Tuesday, August 11, 2015

by Kitties26 on Tuesday, August 11, 2015 3 comments

Gelicious Designer Girls Swatches

I have swatches of the most recent release of Gelicious hybred gel nail polishes for you today. This collection of five shades that were selected as the winners of the design your own nail colour competition by Gelicious.

The formula on all of these was good, they all applied smoothy with two coats and these swatches show two coats with Gelicious top coat.

My swatches are specifically provided as a reference and comparison to my photoshopped swatch photos that are shown on the Gelicious website, but I'm not going to go into it again in detail, as I have covered it before. I do love the identical appearance of every swatch photo using the identical hand (especially on the printed colour brochure) and I do know that the polish part is actually taken from my individual swatch photos and do accurately reflect the actually polish. However, with the photoshopped hand it just makes the whole photo lack credibility as a swatch you can trust. So without further adieu, here are my original unphoto-shopped swatches.

Australian Sunset - As far as I know, this one isn't available for sale yet, as they are adjusting the colour. I was advised that this sample bottle is not what the final colour will look like, this is too close to Strawberry Gelato, and the new shade will have a more yellow in it to give it a more coral appearance. The swatches they have on facebook of this have been photoshopped to show the new colour, so I can't accurately comment on that colour yet.

Champagne Cocktail - This is a beautiful sheer shimmery gold. The base colour is a very sheer beige and you can still see a bit of nail line with this at two coats. I love this sort of gold and it suits my skin tone well, but I'm not sure it will suit everyone. Ignore the name on my bottle, looks like this one got a last minute name change.

Clock strikes twelve - this one is easily my favourite of the bunch. This is such a gorgeous blue shade and the name really does invoke images on Cinderella's stunning blue ball gown. Great formula and a colour I can wear over and over again.

Heirloom Heiress - This is quite a unique and interesting shade. The base colour is a light purple leaning pink and at has a strong golden glass fleck shimmer. In the sun it really sparkles and in the shade it has a duochrome chameleon look, shifting from pinks to rose golds and bronze.

Stone cold sober - a dark and moody grey creme. I like that is looks like a grey and not black and the formula was great, although you need to really remember to wrap your tips well otherwise you will get some gel shrinkage on your tips that will look noticeable because of the dark colour - like my pinky which I didn't wrap.

The Gelicious Desinger Girls collection is available from the Gelicious website (with the exception of Australian Sunset for the moment)

Sunday, August 9, 2015

by Kitties26 on Sunday, August 09, 2015 23 comments

How to make your own neon watermarble polishes

Edited to Add: With the ongoing issues related to the Mentality Polish Neons I'm adding this information to ensure all of you that attempt to make your own polishes, especially with neon pigments are as informed as possible.

The most comprehensive coverage summary of the Mentality Polish issue I've read is here on the Mercurial Magpie blog. Please ensure you read this facebook post by Franken Nail Polish (which is the same people who run NailSuperstore.com.au and supply all artisan Australian indie brands). The article is about how some neon pigments have a resin coating than can break down in lacquer base over time and release formaldehyde as it dissolves. For this reason, the Australian supplier is discontinuing their line of neon tinters. Also read this post from Lad Muffin about possible reasons for the Mentality polish issues.

Just remember, nail polish is made up of a whole bunch of chemicals, and adding mixing various components can have many unknown consequences. Not all neon pigments are created equal when it comes to putting them in lacquer, in pretty much the same way that not all glitters will handle being in lacquer. Not much of a problem if you are making polishes for yourself as you assume all the risk, but it could be a big problem if you are reselling your creations. And if you are selling your creations, for Gods sake make sure you have product liability insurance. If you can't afford it, then you shouldn't be in business selling your products!

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Over the last month or so I have really been putting the Pipedream ANIVC polishes through their paces as a collection of neon polishes. But we all know how damn impossible it is to buy the Pipedream neons. The restocks are not even announced anymore, so the chances of getting them are Buckley's (for my non Australian readers, find out what Buckley's chance is).

