Suzi Says Feng Shui

Suzi Says Feng Shui was a polish that I won in Talonted's giveaway. I think it's hard to find OPI in England so I was pleased that I got this polish as it was probably something I would have never gotten myself. 

The colour of this polish is a really nice shade of blue that is different from any other blue I have. It's more of a teal/dark royal blue and I think it's a really unique colour. As OPI has a really nice brush it's a great application and the consistency gives a nice coverage and has a great sheen to it even without a top coat. 

 In the photos, this polish looks as though it's more of a jelly which I like because I like the jelly look of polishes and yet the creme consistency which this polish offers. 

This is such an interesting colour to me as it's not too much of a blue blue and I think it's so eye catching. I think if you can get your hands on OPI then I would recommend this polish if you're looking for. 

English Breakfast

I suddenly had the urge to do english breakfast nails so that's what I did. I wanted the food to stand out and not be too serious so I put them all on colourful backgrounds.

The base colours I used were Barry M Bright Red, American Apparel Neon Green, Barry M Cyan Blue, American Apparel Neon Yellow and Barry M Bright Purple. I put on white acrylic paint under all the food to make sure the colours stood out then I used Barry M Matt White and Yellow for the fried egg. I then mixed a bit of the Barry M Yellow and Collection 2000 Praline Whirl for the shadow on the yolk, I then used acrylic paint for the grey and white highlights and shadows. For the tomatoes I used Barry M Bright Red with Pink Flamingo in the middle, Barry M Yellow for the seeds and Retro 3 Red for the outlining. On the sausages I used a mixture of American Apparel Mousse and Barry M Gold, Collection 2000 Praline Whirl and white acrylic paint for the highlights and Barry M Mushroom for the shadows and grill marks. I used Barry M Block Orange for the baked beans sauce and orange and white acrylic paint for the beans themselves. Finally, I used Collection 2000 Praline Whirl and Barry M Pinky Caramel for the bacon with bits of American Apparel Mousse and Barry M Mushroom for the shadows and outlining. 

I'm extremely pleased with these and think the egg, beans and tomatoes are my favourites despite the tomatoes looking the worst until the very end when I outlined them. 

Unicorn

So I think I've suddenly delevoped a love for unicorns. I've got this top from Henry Holland's Debenhams collection and seeing as though I love love love Henry Holland and I now apparently love unicorns I thought it would be good nail art inspiration.

I chose to go for more of a pinky background and to use the blues as the hair and highlights. 

I used Collection 2000 Sugared Almond as the background colour and then a mixture of Barry M Strawberry Ice Cream, American Apparel Neon Yellow and Gosh Spot On! Pink. I then used white acrylic paint for the unicorn and star nails and various shades of grey for the outlining and shadows on the unicorn. I then used Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream, Mint Green and Rimmel Aqua Cool all one their own and mixed with Barry M Matt White to create the hair and the nose on the unicorn. I then added some acrylic glitter paint on the star and unicorn nails os that it could be watered down so it wasn't full of glitter. The rainbow nails were down with pink, yellow and green acrylic paint simply so that I could blend them to make them look more like the rainbows on the top. 

Barry M Racing Green

 I actually got this polish as a present for my birthday and I'll admit, it wasn't one that I was wanting to buy for myself but it surprised me when I first used it. The reason I didn't buy it was because it looked really dark, and although a green, you know I don't love dark colours.

Although it looks quite dark, this polish has a shimmer to it so when it is in the sunlight, it comes off a bit lighter and glittery. This is another jelly/creme polish with being shiny and jelly looking but without the sheerness.

You can see the shimmer quite well in this picture and it wasn't really sunny at the time so if you take a look at the thumb in this picture, you can see that it comes off brighter when in the sun. 

It gives good coverage and is a nice consistency as it's not too much of a thick creme polish. I think there are probably better dark greens if you want just colour but as this has the shimmer to it, it definitely offers something different. 

