A England Jane Eyre

A rare sight on my nails today - a polish I have worn before! I have been aiming to use untrieds for most of my manis but A England's Jane Eyre is Gem of the Month for January and it prompted me to dig it out. Last time I wore it I failed miserably to capture its beauty - I think I have had a little more success this time.

Jane Eyre is essentially a black polish packed with tiny pinky red glitters that catch the light and add real warmth to the polish. In some lights it is just black, no complaints from me - I love black but under my LED desk lamp and out in the sunshine the red really glows.

The sun is at a tricky angle for photos at this time of year but I discovered a better angle to take my pics so that I don't end up with bleached out hands! The sun did actually shine today and the sky was an amazing blue, before it clouded over and rained again so I was lucky to get these shots and yes, I took loads!

This polish applied really nicely, perfect coverage in 2 coats and is wearing well on its second day. Photos are taken with a top coat.

I am so glad I brought this one out to try again and Gem of the Month means it's only £6, a real treat.

A England Jane Eyre

 

 

 

 

 

 

A2Z Series - I is for Inspired

Well, we have had a 2 week break from the A2Z for Christmas and New Year, but it is Thursday again and time for the next letter. "I" is for Inspired. I had no ideas and then about 4 or 5 that I had to chose from, but I decided to go for something that I think will always be an inspiration to me.
As I have mentioned before, I studied architecture at university, and there are 2 architects whose work most delights and inspires me, Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Well, I have already done some Frank Lloyd Wright inspired nails, so using a different image off the same plate I have gone for Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
I have used the Emily de Molly plate, EDM03 a few times now - I love it! for me it just shouts FLW, CRM, and art deco.
So, although the images aren't exactly like work done by Mackintosh, it's the lines and the geometry and I have attempted to capture the spirit of his work using the sorts of colours he employed in his stained glass.
I started with a base of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls. This is a nice white, just very slightly grey and although I needed 3 coats for full coverage I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. I stamped using A England Camelot. I am still having issues with my stamper (hurry up postie with my new one) and the images are not as crisp as they should be, but you get the idea. I chose a couple of pinks and purples from my wonderful Sharpie collection and coloured in some of the blocks. I think the colours are bit vibrant for that era and, with hindsight, maybe I should have tried acrylic paint instead.
The end result is bright and striking! Mackintosh's work would have been more subtle, but it's clear in my mind at least where the inspiration for the nails came from.
As they were so bright I did add a layer of my Avon Matte Top Coat to tone them down a bit, the soft peachy shimmer certainly doesn't seem to detract from the design and I am struggling to decide which version I like best.
(late addition to the blog: I was tagged on instragram for #mynailsandmy drink so sneaking that shot in too)

I is for Inspired - EDM03

 

  

EDM03 - matte version

 

#mynailsandmydrink

Look HERE to see what everyone else got up to.

An InLinkz Link-up

Stamping! Pueen SE01B over a fiery saran wrap base

Today's mani is a bit of a bright one! I had a few issues with my stamping but overall I think it has turned out OK.
I wanted to stamp a fairly abstract floral pattern over something really bright, the sorts of colours I am seeing in people's lead-lighting manis, but just using ordinary varnishes as I don't have any lead-lighting polishes.
I started by painting my nails yellow!!! with Leighton Denny Brick Road. My children know my hatred of yellow and they couldn't believe it! I hate it so much I couldn't even bring myself to take a picture for my records.
I then added a few blobs of Nails Inc Atomic, and moved them around with saran wrap. Once dry I added more blobs of a dark red (Manhattan, no idea of its name but it is actually a lovely dark red), and I smushed that around. By now I'd successfully obscured most of the yellow :) Then I added a few small blobs to Barry M White just to tone it down a bit and smushed them around too.
I top coated it and then got down to the stamping. All that took a very small amount of time, these kind of manis are really quick and actually not too messy! In theory the next stage would have been quick too but I had a bit of an issue with my stamper refusing to pick the images up crisply. I was using A England Camelot which is perfect for stamping but this time it looked greyish and a bit watery.
It would appear my stamper did not like the remover I was using to clean the plate, hopefully that won't happen again. Anyway, despite lots of failed stamps on a sheet of paper I did stamp my nails, the images are a bit pale and not as crisp as they should be but that's the perfect excuse to try this again, maybe with blue, green and purple :)
I chose one corner of the Pueen plate SE01B but dotted around using different parts for each nail- I really like that sort of stamping where good placement is not vital, particularly on a mani like this one.
Apart from the quality of the stamping this actually turned out pretty much as I had planned and I am pleased with it, I really like the contrast of the 3 brights, the white and then the black stamping.
Also secretly pleased to have found a use for yellow :)

Pueen SE01B over a fiery saran wrap base

 

 

 

 

 

ILNP Birefringence (with nail vinyls and black stripes)