There are actually a whole range of other brands that do neon collections now, to mention just a few:

If you check out all these collections you will see they are all generally the same colours. That's because they are generally made using the same or similar coloured neon pigments. Because of this, it is easy to make your own collection of neon polishes. Plus today I'm going to share my secret for making them work well for watermarbling.

You are going to need empty bottles (obviously) and you will need nail polish suspension base (obviously). There are a few places you can get these. In Australia from the Nail Super Store and in the USA from places like Wonder Beauty Products, TKB trading and Llarowe - I'm sure there are others, but given I'm in Australia and get mine from the Nail Super Store, I've never bothered researching where else.

These are the bottles I use from the Nail Super Store.

I use JOSS untinted lacquer base +silicia. You don't need to the +silica one for these polishes, but I tend to buy that one as it suits my hobby polish making requirements best.

You will also need to nail polish thinner. I use Perfect nail polish solvet also from the Nail Super Store, you could also use Seche Restore.

Next you will need some fluro or neon pigments. Again, there are a number of places that you can buy these from. I was gifted the below sample bags to play with from polish making extraordinaire Hayley of Emily de Molly and I don't know where she got them from.

But some places to get them are Glitter Unique, TKB Trading and Solor Color Dust. The nail super store and Wonder Beauty also have liquid neon tinters.

You are also going to need some white pigment. You can do this is powder form, but I use the JOSS Titanium Dioxide tinter.

It's pretty easy to mix up a bottle of polish. I'm a hobby maker so I just mix my polishes in single bottles, not in large quantities like indie makers. My process is to fill the bottle about half full with untinted nail polish base, then I use a cut up straw to spoon in the pigment. I like to add heaps and heaps of pigment to get the polish highly saturated and opaque. For me, this is what works best with water marbling. I think I used about 20 straw spoonfuls of each pigment into the bottle. I also add a few drops of white pigment just to make the finish more opaque, but not too much that the make the polish pastel. Then again, if you want to make pastel neon polishes, just add more white!

I then shake that up and test the colour. I add more pigment if required and also top up the polish until it's nearly full.

Next - and here is my trick. I add a lot of thinner. I usually add a full dropper full into the polish. Sometimes I will add two droppers full, sometimes more depending on the amount of pigment I added. The end result that you want is a thin but highly pigmented polish. You want it to be able to drip off the end of a brush easily and for it to have enough colour to easily show up when it's only one thin layer on the water.

Now I give it a good shake, a really good shake. I also use my tattoo ink mixer to mixed them even more.

Then I add my custom little labels, which of course are completely unnecessary when you are making them for yourself, but I still love my polishes to all match.

I also test out the polishes on water as I go, to make sure they are thin enough and pigmented enough. Just to prove they work nicely for a water marble, here they are in action.

A video posted by More Nail Polish Blog - Cathy (@morenailpolish) on Aug 9, 2015 at 4:02am PDT

And my first mani with these... Now I just need to get a few more pigment colours to complete my rainbow collection.

Saturday, August 8, 2015

by Kitties26 on Saturday, August 08, 2015 7 comments

Picture Polish Autumn

Picture Polish recently released four new collaboration shades, one addition to their opulence scatter holos, a new top coat and some treatments. I always love seeing the collaboration shades. It must be hard for collaborators to come up with both something they love, yet is still different from all the polishes Picture Polish has released so far.

This polish definitely fits in that category.

Autumn is a new collaboration from The Polishing Life. It is a bright orange jelly with a scattered holo effect. Its such a fabulous colour and one that I'm really glad someone wanted to create. Orange polish certainly isn't for everyone, but I think this one will get plenty of love (even outside of Halloween!).

