Easter Nails

Just a quick post this morning before I continue lying around dying of a nasty cold (illness makes me so melodramatic haha!). Did these last night as everyone seemed to be doing Easter nails and I decided to hop on the bandwagon.

Nails are done in Sinful Colors Snow Me White, with sponged gradients of (thumb to pinkie) Nails Inc Albert Place, Sinful Colors Verbena, Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Yellow Kitty, Sinful Colors Mint Apple and Essie's Off The Shoulder. Then, for the super cute icing on the cake, I topped them with Cagedbird Lacquer's Faerie Carnival, a beautiful pastel glitter which kinda makes my nails look like frosted cakes.

Mmmm, cake.

A shot of the gradients before glittering. I quite like the semi-matte look you get from sponging polish.

ER31DC Week 4

Considering how many blue polishes I have I could have done about four people's worth of skittle and not duplicated a base colour, but I felt quite restrained this week and ended up trying stamping.

This was a risky move on my part - I've never really gotten stamping to work for me yet, and usually it ends up as a bit of a disaster. But bravely I soldier on, trying to get the damned things to work.

Plate used for this was BM-316, stamped with Sinful Colors Snow Me White over Nails Inc Gosfield Street. I've got quite a few dark blue Nails Inc polishes and Gosfield street is my favourite - dark enough for an impact, but still visibly blue and lovely. It goes on well too - two coats is enough if you make them slightly thicker, and it doesn't take too long to dry.

As you can see, the stamping didn't work perfectly - I'm missing little bits at the end of the thumb and on the side of the ring finger, but otherwise I'm quite liking it. Darker blues look good as the background for delicate prints like white lace.

Pokemon Challenge Week 11

Psychic week.

Psychic pokemon are my favourite type - I always have an Abra or its evolutions kicking about somewhere in my party. Theres nothing quite like Psychic to lay the beatdown on some poor unsuspecting wild pokemon haha. I picked today's pokemon entirely for its appearances in the anime though.

Specifically, this appearance...

Thats right - Its Slowpoke time! I love this episode so much, its hilarious.

I'd have done Psyduck as well, but despite its name and kick-butt psychic powers... Psyduck isn't a psychic type pokemon. Very surprised at that one.

Swatched: Color Club Halo Hues 2013 - Beyond

A couple of weeks ago I treated myself and bought one of the new Color Club Halo Hues collection from the lovely Sally Magpie's. Sally's online store is both a godsend and a curse as what kept me from buying loads of foreign polish - namely the price - has suddenly dropped away and it's now by difficult for me to not spend all of my money on delightful things like this beauty.

With Flash

Sadly, there has been no sunlight. Since, like, last October. So all of these photos are taken in artificial light, which makes this polish even more amazing. Look at that holo! Its unreal.

This is two coats with no topcoat. The polish went on like a dream, no faffing about, and dried pretty quickly.

The best bit about this was that the rainbow effect showed up so well against the black background. And it was only £7.50. Bargain. Totally gonna treat myself to another come pay day (as I've spent far too much on nail mail this month!)

Color Club Foiled Collection

These were brought over for me to play nice with by Rachael of Racho's Nail Love, as she wanted to see these against my skin tone. Rachel's skin is quite pinky toned and I'm much more on the yellower end of the skintone spectrum.

Rachael's post is here, so you can compare the two.

Warning - this post is very image heavy!

Look at the shine on that!

All pictures are two coats - I tried both with and without topcoat and it made little to no difference on the shine as they're insanely shiny on their own. Get out your sunglasses.

I have to say that the polish itself, in all colours, was a dream to put on. Almost completely opaque in one coat and fast drying, these are great colours to make an impact with - there's no way anyone will not notice these bad boys!

Pokemon Challenge Week 10

I never use fighting pokemon. In fact, if it doesn't burn or mentally crush, then I'm probably not a big user of it haha. My squads are always big on fire and psychic pokemon, with others thrown in as necessity dictates.

