Tri-Polish Tuesdays - March round three!

Polishes used: H&M Lady Luck, Jess Joy and Ciate Pillow Fight

This week's manicure is one of my favourites so far: simple, stripy and in my favourite colours! It wasn't created without some tears, as what you're seeing here is the second version. The first one had a nude background, and more stripes, and was pretty cool until I used an untried matte top coat from Ciate, which promptly cracked all over my manicure and ruined it completely. So, if you do find a bottle of Ciate Mattnificent in a set with their chalkboard paints, never ever use it with any other polish. It just doesn't work.

Anyhow, once I'd recovered from that disaster, I started anew with a different base colour and slightly modified stripe arrangement and colours.

Foil finish stripes over a crème base.

 This time, I used Ciate Pillowfight as my base - it's a gorgeous dusty pale lilac, light and fluffy. Once that had dried, I used a thin striping brush to place stripes of the two foil polishes - green Lady Luck and blue Joy. Both the foils were perfect for painting with, opaque and super smooth. All that was left to do was to topcoat it with Seche Vite.

I love posing with square bottles!

This manicure was super easy to do, and really fun to wear - I got a lot of compliments, and I really enjoyed the contrast between the subdued, classy base and the shiny foil stripes.

Polishes I used:

• H&M Lady Luck - blue green slightly duochrome foil that sometimes flashes a bit gold. On its own it would be opaque in two thin coats and quite brushstrokey, but it's perfect for nail art.
• Jess Joy- icy light blue foil that is super shiny, opaque in two coats and easy to apply. An amazing polish for £1.
• Ciate Pillow Fight - gorgeous dusty greyish lilac crème, elegant and sophisticated. It looks light and almost fluffy on the nails, it applies like a dream and is opaque in two coats - a great feature of such a light polish.

Thanks for looking, and check out other tri-polish manicures below!

An InLinkz Link-up

Golden Oldies Thursday - Skittle

Golden Oldies skittle manicure

The GOT challenge theme for this week was skittle, so I thought: I have quite a few polishes that are a year old or almost, and that could make a cool skittle, and I can do it early this time! Let's do this! Three ugly or ruined manicure attempts later, I was ready to give up. Apparently, there was a damn good reason why I haven't been using these polishes recently... Finally, yesterday I took another deep breath and dove into the blue end of my stash, coming up with three of my first blue polishes, and my first glitter topper.

Blue skittle with glitter gradients

I started by painting my nails with a mix of blue shimmers and a crème as a base layer. My index and pinky have a base of H&M Active Blue, my middle finger is wearing Seventeen Navy Glint, and on my ring finger is Orly Shockwave. I then sponged on a glitter gradient with Navy Glint onto my index finger, and topped each finger off with a gradient of an unnamed Color Club iridescent glitter. I bought it labelled as 'Snowflakes', but that one is meant to be a flakie, and I got a normal glitter one. A unicorn with a saddle to anyone who identifies this polish! The whole thing was sealed with Color Club top coat.

Look at the sparkly glitter!

I really need to start using the two blue shimmers more often - the Navy Glint espeically is stunning, with the warm navy base and plethora of silver particles. If definitely doesn't look like a £2.99 polish!

Polishes I used:

• Orly Shockwave - a medium warm blue crème. Opaque in two coats, easy to apply and very shiny. It was the first Orly polish I bought, and the first high-end one as well! Lucky I got it at TK Max for a fraction of the price :)
• Seventeen Navy Glint - a deep, warm navy shimmer with many silver particles. It's opaque in two easy coats, very easy to apply, quick to dry and looks absolutely stunning. This was my first Seventeen polish!
• H&M Active Blue - electric blue shimmer in a deep blue base. Opaque in two thick, easy coats, super sparkly and great for layering. My first H&M polish - this seems to be a theme here!
• Color Club glitter - small iridescent hexes in a goopy clear base. The hexes shift colour depending on point of view, and base colour and are super pretty - but the application kills any joy. The base is super goopy, and requires dabbing to get an even spread of glitter. The end results are lumpy because of how thick the base gets on the nails. I found that sponging it on had a much better effect, since the sponge soaks up most of the horrid base. The bottle I got is unlabeled, and was sold as a different polish, so if anyone has an idea what it is, let me know in the comments!

