Ninjago nails

One of my little nephews turned four today, just five weeks after my little man turned four.  His mum and dad had organised an excellent ninja themed party for him today because he is totally into Lego's Ninjago.

If you don't know about Ninjago, they are a whole story line of Lego, and include the below four original mini figures.

I decided to create each of these characters on my fingers.  Cole the black one on my index finger, Jay the blue one on my index finger, Kai the red one on my ring finger and Zane the white one on my pinky.   If you look closely you can see that each actually has a different facial expression (or should I say eye expression).

There is also a new green ninja now, so I added him to my thumb.

In my hand I'm holding a Kai LED torch keyring, which was part of the birthday gift before I wrapped it up.

I created all of these using temporary tattoo paper, which I originally showed as butterflies here, and also created a tutorial.  The base polish is two coats of Layla Mercury Twilight, which has become my go to silver holo polish - I'm nearly half way through that bottle, I will need to get another soon!

Finally, here is the awesome cake that my brother baked, and check out those very cute take home lolly boxes in the background that they also created!

My sister in law had also organised little prizes for everyone throughout the party, some won them through games, others just for fun reasons.  I received mine for having the best nails. What I forgot to take photos of was all of us dressed up as ninjas, mostly with t-shirt masks wrapped around our heads and dressed in monochromatic colours.  It was great fun!

Feeling Autumn colours with Pretty Serious

Quick post tonight.

Here is a mani wore earlier this week.  When I saw Pretty Serious' VT100 and Morning Java next to each other, I could see that they both had the exact same gorgeous golden shimmer.  

Gradient nails are all the rage now cause of The Nailsaurus's excellent tutorial, I thought I would give one a go.  My gradient's in the past have been less than stellar. In fact, they have been pretty bloody awful. Therefore I was exceptionally happy with how this turned out. My aim was to represent the last of the fading autumn for those of us in the southern hemisphere, with green changing to brown.

Not perfect, but my best gradient so far.

That's all for today.

Pretty Serious - Hello World part 2

After seeing swatches of the rest of the Pretty Serious Hello World collection, I knew that I had to get the other three polishes.

Morning Java is caramel brown polish with a stunning gold fleck shimmer.  I love brown polishes, they are interesting and unusual, so it was especially exciting to see a brown polishes in this first collection from Pretty Serious. This is two coats of  Morning Java, with Seche Vite top coat. Nice formula, a little thick but super easy to apply. WIN.

VT100 - yellow based green jelly with a gold fleck shimmer.  So far I haven't seen anyone comment on the uber geeky name for this polish.  Kudos to anyone who knows what the VT100 is without having to google it.  Great name that matches the polish perfectly.  This is two coats of VT100 topped with Seche Vite.

Sunning gold flecks in this polish. 

Tux - Wow, this one is so much more than you expect it to be.  Initially it looks black in the bottle, but then you see the edges of the bottle and see a teal and purple shift.  Hummm, will I see that on my nail?? In the shade, pretty much black with a slight speckled finish indicating some sort of shimmer.

In the sun, yep there is that teal shimmer.

Whoo hoo, there is the purple shift too.

This one is so much prettier than I expected it to be.

I'm so happy with this next photo, I managed to get both the purple and teal in the one photo and it was all natural sunlight (with thanks to some carefully angled mirrors).

Great collection Kaz.  People, you can grab these polishes from http://www.pretty-serious.com/

Ozotic 743 duochrome (apparently)

Here is another pretty Ozotic that was sent to me for review.  This is Ozotic 743 from the duochrome range.

I absolutely love this colour, but I have to say I did really struggle to see the duochrome effect with this polish.  All the other Ozotic duochromes that I have tried have a very strong and obvious colour shift, but this one is very subtle *read as nearly non existent*.

Here is Ozotic 743 on its own, two coats. Nice opacity at two coats.

Next I tried it over black to see if it would bring out the duochrome colour shift any stronger.  Unfortunately it only made a teeny tiny difference.

The below photo was the closest I got to capturing the colour shift in this polish.  The aqua shimmer of the polish remains, but the base colour seems to shift a little darker blue. 

Finally, over white.

I seriously could not find any swatches of this polish online.  One or two bottle shots, but that was about it.  If you own this polish and have photos of it swatched, I'd love to see them.  Feel free to spam my comments with your links to photos.

This polish was provided to me for review.

Ozotic 745 a polish with two personalities

I've got a really cool duo-chome polish to show you today from Ozotic.  I swatched this last weekend before I broke several nails and I really love how this looks.  I can honesty say this polish really has two completely different personalities.

First up is the stunning pale pink look with a really fine but strong gold shimmer.  The gold shimmer makes the pink polish lean coral coloured and dispute it looking very sheer, it still has complete coverage of the nail in just two coats.

This is two coats of 745 on it's own.  Above with partial sun and below in the shade.

In the sun this polish really warms up and is a pink toned gold.  It's a really pretty gold, not too orange, and it suited my skin tone beautifully.

Next I layered one coat of 745 over a white base.  It's kind of similar to how it looks without a white base except in the shade the white base brings out the pink more.

In the sun, the white base seems to cool down the gold a little. So pretty.

Now here is the second personality of this polish.  If the above photos show it's light and pretty side, these photos show it's gritty and edgier side.  Layered over black you'd swear it was a completely different bottle of polish. The black base seems to complete hide or remove the pink tinge to this polish, and instead you get a cool, almost green toned gold polish.

This is two coats layered over a black base.

It is definitely a little frosty, and you can see brush strokes, but I really didn't care about them because it was such an amazing transformation.  Plus, it actually turns into such a pretty gold colour.  I love my gold polishes, and this has quite sneakily got up in there with some of my favourites.

I really love this over black, but surprisingly for me I also really love it over white and on it's own.  I actually wore it on it's own as a full mani and was quite surprised that I chose to do that, especially given that I'm not hugely into pink polishes.  But because of the strong gold undertones I really didn't feel like I was wearing pink.

This polish is part of the 700 series, which means it not one of the ones being discontinued. Ozotics are available directly from Picture Polish or through their network members in USA, Canada, UK, Brazil, The Netherlands, Pakistan, Singapore, France and Indonesia.

This polish was provided to me for review.

China Glaze Prismatic - Liquid Crystal - pimped

I bought the set of China Glaze Prismatic polishes quite a while back and I finally got around to trying one out.  I'd read on other blogs that these are so much better in real life than they are in photos, and I do agree.  

Most of these have a subtle colour shift, but some of them do not.  The one I chose to wear does have a good colour shift.  This is Liquid Crystal and it shifts from blue to purple.  In fact the colour shift is the exact same one that Ozotic 506 has.  Soooo, what I decided to do was pimp up that colour shift a little bit.

Here is two layers of Liquid Crystal topped with one layer of Ozotic 506 and then top coat.  I love that adding Ozotic 506 on top emphasized the colour shift in this polish, but it's still so sheer that you can see all the pretty glitter particles beneath.  I'm totally going to try this soon with some of the other CG prismatic colours (maybe the silver one that doesn't shift much I could try the green Ozotic 503 over?  hmmmmmm).

Very soon after taking this polish off, I chipped the corner off my nail on my ring finger, and subsequently nubbinised. Note to self - never buff nails again to remove yellow stains.  Sure it works, but my nails are so flimsy at the tips right now its breakage city.  Next time, stick with the yellow and just cover it up.