Kiko 647 Jasmine

Today's polish is from one of Kiko's limited edition ranges from earlier this year. When I saw the first swatches of the Cupcake range, I fell in love. They are a very pretty range of pastel shade matte textured polishes with tiny coloured particles in them, like sprinkles on a cupcake - they just looked so cute in the swatches I saw, and I really wanted to try them.
I wasn't 100% sure I'd like them as I don't wear pastel shades that often, but these really called to me. I was lucky enough to pick up a few on a rare shopping trip into London, but last week I spotted a couple more on one of the Facebook sales pages, so I snapped them up. Kiko 647 is one of the ones I got last week, and as soon as I put it on, I loved it. I was quite surprised how much I like it, to be honest, but it just shows you have to try these things.
647 is named Gelsomino (Jasmine) on the Italian site. Kiko is an Italian range but they do have a UK site and a couple of shops in London.
Jasmine flowers are a pale creamy white, very similar to the base colour in this polish. The particles are in this seem to be bluey teal, and orange, but to the naked eye I think I can see purple and red too, although that isn't apparent when I zoom in on my pics. The overall look seems to be a little pinker than jasmine but I think that's the effect that the peachy orange particles have.
This applied quite well, the brush wasn't fantastic but it was OK. It dried nicely too, pretty quick for a textured polish, drying to a nice hard finish and good coverage with 2 coats. Some textured polishes that don't actually have glitter in them seem to end up looking a bit plastic but this still looks matte.
All in all, for the price, these are excellent value and I am really pleased I managed to get a few, eyes peeled for a couple more!

Kiko 647 Jasmine

 

 

 

 

Dark Metal Lacquer Deliverance

Today's polish is a glitter topper, which I thought would look good over my previous mani, Butter London Royal Navy.
Dark Metal Lacquer Deliverance is a fascinating glitter topper. It contains colour shifting glitter in a clear base, which is great as that means I can wear it over any colour at all. In the bottle it is predominantly blue, which is why I chose to wear to over Royal Navy but it shifts through blue, purple, pink, and red. I did one coat last night and to be honest it looked nothing at all until I topcoated it and then it was so pretty. This morning I added a 2nd coat and another coat of topcoat but actually I think one coat is probably enough. If you paint this onto a sheet of white paper it looks like a fine dust, but it's packed pretty densely and the effect on the nail is gorgeous.
This is a really lovely topper, and I love the shades of the colour shift. Even in low levels of light the shift is apparent despite it not being very visible on my photos.
This obviously works well over dark blue, but I think it would work well over most dark colours and I particularly like that the base is clear as a coloured base would exclude some colours.
This is yet another delightful polish from UK Indie Dark Metal Laqcuer.

Dark Metal Lacquer Deliverance

 

 

 

  

 

Knitted Jacket by Drops Design in Patons Moonglow Mulberry

It's been too long since I did a knitting post. This was the last project I completed and for a number of reasons it took me for ever! By the time I had finished it, we were well into the summer and warm fluffy cardigans didn't really seem right!
I'd had this wool, Patons Moonglow in Mulberry, for quite some time and I really didn't fancy any of the patterns that I'd got in my stash so it sat in a box waiting (along with a quite a lot of other wool, I have to say!)
Mulberry is a soft, muted mix of purples with peach and white. It was sent as a substitute for something I had ordered but I liked it well enough to hold onto it. Moonglow is a chunky acrylic/wool/polyester mix, knitted on 6mm needles. It is lovely and soft, nice to knit with but it doesn't seem to go far, only 50m in a 50 gram ball.
Anyway, it had been put away back in the days before I discovered Ravelry, and now I wonder why I ever bother to buy patterns. You can get some lovely patterns for free :)
So having decided I'd like to use my Moonglow, I went to Ravelry, and set the search filters for the correct needle size, and critically, the actual length of wool I had, so that I wouldn't end up running out! I ended up using 13.5 balls.
Drops Design patterns frequently come up when I am searching, and I liked the look of this one (Drops 129-9). In theory it was a simple design, the body (and button band) all being knitted as one piece, and then you add the sleeves in and keep going. Cast off, sew up the sleeves and you are done...
The pattern is for a fitted jacket, with buttons down the front but I wanted an open jacket with just one button at the neck, so I ignored the instructions to decrease and then increase for a waistline. Apart from the  ribbed borders, the whole thing was knitted in stocking stitch which was perfect since my wool is multi-coloured but my problems came when trying to handle 200 stitches.
I've never mastered the circular needle and in the end resorted to using 2 needles for each row, and switching halfway along which was messy, and risky in case the stitches fell off! As a result this was not a pick up a do a bit when you fancy type of a project and being busy with work, I just didn't really get a good run at it.
Well, I finished it just at the start of summer, and now - August - it's cold so I have pressed the borders as they were curling a bit and it is ready to wear!
I am really pleased with how it has turned out, the colours are lovely and it's really soft and warm.
The pattern was for 3/4 sleeves but I made them full length, confident that I had sufficient wool. So, I changed the cut, and the sleeve length. In principle it's the same pattern, but if you go googling the pattern it won't look quite the same. It is an easy pattern to follow if you are more competent with the circular needle, or have very long straight needles.

