Friday, February 24, 2017

by Kitties26 on Friday, February 24, 2017 5 comments

The Polish Chrome Wars Part 9 - Scattered holo flakie edition

A couple of weeks ago I saw the amazing videos and photos on the Ocean Nail Supply's instagram page of their new scattered holo powder called Galaxy holo. I jumped over to their site to buy a small jar and balked at the $40USD price tag for a 1.8g jar. They also had a 1g jar for $25USD. I was going to bite the bullet and buy it, but upon checkout I discovered I was going to be charged $40USD for shipping to Australia. For 1g! Are you kidding me! So needless to say I didn't buy any and figured I would wait until other suppliers got their hands on it.

A week later, I was catching up with nail polish creator extraordinaire, Hayley of Emily de Molly fame, and she mentioned that Spectraflair4U had recently stocked a new loose form of the scattered holo flakes (which had previously only been available mixed into polish base). Without question I immediately ordered some for us both. Not only was it $6USD a gram, but shipping was reasonable and it got here in only a week! Great service there! Here is a link to the product on Spectraflair4U.

As soon as it arrived, I had to play. It comes in a small ziplock plastic baggie, but I decided to transfer mine into a small clear 1g jar for ease of use in the future. I'm pleased to say that it is a generous 1g in the bag, as my jar was full and there was still some left in the bag.

I just applied this like all the other chrome powders, which is giving it a gentle rub into the base polish. Like usual, I used Dance Legend Glitter Base in black as my base because it dries to a rubbery like finish. I topped it with a water based top coat, specifically the one from the Born Pretty store that came with the mirror chrome polish.

This is so amazing, the flame is so intense and the finish so chunky and sparkly, yet it is totally smooth on the nail. I love it so much. I'm going to be trying it over different coloured bases mext, then I'm going to be using it in jelly sandwiches, and then I might just rub it all over my body!

Just a note on this, like the multichrome flakies, these are super light and will blow everywhere with just the slightest breeze. It's also really messy during the application, even though I used a latex barrier. Good news is that clean up is a cinch, After applying the top coat and letting it dry, I just washed my hand under soapy water and all the flakies over my fingers and hands were gone.

Go and rub all the things into your nails!

Monday, February 20, 2017

by Kitties26 on Monday, February 20, 2017 1 comment

Picture Polish Nail Art Challenge - Gradient

This week I decided to participate in the second Picture Polish Nail Art Challenge. The day to post was yesterday, and I actually only decided to participate at about 9.30pm last night. I was able to get my entry uploaded to Instagram with 20 minutes to spare before midnight last night.

The theme for the challenge was 'Gradient' and you could use between 2 and 5 Picture Polish shades. Upon reading the instructions again today I noticed that they were clarified to say Gradient only, which means you weren't suppose to put stamping or other nail art on top. I'm therefore not sure if this two toned recipricol gradient would still count because of the two white vertical lines, but really I entered cause I really wanted to create this nail design again.

I did a similar pattern last year, but I had the colours reversed, with the red on the outside and the blues in the middle. I also used more colours and had stronger and deeper shades. So whilst this is very similar, it felt very different.

The five polishes I used where. Bright white for the base. Crazy and Love for the red/yellow gradient and Swagger and Tingle for the blue/green gradient.

There were hundreds of entries for this challenge, and I wish there was an easy way for everyone to see them. Because it's run through instagram and using a hashtag for entry, not everyone's posts show under the hashtag. It's really stupid how instagram limit the number of results returned.

Friday, February 17, 2017

by Kitties26 on Friday, February 17, 2017 5 comments

Digital Dozen does Black - Daffy Duck and Sylvester

Whoo hoo, look at me, the super blogger managing to do the five posts in five days, plus today I did free hand nail art! Freehand work, your are my nemesis. You take so so bloody long to get something that I'm happy with.

Don't ask me how I came up with today's idea, for some reason both these two Warner Bros. characters popped into my head when I was thinking about the black prompt.

I painted these two guys using acrylic paint, mainly because it's easier to work with and more fluid than nail polish. I'm not very skilled using acrylic paints yet, but I think I definitely prefer using them for hand painted work compared to using polish.

An InLinkz Link-up

Thursday, February 16, 2017

by Kitties26 on Thursday, February 16, 2017 6 comments

Digital Dozen does Black - Iridescent glitter beetles

Hello again. I have to say that for a prompt I wasn't really keen on this month (black) I've been really digging each of my mani's so far. I am looking forward to wearing some lighter and brighter shades, but just because I'm wearing black doesn't mean I can't make it blingy.

Today I played around with some other glitters I had and rubbed them into a black base like I did back on this post.

The glitters were all different sizes, and all different colours. The first shifts from red to green, the second from orange to green, the third from gold to teal and the the fours from aqua to purple. I was pretty amazed by all the colours that I ended up with on my nails.

I used the Messy Mansion beetle plate to stamp the wing designs, but I do find the images on that plate way too big for my nails, so you don't really get the actual beetle print to fit on your nail. I also really struggled with getting the vertical line straight down my nail, even using a clear stamper. Can you imagine what these would have looked like if I still only had access to regular stampers!!

