My Little Pony: Friendship is Manicures - Fluttershy

Fluttershy is a little girly, but also really shy, so I didn't want to do anything too over the top for her. I kept it simple - a solid color with a little bit of nail art embellishment.

I ended up custom mixing these colors to make it just right for Fluttershy. My base colors were Rimmel Lasting Finish in Sunshine, Barry M Limited Edition Pink, and Eyeko Rain. I added white to both the yellow and pink to make appropriate colors, mixing them drop by drop.

Rimmel Sunshine is really the perfect color for Fluttershy, after I diluted it with some white - at first glance it appears to be just a yellow creme, but when it comes out into the sunshine it has a lovely subtle hidden shimmer. Fluttershy's a bit like that too - at first she appears shy, timid, and easily frightened, but the best shines out of her when the time is right.

After the base of yellow, I carefully dotted on cutie mark butterflies in pink and blue. Actually, this manicure gave me the most compliments out of any pony mani so far - several people said how much they liked it. A sunny yellow is just the thing for a dreary day.

Nailgirl

My Little Pony: Friendship is Manicures - Rarity

I'm doing some NOTDs based on the characters of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. It's a really great show, and each character is a kick-ass girl who's full of personality. My first pony manicure is Rarity.

Rarity would love having her nails done (we already know she gets 'pony pedis'). She has to be all style and flash. So, I bet she would love the runway-inspired 'Ruffian Manicure'. I did my nails in half-Ruffian, half-Funky French. This was my first Ruffian, and to be honest my hands could have been steadier... but, I think it looks pretty neat anyway.

The white is Rimmel Chalk White, my standard white creme. To add a bit of unicorn sparkle, I put China Glaze White Cap over it, which is a fantastic shimmery pearly white. The blue is Barry M Nail Paint in Navy, a deep dark blue with a ton of shimmer.


Watch for more pony manis soon!

Nailgirl

Always wear underwear - Stretch the life of sheer polish

Of course you should always wear underwear. But do you go commando on your nails? If you wear a lot of sheer polishes, you should consider wearing underwear polish.

Underwear polish is a neutral-colored polish you wear underneath your colored polish. It could be white or a nude color to suit your skin tone. The idea is, instead of needing to use 4 coats of sheer polish to get your desired opacity, you'd only need one coat of underwear and 2 coats of polish (for example). That way, you use less of your polish and it lasts longer.

I did a test run of underwear when I recently put on Eyeko Vintage. I love this sweet turquoise color, but it takes 3 or even 4 coats to get a good opacity. And Eyeko polish comes in these cute tiny little bottles, with every color being limited edition - so my bottle of Vintage is running out fast.

I chose a white underwear polish, to emphasize the brightness of the turquoise. It's Rimmel Lasting Finish 085 Chalk White, a basic white creme. I applied basecoat, then two coats of Rimmel Chalk White, then two coats of Eyeko Vintage.

I'm pretty pleased with the results. (I would be more so, if my application were better!) The white base keeps the colors nice and bright, and after two coats the Eyeko isn't very streaky. There is no VNL (visible nail line) to be seen, because of the opaque white underneath. The thin layers of sheer polish lend a bit of a squishy jelly kind of look, even though it's a creme.

Nailgirl

Hauling in the USA: ULTA!

ULTA! Oh, Ulta. I wish I had one of you anywhere near me. How amazing. On my very last night in the US, I was out with a bunch of the girls and we stumbled upon an Ulta store. I casually suggested that we pop our heads in and see what's there. I am so glad I did.

At first, I was good - I carefully selected two of my must-have polishes from the displays. I chose Don't Mess with OPI from OPI's Texas collection, and China Glaze White Cap from their nautical collection.

Then, we found the clearance section, and I had to spring for three more:

In clearance I found a polish I've been wanting for a while! From China Glaze's Vintage Vixens collection, the copper brown bottle you see up there is Foxy.
Light pink with gold shimmer is Essie Cool Lots, and the purple Ulta is called Femme Fatale. I'm not too crazy about the purple, but it was only 50 cents! So it, uh, leapt into my shopping basket.

