So You Beauty: Blog

Floral One Stroke Nail Art Featuring Freckles Polish

Second post of the weekend, yay! Today I felt the urge to sit down with my paints and do some one stroke; my favourite nail art technique. It's been a while since I've had the time to do something so intricate so I really enjoyed doing this. I've painted both hands, although the right hand definitely isn't as good :P

For the base I used a beautiful polish called Get off my bum...bag! by the UK indie brand Freckles Polish. This is another one of my favourite brands and I actually met the lovely Juliann who creates these polishes a few weeks back :) This is a super bright magenta polish and part of her back to the 80s collection. I love it and I have a few others I recently purchased that I'll no doubt be featuring on my blog.

I used acrylic paints for the one stroke design. I tend to use the brands Americana and Oumaxi. I think I'll be wearing this until it chips off because it's so very me! Probably my most intricate one stroke design yet.

Little Ondine Chemical Free, Peel Off Nail Polish Review and Swatches

Hello lovelies! I've got a very cute, innovative new brand to show you today. Little Ondine create natural nail polishes that are water based and chemical free. Their polishes are all peel off and do not require nail polish remover. I couldn't wait to try them out.

They arrived in the cutest packaging, I almost didn't want to take them out of their boxes :D I was sent bang bang, a neon pink and smack, a neon yellow (that seems to have a slight hint of green in the photos and in real life too). The bottles are a nice size at 10.5ml and the boxes come with instructions.

To apply this nail polish it is quite similar to any other, you need to make sure to get rid of any trace of grease on the nail. I was kindly sent 2 alcohol wipes, I just wiped over all of my nails and then started painting. I didn't use a base coat, which feels odd for me because I always wear duri rejuvacote, but the website does say that you should not mix with any other type of polish. They do have a base coat available on their site.

The brushes are great; I found them the perfect size and was able to paint my nails without making much of a mess. Bang bang was the easiest formula. I didn't need to clean-up at all and it dried super fast. I only needed 2 coats of this one to give good coverage, although there is slight visible nail line so another coat would probably be needed to cover that. It dried to an almost satin finish rather than glossy.

Smack wasn't as smooth to apply. I used 3 coats in the swatches below and it is a little streaky. However, it did dry super fast and wow it's BRIGHT! I love how bright it is! It dried to more of a matte finish than bang bang.

So overall, I was actually quite surprised how easy these were to work with. I expected water based polishes to be quite tough to work with but even if you do need to clean-up it's way easier than with usual nail polishes. I was also surprised with how fast it dried and I even knocked a nail not long after painting and it didn't even dent! I can't say how long they'd last on the nails though without a topcoat.

Peeling off is really easy. I just used my nail to lift it near the cuticle and then peeled off in one go. They have a selection of gorgeous glitters too so I imagine they are great as we all hate removing glitters!

Would I use these again? Definitely! I think they're a great idea and perfect for people trying to avoid chemicals and nasty smells. There are some annoying things like the fact I can't use my favourite topcoat or basecoat or mix with any other polishes for nail art. I did try gradients with them and it didn't work well so I ended up doing a saran manicure and adding some stamping on top (using MoYou Nails plate 220 and white stamping polish).

What do you think of the idea of peel off, chemical free polishes? would you try them? They're available in the UK on their website and it looks like they'll be releasing in the US too soon.

* Products sent for honest review.

First Attempt At Water Marbling Nail Art Using Dark Metal Lacquer

I'm back and I've finally attempted a water marble manicure. I've been away because I've been really busy and I also broke my middle nail really low and I had to cut them all down :( thankfully they've grown super quickly and a month later I have claws again :)

I've wanted to try water marbling for ages but the thought of all the mess really put me off. As I had a free weekend, I decided I'd finally give it a go. It took me a while to even get a pattern in the water because it's been so hot here that all the polishes were a bit thick. However, I finally managed to get it working, with the help of a bit of nail thinner!

I used two polishes by the UK indie brand Dark Metal Lacquer. As you know I love supporting UK indie brands and this is one of my favourites, owned by the lovely Kamila. The two polishes I've used are Havens, a hologaphic purple and She's like Heroin, a holographic fuschia. I also used OPI Do You Lilac it and Models Own Chrome Silver.

Now, I slightly regret doing this so late at night because even with using liquid latex around my fingers it was SO messy and took ages to clean up. In the end I actually did a few of my nails using the water marble decal technique where you leave it to dry in the water and then cut it up. I'm definitely doing that for all my nails next time because clean up was hell when I dipped my nails into the wet polish. It's far from perfect and I just went for random patterns but I'm happy I've finally given it a go. Hopefully I'll improve the more I practice :)

Do you have any water marble tips? What are the best polishes you've found for this technique?

Tropical Gradient Nail Art Using Models Own Polish For Tans

Another bright and happy design for you today using 4 Models Own shades from their Polish for Tans collection. This collection was first released last year and consisted of 5 shades, 4 of which I'm using today. They've recently added another 5 shades to the collection too. The name 'Polish for Tans' actually caused a bit of upset when it was released. Why should a polish only be for tanned skin? I am very pale and I love wearing neons! I personally didn't take offence to the name and I purchased them anyway. I'm glad I did, because they are perfect :)

For the gradient, I applied 2 coats of Sinful Colors Snow Me White. I then used some liquid latex on the skin around my nails and applied the colours with a makeup sponge. I absolutely LOVE liquid latex. Before a gradient was an absolute nightmare to clean up, but now I don't worry as it just peels off. I just bought a large bottle of red liquid latex from ebay and transferred it to an empty nail polish bottle. Super cheap that way!

I then decided this was the perfect base to use MoYou London's tropical stamping plate designs on top. I used plates 03 and 04 and I am absolutely in love with these plates. Perfect for summer :)

What do you think of this collection? Are you a fan of summer neons?

DIY Sheer Tint Nail Art

I've got a bright and cheerful manicure today on this miserable grey and rainy Sunday here in England! I've really wanted to get back into nail art so I had lots of arty goodies arrive this week. One thing I'd wanted to try for ages was to make some sheer tints, so I ordered some bottles of clear polish and today I finally got around to making some.

These are SO simple to make! You just pick a nail polish and drop a few drops into the clear polish. You then roll it about in your hands to mix it. Some polishes were stubborn and I had to mix with the brush. Mixing balls would probably have made the mixing a bit easier. I then tested the tint on a white false nail and added a drop or two more if they were too sheer. That's it. Simple and cheap! I got these bottles from Amazon for under £4 shipped and the polishes I used were from a range of brands including Models Own, Ciate and Sinful Colors.

I then couldn't wait to use them for some nail art. This is such an easy and fun look. I painted a base colour of white (Sinful Colors) and then once dry, I painted each colour onto every nail in a random way. I changed placement on each nail but always put the same colours next to each other to give a sort of rainbow effect.

What do you think? I imagine I'll be having lots of fun with these tints and will probably make some other colours too :)

Essence The Pastels 01 - So Lucky Review and Nail Art

Hello lovelies! I'm back with some nail art and a review for you :)

I apologise for having such a long break! I was contacted a couple of weeks ago by Essence about some new products of theirs and decided it was time to get back into my blogging.

I'd heard about Essence quite a while ago now but they weren't easily available in the UK so hadn't had the chance to try them. They're now available in Wilkinsons stores throughout the UK and are super cheap! This is the first polish I've tried of theirs and I will definitely be picking up more. Application was perfect. I used 3 thin coats and it dried to a matte, shimmery finish. You can see from the second to last photo below how great it looks even without topcoat. It dried pretty quickly too.

I personally am a fan of glossy and this polish looks just as pretty with a coat of shiny topcoat too. I decided to paint some fun, vibrant flowers on top with acrylic paints. We're finally starting to see sunshine in the UK so I am really in the mood for spring flowers and pastels :)

This gorgeous polish can be picked up for just £1.80 from Wilkos in the UK. It's an absolute bargain and I'll be going in there to get some more of their pastels collection when I get a chance. Take a look at the Essence Website to see worldwide stockists. I'm a big fan of their eyebrow powder too!

What do you think of this polish? Are you a fan of spring pastels?

*Nail polish provided for honest review

Purple Rose Nail Art

Woo! First post of 2015. I know I'm a bit late but better late than never :)

I really want to get back into freehand nail art this year (but will still be continuing with stamping too of course), so I thought I'd ease myself back into it with some roses. I used Nails Inc black taxi as the base colour. This is my go to black polish because it's so shiny and perfect. I then used Oumaxi acrylic paints to paint on the flowers and petals using a selection of brushes. With roses I basically just splodge and swirl different shades of colours, which you can see close up in my macro shots but from a normal distance they look like pretty flowers. I finished off the design with a nice thick coat of HK Girl topcoat.

I hope you're all having a lovely year so far and I'm going to try my best to make more time for this blog.

Born Pretty Store Nail Jewellery Review Featuring Models Own Oval Plum

Hello lovelies! I hope you're all doing well. I've been awful with blogging again but I'm finally back with some pretty polish, stamping and nail jewellery. Born pretty store sent me this gorgeous nail jewellery tor review and I'd been waiting for the perfect polish to pair it with. I'd ordered a few of the Models Own Diamond Luxe polishes and as soon as I put on Oval Plum it seemed like a great match!

Models Own Diamond Luxe range contains real diamond dust and after seeing a few swatches, I knew I had to own some. Oval plum is pinky/purple shade with gorgeous pink shimmer, much more noticeable in real life than in photos. It applied really well with just two normal coats. It's really beautiful and I love the diamond sparkle.

I then decided to use MoYou Nails plate 221 and Barry M gold foil to stamp a gold leaf pattern. I am a big fan of stamping at the moment. It's a great way to make your nails unique if you haven't the time to do a freehand design.

The nail jewellery looks and feels very well made. The rhinestones are secured well and they're made of metal so feel sturdy. The down side is that they are pretty heavy and also the back really isn't made the right shape to fit on a nail. I don't feel like these would have lasted very long on my nails if I wore them out, however this type of nail jewellery is rarely practical for day to day wear. I do love nail jewellery though.

You can buy these nail decorations and other nail art from Born Pretty Store. These decorations are currently $2.39 for a pack of 3. You can get 10% off if you use the code XRL91 and shipping is free!

What do you think of nail charms?

* The nail charms were to me to review, but all opinions are my own.

MoYou Nails Plate 216 Review

Hey everyone, hope you're all enjoying your weekend! Today I have the gorgeous MoYou Nails Plate 216 to show you with some beautiful polish too :)

Color Club Halo Hues Gradient

First up I have a design using a gradient base. I hadn't done a gradient for a while or used my colour club halo halo hues either for ages so I couldn't resist getting them out for this review. I used angel kiss, halographic and eternal beauty. I then used Nails Inc Park Crescent to stamp a beautiful, swirly, heard design over the top. All the details picked up perfectly. The plate is actually slightly too small for my nails but with a very squishy stamper you can stretch the design to fit.

Femme Fatale Timelapse

Femme Fatale Timelapse is now one of my most favourite polishes. It's exclusive to Rainbow Connection and in real life it's just beautiful! It's a purple jelly full of aqua, purple, lilac, holographic shards and sparkles. I layered two coats of Poshe base coat and a coat of HK girl topcoat to smooth it out and it looked perfect, full of depth!

I loved how intricate stamping looked over Grove of Shards so I decided to use another intricate design over this too. I used A England princess tears to stamp; a delicate lilac holographic polish. I wasn't sure how well it would stamp but it worked perfectly. You can see how great the plates are because every detail has picked up. I again stretched the design over my nails with the squishy stamper. I find that if you line the design up at the top of your nail and roll downwards it makes sure the design is straight.

You can see all of my MoYou Nails reviews so far here. Their longer, intricate designs are just stunning and I'm always impressed with the quality of their plates. I do find their designs can be narrow on some of their plates though, which makes it hard to get it to fit wider nails. I struggled with my thumb with these two designs. However, with a squishy stamper it is possible to stretch if you have claws like me!

I'd love to know what you think of these designs! I apologise for not being around much. I'm unfortunately going to have to post occasionally as finding the time for my blog nowadays isn't easy. But I'll not be giving up completely. I still have a passion for nail art and beautiful polishes :)

* Plate sent for honest review. Polishes purchased by me.

Femme Fatale Grove of Shards With MoYou Nails Stamping

Ready for some beautiful bling? Today I've got the stunning Femme Fatale Grove of Shards with a stamping design from MoYou Nails Plate 218. Femme Fatale is an Australian brand I've been dying to try for ages. I needed to stock up on HK girl from my favourite polish retailer Rainbow Connection and couldn't resist having a browse. Their most recent collection just looked beautiful, most of them jellies, jam packed with multi coloured, different shape glitters. I'm so glad I splashed out on a few because these honestly look even more impressive in person.

