Purple Week - Jade Fascinio Violetta

Hi Goddesses

Hurrah, it's Friday !!  Wow that feels good :)  4 day weeks RULE !!

Ok, considering how much I wanted them, I have been ridiculously slack in getting the Jade holos up on the blog.  The honest reason is that I delayed wearing all the holos I bought this year til the summer arrived and I could photograph them in the sunshine.  Well, summer came and went in the blink of an eye in the UK, and never for more than 1 and a half days at a time, so all my glorious holos remain unworn.  Sorry, we're just going to have to photograph them in indoor light :(

I have been mightily impressed with the Jades so far.  They apply easily, they're vibrant and they have a beautiful holographic compostion.  This is the first time I've been disappointed, but I think I know why, so bear with.

At 2 coats this was glorious - beautifully scattered, delicate... but so was the colour.  It just didn't have the grapey depth I wanted from my purple, so I added a 3rd coat.  And that's why I think this mani went wrong.   

At 2 coats, this bent beautifully with the light.  At 3, it's got that horrible clunky bend the CG holos have - it looks fake and lacks finesse.

So, gorgeous polish, gorgeous about ooooh 20 minutes before I took this photos.  Oh man, you know what that means don't you?  I'll have to wear it AGAIN !!! Siiiiiigh .... such a chore :)

I bought all my Jades from Ninjapolish.com.

Enjoy xx

Crumpet's Birthday Day 3 - Drizzt by Glimmer by Erica

Hi Goddesses

So this is day 3 of my little birthdayfest - this is what I wore on my right paw for my birthday.   I'd pretty much known this would be on my hand since it arrived over a month ago.

This is Drizzt from Glimmer by Erica (who did Muy Caliente HERE).   It's pretty much the PERFECT Crumpet glitter - there's purple, there's red and there's squares !!!! Happy dance!

Drizzt is a sensational combination - lilac and purple glitter, plus red squares plus black micro dots.  I LOVE IT !!

I layered this over Jade Fascinio Violette, which complimented the lilac glitter perfectly.   I deliberately used a base polish because I wanted the mani to last.  Drizzt, like Muy Caliente is a really thick glitter, and I'm finding that the thicker ones peel on me after one day.

This looked like purple tin foil from a distance, like the fairy space ship had crash landed on a distant moon.  Absolutely awesome.

Glimmer by Erica is on Etsy HERE.

Enjoy xx :)

Work Wear Wednesdays - Nails Inc Lowndes Square

Hi Goddesses

This post is slightly late BECAUSE IT'S MY BIRTHDAY !!!!!  There's been a lot of polish love in the house tonight, and I'll be sharing that with you soon :)   My highlight?   That 2 of my best friends did purple manis today - thank you so much xxx

As it's my birthday and I've deemed it Purple Week, I wanted to push the boundaries of WWW a little, and bring a purple into play.  This I think is one of the colours you can get away with in a lot of workplaces because it looks so damn CLASSY.

This is Nails Inc Lowndes Square, and if I could fall asleep in it, roll around in it and eat it, I probably would.  It is the PERFECT grey lilac, just utterly utterly sublime, and goes on totally creamily and dreamily.

More than anything, this is one of THE most perfect shades for my skin tone.  It instantly makes me look classy and elegant and as if I should be wearing pearls !!  It's one of the nail shades I am ALWAYS attracted too, but I've resisted adding to this part of my stash for a while ... Lowndes Square just knocked me off my feet though.

I know without a doubt that this is similar to a LOT of other lilac greys that I own, so I'll be doing a comparison soon.  It is also a little more greige in real life - it's showing more purple here, but it's definitely not quite AS purple in real life.

I'm getting a lot of feedback that you love this feature, which is great.   Let me know if subtle colours and subtle patterns are an option, or whether we need to keep it SUPER boring / neutral :)

Enjoy xxx :)

PS apologies for the nail wrap on the index and the lack of top coat - ssssssh, don't tell anyone!

Birthday Nails - Number 1 !!!

Hi Goddesses

So, it's my birthday tomorrow, or today, depending when you're reading this .. hell, maybe even yesterday or last week !!!  I have therefore decreed this week Purple Week, in honour of my favourite nail colour, and so there's lots of purple as well as Crumpety goodness on the way.

