NOTD: China Glaze Tongue and Chic

China Glaze Tongue and Chic

Today's NOTD is a polish from China Glaze's new Fall collection, Autumn Nights. I had my eye on a couple of the shades, but I only picked up two colours...for now. 

The one that caught my eye immediately was this colour, Tongue and Chic (cute name). It caught my eye because I didn't have anything like it in my collection. I have a lot of blues, and a lot of greens, but not a gorgeous blue/green mix like this.

Tongue and Chic is a shimmery  (almost frost finish) turquiose/emerald shade. It is an absolute stunner, and incredibly opaque. I only needed one coat for it.

The formula was a little bit troubling on this one, it was a little streaky and thick, and I got air bubbles on a couple of fingers. 

I'm super excited for Fall, and to start wearing on the neutral colours on my fingers. Hot cocoa, leaf piles, scarfs, all of it. And cute nail polish, of course.

Thanks for reading!

Melissa

NOTD: China Glaze Flirty Tankini

Hi everyone!

Today's blog will be just a quick post about the nail polish that I'm currently wearing, China Glaze's Flirty Tankini. 

Flirty Tankini was released with China Glaze's Summer Neons collection last summer, and the reason I'm showing you this now is because China Glaze has recently released another neons collection (The Sunsational Collection) and this colour is similar to a couple of colours in that one. 

Flirty Tankini is a gorgeous neon pinky coral with hot pink shimmer. My camera had a very hard time picking up this one, but in the pictures you can see the coral side of it. In some lights it looks like that, and in some lights, it leans more hot pink.

A close up so you can see the shimmer in this. It's gorgeous! China Glaze does neons very well, and from what I've heard, the Sunsational collection hasn't disappointed with the vibrancy of the neons. 

This is a very multi dimensional colours, and changes a lot depending on what light you're in!

This needed two coats to be opaque, and becomes very shiny once you add top coat!

Thanks for reading!

Melissa

NOTD: China Glaze Bare If You Dare

Today's NOTD is an old China Glaze polish. I'm pretty sure this was released as part of the Tokyo collection (I think it was 2008?), but I found it in the clearance bin at the salon I buy my nail polish at. I've seen colours also from this collection at different salons, so if you hunt around you might be able to find this polish.

Bare If You Dare is a peach/coral colour with golden shimmer. At first I was afraid it would be too frosty for my nails, but it really doesn't look that frosty on the nails. 

It was opaque in two coats, and lasted for quite awhile!

I've been really into coral colours and they are really in for summer. If you're looking for a colour similar to this, you probably won't have to look very hard!

Thanks for reading!

Melissa

NOTD: China Glaze Fade Into Hue

 

Today's NOTD is from China Glaze's Avant Garden collection, which was released for Spring 2013. However, I have still seen it in some stores, so you might still be able to find this polish.

 Fade Into Hue is a creme periwinkle blue with a hint of purple. I didn't have a single colour like this in my collection and it seemed like a really pretty shade!

The formula on this was pretty good. The first coat was quite sheer, but the second made it completely opaque. This seemed like it was kind of a mix between a creme and a jelly formula...a crelly I guess.

This chipped a little after about four days.

Thanks for reading!

Melissa

Nail Tutorial: Ombre Nails!!

So ombre is a huge trend this summer. It's everywhere- hair, clothes, shoes, and now, my nails!!
This is the first time I've ever done ombre nails, so this is not going to be the high tech tutorial ever. But I thought I would just share my method for doing them!

So if you want to see how I got the look below, keep on reading!!

Ok, yes I am aware this isn't the best looking ombre ever, but for a first attempt, I'm pretty proud of it. Alright, let's jump into the "tutorial"!

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:

The Polishes:

Ok, from the left, I have base coat and top coat, obviously. Then the third polish is what I'm using for a base colour. I would highly recommend using a white or light cream/pink polish to use as a base for your ombre, because that makes all the colours pop a lot more. I'm using OPI's My Vampire Is Buff.

Then the last polishes are my ombre colours. The colours blend more smoothly together if you use three colours instead of two, and the ombre looks more gradual. I stuck with colours in the same colour family for my first try. For the lightest colour (third from the right), I'm using China Glaze Hopeful. My medium colour (second from right) is China Glaze Flirty Tankini, and my darkest colour is China Glaze Make Some Noise.

The Tools:

You will also need some clear tape and a makeup sponge to paint the colours on.

HOW I DID IT:

Step 1:

So first and foremost, you can paint your nails with base coat, if you want to use it. I always do, it's just a habit.

But then you're going to paint on your white/cream/pink base. Side note: if your lightest colour is a white/cream/light pink, then you can just use that as your base. 

Don't worry if it's not completely opaque.

my base colour- OPI My Vampire is Buff

Step 2:

Once your base colour is completely dry (it needs to be dry so your ombre will stay on), take your clear tape and tape around each nail until the skin around each nail is covered by tape. This is a really messy process and the polish will get everywhere, so this step just saves a lot of cleanup.

So I covered the sides, bottom and top of my thumb. Sorry if this is kind of hard to see. But basically when I press the sponge down on my nail, the polish that isn't getting on my nail will be getting on the tape.

