Manicure: China Glaze Outta Bounds

Manicure: China Glaze Outta Bounds

Swatches Cosmetopia Digest   Thursday, October 23, 2014

Green is one of those colours with some variants that work beautifully, and other shades that look terrible within a mile of me. As a rule, I avoid lime green, parrot green and, well, anything fluorescent or virulent but love bottle green and anything deep. China Glaze Outta Bounds, a gorgeous deep shimmery green with teal blue undertones, is a green that I love.
Unfortunately, I've had a bad nail-accident featuring an "eyebrow razor" from a Memebox which I will show you soon. As a result, I could not do any nail art with this polish. This was my first go at an eyebrow razor and, while it tidied up my brows nicely, it ruined my nail, manicure and fingertip badly.
Photos of the carnage below.

Manicure: Bourjois nail art kit and China Glaze Desert Sun

Manicure: Bourjois nail art kit and China Glaze Desert Sun

Swatches Cosmetopia Digest   Wednesday, June 04, 2014

Coming home from the supermarket with a generous supply of roasted pistachio seeds - shells intact - meant that my nails were vulnerable to breakage, and the dreaded event occurred when I was removing my previous manicure. I am not a fan of my nubs; my fingers are too short and stubby to pull them off. So I decided to do something simple for this week's GOT Polish challenge, where the theme is "a silver accent".
Sometime last year, I had bought the Bourjois Easy Nail Art Kit and forgotten all about it. This was a Spring-Summer 2013 launch. I picked the swallows from the kit because summer is the right time for swallows. More on the kit below.

Here is a summer manicure using the Bourjois Easy Nail Art Kit and China Glaze Desert Sun nail polish.

St Patrick's Day green shamrock nail art with China Glaze OMG It's A UFO polish and O.P.I. Greenwich Village

St Patrick's Day green shamrock nail art with China Glaze OMG It's A UFO polish and O.P.I. Greenwich Village

Swatches Cosmetopia Digest   Sunday, March 16, 2014

Happy St Patrick's Day! I hope your weekend was as relaxed as mine. Here is my manicure for St Paddy's Day - shamrocks, obviously. I know, I know, I suck at freehand nail art and it was the easiest thing in the world to want to reach for my stamper and a plate but I have vowed to step outside my comfort zone this year, so you can expect to see more freehand doodles and horrific experiments on my nails.
A St Patrick's Day manicure would obviously be green for most part. I get that. But I didn't want my base colour to be green-green, if you get what I am trying to say. So I picked China Glaze OMG It's A UFO from the Hologram Collection Spring/Summer 2013.

Read on to find out how I did this St Patrick's Day green shamrock nail art.

Christmas tree manicure: Freehand nail art with O.P.I. and China Glaze polishes

Christmas tree manicure: Freehand nail art with O.P.I. and China Glaze polishes

Swatches Cosmetopia Digest   Monday, December 23, 2013

Two days to go! I thought I would try my hand at a freehand manicure in the hope that the spirits of Christmases past, present and future would steady my shaky nail art brushes. I chose a very basic design of Christmas trees with the odd bit of tinsel and ornaments. I used O.P.I. Green-wich Village as the base colour. This is a parrot-green crème nail polish from the Mod About Brights collection.

Glitter NOTD with Etude House Play Nail polish over China Glaze Flyin' High

Glitter NOTD with Etude House Play Nail polish over China Glaze Flyin' High

Swatches Cosmetopia Digest   Sunday, December 15, 2013

Whoa. It isn't just Korean cosmetics that rock - it is their nail polish, too! The Etude House Play Nails in #121, hauled from W2Beauty, has wowed me so much so that I'm going to haul a bunch of Korean nail polishes in January. It just goes to show that you don't have to look the indie way for your glitter fix - mainstream polish manufacturers such as O.P.I., China Glaze and others can produce amazing multi glitters in a variety of shapes, colours and textures as well. Oh, and I've cut myself with the cuticle remover on the ring finger. Argh!
This manicure is Etude House Play Nail #121 worn over China Glaze Flyin' High nail polish.

China Glaze Whirled Away glitter over Essie Mink Muffs taupe nail polish

China Glaze Whirled Away glitter over Essie Mink Muffs taupe nail polish

Swatches Cosmetopia Digest   Tuesday, November 26, 2013

China Glaze's Whirled Away is a glitter nail polish that contains large white hex glitter and smaller black hex and bar glitter in a clear base. It was part of China Glaze's Cirque du Soleil Collection released last December. I've used it over two coats of Essie Mink Muffs nail polish here. The above swatch is in direct sunlight.
I had been ordering Whirled Away for more than six months and it was always sold out or out of stock. It wasn't till July that I finally got my hands on that gem of a bottle. Whirled Away is a great glitter for layering, especially over creme bases. I have read several reviews which say the formula of Whirled Away is hard to work with - but I find the reverse to be true.