Ruffian nails

Good evening lovelies

Tonight I decided to try something a little different. I have seen lots of these manicures on the many nail blogs I follow and decided it was finally time for me to experiment with the ruffian technique.

I wanted to use my matte top coat so I reached for my only true matte nail polish - Orly Iron Butterfly. It looked really pretty in real life but my camera hated taking shots with a matte finish so I dont have many pictures for you today :-(

For this look I started with a base coat of Barry M Teal, which is a frost finish green polish. I am not a fan of the frost finish so was glad to cover most of this polish up with a ruffian style manicure.

I used Orly Iron Butterfly to create the ruffian look. This polish dries to a total matte finish but the last time I used it for a manicure I had to add my usual glossy top coat to prevent it chipping so much. This time I added one coat of Essie Matte About Me and stepped back to admire.

So that I could take some better pictures of this matte mani I added a layer of glossy top coat and ended up much preferring the way it looked. Iron Butterfly looks like polished granite with the glossy top coat and my camera loved it again!

Barry M Teal swatch

It just goes to show that my original idea of keeping things matte was certainly not the best idea for tonights manicure.

See you again soon

Louise xx

Iron Butterfly & Gems

I am so excited... my Orly Iron Butterfly arrived today from the States. I have only been waiting for about 10 days but still I was very pleased when it arrived this morning. Iron Butterfly is part of the Metal Chic collection and is a stunning matte charcoal grey.

I havent seen this shade available for sale in the UK so although I had to purchase from the States it was still only £7 including postage. Totally worth every penny.

Iron Butterfly no top coat

This polish dries uber quick so I built up the coverage with three very thin layers and it dried to a perfect metallic matte grey. It reminded me of suede - almost like it would be soft to the touch! The polish contains lots of silver shimmer which became even more obvious once I added a layer of top coat.

My accent nail is Models Own Utopia which is a pretty pale pinky grey and I could not resist adding these beautiful little square pink gems to create a different dynamic to my usual stamping patterns.

Iron Butterfly with Seche Vite top coat

Excuse the rain drops - I wanted natural light!

I am really pleased with this look and I hope you enjoy the pictures. I would definately purchase more of these matte type nail polishes in the future. In fact there are two other gorgeous colours in this Metal Chic collection that will find there way into my online shopping basket at some point later in the night.

Louise xx