This is an incredibly awkward angle, but I just wanted you to see all my fingers taped up. I did it one hand at a time, so I taped one hand, then did the ombre pattern on that hand, then taped the other hand.

Step 3:

So now we arrive at the fun part. So your base colour is dry, and you're all taped up. So take your makeup sponge, and depending which colour you want at the base of your nail, paint the polishes on accordingly. In other words, if you want the darkest colour on the base of the nail and the lightest on the top, the paint a stripe of your darkest colour at the top of the sponge. 

I wanted the darkest at the base of my nail, so here's how I painted my sponge.

The darkest is at the very top of the sponge, so when I press it on my nail, it will go at the base of my nail. 

Wait a second or two to lets the polishes sort of absorb into the sponge and blend better together.

So angling the sponge so all your colours line up where you want them on the nail, press down and make sure you're getting all your colour on there.

This is one coat of the ombre. After each nail, I repaint all the colours onto the sponge so it will be freshly painted for the next nail. I did two coats of ombre for every nail, because after only one coat, the colours aren't super strong. 

So this is one hand after two coats of ombre and BEFORE clean up!!

Told you it gets messy!!

Step 4:

Clean up time! Peeling off the tape gets rid of most of the excess polish, but depending on how precise you were with your taping, you might end up with some polish around your nail. When that happens, I take a nail polish remover pad and put some nail polish remover in the center. Then I fold it in half, and use the folded edge to remove any leftover polish. 

And here's the finished look!!

Sorry for the chip on my index finger, I accidentally hit it when I took the tape off. 

But anyway, I hope this tutorial was helpful! I know I'm not a nail art expert (that can be clearly seen), but I thought I would share how I did this anyway.

Thanks for reading!!

Melissa

NOTD: China Glaze Dress Me Up

China Glaze Dress Me Up

I feel like it's been a really long time since I've done a NOTD post (it probably hasn't been at all, but whatever). The reason for this is because I'm trying to stop buying so much nail polish, and so I'm wearing all the colours I already own. And a lot of those I've already blogged about!

Anyway, this colour is from March 2012's the Hunger Games Collection, from China Glaze. That was probably one of my all time favourite nail polish collections ever; not only because I love the Hunger Games, but because I absolutely loved almost all of the colours in the collection. I own so many from it!

Dress Me Up is a brown toned mauve cream. It looks very natural on the nails, and works well for when you need your nails to look toned down or professional. And although you can't buy it anymore, there are many similar colours out there! This is a very dupe-able colour.

Thanks for reading!!

Melissa

NOTD: China Glaze Unfor-greta-bly Blue with OPI Goldeneye

Unfor-greta-bly Blue with Goldeneye

Today's NOTD is from two different brands, China Glaze and OPI. Unfor-greta-bly Blue, the base colour, is from this past summer's Germany collection from China Glaze. And Goldeneye is from OPI's James Bond collection. 

This is what Unfor-greta-bly Blue looks like on it's own:

It is a shimmery cobalt blue, with a hint of turquoise. Goldeneye looks nice on it's own or layered over top of another polish, and it is a gold fleck polish in a clear base. It is very yellow toned.

I gave it one layer of top coat, just to tie things together. I really like the way it turned out!

Thanks for reading!!

Melissa

NOTD: China Glaze Make Some Noise

WARNING: I am so sorry for the crappy pictures in this post. My camera just DID NOT want to pick up the true colour of this nail polish, so I had to take some flash pictures, which actually shows it best.

This was the most accurate picture I could get. This is in natural light, which didn't work either, because it was super cloudy that day. I managed to capture this picture though, and it shows the polish pretty true to colour.

This polish is from China Glaze's Electropop collection, which was released last summer, so it obviously isn't available anymore. However, I don't really do NOTD posts for review purposes, I do them mostly just to show off what nail polish I put on this week!

That being said, there is a fairly similar colour to this in OPI's most recent collection, Euro Centrale, and the colour is called "Suzi's Hungary Again!" (pretty cute name, if you ask me.)

Make Some Noise is a pretty coral pink, and it is one of my favourite colours to wear when it gets warmer out. It's just so fun.

I used two coats of this, but it was almost opaque with just one.

Thanks for reading!!

Melissa

NOTD: OPI My Vampire Is Buff

OPI My Vampire Is Buff

Today's NOTD is a polish from OPI's newest collection, Euro Centrale. I'll be honest, I don't know what the name of this polish has to do with Europe, but whatever. The name is still cute. I was drawn to this polish because plain whites look too harsh against my skin tone, but since this was an off white, I thought it might work.

And it does work. I love this colour. My Vampire Is Buff is a beautiful eggshell cream that looks so clean on the nails. LOVE. The first and second coats were a little streaky, but a third coat evened everything out. 

And because I was feeling a little creative that day (and I had some inspiration from a friend), I decided to do polka dots on top of the polish. I think this colour will be a great base for any nail art.

This is how it turned out!

I really like the finished look! The colour I used to make the polka dots was Dress Me Up from China Glaze, which was a part of their Hunger Games collection last March (almost a year ago! Wow!)

This was my "workstation". I used a toothpick to make the dots, and I just put a glob of the colour on a Post-It note and just dipped the toothpick in. It worked very well!

I really really like this colour. I think it looks soft, yet also makes a statement. Love it!

Thanks for reading!

Melissa