March Challenge #clairestelle8march St Patrick's Day mani

Today is St Patrick's Day so, of course, I had to do a St Patrick's Day mani. I had already decided to do one with Above the Curve polishes Polyjuice Potion and Husbands Just Don't Understand, to enter an ATC competition but I missed the deadline on that. As I'd already planned it out I decide I'd stick with the polishes I'd chosen.
Claire also has St Patrick's Day as a prompt for today on her March Challenge so this is my contribution.
Above the Curve PolyJuice Potion from the Harry Potter Collection is a lovely vibrant green jelly polish with gold shimmer and tiny green glitters. It is quite a sheer polish and I only have a mini bottle so I started with a base of Ciate Mojito which is virtually the same shade of green to avoid using too much precious Polyjuice! It is such a pretty polish, I really love it and I am glad I didn't use too many coats so I still have plenty left :)
Husbands Just Don't Understand is a stunning dark teal green holo, and I have been waiting for so long to use it. It is just gorgeous and definitely needs to be worn again, very soon! I did a quick test to check it would stamp and decided it would go perfectly with Polyjuice Potion for my St Patrick's Day mani.
I searched through all my plates and found this shamrock design on Pueen SE03A which I thought would be suitable. I wasn't too sure which way to angle the stamping and in the end went for random! My fingers won't sit nicely in neat lines anyway.
I am really pleased with the finished mani, I love green for nails and I like putting different types of green together - anything goes with green, but here I can see the holo shimmer as well as the glitters from the Polyjuice. I like the bright green of the Polyjuice which is still very visible but slightly toned down by the teal stamping.

St Patrick's Day mani 
Above the Curve Polyjuice Potion 
and Husbands Just Don't Understand, Pueen SE03A

 

 

Galaxy nails - Picture Polish Bohemian, A England Rose Bower and Her Rose Adagio and a little bit of stamping

Today I have at long last tried galaxy nails! The simple truth is that although I have seen and loved lots of galaxy nails, I doubted my ability to paint any stars and had the nastiest feeling that I could do a really nice background and then make a real mess at the final step.
UberChic Beauty to the rescue! As I was carefully inspecting the images on my UberChic plates, I spotted an image on UC 2-03 which looked perfect! lots of little stars randomly scattered in the sky.
Picture Polish Bohemian is my main polish for this mani - I first saw some swatches a couple of weeks ago and I had 2 conflicting thoughts - pinky/red/bronze - absolutely not my colours - but for some reason I wanted it anyway! I think it was the idea of a multi-chrome type polish in a range of colours unlike any I had seen before.
I finally gave in to that inner voice that told me I needed this polish and when it arrived I swatched it thinking I'd hate it but I didn't. I also swatched it over black, as I would with any duo or multi-chrome, and decided maybe that's where I'd start as I was really in the mood for dark vampy nails.
I painted my nails with a base of China Glaze Liquid Leather, and then in order to avoid any streakines I sponged a light coat of Bohemian over the top. It looked so pretty that I just top-coated it and wore it like that for a day but as I looked at it it struck me that would make a lovely base for galaxy nails, and there was that UberChic plate just waiting to be stamped!
So, today, I used a small sponge and added some A England Rose Bower and Her Rose Adagio. Then I stamped the stars with my Essence Stampy 001.
If you look closely at the plate you'd see there are more stars than on my nails but I made a point of scraping quite thoroughly and as a result I didn't pick up as many of the tinier stars. I thought with all the colours and the holo, it may be a bit much. I also took a clean up brush and carefully brushed a few more out before topcoating.
I am completely in love with the finished look and I will certainly be trying these again!

Galaxy nails

 

 

 

Picture Polish Bohemian sponged over black

March Challenge #clairestelle8march - Neon

I am late blogging this but yesterday, Claire's challenge was Neons. I don't really have any neons as such but I do have the Virtuous Polish Women of Valor, which are described as neon pastel hybrids, so I thought I'd better use those.
There are seven colours so I started with a blob of the yellow shade in the centre of each nail and then used the other six around it. Then I stamped the wavy design from UberChic Beauty plate UC 2-02 in black over the top.
I actually wish I'd stamped in white, but it was too late to change it all. I think black would have worked better with brighter shades and when I used white over these polishes before the result was really pretty.
However, my IG feedback was amazing and I got more likes for that picture than any I have ever had before!
Funnily enough, my 2nd most liked picture is the white on neon-pastel I did about 2 weeks ago - clearly neons are the way to go!!!

