Illamasqua Velocity: Pantone Colour of the Year Radiant Orchid-ish Nails!

In a previous post, I've been going through my Pantone Colour of the Year Radiant Orchid makeup items in my stash. And this time round, I'm looking at another nail polish shade - this time it's Illamasqua Velocity!

Illamasqua Velocity: A Pantone Colour of the Year-ish colour!

I already have quite a few Illamasqua nail polishes, but I'm always game for more because the quality is pretty darn good. I've never come across a dud yet, and every Illamasqua nail polish I've tried has been fantastic.

Pretty Serious Cosmetics Atomic Brain: Pantone Radiant Orchid with Duochrome!

Since my last post on stuff in my stash that was similar to Radiant Orchid, Pantone's Colour of the Year for 2014, I've decided that I should bust out some of those products and actually use them!

Pretty Serious Cosmetics Atomic Brain: Look at all that duochrome!

One of these is part of my slow downward spiral as I continue to throw the contents of my wallet into this black hole called "indie nail polishes", but my, oh my, the spiral sure is pretty! For today's example, let's take a look at Pretty Serious Cosmetic's Atomic Brain. Isn't it so pretty?

Pantone Colour of the Year Radiant Orchid: Look at the Radiant Orchid-ish Stuff I Already Have!

Pantone has officially announced Radiant Orchid as the Colour of the Year 2014, and this time, I'm actually pretty excited for it because, as I've been saying in my previous blogposts, purple is my favourite colours. If you've been reading for a while, you'll also know that I think that this whole Colour of the Year thing is just another means of making them companies more $$$ through commercialization of a single colour shade, and those feelings still hold, but hey, at least this year I'm going to have companies try to make money off me with a colour I actually can get on board with! I wasn't feeling last year's Emerald or the previous year's Tangerine Tango, so FINALLY! Come get my money with a colour I actually like, companies! Haha.

Radiant Orchid is Pantone's Color of the Year for 2014. Here are my Radiant Orchid-ish makeup items!

Anyway, before I get all ready to get my commercialization on (yay retail therapy!), out of curiousity, I thought I'd just run through my beauty stash and pull out all the Radiant Orchid-colour-alikes I already have in my stash, and show them to you guys - and really also to myself, as a reminder to not bust my budget when Sephora puts out their Sephora X Pantone Radiant Orchid Limited Edition Makeup Set with Unicorn Whiskers, or whatever they have up their sleeve. Just a little reminder to myself. So here we go!

All the Radiant Orchid products we'll be bombarded with soon in the coming months! LOL! (Source)

Valentine's Day Nails: Purple Holo Hearts!

February would not be complete without a Valentine's Day manicure - I mean, without fail, V-day is one of the biggest highlights of the month - not just for us as individuals, but also, I'm sure, for the companies and retailers that bastardize the occasion every year in order to hawk their cheesy, red-and-pink-hearts-and-roses-bedecked wares, haha. Well, you know how I feel about crass commercialism, but a little (or a lot of) money-making never stopped us from enjoying the season!

This year, my Valentine's Day nails are purple! and holo! and they have hearts on them! and the hearts are holo too! So, what's not to like? For the base polish, I used Color Club Fashion Addict, which is a gorgeous lilac polish with a holographic finish. Unfortunately, the holographic effect in this isn't that strong (in a super old KOTD I've tried and failed to capture this lilac holographic finish). I then added on these cheap purple holographic hearts I got from Daiso. And then I was set!


For this look, I just added the hearts in a more or less random fashion. As long as they looked good, I didn't really bother where they landed. Each nail had three, except for my tiny last nail which only had two. Also, as you can see from the photos, I had trouble capturing the holo-ness of both the hearts and the polish in my photos. Bah, humbug!


So that's it - this one is really easy to do, and not even all that much work! And I think it looks fab in real life - purple holo hearts on purple holo polish is like, totally hawt! What are you guys doing for V-Day?

P.S. Want to see my older Valentine's Day nail art from past years? I get inspired in all kinds of ways, so I have a Valentine's Day nail look with no pink at all, an obnoxiously over-flowered V-Day mani, a V-Day mani that was hot pink and black, and an annoying-looking red-and-pink nail look, so you guys know this year's is already one of the "better" ones. I even have an Anti-Valentine's Day manicure!

Halloween Nail Art: Purple Glam, Stars and Scars

Halloween is coming up, and I just feel so inspired to do some Halloween nails! I'll be frank - the Halloween nail art that I did last year sucked, so I thought that this year, I had a lot of room for improvement. And this year, I present to you this!

This year, I used the classic Halloween of purple and orange. I used Zoya Yasmeen as a base. I have to tell ya, Zoya Yasmeen is da bomb. I've done a Zoya Yasmeen NOTD back in the day waaay back when, and I still love it!


I then placed these orange stars randomly on my mani, and then I added in the white scars freehand with a long nail art brush.


I actually really like the overall effect, the stars over the purple add a little bit of glam, while the white scars added a little bit of an edge. It's glam but still very much a Halloween manicure! Actually it already looked good enough with just the orange stars, but I figured out that a little edge to the nail look couldn't hurt!


Actually, I don't really celebrate Halloween at all, but I kind of just like utilizing some of the colours for nail art just to go along with the festive mood of the season. Anyone else having fun with Halloween on your nails?