I don't even know how to describe this polish as there is just so much going on! The base is a red/pink jelly and it's absolutely packed with different glitters in different shades of pink, copper, gold and brown. It really is a perfect autumn shade! Application was really good too. You can get full coverage in just two coats. There is definitely no fishing needed at all, there is so much glitter with each application. Due to the amount of glitter it is very topcoat hungry though. I like to wear glitter polishes smooth so I applied 3 coats of poshe base coat and then a coat of HK girl and it looked really shiny, smooth and full of depth.

I then decided to try stamping on this complex polish and I absolutely love the outcome. I don't really want to remove it so I'll probably be wearing it for a few days! I used Barry M gold foil and stamped using an intricate design from MoYou Nails Plate 218. This plate is gorgeous and it's wider than some of the other longer designs I've reviewed (My other reviews here) so it will be suitable for slightly wider nails too. The design stamps perfectly and every little detail picks up. I think this is one of my favourite designs from MoYou Nails. The other designs on the plate look gorgeous too and I cannot wait to try them. I might need to file these claws down a bit though for them to fit perfectly.

What do you think of this polish and stamping design? Are you a fan of glitters or do you find them a bit too much? I love a bit of bling myself as you can see ;)

You can purchase Femme Fatale Grove of Shards in the UK from Rainbow Connection for £8.60 for a 12ml bottle.

* Plate sent for honest review. Polishes purchased by me.

MoYou Nails Plate 220 and Stamping Polish Review

Hello strangers! I've got lots of photos to show you today using designs from the gorgeous MoYou Nails 220 stamping plate. I didn't want to put up a post until I'd used most of the designs so it's taken me a while to get this post up.

Sinful Colors Easy Going

I've had this polish for a while but this is the first time I've used it. It's a gorgeous cream, slightly pink and for the price it's brilliant. Super glossy and takes 3 thin coats. I then stamped over it using color club eternal beauty and halo graphic. The images stamp really well for such intricate designs. I had to stretch the stamper a bit to get it to cover my nails length ways as they're getting rather long now. The cute nail charm was given to me by a friend.

Picture Polish Shy Violet

I am loving Picture Polish at the moment. Shy Violet is a beautiful purple with flecks of glitter. It was a bit sheer for a picture polish but it looks beautiful and the formula is brilliant so I didn't mind. I stamped over it using MoYou nails lilac stamping polish. It stamps really well for such a light polish and I can't fault the design at all.

Pretty and Polished May Flowers

May flowers is my very first Pretty and Polished purchase and I absolutely love it! It's a gorgeous thermal that changes from a bright, mint green to almost white. It's also full of chunky, purple and pink glitters and I even like the big flowers. I decided to stamp over this using the most delicate design. I used MoYou nails white stamping polish and it picked up the majority of the design however a couple of nails had tiny bits missing. Not so much that you'd notice in person as the design is so intricate and probably more to do with my technique than the plates!

Dance Legend Holy Diver

Dance Legend Holy Diver is one of my favourite polishes. It's part of their wow prism range is they're just so sparkly, they really do make you go wow! I stamped using MoYou nails black stamping polish. It picked up the design and stamped perfectly.

MoYou nails stamps and polishes are brilliant quality. I absolutely love their intricate full nail design! You can see all of my other reviews here. They offer a wide selection of stamping polish colours and plates, in different lengths and widths.

I'd love to know what you think! Which is your favourite design?

* Plates and stamping polish sent for honest review. The base polishes were purchased by me.

MoYou Nails Plate 223 Review Featuring Polished by KPT and Serum No5 Mother's Day Polishes

Hello lovelies!! Wow, I've never had such a long break from blogging! My love for polish and nail art is still here, I've just been struggling to find time for taking photos and writing up a post. I am having a lovely lazy day today though, so I've got two designs to show you using the gorgeous MoYou Nails 223 stamping plate and polishes from the Polished by KPT and Serum No 5 Mother's Day box from Rainbow Connection.

Polished By KPT Sunday Rose

Sunday Rose is a gorgeous thermal that changes between a light goldish pink when hot, to a gorgeous rose pink when cold. It's filled with tiny flecks of gold shimmer and is so pretty! I decided to use MoYou nails white stamping polish to stamp a delicate design from plate 223. I absolutely love these long, thin, full design plates from MoYou nails. The designs are really pretty and intricate and stamp really well. As you can see the stamping polish is really good too and is my go to white stamping polish.

Serum No5 Total Mom-sense

Total Mom-sense is a glow glitter polish. It has a light grey shimmery base and is packed full of small red, purple and blue glitters. I have to admit it really isn't the sort of polish I would usually wear and it dried to a very gritty finish that I really didn't like. A couple of layers of Poshe base coat and HK Girl topcoat made it glossy but I just don't think it's my sort of colour. I am too much of a girly girl, I didn't think it'd be so grey so I went stamping crazy over it to make it more me!

I used one design from plate 223 and first of all stamped using MoYou nails light blue stamping polish and then stamped the same design on top using MoYou nails white stamping polish. The blue stamped very well but it was hard to see the design over this base colour so I used the white on top. I actually really love the effect!

I'm very impressed with MoYou nails polishes and stamping plates and you can see my other reviews here. They offer a wide selection of stamping polish colours and plates. I tend to stick to their long, thin designs as they are more suited to my nails. However, they also do wider, shorter designs.

I'd love to know what you think! Are you a fan of these polishes and stamping designs?

* Plates and stamping polish sent for honest review. The Mother's day polishes were purchased by me.

Picture Polish Illusionist with One Stroke Flowers

Hello lovelies! A rather unusual late night post from me but I just couldn't wait to post this! I have the most beautiful polish to show you! the gorgeous picture polish illusionist! Illusionist is a limited edition shade that was released at the end of February 2014 with 4 other shades. I loved all of them and I quickly snapped 3 of them up in the Sally Magpies sale a couple of weeks ago.

For the base I decided to use Ciate Power Dressing; a dark blue crelly. These shades are very sheer and are supposed to be layered over a base colour. The dark blue seemed to make the polish pop a bit more than a black. I used just one medium coat in the swatches below without topcoat. Application was brilliant, as with all other Picture Polishes I've tried so far. This polish dried to a smooth, glossy finish and I actually didn't use topcoat when I wore it without the nail art.

Isn't it just stunning? It really does look like a galaxy on my nails but with very little effort. It changes between so many colours! You can see purple, pink, green and turquoise! It appears really quite green in some lights but it didn't want to be photographed!

I added some one stroke flowers after wearing this polish plain for a day. It really didn't need any nail art but I wanted to see how it'd look and also I just felt the urge to do some painting :)

What do you think? Have you got any of these limited edition shades?

You can pick this up in the UK for £13.50 from Rainbow Connection or Sally Magpies.

Picture Polish Honey Dew and Jasmine with MoYou Nails Stamping

Hello lovelies! Second post of the weekend :D

A couple of weeks ago Sally Magpies had an insane sale on everything so I just couldn't miss out on buying a load of picture polish! I owned a few of these previously and I've been dying to get my hands on some more but they are usually quite expensive (at least £10 a bottle) so I can't buy them often. Today I have two to show you; the beautiful Honey Dew and Jasmine.

I really cannot find one fault with these polishes, the formula is just perfect. Honey Dew took 2 really easy, thin coats and dried to an even, glossy finish. Jasmine also took 2 easy coats and I simply applied one coat of Poshe base coat before a coat of HK girl topcoat to give a smooth finish. You can really tell that these are high quality polishes.

Honey Dew is a gorgeous colour. You can see from the photos that in some lights it's a pastel, mint green and in other lights it's really quite bright but still delicate. I love it! Jasmine is a gorgeous lilac crelly packed full of hex glitter in blue, green, purple and silver.

I love this combo on its own but I have a lilac stamping polish from MoYou Nails that matches Jasmine perfectly so I thought this was the perfect time to try it. I used MoYou Nails stamping plate 221 and I really love how it turned out. I was impressed with how well the lilac stamped as usually pastel colours do not stamp that well. I am a big fan of their longer full nail designs. (see more of my MoYou Nails reviews).

What do you think of this combination?

* Stamping polish and plate provided for honest review.

Freckles Polish Swatches and Review

Hello strangers! If you follow me on Facebook you'll know I went on holiday for my birthday so that's why I've not been around much. The lead up to a holiday is always busy too so it's been a long break. But I'm back with some beautiful polishes AND a new nail shape!! I did love my previous shape however I found the corners broke off so easily and when I went away I broke so many corners off my nails that I decided it was the perfect opportunity to try almond. I've been admiring the lovely AJ's nails from Nail Lacquer UK for ages so she inspired me to give it a go. I have had them like this for a couple of days now and I love them, I hope you like them :)

So the beautiful polishes I have to show you today are from the UK indie brand Freckles Polish by Julieann. I love to support UK indies, so I couldn't wait to snap up some of her polishes after seeing some swatches being posted. As I've been short of time you'll notice that I have squoval nails for 2 of these polishes as they were taken at different times.

Wanton Sex Goddess

First of all I love the name of this polish, I love the Bridge Jones films. This polish instantly stood out to me, such a rich purple colour with a pinky shimmer. It applied like a dream, two really easy coats. I stamped over it using Barry M gold foil and a plate from the Pueen love elements collection.

Raspberry Daiquiri

I do love a cocktail :) Raspberry daiquiri is absolutely stunning. It's a raspberry pink holographic polish and wow the holo really pops! Again I can't fault the formula of this polish at all, it took 2 thin coats. I even painted these sitting outside in a rare sunny day in England.

Blue Hawaii (stamped with Blue Lagoon)

Blue Hawaii is a delicate, pastel blue, holographic polish. The holographic effect isn't as powerful as raspberry daiquiri above but it's still a gorgeous polish. This was very easy to apply but I did need 3 thin coats to get full coverage. I also used Freckles polish Blue Lagoon to stamp with. I haven't yet got swatches for this on its own but it's a darker holographic blue and it goes perfectly with blue hawaii.

Which one is your favourite? I think mine has to be raspberry daiquiri! I'm going to wait for another sunny day to wear that again and it looked amazing in the sunshine. I am really impressed with the formula of these polishes. The only slight criticism I have is that I found the brush a bit short, I tend to prefer longer brushes but I still managed to apply all 3 with no or very little clean-up.

You can purchase these from the Freckles Polish Etsy Store at £6.50 for a full size or £3.50 for a mini. She has many other finishes so go check them out :)

A England Tristam With One Stroke Flowers

Hello lovelies! It's the weekend and even better it's a bank holiday weekend here in the UK so we get an extra day! yay!

I really wanted to do something colourful today because it's now May and it's heading towards my favourite season, summer! So I have another beautiful A England to show you; meet Tristam. It's described on the A England website as 'night blue sky with starlight glimmer and glow' and it certainly does not disappoint. It applies like a dream, honestly I cannot get enough of this brand, I wish I could own them all. For the photos below I used two coats but you could probably even get away with one as it's very opaque.

The finish is gorgeous and glossy and the shimmer is subtle in indirect light, but if you put it in direct light the holographic sparkle really shows up and is amazing. I've taken photos both with my light box and indirect sunlight so you can see the difference.

For the nail art I was inspired by a dress I own, with blue and orange flowers. I used acrylic paints and used the one stroke technique. I'm hoping you aren't bored of my one stoke designs, but with such little time for blogging now I love to do designs that I enjoy the most when I get a chance.

What do you think of A England polishes? These retail at £9.00 each on the A England website, they're also available from many distributers worldwide.

Moyra Polish Review and Nail Art

I'm finally back! I haven't had much time for blogging because I went to see friends and family for Easter and then had a busy week at work. But to make up for it I have 3 different polishes and designs to show you today :)

Moyra is an affordable nail polish brand, with a wide selection of finishes and effects. I hadn't been aware of the brand until Aliz from Moyra UK informed bloggers that she'd be supplying them in the UK and asked for bloggers to apply to review them. I was very excited when Aliz chose me as one of the bloggers!

So here are the 3 beautiful polishes that I was sent.

Holographic 256

I was so happy that I received a holographic polish to try! When I first looked at the bottle it didn't look holographic, it seemed to just have a silver shimmer but that was without good lighting. As soon as you get some light on this polish the holographic effect really comes through. It's a linear holographic polish but it's quite a subtle effect, definitively not as strong as the Color Club holographics for example.

Application was really good. My photos below show 3 thin coats. I found it a bit patchy after 2 coats but 3 really evened it out. It was so easy to apply that I found no clean-up was needed and it dried really fast. The 3rd photo shows without topcoat and the others with a coat of HK girl topcoat. As you can see it does not dull the holographic effect, although it does when the topcoat is wet.

I decided to stamp over this polish with plate 83 from MoYou Nails and Picture Polish Flirt. You might notice that my nails are much shorter than they have been. My break from the car door accident has grown out so I took off the patch and filed all of my nails down. However, this plate was still a bit short for my nails. I had to stretch it out using my squishy stamper so it's not quite as straight as I'd like it to be. The designs stamp really well though, just make sure you pick up a longer design if you have longer nail beds!