Thanks for looking!

An InLinkz Link-up

FingerFood's Theme Weeks - Brithdays/Celebrations

Supplies used in this post - China Glaze For Audrey, H&M Green Bluish and Andrea Fullerton Nail Jewels.

Another first manicure in a new nail challenge! FingerFood's Theme Weeks is a one-weekly challenge that assigns a certain visual theme or an idea. This week it's birthdays or other celebrations. I was in a bit of a pickle here, since I have no appropriate stamping plates, and my freehand is atrocious. Luckily, my eyes fell on my China Glaze stash, and inspiration struck. You see, about a month ago my best friend was having a unicorn-themed birthday party, and I made her unicorn poop cupcakes, covered in light blue frosting, silver pearls, and edible shimmer. For Audrey happens to closely match the colour on that delicious frosting - then it was simply a case of finding some matching sparkles!
I recently went into H&M, and found some great glitters from both core and seasonal collections, and being who I am, Green Bluish caught my eye immediately. And look at the cutest little bottle it's in! The red blob reflected in the cap is me taking a photo :D

China Glaze For Audrey, with H&M Green Bluish on the ring finger, and one gem on the others.

This is the first time I've ever used nail gems - I got three packs of them in Superdrug on a sale. It looks like Andrea Fullerton is discontinuing at least some of their lines, and I was able to pick these beauties up for 80p per pack. Go and see if they're still there, if you can! I also got gold round studs, and a jewel-toned gem pack. This particular set is iridescent, with a purple and gold flash, but I wasn't really able to capture their sparkle on my camera. Perhaps if it was sunny here...

Birthday/Celebration manicure, with China Glaze For Audrey and H&M Green Bluish

I had no problems with getting the gems onto my nails, since the box came with a tiny rubber ended gem picker. I smothered them with Seche Vite, but I am not holding my breath for how long they will survive on my nails. Still, it's great for celebrations!

Polishes used:

• China Glaze For Audrey - Duck egg crème, opaque in two careful coats. This is the runniest polish I own, and it was a bit of a bother to apply without flooding the cuticles. I would recommend laying the first coat thin, as a thicker second coat seems happy to stay within the borders of the first one.
• H&M Green Bluish - a super pretty glitter in a clear base. It's a mix of sparse large silver hexes and smaller blue and green iridescent hexes in two sizes. I had to fish a bit for the silver hexes, and overall it's not a full coverage glitter. It dries fast, and would probably look amazing over dark colours as well.

Thanks for looking!

Here are some of the other challenge manicures:

Galaxy nails

This manicure is a bit like cheating. In one of my previous posts, one of the commenter said my nails looked like galaxy. I thought, what a brilliant idea! The next day I took out my supplies and added some extras to make my nails look like proper space.

Galaxy nails with Revlon Cobalt, Barielle Jillian's Jammin', OPI Unfor-Greta-Blye Blue,Zoya Aurora, No7 Galaxy and H&M Jo Is In The House.

Polishes I used:

• Misa I Will Survive - black crème background.
• Revlon Cobalt, Barielle Jillian's Jammin' and OPI Unfor-Greta-Blye Blue for the blue elements.
• Zoya Aurora and No7 Galaxy for the purple and holo shimmer.
• H&M Jo Is In The House for the coarse holo glitter.

Galaxy nails - sparkle!

I simply sponged dabs of the purples onto my previous blue mani, and then added tiny dots of the coarse holographic glitter with a small dotting tool. I was considering adding some white dots for extra stars, but in the end I prefer the less obvious holographic particle effect.

Galaxy nails - all photos in natural daylight, and cloudy skies.

A day later, I mattified it with Orly Matte Top coat. I love how the purple pops in this satin finish.

Galaxy nails with Orly Matte Top.

Thanks for looking!