I thought you might be interested in some random facts about me - 

* I was born on August 29th

* that makes me a Virgo

* HOWEVER I should have been born a whole month earlier - and should therefore have been a Leo, so I'm a bit of a mixture of the 2

* yes, I was born after 10 months chilling out in the womb

* I was born with an extra finger

Yup, so if you didn't all think I was mad before, you do now lol !!!     Anyhowwhohey, like the Queen, I am having several birthdays this week, partly because I like to wear 2 manis at once lol!   Tomorrow you get some insanely special nail art, and today you get ......

.... this.  In tribute to one of my all-time-and-forever favourite bloggers, Sarah of Chalkboard Nails, I finally did a ruffle mani !!  If you haven't seen it, Sarah did an awesome mani at the end of last year which she originally called the Carmen Miranda - you can see it HERE.  

I've wanted to do this for the LONGEST time, partly because it's so easy as well as effective.   It's literally just rows and rows of dots (which I did with my "almost largest" dotting tool").  

My base colour was a GORGEOUS possibly Workwear appropriate greyish lilac which might be coming to a WWW post near you oooooh tomorrow ... and for the rest of my dots, I picked up some of my untried purples (and shit the bed, there's a LOT to choose from) -

* Bettina Purple

* Cosmic from Claire's Starstruck Collex - thank you Katee :)

* Jade holo Fascinio Violetta

* Cult Nails Spontaneous (thank you Coco for such a to-die-for purple)

It's an easy process but one for which patience is required.  I did the bottom row of dots on every nail, waited for them all to dry, then did the 2nd row on all 5 nails and waited for them to dry .... and so on.  But boy, don't it look pretty ?

This reminds me of witches tights, which is fine with me.   The polishes work well together too.  Because purple spans such a WIDE spectrum (brown based to blue based), the biggest cause of failures (for me anyway) is a lack of congruence between the colours.  I really wanted to use one of the new Germany OPIs or my Sation Miss Emo Shun All which I'm DYING to wear ... but I'm so glad I resisted, as neither would have worked.

So altogether now, Happy Birthday to Meeeeeee .... I'm off to enjoy :) xxx

Summer Challenge - Flip Flops with Essie Neons

Hi Goddesses

Finally, finally, the end is in sight !!!  This blessed challenge !!  Can you guess, I'm a starter, not a finisher?  To be fair, I've had other stuff going on as well, so I haven't knuckled down to this last third of the Challenge as well as I should have.  Hangs Crumpety head in shame.

This mani is a wonderful reminder of the weekend I spent with the Essie Neons :)  I'm not usually an Essie Girl, but Kellie Gonzo's photos of them persuaded me I needed them, so I got them.  I have a gazillion photos of them I still need to post as a summer swansong, but I'm going to tell you a secret - ssssshhhh - not only are they great colours individually, they mesh together perfectly too, and MANY happy playtimes were had just doing gradients.  Aaaah, those lazy weekends ......

So here's the first thing I did when I got them - a summery skittle, with a teeny gradient on the thumb.  This is -

* index - Action

* middle - Bazooka

* ring - Lights

* pinkie - Camera

* the thumb is a gradient of all 4 

I was so worried when I first put them on as they go very rubbery and totally matte.  Personally, I much prefer them with their top coat on when they get mega glossy - they all had a layer of top coat here.

The stamping plate is BM-309 and it's so perfect for summer as well as so-easy-it's-practically-cheating for today's Challenge.

I do need to try and gather all the Essie shots together - they made for some truly stunning manis.

Enjoy xx :)

Goin' Cobwebby !!!

Hi Goddesses

I'm the Guest Blogger today for College Polished - be sure to check her out too :)

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I don't know about you, but I seem to be catching Hallowe'en fever already!  I blame those Indie polish-makers - they're already releasing their fall collections, and most of them have gone Hallowe'en c-razzzz-y.

So, I wanted to get into the spirit of Hallowe'en, but avoid the traditional Hallowe'en colours, so here we have a blue skittle mani, layered with one of my favourite glitters, Oz, Not Kansas by Red Carpet Lacquers, and then stamped using Barry M Silver Foil and the DRK-A stamping plate.

Overall, I'm really happy with how this turned out.  It's always a win when you manage to squeeze a glitter layer into a stamping mani - often you lose as many times as you win.

Just a little shout out for Oz, Not Kansas too.  I LOVE it.  It's one of the few polishes I own a back-up of.  It's delicate but WOW at the same time, and I LOVE how it fires up different colours on different bases.

Thank you, and enjoy !  xx :)