Hi Goddesses
OMG I LOVE THIS POLISH !!! and OMG I love this mani !!!
Wow, wow, wow. This, for me, was perfection, about the best a Crumpet can get, and I really hope you love it even a teeny tiny bit as much as I do :)
Firstly - sadness, boooooooo - it's Day 29. Only 1 day left of the best challenge ever. Well actually, not so. Being a silly, scatter-brained and stressed Crumpet, I accidentally did 31 - DUH - so on the 31st November .... lol, 1st December, you'll get the final mani. What an idiot!
Anyway, back to this one. And I don't care, I AM posting all the photos, they ARE all necessary, the polish is bloody gorgeous, and the fishbraid is fabuloso !!
Contrary Polish is a newish Indie brand which sells through Llarowe. Initially it left me cold - the collection was full of shimmers, and the only colour I remotely liked was this one - Purple Smoke - but it seemed so similar to Zoya Kelly (one of my all-time loves) that I didn't see the need for it.
Anyway, as these things do, nail polish karma happened, and I ended up owning this polish. Not only is it gorgeous, the bottle is the cutest, dumpiest, chubbiest thing ever :)
So the polish. Well, like Kelly, it's a dark grey, blue toned. Utterly fabulous colour, especially for autumn. Unlike Kelly, it's also loaded with sublime blue and purple shimmer. Seriously sensational.
The formula is awesome and effortless, and as you can see, super shiny. I never managed to get Kelly looking this glossy. So, the upshot - you don't need Kelly, you just need this.
LOVE. IT.
So, then I decided to do a fishbraid on 2 nails. Firstly, there was no way I was covering up all of my Purple Smoke lol - that's why it's only on 2 nails.
Secondly, I deliberately went for sparkly polishes to bring some light to the darkness of Purple Smoke, and I went with Grapevine Goddess by Fresh Paint, and my trusty Mink Mitten by ManGlaze.
Fishbraids intimidated me for MONTHS, and yet somehow, I can do them. All I can say is, they're NOT as difficult as they look - but they can psyche you out!
My advice ? Practice first on a piece of paper. You need to be consistent with your plaiting, so you need to work out how you're going to hold your polish brush to get an even line, and then you just need to practice the overlapping. Lucy's Stash has an excellent tutorial if you need one.
Et voila - a possible Polish of The Year and a possible Crumpet mani of the year ??
Enjoy xx :)