Cloud Mani - My first attempt

Earlier today, I was catching up on my Google Reader blog posts, when I read this post which linked to Nailside's Cloud Mani Tutorial and then I lost about 2 hours of my life reading loads of posts on this blog! (Silly internet time vortex!) 


Fast forward a couple of hours and I'm sitting in front of the telly, trying to avoid thesis writing (my avoidance and procrastination skills are, alas, too good!) and I started playing with some polishes and ended up with my first attempt at a cloud mani. It had seemed easy enough, even I could do it.....


I hadn't planned on doing this and was just messing around with some polishes, so there's no undies (undercoat) under my  'clouds'.  I'm usually rubbish as nail art but I was quite impressed with the way it turned out, so wanted to post it!

Natural light.

Flash

The teal colour is No 7 Totally teal and the orange is NYC Spring St and I topped it with a coat of Seche Vite. I think the teal looks most true to life in the natural light photo and the orange is more true to life in the flash photo.  I'll do proper posts on both of these soon. I had a little bit of drag with the topcoat on my  ring finger. I'll also point out the colour choice was a bit random as I just chose from the polishes on the table in front of me and it's not intentionally in the colours of the Irish flag. But I guess this could make an appearance during the Euros with a white base and a proper green. 

Essence Nail Art Kit - Marble Mania

The current essence collection on stand is the marble mania collection, I picked up the nail art kit yesterday and none of the polishes, they weren't really floating my boat. The full details of the collection are available here.  I thought I'd do a quick post as the collections can move quite fast. 

The kit contains 2 orange sticks, 2 pieces of sponge and a stripper brush.  The pink card also contains instructions for use of the stripper brush, the sponges and a how to marble.

The stripper brush. 

And a close up. 

The bristles are extremely long and fine, and I'm not sure they are stiff enough to accurately control the brush. I've only had a very quick play with the brush but found it hard to control and a little bit floppy. Perhaps, with a bit of practice I'll get better.  However, I caveat the last statement with the fact that I'm extremely challenged when it comes to nail art, so it is probably me that is rubbish and not the brush!

I've added a picture to show the brush in comparison to a regular nail varnish brush (Cult Nails top coat), so you can see the difference in size.

 The nail art kit retails for €2.79, so it's as cheap pick me up. I need a bit more time to play with it to decide if it's worth it, but for €2.79, I won't be crying if I don't get too much use out of it!  

What I picked up in Spain

As those of you who follow me on Twitter know, I was recently in Spain for work. While I didn't have much time for the shops unfortunately, I picked up a few Essence bits in a cosmetic shop (kind of like a pharmacy without the drugs!). The selection there was much bigger than that which we have any where I've seen in Ireland - the stand was about 3 times bigger and a lot of the extra was nail stuff.  They had lots of nail stickers and much more polish as well as stamping kits. I only picked up a few things hoping to get back but never made it. 
So here's what I got.


From L-R , the stampy set, two extra plates 01 have fun and 02 style it up!, Nail  Art Twins 02 Julia and Nail Art Special Effect Topper 02 Circus Confetti.

And in more detail.


The stampy kit, this cost €3.49. This contains  a stamper (on top), a scraper (left) and one plate (right)

The two plates, have fun on the left and style it up! on the right.

The two polishes Nail  Art Twins 02 Julia, on the left,  and Nail Art Special Effect Topper 02 Circus Confetti, on the right. Circus Confetti looks very Happy Birthday-esque to me on first look and Julia is a chunky holo glitter. Both of these  are very sparse so a base coat will be needed with them. 

I also popped into H&M and as well as buying a few dresses I picked up these Moody Model,  from the last post and one more polish I can't find anywhere (which has made me mad!!!- I'm pretty sure it made it home with me, unlike my phone charger but that's a whole other story!)  




I did find a Sephora but didn't pick up any polish there, it was quite small and any that I liked the look of were out of stock :( 


Expect some stampy manicures soon, just as soon as I manage to get to grips with it!  

Halloween Nails Part Deux

Happy Halloween everyone! As you might notice, I don't usually paint nail art, but for Halloween, I was going to make a first attempt. Although as my week got so crazy, I only managed to practise my attempt on a nail wheel and not actually try them out on myself :(  So, I thought I'd show you my attempt at bloody tipped nail.

It's definitely not perfect, but an attempt in the right direction.The red is Essence Ready for Action.  Did you do any nail art for Halloween? I'd love to see it!

NOTD Color Club - Who Are You Wearing? with Crack(le)?

Just a quick post today, featuring yesterday’s Color Club ,Who Are You Wearing? with the Barry M Instant Effects polish. I thought the light colour would be interesting under the crackle polish.

It was a great way of hiding the failings of my application of this polish, as seen yesterday! I have no idea why my index finger didn't seem to crack as much as the rest, I might have used to thick a coat on that finger. 

Barry M Instant Effects

This is the new crackle polish from Barry M, called Nail Special Effects. At the moment this just comes in black.   You paint your nails whatever colour you want, then when it’s dry you add a coat of this, trying not to paint the same part of the nail more than once. As it dries, it starts it’s magic.  It’s actually really fun to watch (but then I am easily amused!), there’s a video on the Barry M website here.

 For this first quick look, I did some skittles to show a range of colours. So here, from L-R is No 7 Grey Skies, Essence Rock n Roll, China Glaze For Audrey and Essie Lollipop. (I’ve shown all of these on the blog before except for Lollipop)

I love it over all the colours, lollipop and For Audrey are really obvious, the glitter of Rock n Roll looks really nice with it and Grey Skies is a little more subtle but is still lovely.  I got this in Boots, it cost €5.95 but the Barry M polishes were on 2 for €8.

Between writing this post this morning and getting around to posting it, this evening, Kirstie over at beaut.ie has also posted it, so go here for more ideas. 

Well, what do you think? Ugly or fab?