Secretary`s Nail Art

16 September 2015

Bundlemonster - Polynesia - BM-XL109

If you are anything like me, you might not be quite ready to give up summer, just yet.
The weather has been great here in Northern Ireland, and I was feeling like doing a review of the Bundlemonster - Polynesia - BM-XL109.

The plate is gorgeous, and is like an image buffet, very fittingly the plate is named Flower Buffet.

You can get the Bundlemonster - Polynesia - BM-XL109 plate over here, at the time of posting this, Bundlemonster is Out Of Stock for this plate.

Make sure that you subscribe to my channel for more stamping plate reviews.
I hope you all enjoy the video I put together, I had a lot of fun making it.

There will be a manicure using this plate, up on the blog this week.

14 September 2015

Über Chic - Limited Edition - Zombie Love

Hello everyone. I went on a huge online shopping spree not long ago, and the parcels are now arriving one by one.

One of the things that I purchases was the Über Chic - Limited Edition - Zombie Love stamping plate. Hallowing is coming up next, and I wanted to be ready this year for some Ghoulish Demands.

This year I might actually participate in a Zombie Event. They were hiring "improve theater people", and I sent my application couple of weeks ago. Since I do so much roleplaying, I thought this would be an excellent opportunity for me to show of my skills, as well as trying Zombie life out.
I am usually not the Zombie in these kind of events, but a Zombie Hunter.

...But all of you didn't come over here to look at my Zombie Hunter outfits. Why would you, when I got an awesome stamping plate to show you. Without further ado:

Make sure that you subscribe to my channel for more stamping plate reviews.

I hope you all enjoy the video I put together, I had a lot of fun making it. Below you can find a still image of the entire plate. I was playing around with my scanner and found a great way to get good pictures of stamping plates.

Über Chic - Limited Edition - Zombie Love

The plate can be found at Über Chic Beauty's web page and cost $14.99.

7 September 2015

Technicolor Entertainment

I was going to a musical, and wanted a special manicure for the occasion. The musical was Rent by Jonathan Larson, preformed by the local theater group here in Northern Ireland, marking the end of summer.

Lately I have been buying a lot of indie nail polishes, and I wanted to use one of them.
I promised you girls to follow up on #itrustindiepolish and mainly fature indie polishes on my blog this month, so I am very excited to kick it off with this manicure.

After thinking long and hard, I ended up with Nail Pattern Boldness - Le Big Party.
I even went full on glitterati (!).

Recently I was browsing Poundland, and I came across a set of nail charms "accidentally" ended up in my shopping cart... I am sure we have all been there. Nail stuff; in the shopping cart it goes.
The brand is called Allure, and I think most my nail charms are from that company, they usually have really cute Christmas themed ones, as well as cute bejeweled bows, that I have worn on a couple of occasions.

Nail Pattern Boldness - Le Big Party

It took 3 coats and a bit of dabbing to get it to cover perfectly. I am very pleased with the final look, and it did award me some compliments at the musical. Job well done.

30 August 2015

GuestNails

We had so much fun last time I did her nails, so we decided to throw ourselves at it again.
This time we swapped the wine, for a non-alcoholic wine spritzer, which meant more stable hands and more intricate work could be done.
This was perhaps the most elaborate mani I have done so far.

I showed her my most recent purchases, and we had a little brain-storming session going.
Minions, smiley-faces, school art... ideas was thrown around.

She works with kids, so we wanted to do something that would be fun for them to look at.
That's when we came up with the idea to try a pond manicure with koi fish. I had just received some nail mail from Bundlemonster, and one of the plates I bought was BM - 725, and it has some lovely koi fishes on it.

For this manicure we used Barry M - Speedy - Supersonic for base manicure, and stamped with BM - 725 in Wet n Wild - Black Creme, filled the koi fishes in with China Glaze - Midnight Kiss, Seventeen - Bronze Shimmer, Kiko - 492 and lastly Kiko - 493. I made the kelp using a striping brush and Kiko - 531, and Kiko - 534. Let the decals dry and cut them up to fit the nails.

Guest-Nail at Secretary's Nail Art

To finish it all off, I added a few drops of Barry M - Speedy - Supersonic to a clear polish and added 2 coats of that over the design, added the waves and the kelp, and then two more coats of the Barry M - Speedy - Supersonic with clear polish mix and one coat of topcoat to seal the design.

Guest-Nail at Secretary's Nail Art

I had so much positive feedback from the last time I was showing Sam's nails here on my blog, so we decided to aim at making this a regular thing. I teach her in the ways of a polish-aholic, and she lend me her time, and nails.

Guest-Nail at Secretary's Nail Art

The kids loved her nails, and she reported to me that they had asked to see them many times. So I would say that these nails where a definite hit.
I do not think we will do something THIS elaborate nex time.

Thank you Sam for your patience!

28 August 2015

My first indie polishes

I was very quick to dip my toes in the indie world.I was not so good at staying there, and actually using them. A bit over 3 years ago, I posted on this blog about my indie haul. 3 years. Imagine that...
Long time ago.

My first indie - haul

But it was going to take awhile until I tried them all. Matter of fact, I still have not tried them all.
Girly Bits - Wet Bikini and Girly Bits - Promise Me, are both still untrieds(!!!).

