The Lazy 15: Favourite Colour

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Hullo again. And I’m back for Manicure No 6 of 15 which is favourite colour.

Now I have a general favourite colour. You know, the colour that you buy pens in, the colour that you’ll select a toothbrush in, your hole punch, your post it notes. And for me that is purple. I love purple. And I own quite a few purple nail polishes.

However, when it comes to nail polish purple is not, as it turns out, my favourite colour. I like it on my nails. Enjoy it even. But for whatever reason, it is grey polish that I seem to enjoy wearing the most. Greys of all hues, from the silvers through to the charcoals. And I love a simple grey creme too. Dunno why, just something about the colour that seems to suit my pale pinky white freckled skin. So in homage to my love of grey polish, I’ve tried to do a mani using a number of greys.

Lazy 15 – Favourite colour mani

Unfortunately when I was rubbing some cuticle oil into my fingers I’ve somehow managed to twist the polish on my ring finger. Those lines were straight I swear:(. I should have done it again but I was running out of time. Plus ‘warts and all’ remember. So here we are.

Lazy 15 – Favourite colour mani

First we have a further attempt at a marble manicure using China Glaze Recycle, Chemistry (Ozotic) 509, China Glaze Pelican Grey over undies of China Glaze White on White. I was actually pretty surprised that I wanted to try marbling again quite so soon. It worked ok expect I should have used grey undies as I taped too close to my cuticles and lost some edging of the mani when I was removing the tape. Next is Contrary Polish Purple Smoke with two coats of The Hungry Asian Mumbling which is the loveliest mix of silver glitter. My ring finger is Purple Smoke on the base with stripes of The Hungry Asian Zera Grey over the top. Finally on my little finger is Manglaze Fuggen Ugly with a tip of Layla Flash Black.

Lazy 15 – Favourite colour mani

Again sorry for muffing up the stripped mani. It looked good before I managed to bugger it up. But even so I was quite happy with my efforts having never tried such a mixture of techniques before.

So there you go, my efforts at showcasing my favourite polish colour, grey:).

To check out the work of the other lovely lacquerheads doing this challenge with me, please click on the following links as each of these lovely girls have the inlinkz details for each blogger at the bottom of their posts:

http://phoenixnails28.blogspot.com.au

http://nails4dummies.blogspot.com.au

Until next time,

xx


The Lazy 15: Galaxy Nails…..I don’t get Galaxy Nails!

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Hullo again. And here I am, again one day late posting my mani! I honestly did try to post this morning but the server was down on my host site seemingly. But am happy to see that everything seems to be working now:)

Continuing with The Lazy 15 Challenge, it’s manicure number 5 – Galaxy Nails.

I must say I have no idea as to when the ‘galaxy nail’ craze kicked off, if indeed it ever did. Still being in my lacquerhead infancy, it’s not a nail art style that I’m familiar or know anything about. I must say, but for this challenge, it’s also not a style of nail art that appeals to me so I would never have attempted it on my own.

I did no research in preparation for this mani, a fact that is probably utterly evident. Obviously being a (normally) avid reading of nail blogs, I’d seen a few galaxy nails but not really been that impressed by them. That’s not to take anything away from the skill of those bloggers but simply that the style doesn’t really appeal to me. Anyhow, when it came time yesterday to do my own I just kind of guessed at what was involved and had a bit of a play.

Lazy 15 – Galaxy Nails

I decided to create an A England galaxy, so I started with a base of Camelot over my usual base coat of OPI Nail Envy Matte. I then took a dotting tool and did some dotting on each nail in Lady of the Lake. It then struck me that a bunch of different sized purple dots looked nothing like a flipping galaxy so I got a bit of sponge and dabbed at the purple dots to flatten them and mess them up a bit.

I then got a fresh bit of sponge and dabbed on some Morgan Le Fey across part of each of my nails. I then applied some dots of various sizes using China Glaze White on White since A England doesn’t make a white polish.

I then repeated the sponging but with Lady of the Lake, Tristam and Dragon, dabbing a little bit of each colour in one or two spots on each nail. I then dabbed a very long, thing tipped brush into White on White and proceeded to try my hand at some freehand painting in the forms of ‘twinkles’ over one or two stars on each nail…not the most effective use of freehand I grant you but still a first for me.

Finally I loaded a sponge piece with yet more Morgan Le Fay and sponged away in order to soften and ‘hazy up’ the look. I then whacked on some Lilacquer Hong Kong Girl and attempted to clean up my cuticles since they’d been victims of multiple drive-by sponge attacks!

Lazy 15 – Galaxy Nails

As you can see, the clean up wasn’t perfect. And if my cuticles look red and sore in places that’s because they are!:( Between the weekend’s marbling efforts, normal polishing and a bit of overly zealous cuticle pruning, they’re a bit over it and I can’t really blame them.

