Lacquistry Amazeballz Extra Fine

I got the amazing Lacquistry Amazeballz polish just in time for New Year 2014, and now there's Amazeballz Extra Fine... the same metallic particles, but much finer... so the effect is much denser and blingier. This stuff is seriously stunning!

The rest of this post is just pictures - this polish leaves me pretty much speechless! My nails look like they are made from metal wearing this. Two thin coats plus Seche Vite because I didn't want to smudge it; the application and clean up was very easy.

Lacquistry Amazeballz Extra Fine

Lacquistry Amazeballz Extra Fine

I purchased Amazeballz Extra Fine from the Lacquistry Etsy Shop; she ships internationally and my polish took about a week to get from Arizona to the UK.

Gradient with Mentality Duchess and Manglaze Lesbihonest

Mentality Duchess and Manglaze Lesbihonest

Just a bit of fun today! I love pinks......and gradients, and mattes............ so here's a combination of a lovely new pink matte I bought recently (Mentality Duchess) and an old favourite (Manglaze Lesbihonest). I love how this worked out - and it's great to know that the Mentality Mattes (which I've just discovered recently) work well in gradients with my collection of Manglaze shades.

Mentality Duchess and Manglaze Lesbihonest

To create the effect I used one coat of Duchess all over my nails, then added the gradient using both colours painted onto a slightly damp makeup sponge. I like matte gradients - matte polishes seem to blend nicely together and the sponging gives a nice finish too.

Mentality Duchess and Manglaze Lesbihonest

I purchased Mentality Duchess from Sally Magpies and Manglaze Lesbihonest is an old favourite from my collection. Manglaze polishes used to be a bit tricky to get hold of in the UK but Sally started stocking this brand too recently - which great news for UK matte polish fans.

Nails of the day - Contrary Sky with nail art Skittles

Contrary Polish Sky

Contrary Polish Sky is a super blue - a strong slightly teal leaning shade with a pretty golden shimmer. I wanted to try out a mix of blue and black nail art with this, so I added stamping on my ring and little fingers and thumb with an image from MoYou Explorer plate 12 and giant dots to my middle and index fingers. I brushed a very light coat of a fine black and white glitter (Mentality Antisocial) over my index finger nail before I added the dots. I also added a few smaller dots to my index finger only.

Contrary Polish Sky

The black is American Apparel Hassid, which was a gift a while ago - and is now my favourite black for stamping and other nail art. All products in this post are from my personal collection and were purchased by me. You can buy Contrary Polish Sky from Llarowe (international) or Rainbow Connection (UK) and MoYou plates from their website.

Mentality Cantankerous ............. stamped with MoYou Explorer Collection no 5 plate

Mentality Cantankerous stamped with MoYou Explorer #5

I've made two fab new discoveries in 2014 already.......... Mentality polishes and MoYou stamping plates. I've been pondering and procrastinating over both for a few months now, but I bit the bullet at last and placed an ordered a few Mentality colours and a couple of MoYou plates.

I loved Nailventurous Floam and its relatives (although I've not worn any of these for ages - the only one I've used since I started this blog is Humblebee and that is ages ago!), so I was immediately drawn to the Mentality microglitters. This one is Cantankerous - a mix of black, white, yellow and red in a clear base. This shot is in the bottle:

Mentality Cantankerous

And on my nails:

Mentality Cantankerous

I just used two thin coats of Mentality Cantankerous straight over basecoat; I wanted to see how easy it was to get full coverage without undies. Although you can see my nails through the glitter in these big photos, in real life this looks full coverage.

Mentality Cantankerous

I needed several coats of basecoat to get this smooth enough, although I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to getting a smooth finish on my nails. But totally worth the effort - I love this polish and wore it on its own for a couple of days before I added the stamping!

Mentality Cantankerous

Mentality Cantankerous

I stamped this with MoYou Explorer Collection plate #5, using the banner print from the top of the plate. The all-picture nature of these plates makes them great for longer nails, when most of the 'older style' plates need double stamping or some other fudge to make the pattern fill the nail. I think they're also great fun and very versatile too - as you can use more than image on a single nail or pick different parts of the image to use on different nails o make a co-ordinated skittle mani (I did than with this plate in this mani here the other day).

Mentality Cantankerous stamped with MoYou Explorer #5

The MoYou plate was great to use, every image stamped just about perfect first time. I used American Apparel Hassid for the stamping since I couldn't find my Konad black polish - Hassid stamps just as well as Konad and is a lot easier to clean up. Maybe I'll be using this as my go-to stamping black in future!

I'm super impressed by the MoYou plates and I've already placed my second order! No doubt I'll be ordering more Mentality polishes soon, but I will wait until I've tried the two I still have waiting on my desk! I wore Mentality Brute last week - I loved that colour too; hard to say whether I like Brute or Cantankerous best so far!

