NOTD Jan 17/13 - Mr.Bubble gradient ruffian

Sometimes you just sit down to paint your nails with no real idea what you're going to do. You just look at your polishes til something jumps out at you and then you go with it.

When I did these nails, Lush Lacquer's Mr.Bubble screamed out at me for some more love - it's such an awesome polish but I've only worn it once. I decided to layer it over white polish (which I'm realizing is my manicure base colour of choice) in a cuticle gradient. But once I did it it just didn't seem like quite enough. There didn't seem to be enough of a fade from cuticle to tips, so it looked like I just painted half my nails with glitter. Not the effect I wanted. So to give the cuticle area more impact I painted on a stripe of Essence Ultimate Pink and turned it into a ruffian.

It was only after I'd finished that I had the thought that someone seeing my hands from a distance might think I had some horrible cuticle infection because of the bright pink colour! LOL But I had lots of compliments at work so I guess that wasn't the first thing people thought when they saw them!

I think these turned out pretty cool and unique looking, I don't think I've ever really seen a manicure like this one!

Review/NOTD Sep 2/12 - Lush Lacquer's Salt n' Peppa over gradient

I went back and forth in my mind a lot about what to wear under this polish! Since it's a black and white glitter you can wear pretty much anything with it, so it was hard to narrow it down! I thought about some shades, then I thought about doing a different colour on each finger. Then it was a matter of whether to do brights, pastels or ombre from thumb to pinky. I had settled on a selection of colours for each nail, but as I sat down and was about to do it, it hit me that I hadn't done a gradient in a while! So I picked out two of the shades I was going to use and gradient-ized them instead!

I had kind of forgotten the power of a gradient to really give impact to a design and make it look more interesting with minimal effort. I've tried different techniques, but my favourite is still the most basic - paint your nails with the bottom colour (the one closest to your cuticle) and then sponge on the upper colour(s) with a makeup sponge. I also like to go back with the bottom colour to sponge in the middle and blur the line a little better, and then paint a little bit of the tip colour with the brush from the bottle right on the ends to make sure the colour is really opaque there.

Then I topped it off with a coat of my second fantastic shade from Lush Lacquer, Salt n' Peppa! It's an awesome black and white glitter topcoat with all kinds of shapes - bar, hex, square, even vaguely rectangular ones. And there's also some iridescent silvery microglitter tossed in there too, so this has a nice sparkle to it as well as being very graphic and bold looking! It's nice and full of glitter
 just like Mr.Bubble, also no need to fish around for glitter. I did 1.5 to 2 coats anyways to get the coverage I like. The base is not quite as thick as Mr.Bubble too, which is nice.

Colours used for the gradient are Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Lacey Lilac and Barielle in Blossom.

Review/NOTD Aug 30/12 - Lush Lacquer's "Mr.Bubble"

I finally got my toe into the indie polishes pool, and I think I picked a couple of real good ones for my firsts! I decided the two I wanted most were from Lush Lacquer, a shop run by a mother and daughter team! I bought two shades, Mr.Bubble and Salt n' Peppa. Today I'll review and show you a swatch of Mr.Bubble!

The polish is in a clear base, and contains large and small hex glitters in matte white, matte pink, and matte blue. This is my first matte glitter and I love the way it looks! It's so fresh and different from the glitter I'm used to.

This is it on my nails, layered over two coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Wet Cement. My boyfriend actually pointed out that this looks like a retro linoleum floor, which is so true! I also really want to try this over a sheer light pink, like Essence Sweet as Candy. It would probably make a cool glitter sandwich candidate too - so many options!

The amount of glitter in this polish is awesome - you really don't have to fish. I have about two coats of glitter on here, but really it was one coat, and then a very bare second coat where I wiped off the brush almost completely before applying - just to fill in spaces where I felt there weren't enough large hex. It's pretty thick, so I can see this needing thinner eventually, but they include a note warning of that so no surprises there!

I'll leave you with one more bottle shot to admire! Next up will be Salt n' Peppa!