Hello!
I was in London during the week with my boyfriend, and we had a few hours to spare which we spent browsing Oxford Street. We went into Selfridges just because its a fab shop to browse... and I spent some time in the nail polish section, which is so pretty! It's mostly quite pricey brands like Nails Inc, so I decided not to get anything. However, the Ciate Dolls House Collection had caught my eye.... still, I left it on the shelf like a good girl while we went to find the cocktail bar! One Espresso Martini later and I'd convinced myself I needed the dolls house if it was under £20. We navigated back to the polish section, and I was soon the proud owner of the £18 set - complete in a much coveted-by-me yellow Selfridges bag!!
So, this collection has 5 minis, all with a porcelain (matte) finish - which I didn't actually know until the shop lady told me! They are:
Dollface (nude/beige)
Paper Doll (white)
Baby Doll (peach)
Poppet (lilac)
Sweet Pea (mint green)
cute names! I was desperate to try these, so for my manicure today, I painted each finger with a different colour.
They take a good few coats to build up, I think these were all three coats. With the polish being matte, I found it a really tricky formula to work with - it dried quickly and you couldn't go over the same spot twice without making the polish all smeary and patchy. Luckily they built up quite well after a few coats.
I had the day free, so decided to doodle over the top of these. I picked up my Barry M white nail art pen, and doodled a paisley pattern on all my nails, except the white ones as the white pen wouldn't show up, obviously! I was a bit stumped as to what to do on the white nails as they looked too unfinished with nothing, and eventually settled on using my pastel studs from Born Pretty. I was pleased when I found studs that were of a really similar colour to three of the shades already in my mani, so stuck these on to my little finger nail using wet nail polish. I finished all my nails off with a matte topcoat (Rimmel) to keep the 'porcelain' look meant for these. (sorry about greasiness of last pic, had just applied some Lemony Flutter!) Xx
Hello!
Last week I treated myself to just one of the new Barry M matte collection. I generally think that if I want a matte colour, I can just use a matte topcoat over any of my current polishes! But I was curious about the new Barry M ones so decided to buy just one. I had my eye on the paler nude colour at first, but I decided it was too much like Lychee, their gelly colour, which I already have. So I picked up mocha, a brown kind of colour. I'd usually be unsure about a shade like this, but I thought the matte finish might add something to it.
Here it is, two coats, no topcoat...
I really like how this polish looks, it's nice and simple. However I don't like that I can't add a quick-dry topcoat, I reckon it's going to get marked and lose it's 'perfect' look very quickly! I was going to add some studs to this, but I'm not sure now. I'll see how it goes!
Didn't have much time to do these nails, which is why they're quite simple! Decided to go for gothic because hopefully going to Whitby tomorrow, and that has lots of gothic/dracula connections! I also wanted to try out my new matte black BK polish!
So this is two coats, with Born Pretty silver studs :-)
And here it is shiny, because I had to add a coat of clear to stick the studs on! Added another coat of matte in the end though.
A quick update today - wanted to show these off! I'm new to this matte polish, and obviously you can't add a tough top-coat as you'd undo all the matte-ness... so after 24 hours of wear, my manicure (see previous post) was looking a bit marked and dented. I hate to keep noticing big imperfections, so decided to add another coat of matte tonight. Before I knew it I'd added these little gems - I've wanted to try this kind of studded pattern for ages, and I just went with the urge! Love them... wonder how long they'll last...
(not long I expect, as I'm looking forward to our challenge week 4!)
Sarah x
After being sent a link to some beautiful matte nail art, I decided to hunt some of this polish down and test it out. I found a cheap bottle in Boots, by Rimmel - £4.95! And I bought it with my Boots points, so double Yay! I was desperate to have a play, so I painted over my pink glittery thumbnail to see how well it worked. The matte polish works brilliantly, but don't use it over glitter! It kills the glitteryness! So I decided to try and recreate the look I had seen online. Here's a set of pics to show what I used...
The look I had seen used a dark polish, but the only dark one I own is this Nails Inc very dark blue, called Motcomb St. This is two layers - see how shiny!
Then I added the matte polish. The brush is thick so it's easy to apply in a few swipes! The only problem was that the brush got slightly stained navy blue from the polish. Maybe I didn't leave the base colour to dry for long enough as I was impatient to see the matte!
I finished off by painting over the tips of each nail with the Nails
Inc colour. In normal light it really does look black (which I wanted)
but I've included a photo I took with the flash so you can see how it's
actually really dark blue.
Let me know what you think! X