Neons - Virtuous Polish Women of Valor and
UberChic 2-02

Above the Curve Friday the 13th #1

Today is Friday the 13th, and that means one thing to me - the perfect opportunity to wear Above the Curve Friday the 13th #1.
I know we had a Friday the 13th in February but it was all too close to Valentine's to squeeze a mani in so I decided to be patient and save it for today.
Above the Curve bring out a new polish for each Friday the 13th, so a new one will come out today - I haven't seen any pictures yet but it is bound to be beautiful.
However, it would have to go some to beat this beauty - this is the original one and it is an absolute stunner. It is a dark chocolate brown scattered holo and it looks just like Minstrels!
The brown is just perfect, very slightly red, beautifully dark but not so dark that you lose the colour- I absolutely adore it!
Unfortunately, although it seems to be trying very hard, the sun is not getting through the clouds so I can't get a sunshine holo picture. Very frustrating since this is the most beautiful dark brown polish!!!
Oh well, even in the softest of lights I love this, and when the sun did peep though it was breathtaking!

Above the Curve Friday the 13th #1

 

 

 

 

 

 

A2Z Series - R is for Redo/Reboot/Recycle

So it is Thursday again and time for letter R in the A2Z challenge. I wasn't sure about what to do for this week until I was chatting with some friends about  mani I had done that I wasn't very happy with - of course this was the perfect opportunity to redo it.
The original mani was the negative space lacy nails, where the contrast was all wrong, the negative spaces too stained and the old stamper was not picking the images up clearly - plenty of reasons to redo.
I decided I ought to do justice to the Messy Mansion plate so I am using the same plate, MM44 and the same image.
This time around, no bare nails! I started with a base of Nails Inc Basil Street, a lovely warm nude, so the effect is the same but no stains! I chose to use a creme polish rather than a holo so that I had a really crisp image and having had some success with Avon Classic Fit a couple of weeks ago I decided I'd use that again.
And of course I now have my Creative Shop stamper, which picks up perfectly almost every time.
I have never worn a french mani, apart from the last time I did this, so the dark tips look very alien to me, but I wandered around just with the tips done for a while before stamping and the look was growing on me. Once completed I do think the tips still look very dark as the colour is obviously more intense than where it is stamped - maybe I should have tried to apply the polish more thinly, or even find a slightly lighter shade but on the whole I think this is a lot better than the time before.
I think the Avon Classic Fit denim shade goes really nicely with the nude base, so all in all I am pleased with this.

A2Z Series - R is for Redo 

Messy Mansion MM44, Avon Classic Fit 

and Nails Inc Basil Street

  

 

  

An InLinkz Link-up

March Challenge #clairestelle8march - Dotticure

Today on Claire's challenge the prompt was Dotticure. I have done a dotticure once with a dotting tool, it killed my hands!! I have also done one once before using a stamped image - no contest as to which way I chose this time!
I did have a mani planned but my UberChic Beauty plates arrived and as they have some dotty images on, I thought I'd better give them a try.
I chose this image because it gave me exactly what I'd been planning to do and I had been sat there thinking how likely would it be that I could paint my nails 2 colours and manage to stamp the colours in reverse, and not end up with black on black! There it was on this plate, UC 1-03, and a nice twist on a french mani too!!
I started with a base of A England Ascalon, a lovely silvery grey holo with a hint of lilac, which is apparent in lower levels of light when you can't see the holo.
I then stamped with A England Camelot. The plate stamped beautifully. On close inspection, the dot images are not completely perfect but I think that is because my Camelot is nearly empty and I don't think I had enough polish on the plate. On the ones where I scraped forward and then back again the image is better and to the naked eye they look fine anyway.
I really like the finished look and that at a glance it looks like a gradient, darker at the tips. I also like that thing where you looks and think - is that black on silver or silver on black?

Dotticure with UberChic 1-03
A England Ascalon and Camelot

 

 

A England Ascalon

 

Dry Watermarbling with Nails Inc Royal Botanical Gardens and Instyle Power Pink

Today I thought I'd have a try at dry watermarbling. This is where you create the water marbled pattern in a cup of water, but then leave it to set for a couple of hours. Then you carefully lift it out, lay it on some tissue to dry and then cut up it so that you can apply it to your nails like decals.
I used Nails Inc Royal Botanical Gardens and Instyle Power Pink. I figured the cup was a bit small so I took the precaution of painting my nails with Nails Inc Royal Botanical Gardens so if I didn't have enough decal it wouldn't be the end of the world (well it wouldn't anyway but you know what I mean).
To my enormous surprise it did dry and I was able to lift the pattern out intact. I cut it into pieces and then one by one I top-coated my nails and added a piece of the pattern. I tried to press it down fairly firmly before the decal completely dissolved but did have the same issues as I do with stencils and nail vinyls - flat surfaces and curved nails don't go.
Another coat of top coat once I had trimmed and cleaned up did sort some of it out, but it wasn't perfect, so I hid the imperfections under a coat of Dance Legend Top Sahara!!
I can still see some imperfections but it looks pretty, I love the two colours together and I am encouraged enough to want to try it again!
Who would have thought a year ago I would wear a water marbled mani, with pastel bluey/teal and pretty pink, and what's more I really like it!!!

Dry Watermarbling -
Nails Inc Royal Botanical Gardens and Instyle Power Pink