Bluesky Gel Polish Swatches | Neutrals and a Neon

Here are some photos and swatches of my newest additions to my collection. Check out the video at the end to see the polishes in action and checkout their opacity.

First colour swatched in the video is A74. A gorgeous, bright, neon coral colour, unfortunately I do not have a picture to add yet but I will update as soon as I have one.

Second polish is 80514 a deep nudey brown, quite warm toned.

Bluesky Gel Polish 80514

Third Polish is 80563, it is a few shades lighter than the previous colour and more cool toned, although I would say it was more neutral than cool. Sorry this isn't the best picture to show off this colour, I will try and update the picture when I get a better one.

Bluesky Gel Polish 80563 (behind chevron)

Fourth polish is A44, this is more of a pink nude, very cool toned mauve pink. Has been a very popular colour.

Bluesky Gel Polish A44 on non marble areas

Fifth polish is Nude 19 (nd19), it is the lightest of the colours I swatched in this video, it is quite cool toned and slightly sheer but has quite nice coverage on the nails after 3 coats. Would be great for a french manicure. 

Bluesky Gel Polish Nude 19 (nd 19)

Final polish was 7409, a medium pink that was too sheer for my liking, I do not have a photo of this colour on nails and it is likely I may never get one as I really do not like the opacity of this one. If you would like to check it out skip to 2.52 in the video below.

Realistic Stone Marble | Gel Polish Nail Art

This is quite a hard one to explain in words, I will try to break it down, step by step. I highly recommend checking out the video at the bottom of this post if my written instructions do not make this technique very clear.

Gel Polish Stone Marble Nail

Step 1 : Apply base colour, in my case 2 coats of white curing each layer completely.

Step 2 : Apply a coat of top coat. DO NOT CURE.

Step 3 : Using a fine detail brush draw in thin lines using a dark grey gel polish. DO NOT CURE.

Step 4 : Dip the same brush in a little bit of ispropyl alcohol and start to blend the lines in a wiggling motion, hard to describe, see video for visual demonstration. Once happy, cure.

Step 5: Repeat steps 2 to 4 using white gel polish instead of the grey. You can also add in a little extra grey if you want. Once happy, cure.

Step 6 : You can now repeat the steps again or topcoat and you are finished.

Check out the video for a better explanation of the technique.

From Short to Long - A Hard Gel Nail Growing Journey.

I recently shared a collage of my friends nails, done by me, on my Facebook page and I thought why not share it here as well. I shall go a little more in depth than I can in a Facebook post.

Katie's Nail Journey

First Visit. Nude Gel Polish with Glitter Fade

Katie first came to me wanting a nice, pretty, natural looking set of nails as she was to be a bridesmaid in her friend wedding. She didn't want extensions at the time because she did not want to be the only bridesmaid with false nails. So we kept it simple and went for a nude gel polish with a bronze glitter fade. You can see how I did these nails here.

2nd Visit. Purple and Gold Negative Space Nails

One week later Katie came back, although the nude design was perfect for the occasion, it didn't quite match Katie's personality. She decided she wanted to try Hard Gel Extensions, so I gave her fairly short, square extensions. We kept them short so that it wasn't too hard for her to get used to them and we kept them square because that is the shape she had always had her natural nails. Again we did a fairly simple nail art design which you can watch here. I will not that the same evening I did these nails, Katie had an incident with a cheese grater and managed to grate off the corner of her right thumb nail extension, so she did return the nest day to have this fixed.

3rd Visit. Dream Catcher inspired nails.

Two weeks later (total 3 weeks since first visit) it was time for a design change, we had a couple of millimeters of new nail growth. I filed off the gel polish design and removed any lifting, there was barely any, then infilled the hard gel and changed the nail shape to more coffin, we did not file down any length, before applying a new nail design. This time she chose a dark teal green which I thought would look great with some dream catcher inspired nail art, you can see how I did this here.

4th Visit. Negative Space and Bling Nails

Another two weeks (total 5 weeks since first visit) and it was again time for a design change. I infilled the hard gel and maintained the coffin shape, we still did not file down any length. For the design this time we kept it super simple with a little bit of negative space and a fair bit of bling. If you would like to see how I did these, click here.

5th Visit. Rainbow gel polish and pigment nails.

Two more weeks later (a total of 7 weeks since initial visit) and we decided it was time for a colourful design. This time while infilling the hard gel, I filed the extension at the free edge down to her natural nail length, turning the hard gel extensions into a hard gel overlay. I then went in and applied the design with gel polish and pigments. You can see how I did this design here.






To sum this all up, in 7 weeks we were able to grow Katie's nails to a length she is happy with. We had no nail breaks barring the one that was attacked by a cheese grater and also minimal lifting. You could definitely achieve this with out adding any extension and just doing an overlay from the beginning and wait for the length to grow. But if your client wants instant length you can do it the way we did. I made this post to say that there is no need to remove extensions to reapply, I personally prefer doing infills and overlays as I feel I can get an overlay to look much more natural and you also don't have the chance of the extension tip breaking off. As much as I love doing overlays, there are certain nails that will not be suited to overlays, if a client has nails that curve too far up or down than you would like, you may need to file the natural nail short and apply extensions every couple of infills, you may find you only need to do this to a few nails and not the whole set.

