Pocket Money Polishes Brown Eyed Girl

Pocket Money Polishes Brown Eyed Girl

Today I want to show you the last of my Pocket Money Polishes September colours. This is Brown Eyed Girl - a complex mix of brown, gold, copper and hot pink glitters with a sprinkle of holographic microglitter that holds everything together!

Pocket Money Polishes Brown Eyed Girl

Brown glitter is a real favourite of mine, and so is hot pink matt glitter, so this one presses all my buttons. I considered using a light pink base for this, but Char at SoYouBeauty has already done that (and it looks fantastic), so I decided I'd go for a more autumnal look effect with a pinky brown base. I used Rescue Beauty Lounge Bruised, which is somewhere between a brown and a plum depending on the light, and added a bit of simple water marbling with Pretty Serious The Pink One to accent the pink glitters in Brown Eyed Girl. Pretty Serious The Pink One is a stunning pink - click through to my post from a few weeks ago when I wore this on it's own to see just how bright it is!

I wanted quite a heavy, glitter-bomb look for this mani, so I used two coats of Brown Eyed Girl. The glitter is perfectly suspended and applies smoothly and plentifully without any need for fishing or careful placement. The arrangement of glitter is just how it came out of the bottle. Because I'd put a lot of glitter on my nails, I used two coats of Gelous to make sure the mani is perfectly smooth and then a thick coat of Seche Vite to seal and dry.

Pocket Money Polishes Brown Eyed Girl

Brown Eyed Girl (and the other colours in the September Sparkle collection - which includes the black and white glitters Angels and Forever and the pretty blue Keep The Faith) go on sale at 6pm today at Pocket Money Polishes website. I was lucky to be able to buy a preview bottle of this last week. RBL Bruised is an old favourite from my stash (I got this in swap a while ago, if I remember correctly) and I purchased Pretty Serious The Pink One from Sally Magpies. Llarowe also stocks Pretty Serious polishes and ships internationally.

Blue water marble with glitter (Pocket Money Polishes Keep The Faith)

Here's a manicure that evolved over a several days! I started out with plain, light blue nails - a sort of palate cleanser from all the glitter and nail art, lol! This is Zoya Blu - a really pretty light blue cream from Zoya's spring pastels collection earlier this year. I choose my colours by mood more than *season* as defined by the manufacturer!

Zoya Blu

Next day I added a water marble. I'm a relative beginner at water marbling, but I love the effect, so I've decided to try to a water marble every week to get more practice! In my last water marble I used just a single colour and clear polish to make a marbled pattern over a gradient, but this time I wanted to marble with several colours. I used Zoya Blu, Zoya Jacqueline, American Apparel Passport Blue and Rescue Beauty Lounge Cuprum.

It's not perfect of course, but I do like the way the patterns came out. RBL Cuprum worked in an interesting way, it spread really quickly and thinly over the water, and on the nail it looks a bit like a water colour wash.

My favourite nail was my middle finger on my left hand - here's a macro of that one. You can also see the coppery flecks in RBL Cuprum on the edge of my middle finger nail rather well in the macro. Although I like the fact that every nail turns out different in water marbling, I wish every nail came out as good as this. Obviously more practice is needed!

GLITTER, however, is great for covering imperfections! And because you can add it selectively, you can use it just to accent some areas of a nail art design:

The glitter I used is Pocket Money Polishes Keep The Faith; this is a mix of slightly teal-ish blue glitters in hexes of various sizes, some tiny blue bar glitters and bigger pale gold holographic hexes. 

Pocket Money Polishes Keep The Faith 

I chose this glitter because the tone of blue matches up nicely with the blue shades in my water marble, and the pale gold hexes set off the warm cream of Zoya Jacqueline really well.

Water marble with Pocket Money Polishes Keep The Faith 

Zoya Blu and Jacqueline were part of a gift from a lovely polish friend, as was American Apparel Passport Blue. RBL Cuprum is a favourite from my stash - I got my bottle in a swap a while ago but the colour is still available to buy from the Rescue Beauty Lounge Website.

Charlie, the maker of Pocket Money Polishes, very kindly sent me Keep The Faith as a sample when I last ordered polish from her. Keep The Faith is one of the new Pocket Money Polishes colours for September, and goes on sale on 1st September at the Pockcet Money Polishes website, which includes a blog with information on new colours and release dates. You can also keep up with Charlie and her polishes on her facebook page

An InLinkz Link-up

Dalmations and Dominoes! Pocket Money Polishes Forever, Angels and Schools Out

Pocket Money Polishes Forever and Angels

Today I have two of Charlie's new Pocket Money Polishes September Sparkle Collection glitter toppers to show you - *Forever* and *Angels*. Charlie describes these as a pair of yin and yang polishes; I love black and white glitter in just about any format and I think it's a great idea to present the black glitter and white glitter separately - it allows for much more creativity!