 

  

 

Butter London Royal Navy

I enjoyed wearing my dark creme Jacava last week so much that this week I've gone for another dark creme polish. This time I am wearing another untried polish which I have had for ages. I bought a set of 3 Butter London polishes from Brand Alley, probably 2 years ago. It was a fab set as it included Branwen's Feather, which I have worn but that was pre-blogging days and British Racing Green. 3 lovely dark colours in my most favourite shades, purple, green and the one I am wearing today, blue. Royal Navy is a deep dark navy blue, a lovely intense inky shade. In fact when I showed my husband, he said my nails reminded him of Quink, the bottles of ink we used to buy to fill up our fountain pens at school.
This painted on well, with perfect coverage in two coats. It dried quickly, with a lovely smooth finish. Pictures are taken with topcoat, but it was pretty glossy anyway. I love how dark and shiny these are, and the reflections they pick up outside like deep blue mirrors!
It's cold again now, and no dark blue gloves so I went for a pair of teal, purple and pink marl ones that seem to go with plenty of polishes - gloves in August? I am not really very impressed, but then, this is England and the dreary weather does mean my dark moody polishes can come out!

Butter London Royal Navy

Bella Belle Dragon's Breath

Today's polish was in April 2014's "What's In-Die Box". I didn't get the box but I managed to pick up this polish from someone who decided it wasn't for them. This is Dragon's Breath by Bella Belle Nail Couture. Dragon's Breath is a dark base with tiny red glitter and red diamond shaped glitter. I don't remember seeing diamond shaped glitter before and I think that's probably what attracted me to this one.
I swatched this on a sheet of white paper to see what the base was like and I think you'd need quite a lot of coats for full opacity. I don't like to build up too much glitter with multiple coats so I have used one coat of this over my previous mani, Jacava Blackcurrant Vamp. I think black base looks fine over the dark purple, making it only the tiniest bit darker, but the red diamonds look great over the vampy blackcurrant shade!
I managed to get one diamond on most of my nails, and 2 on a couple, but I did need 2 coats of topcoat for a smooth finish. The diamonds didn't want to lie flat, they curled very slightly and left sharp edges. Those that lay the other way up were fine, with the edges curling down and if I had realised sooner I would have flipped them with a cocktail stick so that they were all curved side down.
The black and red make a wonderful dark and mysterious polish and although I wouldn't attempt to build this up on its own I think it would look good over any number of dark vampy shades, including black and dark red.
I don't think I've quite captured the true beauty of this but I really like the way it's so dark but I get these glimmers of red, like burning coals and the longer I wear this, the more I love it!

