Polka dot nail art with Chanel Rouge Flamboyant 38 and Barry M Lychee

 Chanel Rouge Flamboyant 38 and Barry M Lychee

Nail of the day! This is one of my favourite reds, I've had it for many years. And what better to do the dots with than my current favourite nail art polish, Barry M Gelly Nail Paint in Lychee. I like an irregular pattern of dots, and I was thinking about the Fly Agaric fungus (Amanita muscaria) as I was painting this!

It's two coats of Rouge Flamboyant, which is semi jelly. I bought this shade more than 15 years ago (it was my second ever Chanel polish - after I got Rouge Noir, I decided I wanted a classic red too), and it's discontinued now. I just googled the colour to be sure that it IS discontinued, and there is a bottle for sale on ebay at a ludicrous price. I really don't get this - it's just a red nail polish, why on earth would anyone think it would be worth $100?

I bought Barry M Gelly Nail Paint in Lychee from my local Boots earlier this year, and it's become one of my go-to shades for nail art. I like wearing it on it's own too.

Pocket Money Polishes Magic with Dior Waterlily and Chanel Paradoxal

Pocket Money Polishes Magic with Dior Waterlily and Chanel Paradoxal

This is one of Charlie's new August glitter toppers - it's called *Magic* and it really is a magic combination of colours! There's lime / neon green hexes and squares, some aqua holo hexes, dark satiny purple hexes and a nice smattering of tiny greenish-gold glitter in the background which pulls the whole thing together!

I wanted to use a base that wouldn't fight with the bright colour in Magic, so I decided on a gradient with Dior Waterlily and Chanel Paradoxal - these colours are darker and more muted shades of the colours in the glitters in Magic itself. I didn't get pictures of the gradient without the glitter - sorry - as I was being a bit lazy and didn't bother cleaning up until I'd finished everything! I used a damp makeup sponge to to the gradient; I painted my nails first with Waterlily, let them dry a bit, then I slopped a blob of Paradoxal and a blob of Waterlily onto a sheet of plastic then smooshed the colours together a bit with my sponge before dabbing them onto my nails for the gradient. When the colours for a gradient are as different as this, I think it's worth taking a bit of extra time and care to get the blending smooth - I'm pleased with how this turned out :)

Pocket Money Polishes Magic with Dior Waterlily and Chanel Paradoxal

Here's a macro shot of Magic in the bottle to show all the lovely glitters:

And a couple of macros of it on my nails:

Pocket Money Polishes Magic with Dior Waterlily and Chanel Paradoxal

I love the combination of colours in Magic. I've noticed with some indies that the first few colours that release are great, then they kind of run out of ideas and the polishes start to get boring. That doesn't seem to be the case with Charlie. This is her third collection, and the colours seem to be getting better and better. I've got a few more new ones to share in the next couple of weeks :D

I bought Pocket Money Polishes direct from Charlie at her Website; she makes quite small batches but she does restock regularly. You can follow Charlie on Facebook for more information about her polishes too. Chanel Paradoxal and Dior Waterlily are a couple of old stalwarts from my stash!

Nail of the Day - Chanel Blue Boy

Chanel Blue Boy

I'm wearing this for no other reason than I really like it! It's a subtle slate-blue cream, I think it's both edgy and understated at the same time and appropriate for most situations. A great blue for beginners, maybe!

Chanel Blue Boy

Two coats with Seche Vite quick drying top coat, application is perfect - although you'd expect that from Chanel. There are probably similar colours around in cheaper brands - for example the Nubar Jeans trio which just blatantly ripped off all three of the Les Jeans de Chanel colours, but I think the colour, formula and finish make this worth the Chanel price tag. I'm also slightly irritated by those who copy original ideas (in all sorts of things, not just nail polish).

Off the topic of nails, I had a fabulous swim in Derwentwater last night and this colour looked just amazing under the water - I'll wear this colour again in the winter and remember this day :D

Derwentwater 19 July 2013

Chanel Blue Boy

I bought Chanel Blue Boy from the Chanel Counter in my local House of Fraser. It's one of the Les Jeans de Chanel trio - these were supposed to be a very limited release in the UK a couple of years ago and only available in one or two stores outside of London. I remember making a special trip to Newcastle to buy Coco Blue, then to my annoyance they turned up everywhere a few months later. I wasn't so annoyed it stopped me buying this though! I'm not sure if these colours are still available now.

Untried Polish Challenge Day 11 *Most Expensive* - Chanel Taboo

Chanel Taboo

I've had this untried for a few weeks - although it's only just released here in the UK I got all impatient when I first saw swatches and got a friend in the US to send me a bottle. Then for some reason I didn't get around to wearing it - maybe it didn't feel summery enough or something. Anyway, here it is, and it's a beauty!

