Pink Spotted Scrunch - Nail Art with Pretty Serious The Pink One and Bourjois Sunny Sunday

Pretty Serious The Pink One and Bourjois Sunny Sunday

A Pink Spotted Scrunch, according to Roald Dahl, is a venomous creature that can eat a person in one bite. I had this idea for a wildly exotic pink spotted mani during a Roald Dahl themed art lesson with a bunch of nine year olds a couple of weeks ago. OK, it turned out more like an exotic nudibranch (Ceratosoma amoena, photo credit Doug Anderson - more pictures here of the little darling) than an evil maneater, but I love it all the same.

Pretty Serious The Pink One and Bourjois Sunny Sunday

Not too much to say about the technique, I applied one coat of Bourjois Sunny Sunday, then added the sponge gradient with Sunny Sunday and The Pink One. I reversed the gradient on one nail of each hand for a bit of extra interest. Pink dots (large) on the yellow areas of the mani and small yellow dots on the pink areas. I chose these shades because they are the densest, most pigment rich yellow and pink in my whole collection, so I knew they would work well for both gradient and dots. The Pink One has the extra advantage of a super blue shimmer, which blends wonderfully in the gradient and adds a great highlight to the big pink dots.

Lots of pictures at various angles follow!

Pretty Serious The Pink One and Bourjois Sunny Sunday

The icing on the cake with this mani is that just after I'd finished it, I noticed that new UK Indie brand Quirk had a nail art contest for a pink mani........... I entered a picture of this mani and won the contest! My prize is an exclusive Quirk polish - I'll be showing pictures of it as soon as it arrives.

Pretty Serious The Pink One is a tremendous pink - one of my absolute favourites. Here are my swatches of it alone  (when my nails were much longer), with contrasting (green and yellow) glitter and used in a water marble - yes, it's opaque enough to hold up to watermarbling over a dark base. I purchased my bottle of The Pink One from Sally Magpies earlier this year - I believe the colour is still current but very popular so it sells out quickly. I purchased Bourjois Sunny Sunday earlier this year from Boots - if you like yellows but hate the fact that most of them are streaky and difficult to apply then this one is well worth looking at.

Freehand flowers..............

Nelly Polish Night Sky with floral nail art

These flowers were inspired by some hand-made pottery I have, and an old jumper - both have a dark blue background with bold white flowers with yellow centres. The pottery has a lot of black line work too.

Since it's UK Indie Month, I used Nelly Polish Night Sky for the base; this is a super deep blue shimmer. I painted the petals freehand win Zoya Jacqueline, added the centres with Bourjois Sunny Sunday. When the flowers were fully dry (quite a long time, since I'd painted thickly), I added the line details with a Barry M Nail Art Pen in Black.

I love the way this turned out! I've been wearing it for a few days now, but sadly it's starting to look battered at the tips and grown out around the cuticles, so I'll have to change it :(

A few macros of the individual nails.............  I really like the contrast between the holo shimmer of the base and the opaque flowers.

And my thumb!

Nelly Polish Night Sky with floral nail art

For others:

Scofflaw Letter To Kurt Vonnegut with gradient and dots

Scofflaw Letter to Kurt Vonnegut with gradient and dots

This started out just as a straightforward blue mani with Scofflaw Letter to Kurt Vonnegut, so let's have a look at that polish first! Letter to Kurt Vonnegut is a light periwinkle blue with an interesting shimmer, lots of tiny glitters in various shades of blue and the occasional shard of gunmetal. It was a limited edition Finch made a few months ago, and if I remember correctly it sold out fairly quickly.

The application on this was smooth and easy - this is two coats with Gelous and Seche Vite and it dried to a super glassy finish.

