Blue Mosaic

Hi Goddesses  

Happy Easter to everyone, or Happy Chocolate Day :)

Here's the 3rd in my series of mosaics, and this one is all about BLUE.    The technique is exactly as described in the previous post (here).

For the blues, I used -

* base of CG Sea Spray

* a-England Tristam

* Butter London Victoriana for the shimmer

* OPI Ogre The Top Blue

* LA Girl Glitter Addict in Incognito

* CG Secret Peri-wink-le

There's a lot of congruence to these blues, and by that I mean they fit really well together.   You'll see when we get to the purple one how important that can be!

Choosing the right colours is a bit like selecting the colours for a water marble - you need to make sure they will play nicely with each other.   It helps that blues all have a similar tone, but it's trickier to choose wisely when you get to colours like green or purple which can be either cool toned or warm toned.   From the mosaics I've done, I would suggest you stick to one tone rather than mix them.

Tomorrow - the pink one, which has a twist :)

Enjoy xx :)

The Moody Blues

Hi Goddesses

So by whatever dark and dirty spilling of trade secrets, Zoya and OPI have managed to dupe themselves in their Spring Collections, with both their shimmery dark purple and their shimmery pale blues.   Originally, this post was only going to compare Skylar, I Don't Give A Rotterdam and I Have A Herring Problem, but as I was gazing at one of them, it started to remind me of Butter London Victoriana.  So I widened my parameters lol.

Behold - your Moody Blues -

thumb = Butter London Lady Muck

index - OPI I Don't Give A Rotterdam

middle = Zoya Skylar

ring - OPI I Have A Herring Problem

pinkie = Butter London Victoriana

So we clearly have a split camp here - thumb and index v the other three.  Let's take Thumb and index first.

These are not dupes at all, with Lady Muck paler than Rotterdam, and actually quite similar to Pam's Stormy Skies  (here).    Lady Muck's sparkle is also a lot finer and more silver, whereas the OPI is golder and grittier and therefore more obvious to the naked eye.

Now to Skylar, Herring and Victoriana - don't they look similar?  Whilst none of them are EXACTLY like the other, that's like saying Katy Perry and Zooey Deschanel don't look EXACTLY like each other - they look similar to confuse all but the most obsessive fan.

Victoriana is the odd one out.  It has a slightly teal tinge to it (which you don't notice unless you wear it next to Herring lol) and looks quite flat / matte in comparison.

Herring and Skylar however are almost twins.  There is a deeper intensity to Skylar's pigmentation, but they both share the same goldy sparkle and beauty.

It's also worth noting that everything had 2 coats - except the OPIs, which needed 3.   I want to return to that "has OPI got thinner" question - here they all are at 1 coat, I'll let you decide.

So, let's sum up.  Do you need all 5 ?   Definitely not.   So which ones are you going to give up, Crumpet?  Er, er .... really?  You want me to give up polish ?   Much as I surprise myself by saying this, if I were going to give any up, it would be the 2 OPIs.   The Zoya has the better colour density, and then I do love my Butter Londons ....

Sigh, what IS a Crumpet to do ??  Help .... gulp ...

Enjoy xx :)

Butter LONDON - Victoriana

Hi Goddesses

Siiiiigh, it would seem that my fall is complete.  My name is Crumpet, and I Like Blue !!!  I totally blame Sarah at Chalkboard Nails for this - she posted it and I was just all "oh, I like that :(".    Seems my blue hating days are over.

This came my way in a swap with my polish sister, Elizabeth Stern, and well, it's just absolutely gorgeous.  It goes on like a dream, looks like a dream and siiiiiiiiigh.  I loves it.

Victoriana is a teally kind of blue, infused with silver and gold specks, giving it a metallic / suede type of look.  It is totally the colour of far flung oceans, mesmerisingly twinkly in that way of the sea, and just utterly and inescapably beautiful.

I'm lucky in that I own a lot of polishes that I could just stare at, like artworks, and this is really in that category.  There's just a sublime perfection in the precise shade of blue this is and how perfectly the metal sits within it.

All day whilst wearing this, I've been thinking of mermaids, and how this would be a perfect base for a mermaid mani.  Sadly, before I could even get the stamping plate out this morning, the infamous left index nail split again :(   It has done well, it's not split for weeks, but it's still a pain in the ass, and when you look at the nail, you can see the fault line running half way down the nail.  So I am very sorry, no mermaid nails today, but they are in our near future :)

Enjoy xxx :)