Black and White Optical Illusion Nails!

I'm kinda late to the party cos I've only recently discovered tumblr.  When I did though, oh the hours that were wasted.  Especially when I see a post like this and think that would totally be a good idea to start doing at midnight.  Oh, not so subtle promo: I am on tumblr and post most of my manicures, if you're into that. 

To start, I applied two coats of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls - still my all time favourite white - and topped it off with a coat of Seche Vite.  After I waited for that to dry, and waited another five minutes. I  taped off the tips of my nails with painter's masking tape and did the initial stripes using striping tape and Essence Back in Black.  Any black will do, this one was just at hand.  Once all my tape was on, I pressed everything down, to make sure I had no leaks.  This is why you gotta wait for everything to be super dry - you don't want to squish it.  Once I'd done all my fingers and the next coat of Seche Vite was dry, I tried lining the tape back up and applying the reverse stripes.  I did my thumb before giving up because it wasn't really working that well - it's super hard to see through opaque blue tape.  I resorted to free-handing the remaining stripes but I'm not happy with that either - not crisp enough.  And they look like umpire nails.  But at least they're different!

The Verdict:  Meh.  They took forever and aren't even a bit sparkly, so eh.  I think I'll try this again with brighter colours and clear tape, see if I can't get the second lot of stripes perfect.

Taxi Nails with Maybelline Fiercely Tangy!

I'm not really sure why but I've become a little obsessed with yellow polishes lately.  I guess I want to make it up to the colour after ignoring it for two years.  Shh, that's a normal thing to do.  Totes.  Anyway, Maybelline Fiercely Tangy is good at fitting in that colour cos it's yellow.  Which means I of course have to put glitter on it.  Taxi nails!

I guess I so neglected yellow polishes because they have a habit of being really difficult to apply.  Turns out Fiercely Tangy doesn't have that problem.  It's just a nice, bright yellow creme.  After applying three coats I went to work with my black and silver holo square glitter.  WHY IS IT THAT LARGER "SQUARE" GLITTER ISN'T SQUARE?  Surely it's not that hard to do.  My placement isn't the greatest here because I was having problems with the two colours being different sizes and not being cut evenly.  I think I'm ok with how it turned out.

The Verdict:  Love the polish, eh about the glitter.  Good in theory, just not executed terribly well by either myself or the people that made it.  It is sparkly, so there's that.  That's always a good thing.  Sppppaaarrrrrkkklllyy.

Turns out Unicorn Charms Go With EVERYTHING INCLUDING DOTS

So I conceptually get dotting tools.  They're a good idea and some people have done amazing things with them but I just can't get a satisfactory result of them.  The dots are  never completely even.   That's usually when I say screw it and use glitter.  I LOVE YOU AND YOUR CONSISTENCY GLITTER.  Especially circle glitter.  And unicorns always make things better.  

To start I did the usual two coats of China Glaze Liquid Leather and went to town with my Essence top coat to get the white dots on.  It's easiest if you do a row down the middle of your nail first as this will set the spacing for the rest of the nail.  Just keep the distance consistent for the next column.  You can use a small pair of scissors to trim any excess off the tips of your nails.  Once dry, use a bunch of nail glue to stick your unicorns from The Sparkly Shop on.  Yay unicorns!

The Verdict: I like the look of glitter so much more than that of dotting tools.  Even takes about the same amount of time, believe it or not.  And these unicorns go with EVERYTHING.

Ohhh yeah and also, you can finally get the same glitter I use for all these manis!  I have glitter sets for sale now at The Sparkly Shop.  And unicorns too!  Use the code BLOGGYPANTS to even get 16% your order!  Sorry to be pushy but you are helping a mother at home with her baby and me, who loves sparklies.  Sparklies!

31DC2014 Day 7: Black and White! Eh.

So yeah! Woo! Black and white!  Like, yeah, that's a thing!  All the black glitters!  Over white!  So black and white!  Woo!  There's not the most to say really. 

 I wanted to do black glitter over a white base so I started with a coat of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, then two coats of GOSH Stardust, a shimmery white polish.  I then patterned over the top with rectangle, circle, star, "square" and bar using the usual process.  Slow drying top coat, glitter columns then glitter with the orange stick.  Nothing revolutionary.  Not bad though.  I really should be doing this early in the day though....

The Verdict: Eh.  It's ok.  I should have gone with a flat white base maybe?  I don't know, just not super feeling this.  That's ok, metallic tomorrow is another day.