Scofflaw Letter to Kurt Vonnegut

Here's a bottle macro and a nail macro to show the details in the glitter:

Scofflaw Letter to Kurt Vonnegut

Much as I loved the colour, I had a problem with my nails......... as you can see in the picture below, they're not properly square! When I cut them the other day, I didn't go far enough into what I'd let grow out straight, and the more I looked at them, the more this was starting bug me. So out with my file and square them off properly - but then of course I've filed off some of the polish on the tips so the mani is pretty much ruined!

Scofflaw Letter to Kurt Vonnegut

I didn't want to take Letter to Kurt Vonnegut off straight away, so the ideal solution was a gradient to cover the tips! I used Bourjois 10 day polish in this nice dusky airforce blue - it doesn't seem to have a name, just no. 18. It has a bit of a subtle shimmer and tones well with Letter to Kurt Vonnegut. Actually, Letter to Kurt Vonnegut is a great base for a gradient with a darker shade as the glitters seem to pick up and extend the gradient further down the nail. And then I couldn't resist adding big dots - I'm on a bit of a roll with dots at the moment. I used Barry M Gelly Nail Paint in Lychee for these dots - it's a perfect polish this, being very opaque but quite fluid. I think these dots turned out a lot better than the ones I did with OPI My Vampire is Buff (the dots are near the bottom of that post) - although MViB and Lychee are similar in colour, the Lychee dots are both denser and rounder. And I think dots look better on square nails than pointy ones :D

Scofflaw Letter to Kurt Vonnegut with gradient and dots

I purchased Scofflaw Letter to Kurt Vonnegut direct from Finch at her Etsy Shop; you can follow her on facebook for details of restocks. Llarowe also stocks Scofflaw polishes.

Bourjois BC Beige

Bourjois BC Beige

Just a quick share of a lovely neutral shade I picked up in Boots recently. This is one of the newer Bourjois SO Laque polishes, BC Beige. I love pale, creamy neutral shades and I couldn't resist this one when I saw it (and it's slightly darker sister, Taupe Modele, which I'll post about soon).

This is three thin coats with Seche Vite quick dry top coat. Bourjois is one of my favourite UK high street brands; the application and formula are generally very good and they have a great range of colours. In terms of colour, BC Beige is a bit cooler and more olive-grey than OPI My Vampire is Buff and a bit lighter than Rescue Beauty Lounge Jane, which is a firm favourite of mine in this colour family.

Bourjois BC Beige

All these pictures are indoors near a window in indirect but strong sunlight and show the colour at its warmest. Outdoors and away from the window the polish looks a slightly cooler tone.

I purchased Bourjois BC Beige from my local Boots.

Bourjois Abricot Ouate with Lynnderella Bride of Franken

Lynnderella Bride of Franken over Bourjois Abricot Ouate

I've had a sort of fascination for light peachy colours for a while now - first Chanel June, then Nails Inc Wellington Square, and most recently, Butter London Kerfuffle. I see the bottles, and I think how pretty they are, and I look at swatches and I think they look great with some skin tones, and not so good with others. Then I pick the bottles up, and hold them against my hand and think 'ugh, that won't suit me' and put them down again. So I've never owned one of these colours.

I was buying a couple of Bourjois shades in Boots recently, and there was a 3-for-2 offer. And there was this peachy polish 'Abricot Ouate'.... so I got it as my 'free' item. And it looks awful on me! I'm just glad I didn't buy a high end polish this colour. But at least I know now! Here it is:

Bourjois Abricot Ouate

Three coats plus Seche Vite quick drying topcoat. Application is fine, and I'm sure it would look good on someone with darker skin. Or different coloured skin. Ouate apparently means cotton wool in French.

So what to do with it? I saw this gorgeous mani by Another Bottle of Polish the other day, which reminded me of a fruit dessert with vanilla seeds in it; I thought I'd like to try something with the tiniest of glitter, and a bit of a shimmery highlight in a complementary colour. First of all, I put a bit of Nubar Black Polka Dot onto a saucer so I could push all the bigger glitters to the edge with my brush before dabbing on a little of the polish containing just the tiny black microglitter. Then I added a coat of Lynnderella Bride of Franken. Bride of Franken is one of my favourite Lynnderellas - it's one of her very first ones. It's a mix of bluish iridiscent (or 'disco') glitter with a some holographic microglitter in a slightly lavender-blue tinged base. Even though it looks quite colourful in the bottle, the tint in the base is so light you can wear it over just about any polish without it changing the colour of the base.

