Pigment Experiments!

I've got a bit of a copycat mani for show and tell today- I saw this manicure on the lovely Helly's Nail Newbie blog and knew I had to try it! I loved her combination of dark red and gold, it looked so elegant. For mine I used green as the base- it does look very Christmassy though, so I think I'll have to remember this one for December.

It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be- mainly because I'm the clumsiest person in the world so anything even vaguely arts-and-craftsy causes a huge flurry of mess! And the clean up was a NIGHTMARE- anyone who knows me know how OCD I am about tidy nails and it took me about half an hour to get every last dot of powder out from my cuticles!

I had a loose bronze eyeshadow lurking about in the depths of my makeup collection (next to my purple hair mascara and blue eyeliner- errors from my teenage nineties years!). Word of advice- make sure that whatever you're using as a surface is covered in newspaper or something, as it made SUCH a mess! I got gold powder all over my desk, all over myself, and all over Lola! (my meddlesome little dog, for the uninitiated). She came to 'help' when she heard me swearing as I spilled the dust for the zillionth time, and ended up a very pretty shade of bronze. 

I used Boots No. 7 Dollar for the base, a lovely shimmery green. The first coat was a nightmare, all streaky and thin and awful. I knew it would take three coats to be opaque, so just after I applied the third coat I plopped a blob of my powder just above my cuticle, angled my finger downwards and blew the dust across. I got a lot of different effects- if you look on my right hand I found that if I held the brush above my nail and blew down I got a streakier pattern than if I put the dust on my actual finger. Topped it all off with a coat of Seche Vite for shine, which it definitely needed.

 Above are close ups of my left and right hands- I think I prefer the right hand, it's a little messier and more interesting.

Below left is a picture of them in sunlight (please ignore the rain spots- the joy of Welsh weather...!) and they're a lot more subtle than when in artificial light. I liked them, and got a lot of compliments on them, but for some reason I got bored of them after a day and took them all off! Not sure if I suit elegant classy nails to be honest! Next time...leopard print!

Laterz people!

xXx