Before & After: Ice Princess

Hello!!

Today's theme in the Crumpet's Nail Tarts 31 Day Challenge is to do nail art over a glitter base. This is something I struggle with--both because I hate covering up gorgeous glitter polishes, and because it can be difficult to find a pattern or set of patterns that work with the beauty of the glitter and also show up well.

But every once in a while, something comes out the way you hope it would.

I started out with Windestine's Peacekeeper, a shimmery, glimmery, frostily delicious milky-based polish with silver and purple glitters:

Windestine Peacekeeper

 

Windestine Peacekeeper

Windestine Peacekeeper

Then I stamped my heart out with Pueen 49, using Finger Paints It's An Original!. Finally, I added some diamond-shaped glitters to the design:

What do you think? I think this is a beautiful winter look, and I love the way the art plays off the polish and comes together. If I had it to do over again, I think I'd put the diamond glitters on each of the nails. I love it, it has a mosiac-y, kaleidoscope-y feel, and made me feel like a beautiful snow princess!

Hope you're having a great weekend!
M.

An InLinkz Link-up

Favorites: Purples! (or, watch how my swatching has changed, lol!)

Hello there!

We're down to the last of my color-based favorites posts--after this I'll turn to my favorite specialty polishes, and possibly my favorite fall, Halloween, and holiday polishes, if people are interested. I can also do a series of my favorite nail art if people are interested in that; just let me know in the comments what interests you. I always prefer to focus my attention on things I know people are interested in! :)

For now, I've saved one of my favorites for last--purple. From magentas to plums to grapes to blurples--who doesn't love a good purple? Interestingly though...As I started going through all of my favorite purples, I realized a lot of them are duochromes, and I was hoping to do a separate post on duochromes. Looks like I might just have to do a post just for purple duochromes!

So let's see what I come up with when I rummage through my bag of pretty non-duochrome polishes...

::rummage, rummage, rummage::

Ah yes! Here we go! Let's start with something on the soft side...

China Glaze Tantalize

Soft and feminine, a rich lilac with an icy blue shimmer. I have no idea what one would wear to have tea with the Queen of England, but I think this color might just work.

Enough of that soft stuff...let's go to the dark side!!!


Color Club Glitter Wonderland

Strangely misnamed, this polish doesn't have glitter in it; it has a fleck finish. And, to top it off, my best pictures of it, in retrospect, suck. Probably because the bottle is in focus and the polish isn't--how that made it through, I just don't know. Ah well--live and learn...and along the way, wear this polish, 'cause blurple in a flecked finish doesn't get better than this.

Grrr...focus fail...

Color Club Winter Affair

I hope you like this polish, because you'll probably be seeing it again if I do a 'favorite holiday polishes' post. This is a rich burnished plum polish with a fleck finish...and again, I can only find out-of-focus pictures of it. Looks like I'll be swatching it again...But in the meantime, you get the gist, I hope.

Focus FTW!

Zoya Carly

Okay, this post is quickly turning into an extremely humbling journey through some of my worst early swatches. This one's in focus, but the clean-up is atrocious--clearly this was before I discovered acetone and a nail brush. ::shudders::

If there is such a thing as a reurple (red+purple), this is it. Okay, it's more like a magenta+grape sort of purple, but I like that coinage and I'm going to stand by it. No matter what you call it, though, you have to agree that the rich flashes of color here are beautiful.

Clean-up needed on aisle one...

Zoya Lotus

One of my favorites of the favorites, this is a smoky, deep lavender with red-purple flecks in it. This polish has amazing depth and beautiful flashes of light. It truly is a work of art.

Fergie by Wet n Wild Ferguson Crest Syrah

Horrible name, beautiful polish. This is a bit of a cheat on my part, because this really is a subtle duochrome, that shows gold and brown at the edges in certain lights. But, in most lights, it doesn't, so I'm going to include it here. The thing is, the duochrome that peeks out now and then is like finding a $20 bill on the sidewalk while walking to pick up the $1000 prize you just won--it's awesome, but you didn't have to have it to make it a really good day. This polish is, in essence, a blackened plum--but with a fleck finish that keeps the colors dancing through one another from all angles. That this comes from Wet n Wild just goes to show that you don't have to pay a ton of money to get a stunning polish.

Was this tip wear or Seche shrinkage? Either way...>.<

a-England Avalon

Do I even need to say anything about this polish? Is there anything that can be said about how amazing it is that hasn't already been said? This shows exactly why purple is the color of royalty--a luxurious blurple in a smooth-as-satin finish that just envelopes the nail in muted light. Even in my less-than-skilled swatch, the stunning beauty of this shines through.

Clean-up, aisle two...

