Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear 'Pucker Up'

 Today, I have a swatch of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear 'Pucker Up':

This is a bright, poppy red polish, with a jelly-like consistency and shiny, slightly translucent finish. It is very intensely pigmented, and covers quite well even after one coat. I enjoyed wearing this polish - it's bold and fun, yet classic and elegant at the same time!

Summer Fun Shimmery Skittles Mani

Today I have another summery skittles mani to share, this time using all bright shimmery colours. I even managed to throw in a bit of embellisment, with some nail jewels! 

For the manicure I used four different Sally Hansen Polishes. I've been having a lot of fun shopping my stash lately, and using older polishes that I haven't really used much in years. I've been rediscovering a lot of fun drug store polishes that I bought back when I just started getting into nail polish, some of which are now discontinued.

Polishes Used

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear ‘Hot Magenta’

Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure ‘Wedding Glitters’

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear ‘Ivy League’

Sally Hansen Hi-Definition Nail Colour ‘Three D’

All in all, I really like how this manicure turned out. I think the colours work really well together, and they are so cheerful!

Blue, Gold and Orange Skittles Mani featuring Sally Hansen Pacific Blue

As discussed in my last post, I managed to do another skittles manicure! This mani features the iconic original version of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear 'Pacific Blue'. This polish caused quite a stir in the nail polish world when it was reformulated back in 2014. The original version was super popular, and much beloved in nail polish circles, and has now become somewhat of a collector's item. I've had the bottle in the photo above for several years now - I'm estimating that I may have purchased it anywhere between 7 to 10 years ago!

In the manicure, I used Pacific blue on both my thumb and ring finger. I chose complementary shades of light blue, gold and orange to complete the look.

Polishes Used

Morgan Taylor ‘No Filter Needed’

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear ‘Pacific Blue’

Rimmel 60 Seconds ‘Dazzle’

Orly ‘Melt Your Popsicle’

I really like how this manicure turned out. The colour combination is fun and energetic, and works really well for the summer! I'm happy I was able to throw a neon polish into the look, with Orly's neon orange 'Melt Your Popsicle', as well as a bit of bling with Rimmel's gold shimmer polish 'Dazzle'. 

Metallic (Partial) Rainbow Skittles Mani

It's been a while since I got a chance to feature some new nail art on this blog. It's been difficult lately to find time to sit down and create a design and then execute it. As a result, I've been doing a lot of simple (one-polish) manicures. I decided to try to dip back into creativity, with one of the simplest forms of nail art - the skittles mani.  I wanted to do something bright and cheery, so I decided on the Metallic Rainbow Skittles mani photographed above.

Polishes Used

Orly 'Crawford's Wine'

Orly 'Flicker'

Revlon Brilliant Strength 'Hypnotize'

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear  'Emerald City'

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear  'Blue It'

I love how this mani turned out - it is so fun and colourful, that I'm inspired to do more! However, I think I may just stick with skittles manicures for the time being, because they are relatively quick and easy to accomplish. Who knows, maybe I'll even be able to throw in the odd manicure with other embellishments, and/or some stamping here and there... we'll see where this goes!

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear 'Crushed'

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear 'Crushed' is a gorgeous, shimmery, bright orange polish that just screams summer. It's one of those super-finely milled shimmer polishes that essentially reads as metallic on the nail. It gave great coverage, had a decent drying time, and there were no issues with application. The polish is really fun and cheery to wear due to the in-your-face texture, colour and shine. All in all, I'm really happy with this polish.

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear 'Posh Plum'

Today I have another quick post featuring a simple manicure. I hope to get back to doing nail art soon, so hopefully I'll have some cool nail art to share in the near future. This polish is called 'Posh Plum', and it is from the Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear line. I noticed this looks very similar to 'Pulsating', the polish that I posted about a couple entries ago. 'Posh Plum' is not an exact dupe, as it is just a touch bluer than 'Pulsating', but they still are quite close.

Neutral Manicure with Chunky Gold Glitter

I did an impromptu manicure this morning, using one of the oldest polishes in my collection:

 

Back in the day, I really used to love Revlon's selection of sheer neutral polishes. I used to use them a lot for French manicures, or on their own for a subtle, polished look. I still have 'Sheer Nude - 004' (which used to be my absolute favourite), 'Sheer Blush - 005', 'Sheer Innocence - 013' and 'Sheer Cotton Candy -030', all of which I purchased approximately 10 (or perhaps even more) years ago.



