Chanel Sky Line - Swatches, Review and Comparison with Essie Blue Rhapsody

Chanel Sky Line

This is Chanel Sky Line nail polish, it's part of a limited edition Bleu Illusion collection that also includes eyeliner, blusher, lipstick and pencil and new Illusion D'Ombres shadows. This collection came out today in the UK and it's all limited edition so get it while you can.

Chanel Spring 2012 Couture Nails - Picture from Glamour

It was first seen as part of Chanel's Spring 2012 Couture runway show which was shown in a mock space shuttle which seems in keeping with the airy blue of Sky Line. It reminds me of light summer skies which I can only vaguely remember given the weather we've had recently in the UK. Onwards to swatches...

Chanel Sky Line Swatch

Formula wise it's along the lines of another Chanel polish, Pearl Drop. This is three coats so it takes a little while to go completely opaque but the formula is very smooth and applies well. The base colour is a light periwinkle blue with a hefty amount of pearly light shimmer. It's lovely but, there's no way of getting round this, it has a very definite frost finish. Whilst frost finish polishes are normally my nemesis I think if anyone can make it look good Chanel can. You will get brush strokes with Sky Line but it does settle down as it dries and because there's so much of the pearl pigment in there you end up with buildable ribbons of shimmer rather than obnoxious streaks.

Crosshatch Nails Tutorial



Crosshatch tape mani with Illamasqua Blow & Essie Mint Candy Apple



I originally posted this on one of my tumblr accounts but I’m reposting it here as part of my mass migration of all of my nail posts.

Tutorial

You paint the base coat first (the yellow in the pic) then make sure you let it dry completely (more than an hour probably).
Once it’s dry, cut strips out of Scotch Tape (the opaque matte one), if you use that you’ll be able to see any air bubbles as you lay the strips across the nail so the lines won’t bleed. Arrange the strips in the pattern you want making sure you press them down to push out the bubbles.

Paint your top colour over the tape in one thickish coat and remove the strips immediately in the reverse of the order you put them on (i.e. take the last one you put on off first). If you try and lift a strip that is underneath another one it will either break and you’ll have to fish around for the end or you’ll make a mess of the line.

That’s it, the only other advice I’d have is if you decide to use a matte polish only use it as a base not a top layer. It dries too fast and you’ll end up pulling the polish off. Good luck!

Confetti Nails Tutorial



Confetti Nails



A simple and very quick tutorial for you that you can do without any tools or brushes. The best thing to do if you want to recreate this is choose a brand of polish that comes with a nice thin brush. I have relatively narrow nails and I wanted to be able to make smallish dots clustered at the tips so I went with predominantly Barry M colours with a little added Essie and Illamasqua to get the mix of colours I wanted.

First I painted one coat of my base colour which is Barry M Grey. Barry M polishes are some of the best value polishes I have in my collection. They come in a wide range of colours and tend to be one coaters that dry to a great high shine finish. I didn't have any topcoat on here so you can get an idea of just how shiny they are straight out of the bottle.

Once the base coat is completely dry you can add your spots. For the spots here I used a mix of Barry M Spring Green & Cyan Blue, Essie Bright Tights (orange)and Illamasqua Jo’Mina (lilac). I started with one colour and went over all of my nails making dots in that colour. I applied them directly from the bottle making sure to wipe off any excess polish so you don't end up with overly large spots. I then repeated this with the other colours in sequence. I didn't wait for the spots to dry completely although I did avoid overlapping any spots until I was sure the spot I was overlapping was dry. Once your spots are dry you're done! The possibilities for colour combinations on this are endless so you can experiment with different looks really easily, I'm planning a future post on this with an ombré twist to look out for that one!

Rainbow Nails



Rainbow Nails with Essie Mesmerize



In celebration of the fact that I have a camera again some quick rainbow nails. Base colour is Essie Mesmerize which is a deep cobalt royal blue. Great coverage on this one, you really only need one coat. Totally worth having the postman wake me up before 8:00am on a Saturday!

Essie Blue Rhapsody




Essie Blue Rhapsody

 

Essie Blue Rhapsody

This one is from the Mirror Metallics Collection which is available now. It’s a strong silver-blue chrome, one of the best I’ve tried. You really only need one coat but this is two. Application is great but like all chrome style polishes this will chip if you don’t use a top coat, although the quick wear test I did on this seemed to come off better than most.
When I saw the promo images for this collection I wasn’t that bothered but picked Blue Rhapsody up as part of a Boots haul as I liked the look of it. Having tried this one I definitely going to go back to get more from the collection. They are some of the best chromes I’ve seen with a true solid metallic finish. The others in the collection are Good as gold (gold chrome), Penny talk (copper metallic), Nothing else metals (lavender metallic) and No place like chrome (silver chrome)

In other news I finally have a new point and shoot on order so I won’t have to use am Iphone to take dodgy nail pictures any more, yay!

First posted on my tumblr - theboxesunderthebed.tumblr.com