Funky Fingers Riot and BarryM Instant Effects Moon and Stars

Today I want to show you the mani I had on all week up until Friday!  Yep, a whole week!  It wore really well only showing some real tip wear and one small chip Friday.  It was my birthday yesterday, so I HAD to change it for then of course, and I chose Ozotic Pro 505 and Ozotic Elytra for that (I will post about that later!) but I have posted that combination before too!

I really liked this manicure, it kind of reminded me of all those things you could buy in the '80's early '90's with all the sun, moon and stars designs on them.  Whole matching bedroom sets of curtains, bedding, lamp shades, rugs, the whole kaboodle!  In fact I think I still have some curtains like that somewhere!

Funky Fingers Riot is a fantastic shade of purple, it does fall a little into 'blurple' territory as it is a blue based shade but most definitely a purple though.  It is rich and vibrant, and being a fan of purple anyway it doesn't take a genius to realise that yes, of course, I loved it!  It applied well with a normal drying time, and didn't present me with any issues.  Having applied 3 coats and allowed to dry, I used BarryM Instant Effects gold foil polish as a stamping polish (these are great for stamping!), and went mad stamping away like a demon.  I got LOTS of compliments on this, which is always nice of course and a good indicator that it is as nice as I hope, and not just me thinking it looks better than it actually does!  Finally a liberal splash of shiny top coat, and stick a fork in me, I'm done.  I hope you like it as much as I did, it was so simple to do, but looks so pretty.

Update...and OPI Warm & Fozzie

Well I have been busy and really need to update here!  I have been a bad blogger, I have loads of pics of manicures but literally haven't had time so sorry to you all and thanks for sticking with me :).  Christmas happened, and my birthday is looming very soon and I got a new fancy pants camera as a 'double big gift.'  So I am extremely pleased to say the least and now I need to do a lot more reading and learning in order that I can do it justice!  So, soon you will be seeing pics from a new and improved camera, but I still have quite a few taken with my good old fuji that I will be posting so there may be a bit of a crossover.  All good though!

Right well today I have the lovely and unusual OPI Warm & Fozzie from their Muppets collection.  I love this shade, it looks initially like a lovely dark bronze foil but the colour itself is made up of tiny foil like pieces, and there is a mix of bronze, gold and surprisingly pink in there giving this a warm tone and an almost multichrome gorgeous glow.  It is lovely to look at and I can't think of any dupes for this, so refreshingly something unique as well.  It looks like it is going to be a bit sheer when you put the first coat on, but it builds up nicely and this is with three coats, application was like butter and the drying time was good.  I like foils and I like unusual, so this one is definitely my kind of polish.

Natural Daylight

Direct Sunlight

 

China Glaze For Audrey with BarryM Gold Glitter Instant Nail Effects

I finally got around to buying China Glaze 'For Audrey' after everyone telling me I needed it!  Well I wasn't too sure at first which is why it took me so long to get a bottle, but now I have it I have to say I love it!  It is a very classy colour, one of those 'not quite blue' slightly green toned shades, but quite understated and beautiful, and I don't have anything else in my collection that is close to it in colour.  It is definitely one of those love it, or hate it colours though judging from the reactions I got, there was no middle ground people either thought it was 'oo gorgeous' or in one case 'eww no thats bloody awful'.  The one who particularly didn't like it was my mum, I can always rely on her to give me her honest opinion whether I want it or not!  The formula was good, slighly streaky on the first coat but that evened out nicely after the second one.

Now me being me, I had this on for a couple of days and wanted to change it, but I really didn't have time and thought, well hey I know, I happen to have a Barry M Instant Nail Effects in Gold Glitter that was part of a giveaway I won over at Alice in Lacquerlands blog here (go ahead, click on it and give her blog some love, I will wait here its OK).  I thought the colour combination could be interesting so I slapped on a coat.  I'm not a huge fan of crackles in general but this one I did like and I can see me using again.  It is a lovely sparkly gold although it does need a top coat to bring it out properly, but thats OK I usually use one anyway.  The crackle effect was nice and even, and it was very easy to apply, not thick or goopy at all like some I have tried, in fact it was just like applying regular polish.  I liked the colour combination of using it over For Audrey, the two colours went well together in my opinion and it was overall a very pretty manicure.  What do you think, do you love For Audrey like I do, or hate it like my mum!

