Rainbow Mosaic Glitter Placement

So I have been absent from doing any nail art as I have been in China. I had an amazing time over there studying and experiencing the culture but the trip was hell on my nails. I've had so many hang nails and broke off my beautifully long nails near the end of the trip. Therefore I'm back down to uneven nubs and having to edit out my hang nails in these pictures because no one want to see that haha.

I was having nail art cravings though, so as I'm too impatient to wait for my nails to grow out, I decided to do some glitter placement as soon as I got home. I recieved a massive parcel from the Born Pretty Store before leaving for China, so decided to use some of the glitter I purchased to create a Rainbow Mosaic gradient glitter mani.

I love these so much but my only criticism would be the glitter itself. On the website it looked a lot different than what I received. I was expecting quite opaque, large diamond shaped glitter and instead I received sheer, small square glitters instead. I think I just didn't quite read the description correctly.

Anyway, these are item #7314 from the born pretty store website. The base under the glitter is Sinful Colors - Snow Me White but I think if I were to do this again, I would layer the glitter over a vertical sponged gradient to help the glitter pop more. However these still turned out really awesome. I am an official glitter placement convert and I will be posting many more glitter placed manicures soon along with my regular 1 polish, 5 designs posts.

Thank you for stopping by my blog. If you like what you see please do subscribe and I promise to do more regular nail art as soon as my nails grow a bit more.

 

Outside in the meagre sunlight we have at the moment

More outside pictures. Sorry about the dryness of my nails and finger nail uneveness.

Fizzilicious by Peita's Polish

After joining instagram a few month ago,  I have learned so much more about nail polish, nail art and all the wonderful people who make up the nail art community. One of the biggest things I've learned about nail polish is the existence of Indie Polish brands. For most of my life I've brought nail polish from the local pharmacy, or chain store, because it was convenient. However now I've gotten more serious about painting my nails, I want more interesting and unique polishes and that's were indies come in.

I found out about indie polishes when Peita, of Peita's Polishes, started following me. From her instagram page I discovered the What's In-die Box, a showcase of exclusive Australian indie polishes, released to a theme each month. I also discovered all the other amazing collections various Australian Indie polish makers have released. I really loved what I was seeing so I ordered a What's In-Die Box and one of Peita's polishes from her website, to give some indie polishes a go. 

The polish I ordered from Peita's Polish was Fizzilicious, from her Sweet Treats collection, which is what I have to show you today.

Fizzilicious was inspired by Wizz Fizz and as soon as I opened my package both my mother and sister commented that it looked like sherbet, so I'd say Peita was spot on the money when creating this polish. 

Fizzilicious is jammed packed with matte pink, yellow and white glitter in a clear base. However it is so glitter loaded you don't need any base polish for the coverage you see in these swatches. I just used three thin coats of Fizzilicious topped with Sally Hansen's Insta-dry and wow-a! Amazingness!!

I decided to add an accent nail as well, which is a packet of Wizz Fizz for this polishes name sake! The white base is Sinful Colors - Snow Me White and everything else is acrylic paint. I love the 3D look this accent ended up with and how well it ended up going with Fizzilicious, which just goes to show this polish really is a packet of Wizz Fizz in a jar!

I now adore indie polishes, especially Peita's Polishes, even though I only own a few. I will definitely be purchasing more in the future! If anybody has any recommendations of some must have Australian Indies, I'd love to hear them, just comment below!

Fruit Tingle by Ulta3 - Review

I recently completed my last lot of 1 Polish, 5 Designs and decided to make a review post so you can easily see all the designs and tutorials in one place. It is also a great way to give you an overview of the polish and so you can visualise just how versatile it could be.

So just a quick recap. The polish I used for these 5 designs was Ulta3 - Fruit Tingle. This is a bright, neon pink polish that reminds me of barbie dolls. It only cost me $2 from my local Coles, so was definitely worth the purchase. In case you missed the swatches, this is one that shows the colour pretty much perfectly.

Design 1 - Stamped Lace and Bows

This design came about as I was playing with so stamping plates I had from the born pretty store. I loved how these turned out! Hope you did too!

and the pictorial for this design (with written instruction in this post)

Design 2 - Gradient Animal Print

I'd been seeing a lot of animal print designs, so really wanted to give it a go myself. This is what I came up with.

and the pictorial (information here).

Design 3 - Glitter ball nails

Inspired by polishallthenails who does the most amazing glitter placement. Absolutely love how this turned out. Will be doing more glitter placement in the future.

and I also did a pictorial for these with information here.

Design 4 - Random Skittle Manicure

This is what happens when you go into a design with no idea of the final product. It turned out well but unfortunately created no pictorial.

Design 5 - Braided Nails

Finally worked out how to use stripping tape for this design. This has become quite popular on instagram, which surprised me as it's not my favourite of the bunch, but it is quite cool.

