Valentine's Day Cupid Nail Art with OPI Fifty Shades of Grey

Valentine's Day Cupid Nail Art with OPI Fifty Shades of Grey

Valentine's Day Cosmetopia Digest   Thursday, February 05, 2015

Featuring O.P.I. Romantically Involved and My Silk Tie from the Fifty Shades of Grey collection.

Random irrelevant fact: I hate the Fifty Shades books. I would rather read about the chemical composition of earwax and bogies.
Despite this, I really like O.P.I.'s Fifty Shades of Grey collection. There are some greys, a beautiful red, a silver and a teal blue. I will swatch the whole lot for you shortly. More on the polishes I used below.

Basic water marbling nail art attempt with OPI

Basic water marbling nail art attempt with OPI

Water marbling Cosmetopia Digest   Monday, January 26, 2015

Yet another attempt to master the nail art technique of watermarbling. 

Of all the nail art techniques, water marbling is the one I avoid the most. I did a first attempt here, in 2013, and gave up because of the air bubbles, the inability to make decent designs and the arduous clean-up process. One of my blogging resolutions is to do better at nail art, especially techniques where I'm not very good, so water marbling will feature regularly in this year's posts.
This is a very basic, tentative attempt at water marbling. I did not try to create a fancy design, but just made random swirls in the water. 

Ciate Colour Foil Manicure kit: Nail art fail

Ciate Colour Foil Manicure kit: Nail art fail

Swatches Cosmetopia Digest   Saturday, May 24, 2014

I did not want to buy the Ciate Very Colourfoil Manicure Kit in the first place, I wanted the Chalkboard nails kit. Unfortunately, the fiddly thing was unavailable at Sephora Dubai and they only had foil and caviar kits. As I already have enough caviar beads to cover an elephant twice over to see me through for a long time, I opted for the foil kit. Why was I against it? Because foil is way too blingy, shiny and "goldy" for my liking. Give me a plain black creme polish and I will cease nagging. It did not help that Sephora offered a deluxe gift from Benefit for accumulating 2,000 points and I wanted the points if I had to buy 20 boxes of Sephora wet wipes.
Anyway, the deed being done, I hemmed and hawed my way through almost half a year before deciding to try out the kit. The cover of the box proudly displaying multi-coloured bling, I made up my mind to go all out in imitation of the manicure pictured.

But before that, here are the contents of the Ciate Limited Edition Very Colourfoil Manicure kit.

Blingy glitter NOTD over O.P.I. Ink

Blingy glitter NOTD over O.P.I. Ink

Swatches Cosmetopia Digest   Wednesday, May 21, 2014

First of all, this is a nail art fail.
The GOT Polish Challenge must include a polish you have owned for at least one year. So far, I have tried to include either a nail polish or nail art accessories I have owned for 12 months. This time, though, everything featured here has been in my stash for more than a year.
This week's theme is "bling". I have pretty much thrown every bit of shine and bling I could at my nails, literally plastering them in glitter. The result, which you will see below in a minute, is not very pretty. But aesthetic appeal was sacrificed in favour of going way too over the top. But I have made up my mind to share my nail art fails as well as the ones that look decent - and I get it wrong quite a lot.

My base colour for this manicure is the gorgeous O.P.I. Ink nail polish, which I have swatched by itself.

Tropical cocktail manicure with Ciate Ivory Queen

Tropical cocktail manicure with Ciate Ivory Queen

O.P.I. Cosmetopia Digest   Saturday, April 26, 2014

For this week's GOT Polish Challenge, the theme was Something Tropical. I did not want coconuts, palm trees, beaches, fruits or flowers, the sun or anything yellow or orange. Picky, aren't I? I called for ideas on my blog's Facebook page and Dolon of Pout Pretty and Paulina Pawlowska-Stec suggested tropical drinks such as margheritas, and I loved the idea. Who does not enjoy sipping a cool cocktail in the height of summer?
The only problem with this was my shaky freehand skills, which I suspected would make glasses and crocodiles equally indistinguishable. But nothing ventured, nothing gained; I won't master freehand nail art by just sticking to stamping, striping, FIMO and other techniques. And here is my tropical drinks-themed manicure.

Flocking powder NOTD with O.P.I. It's All Greek To Me

Flocking powder NOTD with O.P.I. It's All Greek To Me

Swatches Cosmetopia Digest   Wednesday, April 16, 2014

I have never used flocking powder before, despite having bought different colours sometime ago. I was on the verge of doing watermarbling for my birthday - since that is what I did for my birthday last year - and remembered my resolution to try new techniques. A long think and scramble in my stash later, I settled on and NOTD with two flocking powder shades for a sharp gradient effect and gems. A combination of elements there, but if you cannot go over the top on your birthday, when can you?
Flocking powder nail art proved to be the  most labour-intensive manicure I have done. In fact, this is clearly a nail art-fail. Here are the problems I faced.