Sand Effect 853

When I first received my polishes this was the one I was most excited about. It's such a pretty turquoise, textured glitter, sand effect polish. It makes me think of mermaids! Application was so good, I'm actually amazed by how great these polishes are to apply. I found this as easy to apply as an OPI liquid sand, far better than the Rimmel Space Dusts! They dry really quickly too.

I used MoYou Nails white stamping polish and a design from the MoYou London Sailor Collection 07 XL plate. I didn't really like how the stamping looked on this. I wanted to use a different colour but the only polish that showed up well enough was a white which I think it a bit too much for this pretty polish.

Moyra 80

Moyra 80 is from the classic collection and is a cornflower blue creme. I was the least excited about this because I have two very similar colours from other brands (Nails Inc Oxford and Models Own Beths Blue). It was interesting to compare the quality though because I ended up liking this better than the other two. I really cannot fault the application. It dried to a glossy finish with two easy coats. The Nails Inc and Models Own are far trickier to apply.

I wore this manicure over Easter so I used a cute Easter design from the Dashica Big SdP-P plate and MoYou nails white stamping polish. I might only have dinky nails for the moment but I still love XL plates!

So overall I can say I am very impressed with the quality of these polishes and will most likely be purchasing some in the future. They sell for just £3 each for standard polishes and £4 for the gel polishes. You can order by sending a message on the Moyra UK facebook page.

*Products provided for honest review

A England Princess Tears With One Stroke Flowers

It's the weekend and time for some more one stroke flowers and a beautiful polish :)

A England is a UK indie brand that I'd actually never ordered from before even though it's probably the most well known. I was informed by some of my lovely nail friends that as the brand was turning 3, there was a sale on, so it was the perfect opportunity for me to finally get my hands on some! Described as; "Hardwearing nail varnish collection with distinctive gloss inspired by the enchanting spirit of England and its myths through unusual and sophisticated shades."

It took me a while to choose some to buy because they all looked so tempting but I ended up with 4. The first one I have to show you is the really pretty Princess Tears, from the Legend collection. It's a beautiful lilac, duochrome, holohraphic polish and just love the description on the site; "As the twin lilac trails of tears stream with an incandescent glow down our doomed heroine's face, they are made even more poignant by luminous grey/ green flashes."

Application was just perfect! I managed to apply this with two easy coats and no clean up and I was so tired when I did it so it's amazing it wasn't all over my hands. Swatches below show two coats with one coat of HK Girl topcoat.

For the flowers I decided to go for a purple/pink because this polish has a lovely pinky/purple flash to it in certain lights. I used acrylic paints and a flat brush to paint some one stroke flowers. I just love this technique :)

Did you manage to pick up any A England polishes during the sale? These retail at £9.00 each on the A England website, they're also available from many distributers worldwide.

Dance Legend Termo Shine 182 with MoYou Nails Stamping

Hello lovelies! It's the weekend again, yay! Some time to do my nails and catch up on everyone else's posts too! I've gone a bit photo mad for this post, I hope you don't mind :)

A while back I ordered some Dance Legend polishes from Rainbow Connection. I've shown you one of their multichromes, the absolutely stunning Sulley and now I've got a thermal to show you.

I thought I'd gone off thermals, I found that because I'm cold most of the time they hardly change colour on me but Dance Legend Termo Shine 182 is my perfect thermal! It is a dark purple when cold and a bright pink when hot, the change is so dramatic I just adore it and my two favourite colours. What makes it even more special is that it's also packed full of a rose gold glitter.

Application was really easy, this is two coats with one coat of Poshe base coat and one coat of HK girl on the top to smooth out the glitters. I find this polish is very temperature sensitive so the gradient effect appears throughout the day! I do also own their termo trio and I have to say I don't like that one as much as this. I didn't find the formula as nice and the change isn't as dramatic.

So of course I had to do some nail art too (you'd be shocked if I didn't ;)). I am loving MoYou nails stamping polishes and plates lately! They kindly sent me some polishes and plates to review and I couldn't wait to try out the pink stamping polish with this mani. I used plate 217 because I love the intricate designs on there and also they're long enough for my nails (even though my nails are short for me at the moment, I struggle to get normal plates to fit length wise). The plates are brilliant quality and I've had absolutely no issues so far with getting the designs to stamp. The polish works really well for a light colour. It isn't perfect and not as crisp as the white but you can still see the design well and the imperfections are only visible when viewing close up photos (but I mean in real life who is ever going to go that close to your nails :P).

What do you think? Would you wear a thermal polish?

*Stamping plate and white stamping polish provided for honest review. All other items were purchased by me.

Happy Hands Fairy Tale With One Stroke Nail Art

Hey :) hope everyone is having a great weekend! We finally have some nice weather here in the UK, it actually feels like spring so I thought I'd pull out a pretty polish I've not yet featured on my blog. This is the beautiful Happy Hands Fairy Tale and I think it really does suit its name! This was a polish I saw just one little swatch of on instagram and just knew I had to get it! It was an exclusive to Mei Mei's Signatures but unfortunately it's no longer available. It's a beautiful pinky/beige crelly with different sized hex glitters in shades of pink and grey. It's very delicate, I really do love it. Swatches below show 3 coats with a coat of Poshe base coat and HK girl topcoat on top.

Now of course I couldn't just leave it alone! I was torn between stamping and one stroke but I went for one stroke because I've been dying to do it again! It's definitely my favourite technique. I need to try and make some time to practice it more!

What do you think of this polish? I love delicate pastels in spring. It's Mother's day tomorrow and I'll be making the most of the sunshine and spending it with my Mum and family :)

Models Own Fruit Pastel Gradient with MoYou Nails Stamping

Hello!! Oh I've been so rubbish lately with blogging. I'm really sorry, I am struggling to post as much as I used to as I'm pretty busy with work and visiting people at weekends! I've made sure to keep this weekend free though to relax :) I really hope you're all well!

So today I have a very delicate manicure perfect for spring! I purchased a few Models Own polishes when they had their 50% off sale so I thought I'd use 3 from the fruit pastel collection for this manicure today. This is not a new collection but I've been meaning to buy them for a while because they're such pretty pastel colours and they also smell fruity. I admit I'd not just buy a polish because it smells nice but it's an added bonus! I first of all applied a white base colour (sinful colors snow white) and then used a makeup sponge to apply apple pie, grape juice and banana split. These polishes are very delicate so I did a couple of layers of sponging to build up the colour. I used Claire's gradient technique from Nuthin' but a nail thing and I'd highly recommend it, her gradients are always so perfect.

I decided to add a bit of stamping too and I love how it turned out! I used MoYou Nails plate 221 and their white stamping polish which were both kindly sent to me to review. (see my other reviews here). I'm very impressed with how well their designs seem to stamp, I had no problems picking up the design and as you can see their white polish stamps very clearly even over a light base. I also had no smudging when I applied HK girl topcoat.

What do you think? Are you a fan of pretty pastels? I tend to wear them once winter is over!

*Stamping plate and white stamping polish provided for honest review. All other items were purchased by me.

TarasTalons Secret Garden Swatches and Nail Art

Hello lovelies! You've probably forgotten who I am by now, it's been so long since my last post! Sorry about that, I had a week of bare nails as I was really busy and I decided to just give them some oil treatment. I'm now back with a glittery, floral mani to show you :)

I love supporting UK indie brands and have featured many of them on my blog. Today I have another to show you, from The Tara Emporium. I've been meaning to try one of Tara's polishes for a while so I finally got around to ordering some! Today I'm showing you the beautiful Secret garden, a very blingy polish! I don't usually go for green but I loved the way this also had purple glitters in and I could just picture it with flower nail art too. Application was really good and I used two coats for my photos. It is a very glittery polish so I did need a few layers of base coat and top coat to smooth it out but that's usually the case with such glittery polishes!

I absolutely love the name of this polish and couldn't resist adding some flowers. I used a random made up one stroke technique for the flowers. Haha I love experimenting :)

What do you think of this polish? Tara has a wide selection of polishes, they're often one of a kind or very limited in stock so grab the ones you like the look of quickly! I purchased 3 colours and I'll most definitely be back for more! You can purchase them from her website and etsy store.

Dance Legend Sulley and MoYou Nails Stamping Polish Review and Swatches

Hello lovelies! I hope you're having a great weekend. I've not had much luck with my nails this week! I had a really low break on my thumb nail a few weeks ago and the patch came off so it's extremely short. I then filed down all my nails, taking off about half the free edge and a day later I injured my middle nail opening a car door. You can see the damage here if you aren't squeamish. It was very painful and still half attached to my skin so I've patched it up for now. So my nails will be much shorter once it has healed enough to remove the patch :(

Anyway thankfully I had some nail mail to cheer me up from Rainbow Connection. Annette the owner stocks such beautiful polishes and when I saw she was stocking Dance Legends I just couldn't resist ordering a few. Dance Legend is a professional Russian nail polish brand and they have the most gorgeous polishes with many different finishes. I instantly fell in love with their chameleon multichrome range. They're named and inspired by monsters inc characters too! I chose to order Sulley and I didn't regret it! I don't own any other multichromes so I've spent most the night watching the colours change on my nails as I walk around haha. The colour change is so dramatic and just beautiful. The polish is quite thin and I thought I'd need quite a few coats but actually two covered it nicely. Swatches below show two coats.

I also received some MoYou Nails stamping polish to review so I decided to try out their black stamping polish over this using their 221 stamping plate. I usually use Konad special polish for stamping but it's extremely thick and quite messy, this one stamped really well but was much easier to clean up! I'm really impressed with the quality of the designs on their plates too, they are very sharp and clear. The only issue people might have is that some of their plates are quite thin, they're perfect for my nails but my nails are slim and it just fitted my thumb nail. Check out my last review here to see what I mean. I'll be posting a few other reviews of their stamping plates and stamping polishes too!

What do you think of this polish and the stamp?

* Stamping plate and stamping polish provided for honest review

F.U.N Lacquer Love 2014 Thermal Collection Swatches

Hello lovelies! I have some swatches to show you today that I've been meaning to post for a while! I'd wanted some thermal polishes for a while and I fell in love with the Love 2014 collection by F.U.N Lacquer as soon as I saw people posting swatches. Unfortunately I was too slow to pick them up from Rainbow Connection when they first went into stock so I ordered directly from her online store based in Singapore. It cost just over £31 for the whole collection including shipping and it arrived really quickly, within a week!

Anyway onto the swatches :)

Purfect For Me

This one I was the most excited to try as it's a tri thermal and changes between 3 different colours. You might notice I have no label on my bottle, this is because I was so eager to see the colour change I put the bottle under my hot water tap and it came straight off! lol, so do not do that! This polish is crammed full of sparkly flakies which make it beautiful and sparkly but the application can be a bit difficult. YuinYing, the creator is aware of this though and she has since come up with another fabulous version. I love that indie makers take note of feedback from customers and improve. The polish is a beautiful purple when cold, and then changes to a pink and a light blue. I actually put a white base colour under this so I'm not sure if it's fully opaque when cold or not.

Be My Queen

This one actually turned out to be my favourite. Be my Queen is a beautiful turquoise thermal that changes from deep turquoise when cold to a very pale turquoise , almost white when hot. I found it difficult to make it stay the hot colour for the photos as I am always cold! Again this is crammed full of shimmer but application was much better than purfect for me and I think even if this wasn't a thermal I'd love it :)

Secret Admirer

Secret admirer is described as a hot pink thermal but I'd class it more as a corally pink, it can look quite red in certain lights. It's so pretty and crammed full of golden shimmer. I would probably wear it with a base colour in the future though as you can see in the final picture it's very sheer when hot and I don't like seeing my tips! This was the first of the polishes I wore and I was fascinated with how it changed throughout the day. Application was very similar to Be My Queen.

Have you tried any of these polishes yet? Which is your favourite from this collection? Enjoy the rest of your weekend :)

Models Own HyperGel Lilac Sheen With One Stroke Flower Nail Art

Hello lovelies! I hope you're all having a lovely weekend! I decided I wanted to do some more one stroke nail art today. I've only attempted this a few times and I just love the effect it gives, so pretty and girly!

Models own had a 50% off sale the other week to celebrate reaching 250,000 followers on Facebook. I couldn't resist ordering some of their polishes, two of which were part of their new HyperGel range. Now I have to admit I do not really understand the gel effect polishes all these brands are bringing out. To me it just looks how my normal cremes look with topcoat! But I fell in love with the colour of lilac sheen, it looks so delicate. I found the polish quite thick to apply and it took a while to dry but you can see it does give a glossy gel effect without topcoat. I did get some cracking after a couple of days wear which I haven't with any other of their polishes but I still think this was a bargain for £2.50 though and it makes a great base for nail art.

Before painting the one stroke flowers, I added a holographic topcoat from Iconic Effect, which actually reminds me I have a couple of their polishes I still need to swatch! They are a brilliant UK indie brand and their extreme holographic topcoat is very popular. I used oumaxi acrylic paint and a flat brush from Born pretty store for the one stroke flowers. I also added bits of silver acrylic paint using another of their brushes.

