Hello my lovely Society sisters!
I am so thrilled to announce that I am participating in piCture pOlish's Blog/Insta Fest 2014!!! Last year my blog was only two weeks old when I stumbled upon Blog Fest 2013. I thought it was brilliant! I set a goal then and there to participate this year. So yay for me for being chosen!
For the uninitiated, piCture pOlish is an Australian indie brand that specializes in awesomeness. It has quickly become one of my favorite brands. They have a wealth of truly unique shades with interesting and high quality formulas. Almost as essential, each polish has a fun name and tagline. You know I'm a sucker for a good name.
This year's Fest is a little different with the inclusion of Instagram participants and a collaboration with Nail Vinyls. Again piCture pOlish provided three of their polishes, and the challenge this time had two parts.
Part one is a straightforward swatch. For my swatch I was given Jasmine:
Jasmine is a collaboration shade created by Tracey The TraceFace Files. It is a lavender creme packed full of green, silver, and bright blue hex glitters, and purple square glitters. Shown is two coats plus topcoat.
With only one coat of Jasmine, I wasn't sure about the color with my skin tone. After the second coat though I really enjoyed the lavender shade.
Part two is to create a mani using the other two polishes and the Nail Vinyls together, then make a tutorial. Last year piCture pOlish challenged the chosen blogger participants to create unique nail art using three of their polishes. This year was even more limited. We were provided with two polishes and one sheet of Nail Vinyls. The instructions were that we could only use these items, and a little white or black polish if needed. This took a lot of creativity!
Here's what I received!
Chillax is a bright turquoise creme with a smooth and highly pigmented formula. How did they know that it has been on my wishlist? It certainly didn't disappoint. Coral Reef is a bright vibrant coral creme with an equally great, slightly thinner formula. It is a welcome addition to my growing coral polish collection.
I've been wanting to get my hands on Nail Vinyls for some time and it was awesome to finally get to try them out. I have to admit though, when I first found out that I would be receiving the mini chevrons, I was a little disappointed. I thought that if I had received the straight vinyls my options for creativity would be much more. After I started playing around with them I soon found that I had nothing to worry about. I was having so much fun with the vinyls that I couldn't just stick to one design. Or two...or three. So many possibilities!
Here's what I made!
These shades together have a lot of attitude and I wanted to do a bold and graphic mani to reflect that. I love how the contrasting black really made them pop!
Every design in this mani was created with the Nail Vinyl mini chevrons. For the thinner lines, I placed the strips closer together. I was really pleased with how easy the vinyls were to handle. Let's face it, scotch tape has nothing on these. They were a little too sticky at times, but it wasn't hard to fix that by pressing them onto my finger first.
Which nail has you favorite design?
Here's the tutorial for the "plus sign" design!
What to do:
- Prep nail and apply your favorite basecoat. Apply black polish as your base color. Let dry completely.
- Using precision tweezers, peel off a strip of Nail Vinyl mini chevrons. Press the sticky side to your finger once or twice to remove some of the tackiness. (Occasionally if it's still really sticky, it will pull some of the polish off.)
- Apply strip diagonally on one corner of your nail. Smooth it down. You want each strip to completely flush with the nail to achieve straight lines.
- Apply the next strip as a mirror opposite. Make sure that they meet up in the middle to form a half square.
- Apply the third strip to be perpendicular to the first.
- The fourth strip should be mirror opposite to the third, and once in place it will create a "plus sign"
- After double checking that each strip is lying as flat as possible, unscrew the lid to both polishes. Be aware of the order that you applied the vinyls. Working quickly, apply piCture pOlish Chillax in the center negative space, then piCture pOlish Coral Reef on the outer negative spaces. Immediately begin removing vinyls with tweezer, starting in the reverse order they were placed. You may want to place a finger on the strip underneath so that it stays in place while you remove the top one. I also try to remove them "against the grain" for the cleanest lines.
- With the brush from the bottle, fill in the gaps near tip and cuticle (and sides of the nail if needed). Using a short, stiff-bristled clean up brush dipped in acetone, remove excess polish around cuticle and sides of nail. If there are any stray strings of polish in your design, you can also easily clean these up with a brush and acetone. Give it a few minutes to dry, then finish the look with your favorite topcoat.
piCture pOlish products can be purchased from their Store, or through these International Stockists for those outside Australia. Don't forget to check out their Every Day Deal. You can follow them via social media on Facebook and Instagram.
Nail Vinyls products can be purchased through their online Store.
*piCture pOlish will also be retailing a special exclusive 4 pack 'Nail Vinyls' containing 'Chevrons, Mini Chevrons, Straight and Right Angles' that will be used by all participants this year.*
Want to see what everyone else created? Check them out below!
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