Fireflies inspired nail Tutorial feat. Orly Glowstick

Recently I purchased 3 very neon Orly polishes from the 2012 Feel The Vibe collection. I did not know about this collection, I was picking up some medicine from the pharmacy and low and behold there was a new mini Orly polish stand at the check out. Convenient location. I spent more on Orly polishes than I did on medicine of course ;-) I picked up 3 from the collection, one being a bright fluoro yellow called Glowstick. And still in the butter London mood, I paired it with Slapper from the 2012 spring collection (we will not discuss how I managed to purchase Slapper twice accidentally):

In my mind I was picturing a beautiful field of glowing fireflies but on nails I can't decide if it looks like the fireflies I had in mind.... or a bubbling pit of doom :-D And if you think this looks familiar, you'd be right, it is a neon recreation of my loved Purple Starry Nights Tutorial. That fan brush had to get some use again :-)

So to recreate this firefly/bubbling pit look we need a neon yellow, and a variety of mint polishes. And for someone who really doesn't fancy mint colours, I seem to own quite a few:

Left to right we have butter London Fiver, OPI Mermaid's Tears, Essie Absolutely Shore, MAC Ocean Dip, Orly Glowstick, butter London Slapper and Orly Alpine Snow. You probably don't need this many, I just grabbed all I could locate. Mermaid's Tears and Ocean Dip are probably interchangeable. Probably don't even need Absolutely Shore but use as many as you like! The effect is discreet in the end.

Let's begin the tutorial! All steps were shot in the iPhone app Hipstamatic, check it out, it's a fab app for lazy "photographers" like myself.

Step 1: Paint your base coat. I chose butter London Slapper from the 2012 Spring Collection. Honestly photos do not do this polish justice. I took photos with a variety of lights with both my phone and SLR and none could show its true beauty. All I can say is to buy it if you like Teal colours. It also applied beautifully. It's dark and not really a Tiffany comparison but it's pretty. Enough said.

Step 2: Take a fan brush and paint a little on the edges and create downward strokes on the nail. The MAC colour is really subtle against Slapper hence the large arrow above. It's also only on one nail.

Step 3: Continue the fan gradient with another lighter colour. Clean and re-fan your brush regularly otherwise it'll stick together.

Step 4: Repeat step 3 with a lighter colour! Here we have Fiver from the Spring 2013 collection.

Step 4 continued - keep going with as many colours as you like! I clearly have too much time on my hands.

Step 5: Finish with a white fan brush coat. This is important as it enables the neon shade to look opaque and bright.

Step 6: Using a dotting tool (I use the Orly brand) to create different sized dots across the nails. They too will be a base for the neon yellow. Use both sides of the dotter and apply more/less polish for different sizes.

Step 7: Go over the dots again with the neon colour.

Step 8: Final fan brush over the white base and fill more at the tips so it's nice and opaque. Use the nail polish brush for the tips if necessary.

Step 9: Clean up around the nails with nail polish remover and add a top coat! I use Sally Hansen Double Duty Base & Top Coat.

And that's what it looks like in sunlight, bright as can be! We went out for a late lunch on the lake and it was such nice weather. Although you can feel winter coming...

Well that is it for the fireflies slash bubbly pit tutorial! I  hope you enjoyed the look and I'll see you next time...

Orly Happy Go Lucky swatches and Vacation Update!

Hi everyone, I have some Orly swatches today and a little bit of a nail design at the end :-) This collection is called Happy Go Lucky and I believe it's the 'back to school' collection.

Left to right we have four bright colours, each starting with 'F': Frisky, Flirty, Frolic and Fresh. All are cremes except Flirty which has a gorgeous shimmer as you will see below :-)

Above we have Frolic with no top coat so you can see the finish - this was actually one coat so and you can see how much coverage you get with just one coat!

Above is Frolic with now two coats and a top coat.

Above we have Flirty with no top coat and just one coat of polish. That shimmer is to die for. If you're a pink polish lover, this is for you. I don't normally go for pinks but after putting on this polish I was just @_@ at my nails. So barbie, so pink.

Above is Flirty with now two coats of polish and a top coat. Dang this is gorgeous!

Above is Frisky with two coats, no top coat. It was more uneven than Flirty and Frolic so required two coats to be 'presentable' in terms of a swatch.

Above is Frisky, still two coats but with a top coat this time. Top coats make everything look nice. It's a nice sky blue and it makes a great addition to my creme nail art polish stash :-)

Above is Fresh with three coats and no top coat. I found this polish the most difficult to work with in terms of formula, hence the three coats. Orly brushes are very thin so that might have something to do with it.

Above is Fresh again with a top coat and still three coats of polish. It's a little 'sickly' green if you don't cover up each coat in the exact same place but to me this would make a great halloween polish! Not so much back to school :-P

And while I was in video conversion hell trying to rip videos for my Motoral Xoom tablet, I decided to do some funky bubble nails. Yes with a pink background. Everytime I look at them I think of that Sodastream commercial on tv and the dude yelling 'Sodastream is back! Get busy with the fizzy!' :-P Omg that ad annoyed me so much when they were spamming it non stop! Now you can all watch too! Haha.

I left the bubbles overnight and thought they could do with some extra cuteness so I drew purple starfish the next day!

Well I hope you enjoyed the swatches and the designs and I hope you're all having a lovely week! I am currently staying at one of the Disneyland resorts, I've just had a full day at Disneyland and I am absolutely exhausted! We have taken thousands of pictures but we have only JUST gotten some free net here! Wifi is so precious and scarce overseas :P Here are a few piccies...

This is part of Hollywood Blvd - the craziest tourist spot I have EVER been to so far. Do not attempt to walk around here when there are movie premiers! There were two when we were staying here - 30 minutes or less and Final Destination 5. Totally crazy. I have little patience for crowded walkways!

