Fail Friday: Sunset Pink

Ugh... Just... Yeah. Before we get into this ridiculous post, please note that none of these photos (or any of the other fourteen billion I took) are anywhere near the actual colour of this polish. This polish downright refused to photograph accurately, and I finally gave up after three separate 'photoshoots' attempting to get the right colour. Gah. Just, yeah. Humph.

*deep calming breaths* Well hi there!! Happy Friday!! Quite some time ago I used to do 'Fail Fridays' showcasing some of my rather plentiful nail-fails, and though I didn't intend on doing one today, it kind of just happened. At the height of my frustration photographing this stupid (not really, I love it, actually) polish, I realised it was Friday, so I could use this as a Fail. 

Today's polish was sent to me by a fellow Kiwi nail blogger Anneke of PinPointPolish. She is wonderfully sweet and super passionate with some amazing photos, so go show her some love!! She found the brand Ulta3 (which is common in the US / Australia but previously unavailable in NZ, as far as I know) at a pharmacy in Auckland and offered to send me a few bottles. Jumping up and down, I went on a Google Images rampage and picked out three, and they arrived safe and sound today in a well packed little box, with some chocolate hiding underneath! Thank you again, Miss Anneke! I love them sooo much!!! Without further ado, may I present the deeply beautiful but unreasonably stubborn Ulta3 Sunset Pink.

See the colour in the bottle? Add two dashes of red-wine shades and a plum or two, and you're a bit closer to the true shade of this baby - a deep berry pink, not a light red as it decided it wanted to be today. This is two easy coats, though the formula was quite a bit thicker than I'm used to. It dries to a rubbery / nearly matte finish, so a glossy top coat is necessary if you want it to shine. I used a coat of Cult Nails Wicked Fast top coat.

I was going to write something here, but this is so far away from the colour that I just... *sigh*.

In this photo, my index and middle fingers are sans top coat so you can see the 'original' finish. Again, nowhere near the colour. Honestly, I'm not sure why I bothered posting these photos, except that I'm always so excited about new polish! I absolutely promise with all my heart that it is a beautiful polish that I don't ever wanna take off. Seriously. Even though I messed with my white balance and tried to adjust the shade in photoshop and all that jazz, I could not get an accurate shade without making my fingers bright cyan. So [expletive] it, that'll do. Humph.

That concludes this train wreck. Bah. 

What colours do you find the hardest to photograph? What was the last polish you bought / received? Thanks for checking in loves, and sorry for the entirely useless post! =( 

Edit: This is much closer to the colour that it actually is IRL. Delicious deep berry lipstick-y kinda colour. It's beautiful, I promise. I googled around and couldn't find any particularly accurate photos of the polish, so it's nice to know I'm not alone with this stupid blimen thing!! =P

Happy Weekends! ^_^

Fail Friday: ALL the Colours!!

Hiya guys! Today's Fail Friday post is a well-intended mani that simply didn't turn out as imagined, and actually looked bad enough that I couldn't bring myself to leave the house with it on! I think it was a mixture of the crap-tastic stamping and the wrong tones for the rainbow and my rush to get something done that resulted in just... no. Wanna see?

From left to right: Revlon Red Hot, BYS Tempt Me Tangerine, China Glaze Happy Go Lucky, China Glaze Four Leaf Clover and BYS Drop In The Ocean. I think I had the wrong orange, green and blue for this to be an effective multi-coloured rainbow mani, but they're kinda all I have at the moment... I'm working on it, I promise! 

I painted each nail a different colour - red on my thumb through to blue on my pinky - and hated it, so I tried to mute it by stamping over them all with fauxnad plate m65 in BYS Black Satin. Again, well intended, poorly executed... Smudge smudge smudge all the way home...

See what I mean about the wrong 'tones'? The theory was there, but it just... failed. 

Gah. Thank goodness that's over! What was your last mani-fail? Have you mastered the rainbow mani yet? I'd love your feedback, guys! Oh, and happy weekend!! =D

Fail Friday: First Gradient

Happy Friday! The weekend's just about here, wahoo! I've got a lot of pics for you today, and you'll be able to tell they were taken a while ago! This was my first ever attempt at a gradient, and I think it went terribly wrong. I recorded it step-by-step in the hopes that it'd be awesome, but it was not to be.

The three colours I chose were OPI Steady As She Rose, Do You Lilac It? and Lincoln Park After Dark. 

Base coat

 Base colour: Steady As She Rose. The rest of the photos kinda speak for themselves...

Yeeeeah.... This is not the look I was going for. In an attempt to smooth everything out and hopefully help the 'gradual' effect, I smothered my nails in OPI Princesses Rule. Not any better. 

I'm so glad I've improved my gradient technique, because this could seriously put a girl off ever trying again! Ugh just... no...!

Short and sweet today my lovelies! I'm off to look at cameras... Mmmm... Apart from the fact that I seriously love new stuff, my big camera that I use for just about everything is quite a bit behind in the times, and it's not really standing up to what I need it to do anymore. As a point of reference, my stepdad's cellphone produces better images than my big expensive 5yr old camera. *sniffle*. So, to the shops! Thanks for checking in, you wonderful people! =D

Fail Friday: Splattered

Hello hello! I know it's a late one today - sorry! - but I thought I'd share with you a technique I've only tried once, and will probably try again but not anytime soon. Behold, the 'splatter mani'. 