And the last pictorial!

And that is the collection using Ulta3 - Fruit Tingle. Hopefully you can now see just how versatile a polish can be and I hope you enjoy these posts! 

Just a heads up: I shall be heading to China in about 2 days. I'll be posting once more before I leave and then will be absent for two weeks. Once I come back I'll be ready for more art! 

Fruit Tingle by Ulta3 - Design 5 - Braided Nails

Final design using Ulta3 - Fruit Tingle for this lot of 1 Polish, 5 Designs. Still loving the colour of this polish, totally recommended if you want an awesome Barbie pink colour.

 I've had today's nails in my head for a while but it was difficult to transfer from my mind to my nails. Once I finally figured out how to do it, they turned out quite well, so check them out below.

I'm calling these braided nails as the stripping taped yellow and pink nails sort of look like hair when it has been braided. The yellow and pink also went really well together. Which reminds me, the polishes I used were Ulta3 - Fruit Tingle and Rimmel - Sunshine. The triangle shaped studs are from a nail art kit I got at K-mart. I made a pictorial for the braided, taped nails, so I'll show that to you now.

1. Paint your nail yellow. This is three coats of Rimmel - Sunshine

2. Using stripping tape, tape your nail as shown. I kind of staggered the tape as you can see.

3. Paint your pink polish on top of your tape.

4. Immediately remove the stripping tape using tweezers. Wait for it to dry a little and add a top coat and you're all done!

To attach the stud things, I just added a drop of top coat to nails painted with Fruit Tingle and stuck them down, then added another coat of top coat to seal the deal.

I hope you enjoy these. A review post for all the Ulta3 - Fruit Tingle designs will be up tomorrow!

Fruit Tingle by Ulta3 - Design 4 - Random Skittle Mani

This is one of those paint jobs where you go in with an idea and then nothing works so you end up doing something completely different from what you initially intended. As I started creating this manicure I was firmly in the mind I would do a Moroccan style of print but it wasn't working. I therefore removed that and tried to repaint my nails to do a gradient but my base colours were not drying due to how cold it is at my house. My dad then told me to move into the lounge room where it was warm to paint my nails and I finally settled on painting a skittle manicure, due to the fact I now had so many different coloured fingers due to the amount of designs I had attempted.

As much as I like the idea of a skittle manicure, my execution is quite poor. I'm going to blame the freezing cold that wasn't allowing the polish to dry on my nails. This is really obvious on the taped finger where I had to fill in some gaps where the stripping tape pulled off the base colour. 

The polishes I used for this skittle were Ulta3 - Fruit Tingle (pink), Ulta3 - Black Satin (black), Sinful Colors - Snow Me White (white), Rimmel - Your Majesty (silver) and Sinful Colors - Queen of Beauty (Silver Glitter). 

Oh and the other thing, I didn't make a pictorial for this, which is my bad. If you're really keen on seeing a pictorial I can possibly pull one together. However I don't think there is anything in this manicure that is that hard to repeat, apart from the design on the ring finger, which you can find a good tutorial on here by ohmygoshpolish.

The only reason this design disappoints me is because the execution is terrible but more pre-thought could have prevented that. Also the weather is just not conductive for good nail painting. I think if I were to redo this design they would look a million times better but for a first attempt these are ok, and I hope you enjoy them.

swatches||design 1||design 2||design 3

Review Time - Nayll Custom Made Polishes

(Warning: Picture heavy, longish post ahead!)

Since getting into nail art and instagram, I have been slowly learning more about the world of nail polish and indie polish brands. Indie polish brands are small businesses who lovingly make each of their polishes by hand. The girls (and guys) who run these indie brands have great polishes and it's lead me to wanting to make my own nail polishes, custom designed to fit my needs. However I don't have the money to go out and but everything I would need to do this and that's where Nayll Polish comes in to the equation.

Nayll Polish allows you to design your own nail polish from the comfort of your lounge room through their easy to use website. They are based in America but ship internationally (mine took just under two week from ordering to get to my front door, how awesome it that?) There are two types of polishes you can make on their site which are glitter polishes and shimmer polishes. They are super simple to create and the mystery of how your polish will look when it gets to you is part of the fun. You also get to name your creations and this name printed onto the polish label, which makes the whole thing look super professional. I had a few ideas in mind for polishes I wanted to create and so went ahead and created two shimmer polishes and two glitter polishes. I created them as presents for my friend, who is an aspiring actress, so hopefully the theme of the polishes will be obvious to you one you hear their names.

This is the first shimmer polish I created. I called it Just Picture them Naked, which was named so that if my friend ever got nervous giving an awards speech, she could imagine everyone in their underwear and see the funny side of life. 

