NOTD: Vday Inspired Funky French

I've been seeing Valentines manicures starting to pop up around the blogosphere.  I saw Brooke use this plate a few days ago & thought I'd give it a try.  I had a really short time frame for this mani, so I had to work quick, but I'm actually really pleased with how it turned out, almost exactly as in my head =)

A lot of the time when I do a french manicure I don't feel the need for anything other than my normal base coat, but since my nails have a little yellowing right now I dug through the unworns for a sheer pink & came up with L'Oreal Bijou Facets B. Sweet.  I didn't really notice in the bottle, but once on the nail I saw that this slightly frosty sheer pink has tiny pink bar glitter in it, adding a little bit more bling.  I used one coat of that, then free handed my tips (messily I'll admit) with Color Club Black.  Then I used Psyche Pink Konad polish & image plate m73 to stamp the heart design on the tips:

Not bad for what was actually about a 20-minute mani start to finish LOL.  Plus I came across a lot of pinks in my search, so now they're cluttering up my desktop & I think I'll try & use more of them coming up to Valentine's Day since during the rest of the year I'm probably less than half as likely to wear pink LOL.

Thanks for reading =)

~Colette

Almost NOTD: Nubar Gold Feather

I have to say, this is the first Nubar polish that I wasn't in love with.  In fact, I was SO not in love that I ended up taking it off without even finishing the mani with a topcoat.  In the bottle this has a heavy green shimmer that almost makes this polish a duo-chrome, but on the nail the green takes over more than I like, yet in pictures you can't really see it at all!  It shows a little bit under the natural lamp, but changes over to the gold flash that you will see in the camera flash shots.  But my main problem with this polish was that it was ridiculously sheer, looking at it in the bottle you would never guess.

Here I have 3 coats except on my ring finger & pinky I've used 4 & I still had VNL & that's when I made the call to stop & take it off.  Here is Nubar Gold Feather:

This was going to be my NOTD on Friday before I decided it was a fail ... I was much happier with the funky french I have coming up for you all after I edit the pics =)  Thanks for reading.

~Colette

NOTD: Orly Glam Rock

This was Thursday's NOTD.  Orly Glam Rock, from the Metal Chic collection, is a really, really nice bronze.  Whether you choose to wear it matte:

Or gloss it up with a topcoat:

Unsurprisingly, I like it better with topcoat =)  From some angles, this actually almost worked like mannequin hands on me LOL, maybe if it were summer & I had more of a tan it would work even better.

Thanks for reading.

~Colette

NOTD: OPI DS Diamond

Got kind of behind again, this is my NOTD from last Wednesday...  Kind of a cool weird color, this is almost like a light purplish-mauve ... not as holo as DS Original is, in fact I didn't capture much of it in the pics, but you can see it a little & it is more evident in real life than I was able to photograph.  From the Designer Series, this is OPI DS Diamond - Konad done with image plate m37 & black special polish:

It took about 3 stamps to get this pattern to cover my whole nail ... it would probably have been easier to use one of the full nail designs, the finished product reminds me a little bit of one on m73, but I wanted these particular vines LOL.

Thanks for reading.

~Colette

I Am ... Such a Spazz

LMAO, so I had it in my head that my blogiversary was on January 19th ... in other words, TODAY, and I planned a cool mani & got all set to post, and just thought "Hmmm, maybe I'll double-check the date" so that I'm not early ... nope, not early, LATE.  By like almost a week LOL.  My 1-year blogiversary was in fact on the 14th.  At least I did post that day, the matte-ified flower marble, but I think that this is proof that I am, in fact, a total spazz.

So, here we have my belated blogiversary mani =)  Something never before seen on MSLP!  Glimpsed only when I hauled them in the first place:  nail foils!  I've heard so much good & bad about these, and I can say I had a little bit of both worlds applying them, but overall I'm impressed & I'd do it again & think my results will improve when my technique is not so amateur. 

The main complaint around the blogs seemed to be that the "special" foil sealer that comes with the nail foils causes crinkling/wrinkling/cloudy/anti-bling crappiness.  The 2 tips to combat that downfall were to let the glue set fully after applying the foil, and to use a regular-to-slow drying top coat.  I did a test on a nail wheel of 6 different top coats I was able to find in my stash:

Left to  right:  Nubar Diamant, Sally Hanson Salon Clear'd For Takeoff, ProStrong Instant Thickening Top Coat, Cina Top Coat, Seche Vite, Foil Sealer

Here are the results with red foil, in the same order.  Some of the cracks are due to my application, not the topcoat, but you can see there's a wide range of wrinkling & clouding:

I chose #3, the ProStrong topcoat.  My biggest challenge was getting the foil onto my nail without any creases.  Creases = spots the foil doesn't stick & you either get a bare patch or have to go back & re-foil which sounds easy but I was impatient & some of my patches turned out better than others.  I used China Glaze Devotion as a base color so the bare spots weren't  glaringly obvious, but I didn't clean up at all so excuse the mess:

Here's the actual roll, and a comparison on my thumb where I thought maybe I could get away with Seche over the ProStrong (not so much):

Not my finest mani, but good enough for a day. Final verdict - still pretty damn bling, even with the issues I had. Unfortunately it didn't wear for crap & here we are after a day at work:

You can see totally half of the foil on my index finger is gone.  Maybe I should have done 2 coats of topcoat?  The nails that fared the best seem to be the ones that went on smoothest, so maybe if I improved my technique the wear would improve?  We'll see ... I've got a lot more of this stuff to use LOL.

Thanks for reading.

~Colette