Bella Belle Dragon's Breath

 

 

 

Jacava Blackcurrant Vamp

It's been a while since I wore a beautiful classic creme shade and this beauty has been waiting in the untried box for sometime, so I decided it was high time I wore Jacava Blackcurrant Vamp.
This is a deep dark blackcurrant purple, so dark it is almost black. It doesn't get much vampier than this!
Like almost all my Jacavas, the finish is very glossy and expensive looking. It applied well with its super elegant long handled brush although I did use 3 coats for complete opacity as the colour was a little less intense at the edges, probably due to my painting inaccuracies. However, despite using 3 coats it dried in good time.
I've got quite a lot of purples but always got room for a few more, especially when they are as dark and gorgeous as this. This is a lovely red/purple - a lot of mine are more blue. I love this shade, really dark but not so dark that it loses its colour. If it is so dark it looks like black in most lights, it might as well be black. This is most definitely dark purple, and conjures up images of Ribena for me!

Jacava Blackcurrant Vamp

 

  

 

Girly Bits Man Size Love

The polish I am wearing today is a real stunner, and I love it! It is Man Size Love from the Girly Bits 80's Girl Band Collection. The collection came out in June, and I bought a couple of them from Rainbow Connection.
I'd seen plenty of swatches before I bought it, but when it arrived it looked much more purple in the bottle than any of the images I had seen. However, once on the nail it is the most gorgeous periwinkle / cornflower blue; it has a leaning towards purple but not as purple as in the bottle. This polish is holographic but also contains fine bright blue glitter, almost aqua coloured and maybe it is this that tones the purple down. Anyway, however the science bit works, it is mega pretty, and I am pleased to see that my pictures are pretty colour accurate.
I have had this on 5 days now, I was going to change it today but it's just too pretty so it will get another couple of days! I just can't help looking at the blue and how it changes when the glitter or the holo pick up different lights.
This polish is an excellent quality, painted on well, and dried quickly. For a bright colour it is very wearable, I am not sure I could wear a creme this colour for too long but the glitter and holo just make it perfect.

Girly Bits Man Size Love

 

 

 

 

 

Dark Metal Lacquer The Day of Night

Once I got back from my holidays, although my holiday mani had lasted well, I was really ready for a change and in the mood for something very different to the nude I had been wearing for almost 3 weeks!
Lucky for me, this little beauty arrived while I was away, and since everything else had been carefully tidied away before we left, this was the obvious choice.
Dark Metal Lacquer is a lovely new UK Indie brand, available here. I took advantage of a sale just before I went away, so I had a nice little parcel waiting for me when I got home.
The Day of Night is a beautiful dark moody polish! It has holographic shimmer and it is also a multichrome. As this is a dark polish, the colour shift was quite subtle, changing from dark green, through blue to a deep aubergine and I'm afraid I didn't capture it too well on my camera, but this polish was an absolute joy to wear. It was a delicious dark tealy green most of the time, softened by that holo shimmer and very wearable. It painted on well, and the holo in the sunshine was gorgeous.
In the bottle this looked like just another black holo, but it is so much more than that, and I am delighted to welcome it into my collection.

Dark Metal Lacquer The Day of Night

 

 

 

 

Nails Inc George Street and OPI Servin' Up Sparkle

This is my holiday mani, carefully chosen to last 2 weeks. A pale colour, so it won't show if it chips, or be too noticeable as it grows away from the cuticle and glitter, again to mask any chips and because the sun is going to shine and it will look AWESOME!
My nude is Nails Inc George Street, which I have had some time but now seems the ideal time to wear it. George Street is a lovely pinky nude creme, it's a very soft shade - slightly pinker than I realised but I have lots of creamy beige nudes so this makes a nice change. In some lights it almost looks lilac.
My glitter is one I have owned for ages, quite possibly one of my very first OPIs. It is Servin' Up Sparkle which was in a Serena Williams Duo with Grape...Set...Match back in 2011. Servin' Up Sparkle is a mix of very fine holographic micro glitter and holographic hexes, in a clear bases.
I think the 2 go well together, in some lights the glitter just looks silvery, and then quite bluey, and then in the sunshine the full holo range sparkles like crazy!

Nails Inc George Street and OPI Servin' Up Sparkle

 

 

 

 

 

 

Updated: This lasted incredibly well, in fact I'd been home 4 days before I had any chips, tip wear was minimal, and in the Portuguese sunshine it looked SO pretty!!