piCture pOlish Blog/Insta Fest 2014

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I'm beyond excited to be sharing today's post: it's piCture pOlish's Blog/Insta Fest day, and I have the great honor of participating this year!

If you haven't heard of the Blog/Insta Fest before, it's a yearly event sponsored by Australian nail polish brand piCture pOlish where selected bloggers share swatches and nail art featuring the company's amazing products. And, this year, we're all featuring Nail Vinyls, too!

This is a long and picture-heavy post, so all the details are behind the cut. Please read on to see my contributions to this year's fest!

Part One: Swatch

Our first task was to swatch a new piCture pOlish shade. I was sent Pandora, an absolutely stunning berry purple scatter holo.

Nobody does scatter holo polish like piCture pOlish, and this one is no exception! Pandora applied like a dream and looks amazing on—as is often the case with these polishes, I feel like pictures can't even really capture the magic. And when you take this color out in the sun, the holo comes to life even more.

These swatches are two coats with topcoat. I took pictures of the polish both with and without topcoat, since topcoat can sometimes affect the holo finish in some polishes, but there was honestly no difference here that I could detect. You can topcoat to your heart's content with this one!

Part Two: Nail Art

The second half of this year's fest involved creating some nail art with two piCture pOlish shades and one Nail Vinyls shape. piCture pOlish will be retailing a special exclusive four-pack of Nail Vinyls that contains chevrons, mini chevrons, straights, and right angles, but for the fest, we were each sent one shape to feature in our art. I was sent the right-angle vinyls, along with Mad Magenta and Jade:

Right-angle Nail Vinyls are a truly genius creation, in my opinion, because the built-in corner allows you to achieve some nail art looks that you just can't get with straight pieces of striping tape. I created a few designs with these that I really liked, but in the end, I decided to go with the one that I felt best highlighted the utility of the right-angle shape.

Getting a striping tape line to turn two corners like this was something I've wished I could manage ever since I discovered striping tape—and now, thanks to Nail Vinyls, I don't have to wish any more! If you've ever worked with normal tape or even straight nail stickers, you know that you always need to have one end of the tape/sticker extending off the edge of your nail so that you can easily grab onto it to pull the tape off once you've painted over it with your second color. So, completely enclosed lines like the vertical sections of this design were never really possible without a lot of hassle.

The right-angle Nail Vinyls made this look so much easier to achieve, however. It still took some time and patience, like all tape manis, but the steps are pretty straightforward:

Each right-angle sticker needs to be cut once, as shown in step 2 above, and then the cut piece reapplied at a right angle, as shown in step 3. The rest is all making sure you apply the vinyls straight and evenly.

In addition to having a great experience with the Nail Vinyls, Jade and Mad Magenta also treated me very well—just as I've come to expect from piCture pOlish polishes! Both applied perfectly, even over the vinyls. If only all polishes could be so forgiving and easy to work with.

Thanks so much for looking! Don't forget to check out piCture pOlish and Nail Vinyls online, as well as the rest of the Blog/Insta Fest participants' nails!

Find piCture pOlish and Nail Vinyls Online

piCture pOlish:

Every Day Deal: http://picturepolish.com.au/everyday-deal

International Stockists: http://picturepolish.com.au/network

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/piCturepOlish

Instagram: http://instagram.com/picturepolish

Nail Vinyls:

Store: http://nailvinyls.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nailvinyls?fref=ts

Instagram: http://instagram.com/teismom

See the Other Blog/Insta Fest Entries

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