An InLinkz Link-up

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

by Kitties26 on Wednesday, February 15, 2017 5 comments

Digital Dozen does Black - Rainbow bubbles

For day three of this black week I've attempted a design that I saw blogger PiggieLuv create in April last year - Rainbow bubbles. Mine didn't turn out anywhere near a awesome as hers, but I was still pretty happy with them. Her video tutorial is excellent, so you should check it out if you haven't seen it already.

I used acrylic paints for the bubbles. I don't use paints very often and usually use nail polish, but this design really needed something a bit easier to work with.

An InLinkz Link-up

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

by Kitties26 on Tuesday, February 14, 2017 7 comments

Digital Dozen does Black - Valentines hearts

Here we go with Day 2 of black week and I pulled together a black valentines day look.

Again I used Dance Legend Glitter Base in black. I then did a gradient by rubbing in the holographic unicorn powders that I bought from Daily Charme last year. I then did black stamping with the heart image over the entire nail, but it only shows over the holo tips which is pretty cool.

An InLinkz Link-up

Monday, February 13, 2017

by Kitties26 on Monday, February 13, 2017 12 comments

Digital Dozen does Black - Multichrome flakes from Emily de Molly

It's another Digital Dozen week already, which is great because it means I will be posting new nail art for five days in a row.

This months theme is Black. Blah, I have to say that wearing black nails is not something I really like. Plus its the middle of summer here and I want to wear bright neons, not black. Oh well, thems the breaks when you live on the other side of the world to everyone else when deciding on challenge prompts.

For today's black nails, I simply started with a black base. Dance Legend Glitter base in black to be exact. I've always had really good results using the Dance Legend Glitter base polishes as a base for chrome powders and the like so I thought I would use them for today's experiment.

Last week I went and visited Hayley from Emily de Molly. Whilst I was there she gave me some of her multichrome flakie jars that she now sells through her store. I applied three of the colours using my finger and dabbing on each nail. I then just rubbed them in to get a smooth finish. I'll have a video uploaded to Instagram tomorrow on how I did this, so look out for that.

This is what it looked like after I had applied the chrome flakes.

And a pretty amazing looking macro of my index finger.

I then did some gold stamping on the top using BM-406 plate

Chrome powders provided for consideration.

An InLinkz Link-up

Thursday, February 9, 2017

by Kitties26 on Thursday, February 09, 2017 10 comments

Different Dimension - Celebration, Family, Tradition, Rejoice and Ghost of Jupiter

Whoopsie, it seems that nearly two weeks has gone by since I was last here. My how time flies as you get older! Nothing really new with me I guess. My surgery wound still hasn't totally come together yet, but it's almost there. I'm doing a bit of hobbling around, but the doctors don't want me walking too much yet until the second surgery to remove the pins and plates. Apparently the plates can snap if you walk on them too much, and that is definitely something I want to avoid.

In other news, it's hot down under. Like the heat wave from hell coming this week. It was only 36 today (98F), but will be 41 (106F) tomorrow and Sunday. I like the summer and hot weather in general, but anything hotter than 34 (93F) is plenty hot enough for me thank you very much.

Today I have some swatches of polishes I got in December. I saw some lovely swatches of the Different Dimension Homespun holidays collection and there were a few standouts for me. I'm such a sucker for metallic holo finishes, so I bought all four of those from the collection. I also grabbed Ghost of Jupiter because the swatches I saw were just amazing.

That red to green iridescent glitter is all the rage at the moment in indie polishes, and damn it, it sure does look pretty. As I wasn't doing nail art as much in December cause of my foot, I actually wore each of these shades for several days (and the gold one for at least a week) so I can report that wear was very good.

Celebration - this one is a hard colour to describe. It's a dusty grayed out mauve, taupe kind of shade. It also has shimmer, flakes and a nice strong holo. Application was nice and smooth and it was opaque at two thin coats. This is two coats.

Family - Argh, I just adore this. Hello cool toned, metallic holo, gold polish. This is the sort of shade I want to be wearing when I die! Strong holo flame and an intense metallic reflection from the gold flakes and shimmer. Great polish.

Rejoice - If you prefer silver tones over gold, then Rejoice is for you, as it's the silver sister to Family. Again the formula was great and it was opaque in two thin coats. It too has a strong holo flame and a very reflective finish.

Tradition - Is it nude, is it pink. is it rose gold? I feel like it's all those things. It's definitely the warmest of the four metallic shades and the pink sheen with appeal to all those pink lovers out there. Again, strong holo flame, excellent metallic finish and two easy coats for full coverage.

I didn't get the other two polishes in the Homespun Holiday's collection, there was a red holo and a green holo, they both looked nice, but not unique enough to join my 3000+ stash.

Ghost of Jupiter - Amazing swatch photos suckered me in to buy this polish. I do really love it, but it doesn't look as amazing on me as the swatch photo I saw, particularly that first photo in the DD store for this polish. Doesn't that suck when that happens! This was full coverage after three coasts for me, but it was pretty chunky with all the glitter and did dry rather rough. I needed about three layers of top coat to get it smooth, and as a result my polish felt (and looked) pretty thick.