What do you think of the Models Own HyperGel range? I hope you enjoy my nail art for today :)

Vibrant stamping decal flower nail art

Two posts in a weekend? :O This is only a very short post but I wanted to show you my first attempt at stamping decals. I've been meaning to try this for a while as I've seen it in a nail stamping group but I just hadn't got around to it. However, after seeing the lovely Lucy's designs from Lucy's stash I just knew I had to give it a go. Lucy has 3 tutorials on this, I went for the first method where you paint topcoat onto a plastic sheet, wait for it to dry, stamp and then paint.

I decided I wanted to go for a vibrant pattern because I wanted something cheerful. After going for orange and pink flowers using a design from Dashica Big SdP-A plate, I just knew I had to have a vibrant base coat too, so I used My Midori from the models own midori set (see my review here). I used just two coats without undies and I think it makes the perfect base for this crazy mani (and it smells yummy!).

So there's my first attempt. It's not perfect but I'll definitely be trying it again! What do you think? Have you tried this technique before? I'm going to catch up on reading and commenting on blog posts now! :)

Goodbye PMP Nail Art and Swatches

I hope you're all ready for some crazy, girly nail art! This post is dedicated to the lovely Charlie and her PMP glitter babies! If you've followed my blog for a while you'll know that I'm a big fan of her glitter toppers and unfortunately she will not be making any more. So today I have two from her last collection to show you!

Emmylou

This is a very pretty glitter topper, with a mixture of pink and lilac hex glitters, iridescent shreds, tiny iridescent sparkles and pink flowers. I decided to layer this over Sinful Colors cinderella because it's so delicate and pretty I thought they'd look perfect together. I only used one coat of emmylou and fished out the pink flowers. I decided to go a bit crazy and used my Barry M nail art pens to draw on hearts and also added some microbeads. Sorry for the girlyness overload but I love it haha :)

Alien Like You

I absolutely love Alien Like You! It has my favourite circle glitters, diamond glitters, square glitters and hex glitters! very unique. It applies absolutely perfectly too, the swatches below show just one easy coat with the circle glitters placed on (because of my OCD :P). For the base colour I used F.U.N lacquer be my queen, one of my first thermal polishes (I purchased the Love 2014 collection). I had to heat up my hands to get the gradient effect because it's usually the darker colour you can see in the 4th photo, I've always got cold hands.

So as sad as it is that Charlie will no longer be making these, I'm lucky enough to own around 20 of them so they'll definitely be making an appearance in my nail designs in the future!

Did you manage to buy any PMPs? Are you a fan of these glitters?

Laquerdaisical Where The Glitter Flamingoes Swatches and Nail Art

Hello lovelies! I have a new UK indie brand to show you today! Laquerdaisical is a UK indie brand run by Alexia and she kindly asked me if I'd like to review one of her polishes. I chose where the glitter flamingoes, which is a gorgeous sparkly, pink jelly polish. I decided to layer this over picture polish flirt as it would take a few coats to reach full opacity. For my swatches I've used two thin coats and a topcoat. The formula is very good, it applies easily and the glitters distribute easily. It's been a while since I've worn a polish with smaller glitters so I've really enjoyed wearing this. It's really sparkly and the photos don't quite show off just how sparkly it is.

As pretty as this polish is on its own, I couldn't help but do some stamping over it. I used MoYou London XL pro plate 10. I love how this turned out, so feminine with the sparkles, pink and flowers :)

What do you think of this polish? Alexia has a wide selection of polishes, including thermals and glow in the darks that you can purchase on her facebook page. All of her polishes are hand made and 3-free.

Models Own Limited Edition Midori Set Review and Nail Art

I've got some bright nail art to show you today for my Models Own limited edition Midori set review. Midori is a fruity liquer made from premium melons, prized for their juiciness and fresh and vibrant taste. The word Midori means 'green' in Japanese, so the they have teamed up with Models Own to create 3 melon scented green shades. I have to admit, I don't wear greens often but I was excited to try these out!

My Midori is a very bright green jelly. As it's a jelly polish, it will not be fully opaque even with many coats. I've used a white base colour and 3 coats here because I found it a bit streaky with just two. It really does smell nice once dry on the nails, you can definitely catch the scent of melon!

Golden Green is a polish I have posted about before, but this one has the added Midori melon scent. It's a beautiful polish that reminds me of a beetle. You can see swatches of it here as well as in my nail art below. I decided to attempt a drip effect mani to put these colours together.

Dancing Queen is the final polish in the set and it's the one I love the most too! It's a beautiful glittery combination of greens and blues and looks like jewels when applied on your nails. I used a dotting tool to apply the glitters so that I could get them in the right place.

I really love the scent of these polishes. Don't think you have to do a crazy combination like me though, I just wanted to make the review fun for you by putting the three shades together. What do you think of this set? I think it's great if you're a green lover. You can buy it from Models Own for £15.

I hope you're all enjoying your weekend.

*This set was sent to me for my honest review.

Rimmel London Space Dust Review and Nail Art

Hello lovelies! I hope you're all having a nice weekend. I've been stuck indoors with a banging headache but I still wanted to make sure I posted something :)

Just before Christmas I came across some Rimmel London Space Dust polishes in Boots. I'd not yet tried any of this type of textured glitter polish so I thought I'd pick up 3 as they were 3 for 2. Two of these were swatched a while ago, but today I swatched my favourite of the 3, moon walking and did some free hand one stroke flowers.

Moon Walking

Moon walking is a gorgeous dusky lilac, crammed full of tiny glitters and larger hex glitters. Now this sort of polish is supposed to be worn without topcoat for a textured glitter effect. Usually I love super glossy so I wasn't sure how I'd like this sort of effect but I love it! This was really easy to apply although I found the brush a bit annoying because it had fanned out a bit but I still managed to apply pretty neatly and only two coats were needed. It's insanely sparkly even without topcoat. I decided to try it out glossy too so applied Poshe super fast drying base coat and then HK girl topcoat. It is rather rough so it needed quite a bit of smoothing. I love it both ways and can't really decide which I like best :)

Luna Love

Next up is the vibrant, pink Luna Love. Now you might be shocked to hear that this was my least favourite of the 3! It just looked so amazingly sparkly in the bottle and it was when I first applied it too but then as it dried it just looked a bit dull. I applied topcoat to make it glossy and you can see it brought out the sparkles a lot more, but without topcoat I was not a fan. Application was good though, again two coats were needed.

Total Eclipse

Finally I have the amazing total eclipse to show you. I wore this one over Christmas and absolutely loved it! It's a dark grey/black polish with green sparkles. It applied really well with two coats and what I loved most is that it lasted so long on my nails before chipping, without topcoat! I've yet to try this one with topcoat but I actually really like it matte!

I know you've probably already seen swatches of these elsewhere but I hope you've enjoyed my review :) There are 5 space dust shades available and they retail at £3.99 but you can often pick them up 3 for 2 in Boots or Superdrug.

Which one is your favourite? or do you dislike this type of polish?

Layla The Butterfly Effect Swatches and Nail Art

Yay! my first post of 2014! Happy new year everyone, I hope you had a great Christmas!

Today I have a stunning polish to show you and a bit of nail art too. I recently purchased Layla the butterfly effect from Sally Magpies. This polish really seemed to catch my eye with gorgeous colour shifting flakies in a purple jelly base, perfect! I originally thought I might have to use a base colour first but actually it's just amazing without. I used two coats for the swatches below, although they were rather thick coats. I wasn't a fan of the brush for some reason, I didn't find it easy to paint neatly with but the formula was great.

I added a layer of HK Girl topcoat (which is definitely now my new favourite topcoat!) to make it super glossy. I also wanted to try out the polish Matte too as I know flakies look amazing matte! I really liked the effect, but I think glossy is my favourite in person at least.

Seeing as the polish is named the butterfly effect, I couldn't resist finishing with some butterfly wing nail art! I stamped using MoYou London Pro Collection 05 plate and Konad black and then added dots using Color Club Eternal Beauty and Cloud Nine.

What do you think of this polish, have you tried it? I've decided that for my new year's resolution I'm going to make sure I blog more, comment more and get back into freehand nail art, so watch this space :)

Nail Lacquer UK Christmas Miracle with MoYou Nails Butterfly Stamp Design

Hello lovelies! Woo, it's almost Christmas! I feel really excited this year for some reason! Anyway I have a pretty, sparkly double review to show you today! You might remember I reviewed some one-coat Nella Milano polishes by OMG Marketing a few weeks ago. Well, they kindly have asked me to review some of their MoYou Nails stamping plates and also some stamping polishes. Unfortunately the stamping polishes haven't arrived yet but I thought I'd show you one of the beautiful designs on their plates using Konad white stamping polish.

Now I find stamping over glitter gives a really lovely effect so I decided it was the perfect opportunity to try one of my untried indies. I first of all did a gradient with Nella Milano black and turquoise and then applied one coat of Nail Lacquer UK Christmas Miracle. I seriously love her polishes, she really knows how to put colours together perfectly and the consistency is always great. This was so easy to apply and as with all big circle glitter polishes I fish out the big circle glitters and place them on. Some people are scared of big circle glitter polishes being too lumpy, but I find that with 2 coats of Poshe fast drying base coat and one coat of HK girl topcoat it's so glossy and smooth and looks jelly like :)

I was tempted to try a Christmas stamping design first but I fell in love with the butterfly design and I'm really glad I chose it as I think it goes so well with the base colours. The one thing I'd say about the designs on plate 222 is that they are extremely narrow. My nails are very narrow and I found they fitted perfectly but I'd have liked them to be wider because I had to get placement perfect for them to fit all around my nails. Length wise they're quite long, as you can see they covered most the length of my nails, although I don't think they would have a week ago before I filed down.

I've included a picture of a pueen plate (left) next to this plate (right) so you can see how narrow the designs are, but you can also see they are slightly longer than average plates. The plates are really good quality though and as you can see they produce a clear, detailed stamp. Also, not all of their plates are this narrow. I have been sent 3 and they do a selection of widths and lengths.

What do you think? I adore this stamp design, it's so cute :) I am excited to try the other designs and to see what their stamping polishes are like too! I am not sure when I'll next get to post but I hope you all have a lovely Chrsitmas if I don't get to post before! x

Christmas Jumper Nails Featuring piCture pOlish Kryptonite and Vegas

I've returned with some festive nails to show you!! I'm so sorry that I've been a bit rubbish with posting, but I've had so much going on, as I'm sure you all can understand around Christmas. I went to Amsterdam last weekend for my works Christmas party! it was amazing, I think I've only just recovered though :D I hope you're all doing well and enjoying the festive season as much as me!

Anyway on to the nails! I decided to use PiCture POlish Kryptonite and Vegas because not only are they red and green but full of sparkle too! I've reviewed Kryptonite previously and it's just soo beautiful! I've not managed to swatch Vegas before but it's a stunning red with a gold shimmer. It's very hard to capture the shimmer though, at least it is with my camera!

I have become rather obsessed with stamping plates lately and I ordered 9 MoYou London plates a couple of months ago. They're amazing quality and every one I've tried so far stamps so well and also they make them in XL size to fit longer nails! I'd picked up one of the festive plates, 04 because it was full of Christmas jumper designs and looked so cute. I am not the sort of person to wear Christmas jumpers, or any sort of jumper really, I pretty much live in dresses, but I couldn't wait to do some Christmas jumper nails!

So here we go, Christmas jumper nails using piCture pOlish Kryptonite and Vegas, stamped using MoYou London Festive Plate 04 and Konad special white! I hope you like them :)

Nella Milano One Coat Polish Swatches and Review

Hello lovelies! I have a new brand to show you today and some nail stamping :)

I was contacted by Michelle from OMG Marketing, the manufacturers of MoYou Nails, who asked me if I'd like to review their new one coat nail polish, Nella Milano. Now strangely I'd actually been looking for some one coat polishes so I couldn't wait to try some! I chose turquoise, violet and black. I'd actually only just a few weeks ago ordered 9 XL stamping plates so I though seeing as these are one coat polishes, I'd test them out to see if they stamped too. These are not sold as stamping polish, it was purely an experiment and to make my swatches a bit more exciting.

Turquoise

I really love the colour turquoise so I just knew I had to try this one. Now in real life the polish looks a bit darker than the photos. For some reason it looked brighter in the photos but it's still very beautiful! It applied really well and of course I only used one coat. Swatches below show one coat without topcoat, it's so glossy! The drying time was fairly standard. I then used the black polish to stamp and as you can see it worked pretty well! You do have to watch out for smudging a bit more than with Konad special polish but you can see the print really well. I think this is my favourite of the three! Just a warning though, I did stain my hands a bit when removing this!

