Models Own Grape Juice & Darling Diva Magnifique

Bonjour tout le monde! Toujours dans le classement de mes photos, je vous montre des images en attente depuis bien trop longtemps sans bonne raison valable: une jolie manucure printanière tout en douceur.

Au menu, le Grape Juice de Models Own, le mauve qui sent trop bon le raisin, et qui, comme ses petits copains, est un peu sportif à appliquer mais tellement joli, et pour faire un accent nail, le Magnifique de Darling Diva que j'ai chopé au vide-vernithèque de Youminou.

Magnifique est un vernis du même style que le Birthday Cake, une base blanc laiteuse avec des paillettes pastels hexagonales de différentes tailles

Mon premier essaie avec le Magnifique a été de le poser seul, et ce n'est pas forcément une bonne idée. A l'inverse des Lush Lacquer qui sont opaques en deux couches, le Magnifique (à chaque fois que je tape ce nom, je pense au film La Belle & la Bête de Cocteau et au cheval magique qui vous emmène où vous voulez si vous dites "va où je vais le Magnifique, va, va, va!") n'est pas opaque à moins de trois couches, et vu la taille des paillettes, ça fait une épaisseur pas très simple à gérer. Pour cette manucure j'ai donc choisi de le poser en une couche sur ma base mauve.

L'application se fait bien, pas besoin d'aller fouiller au fond du flacon pour trouver les paillettes et j'ai vraiment adoré le résultat!

 

2012 is Flakies Year - Nfu Oh 38

In case you hadn't noticed, this year is meant to be the big Flakie year: after Essie and their Luxeffect collection that contained one flakie polish (if memory serves), Finger Paints released an entire collection, and we can only guess that other big brands are going to do the same. Before that, flakie polishes were quite hard to find, the main brand for them being Nfu Oh which is by no mean a widely accessible brand. But still, I've had their biggest hit n°38 in my stash for a while, so I decided to show you what it looked like.

Flakies are flat colour-shifting particles that are usually contained in a jelly or clear polish, so flakie polishes are more for layering than for wearing alone (well, you can wear them alone, but you'd need several coats, and usually the effect is less strong). Nfu Oh 38 is a rainbow flakie, meaning a clear base with flakies going from orange to green, that will pop out more over a dark base. To show you the various colours you can get, I did two sets of swatches. First is, from thumb to pinkie: OPI Pepe's Purple Passion, A-england Avallon, Essie Topless and Barefoot, A-england Lady of the Lake and OPI Expresso Your Style.

Second set is, from thumb to pinkie: Orly Sweet Peacock, Orly Peachy Parrot, OPI From Monop' With Love, Orly Lucky Duck and OPI Lady in Black.

I'm not overly keen on flakies, for me they have all the inconvenients of glitter (in terms of removal for instance) without being as pretty, so I'm very happy with the few I have (Nfu Oh 38, I also showed you Nfu Oh 51, and I consider Orly Fowl Play as a flakie polish, or rather a polish with flakies since it can't be layered), but I don't think I'll get any more. What about you, are you tempted?

A-england Merlin

I'm baaaack!! And damn, the trip in London was fantastic, but I shall tell you more about it in the days to come as I'll show you some pics. For now, I'm catching up with everything I wanted to programm during my absence, because in the meantime, I've gotten another ton of new shinies to play with!

So, last post was showing you A-England's Camelot, the beautiful one-coat black cream, and today I use it as a base to show you the magical Merlin. Merlin is a silver glitter made of square particles, which make it very unusual, very sparkly and very hard to photograph! Some time ago, Livingston USY left a comment asking me if Zoya Luna could be layered over another polish or had to be worn alone, so I decided to present the following layering experiments: one coat of Merlin over Camelot on the left (index finger), two coats of Merlin over Camelot in the middle (middle finger), and one coat of Luna over Camelot on the right (ring finger).

As you can see, Merlin can be both layered or worn on its own, you just need two coats if you put it over a silver base, but Luna's milky translucent base makes it unfit for layering, it definitely has to be born alone.

And then, just for fun, I went to add a magical touch of Merlin over all the creams I have from A-England, so from left to right you have: Camelot, Guinevere, Elaine, and Merlin on its own in two coats.

Finally, I couldn't resist adding A-England Merlin over LM Cosmetic Merlin, to add a touch of silvery magic over the wizard's blue robe, and I'm completely in love with the combo!

OPI Muppets - Rainbow Connection & Divine Swine

I'm finishing my OPI Muppets with the two glitters I chose out of the available six. The Muppets glitters consists of four shades similarly built up: very small colored glitter (in purple for Divine Swine, green for Frog of Bel-Air, blue for Gone Gonzo and red for Gettin' Miss Piggy with It) with large silver glitter. The other two are Excuse-Moi (candy pink and holo fine glitter) and Rainbow Connection (multicolored medium and large glitter). I'm presenting you Divine Swine and Rainbow Connection, only on one finger each because removal is a major pain with those.

I'm usually ok with removing glitter, especially with remover box like Sally Hansen's Kwik Off or Sephora's (well, with my Sephora's, I threw away the remover and replaced it with my usual one, since it's well-known that the Sephora polish remover is really bad for nails), but honestly, those ones are really, really bad. You'll see on some pics that I had glitter all over my fingers!

So this is Rainbow Connection on the pointer and Divine Swine on the middle, two coats each, no top-coat. Application was not as bad as I feared, provided you don't try the usual way, brushing over the nail, but instead, go for light dabs to place the glitter evenly all over the nail.

As you can see, coverage isn't bad in two coats, though to wear them alone, a third would look better. It might be a bit tricky because while the dabbing technique helps to place the glitter, it does make thicker coats than usual. I would probably do two coats dabbing, wait until they're dry and then a final one brushing.

The finish isn't even so bad for a glitter, though of course it's not glossy and smooth and would need top-coat to be perfect.

Since I don't usually wear glitters alone but as layering polishes, I tried some combos. With Divine Swine, I tried a silver base and a magenta purple base. Pointer is Zoya Trixie with one coat of DS and middle is one coat of OPI Pamplona Purple with one coat of DS.

I thought the silver layering would turn out great, but DS actually dulls the base and the end result is quite disappointing imo. On the contrary, layering over Pamplona Purple makes a beautiful combo, I love it!!

With Rainbow Connection, I used Zoya Trixie as well, and I find it looks quite great, so I think I found great combos for both!

Edit: After writing this article yesterday, I decided to try a full Rainbow Connection manicure, so here's three coats of Muppets crazy glitter, with two coats of top-coat (I think I actually had nightmares about the removal last night!!), in the pale autumn morning sun. As you can see, there's a bit of shrinkage because of the amount of coats but in real life it barely shows. If I manage to grow my nails for Christmas, I'll give it another try!