Wet n Wild The Crown Is Mine... or not

Wet n Wild The Crown Is Mine was part of the Coloricon Be Jeweled collection released earlier this year. It's a duochrome foily microglitter with larger multicoloured glitter interspersed in it, much like the China Glaze Prismatic collection - in fact, a lot of them are dupes. I loved other people's swatches, but on my nails? 3 coats over black:

You guessed it... Too. Freaking. Glitzy. I am so not a proper glitter person, I couldn't wait to get it off. The Crown Is Mine is a purple to green-gold multichrome, and even though I'm a duochrome addict, I'd gotten rid of it before capturing the duochrome.

I won 4 of this collection in a giveaway, and I'm determined to love at least one of them. These are sheerer than the China Glazes, and apparently you can do a pretty good approximation of galaxy nails using just one coat, so I'm planning to try that. In a sec. After I've recovered from the SHINE IN MY EYES.

Illamasqua Prism and GOSH glitter

I've had an obsession with ethereal shades lately. Summer has finally turned up but even so we've had storms and drizzle and my usual sunny neons haven't felt quite right. I'd been wanting Prism for ages and when it came up in the sale along with Harsh, Scorch (also shades I'd earmarked) and a base coat for £15 I had to have it.

Really pleased I snagged it - isn't it pretty? I think this was two coats with a sandwich of GOSH glitter (562, Magic Star) which is a transparent prismatic glitter. Reminds me of tinsel/ I've seen people swatch Prism with four coats to make the duochrome more obvious, so I'll definitely try that next time.

More Robot Nails! - Barry M Silvery Lilac

I really wish Barry M was available in the US. It's a lovely little brand that puts out great colours at an excellent price point. At the moment, I turn to the bay of Evil for my Barry M fix, but I just wanted to put it out there!

This is Silvery Lilac - reminds me quite a bit of OPI Not Like the Movies, but for some reason I like this version better.

Silvery Lilac is another polish that reminds me of "robot nails" but it has a healthy dose of sparkle in it. I definitely have to be in the mood for this kind of polish, but when I am, this hits the spot nicely. I also think it would look pretty fabulous under OPI Black Spotted!

Have you tried Barry M polishes? What do you think?

kittytokaren

A sober return

I'm back! I was going to make a celebratory post with a mani I did recently (I don't really have many from vacation, my nails/cuticles take some neglect while I'm not at home, I need to work on that) but I'm changing what I was going to post to this.

My best friend passed away this past weekend. She was hit by a drunk driver. She was only 23.

It's a shock to the system.

I did this mani to honor her... it was a mani she posted on my facebook wall last week, asking me to do it on her nails when she next came over. That day won't ever come, but I'll always think of her.

I'm sorry about the mani quality, it was one that just wouldn't go well for me.

I used American Apparel Hassid and some gold striping tape. It doesn't really hold up that well, even with top coat. I took a shower and it faded to a pale gold. The one on my pinky I reapplied because it repeatedly fell off.

But it looks great.

Please, don't drink and drive.

Kiko 277 Blueberry Glitter

I don't normally like pink. But I picked this one up on a whim in Spain and HOLY WOW IT IS AMAZING. It's a raspberry pink glass fleck with a slight red-pink colour shift in bright light. Very easy application, I think this was two coats and I quite like the brush for a cheapie nail polish - it's kind of the lovechild of Essie and OPI brushes.

OPI Skull & Glossbones

I know OPI Skull & Glossbones has been swatched to death, especially for what it is (a grey creme... the boringest colour in the boringest finish, essentially!)... but it's just so perfect for so many people (except ilexica, who is apparently a freak).

When I first got this, every second mani for about a month had this in it somewhere. And it still worms its way into a disproportionately large number of my manis these days. It's my go-to for an unassuming, pale colour which doesn't pull attention away from the nail art, but will definitely be flattering. And it pretty much works with any colour scheme, including the chunks of maidenhair fern that I thought might be fun to stick to my nails. What more can a girl ask of her lacquer?