Violet

This looks a bit more pinky than violet but it's still a gorgeous colour! Now this was the least opaque of the three polishes, I'd have put a second coat on if I wasn't reviewing. But I guess if you're in a rush then you can get away with wearing this as a one coater. Application was good though, the formula was really nice and again a very glossy finish. I tried stamping over this but it failed a bit, probably more my error than the polish ;)

Black

Now I think this is going to take over Nails Inc black taxi as my favourite black! It's beautiful, perfectly covers in one coat and really glossy! You have to be careful with application as I found it quite thick and made a bit of a mess on some of my fingers but that's probably because I'm not used to using one coat polishes. I then used the turquoise to stamp over. It' not the best colour to see over black but you can see it actually stamps pretty well!

These polishes retail at £7.99 each and are available from MoYou Nails, although at the time of writing this they are £3.99 which is an absolute bargain, so if you want some one coat polishes, go and snap them up!

Which is your favourite?

*These polishes were sent to me for review, but all opinions are my own

Nail Lacquer UK New Year's Night Swatches

I hope you're all having a lovely weekend! Today I'm going to show you another gorgeous Nail Lacquer UK polish! I just can't get enough of circle glitter polishes lately, so when I saw Nail Lacquer UK's Christmas collection I snapped up 4 of them! This one today is called New Year's Night and you can see why, look at all the colour and sparkle! It's similar to heart or love but different colours. It's packed full of tiny red glitter, gold hex glitters and large cyan, pink and red glitters. I always think glitters like this look best over black, so for these swatches I applied one coat over Nails Inc Black Taxi.

Now circle glitter polishes aren't the easiest to apply, you have to be careful where to place the large circle glitters because sometimes you get clusters of them together and they can look a bit silly, so a bit of fishing and placement was needed. It's worth the effort though I think because these polishes look amazing once on! Nail Lacquer UK is a great polish maker, she creates really unique combinations of colours and glitters and of course has the most beautiful bottles with charms!

If you've read my blog before you might have noticed I always use Seche Vite topcoat. I've tried others and I always end up going back to it but I'd heard about HK Girl Topcoat and how it's supposed to be like Seche Vite but without the annoying bits like the shrinkage and going thick in the bottle. When Annette from Rainbow Connection mentioned she was stocking it, I made sure to grab a couple of bottles. I've used it a couple of times now and I love it! It's just so shiny and I've not noticed any shrinkage. I'll keep you updated to see if it goes thick once you start getting through the bottle like Seche does, if it doesn't then I imagine this will be my only topcoat from now on!

What do you think of New Year's Night? You can purchase Nail Lacquer UK polishes from her Etsy store here. Each mini polish (4ml) is £3.50 and full sized (10ml) range from £5.50-£7.50. You can get 10% off using the code TENOFF !

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday :)

piCture pOlish Kryptonite Swatches

I've got a beauty to show you tonight! I wasn't planning on blogging but I just had to show you how amazing this polish is! This is piCture pOlish Kryptonite, a polish that I was sent for blog fest 2013. I'd only ever used it for the blog fest design, but this is one of those polishes you have to see on its own. I'm not even usually a green fan, but just look at the sparkles! The formula was absolute perfection, no clean up needed at all. I then stamped over it using Color Club Kismet and Dashica Big SdP-A!

I'd be shocked if anyone could dislike this polish :D

You can buy piCture pOlish shades worldwide. Click here for stockists.

PMP November Swatches

I have a huge post full of PMP photo spam for you tonight! I've been a bit behind with sorting out my photos and adding them to my blog so I decided I'd group 4 PMP polishes into tonights post for you!

Umbrella

This is from the most recent November collection released last week. I have to admit, it isn't the sort of polish I'd usually go for because of all the bar glitter but I know lots of people love this sort of glitter and it really does look great on! It's full of silver hex glitters with white, bar glitters and holographic blue thin bar glitters. It applied really well, below shows one thick coat over Nails Inc Haymarket. I couldn't resist stamping over this one with my Dashica plate! This glitter topper reminds me of fireworks :)

Torn

This is another glitter baby from the November collection. It consists of shreds of holographic purple glitter in a clear base. I just had to layer this one over black and I really love it! I did find I had to apply two coats and move the glitters around a bit to get it looking right because the glitters are quite large. I think it looks brilliant though, I especially love the holographic effect!

P.I.M.P

This is my absolute favourite glitter baby so far! It's SO blingy and just amazing. P.I.M.P is a special glitter baby dedicated to the members of a facebook group I am part of, ATN! I layered one thick coat over Sparitual Delight. Check out the macro shot, you can see it's crammed full of gold and silver glitters!

The Chain

Now this polish is really special because it's the first PMP polish I've tried that isn't a glitter topper. I don't usually go for metalics but I really felt like I needed to try this polish after seeing gorgeous swatches by Cazzy. I was not disappointed, this polish applies perfectly and has a gorgeous shimmer to it. Metallic polishes have the tendency to show brush marks but this one was pretty smooth! She's done a really great job with these and you should check out the other gorgeous colours she has too!

I hope you've enjoyed my extra long post! I didn't want to write too much but I hope this has given you a good overview of these polishes. I now own 18 of these polishes, so am a big fan :D

You can purchase PMP glitter babies from Charlie's store here. They retail at £4.00 each for 5ml.

Which is your favourite?

* The first two polishes were sent to me for honest review, the second two were purchased by me. All opinions are my own.

PMP Like a Virgin Swatches and Nail Art

Hello lovelies I hope you're all having a great weekend! It's rather miserable and rainy here, but that's England for you! It's given me a chance to sit down and do some nail art and swatches though :)

Today I have the beautiful and delicate PMP Like a Virgin to show you, this is part of Charlie's November collection that was released yesterday. It's a gorgeous iridescent glitter in a clear base, almost looks like a flakie. I imagine this looks good over many colours but I decided to layer it over one coat of Picture Polish Flirt, my favourite pink! It applied really well and below is just one coat of like a virgin! I have many of Charlie's glitter babies now and I just love them, they really transform polishes and make them look unique.

I thought this looked so pretty that I just had to paint some roses using acrylic paint. I really love how they look with the glitter, like princess nails :)

You can purchase PMP glitter babies from Charlie's store here. They retail at £4.00 each for 5ml. I have some more of her November collection to show you too!

What do you think of this glitter topper?

Chubby Owl Polish Midnight Pixie Swatches and Halloween Nail Art

Happy Halloween everyone! I am not at all bothered about Halloween but I can't resist the chance to do a bit of nail art! I haven't done anything OTT because I haven't really had the time, but thankfully beautiful indie polishes like this don't require much nail art! This is the lovely Chubby Owl Midnight Pixie. I introduced this brand to my blog in my previous post, showing off the beautiful EssiePops, this one is completely different but I love it just as much. Midnight Pixie is unlike any other polish I own; it's a black shimmery jelly with pink, blue and silver hex glitters. I used three coats for the photos below with two coats of Jacava topcoat.

This polish was really easy to apply and what I've noticed about this brand is that the polishes dry really quick which I absolutely love! I tend to do my nails late at night now so want them to dry as quickly as possible. Because it's a dark polish I thought it'd be perfect for a Halloween manicure so I used my Barry M pen to draw some spider webs :)

You can purchase them from their Store at a very reasonable price of £5.99 for 10ml!

Can't wait to go and check out all your Halloween manicures! Hope you're having a great week x

Chubby Owl Polish Essie Pops With Born Pretty Metal Charms

Hello, I'm back again and finally have my broadband! yay! Things have been a bit crazy for me so my blog has been neglected. I have bought some beautiful polishes though in the past week and I'm going to make sure to show you all of them, so get ready for more posts :)

Today I'm showing you another UK indie brand that I only came across the other day, Chubby Owl Polish. I absolutely love owls so I love their logo and when looked through the polishes they just looked so adorable I had to buy some to try out. Now I seem to have a bit of a thing for circle glitter polishes, so Essie Pops stood out to me straight away! It's so pretty, a pale blue shimmery jelly, with tiny gold hex glitters, larger silver/baby blue glitters and large purple circle glitters. It applied perfectly, and was really quick to dry! I used 3 thin coats below and the large circle glitters were even quite easy to get on the brush as sometimes they can be a pain to fish out!

I have 2 others to show you another time, you can see them below. I imagine I'll be buying more in the future too! You can purchase them from their Store at a very reasonable price of £5.99 for 10ml!

Now because this is such a pretty polish, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to show you these gorgeous born pretty nail charms I was sent for review. You get 11 metal charms for $5.80 in a plastic wheel. Now as you can probably tell, I love these sort of charms, I think they look really pretty and glamorous. The wheel contains a mixture of large and smaller charms, with a pink one in the middle. I've got photos of 4 of them below so you can see they're all very unique. I guess the only issue I have with this is I'd quite like 2 of each if I was wearing them out as I like my hands to match, but you can always just buy two wheels as they're a very good price for what they are!

What I really love about these charms and others I've tried from Born Pretty Store is that the backs of the charms are curved to fit your nail. If you look at the 4th photo below you can see it just fits my nail curve perfectly!

You can get 10% off these and other nail art if you use the code XRL91 and shipping is free.

I'd love to know what you think of these and if you love the polish as much as me too :)

* The nail charms were to me to review, but all opinions are my own.

Jacava London Marrakesh Nights Swatches and Nail Art

Hello my lovelies! Long-time no see! I really hope you're all doing well and I'm really sorry for my absence, I've had a hectic few weeks. I've moved into a new place and started a new job :D My broadband won't be installed for another couple of weeks but I am using a 3G dongle so that I can post today!

I received a lovely email from Jacava London the other day about my blog and it really put a smile on my face. They've asked me to review one of their luxury polishes and I chose the beautiful Marrakesh Nights as it seemed perfect for this time of year. It was the first nail mail I've had since moving into my new home so I was so excited to swatch! They were kind enough to send me their top & base coat too!

First of all, a little bit about the company. Jacava London are UK based brand and all of their polishes are designed and formulated in the UK. They produce the world's first 8-free formulation; this means they don't contain formaldehyde, camphor, toluene, DBP, cellophane, phthalates, parabens or any animal ingredients. Now these probably don't mean much to you but many of those chemicals may cause health problems and also the polishes are vegan friendly! They are a high end brand with their polishes retailing at £14.50 each.

The bottles are very unique with a long, thin, gold brush handle. I wasn't sure what I'd make of this but I absolutely love it! It really makes application so easy and I didn't make a mess like I sometimes do, so no clean up required. The brush was perfect, as was the formula. I could really tell that I was using a premium brand polish. Two coats were needed for perfect coverage. I did use the base coat too and I was happy to find that it was very quick drying, as I hate waiting for base coats to dry! Unfortunately I do have a bad point to add. I used the top/base coat after applying the polish and something odd happened. Patches of cloudy bits appeared near the tips of my nail. I've no idea if that was my fault or if it was something wrong with the product. I've been told that it works well for others, however a layer of seche vite over the top seemed to sort it. I've added a photo below (second to last) showing what I mean. Has this ever happened to you?

Marrakesh nights is just beautiful! It's a deep purple with a very subtle shimmer to it. I think it looks so sophisticated and I imagine I'll be wearing it a lot as it is suitable for wearing to work. I don't think I'll be wearing the top/base coat as a top coat again because of the clouding, but as a base coat I definitely will! It also contains a UV inhibitor so hopefully no yellow nails ;)

**UPDATE** It seems that the clouding was a one off issue, I've no idea what I did wrong but I've tried over many other polishes since and not had the same issue :)

I wanted to do a bit of freehand nail art, so I did a very quick one stroke design using acrylic paints. I didn't want anything over the top as I still wanted you to see this beautiful polish!

What do you think of Marrakesh nights? Have you ever tried Jacava polishes?

You can buy them from Jacava, Amazon or Feel Unique. RRP is £14.50 for 12ml, so they aren't cheap but great if you fancy a bit of luxury :)

Nail Lacquer Heart Or Love Swatches

I have a polish that'll really make you go WOW today!! I've reviewed a few polishes by the lovely Nail Lacquer (check them out here), today I have the absolutely amazing Heart Or Love! It's a glitter topper full of pink and cyan circle glitters and also tiny sparkly hex glitters. I KNEW I had to buy this polish because I absolutely love this sort of glitter and the colours are perfect for me. I swatched on a few bases to start with as I wanted to see if I could use a base other than black. I've included a photo below to show you that it does actually look lovely over a few base colours but black really makes it pop! Also just to note that the base comes out with a hint of pink/purple so if you put it over ligter base colours it will colour it slightly.

It applied really well, the only glitters I had to fish for were the biggest circle glitters but this seems to be the case with all polishes like this as they slip off the brush. I like to place the larger glitters anyway! This is 2 thin coats and then 2 coats of Poshe base coat and 1 coat of Seche vite to make it super smooth :)

I'm so in love with this! I have been feeling a bit gloomy because its started getting colder and darker here in the UK so this really brightened up my day! What do you think of it? is this your sort of thing?

All of the polishes now come with charms, you can also buy the charms individually too! You can purchase these adorable polishes on the nail lacquer etsy store, she has a wide range of polishes available. Each mini polish (4ml) is £3.50 and full sized (10ml) range from £5.50-£7.50. You can get 10% off using the code TENOFF !

