Tuesday 11 March 2014

Tri-Polish Tuesdays - March round two!

Polishes used: Nails Inc York Street and Wardour Street, Claire's Shiver and China Glaze Highlight of my Summer (not shown - Stargazer 232).
This week's challenge manicure is clear evidence that reality smashes the best laid out plans. In my manicure planner I had sketched out a beautiful skittle manicure with water marble accent nail - and yesterday evening I sat down to my first ever session of water marbling. Guess how that turned out? I attempted the marble maybe 10 times, but it just wasn't really going anywhere; all I was achieving was a complete mess on my finger and a waste of perfectly good nail polish. In the end, I decided to give it a rest and had to improvise something new today.

Skittle, glitter and stamping - a very spring themed manicure


Since the sun was out again, I felt drawn to the neons and pastels in my stash, and chose three complimenting polishes - lavender, neon mint and light dusty blue. I started by painting my nails with the base colours of my chosen polishes, and then added a coat of the gorgeous glitter topper from Claire's. I really love how it looks over the neon green and the lavender. The whole thing still looked unfinished, so I added some floral stamping with MoYou London Mother Nature 02 plate and my trusty Stargazer 232 silver chrome.

I really like the partial coverage stamping achieved with the full image plate from MoYou London
Because Mother Nature plates are all full pattern ones, I was able to stamp different sections of the floral pattern onto my nails, and have the stamps cover only some of my nail.

I will go back to water marbling one day - I'll try different polishes, and maybe I'll settle for making decals from the dried film rather than dunking my fingers right in. But for now, I acknowledge my defeat :)


Polishes I used:
  • Nails Inc York Street - dusty pale blue crème, opaque in two coats and reasonably quick to dry. A bit patchy on the first coat, but completely self-leveling on the second one.
  • Nails Inc Wardour Street - beautiful lavender crème, super easy to apply and opaque in two coats. My new favourite purple.
  • Claire's Shiver- a glitter topper of white and semi-translucent green hexes in a shimmery base that flashes blue, pink and purple. I wasn't able to fully capture the shimmer in the sunlight over the bright undies - but it's there. This glitter is very easy to apply, dries fast and to a slightly rough finish. Great polish from a budget brand!
  • China Glaze Highlight of my Summer - neon mint crème, much brighter than my photos show it to be. It was a nightmare to apply - patchy, streaky and uneven; needed three coats for full opacity and dried uneven. The glitter and top coat solved most of the problems with the finish, so in the end, it's worth the bother.
  • Stargazer 232 - seriously silver chrome, perfect for stamping.
Thanks for looking, and check out other challenge manicures below!


3 comments:

  1. This is fantactic, I need to get my hands on some of that Stargazer 232 it's gorgeous! Do you know who sells it? :) xx

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    Replies
    1. I got this one as a gift! I can usually find Stargazers in some alternative shops with goth clothing, but there's no guarantees which colours they'll have.

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  2. I will have to keep my eyes open then, thanks! :) xx

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