Let's start with Forever. Forever is a mix of small black hexes, big black circles and iridescent bar glitters. In the bottle in reminds me of frogspawn - all black glitters do, lol!

Pocket Money Polishes Forever

Forever would look great over just about any colour, as long as the background wasn't so dark it blended in to the black. I was feeling in a bit of a monochrome mood, and the black circles put me in mind of dalmations - so here are my 'dalmation nails'!

I'm not very keen on pure white polish apart from for stamping and other nail art - I think it looks rather stark; I much prefer a cream shade. I've used American Apparel Cotton here - this is a super cream shade. The formula tends a little to streakiness, but two coats and SV is fine for under glitter. I'd probably use three coats of AA Cotton on its own.  I used two thin coats of Forever over the base, then a coat of Gelous and a coat of Seche Vite. The iridescent glitters are interesting - over a light base they are yellow-pink, but over dark they flash green and blue, as you can see in the bottle shot above.

If you get the angle just right though, you see an occasional subtle flash of green from these iridescent glitters, even over a pale base.

Pocket Money Polishes Forever

Much as I love the monochrome style, I'm always looking out for ways to change and extend the life of my mani! So I decided to a splash of bright colour with another awesome glitter topper from Charlie  ~ *School's Out*. This is a mix of primary red, yellow and blue matt hexagon glitter.  

Pocket Money Polishes School's Out

Given that School's Out combines all three primary colours, it probably works best over a neutral base - I'd been planning to create some black and white nail art to wear this over......... and then I realised that I had that black and white nail art!  So here is a single, light coat of School's Out over Forever and the off-white base. I love this effect - very Mondrian colour scheme!

Pocket Money Polishes Forever and School's Out

The other half of the black and white glitter pair is Angels, which is small white hexes, white circles and the same iridescent bar glitter.  But see how different the iridescent glitter looks in the bottle with the white.

Pocket Money Polishes Angels

Reverse the effect above, and put the white glitter topper over a black nail and you have dominoes! I used American Apparel Hassid as my base here - this black is a one coater (certainly if you're putting something else on top).

How different the iridescent glitters look against the black base!

Pocket Money Polishes Angels

And then with a light coat of School's Out:

I think the combination of Angels and School's out over black is less striking than Forever and School's Out over cream - I'm not sure if it's the iridescent glitters flashing green and blue that makes the whole mani look more *busy*, or if it's just that multi-coloured glitter over black is a combination that I've worn many times before. I still like the effect, nonetheless.

Pocket Money Polishes Angels and School's Out

And, finally - well of course you can combine the Forever and Angels! Obviously if you put on one coat of Forever and then a coat of Angels you'd get a black and white glitter mix that would look great over just about any colour. But I wanted to do something a bit different - that you couldn't get from a bottle of black and white glitter (of which I have many, in all shapes and sizes).

I've been working at improving my gradient technique for the last few weeks, and a challenge that I'd set myself was to do a black and white gradient........... so here it is; a perfect base for a black glitter and a white glitter!

This last picture shows a direct comparison of how the iridescent glitter in Forever and Angels looks on a dark and light background.

Pocket Money Polishes Forever and Angels

And finally, a macro of my gradient; I'm pleased with how that turned out! I painted my nails with American Apparel Cotton then applied a sponge gradient using American Apparel Cotton and Hassid. Although the black and white look scary together on the sponge, it actually worked quite easily. And for once I remembered to put tape around the edges of my nails, which made clean up a million times easier than it usually is when I do a gradient!

Pocket Money Polishes Forever and Angels

I purchased Pocket Money Polishes Forever, Angels and School's Out directly from Charlie at her website, which includes a blog with updates of restocks, launches and new colours. Forever and Angels go on sale on 1st September - I was lucky to be able to get a preview order :)  You can follow Charlie on facebook too. For anyone in the US who likes the look of Charlie's polishes, she is planning a US pop-up sale in September - details on this facebook page.

American Apparel Hassid and Cotton were part of a gift from a lovely US polish friend - American Apparel does have a UK website where you can buy the polishes but they seem rather pricey (£9) compared to the US rrp ($6). 

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!