31 Day Challenge - Day 5: Blue

This is another one of those manicures that is more beautiful because of its imperfections. A gradient using foil polishes is anything but easy; especially the clean-up, now that was a pain. Hopefully though, you think it's as worth the hardships as I do.

I used two polishes from Color Club's Fall 2011 Foiled Collection called Lumin-Icent, which is a light, icy blue metallic foil, and Cold Metal, a mid-tone cobalt blue metallic foil. Both of which were nicely opaque and only need one coat in a regular manicure. It's best to take you're time when applying them however, since like most foil/metallic polishes, they can be very streaky if not applied carefully.

What is a foil nail polish? Basically it's like if a metallic polish and a shimmer polish ever had a baby, a foil polish would be it. Another example would be if you have ever seen a sheet of metal leaf (used primarily for crafting), a foil polish, when dried down, gives the same effect. It's just as finicky as a metallic polish when applying, since you see every mistake and imperfection on your nail. It also shines like a shimmer polish, not as pronounced, but just as pretty. Foil polishes also tend to have a silver shimmer base to them, as these and all the others from this collection that I have do.

Since I chose to create a gradient using the sponging technique (I explain how to do this in my Goodbye Summer Gradient mani), the texture of the sponge left a kind of "crumpled" look to the polish. As if you had balled up a bunch of aluminum foil and then tried to smooth it out again. You'll never get it perfect, but the texture that's left is gorgeous.

I'm so pleased with this manicure, and I'm excited to try it with some of my other foils polishes in the future. See you tomorrow for my purple mani. I hope everyone had a wonderful Wednesday!

31 Day Challenge - Day 4: Green

This is not the best I've ever executed a manicure before, and the type of polish is partly to blame, but this colour combination... now that is something I am proud of. A deep chevron scotch tape mani is what I chose, and I feel like it shows off these two colours spectacularly.

Both polishes are from Color Club, but unfortunately I do not know the names of them, yet again, since they were ones that came in a set. The base of three of the nails is a golden blonde nude metallic (I found out the name! It's called Antiquated from the Fall 2011 Foiled Collection). Very pretty colour, but extremely streaky as most metallic polishes are. Every mistake I made was highlighted and emphasized further with this polish, so that was a big downside. I'm sure this would make a great stamping polish though, since it's opaque in one coat.

Now the green for today; wow. It's a dark blue-toned emerald green shimmer. I'm so in love with this colour, I can't even begin. Now because this colour has a blue tone to it, my camera is making this colour more teal rather than emerald. But trust me when I say, it's stunning in real life. This too was a one-coater, with an even, smooth-like-butter application. Too bad I don't know the name of this polish, because I would suggest everyone own it for the upcoming fall season!

To create the chevron cut-out, I just placed a piece of scotch tape cut as close to a 90 degree angle as possible, and placed the corner at the center of the nail pointing downwards. I gently pressed down the edges of the tape, so as to remove all gaps and bubbles from the edge (to prevent bleeding through of polish) and then quickly painted a coat of polish over the area that the tape did not cover. I then remove the tape immediately, pulling in one direction. You need to pull the tape off while the polish is still wet because if you pull as it's starting to set, the edges will pull up along with the tape and the line will not be clean and crisp. You can also play around with the positioning of the tape; move it up or down the nail bed, and even turn it over for an inverted chevron. If you are successful, you will create the perfect chevron.

I guess you all can tell by now that I am completely into fall with the colour choices I have been making for this challenge. Autumn colours are always my favourite. So rich and luxe; the jewel tones make my heart flutter and I don't think I'll be turning back!

See you all tomorrow with my blue mani! Thanks for reading! Xx

Re-done and I feel like the quality on this one is much better than the original from earlier. Much less streaky and no balding on the ring finger.