Mentality are based in the US and have their own store and ship internationally (larger orders).  I purchased my Mentality polishes from Sally Magpies - Sally has a great range of indie and overseas polishes made easy to buy in the UK. I purchased my MoYou plates from MoYou London.

Mentality Brute........ with Nail Art :)

Mentality Brute with Manglaze Matte is Murder

My first foray into Mentality polishes! I've always loved matte polishes, so I don't know how these stunners from Mentality managed to pass me by, but I'm really glad I found them. Better late than never!

Here is Mentality Brute alone; this is two coats. Application and coverage are perfect, and this colour just glows!

Mentality Brute

I added some geometric nail art with Manglaze Matte is Murder, since I've just joined FingerFood's Theme Buffet  nail art challenge, and this weeks theme is geometric.......

Mentality Brute with Manglaze Matte is Murder

For all of my nails except my ring finger, I taped off the parts I wanted to stay blue with scotch tape, then painted over. This is the first time I've tried taping in this was; I got the idea from Lucie's tutorial at Lucy's Stash. I deliberately left less of my nails exposed between the tape than Lucie did, since I wanted more of the blue in the end result. I'm pleased with how this turned out and I'm definitely adding this to my library of nail art techniques!

I purchased Mentality Brute from Sally Magpies; Manglaze Matte is Murder is an old favourite from my stash but Sally has just started selling Manglaze too. Outside the UK, Manglaze are available direct from the Manglaze website and Mentality from the Mentality BigCartel store.

Check out the other super geometric nail art in FingerFood's challenge - I love geometrics!

Happy New Year - NOTD Lacquistry Amazeballz !

Lacquistry Amazeballz

This is amazing stuff - pretty much what it says on the bottle really! And it arrived just in time for New Year :)

It's quite hard to capture how stunning it is in real life on the camera though; I can't stop staring at my nails because they look like some sort of shiny metal! When the camera focuses on the polish, it shows that it's actually tiny shards of metallic.....stuff; not sure what really, it certainly isn't glitter because the polish goes on smoothly and dries as smooth as glass, even without topcoat. 

This could be used as a topper with one coat I suppose, but I used four coats here to get this full coverage. To be honest three would have done, especially if you have shorter nails.

Wonderful. I think this polish is truly unique, I've never seen anything quite like it before. I had intended to do nail art over it, but it seems too fabulous to cover up.

I purchased Amazeballz from Lacquistry's Etsy shop, shipping was super quick and it arrived here in the UK in under two weeks.

Iconic Effect Astral Plane

Iconic Effect Astral Plane 

This is my first Iconic Effect polish! Quite timely because the day it arrived, Iconic Effect was announced UK Indie Brand of the Year, and winner of the best UK Indie Polish (Extreme Holo Topcoat) so I was feeling a bit sheepish not having tried them yet. Especially since I won the UK Indie Mani of the Year with my Quirk Madame Thenardier mani (last mani in this post here)   :)

It's a super holographic duochrome in a bright purply-blue with a strong purple shift, a sort of coppery purple. Although I have a lot of pictures, at this time of year its hard to do a holo polish justice, but in artificial light, it is really holo - I'm looking forward to revisiting this one in the summer. Here it is in the best sunlight I had all day:

And in more subdued light, you can see the duochrome shift better...........

Popping it under my daylight lamp really shows off the holo, although this burns out the duochrome. This polish seems impossible to photograph showing off both the duochrome AND the holo at the same time!

Iconic Effect Astral Plane 

Macros are obligatory I think - starting with an abstract, fuzzy one; I love how the holo particles spread out into little pools of colour!

Iconic Effects Astral Plane 

These two are a bit more representative of what the polish looks like under my daylight lamp, with holo in full on bling mode! I could only take macros under the daylight lamp, the DSLR and macro lens need this much light.

Iconic Effect Astral Plane 

In terms of application, Iconic Effect Astral Plane is very straightforward. The polish is rather sheer, so I applied it over a dark blurple base (OPI Sapphire in the Snow) to make the duochrome and holo pop, as suggested in the swatches on Etsy. Next time I'll use it alone; I think that would give a softer look and it would maybe take a few coats to build up a good density of colour.

Actually, I bought two Iconic Effect polishes (to spread the cost of shipping, or is it so they don't get lonely in the post - I can't remember, lol); the other one I got was Northern Lights. Northern Lights is another holographic duochrome, blue-purple again but this time with more of a teal base. I think the shift is more coppery than Astral Plane.  I added a gradient of this polish over Astral Plane. The difference between the two is quite subtle but I like the finished effect!

Iconic Effect Astral Plane with Northern Lights gradient

Iconic Effect Astral Plane with Northern Lights gradient

Honestly, I'm not surprised how popular these polishes have been, they are superb! I purchased Iconic Effect Astral Plane and Northern Lights from the Iconic Effect Etsy shop.