Nubar 2010 with Orly La Playa

You see, I'm so free on Saturday that I'm putting two posts up. All these manicures were done in a span of 2 days. Applied, removed, applied, removed. Mom was shocked that the nail polish remover was depleting at an alarming speed. Without waiting for further nagging I bought a new one from Watsons. And, bought Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat. Couldn't find that Colorstay top coat though.. since it garnered many positive reviews online. WHY did I get a new top coat? Because my dear Seche Vite leaked during transition! It had 10% left and was gluey and such, but now it's a milky mess and in solidifying state. SOB!

Anyway anyway... am showing a famous layering polish here. This season has various polish that produce similar effects but since I have this baby in my stash and failed to glorify it last time (click here & here to understand better) I decided to layer it on Orly La Playa, latter being my trusty blue base :)

First up, a picture devoted to Orly La Playa. True blue, royal blue, inky blue, navy blue... yea it fits to all these descriptions. One-coat is good enough but I want to be 110% opaque, so two coats applied.

Now for Nubar 2010. A clear polish with iridescent flakies. Holographic flakies. Didn't know it's so outstanding till now. Fool I am!

Above was done with two coats of Nubar 2010 without top coat. Placing flakies can be trying but I learnt by brushing same layer twice-thrice on the nails to quantify them :)

When applied I became increasingly aware that it looked almost similar to Cult Nails Clairvoyant, though the latter comes with purple base and doesn't have gold element in it. I will do a comparison next time!

Below is a swatch of single coat of Nubar 2010 on Orly La Playa.

Nubar 2010's awesomeness cannot be ignored. I'm sure the similar flakies from CND, Color Club and others  are outstanding as well but for me, I'm superbly contented with this one :)

Have a great day ahead!

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!

Nicole by OPI Step 2 The Beat Of My Heart

Hello!

This is a short post because I had swatched on the same day with my Sparitual Wilde collection and had intended to include them in the same post as a "by-the-way-swatch" but it slipped off my mind completely.

Step 2 The Best Of My Heart is one of the polish in Nicole by OPI's Justin Bieber One Less Lonely Girl collection. I won it from Secret Allure's first giveaway :) It's a clear polish that comprises of heart flakies in pink & purple shades and colorful glitters that appear prismatic but too scattered to be holographic.

I'm not Justin's fan but to win a giveaway is like striking lottery once in my lifetime! I'm happy to own this polish but I might not use it often. It's a fun polish, cute, sweet and light. My character has none of these traits. Ha!

One thing about the bottle. It's weird. The bottom protrudes out with a wider base. I suppose it's good for stability but I don't like the shape. It seems to me the glassblower made a painful mistake in the process but was appreciated by the company! And the cap, hmmm, it belongs to nail polish in the 80s which mothers still keep as souvenirs these days. Ha! Ok ok maybe I'm just fussy.

Well, I believe everything on earth is balanced. You can't have the good unless there's a presence of the bad. Despite the odd looking bottle and old fashioned cap, Nicole by OPI improvises a wide flat brush... No, they called it 'Perfect Stroke Brush'. Upon taking out the brush I realized they have the same brush type as Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri's with the only difference in length; SH Insta-Dri's brush stand is longer. View SH's brush here. It's good to have flat-head brush for Step 2 The Beat Of My Heart because you should be able to scoop out the heart flakies and place them on the nails much easier than a round-headed one.

So anyway, here's the swatch - I was testing Sparitual Wilde collection and didn't have enough time to put S2TBOMH on my nails. I have this practice finger with me and trust me, color is 100% accurate.

I used OPI Ridge Filler as base before putting S2TBOMH. I know other reviewers described it as clear polish with subtle/faint hint of purple/pink but on the practice finger it's clear as water. Yeah, please don't trust the fake finger, the nail color is definitely different from our nail bed's.

Application is, of course, easy, like any other clear polish. But placing the tiny glitter is a task; they are scattered in the bottle and it's not gonna be dense on the nails. As with other similar types of polish, usually you have to slap thick glob of polish on the nails to put the flakies and glitter effectively on the nails. You can see the obvious layer on top of Ridge Filler. You can also see my successful attempt in placing TWO heart flakies but failed in getting more glitters as it should have been. Hmm, as I said, everything on earth is balanced...

Do you like Step 2 The Beat Of My Heart? Or you like it because of Justin Bieber?


1 coat of OPI Ridge Filler
1 coat of Nicole by OPI Step 2 The Beat Of My Heart

Splashy Hearty Duochrome

Couple of weeks ago I bought nail polish from SaSa and Daiso. They don't belong to any well-known brands and they are cheap. However like the rest of the cheap polish, they carry strong awful smell and tend to chip fast.

After my failure in nail marbling, I needed something new, easy to accomplish but not too ordinary. I swatched a few from my collection to test the colors and decided on these two:

L-R: Splash S031 from SaSa, Heart No.2 from Daiso

Cute bottle from Heart nail enamel!

Heart nail enamel No.2 is milky white packed with pink and subtle green shimmer. It's a duochrome!

For Splash S031, it's an awesome blue jelly, bright and fresh in shade. It's sheer and may most likely reach opacity in 4-5 coats but I was blown by the jelly finish and the pretty blue. Application for both Splash and Heart was, sadly, terrible. The brushes were stiff, hard to control and all over the place, like they had a mind of their own. It's advisable to put light strokes on each nail and fill up any bald patches with each coat.

Index finger: 1 coat. The rest: 2 coats

3 coats of Splash S031

When dried, I applied Heart No.2. With 1 coat it became bluish-green. With 2 coats it was green with blue duochrome. Outstanding! My curiosity got better of me and I painted the 3rd coat. The duochrome faded a notch down and emerged as turquoise chrome with hints of blue seen at an angle.

Taken indoors, artificial light

Duochrome in green and blue

The next day, I took some shots at the front porch;

The manicure was too thick and resulted in bubbles forming on the nails. Nonetheless I was happy with it. The turquoise chrome was striking and gorgeous! It flashed blue and teal whenever I moved my hands, even my boyfriend liked it.. Ha!

Before heading out to meet my best friend, I received the parcel from Secret Allure!

L-R: China Glaze Crackle in Cracked Concrete, Color Club Fractured in Smash Hit and Nubar 2010

I decided to slap some goodness on my nails... Nubar 2010!

Well hello holo flakies!

Duochrome with holo flakies. How's that?

The magic of Nubar 2010

One complaint: I had the infamous Seche Vite shrinkage; the blue base was evident at the tips. I also realized my previous marbled nails suffered the same fate. I love Seche Vite but the shrinkage is annoying!

3 coats of Splash S031
3 coats of Heart No.2
2 coats of Nubar 2010
Seche Clear base coat
Seche Vite dry fast top coat

Here's a quick swatch of Color Club Smash Hit on my thumb nail.