OPI - Sparkle-icious

I forgot how much I love this polish, and since it has recently been the season for sparkle, I wasn't quite ready to go back to bland yet!  It was sat there twinkling at me from my stash draw, so I had to do a mani with it.  I'm sorry Sparkle-icious if I have neglected you, you are indeed beautiful and I love you very much!

This polish is a clear base with small hexagonal glitter in gold, blue and pink.  I would call it Mad as a Hatters gold toned sister, it is just such a fun polish, it reminds me or carnivals and colourful wrapped chocolates for some reason.  It makes me smile, and thats a good thing right!?

The formula was good for a glitter polish, as was the coverage but I have come to expect that from OPI anyway so no nasty surprises.  Well, I guess I will put up the pics and let you have an eye full, judge for yourself if you need this!  If you already have it, I might have reminded you to show it some love.
 

China Glaze Sexagon

Hi all, I hope everyone has had a good Christmas, or fantastic holidays whatever your religious persuasion is.  Its the reason for these festivities why I haven't posted in a while oops!  You know how it is, too much to do, then too much to drink, ah yeah, good times!  I was going to do an awesome mani for Christmas day with snowmen and santa's, reindeer and snow, the whole business but alas I just didn't have the time or the inclination to be honest so I just went for good old silver capped bling!  I recently purchased this polish from my friend Chelsea who is a master of hunting down hard to find polishes, and her blog and sales pages can be found here.  It is from the China Glaze Kaleidoscope collection of scattered holo polishes, and this beauty is called Sexagon.  It is a sexy little silver holographic bottle of polish and unlike the linear holo's of the OMG collection (which I also love by the way!) this one still sparkles away with all the rainbow colours you could want without strong light or sunlight.  Awesome, I live in England and its December, days are approximately 3 minutes long and sunshine is something I reminisce about, so this one fit the bill perfectly.

Sorry about the slightly dodgy pics and cleanup, but its the best light I could find to capture the loveliness of this polish. Taken under my halogen stairs lights with no flash, and don't they sparkle!  I hope you like it.

Color Club Lumin-Icent and ManGlaze Matte is Murder nail art

I had seen a design on another blog I would recommend checking out here, and it was so simple but looked really stunning, so I wanted to try it too.  I used Color Club's Lumin-Icent which is a very pale ice blue foil, and Manglaze's Matte is Murder for mine, as I wanted to do something a little different.  It was really simple to do, I used a base of Lumin-Icent and then when that was fully dry, I used low tack tape, to create a diagonal across the nail and added the ManGlaze polish.  Then all I did was fill in the lines and dots using a striping brush and dotting tool, and that was it!  I finished off with a top coat to seal it all, and then added a Matte top coat, because I think it looks more striking with a matte finish than its does glossy.  I am really happy with how this turned out, I will probably do this type of design again using different swirls and colours.  I like it, and I hope you like it too :)

UK News - China Glaze Electro Pop - New collection spotted on sale now!

*UPDATED*
Since posting this I have decided to remove the link to this shop, as although I have had excellent service from them in the past, they seem to be experiencing difficulties recently.  I have emailed them many times and had no response, and if you check their facebook page, many are having the same problems.  Order from them if you wish of course (I have just placed an order myself yesterday, we will see how that goes!) just wanted to give anyone reading a heads up really, and obviously I don't want to link to a site where any of my readers wouldn't get the service I would expect for myself.

Well I just have to share this one, I am not affiliated with this shop in any way but I was kind of excited when I saw the new collection on sale.  We don't usually get these new collections in the UK until way after the US so I had a little *squeeeee* moment.  Its just a shame I am on a total buying ban at the moment.  (Switches to whiney voice) but I neeeeeeeeeeeed them!  Ahem, okay well, I can't buy them yet but someone else might want to, so I couldn't keep it to myself.  You can buy the entire collection from Nail Polish Direct (link removed by me) with free delivery.  Let me know if you bought any, and what you think :) and I would love to see some swatches of these!