Ev's "Inspired by" Entry - Milani Thai-tea, Kleancolor Nail to Toe, Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen

The lovely Cathy from More Nail Polish recently held a nail art competition with some amazing Lynderella polishes as absolutely drool-worthy prizes! Jme and I both tried our luck at it so here's my entry and a breakdown of it! Do check out Jme's post about her nail art entry as well just below this one! Andrew Garfield sure inspires me too... =p

[Inspired by...: Lilies, leadlight, art nouveau]

Cathy's nail art competition was themed "Inspired by..." and I chose three elements I find especially beautiful to combine together: Lilies, art nouveau and leadlight.

[Bottle to nail: Milani Thai-tea (2 coats)]

So... I started with Milani Thai-tea, another beautiful and deceptively simple-looking polish from Milani. This is a creamy milk tea brown, with complimentary gold shimmer and larger flecks of darker gold glitter bits floating around randomly.

[Milani Thai-tea: Two coats]

It really looks like flecks of tea leaves in Asian-style milky tea! Yummmm~ I was trying to pick a background color which would emulate old stained glass (in case any peeked through the design which did not quite happen anyway, haha)...

[Base: Milani Thai-tea; Nail art: Kleancolor Nail to Toe nail art polish (various)]

Excuse this crappy pic - it was taken with my phone because my camera was charging! So, I broke out my collection of Kleancolor Nail to Toe nail art polishes. They are similar to the LA Colors Art Deco ones, with a long-ish thin brush. The Kleancolors are not only cheaper, they contain more polish per bottle!

These are Wedding Gown White (white creme), Gold Dipped (gold), Splash Party (metallic blue), Garden of KC (metallic green), Candied Honey (pastel yellow creme) and Passion Flame (red creme). Excellent coverage and brilliant colours, I totally recommend these!

[Base: Milani Thai-tea; Nail art: Kleancolor Nail to Toe + Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen]

This step is the magic step which brings the pattern to life! Using a combination of Kleancolor Nail to Toe in Tuxedo Black and Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen in Black, I defined each section. I find it best to not have a strict idea of what you want, just go with the flow~

[Competition entry: "Inspired by..."]

And tadaaaa! Finished product. You can see I decided to add red bits, and cleaned up a bit before topcoating everything. This mani was surprisingly tough and lasted most of a week before I got bored and took it off!

Although it didn't turn out exactly like the inspiration, I'm pretty happy with my take on it~ =) Hope you enjoyed reading about it, it was heaps of fun to do!

Thanks again to Cathy for organising this, and do check out all the other gorgeous entries at her blog!

Jme's "Inspired by" Entry - Dong Dong Crystal Sand 04 and 21

Here is my entry for the "Inspired by" competition organised by More Nail Polish here!

Yes alright, my geeky side is showing. How embarrassing! However, I couldn't help it. At that time, I was only inspired by this:

That fine figure from behind is really inspiring! No wait, I mean, the new Spider-man suit is really inspiring! Everything just looks so very touchable. Um. Yes. I was talking about the suit. Totally.

IN ANY CASE, Spider-man manicure! It was so much fun to do!

I wish I took more pictures, but I'm a genius and only managed a couple shots before I decided to run off to do other stuff and promptly chipped the mani. :(  It was a small chip, and I wore this mani for almost a week anyway (what a record!).

Here are the nail polishes I used to do this manicure:

Yes, the Dong Dong nail polishes! This post consists entirely of inappropriate stuff, how awesome is that? I have swatched them in the past, so have a look at how shiny they are originally.

My steps to create this Spider-man mani are:

1. Paint the red polish on as a base, before applying a coat of quick dry top coat.
2. Tape away part of the nails before applying the blue nail polish to create a similar shape to that of the colour separation on the back of the Spider-man suit.
3. Another coat of quick dry top coat over the lot, before drawing in the black lines for the spider-webs and the spider logo using an Artline 200, Fine 0.4 tip pen.
4. Essie's Matte About You over the lot

Matte-fying glittery polishes produces matte manis with a lovely shimmer that does a passable imitation of how latex-y fabric would look like, in my opinion.

