little about L'oreal 811 on its own. It's a deep blue with green shimmer. It might look like there are bubbles here, but it's just an illusion caused by how my camera photographs the shimmer. The green shimmer does come across strongly, which is a nice touch, and the application is smooth. But whether it's a must have... well, I leave that up to you, but I personally don't think so.

Bottled Treasure - More Nail Polish's Coinage, L'oreal Emerald Carat

This is a lovely surprise pressie from Cathy at More Nail Polish. As you may know, my partner-in-crime-and-blogging Ev won Cathy's 'Inspired by' competition, and she was sent three amazing Lynnderella polishes as a prize. Along with these three bottles, Cathy also sent along her own custom nail polish, called Coinage, to be passed on to me. It was such a lovely surprise, and I can't begin to describe how delighted it made me! :D

[Two thick coats of More Nail Polish's Coinage]

More Nail Polish's Coinage is so full of glitter, I hardly know where to start. It's really, epically shiny, something a few people took note when I was wearing it. A fellow I just met immediately passed a comment on how shiny it was at a meeting.

[Close-up of More Nail Polish's Coinage in its bottle]

The clear base is chock-full of gold hex glitter of different sizes and varying shades. There are also silver holo microglitter, large silver holo hex glitter, fine holo bar glitter, and red-copper hex glitter. Running between that all are very fine gold microglitter. It's easy to achieve a shiny, full coverage in two to three coats!

[Two thick coats of More Nail Polish's Coinage]

Coinage is a warm gold, and I think the red-copper glitter stands out and pulls the eye to the nails very well. The above picture captures the shade of gold best, I feel.

If only I hadn't broken the nail on my pinky finger. The uneven lengths is distracting, but I can't bear to cut the others so short.

[Close-up of More Nail Polish's Coinage on nail]

It's easier to see the different glitter in person and up-close. I'm afraid my photos aren't doing this much justice!

[iPhone photo: Two thick coats of More Nail Polish's Coinage]

As usual, I'm including a dodgy looking photo taken with my iPhone, in hopes that you can see some of the shininess that an in-focus shot never quite captures. However, the gold showing up in the iPhone photo is a lot lighter than it really is in person.

I decided to swatch Coinage over a slightly darker colour to see if I could get the fine, gold microglitter to stand out better.

[Base: One coat of L'oreal Resist & Shine Titanium Emerald Carat
Top: Two thin coats of More Nail Polish's Coinage]

Not a bad result at all! L'oreal Resist & Shine Titanium Emerald Carat is a dark bronze shade, with a green sheen and gold microglitter. Rather like a swampy green with a gold hue. It's a rather unusual shade to describe, but so very interesting to wear!

With Coinage layered over Emerald Carat, the overall result is a darker, blingy bronze-gold mani! The above picture is showing up darker than it really is in person, but even in the shade, the holo winks out faintly against the darker base. The big hex glitter flashes between pink-blue-green, so it's nice to capture some of it on photo.

[Base: One coat of L'oreal Resist & Shine Titanium Emerald Carat
Top: Two thin coats of More Nail Polish's Coinage]

This photo is truer to the colour in real life. Isn't it pretty? I don't know if it's my reading choice of late or just my fanciful imagination, but it makes me feel like I'm looking at a speckled golden dragon egg.

[Close-up photo on nail
Base: One coat of L'oreal Resist & Shine Titanium Emerald Carat
Top: Two thin coats of More Nail Polish's Coinage]

Set against a darker base, the close-up of the polish on the nail shows all the different glitter a lot more clearly.

[Base: One coat of L'oreal Resist & Shine Titanium Emerald Carat
Top: Two thin coats of More Nail Polish's Coinage]

And my mandatory iPhone picture for the great shininess!


This blog entry initially caused me a lot of grief, because all the photos I had taken vanished from my camera. I'm not sure what happened, but it's entirely possible that instead of C&P-ing the photos off my camera, I had accidentally pasted them back onto the camera, which will apparently delete the photos instead. So I'm missing all the one-coat, two-coats photos I had taken initially, and had to photograph them all again under poorer light. :(

Oh well, I'll just go stare at my shiny nails to cheer myself up! Thanks again to Cathy for the surprise gift! <3