Windestine Heartbeat

Last but not least, a stunning beauty of a polish (and the swatch doesn't make me twitch all over when I look at it!). Including this polish in this post also might be considered a bit of a cheat, since I'm going to do separate posts on my favorite glitter polishes. But this glitter is so tiny and fine, I think it can easily fall into more of a fleck-type category, and darn it, I'm sticking with that.  The base color of this polish, a deep, sugary plum, is set alight with magenta purple glitter...it's pretty here, but so much more stunning in person. If you think you might like it from the pictures, go get it, because I guarantee you, you will gasp when you see it IRL.

Finally...a decent swatch

And, that's it...for now. I have a swatch spam post that I'll be showing you in the next few days that I realized, completely coincidentally, contains almost all purple polishes, several of which would have certainly been included in this post if they weren't already ear-marked. So there is more purple hovering on the horizon.

Thanks for taking a look--and thanks for your patience with my old, yucky swatches! This post has truly made me want to go back and completely reswatch every post from my first year blogging, lol!! If only I had infinite time...

Hugs and loves,
M.

Review: Windestine

(Some products in this post were sent for review.)

Hello!!

Today I have three polishes from Windestine's new Little Women collection to show you. :)

Little Women is one of my favorite books of all time...I've read it more times than I care to admit, and it still brings up emotion for me. Every time I read it, I'm outraged on Jo's behalf when her manuscript gets burned, and I cry my eyes out when...well, you know when, and if you don't, I don't want to spoil it for you. It's a special book that celebrates the unique differences between people, and the bonds they form when guided by love. :)

The first polish she sent me was inspired by Beth, the sister who always sees the best in everyone and has the biggest heart in the world; the polish is called Heartbeat, and it's inspired by Beth's big heart and the light it shines on the world. It's a purple crelly with purple-copper glitter in it, and the glitter seems to glow a beautiful magenta from within:

Windestine Heartbeat, artificial light

This is three coats with topcoat; this applied without problems and built depth with the three coats. The glitter in this is amazing--it's like someone crushed up starlight and sprinkled it into the base. These pictures don't do it full justice; the glitter shines so much brighter and is more magenta that it plays on camera; the glitter tends to look a little more white on camera for some reason. The top picture captures the glow of the glitter most accurately, but is still a little less vibrant than in real life.

Her next polish, Kizuna, represents the bond between the sisters and their mother ('Kizuna' means 'bond' in Japanese). She wanted the polish to represent a tree along with the roots of that tree, to reflect the deep roots of the family that enable these sisters to grow. It's a brown jelly-based polish with purple, green, and copper hex glitter:

Windestine Kizuna, indirect sunlight

This is three coats of Kizuna; it went on well, and the thin layers allow the glitters to develop depth. Three coats should be fine for you, but I had a small bit of visible nail when in direct sunlight; this is probably because I have a bit of a case of blogger-stain-itis! If you don't, you should be fine.

I think brown polishes can be tricky to make look pretty, and I think this one succeeds. It reminds me of a wisteria tree, with green leaves and purple flowers on a brown vine. It was flattering and interesting visually on the nail. :)

Because of the pretty purple and green, I couldn't help wonder what this would look like layered over another polish. I happened to have Finger Paints Isty Bitsy Spider (a lilac purple with blue shimmer), so I threw one coat on to see how it would look:

This feels to me almost like an entirely different polish! Talk about versatility! I love the way the coppers stand out more, and the purples and greens are still strong enough to add pretty splashes of color. I adore this combination. :)

Last up is Peacekeeper, inspired by sensible sister Meg. She's the oldest of the sisters, and the beauty of the bunch. Her personality and importance in the book are subtle, and I believe this polish suits her perfectly. Peacekeeper is a soft dove-gray jelly with pink, purple, and teeeny olive gray glitters:

Windestine Peacekeeper, direct sunlight

Windestine Peacekeeper, indirect sunlight

The pictures show three coats with topcoat; the formula was fine although I did have to be a bit careful about patchiness. This polish makes me think of a beautiful snowmaiden skating across a pond on a cold winter afternoon. The small glitters catch the light in a way that makes them seem almost holographic. I don't think I'd call this a 'milky' glitter; it doesn't have that feel of colored glitter set into white. This is more cohesive; the glitters and base come together in a more muted overall palette rather than being about contrast like milky glitters are. Of course this is beautiful any time of the year, but I can see it being an amazing spring polish, and also perfect for snow manicures in the winter. I see a Sugar Plum Fairy manicure in my future with this...

Each of these polishes is well thought out, and they each have a uniqueness to them that makes them unlike other polishes I've seen. While I do generally prefer polishes that cover in two coats rather than three, I've come to understand the depth you can build with a thinner glitter polish that needs more coats, and these are well-served by that, I think. :)

You can find Windestine's Etsy shop by clicking here; you can find her Big Cartel shop here. Her full-sized polishes are $8.00, and her minis go for $4.00. While you're there, be sure to check out Moana and Leilani, two of my other favorites in her shop. :)

Thanks for reading! Big hugs and much love. :)
M.

(The polishes in this post, except for Finger Paints Isty Bitsy Spider, were sent for review.)