Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Feeling springy!



Good afternoon!

I know most of the US is still under a bunch of snow and ice, and Florida has had some exceptionally cool weather recently, but I've been feeling rather springy lately. Don't get me wrong, I adore my dark, vampy colors, but I've been craving lighter colors lately. Let me show you what I've come up with!

Today's mani features a glitter gradient, using Zoya Odette (which is perfect to transition from winter to spring with) and Nails, Inc. Westbourne Gardens. Westbourne Gardens is a new to me polish that I picked up weeks ago on clearance at Ulta. I'll be honest, it's a glitter bomb. It contains pink and white matte hexes in mixed sizes and sparkly gold hexes. 








Topcoat was a must for that mani, but sadly, even three coats of Seche didn't smooth it out O.o Not looking forward to taking this off lol.

Yesterday, I sported a new holo from Colors by Llarowe, Sexy Mother. When I first saw it, I had to have it! It's just gorgeous. It was perfection at 2 coats, but it's a stainer. You can kinda see the residual staining on the above pics. I so badly wanted to leave it as is, but I stamped over it to match a skirt I wore yesterday.

The chevrons were from Vivid Lacquer plate VL010, stamped in MdU white, then topped with Seche.







Last week, I picked up some Essies on clearance at a supplier. They were colors from their so called neon collection from last summer. Now, I don't normally care for Essies, because most of the time, the formulas are crap. I deal with it for the few that I love, like Splash of Grenadine and Mint Candy Apple. The "neons" I got for the sole purpose of water marbling with.

Let me say, they do water marble well. Imagine my surprise, though, when the marble dried to the semi matte finish of neons! The colors I got aren't bright enough to be true neons, but they sure want to be! Colors used were:

Sittin' Pretty
I'm Addicted
Too Taboo
Thrills & Chills

Over 2 coats of Zoya Purity, topped with Seche, then matted with Essie Matte About You.











For Textured Friday, I finally got around to trying one of the Zoya Satins and one of the last Pixie Dusts I need, Rowan and Godiva. To be honest, I don't think either color do anything for my skintone, but they both were very nice to work with. Two coats was all that was needed for both. Rown, especially, wore very well, considering my job can be rough on my manis.






Thursday was a matte flakie kind of day. Two coats of Zoya Monica with a coat of Essie Sparkle on Top, topped with Seche, then matted with Essie Matte About You. SoT is Essie's replacement for Shine of the Times, although I like SotT much better. The flakies lay better in SotT than the flakies in SoT, plus, they're different colors.






2 comments:

  1. This water marble is done with Essie nail polishes, whaaat? I tried to use some Essie polishes for water marble too some time ago, but they didn't work at all, I wonder why :/

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  2. To be honest, this is first time I've used Essies to marble with, and that's only because it's been my experience that they are thin enough for this. It could be that you actually had decent formula Essies, or it could have been the water you were using. There are so many things that go into marbling. If you haven't already, watch some tuts on YouTube to get a feel for what you need :) That's what worked for me!

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