piCture pOlish Blog Fest 2013 - Celebrating the Year of the Blogger

piCture pOlish Ocean, piCture pOlish White Wedding, piCture pOlish Dorothy

Welcome to the most epic post in the history of Little Nails! This is my 2013 piCutre pOlish Blog Fest post. piCture pOlish is an Australian brand with the greatest tradition. Every year they have The piCture pOlish Blog Fest and invite bloggers to review their nail polishes. 

This year's Blog Fest theme is Celebrating the Year of the Blogger and has an emphasis on nail art.

As soon as I heard which shades I was getting and the whole nail art side of it I knew exactly what I was going to do. It's not new news that I'm obsessed with making nail art sticker/decal stripe things, usually with a chevron pattern and over the past few months I've found that piCture pOlish shades (and Ozotic shades, also sold by PP) are fantastic for this kind of nail art. They seem to be more flexible than other brands and the strips never crack when you handle them. 

This time I thought I'd branch out from the chevron pattern. I played around with stripes and triangles and ended up with a red, white and blue mixed manicure. 

And just in case you want to try this kind of mani out yourself, I've whipped up tutorials for the decals which are at the end of this post (warning, I may have gone slightly overboard! The general concept of each tutorial is the same but it's always fun to try different patterns)

Dorothy is a red glitter polish. It's actually tiny silver glitter in a red jelly base and doesn't need many coats to get the great red colour. 

Ocean has piCture pOlish's amazing little shards of rainbow goodness, what I've previously described as "particles of magic". They're suspended in a blue jelly base. I wouldn't call this kind of polish a glitter, but it has a lovely sparkle and glimmer to it. 

White Wedding also has "particles of magic" in it. It's absolutely impossible to capture on camera the rainbow hidden inside this colour. It's definitely a wearable white and was great to apply. Three coats was more than enough. 

All shades can be purchased online at www.picturepolish.com.au and if you don't live in Australia don't fret, you can purchase piCture pOlish all over the world through their network partners. They also have everyday deals to take advantage of.

You can find piCture pOlish all over the internet including Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

Once you get the hang of sticking down the polish pieces it's really easy to make cool geometric patterns and the possibilities are endless. This is all the same method, just with different shapes. I use tweezers and a dotting tool (or a pen or pencil if you lose your dotting tool like I did) to apply the polish pieces. Sometimes I'll dampen the dotting tool with clear polish or even remover to make it easier for the polish pieces to stick to the dotter. 

 

These polishes were provided to me for review

Check out all the other amazing Blog Fest participants:

I Know What Pandas Like

Deborah Lippmann I Know What Boys Like, OPI Panda-monium Pink

I've been a little obsessed with the 'solid colour pointer finger accent nail' recently. I couldn't help but add some stripes to this mani also, which are unfortunately a bit streaky. I was too keen on the topcoat!

Navy & Gold Madeline Poole Nails

Orly Glitz, OPI My Vampire is Buff, China Glaze First Mate

I've been eyeing off this Madeline Poole mani for what feels like forever. I finally got around to recreating it!

It's been so dreary in Sydney and it's been raining for what feels like forever (seriously, there was something on the news about only having had 7 hours of sunshine in the past week). There was some kind of miracle after I finished this mani and the sun was out for about 15 minutes. Just enough time to take some photos!

Pink and Navy Flowers

OPI Ate Berries In The Canaries, OPI My Vampire Is Buff, China Glaze First Mate

It's been a while since I've had any kind of freehand nail art on my fingers and I was in the mood for sitting in front of a trashy TV show and playing around with a nail art brush. This is what I ended up with at the end of it.  

And can I just say how much I love My Vampire is Buff? I've really been developing a taste for off white polishes over the past year or so. Every time I get a new one I think it's the be all and end all of off white polish then a new one comes along that seems to be even better. I think I've worked my way through a good chunk of OPI Skull & Glossbones, My Boyfriend Scales walls got quite the workout, and now I seem to be reaching for MVIB every time I sit down to paint my nails. 

Lunar Love Song Chevrons

OPI Can't Find My Czechbook, OPI DS Extravagance, Orly Glitz, My Ten Friends Lunar Love Song

I've been eyeing off some Hare Polish pretties for quite some time and finally bought a couple from Femme Fatale Cosmetics here in Australia. On a bit of an impulse I added My Ten Friends Lunar Love Song to the order. Gosh am I glad I did. It ended up being the polish I was most excited about and I had to try it out first.

I layered it over OPI Can't Find My Czechbook and added some Chevrons for good measure (also because I hate having to take glitter off all ten fingers). 

I have a feeling my next little polish order will have a couple of bottles of MTF in it (Hailing Frequencies Open, I'm looking at you). Although I may have to wait for the new collection to come out to get Space Opera and Starry Night. 

New Polish Mani

 

OPI My Vampire is Buff, OPI Can't Find My Czechbook, China Glaze Man Hunt

I haven't bought nail polish in such a long time, but recently I updated my stash just a little bit. OPI My Vampire is Buff, OPI Can't Find My Czechbook and China Glaze Man Hunt are my newest additions and I couldn't wait to use them in a mani. 

Sparkly Ozotic Chevrons

OPI William Tell Me About OPI, Ozotic 908, Ozotic 903

I wore this crazy chevron mani a couple of weeks ago and I have to say that glittery, shimmery polishes are fast becoming my favourite polishes to make these little chevron stickies with. They seem to be a lot more flexible and easy to work with. These photos don't do these Ozotic polishes justice (check out 903 in action here), it was so sparkly! 

For this mani, instead of using a base colour and having it show through between the chevrons, I completely covered my nails with chevrons and alternated 908 and 903 chevron strips.