This polish is a gorgeous peachy nude with yellow undertones on the nail and was created by combining Nayll's Pale Perfection Jelly with two different shimmer bases, both with pinkish brown undertones (I won't tell you exactly which ones as I can't remember). This was opaque in 2 coats but took three to self level. The following swatches are 3 coats of Just Picture them Naked without a topcoat.

The next shimmer polish I created is called Walk the Red Carpet. This was so named so that my friend could at least wear a red carpet on her fingers until the day she actually get's to walk down one for real.

I was hoping this would turn out to be a deep burgundy red, reminiscent of a walk down a red carpet at a premier, however this polish turned out to be a quite coppery orange-red colour. I don't currently own anything similar to it and it is actually quite a stunning colour. It was created by adding two dark red shimmer bases and a gold shimmer base to Nayll's Red Raspberry Jelly base. This only needed two coats to be opaque and applied like a dream. The following swatches are without a topcoat.

This is the first of the glitter polishes I designed and this one is called All That Glitters Is Gold. This one is a trophy of sorts for my friend that she can wear on her fingers and always recall how awesome she is.

This is made up of three different types of glitter, which are all suspended in a clear lacquer base. The glitters in this polish are gold stars (because my friend will one day be a star duh), larger gold hexes and small gold holographic hexes. The application was okay but I did have to dab on the larger hexes and stars so that they were positioned where I wanted them. I did add one coat of top coat so that the glitter would stay flat and the swatches below are one coat of All That Glitters Is Gold over Walk the Red Carpet.

The last glitter polish I made is called The After Party. It was named for all the craziness that has to happen at Hollywood parties, not that I've ever been to one.

This was meant to be a sophisticated white jelly base with some bright glitter running through it but I went a little over board when choosing glitter to add to this polish. Therefore, when I swatched it, The After Party looks a lot more like what happens when you drink too much glitter and milk and vomit it onto your nails (sorry for that description but it's true). However I guess in a way this is fitting because if you drink too much at a party, the result could possibly be just that. 

This polish has a variety of matte pink, yellow and dark yellow glitter with aqua shards and small aqua holographic hexes. These are also some large purple diamond glitters and pink hexes thrown into the mix. Because of the glitter overload the formula on this is less than average, drying quite lumpy, but that's my own fault for adding too much glitter. The following swatches show two coats of The After Party plus one coat of top coat. If I were going to wear this polish out, I would need to use a few coats of top coat to smooth it out.

I love all these polishes, with the possible exception of The After Party, which is kind of a failure. I'm actually kind of upset that I have to now pass these onto my friend, but hopefully she will love them. I will definitely be making more polishes in the future though and hopefully I have opened your eyes to a whole other aspect of nail polish. I'd love to hear what you think of these polishes so feel free to comment below and make sure to check out the Nayll Polish website!

(Note that I brought and paid for all these polishes and I wasn't asked to make a review. I just wanted to give my opinion of this super interesting idea!)

Fruit Tingle by Ulta3 - Design 3 - Glitter Ball Nails

Last post I hinted that my next design will include glitter placement. I am happy to announce that it does involve glitter and they are the bomb! So Sparkly! I was inspired by polish all the nails who is the most amazing at glitter placement. Of course her's are a million times better than my one accent nail, but these were amazingly fun to do and I will be experimenting more in the future. Now check out those sparkles!

I actually got the glitter from K-mart for about 3 dollars. I placed each little glittery hexagon, because the glitter is hexagon shaped, on my nails using a toothpick. There are actually two polishes used in this design, Rimmel - Your Majesty which is what's under the glitter bomb on my ring finger, and of course Ulta3 - Fruit Tingle. I have a pictorial which will explain this process, so let's just put that below to show you.

1. Paint your nails a similar colour to the glitter you're going to use. I used Rimmel - Your Majesty to match my silver glitter. Wait for it to dry completely.

2. Admire your beautiful glitter? and paint some top coat on your nails (a slow drying one is better as you want to stick your glitter to it and this can take a while).

3. Using a toothpick pick up one piece of glitter at a time and put it on your nails. This is easier if the glitter is on a flat surface such as a piece of paper.

4. Keep going, carefully lining up each bit of glitter side by side. Look, I've done about half here and it is starting to look good.

5. Keep adding top coat and glitter as you need. If you have any overhanging glitter at the top of your nails, trim it off and add a top coat over the glitter.

6. Paint your nail with pink polish, I used Ulta3 - Fruit Tingle, and leave a half moon at the base of your nails. 

7. Add some top coat and carefully line the half moon with glitter using the same method as before.

8. Top the whole thing with top coat and admire the sparkling.

Unfortunately I painted these at night so I haven't gotten to see the glitter in the sunlight yet. All my pictures are therefore taken in my light box. However tomorrow I'll be sure to take some pictures in the sun and edit them in to show you. I hope you like these! They'll probably stay on my nails for a while :D. Now pictures for you to look at until the next design is up!

All the glitter!!

swatch||Design 1||Design 2