My Revlon Sheer Neutral Polishes

Over the years, I've experimented with quite a few other brands of sheer neutral polishes, and these Revlon's have fallen out of regular rotation. I'm pleased to see that they have held up quite well over the years, and are still usable. The only thing is that they have become a bit more thin than I remember them being initially. I decided to use one of them, 'Sheer Innocence' to do today's quick and simple manicure, along with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear 'Set the Stage'.



Polishes Used: 'Set the Stage', and 'Sheer Innocence'

Coral Compilation Mani

For this manicure, I picked out a bunch of coral polishes that are all similar in tone but have different finishes, and put them together for a subtle skittles mani. I used 'Sally Hansen's 'Crushed', a metallic finish polish, on my thumb and ring finger; 'Hello World', a jelly finish polish from Nicole by OPI on my index finger; 'Kiss Me Coral', a frost finish polish by Revlon, on my middle finger which was then covered with a chunky red heart glitter polish called 'Have a Heart' from Nicole by OPI; and finally, on my pinky I used a crème polish from Revlon called 'Craving Coral'.

Polishes Used

Nicole by OPI ‘Have a Heart’

Revlon ‘Craving Coral’

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear ‘Crushed’

Revlon ‘Kiss me Coral’

Nicole by OPI ‘Hello World’

I haven't been doing a lot of nail stamping or designs lately, so I've been trying to do a lot of interesting combinations to add some element of fun into my manicures! I found this to be an interesting way do a monochromatic look but still have some subtle visual interest. 

It's also really nice that I got a chance to use some of my older polishes for this manicure. I love going back and rediscovering over-looked gems from my collection.

Light Purple, Blue and Teal Mani

Today's manicure was done using two KB Shimmer polishes that I purchased recently, which I absolutely adore!

The main polish, 'I'm So Sweet Pea' is a beautiful light purple crelly-based glitter polish with teal, purple, soft pink and mint glitter particles. This polish was part of KB Shimmer's spring 2015 collection.

Pink Floral Pond Mani

For today's manicure, I decided to try out a 'Pond' manicure for the first time. This style of manicure involves sandwiching designs between layers of tinted jelly polish, to create a submerged item effect.

I decided to do a monochromatic look, so I used a medium pink jelly polish for the base, and then used a repeating four-petalled flower design, made using a dotting tool and two shades of pink polish.

I really like how this look turned out - it is super-girly, fun, and vibrant! I also really like the polishes I chose. I used 3 Essie polishes that were newly released for summer 2015. The two crème polishes, 'Coacha'Bella' and 'Groove is in the Heart', were from Essie's Summer Neons collection, while the jelly polish, 'Blush Stroke', is from Essie's Silk Watercolor collection. The other polish I used was one of my silver standby's: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear 'Celeb City'. I really love how sparkly, and reflective this polish is. I use it quite frequently as a silver base polish underneath my nail art.

Polishes Used

Essie ‘Blush Stroke’

Essie ‘Coacha’Bella’

Essie ‘Groove is in the Heart’

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear ‘Celeb City’

This look has really inspired me to try out more pond manicures. There were a couple really notable jelly polish collections released this summer: OPI's 'Color Paints' collection, and Essie's 'Silk Watercolor' collection. Since I purchased both collections, I have a lot of options for creating some lovely pond manicures, and I can't wait to try them out!

Here are some more shots of the completed manicure.

OPI Color Paints Leadlight Mani

Today I have a nail stamping manicure created using the 'leadlight technique' to share with you. For this mani I used the new OPI Color Paints Collection that has recently been released for summer 2015:

It's been a while since I've done a manicure like this. I usually try to avoid doing full-hand leadlight manicures, since they tend to be very time-consuming. However, I was really excited to try out the entire line of OPI 'Color Paints', so I made an exception!

I first found out about the 'Color Paints' collection sometime in April, and learned that it was supposed to launch in early May. I was so eager to try these polishes, that I actually began hunting for them in different beauty supply stores near the end of April (just in case they were put out early!). I had no such luck. In fact, compared to other OPI collections, these polishes were relatively hard for me to get a hold of. A lot of the places that I usually go to buy OPI polishes don't seem to have them (...yet?). Perhaps that will change as we get a little further into the season.