Squeezing out the last few drops of summer - Essie Super Bossa Nova

It's been a little rainy and gloomy where I live for the past couple days - a slap-in-the-face reminder that summer is coming to a close. I wanted to squeeze in a few more summery manis while I could. I did Essie Geranium for a few days (posted a long time ago here) and then Essie Super Bossa Nova.

OK, I'll be straight with y'all. This polish isn't really for me. It is pretty, application was great, but I'm just not feeling it. I think it's just got too much going on for me. I'm a creme girl, and when I do a bit of shimmer or something special, I usually prefer it to take center stage as part of a more neutral polish. The bright colour + texture combo is a little OTT for me in this particular case. However, I do think it would look really really fab on toes!

What is your final summer mani going to be? Any last minute recs for me?

kittytokaren

Glitter gradient with Savvy Irish Coffee and OPI The Living Daylights

If you haven't already seen, I recently had the opportunity to swatch 3 of the shades from the upcoming OPI James Bond 007 Skyfall collection here. I was probably most excited about the multi-coloured glitterbomb The Living Daylights - I guess it's a kind of counterpart to Rainbow Connection from last year's holiday collection.

Unlike RC though, there's only one size of glitter - hexes the same size as the large hexes in RC. And there are only 4 muted shades of glitter (salmon, teal, silver and gold).

It sounds like a very simple glitterbomb, but I have to admit I'm kind of in love with it. It's RC's sophisticated older sister. I'm not one for wearing metallic glitter on its own (c.f. my laments here) but this is gorgeous for layering!

I originally tried it over Live and Let Die, a very dark vampy, so for my second try I layered it over Savvy Irish Coffee, a new budget offering by Australian evil time and money black hole of beauty everything chain store Priceline. This is a mushroom taupe kind of colour - light brown creme with a hint of purple in there. Unlike my usual glitter gradients, this time I went heavy at the cuticle, fading towards the free edge.

And here it is mattified with Rimmel Mattifying Topcoat - love! Somehow matte topcoat over glitter always gets my vote.

Are you a Rainbow Connection or a Living Daylights lover? What else should I do with The Living Daylights?

OPI Hot & Spicy

I keep thinking that I MUST have posted this, I wear it so often. But I don't think I have, at least not on its own (if I recall, my first post here was this underneath white crackle, which is still a favourite combo of mine). It's a colour I gravitate towards when I'm not sure what to wear, and I keep picking accidentally up dupes of it when I'm having an idle browse, so clearly this is a colour deep rooted in my subconscious somewhere.

This is a aoftened orangey red with a slight terracotta undertone. It's very summery, makes a lovely colour for toes, and goes with everything. It was released with the Hong Kong collection and while I have no idea whether it embodies that inspiration, I really like it, especially with gold or white accents.

Tiger's Eye - OPI Black Spotted

Yes, I managed to get my hands on the elusive OPI Black Spotted! I'm sure you've seen some (or too many) swatches of this, but I'm still going to share mine. This was my first attempt using Black Spotted, and I learned a couple things while playing on a nail wheel:

a.) Apply thin, almost non-existant coats or you won't see much of the effect.

b.) You can go over what you've already done, unlike Shatter.

c.) The more you go over it, the smaller the spots will be.

d.) The manicure underneath has to be SUPER DRY or else you get cracking.

That's all. I could seriously use some more pointers - this thing is NOT the easiest in the world to work with. Here I put it over one of my favourites - Barry M Copper.

I think the result looks kind of like Tiger's Eye stone! I think it looks pretty neat. After a bit of nail wheel experimentation, I think I like this over metallics best, but I can't wait for the winter to wear this over shimmery vampy colours! I think the effect is more subtle over darker colours, and honestly quite unique, but in a refined artsy way - like watercolour on top of oil pastel.

Have you tried Spotted? Any tips for me? (And do you think this is coming to the US eventually?)

kittytokaren

Rimmel Misty Jade + glitter gradient

I swatched this a while ago but it's been languishing at the back of my photos folder, because winter is no time for pastels. But it's warming up just a tad here, and spring is finally around the corner... Rimmel Misty Jade, 2 coats with Seche Vite:

Misty? No. Jade? Well it depends what light it's in! I've never seen a creme change so much depending on whether it's wet or dry, or what topcoat it's under, or what time of day it is. Weird!