So I had a real problem deciding which of the fighting pokemon I was going to use this week. I don't like any of them! I was tempted to go for Mankey or Primeape, as I do love the episode of the anime where Mankey steals Ash's hat, but as always I had to be awkward and go for the non-obvious choice...

...Poliwrath.

Poliwrath is conveniently a dual type pokemon, water/fighting. And far more interesting to look at the the rest of the fighting bunch, with their various shades of brown/beige.

Poliwrath was done in Sinful Colors Snow me White, with Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Thinking of Blue and LA Colours Art Deco in Black. Gradient (as always) was done using the fabulous tutorial from The Nailasaurus.

ER31DC Week 4 & Apologies

First of all, apologies for not posting for a week or so - we've had a bereavement in the family so everything has been a bit topsy turvy, and obviously family comes first.

Back to our regularly scheduled activities, and first up this weekend is the Extra Relaxed 31 Day Challenge. Week 4 is green week, and has once again highlighted that I really don't realise how many of each colour I actually have.

Shuffling through my surprisingly large collection of greens, I decided to see what I could do with just two colours and a glitter - Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Green Slipper, Essie's Navigate Her, and OPI Fresh Frog of Bel Air.

Claws in Other Places

Kitty's Painted Claws are available is many places on the Great, Wide Interwebz.

There's :

• Twitter - kpclaws
• Facebook - Kitty's Painted Claws
• Instagram - Kitty's Painted Claws

You can also follow the blog through the magic of either Google Friend Connect, or though one of the other feed reads such as Feedly, or Bloglovin'.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

ER31DC - Week 3

Week 3 of the Extra Relaxed 31 Day Week Challenge, this week's colour is yellow.

I only own 2 yellow polishes - Sally Hansen's Complete Salon Manicure in Yellow Kitty, which is a soft, pastel yellow; and BarryM Yellow, which looks like an American Taxi. I was fairly stumped with what to do this week to go with the yellow, until I remembered a really old website layout I created whilst in uni. Mid-grey, sky blue and sunflower yellow halftone gradients all over the place, with shy blue and sunflower yellow highlights on white text. It wasn't as awful as it sounds, honest. But when I remembered that, I pulled out my trusty dotting tools and created this...

Pokemon Challenge Week 9

9 weeks in already!

This week is Poison type week, but I realised that I already did my favourite poison type pokemon for Bug week - Venonat. I clearly did not think ahead. So off I toddle to the Bulbapedia to peruse the poison type listing, and I spot the only pokemon I would I want to do on the list....

Arbok.

Then I also realised that I cut my nails short last week and I've not actually got much space to paint an full Arbok on my nails now. So I went abstract.

Swatched - Essie's Beach Bum Blu

I'm not short on new buys at the moment, but I couldn't resist swatching one of my newest purchases this week - Essie's Beach Bum Blu. A beautiful metallic/pearl sea-blue, BBB is a perfect summer colour - which is something I could do with right now because its started snowing again.

As you can see it catches the light beautifully, the photo above is two coats with Seche Vite topcoat. The formula is good too, with one regular thickness coat being just short of opaque.

I absolutely love this colour! I'm fairly fond of blues and greens and the colours between, but as soon as I saw this I knew I had to have it. This will probably be worn for a large chunk of the summer, or at least to cheer me up when it starts snowing again.

Work Week Nails - Navy and Nude

Every sunday I do my nails for the week at work. I would say that its usually a more restrained mani, but not always - one week I went to work with 10 different colours on my nails. Everyone in my office knows I'm a little odd.

I've been hankering for a good navy mani for a while and when I looked at Sally Hansen's Thinking of Blue and BarryM Lychee sat next to each other on my desk when sorting out my new Helmer, I decided that a nude and navy set of stripes was exactly what I had been pondering for an absolute age.

I have to admit that the nails themselves aren't looking the best in these photos - Thinking of Blue resists cleanup like there is no tomorrow.