Around the first or second week of May, I finally saw them on display in one of my favourite beauty supply stores. At the time, they only had a small display featuring only one each of the full sized colours, and 4 bottles of 'Silver Canvas'. Unfortunately, the one bottle of 'Magenta Muse' was sold out, so I could only purchase the other colours, and continue the hunt for the missing bottle. Funnily enough, that same colour was also sold out at the only other place I was able to find these at the time - and their display originally contained 3 of each colour! It took about another 2 weeks for me to finally be able to acquire that last polish - I ended up getting it when the first store I went to eventually got the larger '3 of each' display.

Polishes Used	Polishes Used (Cont’d)
OPI Color Paints ‘Pen and Pink’	Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear ‘Celeb City’
OPI Color Paints ‘Magenta Muse’	Konad Special Polish in Black
OPI Color Paints ‘Chromatic Orange’	OPI ‘In True Stefani Fashion’
OPI Color Paints ‘Primarily Yellow’
OPI Color Paints ‘Landscape Artist’
OPI Color Paints ‘Turquoise Aesthetic’	Plate Used
OPI Color Paints ‘Indigo Motif’	Messy Mansion Leadlight Lacquer Plate A06
OPI Color Paints ‘Purple Perspective’
OPI Color Paints ‘Silver Canvas’

As for my first impressions, I am quite pleased with the collection as a whole. The polishes worked really well for leadlighting, and that was the main use I had in mind when getting them. Also, I really like the 'foil wrapper' look that you get when you layer these translucent colours over a silver base. Normally I would use a white base for leadlighting, so this is a new idea for me, and I love it! My favourite colour in the collection is 'Turquoise Aesthetic' - it's a gorgeous shade, and it looks absolutely amazing layered over the silver base.

The only colour that I have a minor complaint about is 'Purple Perspective'. I find that it is almost a little too highly pigmented so you have to be really careful to not use too thick of a coat or else the purple doesn't 'glow' as much over the silver base, and reads almost as black. 'Indigo Motif' was the second trickiest one to work with due to the intensity of the pigment, but even with a slightly thick application, it still reads as blue, although it won't 'glow' as much.

And as for the manicure, I like how it turned out. It's colourful and fun, and again, it's something new for me because of the foil look that the silver base gives. The manicure is really busy, because the driving force behind my colour selection was to use all 9 colours from the collection, however, due to the success I had with this trial mani, I can't wait to start experimenting with these polishes using smaller colour palettes, and less intricate designs!

Crackle Polish Challenge #14 - Crackle Combo Mani

2015 Crackle Polish Challenge Manicure #14

Featured crackle application:
Combining two colours of crackle polish for a cool abstract art effect

Featured crackle polish:
OPI 'Navy Shatter'

Left: Crackle Combo Mani
Right: Jazzed-up Version 

Polishes Used:
OPI 'Navy Shatter'
Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear 'Celeb City'
Sally Hansen Crackle Overcoat 'Cherry Smash'
Sally Hansen Insta-Dri 'Silver Sweep'

Polishes Used

Plate Used:
Lily Anna 06

I really don't know what to say about this manicure! I guess I'm kind of indifferent to the final look. It's a fun looking manicure, but it's not my usual style - I usually prefer brighter and/or lighter colours. I think if I were redesigning it now, I'd probably go with a light blue base, and maybe less coverage of the shatter polishes so more light blue shows through. Then I would probably try stamping the same negative space circle pattern in white instead of silver. As much as I would like to avoid doing a 'Do-Over' mani during a challenge (I've been wearing crackle polish manicures exclusively for over a month now, and still have 7 more to go!) - I'm really tempted to do just that!

Crackle Polish Challenge #12 - Red Shatter Tip Valentine Mani

2015 Crackle Polish Challenge Manicure #12

Featured crackle application:
Using crackle polish to embellish nail tips

Featured crackle polish:
Sally Hansen Crackle Overcoat 'Cherry Smash'

Red Shatter Tip Valentine Mani

Polishes Used:

Sally Hansen Crackle Overcoat 'Cherry Smash'

Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure 'Strawberry Shields'

China Glaze 'Love Letters'

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear 'Cherry Red' 

Plates Used:

Moyou London Festive Collection - 20

PUEEN43

Polishes Used

Today I have one final Valentine's day Mani to share for this year. Still keeping with the Crackle Polish Challenge, I used red shatter polish to decorate my nail tips. One thing that I really like about using shatter polish this way, is that you don't have to be as careful when polishing your nail tips as you would normally have to be for a traditional French manicure. Actually, this is the main reason that I don't do a lot of tip designs or French manicures on this blog - I rarely have the patience for that!