The original reason was the hassle with glitter removals, so they just stayed in their box, later they moved into a Helmer, and there they stayed. Never tried, never loved.
I feel sorry for them. So I will definitely take them out and put them on my talons, soon.

I hope.

It's on my to-do-list. I will get there.

I am quite embarrassed over my old swatching pictures, so I will be doing new pictures of them as well.

The reason for this trip down Memory Lane, is because I wanted to show you all that #itrustindiepolish

My indie collection might not be as large as many others, but lately (since the whole Mentality thing blew up), I have made a point to order more indies. So the next month or so, I will mainly focus on indie nail polishes, and show them to you in all their glory.

As long as they are fully disclosing ingredients, and do testing, I don't see the problem.
If you where to have a problem with a polish, you would be able to point to what you reacted to.
Open and honest communication all around.

Raise your hand with me and say: I Trust Indie Polish

27 August 2015

The Dictionary of Colours

I think shades within a colour group sometimes can be hard to nail down.
Ingrid Sundberg is a writer, and wanted to be better at describing colours in her work.

That is how "The Dictionary of Colors" became a thing on Imgur. I hunted down the owner of the pictures, as I wanted to share it with you all. If you follow me in Pinterest, you might have seen it already, as it's been saved over a 100 times!

The cool thing about this, is that it is not just genious for writers that want's to be more colorful in their novels, but it works great for us nail polish geeks for describing our nail polishes. I have also added some other words that would go in the same colour family underneath the pictures. I have to thank Once Upon A Lexicon and Wikipedia for those.

So without further ado.

Other shades of white would include: milk, chalk, oatmeal, champagne, crystal, vanilla, blonde, linen, cornsilk, honeydew, seashell, eburnean.

Other shades of tan would include: Khaki, biscuit, buff, ecru, camel, mushroom, taupe, nude, bisque, toast, dun, suede, sarcoline.

Other shades of yellow would include: sunshine, straw, goldenrod, citrine, taxi cab, sunflower, apricot yellow, jasmine, papaya whip, lemon chiffon, ecru, arylide yellow, aureole, chartreuse, jonquil, mikado.

Other shades of orange would include: Pumpkin, ocher, ginger, flame, Princeton orange, persimmon, tangelo, Portland orange, bittersweet, sunset, tawny, peach, gamboge.

Other shades of red would include: maroon, burgundy, carmine, vermilion, ruddy, henna, terracotta, poppy, tyrian red, cardinal, rust, rosso corsa, auburn, folly, redwood, vermilion, Venetian red, Tuscan red, raspberry, lava, carnelian, alizarine crimson, falu.

I want to throw something in here about the color Saffron. Originally Once Upon A Lexicon mentioned that this was a red shade. It was first used to describe a color in England around 1200 (thank you wikipedia). Wikipedia has it listed as a golden yellow. Below I attached a color chart from Adobe Color. As you can see Saffron could below to the colour group: White, Yellow, Orange, Brown and Red. Cool right?

Source: https://color.adobe.com/Saffron-color-theme-313744/

Other shades of pink would include: peony, raspberry, roseate, cerise, puce, amaranth, brink pink, folly, thulian pink, Mountbatten pink, carnation pink, Baker-Miller pink, desire, razzmatazz.

Other shades of purple would include: pomegranate, puce, wisteria, Byzantium, fandango, heliotrope, tyrian, thistle, cherise, cattleya.

Other shades of blue would include: turquoise, aqua, cyan, ice, cornflower, majorelle blue, Bleu De France, Brandeis blue, Cambridge blue, Carolina blue, duke, federal, midnight. Prussian, phthalo blue, zaffre, Tiffany blue, viridian, denim, Celeste, glaucous, Eton blue, Columbia blue, Dodger blue, Persian blue, Oxford blue, Palitinate blue, smalt.

Other shades of green would include: Kelly, grass, leaf, apple, jade, spinach, willow, avocado, bottle green, asparagus, artichoke, mantis, forest, malachite, harlequin, shamrock, verdigris, xanadu.

Other shades of brown would include: earth, copper, chestnut, burnt sienna, auburn, bay, bistre, russet, sorre, beaver, burnt sienna, burnt umber, camel, cordovan, coyote, ecru, fallow, fawn, field drab, fulvous, isabelline, lion, liver, rofous, russet, sepia, sinopia, tawny, wenge, wheat, titian, wenge.

Other shades of grey would: dust, stone, granite, cement, platinum, battleship grey, Payne's grey, slate, timberwolf, gunmetal.

Other shades of black would include: licorice, raisin, outer space, bistre, eerie black, Jet black.

So there you have it, a start to better colour knowledge, and colour descriptions. I hope you enjoyed it. Most certain that there are colours missing here, but it's a great start.

Hope you enjoyed it!

26 August 2015

Frankening

So if you read yesterdays post about re-purposing your nail polish, you might be wondering what to do with all the empty nail polish bottles.

First we have to clean the bottles. <-- Follow the link for more information on how to do that properly.

How about making your own nail polish?

Frankening (fránk-ən-ing) – The DIY practice of mixing one’s own unique nail polish using glitter, micas, pigments or eye shadow with clear or other polishes.

You can buy some really cool Frankening sets, where everything is safe and tested, and all you have to do, is decide how the end result is going to look. As I am a Secretary, I have taken the time to collect this list of Frankening Suppliers. If you are missing a supplier on this list, please let me know, and I will add them.