Splatter Mani in Blues

Greetings! December is a busy month isn't it? Mine is all about travelling for holidays, to attend interviews, for family gatherings.. Sometimes I wish we can slow down our festive pace and reflect on the things we have done for the past months to sum up 2011. When the year passed by, we will be tied up in daily stuff and tend to forget about simple pleasures we used to have.

Anyway...
I have a fun manicure to show you today! I learned from Polishaholic about splatter mani few months ago but didn't have time to try (add to the fact of having a slight phobia in cleaning up ever since the water marbling experiments). It's always in my to-do list, so, making use of a long weekend I sat down and patiently completed this manicure - though I redid two nails - with success!

Instead of neons and reds, I opted various blues for the splatter:

I used Elianto white as my base, the rest are in different shades of blue - Nubar Baby Blue, Splash S031, Splash S061 (awesome shimmery midnight blue that gives depth), Essie Lapis of Luxury (cornflower blue) and Sasatinnie FCGL001.


Special mention to Sastinnie FCGL001: It's a sheer blurple with irregular-sized colored flakies! Copper, yellow, green flakies swimming in the bottle and it's absolutely visible on the nails. I bought from SaSa for RM8.90. Cheap but so pretty, polish addicts are you excited yet? Or you have them in your stash already? I have another one in copper brown :)

To avoid extensive clean-up I followed Polishaholic's advice by wrapping my fingers with tape.
To make the splatter, Polishaholic used Ikea straws. I was curious on the effects of each splatter used on different straws so these are the ones I had:

I cut them in half and used the bottom part to dip each straw into each different blue polish. Then from the top end of the straw I puffed out the polish (a single strong puff will do). It's not always on target, some of them landed on the paper towels and most of the time globs of polish were splat out instead. So yea, it's another messy affair second to water marbling. I find that the black and white straws gave better splatter than others.

This is how it's like after all the splattering. Looks terrible at first glance huh?

Taking deep breath and measuring my patience, I carefully cleaned up my fingers and cuticles with cotton buds (some call it Q-tips). Now I present you, Blue Splatter Mani!

Right hand

Left hand

Okay the clean-up is less than perfect. And the imperfect splatter is what makes it look unique! If you take a closer look, the Sasatinnie flakies are flashing among the seas of blue!

This splatter mani is well-liked by my friends and colleagues. It's eye-catching, fun, easy to do (albeit messy) and doesn't require painting skills - Why don't you give it a try too? :)

Hope you like it!

Jesse's Girl Blue Moon + Orly La Playa

Hello everyone! How's your week? Today is a public holiday so I finally have time to post my manicure pics :)

A while back I purchased a mini bottle of Jesse's Girl Blue Moon from an online seller, who had ordered Confetti but it arrived as Blue Moon. I grabbed it as soon as she published them! That's quite typical of me!

From the bottle, you can see Blue Moon is more of a purple tone with hints of blue. People coined a new term called Blurple, a shade that's purple and blue with obvious reasons. You can see the color contrast between Blue Moon and La Playa, the latter is a deepened navy creme and it appears darker on the nails than in the bottle.

L-R: Orly La Playa, Jesse's Girl Blue Moon

Blue Moon is not 3-Free

The brush is super short with a rectangular-shaped block as the holding end.
As a result I had issues in application, the block hindered and kept hitting the table

Application was almost good, being buttery and smooth but it left bald patches with 1 coat and resulted in brushstrokes. It was opaque in 2 coats but I put on the third one to even out everything.

Blue Moon dried in satin matte finish, which looked really cool in blurple. You can keep this look for a mod style but I added top coat since I used La Playa as french tip.

Jesse' Girl Blue Moon under artificial light. It became deep cobalt blue

Added La Playa as french tip. 

Finishing touch: Brandless top coat & Sech Vite top coat

Next day with the sun soaring high up, I took some outdoor pics:

Blue Moon's true blurple showed up!

It's jewel toned in the shade. Look at the pink flashes!

I absolutely love jewel toned polish. They glow from within and look oh-so-dandy. I couldn't stop staring at them everywhere I go.

Now when I went directly under the sun, holy molly, the pink and blue shimmers were so vivid I was blinded instantly!

From jewel toned to gorgeous shimmers!

The shimmers bounced back and dazzled

Close up shot on the pink and blue shimmers

Jesse's Girl Blue Moon is a must-have! It's like a chameleon on your nails, glowing in the shade and dazzling in the sun! I simply couldn't get enough of it. I stole glances at them during a 3 hours' workshop, admiring them with secret smiles!

Was almost sad to remove them after 5 days. I'm not sure if it's the work of La Playa or Blue Moon, they remained chip-free for a week :)

3 coats of Jesse's Girl Blue Moon
1 coat of Orly La Playa (yes a one coater!)
1 coat of OPI Ridge Filler
1 coat of brandless top coat
1 coat of Seche Vite dry fast top coat

Remember how I complained about the shrinkage caused by Seche Vite? I did my research and found out that it has to be applied on WET polish. I hate to spoil the freshly painted nails so I added a coat of brandless top coat and when still wet, drop a glob of Seche Vite and spread evenly on the nails. So far it works! No shrinkage anymore!