Next we havee Rodeo Dr - the shopping destination in Beverly Hills. We came through here twice - once on a hop on hop off bus so we could walk around, the second on a movie star homes tour (where I actually saw Johnny Depp driving his black Porche in the Hollywood Hills weeeee!)

This is the view from our room at the Disneyland Resort - freaking awesome! Eventually the sun came out and it was so hot walking around.

And if you're interested, I am in the process of making daily videos of my adventures so check out thisleanne on youtube for 3 vids so far - I have linked the first below:

My apologies for the quality - there is only so much you can do with an iPhone 3gs and no macbook or lappy ;-) Ok I really must sleep now! Until next time my lovelies...

Orly Pin Up Summer 2011 collection swatches!

Wow is all I can say about Orly Pin Up for summer 2011. As soon as I saw the promo images for this collection I was sold. So much glitter! Purple and green are one of my favourite colour combinations, they look so pretty together.

Left to right we have Coquette Cutie, Here Comes Trouble, Bubbly Bombshell and Va Va Voom! If you think the left and right polishes look similar, you would be right! One is slightly more coral and the other is more hot neon pink. Onto the swatches!

Above is Va Va Voom, a neon pink creme. And wow it's bright! I believe I did 2-3 coats for the creme polishes. And to give you an idea of what they look like without a topcoat, here is Va Va Voom minus the topcoat:

I really like this finish, it seems less in your face as the shiny bright topcoat version :-)

Above is Coquette Cutie a coral creme. Less intense than va va voom but still quite bright.

Above is Bubbly Bombshell and these glitters do not have top coats so you can better see the glitter. Quite like this one even though it's on the pink side of purple. These glitters have two sizes of glitter in the polish, one micro and one slightly larger. You'll see what I mean further below on the Here Comes Trouble swatches. Another thing to note about these glitter polishes is that they do have a base colour so it will change the colour of whatever you put it on top of ever so slightly.

Above is Here Comes Trouble and you can see what I mean about the base colour. The edges look slightly greenish yellow and that's what the polish looks like if you don't where a lot of coats or layer it on another colour. Another thing to note is that I lost count of the coats I did :-) I basically did enough to get a good coverage.

I like the name of this polish though. I think if a polish could be named after me it would be Here Comes Trouble. I'm always a trouble maker at work :-( But I don't find trouble, trouble finds me I swear...

So when I had the green glitter on I was inspired to draw some butterflies on my nails because of these cheap green butterfly earrings I own.

There's a better picture of the earring. Even managed some little gems on the drawn butterfly. Cute right! Well I don't know what happened but halfway through I became really uninspired, mainly because I didn't have the right greens and pretty much rage quit. I should have done purple butterflies, I would have liked those better!

Here's a 1-2 coat application of Here Comes Trouble to give you an idea of the glitter particles and the icky green base colour. I think this nasty yellow is what also put me off my nail art. Oh well!

Anyway that's all I have for today! I was a little hesitant to post this after the major blogger issues of last week (and I believe I still don't have my comments back from my last post :-( but I'll just throw caution to the wind and post this one :-) I hope everyone is having a lovely weekend and I shall see you next time!

Orly Precious Collection Swatches feat. cherry blossom nail art!

I have been holding onto these pretties for a little while and finally got around to swatching them over the weekend! The Orly Spring 2011 collection called 'Precious' is out and they are a mix of creme and shimmer polishes (2 shimmer, 4 creme) and they are verrrry pretty.

Left to right we have Pure Porcelain (pale pink creme), Gilded Coral (coral shimmer), Fancy Fuchsia (hot blue pink creme), Ancient Jade (jade green creme), Sapphire Silk (deep blue slightly teal creme) and finally Royal Velvet (dark blue with purple shimmer).

Before I move onto the swatches, I decided to play with the 'spring' theme using these Orly colours and attempt some cherry blossoms (key word: attempt)...

Oh boy! I had to redo these as the first attempt was quite bad but I think I got the thumb right. I used 3 of the Orly precious colours (gilden coral as the base, pure porcelain and fancy fuchsia as the flower). The subtle grey branches were OPI's totally fort worth it. It's a very subtle look yet very pretty on the nails. Onto the swatches! Let's start with Pure Porcelain:

Ahh pale cremes, such a tricky formula to work with. Pure Porcelain was 3 coats (actually most were except for the jade and dark blue cremes which only needed 2). Flash shot above.

Natural light shot above (although a bit dark - I am experimenting with new SLR settings :-)

Ah one of my faves - Gilded Coral. It reminds me of the NARS Orgasm polish but is much softer (less orange). Beautiful. Flash shot above.

Natural light shot above. Isn't it pretty? @_@

Bam! Next we have Fancy Fuchsia and yeah it's really crazy bright. LOVE IT. Very nice for spring/summer. Flash shot above.

Natural light shot above. 3 coats like the first two just because of some slight patchiness. Creme formulas tend to be tricky to apply.

Ancient Jade is a creme jade green and only needed 2 coats. Quite opaque. Flash shot above.

When I looked at the natural light shot above I did notice some streakiness but nothing a top coat won't fix.

Sapphire Silk is a dark blue creme and like Ancient Jade only needed 2 coats. Flash shot above.

Natural light shot above. Not the biggest blue fan but it applied very nicely.

And lastly we have Royal Velvet and what a spectacular colour it is. More blue than purple in my opinion but you can see purple around the edges. Flash shot above. This could use 3 to 4 coats. Above is 3 and 4, one of the fingers was slightly patchy :-)

Natural light shot above. Isn't it just stunning? Well that is all I have for now, I hope you enjoyed the swatches and the cherry blossoms! Have a fantastic week everyone and I will see you next time :-)