I think my favourite nails are the thumb/accent and pinky, I'm not too fond of the arrow/sunburst shape on the pointer and the horizontal stripes just make my nail look all short and chubby.

ER31DC - Week 2

Ah ha! Caught up.

Week 2 is Orange, a colour I was always convinced I didn't suit until I stopped being afraid of wearing anything that wasn't black. I love orange on nails, and I'm pondering doing a super 70's orange/white/brown mani at some point because that is one of my favourite colour combos ever.

I decided to do an orange skittle as I really couldn't decide what I wanted to do or which orange I wanted to do it with. I found I had quite a few different oranges today, ranging from quite pastel to pretty damn in-your-face.

Extra Relaxed 31 day challenge - Week 1

31 day challenge, as run by Rambles of a Polish Addict. Thankfully this is being run as a 31 week challenge, rather than a 31 day one, else my brain would explode - I have no energy after work during the week to come up with nice manis!

I'm so relaxed about this extra relaxed challenge that I missed the first week, so here's my catch up post and week 2 will happen before the end of the weekend.

The first 10 weeks are colour based, and week 1 is red. I love red. I have quite a few red polishes now but I picked up another one a couple of weeks ago and completely forgot about it until I was raking through my stash this morning..

Pokemon Challenge week 8

Its ground week! And we all know what that means...

Diglett DIG, Diglett DIG, trio trio trio.

Why do just one pokemon, what I can do two... or in fact, three!

Diglett/Dugtrio was done in NYC New York Minute in Park Avenue, with cute little noses in Nails Inc Elisabeth Street and eyes in my trusty Models Own Pro Jack's Black.

Nails Inc Dark Blues Comparison

I don't have many Nails Inc Polishes... actually that a bit of a lie now. I've got 10. But somehow 4 of them have ended up being dark blue.

I'm fairly fond of dark blue, but this is a complete fluke as I only actually picked one of them. My first was Motcomb Street, an almost black shade of Navy that came free with Glamour magazine at the end of last year. Then came Blenheim Street, which was my free gift for joining the Nails Inc VIP program. Then came Covent Garden - yet another blue-black, but somehow different from Motcomb Street - and Gosfield Street, which is still dark blue but considerably lighter than the other three.

From pointer to pinky - Motcomb Street, Gosfield Street, Covent Garden and Blenheim Terrace.

Apart from Gosfield Street, these polishes are super alike, even when I crank up the flash...

Covent Garden show up as a little lighter under the flash, but Motcomb Street and Blenheim Terrace are pretty much the same polish. Blenheim Terrace is ever so slightly lighter, I think, but you'd only notice it after staring super hard at them together.

All in all though these are lovely polishes - well pigmented, lovely formula, dried in a decent time, and opaque in two coats. <3

Spring Pastels

Easter is coming, and spring is coming, and I've finally given in and busted out the pastels.

I'm gonna be completely honest - my thumb is hiding because I managed to take a chunk out of the blue by incautiously shoving my hand in to my pocket before the 6 million coats of blue had dried properly.

The polishes used in this delightfully cute mani were - Sally Hansens Complete Salon Manicure in Yellow Kitty, Revlon Blue Lagoon, with spots in BarryM Matt white.

The colours on these two polishes are absolutely adorable, especially when covered with my matt topcoat, however there is one major downside with both - they're streaky and take loads of coats to go opaque. And by loads, I mean like five or six regular coats for Blue Lagoon and four for Yellow Kitty.

Blue Lagoon, when not matted, does have its good points as it has a beautiful silvery blue shimmer in it. 

Pokemon Challenge Week 7

Electric.

Yeah, this did not come out as well as I expected.

Pikachu was always the obvious choice for electric pokemon week, and as I've spent a lot of time lately re-watching Pokemon I figured I'd best take a bash at what is effectively the main character.

It did not end up well.