For reference I use Akzentz Proformance Hard Gel and Bluesky Gel Polish.

I hope you found this nail growth story interesting, and feel free to ask any questions as I am sure I have left something important out.

Thanks for reading.

Bluesky Gel Polish Swatches - Mixed Colours

I made this swatch video for y YouTube Channel a little while ago, but I never got around to putting pictures on here. So here they are. This post will be set up a little differently from my last swatch post in which I had photographed each colour with and with out flash. In this post the polishes are pictured under my daylight lamp and on clients hands.

Bluesky Gel Polishes From L - R :  A58, SP18, DC31, A52, LT137

Bluesky Gel Polish A58 is a gorgeous purple pink, it is quite bright and has great coverage.

Bluesky Gel Polish A58

SP18 is a glitter gel polish with silver, gold and pink glitter pieces in a clearish base. Can be worn alone with 3 coats, as pictured. Or one coat over any other base colour also looks great.

Thumb is Bluesky Gel Polish SP18. Paisley pattern is painted in A58.

DC31 is an off white cream shade, a very pale peachy nude. DC 31 makes a great alternative to white in nail art designs for a more subtle look.

Bluesky Gel Polish DC31

A52 is a deep green-blue.

Bluesky Gel Polish A52. Art is done with DC31.

LT137 is a beautiful army green. You could also call it olive green or khaki. It is a little less yellowy than pictured in this photo, I would say the colour is closer to the colour in the first picture of all colours swatched.

Bluesky Gel Polish LT137. Art is done with DC31.

I hope you found this post useful, Let me know if you prefer colour swatches on real hands or on nail pops. Thanks for reading. Here is the video swatching these colours if you would like to see what the coverage is like. Please disregard the last polish I swatch in the video as I think I had a defective bottle.

Updates

It has been a very long time since I last posted, and I don't even have an excuse as to why. Although I have not been writing blog posts, I have been uploading a nail related video to my YouTube Channel once a week for a little while. If you are interested I aim to upload a nail art video every Wednesday at 6pm New Zealand time, with occasional swatch videos or other nail related videos as bonus videos, although if I am low on the nail art videos I may rearrange this schedule.

Anyway, enough about YouTube. I haven't a whole lot else to update, I am still solely working for my self in my beauty business mainly focusing on nails and nail art, business has steadily been getting busier since November last year and I am really enjoying getting to know all my new regulars as well as seeing those that have been to see me since near the beginning.

I hope to continue growing my business, but I am unsure whether I will be staying in Hamilton forever or moving on to somewhere new sooner or later. I am certain I want to continue making YouTube videos, because I find it fun and hopefully someone, somewhere can learn something from my videos.

I think that is enough updates for now, I hope to be posting more regularly on here, perhaps when I have created a design I love on a client but was unable to record a video on said design, who knows, we will see what happens.

Here are a few nail pictures to make this post a little more interesting.

Neon Galaxy Nails - Tutorial for this design will be on YouTube in the near future.

Pink and Purple Gradient Chevron - Not my original design, client brought in a picture but I didn't catch the artists name.
Let me know if you know who it was.

Thanks for reading.

Bluesky Gel Polish Swatches | Reds and Pinks

I have decided to swatch my Bluesky Gel Polish colours because I know how hard it is picking colours online.

All swatches are with out basecoat, three coats of colour and a top coat.

Here are the reds and pinks that I currently have. I will be swatching more colours soon.

Bluesky Gel Polish 80562

This is a lovely pale dusty pink colour, with a very subtle shimmer that is only noticeable in bright light. Great pale pink for darker skin tones. Does take a few extra coats than other colours.

Bluesky Gel Polish 40511

This pink is a couple of shades darker than the first one, but it has the same rose tone to it. This colour has no shimmer and is quite opaque.

Bluesky Gel Polish 80506

This colour is a hot pink with a blue shimmer. It is a gorgeous colour, definitely a must have.

Bluesky Gel Polish 40507

This pink is very similar to the above 06 pink but this one has a pink shimmer instead of the blue.

Bluesky Gel Polish A45

This is a true red with no shimmer.

Bluesky Gel Polish 80545

This polish has a sheer purple base with red glitter. Perfect colour for Christmas. Can be hard to get an even coverage of glitter, I definitely recommend three coats with this one.

Here they are all together.

No Flash

Flash

If you would like to see these polishes being swatched, check out my video below.

Nail Art Basics | Chevron/Zig Zag Design | Gel Nail Polish

Hand Painted Chevron/Zig Zag Design

If you want to know how I hand paint chevrons, check out my newest video.

If you have any requests for nail art videos please leave them in a comment.