I could definitely see myself trying this shatter tip mani again with my white shatter polish, or maybe even trying to layer a different coloured shatter polish over a traditional white French tip.

Bye for now, and Happy Valentine's Day!!!

Crackle Polish Challenge #7 - Shattered Heart Mani

2015 Crackle Polish Challenge Manicure #7

Featured crackle application:
Using crackle polish to make a decal

Featured crackle polish:
Sally Hansen's Crackle Overcoat in 'Fuchsia Shock'

Polishes Used:
Sally Hansen Crackle Overcoat in 'Fuchsia Shock'
Sally Hansen 'Big Smoky Topcoat'
Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear 'Rouge Rush'
Sally Hansen Insta-Dri 'Presto Pink'
China Glaze 'Feel the Breeze'

Plate Used:
Pueen Celebration Collection 'Fireworks Festival'
PUEEN41

Today's crackle technique involved making a stamping decal out of dried crackle polish.  To do this, I started by painting a couple coats of my base polish, 'Feel the Breeze', a light pink creme polish, over a stamper. When that was fully dry, I painted a layer of 'Fuchsia Shock' over it, and allowed that to dry.  When the stamper was completely dry, I carefully peeled off the polish, and then cut two heart shapes out of the dried polish.

After painting my nails with the sheer black polish, 'Big Smoky Top Coat', I placed the decals over the slightly wet nails, and then added a layer of topcoat in order to get the decal to adhere to my nail. I finished up with a little stamping, glitter, and rhinestones on my other nails.

On the bottom right corner of the collage, you can see a variation of the decal that I did on my right hand. Not only is the heart decorated with shatter nail polish, but this heart is also cracked into three pieces, and slightly separated to reinforce the shattered heart theme. I really like this variation because it takes advantage of one of the special features of decals - you can manipulate their shape, and placement.

All in all, I really like how this mani turned out. I love how the shards of 'Rouge Rush' glitter echo the 'shattered' theme, as well as how awesome-looking the double stamping on my thumb turned out - I may have to do an entire mani like this! I also think that this use of shatter polish really does add something special to the overall look of the mani.

Candy Cane Mani

Today I have a candy cane themed manicure to share:

Candy Cane Mani

Polishes Used:
China Glaze 'Define Good...'
China Glaze 'White on White'
Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear 'Celeb City'
Konad Special Polish in White

Plate Used:
MoYou London Festive Collection - 03

Other than a few issues with getting my lines straight, I love this manicure! Incidentally, I discovered a great tip for getting my lines straight, just as I was finishing up the manicure. Just before I was about to put polish on the image plate to stamp the last unfinished nail, it suddenly dawned on me that instead of my trustee hard Konad stamper, I should try using my larger, squishy stamper. With my Konad stamper, not only were some of my lines becoming crooked during the process of rolling the images onto my nail, but also, at times I was having problems with a little bit of polish bleeding onto the negative space of the image when I tried to pick it up.

When I tried the squishy stamper, not only did the image pick up beautifully, with no bleeding, but I found it was also much easier to transfer this particular image cleanly by pushing my nail onto the stamper, than it was to roll the image onto my nail as I had been doing with the hard stamper. I realized that this is because when I roll an image onto my nail, I don't always use one smooth, continuous motion. In areas where I stop momentarily, or my hand moves a bit too fast, I end up with a crooked bit of the image. Pushing my nail onto the image with the squishy stamper solves this. It also makes it a bit easier to line up the image exactly how you want it on your nail.

You'll notice in the above picture that my index finger turned out perfectly straight, and the angle looks great. That's because I used the squishy stamper for that finger. I used my trusty hard Konad stamper for all of the other striped nails - you can probably see the difference!

 I love using the hard stamper because it's really great at picking up every detail of very fine images, whereas many times I have problems getting detailed images transferred onto the squishy stamper. Also, when I first started stamping, I only owned hard stampers, so when I'm gathering my mani materials, I often instinctively reach for them out of habit.

This experience really helped drive home the message that I really have to take the time to evaluate which is the right tool for the job, before I begin. As a basic guideline: the squishy stampers are better at picking up images with thicker lines and/or larger, open spaces of polish, while the hard stampers are better at picking up detailed images.

Polishes Used

Now, I just want to take a moment to talk about how beautiful 'Define Good' is.  I think I mentioned before that I'm normally not the biggest fan of red nail polish, simply because it is so common, however this red polish is gorgeous! It's dark and sultry with blue undertones, and has this magnificent shimmery metallic finish to it. It also stamps really well, which is a big plus. I'm so happy I bought it! This is a red that I probably wouldn't even mind wearing on it's own (sans nail art) - now that's a big deal!