Lynnderella Bride of Franken over Bourjois Abricot Ouate

I added a coat of Gelous and another coat of SV to smooth this out - end result is a delicate, pretty spring mani.  The iridescent glitters in Bride of Franken catch the light wonderfully!

Lynnderella Bride of Franken over Bourjois Abricot Ouate

If Bourjois Abricot Ouate was *orange* and Lynnderella Bride of Franken was *blue* (and they are, near enough) they would be complementary colours, which is why they look good together. Once I'd done the mani, the colours reminded me of a limited edition polish Lynn made called 'Habeas Coral' which sold for hundreds of dollars on ebay. Lynn clearly knows her colour theory! Here's a pretty swatch of Habeas Coral by PeachyPolish.

I purchased Bourjois Abricot Ouate from my local Boots and Nubar Black Polka Dot from Beauty Bay. Beauty Bay's prices include worldwide shipping. I received Lynnderella Bride of Franken in a swap a long time ago;I believe this particular shade is now discontinued and has been replaced by 'The Bride Turned Blue' which looks very similar, except the base is rather more blue tinged. In the USA you can buy Lynnderella polishes from her store on ebay; Norway Nails stocks Lynnderella polishes and ships within Europe.

Bourjois Sunny Sunday with Nostalgic Chilly Down

Bourjois Sunny Sunday with Nostalgic Chilly Down 

Well, it's almost a sunny Sunday although there's a bit of a chilly wind so this is quite an apt combination for today! I love yellows, but they can be quite difficult in various ways. I usually go for pale, custardy yellows, or mustardy yellows, as these are easier to wear with my pale skin. Primary yellows don't always look quite right. Apart from clashing with skintones, yellow seems to be the most difficult colour for polish makers to get right - the formulae are often streaky and difficult to apply. I wore an old yellow  (Ruby & Millie Yellow 200P) a couple of weeks ago; although the colour was great, the formula was thin and it took a few coats to get good coverage. So I was delighted to see a new yellow in the Bourjois new spring colours last week!

Bourjois Sunny Sunday 

Sunny Sunday is in the '1 Seconde' range and Bourjois describe the texture as 'silicone gel'. I think the intention is that the polish is a one-coater, and it has a thick, gel like appearance. A one coat application for a yellow polish seems very hopeful, I used two here but it is pretty much perfect! It's a strong, dense canary yellow and I love it! Another plus point on this polish is the brush, it's a flat brush with a rounded tip that makes it really easy to get a neat edge around the cuticles. The polish is a little on the thick side, but not enough to make application difficult. I used a coat of Seche Vite quick drying topcoat to smooth and level the polish.

Bourjois Sunny Sunday 

Although I enjoyed Bourjois Sunny Sunday alone, I wanted to give it a bit of extra zing, so I decided to add a blue-pink colour-shifting topcoat. These sorts of topcoats are usually used over black or dark polishes, but I like the subtle iridescence you get by layering over a light colour.

The strength of the iridescence varies a lot depending on the angle and intensity of the light, from very shimmery to barely noticeable:

Bourjois Sunny Sunday with Nostalgic Chilly Down 

The colour shifting topcoat I used was Nostalgic Chilly Down, which I bought from the maker on Etsy quite a while ago. However, CND Colour Effects in Sapphire Sparkle is very similar and would work in the same way, or a blue flakie like Inglot 204 or Nfu.Oh #40 would give a  more pronounced effect.

Bourjois Sunny Sunday with Nostalgic Chilly Down 

I bought Bourjois Sunny Sunday in my local Boots.