Pretty and Polish Bayou Blitz

Hello, hello, hello and welcome to this evenings post. Not sure if this particular combination today is a massive nail fail or just a minor one. I really loved the darkness of Kleancolor Retro Green yesterday (flick back to have a looksee) and thought I'd put Pretty and Polished Bayou Blitz as an added top coat. Bayou Blitz is a vibrant green and yellow matte glitter polish with larger bright hexagons in it. So onto the polish!

 Bayou Blitz

 Back of the bottle

Macro shot

So, I applied one coat of Bayou Blitz over Retro Green, this is no top coat.

You will have to excuse dry cuticles, winter sucks on my nails!

 Bayou Blitz, no flash

 Bayou Blitz, no flash

Bayou Blitz, with flash 

Close up with Flash

You can see in the last close up shot that the green base of Bayou Blitz changes the base color of Retro Green from a nice dark color to a more faded one. A base closer to the green color of Bayou Blitz might have generated a more pleasing result, although I do like the idea of a fluoro glitter over a darker base. The slight green tint appears to be more apparent with the flash though.

So, what do you think..nail fail or semi nail fail or does this color combo work for you?

Lacura French Manicure with stamping and glitter.

As promised, this is my second post for the day to make up for the lack of blog postage last night...I decided on wearing a lovely french mani (*cough, boring, cough*) as a work appropriate look and since I have never tried to achieve this look I thought I would give my Aldi Lacura Manicure kit a whirl. The kit itself consists of an emery board (didn't use), orange sticks for cuticles (didn't use), a clear, white and pink polish (didn't use the clear) and nail sticker guides for doing the white ends.

So, I applied my normal base coat, 2 coats of pink polish and then attempted the french tips with a sticker on one of my fingers as a guide for the white polish....then I freehanded the rest. I sealed the look with INM Out the Door top coat.

 The polishes and sticker guides I used

How the stickers look!

 The end result, I used the sticker guide on my middle finger and freehanded the rest.

 My right hand, I think I did a pretty good job!

The looks was nice and natural and oh-so borink. When I look at my nails I like to think "oh, that's pretty" or "ooh, so holo and shiny" or "that color is so nice!" and looking at my nails I was "sigh, what polish?" I was literally depressed for 2 days. As soon as work was over I was "lemme at some color and stamping goodness". 

My inspiration of colors came from looking at Pretty & Polished Sand Art....I picked out the purple and green with Ulta3 Orchid and Kleancolor Catch Me polishes and attacked the mani with Cheeky stamping plates and Bundle monster.

 Pretty & Polished Sand Art

Ulta3 Orchid and Kleancolor Catch Me

Left Hand

 Alternating Ulta3 Orchid and KC Catch Me. Accent on the French tip with Pretty and Polished Sand Art

 Left Thumb and flash

 Right Hand

 Right Thumb Stamp

Gratuitous extra pic!

I am pretty happy with how the stamping turned out and the little bits of accent using Pretty & Polished Sand art on the white tips. Kleancolor Catch Me stamped a little easier than the Ulta3 Orchid but both were relatively easy to work with. I spent the day admiring my nails, just like I should :)

 I still have a ways to go with my cuticles, I use Lush Lemony Flutter Cuticle Butter nearly everynight and a Sally Hansen hand/cuticle cream but years of nail/cuticle biting and continued handwashing for work take it's toll on my hands! Oh, and I picked up some polishes today so prepare for a swatch fest on the weekend :) Hope you are all looking forward to the weekend and make it through Friday unscathed!

Pretty & Polished Jawbreaker with Stamping

Today's challenge for me was that I wanted to use Pretty & Polished Jawbreaker as the basis for my mani but I didn't want it to be just about  Jawbreaker, although I do love, love, love it :) So this weeks look is a Jawbreaker mix up with stamping.

First of all, Pretty & Polished Jawbreaker!

 Jawbreaker without Flash

Extreme close up of all the glittery goodness!

So here is what I used for the actual manicure.
Base: CND Stickey
Color: 2 coats of Ulta3 Lily White
Accent Color nails: Pretty & Polished Jawbreaker
Top Coat: Seche Vite
Stamping: Kleancolor Metallic Yellow, Red, Blue
Stamping Plates: Fun Plate 2, Bundle Monster and Cheeky Plates

Ulta 3 Lily White Base

Jawbreaker Accent- I did uncover the glitters in the polish with some acetone to make them more present.

Now on to the stamping using Kleancolor L-R Metallic Yellow, Metallic Red and Metallic Sapphire

Dodgy Bottle Shot

  

Stamping design, Left Hand

Please ignore cuticles, they had far too much acetone by the time I photographed.

Left Thumb

 Right Hand Stamping

Right Thumb

Now on the stamping front, can I just say it was NOT easy with the bright colors on white and the fact that the Kleancolor Metallics are tricky to get a good transfer and bleed like all get out :/ It took quite a few goes to even get this. Maybe my stamping mojo wasn't on for tonight. Anyways, I like the matching color combo and how it eventually turned out. 

Tips for stamping with the Kleancolor Metallics..scrape firmly, wait like 5-10 before picking up the design or it blobs. Then when the design is on the stamp wait another 5 seconds and transfer to the nail lightly. Don't press hard or it smudges.

Hope you liked todays offering, please leave your thoughts! :)