Nail Lacquer Bring Me Love Swatches And Nail Art

Hello lovelies! I've got the most adorable polish by Nail Lacquer to show you today!! After reviewing two of her polishes (check them out here) I couldn't wait to try some of her full size polishes with the cute handmade charms! I purchased Bring Me Love and one other that I'll show you another day. Bring Me Love is a gorgeous baby pink with pink, green, blue and white hex and square glitters and also a few white bar glitters. I've realised that I don't actually dislike bar glitters, as long as they aren't the main feature of a polish I quite like them :D

The polish is really easy to apply and the glitters spread nice and evenly. It is quite sheer, I've taken a photo below with just one coat so you can see but it builds up to opaque with just 3 coats. As I've mentioned before, I love glitter polishes like this to be quite sheer as you get to see all the glitters within the layers and it really gives it lots of depth! Another thing about this polish is I found it dried pretty quickly, which is really good if you're impatient like me :)

Now I thought I'd show you a little tip that I randomly came across in this blog post here. As I've been using a lot of glitter polishes lately, I realised I needed something to smooth them out. The problem with just using a topcoat is that the glitter ends up absorbing it so you need lots of layers and your nails can end up looking quite thick. I'd heard of gelous, but it isn't easy for me to get hold of and also it's made to make your nails thicker which I do not like, so I was searching for an alternative. The brilliant blogger mentioned above recommends using Poshe super fast drying basecoat before applying topcoat. So I purchased some from Nail Polish Direct to test it out. It works perfectly and my nails were so glossy and smooth!

I seem to have really got into stamping lately too. I recently purchased two plates and an XL stamper from Dashica Beauty Shop. I've always had trouble stamping on my nails as the nail beds curve a lot (not just in the usual c curve, but they curve downwards too). The stamping plates I purchased are slightly longer than usual plates (2cm long) so they fit my nails and the XL stamper is perfect! moulds to my awkward shaped nails! :) Ironically one of my nails decided to break half way down the free edge yesterday so I've filed them all down, but I can still use the longer plates on my shorter nails too! The design below is from the Big SdP-P plate.

Isn't this just the most adorable polish you've seen? :D I've got another beauty to show you next time too and it's completely different to this one!

Both of the full size polishes I bought came with cute little handmade charms and I absolutely love this! Some of the polishes do not come with charms but you can buy them for just £1 extra and she'll make the charm to match the polish. You can purchase these adorable polishes on the nail lacquer etsy store, she has a wide range of polishes available. Each mini polish (4ml) is £3.50 and full sized (10ml) range from £5.50-£7.50. You can get 10% off using the code TENOFF !

Nail Lacquer Dig My Gold Swatches And Nail Art

Wow I'm on a roll this weekend with another post for you! I've had this beauty waiting to be swatched for a while now so I thought it was about time I brought it out. This is the second Nail Lacquer polish I've reviewed, you can read my other review here. Nail Lacquer is a new UK indie brand and also a brilliant nail art blogger!

So today I have the absolutely stunning Dig My Gold to show you! It really is a stunner, jam packed full of different size hex glitters, mainly gold but with many other colours dotted in too! I honestly had no idea what base to put this over so I swatched over a few colours and it looks great over lots of bases! I decided to go with a gradient of Nails Inc Haymarket and Warwick Way. I'm really loving glitters over gradients at the moment.

The polish applied like a dream, all the glitters applied well and swatches below show just one medium coat. These are my favourite type of glitters, so quick and easy to apply and yet it looks so complex! I couldn't resist stamping over it, I used Pueen plate 26 as I thought a jewelled theme would suit it well :)

You can purchase these adorable polishes on the nail lacquer etsy store, she has a wide range of polishes available. Each mini polish (4ml) is £3.50 and full sized (10ml) range from £5.50-£7.50. You can get 10% off using the code TENOFF !

What do you think of this polish? I'm very impressed with the two I've tried and will be buying more! I love supporting UK indie brands because they work so hard to get the supplies in and as you can see, they create very unique, beautiful polishes!

*This polish was sent to me to review but all opinions are my own

PMP September Sparkle Collection Swatches and Nail Art

Hello lovelies! I hope you're enjoying your weekend! I've taken some time today to swatch some more beautiful glitter babies from Pocket Money Polishes! The lovely Charlie was kind enough to send me these beauties to swatch. These are part of her September Sparkle Collection being released tomorrow! I'm a huge fan of her glitters because they're so versatile and perfect to use on their own over a polish or with nail art.

Forever

All of Charlie's polishes so far are named after songs, this beauty is named after 'Who Wants to Live Forever' but has been shortened to 'Forever'. It's a mix of large and tiny black circle glitters with iridescent bars in a clear base. I have to admit I am not usually a bar glitter fan but I really do like this polish because they are very subtle! It applies evenly but I did fish for the circle glitters because as with most large glitters they tend to not come out as easily and also I wanted to place them nicely!

I applied one coat over a gradient of Sinful Colors Snow Me White and Ciate Skinny Jeans. I then attempted some stamping - still really not brilliant at this but I love the effect over a glitter mani! I used Pueen plate 44. I couldn't resist using one of my mum's paintings as a prop! I love owls and this mani went perfectly with it :D

Angels

Angels is the white version of Forever, it's named after the song Angels by Robbie Williams and I think that suits it perfectly! It is absolutely beautiful, with large white circle glitters and tiny hex glitters with iridescent bars. Because this polish looks so delicate I decided to put it over a pastel base. I used Models Own Beth's blue. Application was the same as Forever, you'll need to fish out the white circle glitters to place them where you want.

I didn't do any nail art because I found this so delicate that when I tried stamping it just didn't look right and covered up the beauty of it! Swatches show one coat over Beth's Blue with one coat of Seche Vite.

This is the Life

This is the Life is named after a favourite song of Charlie's by Amy Macdonald. This is one of my favourites from Charlie's September collection. It's a mix of purple glitters with some added fine black holo. It was an absolute dream to apply and oddly very easy to remove too! Swatches below show one thin layer over Picture Polish Flirt without topcoat.

Unfortunately I swatched this a couple of weeks ago and didn't have time for nail art but don't worry, I'll definitely be bringing this beauty out again!

These are being released tomorrow at 6pm along with 5 other polishes (include my absolute favourite that I reviewed previously, brown eyed girl)

You can purchase glitter babies here in the UK, they cost £4 for 5ml, with postage at £1.50 for up to 4 polishes. Also, amazing news for US indie lovers, Charlie will be setting up a pop up store in September so you can get your hands on some too! Follow here to keep updated :D

So which is your favourite? Will you be purchasing some glitter babies?

*These polishes were sent to me to review but all opinions are my own

PMP Brown Eyed Girl Swatches and Nail Art

I'm back with another beautiful PMP glitter polish plus some nail art!! I've not really had much time for nail art recently but I'd treated myself to some Pueen Plates so I've been dying to try them! I also have a few gorgeous polishes that need swatching so I decided that today I'd show you both PMP Brown Eyed Girl with some stamping :D

Brown Eyed Girl truly is unique! It's a glitter topper full of brown and gold hex glitters, pink square glitters and a tiny holographic gold glitter. I wasn't sure what base to put this with but I decided to show it over a gradient base so that you could see what it looks like over a very light pink and a darker pink. I used Ciate Strawberry Milkshake as the base and sponged on Sinful Colors Cream Pink. Brown Eyed Girl was really easy to apply, no fishing needed! I did find you need two coats to look best though so swatches are showing two medium coats. I really love how this looks over the gradient base!

I then used Pueen Plate #39 to stamp some cute butterflies over the top. These plates are amazing! I used to get frustrated with the other plates I own because they are so hit and miss but after testing a few of these plates out they so crisp! Thanks so much to Anna for recommending them. The stamping isn't perfect because my nails curve so much both downwards and with a strong C curve so it's hard to get it perfect but hopefully you can ignore the imperfections :)

What do you think of this combo? xx

Nail Lacquer Younger Again Swatches

As promised it's my second post of the day! Until recently UK indie brands were unheard of, but suddenly we have some amazing ones appearing! Today I am going to show you a new UK Indie, made by a very talented girl who runs the blog nail-lacquer.co.uk. Not only is she brilliant at nail art, but she has such an eye for design and you can see this with the polishes she's created and the amazing bottles with handmade charms!

She kindly sent me two of her polishes in mini size (4ml) to review. First of all I am going to show you Younger Again. This is a beautiful polish with white, teal and lime green hex and square glitters of various sizes in a light mint green/blue jelly base. The polish is quite sheer but very easy to apply. Below you can see a photo of the polish with two thin coats; I decided to use 4 thin coats for the rest of the photos as this gave the best coverage. I imagine it'd look great with undies too but what I love about building up sheer glitter polishes like this is the depth you get. You can see all the little glitters in each layer. As I've said before, I'm not usually a fan of minis but this polish was a breeze to apply even with its dinky bottle! Probably helped by the fact my nails are not quite as long as they were before too! I love how she's added her little sticker at the bottom :D

Now her polish bottles get even more amazing because on some of the full size ones she adds handmade charms (see photo below). These are just adorable! I can't wait to pick up some full size bottles with charms and though some people might not want to pay extra for charms, I have my polishes on displays in my room so I like the bottles to look as pretty as possible :)

I've another beautiful polish to show you next time too! What do you think of Nail Lacquers creation? Do you love the charms as much as me too? :D

PMP Magic Swatches and Nail Art

Hello my lovelies! Really sorry for neglecting the blog! If you follow me on facebook you'll have seen the apology I posted. I've got lots going on so I've not been able to update much and also I really apologise for not commenting on blog posts like I usually do, I promise I'll be back commenting again once everything has settled down. Anyway I actually have two posts for you today to make up for it! The first post today is showing off another one of Charlie's gorgeous glitter babies! I've reviewed some of her polishes previously and she is the reason I now have a love for glitters and indie polishes!

Today I'm showing you the gorgeous Magic! the inspiration for the names come from song names! As with all of the glitter babies so far, this is a glitter topper in a clear base. This one really is magical with lime green, purple, silver/light blue hex glitters and teeny tiny green sparkle. I'm actually away from home at the moment so I've only a small selection of base colours to choose from but thankfully Ciate Skinny Jeans goes perfectly with it!

The glitter was really easy to apply. There are less purple glitters than the rest so I did fish for a couple of those but no intense fishing needed! The photos below show it with one coat of Ciate Skinny Jeans without top coat. I decided to randomly stamp over it too with a cheeky stamp CH16, making the most of my newly shortened nails! I unfortunately broke my index finger nail so I trimmed them all down.

What do you think of this beauty? I have more to show you too, I couldn't resist picking up a few! Stay tuned for another amazing UK indie too!! :)

piCture pOlish Blog Fest 2013 - Celebrating the Year of the Blogger

I've been so excited about today's post!! I applied to take part in piCture pOlish Blog Fest 2013 and really didn't think I'd be chosen to take part but I was! I'm so honoured to be taking part. All of you nail polish fans would have no doubt heard of the wonderful piCture pOlish, they're an Australian indie polish brand that produce the most gorgeous shades and even work with bloggers to create collaboration shades. The blog fest involves bloggers from all around the world blogging about piCture pOlish all on the same day, some years have involved introducing new shades. This year no new shades are being introduced but we were told 'this year it’s all about you and celebrating what you do!'. We were sent 3 shades and had to create nail art with these shades and a tutorial showing how we did this. As you all know I love nail art, so this is very exciting :D

I was sent Kryptonite, Citrus and Focus. Kryptonite is a beautiful green polish jam packed with holographic sparkle, created with Cathy from More Nail Polish. Citrus is a fantastic orange, almost neon creme and Focus is a gorgeous sparkly purple created with Sheila from Pointless Cafe. I love all of these shades and how they are a really unique combination I probably would never have thought to put together. I decided to do roses as to me this combination just screamed flowers to me and I do love flowers! I usually do my nail art with acrylic paints, but we were strictly only allowed to use the polishes provided, however little bits of white are allowed so I gave my roses depth using a white nail art pen. The ring finger I had originally left just with Focus but decided it looked better with swirls of Kryptonite and dots of Citrus. I've made sure that this is a design you can easily recreate. See below for the tutorial.

