Switchy Swatch - Caribbean Crush

Howdy!

Today my Lilypad Lacquer order arrived! I got totally over excited when I saw the package in the mailbox (and my daughter was fascinated with the little froggy stickers on the envelope!). I am sooooo in love with them! The colours I ordered are all absolutely gorgeous, and I'm hoping to get some more in the future!

So, here is the first: Caribbean Crush

This is a very sparkly holographic colour shift polish. It seems to be primarily a teal colour, but when you move around in any source of light it shifts from teal to blue to purple (to a point where I can't stop staring at it...)

This is the teal colour that shows most of the time. It is super sparkly and such a gorgeous shade.

This pic shows the purple colour shift that occurs

And this one shows the blue shade that also appears

And finally, this one shows the full colour change (albeit a bit blurrily :P)
This was 3 coats colour plus top coat

I can't wait to try out the other colours I ordered , they are all so pretty! It was really easy to apply, very smooth, over all the perfect consistency. I definitely recommend Lilypad Lacquer! Hopefully we will get some sunshine here soon so I can take some pics in lovely outdoor lighting (in northern England we are pretty lucky to get more than 3 sunny days a year hehe :p)

(Looking at these pics, I defo need to stop being such hand sanitiser addict, my hands have gone so dry and my cuticles look so crap!)

Right then, I'm off to watch How To Train Your Dragon with my little monkey :D

Until next time!

Stef x

First official post: Marblised Nail Art!

Hai there!

Today I went out for a spot of light shopping to the local town and picked up some new nail polish. I got the Barry M 343 Plum Gelly, Barry M 341 Mocha Matte, and the Barry M Base coat/Top coat/Nail Hardener 3 in 1 (Can you tell I quite like the Barry M range??). 

I loooove trying out new designs and techniques so I decided to try a technique I liked the look of and had seen on some of the nail art blogs I browse through, but hadn't yet tried myself: water marbling. I chose 2 main colours, the Plum I bought today with Barry M 319 Prickly Pear.

First off I prepped my nails with a coat of the new base coat I had also bought today. Once that was dry I applied one coat of the Plum and again waited for that to completely dry (thank the Lord I recently bought a UV nail dryer!). 

Once it was all dried I taped up around my fingers to avoid too much excess waste ending up on my skin (a tip I picked up from Colette at the mysimplelittlepleasures nail art blog).

Next up was the fun bit! You use a cup or bowl (preferably one you no longer need as it's pretty much going to end up ruined) full of room temperature water, I used a plastic cup. I took each of my colours in turn and dripped a drop of it into the centre of the water and let it spread, dropping from about half an inch from the surface seemed to work the best for me. 

Once I was happy with the droppage I took a long hoof stick and used the pointy end to create lines and patterns into the surface - marbling the polish. Once I was happy with the marbling I readied my taped up finger above the surface and dipped really fast through the area I wanted to be applied to my nail.

I held my finger in the water while I used the hoof stick to clear up the excess polish from the surface of the water, then once that was all gone I pulled my finger back out from the water and was left with the pretty marbled effect on my nail.

I repeated the process for my other fingers (and thumbs!), removed the tape and had a little wipe up. After I'd had a go on a couple of fingers I managed to move on to dipping a couple of fingers at a time. This was the final product:

It looks quite blue in the picture because of the lighting, but its more purple. I topped it all with a coat of the quick-drying Sally Hansen Mega Shine Top Coat and that was that! (though I did take the above photo before I added the top coat and had cleared off the mess around the edges - oops :D ). 

Something I must remember to do on future attempts at this is to remove any air bubbles that are trapped on the surface of the water/polish mix before I use it, but I'm pretty pleased with how well they came out considering it was only my first attempt at the technique, it is definitely something I will try again! Passed my Sunday afternoon quite happily playing around with this effect and now have pretty nails for work tomorrow :D

Happy Sunday folks! 

S x