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!

Nubar Indigo Illusion

Hey readers, how are you? I had a busy social week which includes the A|X anniversary event, two friends' birthday parties and celebrating my ex-boss's new job.

For A|X event I changed my Sparitual Sacred Ground mani to Nubar Indigo Illusion to match with my navy blue pedicure (shade is almost similar to Orly La Playa, but a level lighter).

Initially I wasn't sure about Indigo Illusion, it seems a tad faded for duochrome and washed out for a fashion event. It's extremely sheer so I tested it over black base, the color changed to metallic pink and olive green, just like Nubar Wildfire. I had to put 3 medium coats of Indigo Illusion on my nails, which used up 1/5 of the polish in the bottle (heart pain).

Here's the bottle pic, on the left is Sparks S082 bought from SaSa;

In the bottle, Indigo Illusion has a fantastic array of shimmering blue, pink, gold and green;

Sparks S082 is a clear polish filled with prismatic crescents flakes and tiny round glitters. To be honest, it's so much denser than Nicole by OPI Step 2 The Beat Of My Heart. You'll definitely get the flakes and glitters on your nails without effort.

On the nails, I only have greyish blue, violet-pink and green. The gold did not show up. I smudged my ring finger's nail so I used Sparks S082 to conceal the mistake. Didn't help much but it's a good layering polish, especially for accent nails.

(Photos were taken 2 days after manicure)

It was a harsh week, my cuticles and skin were dry and brittle. I had over-cut the cuticle on my pinky resulting in long laceration at the edge. Imagine my scowls when applied with acetone polish remover and polish. It was painful!

Duochrome is at its best on Nubar Indigo Illusion. In reality, without top coat it dried to satin matte finish even though the shimmer settled down to oil-slick smoothness. No twisted angles or various lighting needed to reflect all the colors. Green is strongest under the shade, Denim grey-blue is obvious under indoor artificial light and every intended colors show up in natural lighting.

A blurry macro shot;

Splash S082 is so interesting on Indigo Illusion that I added it to my thumb as well. Even with prismatic flakie and glitter, the duochrome doesn't shy away!

I love duochromes, they always pose a challenge to cameras... you have to take multiple shots to find the colors as seen in reality. I found the missing gold shimmer blended with green, you gotta contort your fingers in a way to see it!

Earlier on I expressed my concerns on the faded, washed out shade but all worries erased after applying them. Nubar Indigo Illusion is gorgeous! It's subtle from far but amazeballs within distance! Whereas Wildfire is eye-catching, Indigo Illusion is a hidden treasure. I found myself staring at them throughout the whole week!


3 coats of Nubar Indigo Illusion
1 coat of Splash S082
1 coat of Seche Clear base coat
1 coat of Seche Vite dry fast top coat (I used 2 coats on ring & thumb to seal the flakies)

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.

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