I considered using my nail art pens to draw in the black lines, but I never find any of them fine and thin (in colour) enough to produce the effect I wanted. A tip I have for using Artline pens for arty manis is to draw very gently, otherwise you will dig into the polish. My second tip would be to apply your matte top coat as fast as possible, and use as few strokes as possible when applying it. Certain fast dry, glossy top coats will smudge the ink, but I find matte top coats to be pretty good at preserving the ink without smudges.

I took some artistic liberties with this Spider-man mani so it's not an exact copy in many ways. Still, it really was a fun mani to have on my nails!

And now, one last thing...

I'm so looking forward to the hilarity of Andrew Garfield's poofy hair being squished under a mask.

Amethyst Soda - Sally Hansen Gem Crush Be-Jeweled

Argggh, March is such a terribly busy month so I'm sorry if the quality and frequency of my posts decrease. It's almost all I can do to keep up my regular Monday post. I'm sorry! I've just had so much to organise and hand in this month. Things will pick up again in April, I promise!

I'm heading to Perth for work for the whole of next week. Unfortunately I won't have much time to look around but I do have a few hours to wander around before my flight back to Sydney on Saturday. Any Perth peeps with tips on plish shopping? *wink*

Anyway, I managed to find some time yesterday to swatch Be-Jeweled from the Sally Hansen Gem Crush collection! How gorgeous are these glitters! I'm lemming Showgirl Chic too especially after seeing Jme's swatches but I've only got this one (for now...)...Let's take a look!

[Bottle to nail: Sally Hansen Gem Crush Be-Jeweled (3 coats)]

Be-Jeweled is a dense pale purple glitter in a clear base with peach-orange holo glitter scattered throughout. This photo is a bit darker than it actually looks in the bottle and on the nail.

[Three coats: Sally Hansen Gem Crush Be-Jeweled]

This photo is a bit more accurate although I had SO much trouble trying to photograph the peach glitter! I used three coats for complete coverage but I suspect with care, two coats would be enough. The formula is slightly thick as is normal for glitter polishes, but nowhere as crazy as the goop you sometimes get with other glitter polishes like LA Splash, for example.

[Three coats: Sally Hansen Gem Crush Be-Jeweled]

As Jme has already mentioned in her review of Showgirl Chic, there are two different brushes that come with this collection. The bottle I picked up had the curved lid and longer, thinner brush. I didn't have any problems with application.

[In shadow: Sally Hansen Gem Crush Be-Jeweled (3 coats)]

Here's a slightly shadowed picture to see the ratio of peachy glitter compared to the purple. There's a pleasing amount of it and it builds up nice and even over the nail.

[Glittery goodness: Sally Hansen Gem Crush Be-Jeweled (3 coats)]

And of course, a crappy-focus mobile photo to show the glorious shinyness! This is a great range of glitters from Sally Hansen (and so quickly available in Australia too!). Some of the others may be a bit generic, but a couple are definitely worth picking up, I reckon!

Chips to Tips - Sally Hansen Showgirl Chic + Milani Blue Flash

Quickie Saturday post! If my mani chips, I take that as an awesome reason to put on a new manicure altogether or try on a French mani combo. In this case, I already had a perfect blue polish to go with Showgirl Chic.

[Base: Sally Hansen Gem Crush Showgirl Chic
Tips: Milani One Coat Glitter Blue Flash]

Milani's One Coat Glitter Blue Flash is a surprising perfect colour match to Showgirl Chic's blue glitter. Blue Flash's glitter is smaller, but it doesn't matter when doing a manicure like this. 

There was only one little chip to be honest, but I already had this French mani in mind anyway. I painted this freehand at super-speed, so it probably shows. At least with glittery tips, an imperfect line is not terribly noticeable.

[Base: Sally Hansen Gem Crush Showgirl Chic
Tips: Milani One Coat Glitter Blue Flash]

So shiny and prettyyyy. :D

I have heard complaints that Sally Hansen's Showgirl Chic chips real quick, but to be honest, I find most glitter-full polishes to be that way, unless you use a long lasting topcoat and a bonder as a base I think. It's not any worse than most polishes consisting entirely of glitter.

Glitterlicious - Sally Hansen Gem Crush Showgirl Chic

In this post, I'll cover off where we bought the new Sally Hansen Gem Crush collection on discount and the different brushes Sally Hansen offers, but let's start off with the swatches for Showgirl Chic from the aforementioned collection!