Barry M Raspberry

So as Autumn is here I thought it would be good to swatch some autumn colours. Although I can't quite capture the exact colour of this polish I'll still review it. Every time I took a picture of these nails they came up a lot redder than the actual polish which is more of a dark wine colour.

I love the colour of this polish although I'm not sure if it's a bit too much for me. I really wish I could get the right colour because it is so beautiful and really perfect for autumn. I'd say it maybe has more of a jelly feeling than a creme but it isn't sheer so it's nice coverage with a nice shiny finish. 

This photo looks even lighter and redder but I seriously seriously tried to get the true shade. 

You can kind of see a truer colour on the first two nails so maybe you can get the idea but as you can see, it's a really nice coverage and consistency. I've seen many colours similar if not identical to this colour so there's probably a wide range to choose from and others may be more creme than this one but as Barry M is great value, I think this one is good for me. 

Needle Dragging

The fact that I used a striping brush to drag the polishes has me wondering whether this is the needle dragging technique or not. I haven't done this technique before but it's really easy to do and it looks as if it took a lot longer than it actually did.

I decided to do a feature nail of different colours to show that it can be an autumn design as well.

To create this look I put on a clear coat of polish on top of my base just before I applied the colours so it was easier to drag. As I forgot to do this on one of my nails on the other hand, I can safely say that it does help and it will drag easier and create a nicer pattern. The colours on most of my fingers are Gosh Spot On! Pink, Barry M Matt White, Bright Purple, American Apparel Neon Green, Barry M Indigo and Pure Turquoise. On my ring finger there is Rimmel Sea Green, Barry M Mint Green, Yellow, Coral and Black. 

Barry M Black Multi Glitter

So I got this polish recently and I thought it would be great on a Halloween mani so I decided to swatch it to see the full effect. Barry M Black Multi Glitter is a black polish with micro holographic glitter in it which creates a nice depth when on the nail. 

It's hard to capture the holographic glitter in photos as it just looks silver but in the sunlight, it shows up in all different colours. I really like this polish as the glitter makes it less dark and gloomy as regular black polish/regular glitters and it makes it so more interesting without being too over the top with glitter.

The first coat of this polish is quite sheer which I find to be the same as their regular black but with two coats it looks like a solid black. These nails have two coats of the black multi glitter but I think if I was going to use it on my nails, I'd probably use the black colour as the base and then put this multi glitter on top so I didn't use too much and loose the glitter in layering. 

I think this is a really good polish and although I don't tend to look at black polishes a lot, I'd say that this is a unique polish that definitely caught my eye immediately. 

Barry M Peach Melba

So a while ago I decided that I was going to do swatches of nail polishes as I always find them useful. Anyway, I did my first one ages ago and then never actually wrote anything about it and carried on with my life so I decided that today would be the day that I used the photos and also did more swatches.  As you can tell by my nail length, it was a while ago and seeing these photos now makes me miss my long nails. So, long story short, here is my swatch and review of Barry M Peach Melba.

I'm quite a big fan of this colour as it's a nice creme pastel colour that's not too orange for me. As I colour coordinate my polishes, I keep them in an order of shade which does not run by the rainbow order at all. I keep this colour in with my pinks and cream/nudes which for me is good as I'm not a major orange person, its probably my most hated colour to be on me. 

Being a major Barry M fan I obviously don't have a problem with the application or brush but I will say that some colours tend to be sheerer and more jelly like than others. Peach melba is not one of these. The test for me is if I can clearly see the the line where the whites of my nails start if that makes sense. This polish is not one of these, I am able to cover my nail well with one thick coat which I like. 

I haven't put a top coat on these nails so the true colour shows and you can see that it is nice and shiny and doesn't look sheer when in the light. As I am so very pale, I think this colour makes me look slightly tanned because of the shade which is great. You can see this colour in one of my designs here. 

So to conclude, I would highly recommend this colour and as Barry M polishes are £2.99 you/I can't say no to them. 

