Butter London Double Take Ice Duo – Bluecoat and Leccy

Today I’m showing you some more goodies that I won from nailpolishcanada‘s holiday nail art contest.  I don’t wanna be a bragger but you really need to see this cool Butter London ICE DUO that I won!  It contains two full-size bottles of nail lacquer: Bluecoat (opaque navy) and Leccy (flakie topcoat).  Let’s first look at Bluecoat…

Shown in these photos is one coat of Sally Hansen basecoat, two coats of Bluecoat and one coat of Seche topcoat.  Although Bluecoat is very opaque I did need two coats to eliminate a few bald spots.  It’s a gorgeous deep navy with a slight shimmer running through it.  The shimmer is a cross between dark blue and teal but is pretty similar to the navy base color which gives it a nice subtle glowing effect.  I love blue nail polish!

I quickly got a lot of tip wear while wearing Bluecoat though.  I painted my nails at 10pm and by lunchtime the next day my mani looked 2 or 3 days old.  I dunno!

Now let’s look at Leccy, a sheer opal fleck topcoat.  Did you know that LECCY is a British slang term for ‘electricity’?  I learn something new everyday!  Leccy is hard to photograph since the multi-colored flecks looked drowned out on camera.  But it sure doesn’t look drowned out in real life!  Here’s a pic of Leccy in natural lighting outside…

Leccy dried a little rough since some of the glitter shards lifted up around the edges.  I added a healthy dose of topcoat but there were still a few jagged edges poking through.  It didn’t really bother me though.

Leccy didn’t really excite me at first glance, but once I got it on my nail I really liked it a lot.  It has an edgier feel than your typical flakie.  And it totally comes to life in dim lighting.  Check out this pic that I took at night in the dark living room.  It’s blurry but you’ll see what I mean..

What do you think of this duo?  You can never have too many Butter Londons, amiright?  They have a red one called the Fire Duo too…but I’m glad I won the blue one since I always feel sassy wearing blue.  LOL

I also want to mention…did you see that our Nail Art Ideas Linkup for January started up??  The theme for this week’s nail art is Health & Wellness.  I am stumped, which is weird considering I was the one who came up with that theme when Brijit and Jemma and I were brainstorming.  Oh, the irony !  I am hitting up the gym after work today so I’m determined to find some inspiration there.  When it comes to getting into shape I am more the type to workout every day until I collapse rather than counting every calorie I eat… so I’m sure my design will have something to do with physical fitness.  Stay tuned for my next post to see what weirdness I come up with!

‘Til then!

Earth-Toned Fishtail Nails

It’s day 12 of the 30 Day Nail Art Challenge and the theme is fishtail braid.  I’m psyched to finally get a chance to try out this nail art technique!  Since I’ve never tried fishtail before I practiced a little bit before jumping in.  The hard part was finding:

• opaque colors that only need one coat
• polishes that had a small(ish) applicator brush since pro-wide brushes didn’t seem to work well for this design
• last but not least, finding coordinating colors!

I used Top Coat It’s tutorial and I practiced with some different polishes until I got the technique down.  Most fishtail designs that I’ve seen use 3 colors and I chose the following:

Charming Charlie ♥ Penny Lane

Sephora by OPI ♥ I Think I Cayenne

Sephora by OPI ♥ S-Age is Just a Number

I also applied 2 topcoats at the end to try to smooth out the overlapping brushstrokes.  The surface still looked kinda uneven to me though.

I like the warm color combo, even though it feels kind of unseasonal for this time of year!  But I really wanted to incorporate my Charming Charlie polish (that’s the darkest shade in my photos).  I’m almost positive this shade is called Penny Lane, but I can’t confirm it since I lost the bottle.  I just used it 15 minutes ago so I have no idea where it could be hiding!  So have any of you been to a Charming Charlie retail store before?  I never heard of this chain until I stumbled upon one of their stores in Florida.  And I was like WOW!  It’s like a Claire’s Boutique for grown-up ladies!  It was jam-packed with affordable necklaces, accessories and even nail polish- so of course I had to buy one.  Penny Lane is a beautiful deep coppery shimmer and I hope you like it in my fishtail braid design!  You can see the other participants’ designs here.

Butterfly Wings

I had a lot of free time last night and sat down with my box of very old polishes that I never use.  I rummaged through them and tried out all my spring-iest colors.  The AVON Retro Rose floored me!  In the bottle it looked matronly, but once applied it morphed into this stunning peachy pink with gold shimmer!  I sponged on some Sinful Colors Lagoon which is a sheer orange shimmer.  This polish must be very old- check out the retro bottle in my bottom pic!  The peach and orange looked great together and then it hit me- MONARCH WINGS!  Yes!  Time for me to try out butterfly nails!

Butterfly wing nails have been one of my favorite looks ever since I got interested in nail art.  They’re breathtaking and have been on my to-do list for a while.  I’m so glad I finally tackled this project last nite.  I guess I just needed the perfect base color to inspire me!

I used some black wet n wild polish and a sephora nail art brush to freehand the black wing outline.  The design was very forgiving… I didn’t even have to wipe it off and start all over again –  you girls know what I’m talking about, right?  Here’s the list of polishes and tools that I used….

I love it.  It will break my heart to have to take it off once it starts chipping!  And in case you are wondering… yes, that IS snow in the background of my pics.  We got another bad storm last night in NY.  Will it ever be spring?  Probably not.

My Favorite Gold

I haven’t tried this Nicole by OPI shade yet- and I figured it would be a great glitzy color for the 3 day weekend!  I just found out yesterday that I have bronchitis, and now I’m surprisingly really happy!  I have been sick for ten days, so I’m glad to finally have a diagnosis and some meds.  This shiny gold polish is perfect for me today since it matches my good mood.

This shade is called My Favorite Gold and it’s part of the Justin Bieber collection.  This gold is super shiny, glam and is really an eye-catcher.  It’s one of those polishes that really glows!  If I dare venture out of the house today I can imagine getting a lot of compliments on it.  The formula was iffy- it did dry fast, but man- did it need a lot of coats?!  Shown in my pics is 5 coats… and I could almost go for a 6th!  If I turn my hand just right I can still see some visible nail line.  Next time I’ll have to use a white or yellow base coat underneath it.  I also decided to spice up this mani a little bit with some fimo flowers.  Has anyone used these before?  The flowers seem small at first glance, but once I apply them to the nail I realize how big they really are.  They take up way more space than I planned.  I wish they were a bit daintier…. but they’re still fun to use as an embellishment once in a while.

My Favorite Gold came in a two pack along with I’m a Belieber and I noticed a funny typo on the box.  There’s a couple words printed on the packaging- fashion, art and DYI.  DYI?  What’s that?  I think they meant to say DIY!  Hehehe… I love finding random typos.