For my nail art look with Autumn, I couldn't go past some leaves. I used the images on Messy Mansion plate MM23. I created a decal on my ring finger using Autumn and black polish and put that over a base of Picture Polish Gelato. The individual leaf stamps on each finger were double stamped. First with black and then carefully with yellow closely over the top. I was trying to create a shadowed effect and I think it worked quite well. I ended up painting some freehand lines on the leave with black polish to give them some more depth.

Because it's the middle of winter here, I just can't get to take any swatch photos in full sun. Stupid work and life keep using up all my daylight! This polish definitely looks more saturated when viewed in the full sun.

Picture Polish Autumn is available from Picture Polish. International ladies may be able purchase through one of the many Network stockists if they have this in stock.

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

by Kitties26 on Wednesday, August 05, 2015 8 comments

Pipedream polish ANIVC water marble

Yeah, you knew this was coming. I've been playing with my pipe dream polishes over and over again since I got them, and I was yet to do a full water marble with them. So here it is, I couldn't hold out any longer!

I have to say, I got so many compliments with these on my nails. I also love them so much that I ended up wearing them for about five straight days. I really do have to say that it's not just the great formula on these for water marbling that I love, it's actually the complementary colour combo that you get when using the whole collection together. The shades are so cohesive and are really seen at their best when teamed up.

Pipe Dream has a new collection of creams releasing soon, I wonder how hard they will be to get? The colours look bright and saturated, just my thing!

Even Miss 4 got in on the action with some watermarble nails. I did hers by leaving the watermarble design to dry on top of the water overnight, then cut it up and applied them as decals.

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

by Kitties26 on Tuesday, August 04, 2015 6 comments

Neon galaxy

So we've all seen regular galaxy nails, and now we've seen pastel galaxy nails, but today I bring you neon galaxy nails.

I guess they just look like random sponged nails, with some glitter and some white dots and star bursts, rather than actually looking like galaxy nails. But either way, they are bright and fun and definitely a lift in this freezing winter weather (and for you lucky ladies in the Summer, they are seasonally an excellent fit).

No prizes for guessing which polishes I used, the Pipedream a Night in Vegas Collection - but I have some other options instead of these polishes coming up, so stay tuned.

Monday, August 3, 2015

by Kitties26 on Monday, August 03, 2015 5 comments

Emily de Molly - Record Keeper and Forever and Ever

I'm going to bed early tonight. Normally I'm an 11.30pm kinda girl, but I feel like it's all catching up with me. So I'm heading to be in 10 mins for a 9.30pm early night!

Before I head off, here is how I wore a couple of the recent Emily de Molly releases. The gold is Record Keeper and the teal is Forever and Ever. I stamped with Mundo de Unas gold and added green swarovski crystals.

These two shades are part of the six new releases from Emily de Molly that launched last week.

Polishes provided for consideration.

Sunday, August 2, 2015

by Kitties26 on Sunday, August 02, 2015 3 comments

Dance Legend Binary 25 with Pretty Top

Another weekend comes to an end and the thought of another Monday looms. But I have Wednesday off this coming week, so that makes it a pretty easy week to get through.

Today I have two shades from Dance Legend. The first one is another addition to the Binary line. The Dance Legend Binary polishes are a gel like polish that don't require curing. You apply the special Binary top coat and the polish gets stronger the longer they are worn. I only worn this mani for one day, but I have previous worn the Binary shades for longer and the wear is great. This is colour #25 Lilia.

On top of Lilia I applied Pretty Top. Pretty Top has a clear base and if filled with gold and pastel pink holographic glitters in different shapes and sizes. Its name may not be very creative, but it certainly is accurate. This is one pretty top coat!

Dance Legend polishes are available from the Dance Legend website - although they are on summer holiday's right now. International shipping is only $10 for up to 10 polishes, but if it's more than 10 polishes then shipping is free! The website also has details of other international stockists.

Don't forget you can connect with Dance Legend on Facebook and Instagram.

Polishes provided for consideration.