A cat For Audrey

A bit long time no see. I’ve been a tad neglectful, a combination of forgetting to photograph manis before they chipped, my nails being manky from a lot of household work, and being completely uninspired by recently released polish collections. Seriously, just as one example what is up with the Amazing Spiderman Collection? I recoiled in horror at that coral frost. Paraphrasing a tweep, the only thing those shades have in common is that they all belong in the same clearance bin.

But anyway, on to my mani for today’s post. I’ve worn China Glaze’s For Audrey before as a water marble. It’s such a great shade I’m happy to wear it again and again! I really didn’t know if I’d like it initially — it’s very gimicky and I’m not into the whole Tiffany/Audrey Hepburn thing — but on the nail it is the most perfect shade of ‘Tiffany blue’ (i.e. a dusty baby blue/turquoise). I believe that those in the know don’t consider it an absolute dead-on dupe for the store’s patented shade, but it’s good enough.

For Audrey is more dusty and less bright in person, but my camera won’t capture that. Click all to enlarge.

For Audrey is an older China Glaze colour and has a great formula. Despite being light in colour it’s opaque in two easy coats. I used my regular Posche top coat and drew the design using my dotting tools and the following polishes: China Glaze Liquid Leather (black), NYX Girls My Sunshine (yellow – the moon), Orly White Out (white – cat’s eyes), Kleancolor Bite Me (red glitter – cat’s collar) and Kleancolor Pearl Silver (metallic silver – collar tag). I left my left (dominant) hand free of any designs out of both time constraints (friends stayed with us this weekend) and wanting to grab a photo of For Audrey by itself.

Inspired by one of my beloved boys, who wears a red collar.

This photo shows For Audrey‘s colour the most accurately, but it’s still more dusty in person.

Cadbury Caramello Cuties

So, Easter nails. There are a lot about at the moment, and most seem to have some kind of spring theme. That’s understandable for the Northern Hemisphere where Easter comes from, with new growth, the return of the sun, and associated historical fertility rituals and what-have-you. Down here though, it is of course Autumn; we shouldn’t really be having any rebirth type celebration at this time of year at all. So in light of this, but still wanting to jump on some kind of bandwagon, I decided to go with a theme of delicious chocolate. My favourite Easter eggs are Cadbury Caramello Cuties, small chocolate eggs filled with caramel.  Can’t go wrong with chocolate. Unless you’re allergic to it. And that would be a tragedy.

Bright sunlight.

The base polishes I used were: China Glaze Eyes Like Sapphires (sapphire blue with a silver shimmer), OPI Dear Santa (festive red with small red and gold glitter), OPI Rising Star (a bright, coppery metallic gold), a-England Lady of the Lake (medium purple with scattered holo). For the egg wrapper dots I used Kleancolor Pearl Silver (a slightly blackened metallic silver), and for the ‘Cadbury’ text Orly White Out. The chocolate shell of the partially unwrapped egg is China Glaze Foie Gras (a dark purpled brown) and OPI Over The Taupe (a dusty, greyed milk chocolate). Everything was finished up with two coats of Poshe top coat.

Unwrapped egg! Flash photo.