Summer Challenge Day 6: Violet

Summer Challenge Day 6: Violet

I had actually been looking forward to violet, because purple is my favourite colour nail polish. Then I realized that violet and purple aren’t the same colours… Damn!

So I thought I’d make this mani a little bit festive. I wanted to try out Kleancolor’s “Sparkle Purple”, which is a clear base with violet and purple glitters. I decided to layer it over another polish, since I could see it would take quite a lot of layers to make it opaque, and Kleancolor isn’t exactly known for making quick dry polishes!

So I applied two coats of Hot Makeup’s “Purple Rain Drops”. I thought it was a metallic kind of polish, but it turned out to be a jelly. Ugh! Anyway – it was “only underwear”, so I thought it would be alright.

Two coats, no top coat:

Then for the glitter. I applied two coats of “Sparkle Purple” and waited what seemed like forever. I even applied a couple of drops of Essence “Nail Art express dry drops”, but little did it help. After an hour it still wasn’t dry. Ah well.

Here is two coats of “Sparkle Purple” over two coats of “Purple Rain Drops”.

I am so disappointed over this mani, and I hate being disappointed over glitters. But it’s so not what I had in mind.

So please be gentle when you comment!

You should check out these other Danish girls’ blogs to see what they came up with for violet nails:

• Neglelir
• Se min kjole
• Mette
• Life is a fairy tale
• Vicki's Polish

Stay tuned the day after tomorrow - same bat time, same bat channel - for black and white nails!

My first gradient!

My first sponging gradient mani

I follow quite a lot of nail blogs out there, and I’ve been looking at the gradient manicures with envy. Some nail bloggers make it look so beautiful, and I’ve wanted to try it out myself for quite a while now. The reason I haven’t done it until now is that it looks pretty difficult to achieve a great looking gradient.  At least that’s what I thought.

A month ago or so, I saw a trick that suddenly made sponging gradients look easy. I decided to give it a go.

Here’s what I ended up with:

And here’s a picture taken with the other sponging colour:

I painted my nails pearly white first, using 2 coats of Amor’s “Pearl White”. (I know - great name, right?) I felt so weird having white nails! Then I painted the two colours I wanted to use on the sponge, and then I sponged both colours on the nail in one go. I also chose to turn the sponge around on my ring finger; I think that looks pretty cool.

I used HOT Makeup polishes, the turquoise is called “Turquoise Love” and the pink one is called “Cherry Berry”. I deliberately chose some colours that I know are very much pigmented, so I only had to sponge once on each nail.

Here’s what the polishes look like:

I think it’s pretty good for a first time gradient! What do you think? Are you good at sponging?

HOT Makeup ~ Petrol Blue

HOT Makeup ~ Petrol Blue

A petrel blue crème

and

Klean Color ~ City never sleeps

A clear jelly packed with teal glitter and larger pink and gold hexagons

HOT Makeup is a very cheap brand here, not very common, but sometimes available in the larger supermarkets. They usually have a lot of (to me) uninteresting colours, but I fell for this petrel blue (and yes, it’s called Petrol Blue).. I thought it was a great colour, and if the formula wasn’t much good, I imagined I might be able to use it for stamping.

I wanted to test it out, so I applied one coat, and it covered perfectly, and I mean *perfectly*. The appropriate word here is ‘impressed’. The formula is a bit on the thick side, but it was *so* easy to work with and covered the nail without streaks or bald spots.

Here is one coat. One!

Had I wanted to stamp on it, I might have added a second coat, just to smooth out the surface perfectly, but I had other plans for this baby: Klean Color’s “City never sleeps”. 

This glitter is in a very thick jelly, which I imagine will be on the tricky side to work with after a little while as the polish get older. But for a fresh bottle of polish it was great. The glitter spread out evenly without any problems whatsoever.

The only con is that it leaves the surface very bumpy, so it needed two generous coats of Poshé top coat to even it out nicely.

I’m pleased with this. Very pleased indeed.

HOT Makeup ~ Petrol Blue

Opacity: 10/10
Colour, prettiness: 7/10
Durability: 10/10
Value for money: 10/10
Overall: 9.25/10
Buy again: Yes

Klean Color ~ City never sleeps

Opacity: 2/10
Colour, prettiness: 8/10
Durability: 10/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 7/10
Buy again: Yes