I did a gold glitter gradient on top of it a while ago by coaxing Essence Make It Golden on top with a cotton bud, here's the result:

I think it's a really nice shade to have, and quells the For Audrey urges somewhat... if only it'd stay one consistent colour!

The Girliest Glitter - Essie A Cut Above & OPI You Callin' Me a Lyre?

This manicure is dedicated to my brand new little god-daughter who was born on August 1! The most beautiful baby I have ever seen - she is absolutely perfect. I wanted to do something very girly in honour of the little one, so I layered OPI You Callin' Me A Lyre? with Essie A Cut Above.

I'm not the biggest glitter fan on the planet but I LOVE this one! For some reason I find the pink colour very appealing. I like that it can be quite subtle over a sheer, and can take on a whole different vibe over a dark colours. A Cut Above is a modern woman - she can go from sweet and demure to tough and chic in a minute!

I hope my god-daughter will love all things girly when she gets older - I'd love to do manis with her!

kittytokaren

Essie Sand Tropez

I actually bought this by accident (no, really). I had some unexpected holiday pay and I remembered that there was a nude from the Nice collection that I really liked...which as it turned out was Topless and Barefoot, but luckily I really like this too.

I have quite a lot of warm greys (like Waking Up in Vegas which I LOVE and must post soon) and this is in the same family, but it's more yellow than grey. I love those kind of colours. They're so flattering and chic.

Gold and purple all-over-the-place nail art explosion

Alanna of Pretty Purple Polish recently celebrated her first blogiversary by holding a nail art competition with a purple theme. She was one of my first followers and co-created Artsy Wednesday with me, and has really nice swatches and is generally all-round lovely.

For my entry, I decided to showcase a bunch of my favourite purples. I have a lot of purple polishes! I also had some big iridescent hex glitters, so I decided to explore a number of different nail art techniques on my nails. I only had 3 nail designs in total, because... I'm lazy :(

Thumb and ring finger: China Glaze LOL (Alanna grabbed this HTF for me from the mythical Bankstown nail supply shop - told you she's lovely! :D), glitter gradient with Essence Make It Golden, applied with a Q-tip

Index and pinky: These nails were the first I came up with. I wanted it to look like mermaid scales. The base is ulta3 Berry sponged over Rimmel Lively Lilac, then stamped with Mash-39 in ulta3 Gold Rush Fever and mattified with Rimmel Lycra Pro Mattifying Topcoat. I then stuck on hexes with clear polish.

Middle finger: one of my favourite but time-consuming and hard-to-get-right techniques - drag/needle marbling. I painted the entire nail with a thick coat of ulta3 Orchid, spotted some Gold Rush Fever on top, then dragged loops in the polish with the needle of a compass. Finished with Rimmel Mattifying.

For everyday wearing this felt over-the-top, but I think each of these would make good manis on their own, and I'll probably revisit them. What do you think?

Two Shimmering Vamps - OPI Germany

(This post has nothing to do with Twilight.) You've probably seen so many swatches of these polishes that you're ready to claw your eyes out, but these are the two from the OPI Germany collection that I ordered *immediately*. My dark shimmery vampy stash is shockingly anemic and these fill that void...fill it with AMAZINGNESS!

OPI German-icure by OPI

Warm shimmery red vampy - deep, but not too deep that you never see the fantastic colour and shimmer.

OPI Every Month is Oktoberfest

A VERY interesting polish. Goes on purple/blue with red shimmer at the first coat, then builds up to the magnificent deep plum that you see here. I'd be curious to do one coat over black to see how that looks.

I'm thrilled with the purchase of both of these. Come winter, these will be in heavy rotation! Thanks to responses to my Essie Stylenomics post, I've picked up two more from the OPI Germany collection which you will see soon! I'll be posting comps with the Essie polishes.