Russian Dolls

These nails are of Russian Nesting Dolls/Matryoshka Dolls or whatever you want to call them. I've thought about doing these nails for a long time and as I had no other inspiration today and a lot of free time I decided to go ahead and do them. I don't even know how long these took but it was probably too long. 

The polishes I used were Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream, Yellow, Spring Green, Coral, Bright Purple, Bright Pink and Mushroom. The black and white details are acrylic paint and all the faces are Barry M Pinky Caramel.

Totoro

So for these nails I decided to do Totoro nails! The film is really cute so I thought that if the characters were in nail art form they'd still be just as adorable.

Starting from the thumb there is the Camphor tree, Catbus, Totoro, Chu and Chibi!

Ok, so I used a lot of polishes for these nails as well so I'll start from the thumb again and work my way across. All of the nails are on a background colour of Barry M Matt White and all of the black is acrylic paint. On the thumb I used Barry M Mushroom and a mixture of Mushroom and Black for the tree trunk. I used Barry M Spring Green, Racing Green and Rimmel Sea Green for the leaves of the tree. On my index finger I used Barry M Gold, Yellow and Coral and American Apparel Mousse. On my middle finger, I used Barry M Grey and Bloom Nicole for Totoro. On my ring finer I used OPI Suzi Says Feng Shui and on my little finger I just used the black acrylic paint to outline the chibi.

I think my favourite nails are the Catbus and Chu but considering the Catbus was my favourite in the film I'm not really surprised.

 

Birds

So I have this tray from Ikea and I thought that the birds would look good as nail art.

So I went to my first Sally Beauty Supply and I got quite a few things. Along with the acetone I got an OPI that was reduced to less than £4. I think over here the full price is £11/£12 so I couldn't say no to it. It was OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls and that's what I used as the base colour. It's an off white but more on the grey side than the cream in terms of off white. 

I tried to use as many polishes as I could instead of acrylic paint. So, starting with the thumb and moving across I used Barry M Block Orange, Bright Red and Cyan Blue. On the index finger I used Barry M Yellow, Cyan Blue and Block Orange. Barry M Spring Green, Racing Green, Block Orange and Cyan Blue on the middle finger. On the ring finger I used Cyan Blue, Cobalt Blue, NPP1, Bright Purple and Block Orange. Finally on the little finger I used Barry M NPP1, Bright Red and Block Orange. All of the white and brown are acrylic paint and the NPP1 is the pink that has no other name as it seems to be a limited edition polish or something.  

Anyway, that was a long list and probably quite pointless but hopefully it helped someone otherwise I'm just making crazy lists. 

Chalkboard

So these nails are inspired by this Robin Moses tutorial. I only started watching Robin Moses' videos a couple of months ago, I'd heard of her but I thought she would be stuck up given the fact that everyone knows she's one of the best, boy was I wrong. She is so funny in her videos and so down to earth that it makes me love her even more! Anyway on to the nails...

I used American Apparel Army Jacket as the base colour and then acrylic paint for the other colours. I thought that acrylic pain would look better than polish for this design and I used Rimmel Mattifying Top Coat. I think these are really fun and cute and not too bad on me considering it's quite a dark base colour. 

Watercolour

I finally got my hands on some acetone so I couldn't resist the watercolour technique for my nails. I also cut them down quite a bit as my thumb nail had breaks in it on both sides so I went for the chop on all of them so that they ware equal. Having watched videos on the watercolour technique, I expected it to be a lot easier than it was but I think the problem I was having was that the polishes weren't spreading out as much as they should be, any one go any tips as to why that might be?

Anyway, here are the nails.

I used Barry M Matt White as the base colour, H&M Sophisticated Susanna, 17 Twist and Barry M Cyan Blue and Spring Green. I really like the colour combination of these nails and they're welcome in the cold weather I've been having. I also added some 1.5mm rhinestones to create an accent nail.