Monday 26 March 2012

Nicki Minaj Water Marble Attempt....

Hello lovelies,

Well I bought the whole OPI Nicki Minaj collection even though I really only liked Fly - I'm just a bit weird like that and like to have the whole collection!! So now I need to use them......... A water marble I thought, what a good idea!

Well, let me tell you this is my second water marble attempt ever, and I have to say this is a technique I need to practice.

Firstly I used my usual OPI Nail Envy base and then 1 coat of OPI Alpine Snow. The Nicki Minaj colours needed one more colour I thought so I picked OPI Ate Berries In The Canaries.

Here are the results:





It wasn't exactly what I had in mind but I don't mind how it turned out! I wanted to get the more flowery patterns that I have seen on some blogs but everytime I tried it just didn't come out that way, I'd get a big bald patch or too much colour.

Anyway, I did find a way to improve it - and that is to add some pretty holo glitter in the form of Northern Lights Gold Hologram Topcoat:



In my opinion everyone needs this topcoat - they do it in silver too!  

These were the colours I used:



OPI Pink Friday, OPI Fly, OPI Did It On 'Em, and OPI Ate Berries In The Canaries

So, things I learnt this time:

- I didn't tape, I just used cuticle oil all over my finger and cleaned up with acetone and cotton buds after (saved a lot of time and aggrevation)

- I didn't drag the toothpick from the outside ring of polish as this was sometimes already dry and would bunch up rather than being dragged to make a pattern.

In the end I was quite pleased with this mani and had a lot of compliments, I just need to watch some more YouTube tutorials to make the patterns better. Have you got any tips for water marbling??


Thursday 22 March 2012

OPI Fly and a NOPI Million Sparkles..... A Winning Combination!

So lovelies, today I have for you OPI Fly which is part of the Nikki Minaj collection released earlier in the year and Nicole by OPI A Million Sparkles. They are a very pretty and sparkly combination together!

A Million Sparkles has lots of lovely glitter - bright blue glitter, hexagonal gold glitter, pink bar glitter and tiny blue bar glitter. Now I'm not a fan of bar glitter generally but this applied well and didn't stick out anywhere.

For this mani I used 2 coats of Fly and one coat of A Million Sparkles. It was a little gritty as all glitters are but really not too bad. One coat of Poshe was fine, 2 was even better.

This was taken outside in the sunshine:



Inside with a flash:




Outside in the sun - see how sparkly this is!



Although this is blurry look how pretty this is, this was taken in the evening under artificial light:


OK, now on to OPI Fly. It's a gorgeous blueish cream. I saw blueish because to me it's not exactly blue, but it's not green or teal either. Maybe it has a touch of teal, my camera gave me different colours so see what you think:

I think this is probably closest to the true colour:




Outside with sunshine:



Inside with flash:



I thought I'd post a few bottle shots cause there's a lot of OPI fakes. I got mine with some vouchers from Bloom.com








Now, a lot of people said that Fly stains, so I was prepared. When using dark colours or colours I think might stain I always put on 2 coats of OPI Nail Envy and then 1 coat of a nornal base coat, I'm currently using up a bottle of Leighton Denny base but any thickish base coat will do. This is how they looked after removal - see, no stains!!


Hope you liked this post :-)

Thursday 8 March 2012

Butter London Disco Biscuit

Hello fellow polish lovers,
OK for my very 3rd post I have Butter London Disco Biscuit to show you.

Butter London is a British brand but seems to be impossible to find in British stores except Harvey Nichols or online, very strange in my opinion! But they do have amazing polishes and great formulas.


I was lucky enough to get this amazing polish in a swap from one of my polish friends Peggy - how lucky was I??

Butter London Disco Biscuit is a gorgeous hot pink jelly with blue micro-glitter. It was released as part of Butter London's Spring/Summer 2012 colection.

As with all jellies it applied pretty sheer and for these pictures I used 4 coats. It also dries quite gritty which I was surprised by but this was fixed by 2 coats of topcoat. I used OPI Rapid Dry this time because my new beloved Poshe was packed away somewhere!

The glitter in this really does shine through and it really pretty and I love the squishiness of the jelly finish.

I can still see a VNL even with 4 coats and so next time I think I'll layer it over a similar colour or use it for a candy mani over a pretty glitter. I do love it and am pleased to have it in my stash!

Inside with artificial light:







Although this is a bit blurry it does show you how sparkly this polish can be!



Outside with no sun:



This is what the bottle should look like:








Did you know that a Disco Biscuit is actually another name for an ecstasy tablet (as in the drug)??


Disco Biscuit can be ordered from Butter London at http://www.butterlondon.com/ for £12 GBP or $14 USD. I do believe that Ulta in the US also stock it.