Stone Marble Manicure!

Hi lovelies,

It's been too long since I've shared some nail art with you...I've still been playing, I just never seem to be able to get a good photo before I take my mani off! Darn these winter hours with limited natural light.

There's only one thing I love more than rose gold, and it's marble. It often pops up in my photos (case in point below, and yes, a review of these will be forthcoming), and I thought it would make a beautiful accent manicure too.

It was a really easy mani to do. I began by painting my nails with the chosen base colours (Orly Mirror Mirror and Sally Hansen White On). Next, I used the cling foil technique with Orly Mirror Mirror (tutorial here, but please excuse the terrible photos, it was in my early days of blogging), to create a little texture over the white that also tied in with the rest of the mani. I then used a very fine tipped nail brush to 'draw' on the veining to emulate the striations in marble. Lastly, I applied a thick layer of top coat while the 'veining' was still wet, to smear the lines for a more realistic look. Overall, I'm pretty happy with my first attempt and I can't stop looking at my nails!

There you go, lovelies, my first attempt at a marble manicure! What do you think? I'd love to hear your feedback!

I also used a mattifying topcoat on my nails just after I wrote this post, and I quite like the effect! I'll try to take more photos and update this post, it's definitely a different look to wearing it glossy.

Much love,
MM.
x


PS- Linking up with Ingrid from Fabulous and Fun Life on her Blog Link Up Party, so do go check out all the other amazing posts from this week! 

Winter Nail Art Tutorial - The Winter Smoke Manicure.

Hi lovelies,

Happy Hump Day! We're over the middle of the week, so it's a clear stretch to the weekend now!

I just wanted to let you all know that I have another editorial up on the Lipstick Republic website, it's a tutorial on how to create the manicure below! This one is inspired by the cold, wet and dreary weather in Melbourne of late.

All you need are three different polish shades and a dotting tool (or bobby pin). I chose to use ORLY Mirror Mirror for my base, and Sally Hansen White On and ORLY Liquid Vinyl for the design.

L-R: ORLY Liquid Vinyl, Sally Hansen White On, ORLY Mirror Mirror and dotting tool.

Keep reading after the jump!

Product Review: ORLY Beautiful Disaster and Sparkling Garbage | ORLY Mash Up Colour Collection.

Hello lovelies!

It's been a while since my last polish post, I have been a bit amiss! To make up for it, I have two beautiful new polishes to show you from the new Orly Mash Up Collection.

Beautiful Disaster (is anyone else singing a Kelly Clarkson song in their head now, or is that just me?) is described as a 'magenta chrome', this has a tendency to shift from a rich magenta to a royal purple, depending on the lighting, so I would have to say that the description is pretty apt. I have to confess to falling in love with it as soon as I saw it (I have a thing for purples), and having it on my nails only reaffirmed my love.

ORLY Beautiful Disaster in direct sunlight.

Keep reading after the jump!

Product Review: ORLY Watch it Glitter | ORLY Flash Glam FX Collection.

Hello lovelies!

I hope you've all had a great weekend. It's been a quiet one for me as I'm still recovering from the flu, however, I couldn't let another day go by without a post, so here's a simple post on a gorgeous glitter polish called 'Watch It Glitter' from the ORLY Flash Glam FX collection.

Watch It Glitter is a pretty copper glitter, suspended in a clear base. I was immediately intrigued as I love metallic glitters (think silver, platinum, gold and copper), and it's even better when they are suspended in a clear base as you can go to town layering them over different base polishes!

This polish is packed full of hexagonal glitter, but the glitter particles tend to settle to the bottom after a while. It's nothing a good shake doesn't fix. The brush picks up quite a lot of glitter but most of it gets stuck in the bottle neck when you wipe it off before applying. Not a problem when you're layering over your whole nail, but in order to do a gradient nail, like I did here, you need to go back and pick up glitter particles from the neck of the bottle.

On to photos!

I layered Watch It Glitter over Essie Stylenomics, a deep green shade that tends towards black. Stylenomics was a gift from my dear friend Kris (thank you again, Kris), and I'll be posting photos of Stylenomics soon.

My photos fail to do it justice, lovelies, it's even more stunning in real life!

I have one more polish from the collection to share, Can't Be Tamed, which will be featuring in an upcoming post shortly.

Removal was quite straightforward, I soaked a gauze square in some polish remover from Daiso, and the glitter came off quite easily!

Each of the polishes from the gorgeous Flash Glam FX collection retail at $18.95, and you can view a list of stockists or purchase online by clicking here.

Do you love glitters as much as I do?

Much love,
MM.
x


Note: This product was kindly provided for my consideration. This has not affected my opinion in any way. I was not obliged to blog about it in any way but am choosing to do so at my own discretion. For more information, please refer to my Disclosure Policy.

NOTD - Butterfly stamping and taping.

Hello lovelies,

Quick post today to share some nails I was wearing recently (terribly behind in posting, dear me)!

I decided to get back into my stamping (for more details on getting started, read my tutorial here), so I decided to do some accent nail stamping and then did tape nails for the remaining nails. Please pardon the tip wear, I've been doing quite a bit of housework lately and with the lack of daylight savings, I couldn't photograph it before it started to show!

For the stamping, I used Sally Hansen White On as a base, and stamped the butterflies using Zoya Karina and ORLY Liquid Vinyl* (using Konad plate M39). With the tape nails, I used Liquid Vinyl as a base and then painted Karina over.

I hope you enjoyed that, lovelies! I'm thinking of getting more plates soon, so stay tuned!

Much love,
MM.
x


Note: Products marked with a '*' were kindly provided for my consideration. This has not affected my opinion in any way. I was not obliged to blog about it but am choosing to do so at my own discretion. For more information, please refer to my Disclosure Policy.