[Sally Hansen Showgirl Chic, from the Gem Crush collection]

I'm easily entertained so I was quite amused by how the word 'crush' looks all squishy and crushed under the word Gem on the bottle. The plish in the bottle looks impressively shiny and it doesn't disappoint on nails.

[Sally Hansen Showgirl Chic, from the Gem Crush collection]

This is so brilliantly gorgeous in person. I love how shiny it is. Showgirl Chic from Gem Crush is a dense silver glitter with sparse, very small, blue hexagonal glitters. The scattering of blue hex glitter makes the bright silver base look colder, showier and that much more interesting.

It took two to three coats to be completely opaque.

[Sally Hansen Showgirl Chic, from the Gem Crush collection]

Mm, I think silver manis go well with my skintone.

I decided to use my iPhone to photograph this, because it really excels at being just that little bit out of focus so that the real shininess of the polish comes through:

[Sally Hansen Showgirl Chic, from the Gem Crush collection]

Now isn't that lovely?

An issue I noticed with Showgirl Chic is that the blue hex glitters are much sparser compared to the silver glitter, so the distribution on nails can be a little dodgy sometimes. I found that there tended to be more blue hex glitter towards my cuticles with barely any on my tips. It was probably due to how I drag the brush as well.

Thankfully, with glitter polish, you can be a little more 'creative' with the application. All I did was dip the polish in again and if there was more blue on the brush, I would just spread them across the tips so that I had a more even distribution. 

I have Be-Jeweled as well from Gem Crush and I didn't have the same issue with it. The pink-orange hex glitters were spread more evenly across the nail, and I think it's due to the fact that Be-Jeweled clearly have more hex glitter than Showgirl Chic does. You can see for yourself below by clicking on the photo for a closer look:

[Sally Hansen Showgirl Chic and Be-Jeweled]

Sally Hansen Brushes

Other than the distribution of different-coloured glitter, you might have also noticed that the lids for Showgirl Chic and Be-Jeweled are different. The lids are actually random across the Gem Crush collection, and you can choose whichever lid you prefer. 

A straight lid (Showgirl Chic, in this case) has a shorter and thicker brush, while a curved lid (Be-Jeweled), has a longer and thinner brush. I can honestly say that Showgirl Chic felt like it was harder to apply while Be-Jeweled definitely went on with a bit more ease. Perhaps it's personal preference, but I thought the thicker and shorter brush was harder to wield and made the plish gloopier. 

Sally Hansen Discount!

As for where we got the Sally Hansen's Gem Crush... Well, it's no big secret actually. We got them from Priceline, which has a 20% discount off all Sally Hansen products right now! So don't miss out on it! I find that when it comes to new Sally Hansen nail polish, that's the lowest they usually go for. Priceline occasionally has 20% off Sally Hansen so it's a good place to keep an eye on. 

If you have found a better place to get new Sally Hansen nail polish, please comment or message us with the deets, because I would love to get a chance to buy more Sally Hansen products at a lower price! :P

On the Flakie-Wagon - China Glaze Wagon Trail + Nubar 2010

Well! After all the excitement of last week, here's a tried and true favourite - Nubar 2010 over China Glaze Wagon Trail. Wagon Trail is one of those under-rated colours, I reckon. Just check out the pics to see all the shimmer hiding in it! I didn't want to use Nubar 2010 over black as I always do, so putting it over a coordinating-but-not base colour was the way to go...

[China Glaze Wagon Trail: 2 coats]

My base of China Glaze Wagon Trail. Wagon Trail is a deliciously opaque (I think this was two coats) blackened olive/gold with lots of hidden gold shimmer... but that's not all...

[Hidden Shimmer: China Glaze Wagon Trail]

Look closer and there's a tonne of shimmer in lots of different colours from pink to gold and green!

[Base: China Glaze Wagon Trail; Flakies: Nubar 2010 (3 coats)]

I layered 2-3 coats of Nubar 2010 over each nail. Nubar 2010 is a orange-to-green duochrome flakie with varying sizes and density. Two coats was probably enough but who can say no to more shiny goodness!

[Flakie colour-shift: Nubar 2010 (3 coats)]

Sorry for the somewhat blurry/dark pics but I wanted to show the strong colour shift. I have fairly curved nails so it was pretty amazing! I'm not a fan of duochrome shimmers to be honest, but when glitters/flakies/glass-flecks are duochrome... I'm all over it!