Models Own Water Marble

Last month I tried my hand at a water marble for the first time, and while it kind of worked I wasn't 100% happy with it. I decided to try again and I'm pleased to report my second go was somewhat more successful. Take a look:

Products:
Models Own Pastel Pink
Models Own Sophie's Pink
Models Own Golden Peach

That faint gold shimmer you see is Golden Peach, which turned out to be a lot sheerer than I expected! Oh well, at least I know for future reference. I'm actually pretty chuffed with how this turned out, although I think I need to work on my patterns - I was aiming for a chevron design! XD

Urban Outfitters Twinkie

Just a quick(ish) post to show you what I layered over yesterday's manicure, Color Club Revealed. I had no idea Urban Outfitters sold nail polish, but I stumbled upon this interesting one the other day. It's little holographic glitter and turquoise and pink star glitter (!!) in a clear base. I've never seen a polish like this before, so naturally it had to come home with me. XD The stars were a pain in the arse to get out of the bottle and I ended up using an orange stick to place them on my nails, but I was expecting this so I wasn't too bothered. Anyway, here is Urban Outfitters Twinkie over CC Revealed:

Eugh, horrible blurry photos. Sorry! And these were the best ones. *hangs head in shame*

Peachy Keen

I love the expressions 'I'm peachy' and 'peachy keen'. I don't know why. Clearly I am just very easily amused!

Anyway, today I'm showing you one of the two peach polishes I own (the other being Barry M Peach Melba, used here and here). I got this polish in a Color Club set that calls itself one half of spring 2011's collection, but some Googling has proved there are a couple of usurpers in there. Oh well, with seven polishes for £7.99 I can't complain too much, can I?! This polish, Color Club Revealed, is definitely from last year's spring collection though. It's a warm peach with a red shimmer, but disappointingly the shimmer didn't show up in my photos at all. I did three coats of polish, which made it completely opaque. I don't have many Color Clubs, but considering how cheap they are I'm always very impressed with the formula.

The rubbish weather meant I only had artificial light for these photos. Dear Mother Nature, let's make a deal: I won't complain about the rain every 0.5 seconds if you actually give me sun when I want to photograph my nails, okay?

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! I'm not religious, so for me today is more about celebrating the fact I get to eat a ridiculous amount of chocolate than it is anything else. XD I hope everyone has had/is having a brilliant Easter. I was working this morning (no four-day weekend for me - I'm working every day of it!) but I've spent the afternoon baking Easter-themed cupcakes. Yum.

Anyway, today's nails are a variant on what I've seen on a few other blogs recently and are inspired by Easter eggs - the painted kind, not the kind you eat. Pictures first (featuring the special guest appearance of my thumb!):

Why yes, that is a Cadbury Creme Egg. And yes, I did eat it after taking these photos!

I painted my nails at 11 o'clock last night so I wasn't entirely awake and alert during the whole thing, but I'm still rather pleased with my efforts all the same. For the most part I used the same polishes as in my rainbow cheetah manicure, as you may notice I also did a rainbow with the base colours:

Peach - Barry M Peach Melba
Yellow - OPI Banana Bandanna
Green - Revlon Minted
Blue - Barry M Blue Moon
Lilac - Barry M Berry Ice Cream
White - Models Own Wah Nail Art Pen

And one more bonus photo:

Models Own Beetlejuice Spring/Summer 2012 - Summary

In the previous three posts I've reviewed the new colours from the Models Own Beetlejuice Collection Spring/Summer 2012. I thought it might be helpful to put all three together in one post, so here they are again (this time with minimal commentary).

Copper Pot

A copper/bronze duochrome. Three coats. Not my cup of tea.

Tropical Sun

A pink/peach duochrome. Three coats. Me likey.

Indian Ocean

A blue/pink duochrome. Extremely sheer; this is five coats. My favourite of the three by far!

To be honest, I'm a bit underwhelmed by the new collection overall. The promo pictures looked incredible, but I should have known they wouldn't be reliable - we've been burned before. They're nice colours, just not quite as cool as the promo pics made them look. I don't think much of Copper Pot, especially as a duochrome, but I like Island Sun and I really like Indian Ocean. The formula is much improved on last autumn's collection, and for a fiver they're pretty good value for money. I'm not going to tell you to run to the shops and buy them immediately...more to go there at a leisurely stroll if you like the look of any of them.

Models Own Beetlejuice S/S 2012: Tropical Sun

Here's the second of the new Models Own Beetlejuice Collection, Tropical Sun. The PR release describes it as a "glistening sunset", and this is pretty much accurate! While it's not as orange as the promo pictures would have you believe, it does still resemble a glorious tropical sunset. In the bottle it looks very peachy (in fact, when I first unwrapped it I initially thought they had sent me Golden Peach, another Models Own shade, by mistake!), but on the nail it takes on more of a salmon pink colour that shifts to a glowing peach. It also has sparse, itty bitty silver glitter in it. It was incredibly sheer. I did three thick coats on my nails but it could have done with a fourth - although the VNL was more obvious in real life than in my photos.

I also took a couple of photos indoors, which really brings out the peach colour:

Hmmm, I don't have an awful lot more to say about this polish, except that I rather like it. Definitely more than I like Tropical Sun, anyway. I think it's because it genuinely does look like a sunset. It's pretty cool.

Models Own Beetlejuice Spring/Summer 2012 - Quick Pics

Second post of the day! Just a quick one to say that my Models Own Beetlejuice Spring/Summer 2012 polishes arrived in the post today. I'm really impressed with how quickly they've reached me as I only ordered them on Monday afternoon. I haven't tried them on yet but I have swatched them on a nail wheel. Here's a couple of photos of them taken in today's lovely sunny weather:

Tropical Sun, Copper Pot, Indian Ocean

Expect proper swatches in a few days. :)

EDIT: You can find swatches of the polishes on my nails here!

Pastel Rainbow Cheetah Mani

Whew! The title of this post is a bit of a mouthful, but I'm afraid I used all of my imagination up on the manicure itself so it's stuck with a boring name. I'm really chuffed with today's manicure - it's my first attempt at freehand animal print and it came out so much better than I expected!

My plan was to do a rainbow manicure of some sort but jazz it up a bit. I took inspiration from this design, but as it's spring I decided to use pastel colours instead of neon. Short version? I began with a white base because pastels can be a bit sheer. I then painted on five different pastel colours in diagonal lines on my nails using the brush that came with each polish - I did this twice to build up opacity. Once it was dry, I used a black nail art pen to freehand broken O and C shapes. This was much easier than I expected as they actually look more authentic if they're not perfect, and the cheetah print has the added bonus of hiding any imperfections in the colour gradient background.

Products:
White base - OPI Alpine Snow
Peach - Barry M Peach Melba
Yellow - OPI Banana Bandanna
Green - Revlon Minted
Blue - Barry M Blue Moon
Lilac - Barry M Berry Ice Cream
Cheetah spots - Models Own Wah Nail Art Pen

It just goes to show how easy nail art can be. Even a couple of weeks ago I never dreamed I'd be able to create something as eye-catching as this, but it turned out to be dead easy! Not to worry you or anything, but I may have caught the animal print bug...and I'm pretty sure it's contagious.