Pastel galaxy mani

I've been dying to try out a galaxy mani for aggggeesss and finally decided to attempt one at the weekend. I particularly like pastel versions, and a quick search brought me to a tutorial posted by The Nailasaurus here. I pretty much followed it to a T using the list of polishes below.

artificial light

I used the following polishes for my 'basic' colours;

• OPI 'Thanks a Windmillion' (sea foam green) - used as the base
• Sally Hansen 'Yellow Kitty' (yellow)
• MUA 'Bold Blue' (blue)
• Rimmel 'Marshmallow Heaven' (purple)

artificial light

 I then used the following colours for little splashes of shimmer to make it all look more ethereal;

• OPI 'Not Like The Movies' (shimmery green/silver)
• OPI 'Play The Peonies' (pale pink pearl)
• OPI 'Significant Other Colour' (sheer lavendar/yellow duochrome)

natural light, partial shade

 Once that had all dried I dotted on some NYC 'Pinstripe White' to make the stars, and topped with a coat of Seche Vite for strength. Later I then applied two coats of Rimmel 'Matte Finish' to give a matte effect.

Partial shade

 My favourite nail polish in this line up is 'Not Like The Movies' from the January 2011 Katy Perry collection, which is a silvery green and light purple duocrome with some silver microglitter mixed in. Its one of the first few OPI polishes I bought and I haven't even looked at it for at least a year - I'll definitely be using it again in the near future!

all of the polishes together!

What do you think, do you like galaxy manis? When I try this next time I'll vary the pattern across the nails I think, but I'm very pleased with my first attempt!

Fx

OPI 'Glacier Bay Blues' swatch

Well, as predicted, the bow in my previous mani fell off fairly quickly resulting in a ruined nail. It happened in the toilet of a restaurant I was at with family today, so I was not best pleased!

However, this means I can now legitimately paint my nails again without feeling like I'm wasting polish - yay!

Today I decided to use OPI 'Glacier Bay Blues' as the base for a more complex mani (which I'll post later), and as it's considered a very rare polish I thought it was worth doing a separate swatch post.

I bought this polish a couple of years ago when I started to become interested in nail polish, and have only used it a couple of times since. After today I remember why - it really is an AWFUL formula!

This is from the OPI 2004 Canadian collection and features their old formula (e.g. not 'big 3' free) and the old, thin brush. I do miss the pro-wide brush!

In direct sunlight

This a green and blue /purple (or blurple) duochrome. It's really hard to capture the effect it has on the nail, but you can probably see the two tones in the bottle in my pictures - this is how it actually looks on the nail.

As I mentioned previously it's a terrible formula - very watery and streaky, and it takes aggggges to dry between coats. I had to apply four coats to get the opacity you see in these pictures.

with flash in shade

If it wasn't for the scarcity of this polish I would probably sell it to be honest - but as it sells for upwards of £20 these days I think I'll hold on to it and hope it increases further in value ;)

indirect sunlight

What do you think, do you like the duochrome effect? Is it worth the pain of the poor formula?

Keep tuned for my next blog post to see how I use this as the base for a saran wrap mani :)

fx