Showing posts with label Nubar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nubar. Show all posts

Saturday, 31 March 2012

The Bright Stripes


I share a love of black, white and red with The White Stripes but I didn't use those colours for this manicure!

I did this manicure yesterday morning on a day I took off work to spend time with my best friend Alice, it may have been sunny all week but we had indoor plans to go to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery which is conveniently located five minutes from my house!

For this manicure I freehanded stripes on a base of Nubar "Classic Camel" with Essie "Navigate Her" and "Armed and Ready" and Zoya "Ciara": 

In the sunshine!


At the gallery:



xoxo


Sunday, 11 March 2012

A Shade of Brown Upon Some Blue....

Subtle was not the intention here,
The intention was to be quite clear,
In a shade of brown upon some blue,
by Nubar was not my dream come true,
The brown was made by OPI,
Jacques isn't for stamping I do decry,
It certainly picked up well enough,
So that retort is my disappointed guff,
It does stamp very well, thank you Jacques,
So my words I do take back,
My stamping skills I do not rate,
For the print itself is not centred straight,
But the unintentional end result,
Is one in which I will now exult!


So in case you missed my subtle hints, the shade of brown is OPI "You Don't Know Jacques" and my lesser promotion of the blue will have left you in the dark so now is the time to declare it as Nubar "Mod Agua."  

I haven't worn Jacques before so I wasn't aware of it's thin formula.  Hence my surprise at the stamping being so subtle.  I did think about changing the stamping colour to my new China Glaze "Foie Gras" or "Midtown Magic" but I wasn't sure of the colours so I just stuck with Jacques and repeated the stamp on all my digits.  I had originally intended to do a brown and blue skittles look with some pinstripes and polka on other fingers but it wasn't meant to be!  

The Nubar is a lovely colour of aqua blue that I am glad I own.  The other option for my blue was "Electric Beat" but I shall save that for another day!

So this is Mod Agua with Jacues stamping using BM 206 and a french using Jacques:


This started out life without the french, don't my nails look long! I wish my nail beds were long so I didn't HAVE to grow my free edge long to have more of a canvas and to have nicer nails.


I had barely finished my manicure last night when my guests arrived; one of my new colleauges and her husband, to join my husband and I for dinner at a local Chinese restaurant called Chop Chop that I adore and my new friend had wanted to try for ages.  They have an amazing unlimited banquet (not usually my dining option of choice but not a self serve one so acceptable!) and the most delicious dumplings and were apparently in some Gordon Ramsay show about Britain's best local restaurants and declared his favourite as well as winning other awards.  Needless to say I have one of their dining cards where you get discounts and vouchers on birthdays and anniversaries.

My new friend and I think we were separated at birth due to our similarities despite our 14 year age gap.  Truth be told, we have as many dissimilarities as well: what person doesn't like coriander lol!!!! But the freaky coincidence is that we have the same engagement ring which led to seeking other similarities.  When she arrived I had promised her a manicure as well so the polishing began anew.  She is a polish lover already but I have introduced her to seche vite and the nail art/polish obsessive world which I am not sure her husband is thankful for!  For her manicure, I wanted to try some more stamping with my favourite stamp from Konad M71 and I added a french in my Essie "Size Matters":


This weekend also had some adventures in babysitting and a manicure is always required, especially when it is used by mothers to bribe and is requested by the three year old about a hundred and one times!  I normally do polka dots on her but I wanted to see if any stamps would look good on such tiny nails with so I used some of the smallest flowers on Konad M57 and 53 on top of my Essie "Size Matters" to create this:


xoxo

Saturday, 11 February 2012

Eenie, Meenie, Minie Mo....

....too many colours for my fingers and toes!
With twenty-eight bottles bought this year,
(some might call this an addiction dear),
What can a girl do to help her decide?
Which she loves and which she can't abide?
I guess that's why it's come to this,
Swatching them all with a twist,
Well not all, I didn't use my toes,
But here's what I did, anything goes!

So....... although I do know what I am going to paint my nails tomorrow, I have bought the aforementioned twenty-eight bottles of polish so far this year (I know!) and with many untried bottles from last year as well, I decided I might as well be lazy and paint over my current manicure (black lace) with some of them to try out the colours. 

Not exactly conventional for a blogger as most would swatch and show the colours to their full potential to fellow polish lovers.  But I'm not normal (wohoo!) and I don't class myself as a normal nail polish blogger either.  I never intended to swatch polishes for the perusal of others as plenty of others do it so much better (scrangie, vampy varnish, the polishaholic to name but a few) so my mission statement was to paint my nails every week, try out nail art ideas created by others or myself and show them here in case anyone was interested in taking a look.

So here is what I have been up to today:




Ignoring the shoddy painting, I tried out 16 polishes which are from left to right:

  • Revlon "Royal" with Barry M "Gold Sparkle" crackle
  • OPI "You Don't Know Jacques!" with China Glaze "Midtown Magic"
  • Essie "Size Matters" with Nubar "Star Sparkles"
  • Essie "Navigate Her" with Essie "Bobbing for Baubles"
  • Nubar "Mod Aqua" with Essie "Go Overboard"
  • Milani "Purple Gleam"
  • Nubar "Hyacinth Sparkles"
  • Nubar "Elegant Indigo"
  • Nubar "Night Sparkles"
  • Essie "Armed and Ready" with Color Club "Gingerbread"
That's all folks! Tomorrow I am going to be testing out a manicure on my cousin for her wedding (codename Peacock) and painting my own nails.

xxx