Edinburgh.

Now that's a much better summer colour! Put on my nails following After Eight. Another one of Herôme's W.I.C., this is 'Edinburgh'; after the city in Scotland. I figure with my red hair I should be able to pull this one off, right?
It's an interesting, shimmery green with gold and blueish tones in the right light. Unfortunately, though, it's also pretty sheer. I used 4 coats to get it to a state of opaqueness I was content with. That's probably off-putting to a lot of folks but I'm not too bothered by it. Seems a waste of a pretty polish to not.. waste it.. in such a fashion - that made sense to me originally.

Another untried down, many more to go.

Artificial light - flash.

'Tisn't the season.

 

The sun is shining, the temperature is a little higher than I'd like nice and what do I do? I slap a dark, dark green on my nails. Seasonally inappropriate! This not quite summery green is Catrice's '600 - After Eight', which is one of their old polishes. Though it's not necessarily the best colour for this time of year, I do think it's really quite beautiful. But then, I do love my greens. It applies smoothly and has a fair amount of shimmer to it.

This is the only picture I took, because I ruined it trying to put a gold crackle top coat over it (I could tell it was ruined in the bottle, but I'm stubborn..) and took it off, replacing it by a lighter green.

A definite bonus to this polish is that it lets itself be cleaned off very easily, which isn't always the case with darker colours.

What about you? Do you find the polishes you use influenced by the weather?

(On another note, I put all my nail polish up under 'My Stash'! Check it out :)! )

It's an outrage!

Old nail art is ooooolldddd.. all these done throughout October 2010.
Once upon a time, I decided it'd be a great idea to base nail art on the many wonderful outfits of Vince Noir from the Mighty Boosh (and the Hitcher, because I really love the Hitcher.) and this was the product of that.
Not much to say about them except that I'm glad I've since learned to do a better job of polishing neatly ;).

Brutal.

Catrice - 800  Heavy Metallilac

Okay. You - the one reading this. Yeah, you. You run out to the shop right now and you go buy yourself this purple.
*Ahem* I think that quite gave away how incredibly happy I am with this polish. It's really just.. beautiful. As I noted in a previous post, I bought this because I saw swatches on other blogs and basically fell in love with it. Now, wearing it in real life, I still am. I keep looking at my nails - it's just so darn pretty. I mean, sure, metallic purples have existed in the past and I'm sure will keep doing so in the future but.. I really love this one.
Sadly the full sun wasn't out when I took the picture, because it glistens in the light really nicely. It covered well enough to satisfy most people in two coats, but I opted for three to really get it looking its best. It's pretty much your standard Catrice polish when it comes to application.

Artificial light - flash.

The Doctor is in the House.

You should know by now I'm all about the cheap title puns. I'm not sorry.
Gregory House; everyone's favourite acerbic, cynical jerk! And don't we all just love him for it. I don't actually have all that much to say about the nail art. I'm fairly pleased with it. Gray is '02 Pointbreak' from Essence's Surfer Babe collection from way back when. Details are my trusty Hema French manicure striper (which to date I have never used for an actual French manicure), painted on with a small brush. The whole is covered with NYC 'Matte Me Crazy' - which I am very happy with indeed!

Sherlock Holmes.

Originally done back in August '11, I've been saving this one to post on a "rainy day".. that is to say, if I ever ran out of things to post. However, I do polish my nails fairly consistently so I figured it was time to finally just type up a post for this and put it here!
Sherlock Holmes nail art I was (and am still) quite proud of. The base polish is '02 Copper Rulez!', a magnetic polish from Essence's LE 'Metallics'. No actual magnetic effects in this mani, though, I just thought the copper was a suitable colour to go with Holmes.

Zzzap!

Oops!

I've been dying to try the double lightning bolt as seen in a tutorial on Nailside, and when I bought Catrice 'C01 - Innocent Toxin' and NYC '206 - East Village' I knew I had to use them to do it. The separating lightning bolt is a Koh holo by the name of 'Metallic Green (127)'.
It didn't all go.. exactly according to plan. I did learn some valuable lessons for next time! For example, the drying time for holo polishes is so short that you can't do your whole hand and then go back and peel the tape off; it's really a one-at-a-time thing. And East Village turned out to be a lot sheerer than I had anticipated, resulting in me making a mental note to check the polishes I want to use before hand and not rush into an idea, no matter how nice it seems at first. Sadly it has been a teeny bit damaged already (as you can see on the ring-finger there), but packing will do that to your newly polished nails.

A decent looking, flashy (pun intended) mani, some experience gained and lessons learned!
What more could I ask for?

Updates.

Heya! I realise I don't really post all that frequently; namely because I polish my nails predominantly in the weekends, when I have time to do it properly. I figured I'd at least put in a little update on the polishes I've acquired rather recently.

 

I have complained about being dissatisfied with the matte top coat I had, and the NYC matte top coat came recommended by the very friendly Miriam over at NailTalk.

Then, NYC '206 - East Village', which in colour reminded me a bit of Orly's "Halley's Comet", but less glittery. I'm not a very glittery girl, so I'm not complaining.

Followed by Catrice 'C01 - Innocent Toxin' from the Limited Edition 'Revoiltaire'. Now, it's not hard to see this is pretty much a dead ringer for their ACid/DC. Holding them next to each other in store lights, I couldn't make out any difference at all. With polishes so similar, I'll go for the one with the prettiest bottle.

I wasn't going to buy any more Catrice polishes, but I'd seen '800 - Heavy Metallilac' swatched on some other blogs and I was just in awe! What a stunning purple! Basically, I had to have it. And now I do.

Here's Innocent Toxin on my nails. Sadly, it's not very sunny out, so the pretty shimmer is very difficult to be seen on my picture. The shimmer itself looks a little blueish if you look close enough.

Further more, I want to post more of my older polish jobs and nail arts. However, rather than just mentioning it, I whipped up a little header for those posts. (I'll also be going back and stick it in older posts of the kind already up.) I must say I'm quite fond of kitschy, gimmicky aging effects. Anyway, featuring two fairly old polishes;