Cirque Ophelia & her flowers

Hello readers!

This manicure was done weeks ago and I only get to post it now.
Be warned, it's a photo-spam post!


I bought OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls from a sweet lady who posted about the sale in Facebook. Usually I won't get an expensive white polish since most of the time, I will use it as base. But this MBSW is not the typical white, it's a shy white with grayish blue undertones. Which I find it to be interesting. Not too bright and sparkly yet still look clean and polished :-)

I used two coats here, first thin layer and medium coat on the second. This white is not streaky and covers nicely without giving any issues - this is a white gem! Most of the whites are patchy on the nails, either runny or too thick. Not this one. MBSW is the new white!

To jazz up the chalky nails I added blue flowers on ring and thumb, with Cirque Ophelia on the rest of the fingers!

I used two coats of Ophelia:

And realized Ophelia's cornflower blue is not a close match to the flower's :-(
In retrospect, I should put one coat of Ophelia to complement the whole manicure (albeit the mismatched color)

Anyway...

Cirque Ophelia is another pwetty.. it's like your nails are spammed by blue fairies' dust! I'm not a big fan of glitters but this has a place in my heart. It has that soft, delicate and naive look.

I'm not sure if Cirque named it for Hamlet's Ophelia; it just occurred to me that my manicure plays right into the character!

When Ophelia went mad after her father's death, she was observed to be in white gown, walking in the streets mumbling to herself and sprinkling wild flowers. Later on, she fell into the river and drowned, her body flowed with the stream, flowers weeping from the trees and rested on her body, echoing a delicate and tragic end of her short life.

Ok, back to reality.

If you're wondering about the flowers, I bought them from BornPrettyStore. It comes in a set of 12 assorted flowers at a very affordable price:

To help you understand their sizes, here's a reference:
(the rest, except green, are bigger - they cover three-quarter of my thumb nail)

Are you tired of reading already?
I will make this quick.

After few days of feeling 'uneasy' about the blue combination, I removed Ophelia and did a simple french mani in MBSW. Ok they weren't perfect... well that's because I did it in the office toilet! How many of you did that too? Own up! Haha!!

Last to add; I bought Cirque Ophelia from Mei Mei Signatures. She has wide range of nail care and polish brands - from salon to indie ones! Go on, click and take a look.


Right, you can rest your fingers from scrolling the page now. Thanks for reading!

OPI Steady As She Rose + Konad

Happy New Year!

I was away for the last part of December and was kept busy since then. After my Sabah trip I changed my manicure to a more subtle one, mainly because I needed to meet my future HR to officiate my position. Initially I intended to keep the manicure clean and simple but the rebel side of me konad-ed it, not with one but three designs on the nails!

Steady As She Rose is part of the OPI Pirates of the Caribbean 2011 collection. It's a dusty pink or more accurately, a muted lavender shade. For stamping I used Elianto White.

I used image plate M44;

In the beginning I only needed one image to create a half moon design but it looked lonely so I added two-line image on top. That made it queer and ended up with vertical stripes on the tips :P

It was my first to create complex konad design on the nails and my placements of each image still need further improvements. Nonetheless I'm quite pleased with the outcome :)

OPI + Sally Hansen = Nail Marbling

And so I did marbling. I read about it, watched YouTubes tutorials, took in few tips from there and went ahead with my experiment. It is indeed a very tacky process with hit-or-miss results. Cleaning up is a bitch, especially on the edges!

But I enjoyed it. Adding colors into water, creating pattern, getting your nails "painted" in various colors all in one go is FUN!

For my first try, I used Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Beige Blast as the base. Application was thin and runny, it required 3 thin coats for opacity showing hints of nail line. I love the flathead brush, it's easier to apply and covers the nails in few strokes! For marbling, I had it with OPI Funkey Dunkey, OPI Miami Beet and OPI Jade Is The New Black.

L-R: OPI Funkey Dunky, Sally Hansen Beige Blast, OPI Miami Beet, OPI Jade Is The New Black

Flathead brush from Sally Hansen Insta-Dri collection

I thought my marbling went well without glitches. At least everything went on smoothly in the making. Sure the pattern was not uniform across all nails, I have yet to excel in that. What I didn't expect was shades that appeared washed-out in some nails. Why? I don't know :( My color combination sucked too; the berry & purple didn't shine together, this green & purple didn't look great either.

