Bloom to be MANiDiva!

Hellllllllloooooo!

Today is a special post: I have a model for the manicure! And that's none other than Mr C, my better half :) Yes it took a few months of offhanded-suggestions, few weeks of hinting and two days of persuasion to nod his head in resignation!

I can't put a finger to why I needed his nails for the manicure, but it started as a joke and spun off to a request since his nailbeds are flat, big and wide to be a polish canvas.. lol!


On to his manicure!

Since he has tan complexion, I wanted to bling up his nails. I decided on Bloom Costa Rica (hot red creme) and Bloom Seoul (dense silver glitter) - both were brought in by my friend from Australia :)

Both polish are well-pigmented; they are one-coaters! Application was a breeze. It applied smooth and buttery. Seoul is so tightly packed with glitter that it's impossible to act as layering polish. As for the brush, not too bad, not wonky, not naughty, just a little on the thin side.

I used two coats of Costa Rica as base. I know it was opaque in one but I didn't cover the ends well so two to round up. After it was completely dry, I used reinforcement ring stickers to create half moon nailart in Bloom Seoul. Well apparently it wasn't that dry yet, cos' the sticker smudged the red base on the pinky. And I added too much Seoul on the half-moon, it became a mountain.. lol.

I gave more time for the rest to dry up and while waiting, decided to dot up two nails instead. Using a dotting tool, I randomly dotted the thumb's and ring finger's. After that I completed the half-moon art on index's and middle's. Hmm, ok, they weren't half-moons, and they were in different shapes and sizes. Oops.

Though the art was poorly executed, I'm still glad I did it!
Since it has de glamour look on a man's nails... I call this a MANiDiva! :P

Last shot before Mr C cleaned it off!

Above pics were shown without top coat.
Thanks for reading!

SueSa S19 & Color Club Worth The Risque

Howdy!

In the month of February I took part in BlogShopBuzz's weekly giveaway to celebrate Valentine's Day. What we needed to do was to share the nail polish picture and comment on who we wanted to give the polish to, and why. This year marks the 20th year of friendship between Joyce and me, and I wanted her to know how much I love her, my dearest friend for so many years. And yes I won! Within 2 days they sent Mei Mei's Signatures in-house brand SueSa S19 to my Singapore home. I have been thinking about it and now I finally brought it back! So here's the swatch!

Sorry for the dry cuticle! Anyway SueSa S19 is a black glittery polish that dried matte, oh and dried real fast too! Application is a breeze though the brush can be wonky at times. This cool polish is also a one-coater! Yes one stroke and there you have it, full opacity and well pigmented! Black isn't anything new in polish line but there's something about S19 that's captivating. The matte glitter creates depth which is rare for matte polish and it has an almost charcoal grey in it, though not always visible. Interesting, I like it :)


I swatched Color Club Worth The Risque at the same time. When I used Fashion Addict for Konad stamping (view here) I was dismayed at how mild the holo was and concluded Worth The Risque will be a dud too. Well, I hereby issue an apology because Worth The Risque has stronger holo than FA! I couldn't stop staring at my nails.. it's quite amazing. I gotta admit this is the first visible holo I had on my nails and a newbie like me was stupefied!

I had big plans for S19 but the end results were once again, epic failure. So what you see here are the initial swatch before they became an accumulated disaster (nope, ain't gonna show the ugly free-hand painting).

Wouldn't you agree that CC Worth The Risque and SueSa S19 are good combination for nail design? It's just too bad my drawing really sucks.. oh well.

If you like SueSa S19, you can get it here. Mei Mei Signatures carry a wide variety of polish products; Glitter Gal, A-England, Nfu-Oh, Blaze, Cult Nails, Megan Miller and etc. Their in-house brand is equally impressive, as shown above :)

Above swatch was taken without topcoat.

Thanks for reading!

Guest Post: OPI You're A Doll with Silver Glitter

Hi, my name is Joyce, best friend of Agnes :) I was invited to be her guest blogger for Nailbytes because we both share the same addictive hobby, and like her, I have collected a museum amount of nail polish over the years (or maybe months).

For my virgin post, I am sharing this nail art that's nude yet elegant on the overall. It's simple, easily achievable and suitable for almost all occasions.

The base color is OPI You're A Doll. This color is in sheer nude pink with red dusty bits. After applying the coat, let it dry well before proceeding to the next step.

To glam up the nails, I added few layers of non-holographic glitter nail polish (around 3 to 4 will be good) from the middle to produce the gradient effect. This type of polish is clear-base, sheer with small, sparse glitter flakes. However try not to add too many layers  or else you'll have a hard time placing the flakies at the right spot.

So now to achieve a good gradient, you'll need to add pigmented silver glitter on the tips. You can use an opaque silver glitter polish but it's easier to use silver glitter powder. My method is to use the polish brush (from the silver glitter's), dip it lightly into a container of glitter powder to pick up the glitter. With light strokes, transfer them onto the tips. Control the amount with each layer - use the same brush to add or reduce the amount. You can also use nail art brush (or even silver glitter nail art polish to achieve the same effect). Advice: In order not to 'contaminate' the silver glitter nail polish or the top coat/clear polish, use a cotton pad (wet with nail polish remover) to clean the brush.

After drying, my finishing touch is to add few drops of  OPI Drip Dry for rapid drying. It really works for me, I swear by it!

Hope you enjoy reading :)

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