Chanel Taboo

The polish is basically a dark blue-purple jelly packed with plummy shimmer. It picks up different colour casts according to the light and the angle, but there is a lot of purple flash in there along with some bluish hints at times. It does look a lot redder and sparklier in the bottle than on the nail, but to be honest I prefer how how it looks on the nail. A long, long time ago (maybe around 2000), I bought a dark purple, almost black,Chanel polish called Cobra; at the time it seemed really rad but I wore it again last year and it was dull and rather ordinary. When I put Taboo on my nails, I realised this was what I wanted Cobra to be!

Here's a bunch of pics at different angles and in various lights to show what I mean:

Chanel Taboo

And a macro in full sun to show the shimmers in detail:

Chanel Taboo

The application on Chanel Taboo is impeccable. I used two coats here, with Seche Vite quick drying top coat. I could probably have got away with a single coat; one coat would suffice for short nails I'm almost certain.

I've been trying to do more nail art recently, and I really enjoyed my Gradient with Chanel Bel-Argus and Azure, so I thought I 'd jazz this one up a bit on it's second day too! I love purple and yellowy-olive green together (they're complementary colours so pretty much guaranteed to look awesome), so the obvious partner for this was Chanel Peridot! I also used SpaRitual Running With Wolves in the gradient as an 'in-between' colour. Neither Peridot nor Running With Wolves are untried; I bought and wore Peridot the day it was released here in the UK (August 2011, if I remember correctly) and Running With Wolves is an old favourite; it used to be a lucky polish for racing. In fact I might wear it next weekend when I run my first 50 mile ultra:)

Chanel Taboo, SpaRitual Running With Wolves and Chanel Peridot

Chanel Taboo, SpaRitual Running With Wolves and Chanel Peridot

Too many pictures in this post I know, but too hard to choose! 

All polishes in this post purchased by me. 

Other bloggers taking part in this untried challenge are:

Jonochi at Just Add Polish
Masha at Lost In Lacquer
Raine at Lacquer Lily
Amy at Fancy Side
Amanda at Designer Nail Accents
Sam at Polished Art
Lizajane at Organic Neglect
Blueberry Pie at Blueberry Nails
Kristina at Lacquer Fetish 

Missy at Gnarly Gnails
Uni at Acetone FIles
Erica at Coat of Mani Colors
Isabel at Little Fairy

Raux at Raux Polish 

Nail Art with Chanel Bel-Argus and Azure

Chanel Bel-Argus and Azure sponge gradient and stamping with matt top coat

I'll state up front, but not apologise, that this is a picture heavy post! I built this mani up over a few days, and I loved every stage of of it! So I took pictures of all the steps!

The starting point was Chanel Bel-Argus, which on it's own is a fantastic metallic blue, unlike anything else in my collection. But since I don't normally go for metallics, it's unlikely I would have had a dupe for it really.

Chanel Bel-Argus

This is three coats plus Seche Vite quick drying top coat - the colour was opaque at two coats but I'm over-sensitive to brush strokes so I sponged on a third coat thinly to fix the finish. The colour is amazing - it reminds me of the tropical Morpho butterflies.

With these butterflies in mind, a couple of days later I added  a sponge gradient with Chanel Azure.

Chanel Bel-Argus and Azure sponge gradient

I don't know if Chanel had this sort of thing in mind when they released these colours together, but I think they were just made for each other :)

I love stamping for easy nail art effects, but I have a bit of a conflict because I like to wear my nails long too, and the stamping images are usually too small.......... so my stamping adventures are usually confined to when I cut my nails short. Or the complicated process of double-stamping (stamping the image twice on each nail) which doesn't work with all plates because there is no way of lining the images up on some of the designs, and in any case is tricky! But then I had an idea............. if I added a gradient to the tip of my nail, and then stamped in the same colour as the the gradient on the rest of the nail, I could get a design using just a single stamp. So I tried it out stamping with Chanel Azure over this gradient mani:

Chanel Bel-Argus and Azure sponge gradient and stamping

I really like how this turned out! I used one of the wavy / zebra patterns from the Cheeky Wild at Heart plate - these designs are all quite big anyway.  Here are a couple of macro shots of the stamped mani in full sun to show how rich these colours are:

Chanel Bel-Argus and Azure sponge gradient and stamping

And finally, still thinking of dusty butterfly wings, I added a matt top coat (Mavala Color-Matt).

Chanel Bel-Argus and Azure sponge gradient and stamping with matt top coat

I prefer the matt version, it shows up the pattern much better. I took these pictures in indirect sunlight indoors near a window, but finally, back to my opening full-sun macro:

Chanel Bel-Argus and Azure sponge gradient and stamping with matt top coat

I think this has to be one my favourite manis of all the ones I've ever done. Someone said it reminded her of these guys and I have to agree, although I never thought of Avatar as I was doing the nail art!

I purchased Chanel Bel-Argus and Azure from my local House of Fraser. Mavala Color-Matt top coat is my staple matt top coat and is readily available in chemists and department stores in the UK. I bought the Cheeky nail art plate from Cheeky via amazon.co.uk - although it shipped from China it was here in a couple of weeks and is great quality - I'd definitely buy from Cheeky again.