I’ve noticed lately on Instagram a couple of Galaxy Nail manicures where clouds have been painted over in part, as if you are looking through evening clouds up into the night sky. Given the dodginess of my freehand ‘twinkles’ I decided not to attempt anything more complicated.

As you’ve probably gathered from my comments above, I didn’t really enjoy the process with this one. The final outcome was ordinary and I expected as much. Really, it was a relief to remove this manicure as it just felt like a big old mess.

So what’s the take away from this for me? I’m afraid it’s ‘I don’t DO Galaxy Nails’. And I’m ok with that. I gave it a crack and I’m pleased that I did. Not every nail art style will be to everyones’ taste:).

And whilst I’ve struggled recently to keep on top of my RSS feed and so I’ve not had a chance to see what others in this challenge have done for this one, there are bound to be some stunning efforts. You can access the inlinkz for the blog of each lovely lacquerhead taking part in this challenge by clinking on the links to either of the blogs listed below:

http://nails4dummies.blogspot.com.au

 http://phoenixnails28.blogspot.com.au

xx


The Lazy 15: Water Marbling (or be afraid, be very afraid!)

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Hullo again. Apologies as I’m a bit late with mani number four. But water marbling is completely foriegn to me and I didn’t have sufficient down time to give it a go until yesterday. And boy oh boy, do you need clear time for this!

The polishes I used for this particular attempt were all OPIs: Moonraker, Tomorrow Never Dies and Bogota Blackberry. Now both Moonraker and TND were brand new and BB I’d used once. But even so I still found it quite slow to drip into the water so I added thinner. Aside from getting the polish to drop fast enough, the other big problem I had was getting the polish to spread. I found that the first polish would generally spread ok but that subsequent to that the polish circles wouldn’t expand very far. I was using ordinary tap water and I’ve since heard that that may be an issue. I’ve bought some distiller water now but I think I need time to recover from the experience before I try water marbling again. I will try it again though!

So below is the final outcome. After five hours of messing about my desk was a pigsty so I just went outside to take these photos rather than set up the light box. Also I apologise for the cuticles – despite using scotch tape, clean up was still a bitch. Added to which I nicked my right hand middle finger cuticle which bled profusely so I did my left hand instead, not wanting my wounded right hand to be exposed to acetone. Being left handed my clean up was even more underwhelming than it would have been on my right hand.

Watermarbling attemp

Watermarbling attempt

I did a number of trial runs with different polish brands and combinations. Some of the results of these I posted on Instagram (@Lacquercarefactor). The first was a total fail but then each after that was a slight improvement. So yes, I get that this takes patience and practice:). The other thing I struggled with was that I knocked the finished product on my index nail and then a bit of dried polish landed on my middle nail whilst I was applying top coat. So I actually had to do those again. The first version of the above was better looking than this but by that stage I was over the fun of making a huge mess with polish.

Also, I’ve still not managed to get hold of the inlinkz HTML code, so here’s a link to the blogs of just a couple of the lovely Lacquerheads doing this challenge and from their posts you can access the inlinkz of everyone one else who is part of this challenge:)

http://phoenixnails28.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/lazy-15-nail-art-challenge_7077.html 

http://nails4dummies.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/the-lazy-15-mani-4-water-marble.html

Until next time:)

xx

The Lazy 15: Dotted Manicure

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Hullo again. I’m back for another Lazy 15 post. And today we’re doing dotted manicures:)

Dotting tools hey? Simple enough implements in themselves. But in true LacquerCareFactor tradition I found the seemingly simple act of dotting some polish onto a nail actually much harder than you may have first thought.

Now today’s mani is again one that if had I more time on my hands I would probably have scrapped and started again but in the ‘warts and all’ spirit of this challenge I’m putting it out there. And thank you those of you who suggested I’m perhaps a little tough on myself. You’re really sweet and very kind. But learning is a plus so I’m not unhappy with my efforts in that respect.

Here I started with a black bottom of A England’s Camelot. What I had in my mind was glossy black with bright, clear and very defined dots. Sadly my choice of polishes didn’t quite live up to my imagined mani. For the red dots I used A England’s Perceval. A gorgeous polish in its own right. And quite opaque which was what I was after. But the first learning for me was don’t have too much polish on the dotting tool because a couple of the dots were overly full and so spread into each other. But aside from that I was actually reasonably pleased with Percival as a choice. Next I overlaid dots of A England’s Holy Grail (v1) and sadly, as you can see from the pic below, the original formula is not as opaque as Perceval so it just didn’t work as well.

Dotted Mani

I had initially thought to use St George and Lady of the Lake and in hindsight perhaps I should have. But then I quite like my dotted, unintended homage to the German flag:)

Again, any tips anyone has for successful dotting I would love to hear them.

Am also still trying to track down the inlinkz HTML code so I can include links of the other girls and guy participating in this challenge.

Until next time

xx