All participants of blog fest go into the running to be chosen to create a collaboration shade with piCture pOlish launched in 2014 (amazing!!)! There are 3 awards that will be voted and chosen as follows via the special Pinterest Blog Fest 2013 board:

1 x Award - as voted by PP friends and fans
1 x Award - as voted by all participants of Blog Fest 2013
1 x Award - as voted by Jules & Megs of piCture pOlish

I don't expect to win anything but I'm just so happy to be part of this! I hope you all enjoy my design and tutorial! I'm really excited to see all the deisgns :)

piCture pOlish ship internationally and also can be found at other worldwide online stores. Check out their shipping, network and everyday deals pages for further details. You can also follow them on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, Google + and YouTube :)

1. Paint all nails apart from the ring fingers with Citrus.
2. Using a nail art brush apply Focus in random blobs. Don't make them really neat circles, they will need to look random.
3. Once dry, apply a second layer of Focus to add more depth. I used the brush to dab rather than paint to give more of a random texture to the roses.
4. Paint in leaves using Kryptonite and the nail art brush.
5. Once dry apply another layer of Kryptonite to build up the colour of the leaves.
6. Use either a nail art pen in white, or white polish/acrylic paint to add in highlights to the roses and leaves, then apply top coat
7. For the ring fingers use 2 coats of focus. Then once dry paint random swirls using kryptonite.
8. Finish with dots of Citrus and seal with a shiny topcoat.

* Make sure to clean your nail art brush as you're painting with nail polish remover or acetone otherwise the brush will go hard as the polish dries.

Mint Mani for Talia Group Post

A very different and very special post tonight! As many of you have probably heard, the gorgeous and inspirational 13 year old Talia Joy Castellano lost her 6 year battle with cancer. She touched the hearts of many, and even those who didn't know her when she was alive are showing their support. As Talia posted a picture wearing mint nail polish as her final instagram picture, the nail blogging community has decided to wear mint manicures in tribute to her, her family and friends.

I'm a member of a lovely facebook group full of ladies who love their polish and I want to share with you the beautiful manicures they've been wearing especially for Talia today. Many of them don't have a blog, but I want you to see just how lovely the nail community really is. Click on the thumbnails to see the full sized photos and names.

And so many in the blogging community have paid there tributes too, just look at all the gorgeous manicures below:

RIP little angel - even in your short time you had such a huge, positive impact and your legacy will live on forever.

Born Pretty Store Metal Rhinestone Nail Charm Review & Nail Art Part 2

Hey lovelies! As I mentioned in my previous post, Born Pretty Store kindly sent me two of their gorgeous metal rhinestone nail charm designs to review. I showed you the white colour previously and today I'm going to show you a whole new design using the coral/pinky coloured version. I was so impressed with these charms, my last manicure they managed to stay on for two days! In fact they stayed on so well that I was worried I wouldn't be able to remove them!!

Now my last design was quite busy with stamping and rhinestones, but today I thought I'd do something simpler so you can see just how beautiful these decorations look! I used Nails Inc Wellington Square as a base colour and then on all fingers but my ring finger I applied a layer of Models Own Coral Reef and quickly dabbed it with cling film (saran wrap). I also added a teeny bit of Nails Inc Regents Park and dabbed again as I wanted more pink in there too. As you can see the large coral stone on the decor has a sort of marbled effect so I thought a subtle saran manicure would look elegant with it. I quite like how it turned out and it's so easy to do!

These decorations really are jewellery for your nails! They're great quality and feel really sturdy, they're curved at the back to fit the shape of natural nails and stay put with glue for a long time! They also do other varieties, including a bow and other cute designs. You get 5 of the same design for $4.59 and you can get 10% off these and other nail art if you use the code XRL91 and shipping is free.

This design is so summary :) it's perfect for our gorgeous weather in the UK at the moment! Would you wear these nail decorations? I know I'll be wearing them again :D

* This item was sent to me to review, but all opinions are my own.

Born Pretty Store Metal Rhinestone Nail Charm Review & Nail Art

Hello lovelies, I hope you’ve had a lovely weekend. We have actually had gorgeous weather here in the UK for the past week, so nice to see some sunshine! I have some more 3d nail art to show you today, Born Pretty Store has kindly sent me two of their gorgeous metal rhinestone nail charm designs to review. I loved the look of these on the site, I thought they looked really special and elegant. You get 5 for $4.59 and that is a brilliant price because these are great quality! Today I'm going to show you the white design.

The white and black on the charm made me decide to do a white and black manicure. I used Sinful colors snow me white as a base with one coat of Ciate LA confidential to make the base a creamy colour rather than white. I then decided I'd finally get my stamps out again because they'd been completely neglected. As my nails are long I find stamping a pain because none of the full designs fit my nails and placement is so hard if you try to double stamp. So I decided to use smaller designs and stamp a couple on my nails to create my own full nail design. I stamped with beauties factory M70 plate and Konad black stamping polish. I then added a few freehand dots with my Barry M pen in black, added Seche Vite and black rhinestones and used nail resin to stick on the nail charm.

The nail charms are actually curved at the back, which you should be able to see in the very last photo below. This is brilliant because the majority of nails are curved (c curve) and when I've used big decorations like this before the backs are flat and so are hardly stuck to my nail at all. These fit perfectly and I've had them on all day and they still feel firmly stuck down! Another great thing is that you get 5! you're not really likely to wear loads of these on one hand at the same time, but it means you have a backup if you lose any! I've ended up losing just one before and then I'm stuck with a lonely decoration if you only get 2 in a pack. I'd be sad if I lost one of these though, they're beautiful! They are quite large and you'd need pretty long nails to pull them off but you could get away with them being much shorter than mine.

So what do you make of this 3d decoration? less cutesy than others I've showed you before! You can get 10% off these and other nail art if you use the code XRL91 and shipping is free. I've got a gorgeous coral one to use next time! Hope you've enjoyed :) xx

* This item was sent to me to review, but all opinions are my own.

PMP My Girl Giveaway

Today I have a cute mini giveaway for all my UK readers! Sorry to my international readers but we're unable to ship polish outside of the UK :( I'll be having other international giveaways though in the future!

Charlie from Pocket Money Polishes (PMP) has kindly offered a bottle of my girl for this giveaway. This is a beautiful handmade polish (see my swatches here) and not only that but it is the last of only 12 bottles made :D

So if you want to get your hands on this limited edition beauty, just use the rafflecopter widget below :) Good Luck xx

a Rafflecopter giveaway

SpaRitual Dreamsicle Review and Nail Art

Following on from my SpaRitual Delight review I have the beautiful SpaRitual Dreamsicle to show you today! This is a beautiful neon pink creme polish and it really is neon, it looks absolutely amazing in the sunshine! For the plain swatches I found that I needed 3 coats to get it completely opaque, you could get away with two as it applies really evenly but I found my free edge was slightly visible after two. I really like the consistency of the SpaRitual polishes, not too thick or thin! Again, I did have difficulty with it being a mini bottle but I didn't make as much mess as I did with the other polish, maybe I'd got used to the bottle a bit more, but still I'd prefer a longer handle and thicker brush.

The polish dries to a pretty cool finish, it almost looks rubbery rather than glossy! I quite like this myself but a top coat will make it really glossy. The swatches below show without topcoat and you can see it has applied nice and evenly without any brush strokes - my perfect sort of polish :)

A group I take part in is currently doing a neon and nude themed week so I decided that I'd use dreamsicle to create a neon and nude mani! I applied a Ciate cookies and cream as my base colour and then I used striping tape to create a random, funky design. There is a photo below showing how I placed my tape, I then used a thinish nail art brush to paint on the pink and once dry I simply pulled off all the tape and used a thick layer of seche vite. I also added some dots with my Barry M nail art pen just to give it something extra! I think this simple design really makes the neon colour pop!

So overall, I'm very impressed with the quality of SpaRitual polishes. The consistency seems good with both of the polishes I've reviewed, the bottle design is beautiful too. I forgot to mention that they have a rubbery handle with grips, which is a really good idea because I've often had polish bottles stick and with a slippery lid it's a nightmare! The negative has to be the brush, I found it too thin and the lid not big/long enough so application was tricky. This may just be due to it being a mini though as I have the same problem with a few other mini bottles from other brands.

You can purchase SpaRitual polishes in the UK from sparitual.co.uk. The full size 15ml bottles are £9.75 and the mini 5ml bottles are £5.99. Shipping is free for non-trade customers, you can also order via free phone 0808 202 0855, just mention that you're buying for personal use to get the free shipping :)

What do you think of dreamsicle? I love a good neon pink! x

I'm Guest Posting at PMP Today with Nail Care Tips

Just a quick post to say I'm doing a guest post for Charlie at Pocket Money Polishes today. I've posted some basic nail care tips to show you how I keep my nails long and also an added bit of nail art :)

Come check it out!

SpaRitual Delight Review and Nail Art

Today I have a polish brand to show you that is new to me. I was asked to review two polishes from SpaRitual, a vegan luxary spa lifestyle brand. I'm always excited to try new brands so of course I accepted! I really had no idea that vegan polish existed, but as I'm not vegan I haven't really ever thought about it! The bottles look gorgeous and I've been told that they were designed by Ferrari! I was sent two mini (5ml) polishes. I have to say, I'm not a fan of mini bottles, I always find them much harder to apply and well with my talons they aren't very economical. But these have to be the cutest mini bottles I've seen! They'd be very handy for travelling!

Application wise, it wasn't the easiest of polishes to apply and I ended up having to do a lot of clean up afterwards, which I try to avoid! I think it was mainly due to trying to apply with such a small handle, I'm used to nice big lids to grip onto and this was a bit like holding a pen. I also had to dip my brush in twice to apply one layer to each nail, but if you have smaller nails I don't think you'd have to do this. The actual consistency was really good though, not too thick or too thin and opaque in two coats. I did seem to end up with a few brush strokes visible but that was easily fixed with a nice coat of Seche Vite. I absolutely love the colour of this polish, I've always loved minty colours but don't own another shade the same as this!

I finished off with some nail art, I just used my Barry M pens in pink and white to draw some swirls and dots and then added some tiny circular silver 1.5mm studs.

You can buy SpaRitual polishes from sparitual.co.uk. This polish I've shown you today is £9.75 for 15ml or £5.99 for 5ml, so they are high end polishes. Shipping is free for non-trade customers, you can also order via free phone 0808 202 0855, just mention that you're buying for personal use to get the free shipping :) I've got one more to show you but I'll leave that for another post, it's a beautiful neon pink!!

Have you tried SpaRitual polishes? I'd be interested to know how application is with a normal size bottle.

* This item was sent to me to review, but all opinions are my own.

British Nail Bloggers Giveaway Winners

Woo, it's time to annouce the winners for our big British Nail Bloggers giveaway! Thank you so much to every one who entered!

We have 3 second prize winners, who each win a $50 voucher to a nail polish e-tailer of their choice.

Congratulations to .....
* Nina Wilson
* Courtney Beck
* Kris Wilson

and the BIIIIIIIIG winner of a $100 voucher to a nail polish e-tailer is .......

Lena Payne !!!

Congratulations to all of you - please email crumpet@the-crumpet.com, before the end of Wednesday 3rd July, to organise your prize!

Keep a look out for more giveaways here in the future :)

Emily de Molly Serenity Swatches and Review

Another beautiful Emily de Molly polish to show you today!! I'm am sooo happy I have got to own some of these, they're so beautiful and unique! Only problem is that now I want MORE! This is the gorgeous Serenity. I didn't hear many people talking about buying this one when Sally Magpies started stocking it, but when I was looking at her polishes this one really stood out to me! I think it's because I really love teal colours in a polish and then I saw all the gold and the purple and I just knew I had to have it!

As you can see it's packed full of turquoise, lavender and copper/gold hex glitters and it was a breeze to apply!! I've found you need 3 medium coats on its own to make it opaque. I have photos below of it with one coat and two coats so you can see how it applies. The glitters go on evenly and you don't need to fish at all! I've used one thick coat of Seche Vite to make it glossy. It's a hard one to photo because in some lights it's green, some it's more blue.

I personally love it! It's so unique and I love the colours. I'm going to treasure these polishes! Have you tried any of these polishes yet? If you want to buy this in the UK (or Europe as Sally is now shipping to Europe too!) you can get it here from Sally Magpies for £11.50 or see more Emily de Molly stockists here.

KKCenterhk 3d Heart Decoration Review & Nail Art

Some nail art for you as promised :) Now I know it's flowers again, but I wanted to do a review of this 3d heart with three flower nail decoration that I was sent by kkcenterhk.com. Annoyingly I didn't have a pink polish the right shade, but I thought by having it as an accent nail I could get away with using a different shade of pink on the other nails. I used Sinful Colors Pink Forever as a base and Sinful Colors Snow Me White on my accent finger. I then used acrylic paint to paint on the dots and the flowers and finished with a nice thick coat of Seche Vite.

I actually stuck the decoration on while my top coat was still wet as I wasn't planning on keeping it on too long, so I hoped I could save it to use again. Well it didn't work because it seems that the back of the decoration is paper, so it rubbed the paper off and I am just left with a big clear bit where the pattern was. It'd be better if the back was plastic or had some sort of protective covering! After examining my bows that I reviewed previously, it seems they are made in the same way, but because I used glue it pulled off a bit of my polish rather than the pattern when I removed it. So my advice if you use any of these - use strong glue!

You get two in a packet for $4.00. My nails have a strong C Curve so only a tiny bit sticks on at the back, but with strong glue that's enough to make it last - I wore my bows last time for the entire day, whilst out too.