I am very pleased with the way today's nails turned out although they took so much longer than I expected. In my mind it went like this - paint the base, top coat, add the vinyls, paint using the multi-chrome, remove vinyls, top coat, done... erm maybe not.
I wanted to use nail vinyls that I'd bought from She Sells Seashells and I spent quite a while deciding what colours I would try. I didn't want a huge contrast and then it struck me - black and something that would look good over black - glitter? flakie? or... multi-chrome - the perfect opportunity to try I Love Nail Polish Birefringence. I knew that this one was a pretty powerful multi-chrome and I thought it would be strong enough for a good contrast against plain black.
I used Nails Inc New York Noir for my base, and added a top coat. I did wait a while before using the nail vinyls but I should have done the base the night before, it does need to be really dry. I then started to apply the vinyls, thinking that if I was going length-ways I would not have such a problem as I did when I did my Jack Wills style bold stripes. Actually the problem was pretty much the same, I found it quite tricky to apply the vinyl so that the stripes were parallel, they seemed to bow out in the middle, but to be honest when I'd finished that wasn't particularly apparent. Because I kept lifting them and replacing them there are couple of areas where the base coat lifted a bit.
I added one coat of Birefringence, carefully removed the vinyls and wow! this is some awesome multi-chrome! I added top coat and all the slightly smudged edges disappeared and there were these wonderful multi-coloured humbugs!!
Birefringence looks essentially bluey purple in the bottle, but it shifts from green, then teal through blue, purple, dark red towards orangey brown. Typically I couldn't capture the full range on camera, did manage to catch the rain drops though! Anyway, I captured enough to see the stunning effect and was delighted that the contrast between the multi-chrome and glossy black was clear enough to see.
I love what you can do with nail vinyls, I just need to practice and stay calm - these finished off way better than I thought they would as I was doing the mani. I do feel the need to say, the problems I had are not with the vinyls themselves - they are great if you use them properly!!
I think the end result with the length-ways stripes is actually quite elegant and I love the variation in colour against the black.
Lots of pictures taken over a couple of days but in the end I decided I was never going to catch the green :)

ILNP Birefringence

 

 

 

 

 
 

 
 

Avon Blue Attraction

Today I let my husband chose what I would wear on my nails, and he chose "one of those magnety polishes!"

He rarely shows any interest in nails but I happened to be watching a QVC Nails Inc show ages back and he came in just as they were doing a demo of one of the "new" magnetic polishes. He was genuinely fascinated and I will admit I was tempted but not at those prices.

Anyway, months later Avon brought out quite a sizeable range of magnetic polishes. At £3 a time, I bought 3, Fuschia Force, Spellbound Green and Blue Attraction. Fuschia Force is beautiful as it has tiny glitters in it too, but it was high time I tried one of the others so I went for the blue.

Blue Attraction is a denimy mid toned blue. As a plain polish it is pretty blue, a bit on the pale side for me but good quality, applied and dried well, with a nice finish. Often these metallic style polishes have a brush strokey finish,but to the naked eye the finish looked good to me. It does look a bit streaky in the picture but not the worst I've seen.

You bought the magnets separately for these polishes, and I have tried the wavy line so I went for the diagonal lines this time. As I mentioned when I reviewed the last one, my nails are really curvey so the magnetic effect was stronger down the centre, and didn't really have the full effect at the sides. I like the finished effect though and the end result is darker than the unmagnetised form, which is a definite plus for me.

Avon Blue Attraction
before the magnet!

Avon Blue Attraction

 

 

Stamping! Messy Mansion 20 again with Mentality Green Opaque

Today's stamping was not a huge success. When I used Messy Mansion 20 a few days back I didn't really pick the image up as well as I thought I should so, having asked for advice, I was determined to try again. I decided to stamp over yesterday's mani, with Mentality Green Opaque and see if I had more success with a thicker polish.
I added some more ATC This One's For My Peeps to the mani, just a little dabble with some saran wrap so the base was pinker. I think this was quite successful, I do like the effects of saran wrap manis, but with hindsight I would have been better off stamping directly over the untouched mani.
The image picked up very well, but the contrast over the pinky blue marbled base wasn't great so the stamping couldn't really be seen clearly. The colors look great together but it did look a bit random - it made me think of Avatar. I think there must be some fantastical creature out there with this mottled green, pink and blue skin!!
The contrast would have been better over the darker base, so Messy Mansion 20 will have to stay out and be tried again. I think next time I won't try to be too clever, just a simple plain base and one of the Mentality Opaque polishes. I just have so many ideas I want to try but I would do well to remember "less is more" !!
Anyway, a quick pic of the saran wrap base and a few of the colourful end result :)

saran wrap base

Messy Mansion 20 and Mentality Green Opaque

 

 

 

 

Stamping! Born Pretty 02 with ATC Moon Dance

Today I have been stamping again. It didn't work out exactly as I'd planned but I am still quite happy with it. Although I've experimented before, I wanted to try stamping with 2 colours so I chose Above the Curve This One's for My Peeps and Caty Perry-winkle, a pink holo and a blue one, both quite pale colours and quite opaque so I thought they'd work well over Above the Curve Moon Dance that I was wearing from last night. I decided to try a very pretty lacy pattern on one of my Born Pretty Plates, BP02. These plates are really good value and despite the long wait for them to arrive I am really pleased I got them. 

The plan was to do half the image in pink and half in blue, and allow any merging of the colors to happen but although the polishes are opaque enough to stamp with, the colour has not really come through so the whole nail looks the same. Not the end of the world, the image stamped well and the design is pretty, so although I could see my plan had failed I kept going just in case the top coat helped the colours out. It didn't, but the stamps I did on paper worked so I think I was just a bit too optimistic stamping over such a dark colour. Note to self - things to try next - pale colours over white, not nearly black and stronger colours over a dark base.

The piece of paper where I wipe the scraper between scrapings looks really pretty with the pink and blue wipings :)

I could pretend that I'd just used one colour and that it all worked out perfectly but you never know - this might be a useful note to anyone else thinking about trying this. I still consider myself to be very new to stamping, still have heaps to learn and my blog is about what I did and why, so you get it all -successes and failures.

I don't consider this a failure, it is a lesson learned and luckily I still have a very pretty pattern stamped over last nights stunning glitter, the glitters still peeping out between the stamped image and I really like the end result!

As usual where I really like a mani, heaps of pictures. There was no sunshine today but I have a mix of daylight, LED and flash pics.

BP02 stapmed over Above the Curve Moon Dance