Ciate Sharp Tailoring and Velvet Tuxedo Lace Manicure Fail

So now that Winter's almost over, I'm finally wearing my Winter collection nail polishes. Go figure. Anyway, good polish is timeless! The perfect edgy neutral is always timeless and oh-so-chic all year round! And the two Ciate colours I happened to buy when they were on sale at ASOS are pretty neutral and chic. I bought Sharp Tailoring and Velvet Tuxedo.

First of all, bottle pics of both of them! I'm really digging these two.

Sharp Tailoring is a very edgy neutral greige (you know, a cross between a grey and a beige), and is one of those colours that I LOVE to death. This one isn't like the rest of them - it doesn't have any pink in it (unlike the other greige-y colours), and that's what makes it stand out. It also has gold shimmer that really amps up the colour.



Velvet Tuxedo is a blackened-grey, or is it a black? that has beautiful multidimensional shimmer:



I love those two colours, and I decided to do a KOTD with them, in attempt to replicate the "Lace Manicure" look that's been so popular lately. The KOTD itself turned out to be a massive fail due to my inability to stamp and align properly, but here you go anyway. I believe the plate is M57.

As you can see, in natural sunlight, Sharp Tailoring is a lot more grey, and a lot less beige.



In indoor lighting, you can really see it's beige-y-ness, and it's gold shimmer (which my @#$@% camera can't seem to capture. I think my camera has issues with shimmer). I do think it stands out best indoors, as opposed to outdoors:



Application-wise, both of them were a little mixed. Velvet Tuxedo gave me no problem whatsoever - it was opaque in one coat, and good enough to konad with. Sharp tailoring was a little sheer and streaky, but two coats took care of everything, so it's not a big deal. However, I do wonder if it was the polish or my lack of skillz that made this a little tricky to work with. But anyway, I've yet to see a dupe of this pretty little colour, so if anyone knows of a dupe with less application issues, let me know!

Two Award/Tags!

Olivia of Maquillage Obscura and Sharlene of I-Lashes have tagged me for the Best Blog Award and the I Love Your Blog Award respectively. Thank you Olivia and Sharlene!

Edited to add: Looks like Nea of Fashioned in Finland has tagged me for the best Blog Award too! Aww thanks Nea!

Edited to add again: Looks like Dani M of Let Them Wear Gloss has tagged me for the Best Blog Award as well! Thank you Dani!

Edited to add yet again: Kaylena of Makeup by Kaylena has tagged me for the I Love Your Blog Award as well! Thanks Kaylena!

As always, tags come with rules:
1. Post the award on your blog
2. Link the person who has given you the award
3. Pass the award to 10(Olivia) or 15(Sharlene) other blogs that you've newly discovered
4. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they've been nominated

Wow. That's really involved. 15 other blogs?! My small brain can't think of 5, let alone 15! I'm going to open this post to everyone! Let me know if you want to do this award, and I'll edit this post to include your link!

Asos Paints by Ciate: Agyness, Flakiefied and Mattified

I know I should stop posting NOTDs when my skills are le suckage, but sometimes, I just can't help it. Especially when a pretty purple comes along! We all know what a sucker I am for pretty purples, so Agyness, part of the Asos Paints by Ciate Winter Collection for 09, comes along.

Here we have Agyness in natural light. She's a really pretty deep violet purple colour, a little blackened, with that lit-from-within glow.



Pretty, isn't she? She's equally good in indoors lighting, and it really brings out her shimmer.



I couldn't really get a good pic of the shimmer, so I took this picture for you, since3 it does show the shimmer very well. It's very pretty blue and pink shimmer.



And then, because I got bored, I decided to add a flakie over it. This was Maybelline's Pink Pinata. I think it's been discontinued.

This is the flakie-fied Agyness in the sun:



And in indoor lighting:



And, because I was STILL bored, I added RBL's Matte topcoat over it. And then I was satisfied. The results were truly stunning, although I have to say the matte-ness of the whole thing made the purple base look black.

It really changes colour with different angles. Sometimes it flashes red, orange or yellow:





While other times it looks green, or even blue-ish:





And sometimes, it just looks like a little bit of everything! This is so pretty - it's when it really looks like a rainbow!



While I thought Agyness was pretty, I really liked it better when it was oomphed up a bit more with the flakie and the matte topcoats. As with the other Ciates in the Asos Paints Winter 09 Collection, Agyness, like Pixie and Mary-Kate, has been quite smooth to apply. Not as smooth as the other two, but better than you'd expect for the price point. As usual, the formulation was good, but the brush was a bit draggy. I wish ASOS would change the brushes on these, so as not to ruin the awesome formulation of the polishes.

Another thing I noticed when I matted and flakiefied my mani - the RBL Matte topcoate didn't stay on for very long. It started showing tipwear after day 2...Which made me kind of sad. So after the second day, the tips of my nails started looking glossy, while the rest of my nail was matte. Of course this is easily rectified by applying another layer of topcoat, but I thought I'd just put it out there for my readers. I'm not sure if this is due to it being matte, and thus more chippy (like matte and suede polishes), or whether it's just this polish. I suspect it's the former.

Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed this photo-spam of a post, I certainly had fun trying to peer at the flakies to see that I got all colour spectrums down on film for you guys :)