You can tell it's an oldie by the round nails... I've really been liking my squarer nails, to be honest! This is BYS French White and Drop In The Ocean. I found this on Youtube and had to try it. The technique involves dipping the end of a small straw into a puddle of whatever polish you're using, and then blowing on the (OTHER) end of the straw so the paint splatters out and onto your nail (and everything else in the vicinity...). I think I got a bit carried away trying to cover the whole nail, and it ended up just looking a mess. My base colour application left something to be desired too.. An all over fail, don't cha think?

I originally saw this done with red polish splattered over white, and the result was very gorey - perfect for Halloween! My blue version just resulted in my nails looking like I'd had some accidents while trying out test pots of paint... Not so glam. 

Have you ever tried a mani technique that didn't work anywhere near as well for you as it did for the person doing the tutorial? What's your favourite Halloween mani look that you've come across? Just think - it's the weekend tomorrow! Happy Friday night, loves =) Thanks for stopping in!

- Ally xx

Fail Friday: Pink Wednesday

Happy Friday, everyone!! Today I have a very pink Fail Friday for you. This was my attempt at a design for Pink Wednesday this week, but it went so horribly wrong that it became a Fail instead. This is the last time you'll see OPI Strawberry Margarita featured for a while, I promise!! 

I started with two coats of Strawberry Margarita, then stamped over it with plate m60 in BYS Reign Supreme. I've made a discovery about my plates - do you remember I said something about not knowing what brand they were but how they seemed to match up to the Konad designs and numbering? Well through my interwebs exploration, it looks like they're plates from the Born Pretty Store that I've scored second hand. I've recently set up a PayPal account and therefore am terrified of how much I could potentially spend at that amazing website. Mystery somewhat demystified. More pics!!

This, sadly, was my best stamp. I think maybe I didn't clean my stamp thoroughly enough before I used it, or my scraping was off, or the polish was the wrong consistency, or I rushed it, or a combination of all of that. Whatever it was, it all went wrong, so as gorgeous as this mani could've been, it wasn't!

Smudging and poor transfer and just all kinds of fail, ugh! It didn't help that this was about 2am and I was battling a very heavy cold! That's why my posts have been a little more spread out this week - sorry! But I haven't been very well at all. My lovely generous mother caught a heavy cold / 'flu last week and just had to share it with me, so we've been miserable together. It's still lingering - we're both coughing and sniffing all over the place, so very attractive - but hopefully it will subside soon as we're blasting it with every medicine we can find, with hot cups of lemon, honey and ginger for good measure. Enough of that!

Do you find you have a preferred time of the day to do your nails? Or are you like me and squeeze it in when you find time? Are you relieved that Strawberry Margarita will be taking a hiatus? Gimme your feedback, lovely people, I always love to hear from you =D (Especially you, Charli!! ;-) ) Stop by again soon, lovelies! Happy Weekend!


- Ally xx

A Flowery Fail Friday

It's the end of the week, wa-hay! And it's a long weekend here in NZ as we celebrate the Queen's Birthday. This weekend is no where near Her Majesty's actual birthday, but that's beside the point. I plan to have a holiday-themed mani on Monday, but today I thought I'd share a nail-fail with you. This was the first mani I did after filing my nails down to nubbins and I was going to put it up instead of yesterday's plain mani but I thought 'Fail Friday' sounded cool, so you get it today! There is a good chance 'Fail Friday' may become a regular thing on this blog, because I have plenty of nail-fails to share! Onwards!

Don't get excited, this isn't the fail-y bit, though the photography's a bit shoddy. I mentioned yesterday that I got new BYS polishes, yeah? The dark purple (that looks like a blue... yep, fail...) is the second of the two that I bought. It's called Reign Supreme and IRL is the deepest purple-y purple creme ever. I completely forgot about the holiday this weekend while purchasing this so the name is a complete coincidence. While thinking about my holi-mani for Monday, I decided what my accent nails would be, but then couldn't think of what colour to do my other nails... Duh! Royal purple, anyone? I'm the slowest of the slow, sometimes... The accent nail is ORLY You're Blushing.

This is almost the colour that it really is, but still too blue. I took and edited these photos before I decided that it would be to showcase a fail, so I tried to make 'em look all non-fail-y. This, sadly, is the best nail I did. Still far from perfect. Underneath the white flower you can just make out another one - I tried to stamp in You're Blushing but it didn't really contrast enough with Reign Supreme to be noticeable, so I went over it with BYS French White. This stamp is from one of my new plates, m60. My plates are not Konad, but seem to have the same designs on the same numbered plates. I can't afford Konad plates (they are available online here for minimum NZ$11 per plate, plus postage!!), so I go for whatever I can find.

Ahhh, here we have the complete fail in all its glory. Failed stamps, smudges, ill-aligned stamping, peeling, and colour that is no where near true to life. I managed to clean this pic up a bit, but the flowers on my middle finger were severely top-coat-dragged. The stamp on my ring finger (plate m69) came off the stamp like that. Sadly, this wasn't my first time stamping, though you're forgiven for thinking so. This is just all kinds of... well, you can see. This mani was removed after being poorly photographed. Maybe that's why I left yesterday's red plain? I may have lost faith in my stamping ability. Sigh. What a perfect excuse to practice!!

What was your worst nail-fail? Have you ever nail-failed so badly it completely put you off trying that mani again? I'd love to hear your horror stories =D Thanks for checking in, lovely people! Happy weekend!

- Ally xx