I did my base and marbling in 2 hours, with remakes & touch-ups included. When it was all over the table was littered with toothpicks, paint, stains, scotch-tapes, soiled paper towels and dirty bowl. Oh my.

 

 

 

Above photos show my marbled mani without clean-up done. Ok I lied. I cleaned the edges but wasn't too conscientious in it... hence the ugly sight. I also have issue in applying polish without staining my cuticles - I find it hard to leave a consistent gap between both, I need to practice more!

Despite the fug design, fast chipping and awful ends, I wore this mani for a week! (shamelessly)

3 thin coats of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Beige Blast
3 droplets of OPI Funky Dunky
3 droplets of OPI Miami Beet
3 droplets of OPI Jade Is The New Black
Seche Clear base coat
Seche Vite dry fast top coat

Color Club Revvvolution in Twilight

The original plan was to create two-toned contrast on the nails. I started with green and grey but China Glaze Recycle was not the right shade. I know it's buildable but I wanted some shimmer and glitter. My Bloop green was too loud for Recycle so I switched to Color Club Revvvolution. The combination didn't look good, I switched again to OPI Jade Is The New Black. Nah, looked weird so finally I changed to OPI Lucerne-Tainly Look Marvelous.

I tried to create a crescent but my drawing sucked, and Lucerne seemed to blend into Revvvolution when painted on top of it. Tried the other way round, no go. In the end, deeply annoyed, I decided on gradient effect even though I didn't have a suitable sponge to work with.

What I did was:

• Use Revvvolution as base
• Remove the base coat from middle to tip with a brush
• Paint Lucerne from middle to tip with another brush

Definitely not a wise method; I wasted a lot of nail polish. I failed to cover Lucerne well, you can see some bald patches even with 2 coats. Worst of all the gradient effect was like, N-O-N-E. Was also hoping Revvvolution to show some holo but I guess I have one that doesn't! Total crap.

My clean-up was done in a haste cos it was really late at night by the time I was done with this frustrating mess.

Few days later, I spiced it up with a clear polish that has glitter flakes and moon crescent. Lo and behold! It revived my nails instantly! I was lucky; the moon crescent came out without any effort. It rested comfortably on my thumb and ring finger. I thought of Twilight looking at my nails... 

I bought Splash polish from SaSa at only RM4! Love!

2 coats of Color Club Revvvolution (no holo no holo no holo!!!)
2 coats of Lucerne-Tainly Look Marvelous
1 coat of Splash S082
1 coat of OPI Ridge Filler
1 coat of Seche Vite dry fast top coat

OPI Who The Shrek Are You in Polka Dots

It was my first nail art and I thought making polka dots would be an easy start. I was wrong!

I was satisfied with my choice of colors but Color Club Vintage Couture was not bright and opaque enough, as a result the pink blended in with white dots. Obvious enough from the photos, I was not able to make the dots in same size and I put too many of them on each nail. Another fatal mistake was to use black as my base; I thought black would tame the avocado green and brighten the dots! Not only that, it was a mess, cleaning up was a big hassle... the black was visible at the edges :(

I had this mani for only 3 days before removing it. Somehow the dots creeped me out.. there were just too many on the nails and the urge to rub it off grew stronger each day!

2 coats of IN2IT IN100 Black
3 coats of OPI Who The Shrek Are You
1 coat of IN2IT IN100 White
1 coat of Color Club Vintage Couture
Dotting tool
OPI Ridge Filler
Seche Vite dry fast top coat

OPI I Lily Love You + LA Colors Bubblegum

This is not my first attempt in nail painting. I started this little vain hobby of mine early in the year but did not take any photos of my nails, except showing them to my friends and family.

LA Colors Bubblegum is sheer pearly pink, you have to put 3-4 coats to see the color but don't expect full opacity. In my opinion, it will be great for bridesmaids, young teens, formal events... and might even suitable for french manicure. OPI I Lily Love You is pink base with crazy glitters in all sizes and shapes. I love the irregularities!

However when layered with Bubblegum my nails became cotton candy pink, though with fun flakes & glitters, it's just not the kind of shade I favor. It's like Barbie with her standard manicure :-\ I can do with dusty pink, pastel pink, neon pink, fuschia, bright pink but cotton candy pink aka barbie pink is "meh" in my palette.

4 coats of LA Colors Bubblegum
1 coat of OPI I Lily Love You
Seche Clear base coat
Seche Vite dry fast top coat