China Glaze - Avant garden Collection - Tart-y For the Party

As promissed here is my dragonfly nail art attempt!
I used China Glaze Tart-y For the Party as a base colour and added dragonflies in the colours Sunday funday, Fancy Pants and CG In the City.
The dragonflies are made by polishing a fair amount of nailpolish on a ziplock bag, then leave it to dry for a few hours (don't leave it more then a day because the polish get to hard and starts breaking), peel it off (gently) and then use a clippunch to make the desired motive, stick those on the still wet polish and finish with a topcoat to seal to whole thing together.
This fabulous idea came from Chit Chat Nails, she is so very talented and creative! I just had to try this technique on my own nails: I love it (and it is very easy as well)!

Have a look what I created:

China Glaze - Tart-y For the Party

China Glaze Fancy Pants and Tart-y For the Party

This is 2 layers of Tart-y for the Party, which turned out to be a very lovely polish! I sort of came by it by accident butI relly like it: the colour is very fresh and spring-y and it works very nicely as well. The dragonflies are all 2 layers on the ziplock and I used 2 layers of topcoat, one normal and one fast drying.
The only problem I had with this nailart was that I left the dragonflies to dry for 2 days. This made it very hard to get them to follow the curve of my nail  because the polish wasn't flexible enough anymore (which also made some pieces break off). So next time I won't leave it to dry for such a long time :-)

China Glaze - Avant Garden Collection - Mimosa's Before Mani's

Next up in the Avant Garden Collection is Mimosa's Before Mani's. It is a lovely peachy coral/orange colour with a hint of shimmer. I was pleasently surprised by this one: it is a very flattering and happy colour. Not pastel at all and not too bright either.

Have a look:

China Glaze - Mimosa's Before Mani's

in sunlight

There is some shimmer in there...do you see it?

in the shade

This is 2 layers with a topcoat: it would have been even better with 3 layers I guess....
I had to thin the polish a bit to make it more workable, it was a bit syrupy and sticky.

In my next post I am going to attempt some nailart.....stay tuned....!

China Glaze Avant Garden Collection - Fancy Pants

A few weeks ago I ordered some polishes from the new China Glaze Avant garden Collection, today I am going to show you: Fancy Pants. It is a lovely dusty cornflower blue with a very pretty hot pink shimmer.
In the pictures the shimmer was very hard to capture, in real live it is there and it is perfect!
The blue is purple leaning and a bit dusty : I LOVE IT, it is such a gorgeous and wearable blue!

Here it is:

China Glaze - Fancy Pants

Can you see the shimmer?

This was 2 layers with top- and basecoat. The consistency was a bit weird: it seemed that the blue pigment did not dissolve completely in the base (or something, it did not show in the bottle). So the first layer was patchy and watery looking but the second layer solved the problem and the result was as shown above: YUMMY.

Color Club - Cherubic and Essie Luxeffects - Shine of the Times

I realy love holos but in some lights they are a bit dull and flat....so I thought a layer of flackies might do the trick! That is how I came up with the holo-flackie combo of Cherubic and Shine of the Times.
It worked well, but Cherubic is such a strong holo that it really does not need the flackies. A duller holo might benefit more of this layering (I'll keep that in mind!).
Cherubic is a lovely neutral colour, a cool leaning sand colour which is a tiny bit too cool for my skincolour but not so much that it is disturbing ;-)
Shine of the Times is a predominantly orange/green shifthing flackie BUT I have found that against the light there is a whole rainbow in the bottle! The purple and the blue were not visible on the nail, perhaps I need to use a different basecolour to get those colours to shine through.

Have a look and see for yourself (it was VERY hard to get the flackies to show themselves in the pics).

Color Club - Cherubic and Essie Luxeffects Shine of the Times

Look at that pretty rainbow!

YES: there they are...the flackies

This was 2 layers of Color Club Cherubic and 1 of Essie Luxeffects Shine of the Times and it was topped with a coat of Poché. It was not very long wearing: on day 2 there were large chips and I had to change polish again.

OPI - Don't touch my tutu with China Glaze - White Cap

Today I have a delicate combination to show to you: China Glaze White Cap (Anchors Away collection, spring 2011) sandwiched between OPI Don't Touch My Tutu (New York City Ballet Collection, Soft Shades 2012). It's a lovely combination altough I would not recommand it after wearing Essie's Aruba Blue (or any other dark and staining colour)..... As you will see in the pictures below the nail edges are a bit dark and stained which makes the manicure a bit "foezelig" (dingy). I guess this will be a better combi for summer, when my skin is more tanned and not so ghostly and zombie-like as it is now :-)

Have a look:

OPI - Don't Touch My Tutu and China Glaze - White Cap

Direct sunlight

Still a little sparkling!

This was 2 layers of OPI DTMT with 1 layer of China Glaze WC in between. The OPI worked very nicely and leveled perfectly, the China Glaze was quite watery but this worked in its advantage: the little gold flecks spread very evenly this way!

Essie - Aruba Blue and Cirque - AU

I needed a break from the red polishes...so today is blue saturday!
This week I received my little order from Cirque polishes and one of those gems is AU. The Cirque variation on the OPI Man with The Golden Gun. I did some research one which goldleaf polish I was going to purchase and the Cirque one came out as the overall winner.

At first I wanted to combine it with Essie Where's My Chauffeur, but I already saw that (splendid) combination so I looked for something different. That something became Essie Aruba Blue, a deep vibrant sapphire blue with loads of almost metallic like shimmer. A very royal combination paired with the goldleaf: ever since our queen Beatrix has made the announcement that she will be abdicating her throne on April 30....it's very appropriate!

Le voila:

Essie - Aruba Blue and Cirque - Au

It looks a bit more blue in the pics, in real life it's a bit more blackened. This was two easy coats of Aruba Blue and one very gentle coat of AU. Essie Aruba Blue would be very nice on the toes as well I think....I am going to try that next (no pics....I promiss :-P )