31DC: Half and Half

Half and half is the prompt today.

I kept it pretty simple, opting for two similar colours with contrasting finishes: porcelain and glitter!

These are both Ciaté; Sweet Pea from the Dolls House Collection and Gleam Dream, a green and silver loose glitter. 

This mani really reminds me of the sea. The colour is a very sea-green colour and the glitter creates a reflective water-like effect.

I can't stop looking at it shimmering!!

31DC: Dotting Tools

Can't believe I have made it to day 5 without falling behind yet!
Back to work after the Christmas break today though, so it'll only get harder to keep up.

Dotting tools is the prompt for today. I love my dotting tools, but I didn't want to do a plain old boring dotticure for this, so I went with a design I haven't tried before, swirls!

I'm not sure about these. Last night, when I did them, I wasn't a big fan. The more I look at them the more they are growing on me!

I used three polishes from the Ciaté Dolls House collection: Poppet, Paper Doll and Dollface. I think Dollface is a little too subtle, it is almost invisible against the lilac.

What do you think?

Pretty Poppet: Review and Swatch

Last week I picked up the Ciaté Dolls House Collection in TKMaxx for the bargain price of £6.99.

I was super excited about these and wanted to try out these polishes straight away, so I started with a nice, simple mani using Poppet, a pastel lilac shape.

I love the colour of this polish. It is a pale lilac, so pastel it could almost be mistaken for white in certain lights. 

This polish is advertised as a 'porcelain finish'. Basically, it's matte. I love matte polishes, however this dries so fast that is makes application difficult as the polish has dried onto the brush before you manage to cover the whole nail. This means you have to use a really thick coat to ensure the polish doesn't dry too quickly, which then leads to a slightly streaky finish. Kind of a lose, lose situation!

I also found that this polish chipped so easily. On my left hand I wore the mani without topcoat and on my right hand I added my favourite super shiny Essence topcoat.

Considering my right hand generally gets used a lot more, after a day the right hand was still perfect, however the left hand had huge chunks of polish missing. The polish on my index finger literally peeled off in one big sheet, about 3/4 of the way down my nail.

For most polishes this would not be a big deal, as I would usually wear topcoat anyway. But what is the point in having that lovely Porcelain finish, if I then have to cover it in topcoat to make my mani last more than a few hours?!

Overall, I was not impressed with this polish at all. I love how it looks but the poor application and lasting power really let it down. I really hope the others in the collection are a bit better and this was just a bad bottle!

I was however really impressed with the studs I added. This were a bargain from Poundland. I used a blob of a cheap No.17 clear topcoat on the bottoms of them and stuck them in place with tweezers. I wore this mani for two days and managed not to lose a single stud, even on the hand without topcoat! :)

Mythology Nail Art

This weeks llama nails prompt is Mythology movies/films.

I have to admit, my mani this week is a bit lame. I've been feeling ill all week and haven't been bothered to paint my nails. Usually I paint them three times over the weekend, and I've done them once!

I loosely based this weeks mani on the film Hercules, painting Pegasus on my ring finger.

The nose went a little wrong, but I'm reasonably happy with how it turned out.

The base is Ciaté Poppet, with Pegasus painted in acrylic paint. I bought the Ciaté Dolls House collection earlier today for a bargain £6.99 in TkMaxx and I love it! The porcelain finish is beautiful. Watch out for swatches later in the week, when I'm hopefully feeling a bit better. 

An InLinkz Link-up