Aug 25, 2014

piCture pOlish Blog Fest 2014 featuring Nail Vinyls

It's that time of year again.  piCture pOlish's Blog Fest is here. The day nail bloggers all over the world showcase piCture pOlish swatches and nail art.  This is my third year participating.  If you want to see my previous contributions here's 2012 and 2013.
This year is a little different, we are featuring Nail Vinyls.  piCture pOlish have just released a special 4 pack exclusive of 'NailVinyls' from the US, available here.   This year is also an insta fest so you can check out more pics on instagram using #picturepolish and you can follow my IG @reblr.  There is also two parts to this blog fest.  The first is a straight forward swatch and review of a supplied polish, no nail art, and the second task is to create a nail art project using the supplied Nail Vinyls and polish.
So first up here's piCture pOlish Midnite Meteor.
With token lizard.
Midnite Meteor is a collaboration shade with DoBeauting!  It's a dusty navy blue with scattered bijou holo and coloured flecks.  The holo and flecks of colour are subtle.  In the sun holo is most visible, in shade it's the coloured flecks that catch the eye with little flashes of magenta and blue, but it's the formula that is the stand out feature of this polish.  It's a one coat wonder!  Smooth and completely opaque in just one normal coat and I love a good one coat polish.
Taken indoors with flash.
See that's just one coat.  It's shiny too.  I applied top coat to just two of those nails and couldn't see the difference.  Wow, one coat without the need for top coat, yep I can use that.  Even more impressive is that underneath I was wearing some nail art with black and white stamping.  I applied a coat of Midnite Meteor to just one nail to test it and I was so impressed with the way it covered the nail art I had been about to soak off (gel polish) that I went ahead and did a full manicure and took photos.  I felt so lazy but it was the perfect quick and easy solution that I wore for another 3 days.  Easy to apply too, not to thick and no risk of cuticle flooding.  I didn't need to do any clean up. 
It's going to be great for nail art and I intend to test it for stamping.

There was a full sheet of Nail Vinyls but I used a lot testing designs.
Next we have piCture pOlish Hot Lips, a bright neon pink, and Swagger, a milky periwinkle blue.  The Nail Vinyls I received are mini chevrons. 

I can't wait for summer.
Hot Lips and Swagger look great together, quite summery, not at all like our current rainy weather in Sydney.  I found Hot Lips to be a two coater and for Swagger I needed three coats for an even, opaque finish.  Which made the next task a bit tricky.
We were instructed to create nail art featuring the Nail Vinyls using the supplied two colours and NO studs, stamping, decals, stickers, tape, acrylic paints or any other nail art, ie gradients and dots.  We could use black and white polish if needed but these colours and the vinyls were to be the focus.  My first inspiration was to do a gradient under the Vinyls.  I think these colours would make a nice gradient but it wasn't an option so I'll save that idea for another day.
Nail Vinyls are basically vinyl stickers, used like striping or masking tape to stencil designs with polish.  Easier to handle than striping tape and stronger than masking tape, with precut shapes to make stencil style nail art easier.  You stick the vinyls on your nails, paint over with a coat of polish then peel them off while the polish is still wet, leaving behind your (hopefully) crisp clean shapes.

yes that is a horribly stained ring finger nail.
Ideally you need a nice opaque one coat colour to paint over the vinyls and the problem I had was both the supplied polishes needed more than on coat.  Multiple coats or too thick a coat caused the vinyls to 'melt' on the edges and leave a mess of glue behind.
My husband thinks this looks like a blue cockroach.
This is over a bare nail and you can see the glue left behind because I applied the polish too thick.  I tried many different combinations and designs and I kept having sticky problems.  In the end I found pressing the vinyls on my skin a few times to reduce the stickiness first helped and I had to settle for the base colour showing through each top colour because I just couldn't get them opaque in one coat.
You can see the blue Swagger under Hot lips has turned the neon pink into more of a fucshia colour on my index and ring fingers and on my middle and little fingers where I used Hot Lips as a base colour it has given Swagger more of a lilacy tint.  The top colours are also patchy on each so the base is showing through unevenly and I still had ragged edges from applying the top colour too thickly.  To finish off the mess my top coat made the colour streak over the chevrons, even though the polish was completely dry before I top coated.  I wasn't happy but this was the best result I had.  I tried things like using white as a base coat which made the colours 'pop' nicely but still didn't get around the need for more than one coat.  A polish like Midnite Meteor would have been perfect for this but I could only used Swagger, Hot Lips and black & white.
So I slept on it.  The next day I added another layer of chevrons using a rich one coat black I made myself.
Even the reflections look zigzaggy.
On my middle finger I left the vinyls on and top coated them, I like that nail best, it's kind of 3D. 
Bonus, Hot Lips glows under UV lights :)
Hot Lips and Swagger are both beautiful colours and make great base colours for this kind of nail art but for Nail Vinyls a one coat colour would give much neater results.  I'm going to use my remaining mini chevrons with Midnite Meteor.
You can find more information about Nail Vinyls here:
and the exclusive 4 pack of Nail Vinyls containing Chevrons, Mini Chevrons, Straight and Right Angles is available from piCture pOlish, as is Midnite Meteor, Hot Lips and Swagger, here:

If you'd like to see more Nail Vinyl art (and polish) check out what the other piCture pOlish Blog Fest 2014 participants have created.


1 comment:

  1. Wow, you sure gave this a valiant effort, and with the addition of the black I quite like the final result!! I can imagine how frustrated you must have been, knowing the rules you needed to abide by, when the polishes weren't being cooperative. This actually ends up being a very helpful post, for nail vinyl newbies especially, knowing what they need ( and don't need!) to make the best use of them. Well done!

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