Birth of Venus Mani - Using Moyou London Artist Plate 05

Today's manicure was inspired from Sandro Botticelli's classic painting 'Nascita di Venere' or 'The Birth of Venus'.  This is the 3rd instalment of my design series using my Moyou London Artist Plates. Today's plate was Moyou London's Artist Plate 05, which is also inspired from the painting. I pulled colors and motifs from the original painting, and incorporated 5 images from different parts of the Moyou Plate. Here is the finished manicure:

Birth of Venus Mani

The pinky represents the tree canopy in the upper right quadrant of the painting, while the ring finger represents the robe that the handmaid is waiting to cover Venus with. The clamshell on the middle finger represents Venus' mode of transportation in the painting, and fittingly, it is stamped over wave images. The index finger represents the blowing winds and falling flowers to the left of Venus, and of course we have Venus' face on the thumb.

Here are the plates and polishes I used:
Plates:
Moyou artist collection plate 05, Moyou London Kitty Collection Plate 02 (flower image on index finger), Moyou London Sailor Collection Plate 01 (Clamshell image on middle finger).

Polishes:
Not including base and top coat, I used 12 different polishes to achieve this look. Here they are listed  by the finger on which the polish is one of the base or main colours:
Pinky: Maybelline New York Color Show 'Walk in the Park', and Essie 'Sew Psyched'
Ring Finger: Sally Hansen Color Foil 'Rose Copper', DRK Nails 'Metallic Brown' Stamping Polish
Middle finger: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear 'Breezy Blue', Revlon 'Urban', and Rimmel 'Black Satin'
Index Finger: Essie 'Rock the Boat', and NYC 'French Tip White'
Thumb: Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure 'Almost Almond', OPI 'Y'all Come Back Ya Hear?', and NFU Oh Jelly Syrup Series NFU JS16.

Birth of Venus Mani

This manicure was very time-consuming. I used a lot of different materials and techniques to achieve the look, and I also had a lot of failed attempts and revisions of my original plan.

One of the techniques that I used was the decal method. This was done on the middle finger, where I made a stamped decal of a clamshell.This is the first time I've incorporated this technique into a manicure. All in all, it worked well, except for on my left hand where I had a slight problem when placing the decal over my freshly top-coated nail (which also had a stamped background image underneath). I ended up having to lift and reposition the decal, which caused the background to get a little smudged on that finger. Next time, I'm going to wait until the polish is completely dry before I place the decal.

I also want to point out that I really like the combination of 'Sew Psyched' with 'Walk in the Park' on my pinky.  I would love to do another manicure featuring these two colours - they look so good together!

Flamingo Themed Mani - 2nd Attempt

Since I wasn't fully satisfied with the execution of my last flamingo manicure, I decided to try again. This time, I had the idea to use the cover of the Moyou London Tropical Collection image plates as the inspiration for the mani. Here's a picture of the cover:

Moyou London Tropical Collection Sleeve

And here's the finished manicure:

Flamingo Themed Mani Version 2 - Left Hand

Flamingo Themed Manicure Version 2 - Right Hand

I used a lot of materials for this mani - a total of 5 image plates, and 5 nail polishes (not including base and top coat). For the base colour, I used Essie's 'Turquoise and Caicos'. All fingers except for my middle fingers were stamped with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in 'Mint Sorbet', using a wave image from Moyou London's Sailor Collection plate 04. I stamped my middle fingers with the flamingo pattern image from Moyou London's Tropical collection plate 06, using China Glaze's 'Flip Flop Fantasy'.

On my thumbs, I used the flamingo decal image from Winstonia plate W210, as well as one of the palm trees from Moyou London's Time Traveller Collection: Back to the 80's plate 04. On my ring fingers, I used the same flamingo decal from W210, but this time paired it with a tropical leaf image which was a part of one of the full nail images from Moyou London's Tropical collection - 02. I used DRK nails Metallic Brown stamping polish to colour the palm tree trunk, and coconut details on my thumbs and ring fingers.

***Edit: I realized well after publishing this post, that I forgot to include the name of the dark green polish I used for the palm leaves.  Unfortunately, I no longer remember which polish I used.***

Here are some images of the final result paired with the original piece it was inspired from:

I'm finally satisfied with my flamingo manicure! It took me a couple tries, but I'm glad I persevered.