Nailgirl

Cinderella Nails

I'm taking a trip to the US, and while I'm there I'll be seeing my sister star in Rogers & Hammerstein's Cinderella -- and I have just the nails for the occasion! Delicate and subtle and beautiful, fit for a princess.

I started with a basecoat and two layers of a white cream - enough to ensure opacity. (Note to self: I need a one-coater white cream!) Then, I put on two layers of my ever-favorite layering polish, Revlon Sweet Nothings in Rendez-Blue.

Unfortunately, the effect doesn't come out well in the pictures (took them on a cloudy English morning), but when my nails hit the sunlight, they flash pink and all that glitter comes out. Layering the polish over white gives a sweet pastel look that comes to life in the sun.

Nailgirl

detox - white notd

After spending lots of time recently in red, blue, purple and other dark polishes, my nails had become seriously stained. Really not nice to look at. So here's my answer, to give my nails a chance to relax a bit without fear of staining - a 'detox', if you will.

It's Rimmel London Lasting Finish in 085, the aptly named Chalk White, and with a nice coat of shiny topcoat it doesn't come out too 'chalky' or 'white out-y'. I rather like white nails, in fact.

The downside of having horribly stained nails underneath them, though, is that any tipwear or chipping is painfully obvious, because my nails are not even remotely close to white-colored. Uck.

Nailgirl

Too lazy to remove hex glitter polish?

Hex glitter. It's beautiful, flashy, different. When you wear it, your nails get noticed - and that's great! But all good things come to an end, and when it comes time to remove that chunky glitter... It isn't fun.

In fact, when I tried to remove my Christmas manicure, my acetone-based nail polish remover ate through two thick layers of Seche Vite, three layers of polish, and a basecoat... leaving nothing but the glitter behind. It removed everything around the glitter, but couldn't remove the glitter itself.

Awful, right? There are methods for getting rid of these glitters, but this time I decided to just roll with it. What's the harm, I figured, in wearing these glitters another day? So here's what I did.

I took my absolute favorite layering polish, Revlon Sweet Nothings in Satin Sheets, and put two layers over the glitter. The result was a milky white base filled with golden flakie-ish glitter, and chunks of gold hex glitter buried underneath. In passing you could mistake them for naked nails, but then the hex glitter catches your eye, and you look at it, and you see the delicate play of even more glitter...

For something I just slapped on because I was too lazy to scrub the glitter away, I think this was a very cool outcome. I'd do it again.

Nailgirl

Retro nails for a day

A found a 1940s tutorial for a manicure. It seemed so ingenious, I just had to try it out!

It's pretty simple: basically a half-moon manicure with french tips, over almond-shaped nails. You leave the moons and tips bare and paint the remainder red.

The genius of this technique is that it would really stretch out your wear: bare tips means no tipwear, obviously, and bare moons means that the gap from your nails growing out would be less evident. You could probably wear a manicure like this for a week or longer if you were careful.

Now my tips aren't very white and I don't even have moons, so I played with this look a little bit. I filed my nails into almond shapes (which took forever), and started with a base of sheer white - in this case, a doubled-up coat of my sheer white basecoat.

Since I was wearing polish under the red, I couldn't take advantage of the trick the article offers for perfect tips: simply wipe away the red polish in a neat line. Instead, I had to freehand it. I'm not very good at this, as you can tell. To boot, if you examine the pictures you'll notice that a second person is meant to be painting your nails, not you yourself. So my lines didn't come out great.

Ashamed at my shoddy drawing skills, I put a layer of sparkly white over it to distract (Satin Sheets from Revlon's Sweet Nothings collection)

So I didn't love this manicure. It would probably have looked better if I had steadier hands, my nails were longer and not stained, and if the red weren't so bright. But still, it was fun and fascinating to do the kind of manicure my grandmother might have done. What a clever technique to extend the wear of your polish.

Nailgirl