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:

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. 

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. 

Space Jam Zig Zags

Australis Space Jam, OPI DS Extravagance, OPI Ate Berries in the Canaries, OPI Simmer & Shimmer, China Glaze Rodeo Fanatic

I bought this amazing looking Australis polish a few weeks ago, and after lurking in the bottom of my handbag for ages I finally added it to the stash and gave it a test run! It's super pretty, but man it was a pain to apply. I added some thinner, which helped it out but it was still quite thick and gluggy, which made the application difficult. It works fabulously with just one coat over a dark polish. I've settled in a quite a solid chevron phase ever since the purchase of the Ikea Scissors from Heaven and couldn't resist adding some colour matching zig zag feature nails to the mani.

Day 23 - Inspired by a Movie

Orly Androgynie, piCture pOlish Heavy Metal, Spectraflair Topcoat

Finally, day 23! Posted 242 days after day one, but let's not dwell on how long this thing is taking me (to be honest, I kind of forgot about it for a while). Fingers crossed I'll get all 31 days done within a year! 

Day 23 is Inspired by a Movie. Saturday was May the 4th, also known as Star Wars Day. I originally attempted a mani with a Stormtrooper, R2-D2 and C-3PO, but it was a giant fail and I gave up half way through. I settled for painting my nails with Orly's Androgynie, which is the most space/galaxy looking polish I own, and then later in the day I added some piCture pOlish Heavy Metal and spectraflair sparkles! 

I'm back! And Ikea scissors have changed my nail life!

Orly Fowl Play, Orly Glitz, Ozotic 513

Hello everyone! Sorry I've not been around for the past little while, it's the usual hectic life excuse. My housemate and I moved house (not so conveniently timed to occur at the same time as our insane period at work) and my poor nails were not given the attention they deserved and I didn't want to put them out in the internet world when they weren't looking their best. And, to top things off I ran out of top coat. It was a disaster. 

I had to become the queen of the 5+ day manicure, but now, most of the boxes are unpacked so I can paint my nails whenever I want!  

During this little hiatus of sorts, on one of my trips to Ikea, I spontaneously bought a pair of pinking shears. Quite some time ago I saw this post on how to make your own "nail sticker" type things. I bought a cheap set of fancy scissors off eBay and eagerly tried the tutorial. It was quite the fail. The scissors weren't sharp enough to cut cleanly through the nail polish and paper so I gave up after only one mildly successful manicure.

Sharper scissors were the key, but dressmaking pinking shears are around $30, and really, did I need to pay $30 just to have some cool zigzags on my nails a few times? No, I did not.

Until I saw them at Ikea for $10! I've been in chevron heaven ever since! 

(On another note, can you believe that these are the only nail art type manis I've had in the past month. Sadly, they were only captured on the iPhone, not the real camera.)

Mod About Stamping

OPI Mod About You, China Glaze Concrete Catwalk, BM-201

It's been so long since I stamped anything on my nails but this chevron pattern has always been one of my favourites. 

Pink Nails & Zebra Chevrons

OPI ElePhantastic Pink, OPI Mod-ern Girl, OPI Alpine Snow, BYS Black Striper

Another chevron mani! I just can't get enough of them! This time I tried my hand at thicker zig zags, and while they're a wobbly on the edges when you inspect them closely, I think they still looked pretty good from a distance. I'll definitely have to practice my corners!

The non-zebra nails are painted with ElePhantastic Pink, and then a coat of Mod-ern Girl. I've realised that my nail polish collection is missing a crucial shade of pink - a pink that's not too bright, not too pastel, still pink, but with a hearty splash of coral to it. I was going to use OPI's I Eat Mainely Lobster, but I had my heart set on a lovely creme/jelly and I Eat Mainely Lobster has a delightful shimmer to it. 

All the pinks I own are either too pale or too red. For the time being, Mod-ern Girl over ElePhantastic Pink will have to do the job.  

Chevrons & Hearts

China Glaze Concrete Catwalk, China Glaze Aquadelic, LA Color Flamingo

Chevrons may just be my new favourite pattern! I randomly bought this LA Color striper from a dollar store on my way home from work a few weeks ago and couldn't help but do another chevron mani after my last one. The other trend that's been floating around that I wanted to try was framed nails. I actually followed a tutorial for the framed nails where you paint the frame colour first, then use tape on the tips and paint your nails again with the second colour, which makes the frame. 

I can't for the life of my find what blog it was that I saw it on! I even went through my internet history (apparently all I do on the interwebs is look at nail polish, read celebrity gossip and online shopping!) but couldn't find it. I have a feeling it was on Tumblr, so if I do track it down I'll definitely update this post (after scrolling through 103 pages of my dashboard trying to find it, I've given up) It was such a great tutorial though! Why don't I bookmark these things?