How Not to Blog Like, Or, Polishing Fails

Something I try to do on this blog is be open and transparent about how I feel about polishes and manis.  I've been reasonably good at it but I felt I should show you some of the manis I've done recently that make me angry, be it poor choice of colours, photography, style or application.  Let's take a look at some of them, shall we?

First up we have what should have been a simple swatch of Nfu-Oh 51 over Sally Hansen Navy Baby.  I thought the navy would bring out the nice blue in the 51 but it was just too dark.  My application and clean up was bad so my cuticles and fingers look a bit dirty and weird.  In cleaning up also, I removed just a bit of the top colour from around my cuticles which I hate.  It's too thick, too!  Urgh, I just hate everything about this.  I will find a way to review this polish properly soon, though.

Compared to the above picture, I did much better in the clean up and lighting.  This is at least how my cuticles should look.  I just managed to completely mess up the application, with massive bubbles and lumps showing up.  I don't even really know how this happened.  I didn't knock my nails nor was my Seche Vite especially bubbly.  Again, a super pretty polish that I will have to get around to reviewing.

Another mani that was completely let down by my application.  There's something about Sally Hansen Navy Baby that just doesn't clean up well.  I hate how non-smooth the cuticle finish is.  My nails are also completely covered in fluff that I didn't see until I was editing the pictures.  Too much drying oil on there too, which doesn't help.  And too dark.  Urgh.

This is why I shouldn't try to take photos outside of my desk!  Ozotic 531 is such a beautiful linear holo polish that's completely let down by my attempt to use the down lights in the kitchen to capture the holo-ness. Also by my poor application of the base red colour, making my cuticles look like they're beaten up more than they are.  That's to say nothing about how sad the white-balance makes me.

I had such a vision for this mani.  I wanted to glitter myself but felt that I should, you know, just try something different for once.  Armed with my new striping tape, I wanted to do some kind of checkered...thing.  After doing three nails, I got sick of doing it so I tried some kind of dry-marbling...thing on my ring finger and a dotted...thing on my little finger.  The execution is off, the colours are ok but the white is too much, just a bit of a fail all round, really.

Last but not least, my attempt to swatch Illamasqua Devotee, one of the rubber finish polishes.  I wanted to try this polish for a while and finally came across it in a Sephora.  I get a little anxious with matte or special finish polishes as I'm super rough on my nails and can't stand any kind of wear.  I thought I'd try the whole do-two-coats-then-top-coat-then-final-coat thing and hope for the best.  My application really let me down here though, it's just too thick and I didn't go all the way to the edges, making it look lumpy.

The Verdict:  Drink in the fails and hopefully we can all try not to do these things.