What have you picked up from OPI Germany? Any more shimmery vampy recs for me?? (Seriously I have 3 now total. Including these. Can you hear that? Piff just died a little.)

kittytokaren

Terrible olympic nail art

I was expecting to be a total humbug about the Olympics (I think every British taxpayer has spent the last year wincing every time the word is mentioned) but I've actually really enjoyed it. It has happily coincided with two weeks off work for medical reasons where I've been stuck on the sofa, so it's been nice to watch all the sports, and in my home city. So I succumbed to the inevitable and donned some flags.

I am crap at nail art at the best of times. I am even worse at nail art when Small Naughty Cat has stolen both my clean-up and striper brushes (I tuck them into rolls of cotton wool, which she then abducts from the bathroom and hides around the house). Nonetheless, I had a go with an orange stick and regular nail polish brushes. The colours are Kiko 266 (which I got for the princely sum of £1.50), Ciate mistress and Illamasqua Scorch.

Are you all enjoying the Olympics? What's your favourite sport?

Essie Fall 2012 - Stylenomics

As I do with almost every Essie collection, I've been anxiously anticipating the release of their Fall 2012 offering - Stylenomics! In the end, I've picked up all but one. SPOILER ALERT! I'm really disappointed. Not that the formulas aren't great - they are. And not that the colours aren't lovely - they're beautiful. This is just something that we've seen before, and we've seen it from Essie. A few times.

If you're looking to fill some gaps in your collection, this is a great place to do it. As I said before, the formulas were fantastic all around! However, if you're like me and the vampy and taupe sections of your collection are going strong, I'm going to do some comps below with mostly other Essie polishes - maybe my regret will save you some time/money/trouble!

Let's begin!

Skirting the Issue. Gorgeousssssss! Dark red/berry jelly. Yes, a jelly. And the application is truly wonderful. If you have Essie Clutch Me If You Can already though, you might want to skip this one. They are very close. Skirting the Issue is a bit lighter and *ever-so-slightly* more ruby red than CMIYC, which has a touch more berry. In reality they are more difficult to distinguish from one another - I had to hold them up to a blazing light to really see it. The photograph really accentuates the differences! (Odd, as it's usually it's the other way around...) Essie Bordeaux is lighter and warmer than Skirting the Issue.

L-R: Essie Bordeaux, Essie Skirting the Issue, Essie Clutch Me If You Can

Miss Fancy Pants. Again, very pretty and right up my alley. This one reminds me of OPI Berlin There, Done That from THEIR Fall collection, but I don't have it (yet) for comparison purposes. It is warmer than Essie Chinchilly, and quite a bit lighter than Essie Merino Cool. The comp pics are below with Don't Sweater It, as I put a taupe line-up together!

Don't Sweater It. Another pretty taupe, this time darker! This one has a similar level of darkness in comparison to Essie Merino Cool, but has more of a mauve undertone instead of purple. You can see it next to Essie Mink Muffs, which is much more brown. I find this one to be really flattering on the hands! If you haven't found your *perfect* shade of taupe yet, give this one a shot.

L-R: Essie Mink Muffs, Essie Don't Sweater It, Essie Merino Cool, Essie Miss Fancy Pants, Essie Chinchilly

Stylenomics. The polish the line was named for! A dark almost-black green. (NB: Things tend to look quite dark on me since I am so fair.) It's not a true green-green, but has a dose of blue in it that reminds me of an evergreen tree. Definitely bluer than OPI Here Today...Aragon Tomorrow. HTAT is a jelly and Stylenomics is a very opaque creme. Comparing the two isn't easy, as they are both very dark. Sadly, much darker than I was hoping. Again, it reminds me of an OPI Germany polish - Nein! Nein! Nein! OK Fine. I don't have that one either (yet), but I might pick it up since it seems like it might be a lighter version of this that won't read as *black* in most lights. Maybe?

L-R: OPI Here Today...Aragon Tomorrow, Essie Stylenomics

Recessionista. And finally a quick one - I picked this up last minute and don't have a mani picture of it, but I didn't want to keep you guys waiting! In terms of what I have in my collection, this falls somewhere between Essie Sole Mate - which is darker and a jelly, whereas this is a creme - and Essie Plumski - a long-gone LE colour. It's *very* closer to Plumski, which has a tinge more red. If you missed out on that one, I'd pick this up! It's a lovely plum.

