Hey friends readers and other people! I'm back! Yay. I know I've been like mia for weeeeeeks now...I have a good explanation. I promise. Soo if you didn't know I was in China for 2 weeks...so obviously there was no blogging to be done there. But I had a great time I was there with my mom visiting family, my grandparents, who by the way, live in THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, and eating Chinese food. Which in China, is nothing like the "chinese food" they have here. And dear God it was sooo hot! And I watched lot's of movies and TV and stuff. Cuz I was in the middle of nowhere and had nothing to do. But like, American TV stuff. I watched lot's of big band theory, and friends, and elementary, and FINALLY got a chance to watch Person of Interest! Yay me. And, of course, I bought more nail polish. The good thing about the middle of nowhere is that things are CHEAP! I got 5 bottles of polish for like 8 bucks. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT!! Ok so then afterwards my mom and I stopped in Shanghai just for a couple days, and I bought more nail polish and visited some more family and stuff. And so I got back like 2 weeks ago i guess, on Friday night. So yeah ALL of last week I was mostly free and probably should have updated this blog, except I was kinda busy yaknow...being the laziest ass in the world and watching friends all day and yeah...And then last thursday my family and I went to upstate New york to spend some time in a lake house with our neighboors, and we didn't get back till Sunday. And band precamp started on Monday and I'm away marching and playing in the hot hot sun from 9-2. So I guess this week I'll be able to get some blogging done, before leaving for band camp in Pennsylvania on Sunday, and will have no computer access/free time for all 5 days. So yeah August is like a super busy month for me. But I'll try and post some stuff for this week! I did do my nails after I got back from China and I have pics of those for you guys today!
So what I attempted here was a turquoise stone effect. Like this:
I'd seen lots of turquoise stone manicures so I thought I'd give it a try. So this is what I ended up with...
So really not sure how I feel about these. I do think the effect is really cool...but I probably should have picked a more turquoise-y base color. What I'm wearing here is Urban Outfitters-Absinthe. It's a couple shades darker than what you see in the pictures. And that really isn't the color of absinthe. It annoys me when polish names are like that. If you're gonna name a polish absinthe you might as well make it the actual color of absinthe. But the dark teal color is still quite pretty!
So after a couple coats of "Absinthe" I used plastic wrap to dab on white and grey polish. Then I used the water spotting method to get the black lines. It's basically where you put a few drops of black polish onto the surface of water, spray it with something like hairspray, which will create fine lines in the surface of the black polish, then dip your nail into a part you like to transfer the polish onto your nail. Much like water marbling.
This was my first time ever using this sort of method, I don't even do water marbling that much because I find it sort of tedious. I think for a first try it came out pretty well though! I really like my pinky and index finger, I managed to get the finest lines on those. The other nails all seem to have larger chunks of black polish.
Overall I think this is a manicure I'll be trying again sometime soon. Maybe with like other colors and stuff, it's a really cool effect and I got SO many people asking me how I did these!
So that's all I've got you guys today! I'll be posting some more stuff this week (hopefully) before band camp so yay! Have a great rest of the day everybody!
Oh and fyi, THIS is absinthe
Please don't ask me how I knew all that.
~Nova
Hello happy Saturday yay! Hope everyone's having a good weekend. I had a 6 hour marching band "boot camp" rehearsal this morning. God it was exhausting, and we've barely even started the actual marching part yet! Don't ever let ANYONE tell you that marching band isn't a legit sport, because IT IS INTENSE!
So anyway...[segway]...today's polish is another Urban Outfitters polish, Dust. Dust is a glitter in kind of a blueish base with dark silver glitter.
As you can see, the blueish base isn't really obvious once it's on the nail. Really all you see is this blue-y tinted silver glitter. Here's a bottle shot, where you can see the grey ish blue base:
I messed with the color balacne just a little to get the base color to show better. This is how the bottle looks in real life, quite a lot of blue. Sadly that blue doesn't translate onto the nail :(
The formula is also a tad tricky. It's thinner than I expected, and runnier/streaky, so the first coat is quite patchy. The second coat is more opaque, but there are still some patchy areas, so I'm wearing 3 coats in these pictures. Since it was so much thinner than I expected, I experimented with some layering.
Here's one coat of Dust over black and white:
Over the white polish on my middle finger you can see the blue base better, and also see how streaky it is. I think it looks pretty cool over black, it looks like Color Club-Platinum Record, which is silver glitter in a clear base. I'll do swatches/a comparison maybe some other time.
Here's one coat of Dust over OPI-I Don't Give A Rotterdam! which is a slate blue with slight copper shimmer.
I tried to choose a polish with a similar base color as Dust to see how it would look. I kind of hoped the copper shimmer in IDGAR would show through, but it didn't :(
And for the sake of experimenting, here's one coat of Dust over Jordana-Pink Lilac
I had hoped that the blue on top of the pink would make a purple-y color, but I clearly still have much to learn about layering polishes, cuz all I got was a streaky ugly blueish mess.
:D
Overall I think I would like this polish a lot more if it were in a clear base, or if the blue showed up better. Right now, it's just sort of grungy looking, and I'm not sure when I could ever use it, except maybe as an accent nail with nail art or something :(
Urban Outfitters polishes cost $5 in stores.
Anyway that's all for today guys thanks for reading!
Hi everyone happy Monday! Today's polish is a pretty glitter, Urban Outfitters-Pluto. My town recently got an Urban Outfitters in down town, and since the only thing I can afford in that store is the nail polish, I've recently acquired several of their polishes! Pluto is a beautiful navy/purple-y jelly base (I LOVE navy!!) with super pretty iridescent glitter. I think this is a really unique color/polish in general, so kudos to Urban for doing something so original!
In the bottle the base looks darker and more blue, but on the nail there is definitely some purple in there. And look at that amazing glitter sparkle! These pictures all have a coat of Seche Vite on top to smooth out the glitter.
Here's a close-up of my finger. I love how the pretty jelly base sort of hides the glitter from the previous coats. And the top glitter is so much sparklier in real life it's just like outer space BAM on my nails!
Now let's talk formula. Just from looking at this polish you can expect the polish to be pretty goopy, but I had no idea just how bad it would be. When I first started painting I had no idea how goopy it would be and stupidly plopped a giant thick drop onto my pinkie. That was a HUGE mistake! The polish sort of runs around depending on how you're tilting your hand. It was a pain. My advice with this polish is to apply several VERY thin coats. It's also a good idea to let the previous coat dry before applying the next coat, or else the polish will sort of drag off and be all patchy. My pinkie has 2 gloppy lumpy coats, and the other fingers all have 3 thinner coats. It definitely is easier to manage with 3 coats, and I think it's totally worth it seeing as the color is so gorgeous!
This polish cost $5 at Urban Outfitters, but they have a 2 for $8 sale, so I think I got this for $4 with another polish.
That's it for today see you all next time!
