Royal Candy Coating.

Have you read One Gent's Ten?  It's quite interesting having a mans input into the world of nail polish.  His swatches are well done and tidy and his nails neat and masculine (polished or not, I prefer shorter nails on a man.)

One of the things that I really like is how his view point is making me take a new look at polish and finishes as well as looks that are attainable to individuals with shorter nails.  He recently did a post on candy paint jobs for vehicles  Chances are you've seen them, these are the paint jobs that always make you look twice and wonder if you have a polish that color.  Come on, I know we've all done it.  He accomplished his look via a jelly sandwich, a layering technique involving a jelly polish and glitter polish. 

I wanted to achieve something more true to the actual finish I've seen on vehicles, so here you see the original color that I started out with on my ring finger.  This is China Glaze ***  a beautiful silver shimmer that applied beautifully.  This is two coats, and they dried fairly fast.  Over the top of that I used a single coat of Revlon Royal, a blue jelly that in this instance I wanted to be a bit more sheer.  You have to enlarge the photos to see, but there is a definite depth that is very striking, a certain something that adds an additional element of elegance.  To finish I used a single holo hex from a glitter mix and added it to the center of the nail.  A tiny flake of other glitter snuck in on my middle finger, but I am calling it a design element now.  :) 

 

While this is very much the right direction that I want to go, this isn't quite the look I was hoping to end up with, honestly I wanted a bit more...something.  The tip wear wasn't impressive either, the Royal wore down in about half a day.  So I'll be trying this look again.  Meanwhile, I hope you enjoyed this look.  Many thanks to Scott for his inspiration.

Thanks so much for stopping by and reading and commenting.  Until next time, you all take care!

Random Bits

Berlioz says hi!










First, here is the current mani I'm sporting. I actually got several comments on them today so I'm pretty pleased.

I used Sally Hansen Xtreme Blue Me Away as my base color with a faux-nad plate (courtesy of ebay) and Orly White Tips for the French and Stripe Rite for the yellow stripe.

Then, here is the pedi I'm sporting, I know it looks like I've got a bad shadow, but I actually did a vertical gradient on the big toes.
I used Savvy 'Totally Teal' and LA Girls Disco Brites 'Hustle' as well as a cute little aqua stars that arrived from Dollar Nail Art last night.
Kinda funny, I discovered a con to having a nice pedicure. My naughty puppies decided to dig under the fence and explore the neighborhood, a neighbor brought one of them home but that left one on the run so without even thinking I went out in search. I didn't think about the effect of heat on asphalt/concrete until it was too late, No calluses on your feet means burned feet. I actually have blisters. But what's really important is that the toes look fabulous as I hobble along.

Speaking of Dollar Nail Art, these were also in the package and are making it very difficult for me to keep my polka dot french on. I am dying to try some foils!
I'm going to try and be strong though. I have military duty for the weekend and all of next week so I'm going to keep the current mani until I have to go with the boring.
I dunno though, maybe I can get away with a neutral with the opal swirl over the top.

And finally, I went to Ulta to get the Goth Glam polish set but they were all out. The lady sounded like my daughter as she tried to get me to buy some of the other dark singles instead. "They're the same but different." Ok so I did buy some singles but really, if I'm there to buy something in particular don't give me the but this is practically the same schpiel.
I was actually pretty pleased to buy Ulta products because if you spent $17 and change you got a free makup bag that was an $88 dollar value. Look at all the goodies that were inside!
My thoughts on this deal. "SCORE!!" I don't know how long this is running but it's in my opinion it's well worth the $18 .
Here is a shot from the website, it's the cool colors, I got the warm in the green bag.