L-R: Essie Plumski, Essie Recessionista, Essie Sole Mate

The only colour I didn't grab was Head Mistress - it's a red and I am pretty happy with my collection of reds right now. It does look fab in other people's online swatches...hmm...

Again, lovely collection, but really unimaginative from Essie. I'm pretty bummed. I'm even more bummed that I bought so many of them. If I could do it all over again, I would just pick up the two taupes (I clearly have a taupe problem...but these are so flattering!) and perhaps Skirting the Issue because I like the formula better than Clutch Me If You Can's.

Will you be picking up any of these? Please let me know your latest polish regret so I don't feel so alone!

kittytokaren

ulta3 Spring Shower (slightly frankened)

Good pastels are difficult for me to find - for some reason they look wrong on me if they're not slightly dirty/grey. Something to do with undertones, maybe. Luckily there've been lots of grungey pastels coming out (OPI Pirates collection comes to mind), but I tend to franken most of my cremes. This is one of my favourite pastel shades to wear - NYC Blue Bird (dupe of ulta3 Spring Shower) with a few drops of black. Somehow, those few drops of black make all the difference - the normal polish looks weird on me, a bit too bright.

This is 2 coats without topcoat - see how nice the application is? ulta3 pastels have such great formulas, almost like OPI, at a tenth of the RRP. Love love love.

Annoyingly, it's suddenly become HTF - ulta3 are in the process of revamping their everything, and things are Not Quite Normal. I've been on bin dives recently mere days apart (bin diving for ulta3s is an Aussie polish enthusiast rite of passage, since ulta3s come tossed in massive tubs), and come up with completely different polishes. Happily though, they're now stocked in Coles and Woolworths, the two major grocery chains in Australia, making no-buys nigh on impossible... but a $2 polish really doesn't inspire much guilt!

Nail Art: Tape mani

This is entirely inspired by a picture I saw on Pinterest. It wasn't executed perfectly, but I like how it came out :) I should have used a different glitter polish, the China Glaze I used was a bit too thick and all the topcoat I had to use caused some bubbling :(

Here are the polishes:

light gray: OPI: French Quarter for Your Thoughts
dark gray: Essie: Power Clutch
black: American Apparel Hassid
Glitter: China Glaze Techno

I used individually cut pieces of tape, which is kind of hard to make uniform when you have huge scissors and a small piece of tape, lol. This manicure did take time and patience because I had to make sure the layer I was putting tape on was totally dry.

Have you done any "Pinterest" manis?

Subtle Jelly Sandwich with OPI My Pointe Exactly

Today I felt like something sheer with a little sparkle that wasn't the stereotypical pink, and this is what I came up with! OPI My Pointe Exactly, the most fantastic sheer grey - interesting, unique, but reserved - sandwiched around one coat of Essie Golden Nuggets, a very fine gold glitter in a clear base.

I love the way this catches the light and the contrast between the cool grey jelly and the warm gold glitter! Soft and delicate, but still special.

What do you put on your jelly sandwich?

kittytokaren

Ulta 3 Mojito

This one comes courtesy of Labmuffin's giant parcel of joy. We didn't really give too many hints about what we liked, which as it turns out was a good thing, because she still managed to put together a package of exactly the kind of goodies I would buy for myself. Top of the list was this one - a really bright green with a slighty blue undertone, like Mint Candy Apple's more kick-ass sibling. Three coats, and it took some building up, but it was totally worth it.

layers abound! purple jelly sandwich

I always love the look of jelly sandwiches :) there's a pretty depth to them that you can't get with regular polish!

This pretty layering combo is:

Sally Hansen: Purple Pizzazz (2 coats) +
OPI: Servin’ Up Sparkle +
China Glaze Snow Globe +
Sally Hansen: Purple Pizzazz (1 coat) +
Clarins 230

I took all these pictures and then realized I was just capturing the beauty of Clarins 230, but you can see the layers beneath, too :)