NOTD: Lilac Pastelle Fauxnad

The base is Lilac Pastelle, yet another Revlon pastel I have trouble with. It takes at least four-five coats to be opaque. And it's much too pink to be called lilac. Anyway, I used China Glaze Hyper Haute to stamp. Even for those of you who hate the Tronicas, they are great for stamping. I used one of the floral images from Born Pretty's Hello Kitty image plate (M71). Lately, I've been obsessed with off-center fauxnads. So I placed two or three flowers randomly over each nail.

I also added tiny purple rhinestones on a few of the flowers. I found these rhinestones at the grocery store, of all places, but they're the perfect size.

Swatch: Evil Queen

Earlier, I shared Claire's Poison Apple. Now, I have my other polish from that release: Evil Queen. (I didn't get the Space Cadet dupe since I already have the Orly version. But I'll try to do a comparison with my sister's bottle.) Evil Queen is similar to Orly Galaxy Girl and MAC Formidable.

Evil Queen is a dark purple-plum base with duochrome shimmer that shifts from a blue-aqua in direct light to magenta that pretty much disappears into the base colour. Three coats covered perfectly. This was another tough one to photograph, so here's some pic spam.

 The blue shimmer in this polish is stunning. The bottle shows it really well in this picture.

Swatch: Poison Apple

Today I have Claire's Poison Apple. My sister found this and the other two "dupes" for the MAC Venomous Villains polishes that were released last year. Ten for $10! Poison Apple has been compared to MAC Bad Fairy, which I don't have so I'm not sure if they are identical. Dupe or not, this polish is a beauty.

The base is a sheer reddish plum and it's filled with duochrome flaky glitter. Depending on the light, I've seen it shift from a pinky-red through copper to a murky yellow-orange. I've heard some complaints about it being too sheer, but the glitter is dense enough that I had no problem with that. I used three coats, which is fairly standard for me.

I had some trouble capturing the duochrome effect, although it is visible in the bottle. These show the shift from pink-red to coppery-orange better than the above picture.

Does anyone have Poison Apple and Bad Fairy? Dupes or not?

NOTD: Stamping with BM10

Here's Color Club Wild at Heart over Revlon Peach Petal using Bundle Monster plate BM10. I finished it with a coat of Hidden Treasure because I just can't leave anything alone. As much as I love the colour of Peach Petal, it's a pain to use. This is four coats and it's still patchy but I pretty much gave up at that point because I knew I could cover most of it by stamping. I had to overlap the images to cover my nails. I can't wait until I can buy the new Bundle Monster plates with larger designs. Has anyone tried them yet? And are they definitely worth buying?

First Attempt at Nail Foils

A couple months ago, I made a Dollar Nail Art haul. One of the things I was most excited about were the nail foils, but they were also the only thing I was really nervous about. I thought they might not work or I would struggle too much and they would just look awful. So they've sat in a drawer taunting me since my order arrived. I chose six patterns and they all look gorgeous on the transfer paper, but I doubted I could make them look good on my nails. 

Yesterday, I finally decided to just go for it. After all, the great thing about nail art is you can always take it off and start over. And who knows, maybe I just happen to have a great talent for applying nail foils. Turns out, I don't. But I want to show you my first attempt anyway.

Not too bad overall. I had a little trouble getting it all the way to my cuticles and there are a few spots where the pattern didn't transfer completely, but there's definitely potential with these. I'll have to try again and let you guys know how it goes. This pattern is called Fifth Avenue and it's over one coat of Wet n Wild Black Creme.

For anyone who hasn't heard of Dollar Nail Art before, it's an e-tailer that has tons of nail art supplies and each item is (you guessed it) a dollar. For some of their products, the amount you get for a buck is pretty tiny but some are a great deal. The nail foils are one of the better deals. For a dollar, you get a roll that will do several manicures at least, even with a few practice attempts. Their minimum order is $25 though, so it might be a good idea to do a group buy with a few friends.

If anyone has any tips on how to make the nail foils work, I'd love to hear them.

Fyrinnae Arcane Magic Swatches

What was I thinking, waiting so long to try Fyrinnae's Arcane Magic shadows? The four I chose are all stunning, and the colour change is just the icing on the cake. The effect is hard to capture, but I tried to get a photo closer to(top) and farther from (bottom)  light. Enlarge these pics to see the differences for each.

Dragon Magic, Faerie Glamour, Futuristic Glamrock, Madame & Eve's

Dragon Magic

Dark, almost black, green with bright blue-green shimmer. Colour change is less obvious than others, becomes more green, less blackened.

Faerie Glamour

Vibrant purple base with light blue and pink shimmer. Another less obvious change. Shifts from mostly pink to mostly blue shimmer.

Futuristic Glamrock

Icy blue filled with light blue and sparse pink shimmer. Pink sparkle becomes much more obvious closer to the light.

Madam & Eve's

Dark purple, leaning brown, base with blue-green shimmer. Shifts from purple-brown to turquoise.

Fyrinnae Shadow Swatches

As promised, here are the rest of the swatches for my new Fyrinnae eye shadows. 

Eternal Innocence

Dark shimmery green. I've been looking for a good dark green for a while, and I think I want something just a little brighter than this. So, I'd love to hear any suggestions, whether from Fyrinnae or any mineral makeup company.

Kamikaze

Bright red with red sparkle. On me, anyway, this seems to have slight orange tones.

Meerkat

This is one of the shadows I bought mostly for the name. I think meerkats are one of the cutest animals around. Maybe not the best way to choose eye shadows, but I wasn't at all disappointed with this one. Pink-purple with tons of gold sparkle.

Orangutan

Coppery-peach with an almost metallic look to it. I actually didn't think I would really like this one as much as I do. It's another one I bought for the name. Orangutans are my absolute favourite animals in the whole world. How can you not love a baby this cute?

Hesty the Orangutan (Denver Zoo)

And last but not least,

Tapir

Rich purple-based burgundy. This looked more of a wine red in the jar, but the purple tones came out against my skin. Nearly matte, with only a slight shimmer.