I think these decorations are fun, but I did prefer the bow shape - I think it's because it didn't seem quite as big on my nails. Have you tried 3d decorations yet? Or are you not a fan?

Don't forget to enter the great British Nail Bloggers international givaway if you haven't already!

Emily de Molly Cosmic Forces Swatches and Review

Ok so I know I promised some nail art but yesterday I had two Emily de Molly's arrive and I was so excited I just had to try one on and it's far too beautiful to do anything to! This is Cosmic Forces and WOW it's nail art on its own! I've been eyeing up her polishes for a while now, but as they're made in Australia they are hard to get hold of here. But as soon as Sally Magpies mentioned she was going to stock them, I just knew I had to get some!! I ended up with 2, because they aren't cheap at £11.50 each but I have never seen anything like them.

Cosmic Forces was one I just knew I had to have! I absolutely love purple and the effect just looks amazing. I think it looks like space with lots of planets. Now I admit, when I saw swatches I was sceptical, I thought how could a single polish look so good on and that the blogger must just be really good at capturing it. But no, I can promise you, this is as amazing as it looks. It was SO easy to apply, I used a PVA glue base, then two coats. I fished out the larger glitters as they slip off the brush, but they're easy to find and dab on. Two coats looks fine in real life, but I guess 3 thin coats would have looked better for the photos. You do need a nice glossy topcoat for this, I of course used the brilliant Seche Vite.

I am seriously in love and I think Hayley (creator of Emily de Molly) is a true artist and genius! I can't wait to try my other polish, Serenity.

What do you think? Have you got any Emily de Molly's? You can find Emily de Molly stockists here.

PMP Glitter Babies 2 - The Summer Collection Swatches and Review

I hope you're ready for my biggest ever post! haha. As I mentioned before, Charlie from Pocket Money Polishes has created a new line of Indie polishes! I previously posted about the beautiful My Girl from her Glitter Babies collection. Well on the 1st of July she's releasing Glitter Babies 2 - the summer collection! I was so impressed with My Girl so I couldn't wait to try out some of her new collection. Today I have 3 out of the 5 to show you. I hope you enjoy and don't forget to snap these up on the 1st July if you like what you see - there are only a limited number available.

Pretty Woman

Pretty woman is described as 'hot pink and bubblegum pink daisies with bright white hexes and bubblegum pink squares'. I think this is such a unique polish! I did a quick test first, over a few base colours and decided for my swatch I'd use Nails Inc Haymarket because it really seemed to make the glitter stand out. Now as you know, I don't often use glitters so this was the trickiest for me to apply. With all the glitters being large, you can't just apply like a normal polish because the glitter applies sparsely. I found that it was best to fish out the glitter and dab it on. Once it was on though it was totally worth it! Who needs nail art with this sort of glitter?

Most of the glitters lied flat but I have very curved nails, so you can see some of the flowers didn't look totally flat.

Summertime

Next up we have the vibrant Summertime! This is described as 'Neon green hexes, aqua hexes, yellow hexes and baby blue hearts' - although the hexes and hearts look silver rather than baby blue to me, which I like! After doing a quick colour base test I just knew I had to use a vibrant base for this. I decided on Nails Inc Notting Hill Gate. Application was really easy! I found that all of the smaller glitters applied nicely by just applying like a normal polish. I used one thick coat and then fished out the hearts and placed them where I wanted them. Absolutely love this glitter! It really lives up to its name!

Ice Ice Baby

Finally we have Ice Ice baby!! This polish is described as 'small aqua and winter white hex base with large winter white hexes' and is beautiful! From the swatch test I could see it looked best over white and lilac. I used lilac for my My Girl swatch so I decided to go for white (Sinful Colors Snow Me White). The only problem is this was an absolute pain to try and capture on camera because the silver kept blending in - even though in person it looked gorgeous! Eventually I managed to get some photos that showed its beauty! This was the easiest out of the 3 to apply. Two coats, no fishing needed! :)

I only used one coat of Seche Vite for my swatches, but for them to be totally smooth you'd probably need 2.

What do you think of these glitter babies? I love how unique they are, Charlie has done really well and created such a variety of polishes! Which is your favourite? I think mine is Ice Ice baby :) Don't forget these are available on the 1st July on pocketmoneypolishes.co.uk. They are £4.00 each for 5ml.

I hope you don't mind the insane number of photos but I thought I'd put these all into one post! I'll be working on some nail art to show you next :D

Colour Blocking Stud Nail Art

Hey lovelies! just a simple colour blocking manicure today with LOTS of studs ;)

For the colours I first of all used 17 magnetized in blue, the reason being that I don't own many dark blues and it's a great one coater. I then applied Color Club Harp on it and Over the Moon in blocks, just freehand because I'm too lazy to use tape and I knew I'd be covering with studs.

These are some studs that I was sent to review for KKCenterHK.com and I love them! First of all we have the circular silver 1.5mm studs which are the tiniest studs I've ever seen! They are pretty flat and have a matte silver finish. With these I've also used circular black 2mm studs so that you can see how they compare. As you can see these are more rounded, slightly bigger and have a shiny finish. I love these too! they seem brilliant quality. Each of these are $4.23 USD (£2.62) for around 50.

Now I might have gone a bit OTT with the studs but who cares? I love them, haha! They're pretty easy to place on the nail too, it's just getting them the right way around before picking them up that's a bit fiddly, because they're so tiny!

Do you like nail studs? I'm loving the variety out there at the moment! Hope you've all had a lovely weekend!

Don't forget to enter the great British Nail Bloggers international givaway if you haven't already!

Color Club Cloud Nine One Stroke Nail Art

I've finally attempted one stroke nail art :D

I've always loved the look of one stroke nail art but was a bit too scared to try it. Last night I just decided I was going to give it a go! I'd had the beautiful Color Club Cloud Nine on since Saturday (I know, shocking!) so I thought some pink flowers would look great over it. Now these are far from perfect, but please take into account it's my first attempt, hopefully I'll get better at it! I used acrylic paint for the nail art and a nice thick coat of Seche Vite (after trying out other top coats for a while, I'm glad to go back to it, nothing seems to beat it!).

I couldn't resist going out in the garden to pose with some gorgeous flowers too! so glad to finally have flowers in the garden again! Although I still couldm't get any direct sunlight so I got out my daylight bulb to take holographic photos.

So what do you think? Have you tried one stroke yet? I'd recommend cutenails on youtube as she has some fantastic tutorials.

Don't forget to enter the great British Nail Bloggers international givaway if you haven't already!

British Nail Bloggers $250 International Giveaway!

WOO an exciting INTERNATIONAL giveaway for you all to enter!

Some of us in the British Nail Bloggers group have teamed up to create a huge giveaway worth $250! This is open internationally, so you're all in with a chance of winning! Here are the prizes:

1st prize $100 gift certificate
3 x runners up $50 gift certificate

The gift certificates can be used at any online nail e-tailer so you can get the polishes you've been wanting!

Just use the Rafflecopter below to enter - the more of the blogs you follow, the more entries!

GOOD LUCK! :D Wishing I could enter myself ;)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

New UK Indie Polish - Pocket Money Polishes My Girl Swatches

Ooh an exciting post today for those of you who love custom indie polishes! There's no nail art, but this is beautiful on its own. Nail art to come soon though!

Now you've probably noticed that I don't blog about indie polishes. This isn't because I don't like them, I absolutely love seeing them but being from the UK there aren't many around and they end up being really expensive if you try to order from abroad. So when Charlie from Pocket Money Polishes mentioned she was creating her own UK polishes I was soo excited!! P.M.Ps first collection called glitter babies consists of 4 really cute glitter toppers inspired by old school songs. They are all 3-free, cruelty free, and made individually to order!

Charlie allowed me to order before the official release (Monday 10th June) and I have never had a polish before release before so I jumped at the chance :D I went for the most girly one in the collection, My Girl. From far away it might not look that special, but I could see she was a beauty! Take a look at the macro bottle shot! wow! full of pink and silver/lilac hex glitters with tiny hologrphic sparkle mixed in.

Choosing the base colour was the difficult part. I tested it out on a few colours and it looked good over most of them! (see photos below). In the end I decided to go for Nails Inc Cambridge because from the test it looked so elegant! So here it is, two coats of nails inc cambridge with one thick coat of P.N.P My Girl! Isn't it beautiful! It looks like a sequin effect! It applied brilliantly with lots of glitter! I rarely wear glitters so if I can apply it, anyone can! A thick coat seems to give a nicer effect than two thin coats. Dry time was fine, just like a normal polish but I topped it off with a coat of Orly Sec N Dry.

What do you think of My Girl? Check out the other polishes on P.M.P's Facebook Page. These cost £4 for a 5ml bottle - which I'd say is the only down size, I'd rather buy a bigger bottle. But if you take into account a Nails Inc 4ml mini is around £5 - I'd much rather pay money for a limited edition custom one than a bulk made one ;) They are available only to people in the UK for the moment.

Color Club Holographic Galaxy Nail Art

Hey lovelies, the sun is shining so I thought I'd bring out the holographic polishes again! I know galaxy nail art is nothing new and has been done a million times before but I really wanted to try it out using my color club halo hues collection! I first of all used Beyond as my base coat and I then sponged on Kismet, Angel Kiss, Cloud Nine, Over The Moon and Harp On It. Yep I used 6 of them haha!! I also sponged on some Sinful Colors Cream Pink as I wanted a pop of pink and I didn't have a bright pink holographic. I used my Barry M pen in white to dot on clusters of stars and sealed it with a coat of Orly Sec N Dry.

I have attempted galaxy nails before I had a blog and I was pretty happy with how they turned out BUT I was awful at application back then so the mess makes me cringe slightly now. Still you can see those here. This version however, is SOOO holographic! I just love how much they sparkle in the sunshine!

I also wanted to review these Laser Silver Star Studs sent to me by KKCenterHK. Now these studs are BIG, they are 8mm and I tried putting it on my ring finger to start with (picture below) but it just look a bit too big for my liking, so I moved onto my thumb. The studs are very pretty and holographic and look great in the sunshine. They feel very sturdy and well made. If they made these in a smaller size they'd be perfect! I think these are more suited to wider nails. You get 50 in a bag for $6.00 though, so that's a lot for your money.

Have you attempted a galaxy mani yet or are you bored of this design? I personally will always love them <3

Coral Rose Birthday Manicure

Today I have my birthday manicure to show you :D I turned 27 on Saturday and I've had such a lovely weekend! It was sooo freezing the day before but the sun has been shining the past two days, very lucky!! I decided to do a coral coloured manicure to match my dress I was wearing for my birthday drinks. I used the beautiful Nails Inc Wellington Square. I used 3 thin coats for perfect coverage. This is a beautiful peachy colour! I then painted on orange roses. They look red in the photos but they do look more of an orange colour in person. I used gold acrylic paint for the leaves.

I then decided to use some studs on my ring finger. I don't actually own any gold studs, but I remember the wonderful Tamit24 mentioning painting hers so I painted some silver and black ones from kkcenterhk.com. The bottom two photos show how I did this. I simply applied a quick dry base coat to a plastic sheet and used a cocktail stick to line up the studs on the sheet. I then painted them all with Barry M Gold Foil paint and peeled them off when dry. I used 3mm studs, 2mm studs and 1.5mm studs. I will be using these in their original colour in a future post :)

What do you think? I hope you aren't bored of roses!! you can see the dress below that I wore out for my birthday too, as you can see I'm a huge fan of roses, hehe :)

p.s. I had a total disaster with my ring finger and sliced half of the free edge off with my razor in the shower :( so please excuse the uneven nails.

I hope you've all had a lovely weekend!

Cute Leopard Print Nail Art With Matching 3d Bow

Hello lovelies!! If you love cute leopard print then hopefully you'll enjoy my design tonight!! As I mentioned in my last post KKCenterhk kindly sent me some of their nail products to review. When I saw these cute leopard print 3d bows I knew exactly what design I wanted to do. I decided to copy the leopard print design using the amazing Barry M nail art pens in black and pink. The pink was a PERFECT match! I can't say enough how much I love these pens and I just hope that Barry M release more colours! These are still 3 for 2 at Superdrug too!

Now I know everyone isn't a fan of 3d nail decorations, but I think these are just adorable! You get a pack of 2 for $4.00 and they are really well made. They are totally flat at the back so if your nails curve a lot like mine, they are only really stuck on by a little bit in the centre. I used glue to stick mine on and I actually wore these out for the day and I'm happy to say they stayed on! I did however lose one when I got back home but I'm hoping to find it because I want to use these again :D They do a wide range of these nail decorations and I have another to show you in a future post. See the range of bluesea 3d decorations here.

For the base of my manicure I used Sinful Colors Snow Me White and the gorgeous Pink Forever on my ring finger. This is the first time using Snow Me White and it's perfect! I can't wait to get to a boots to pick up more colours from them because they are amazing quality for the price!

What do you think of these 3d nail decorations? Don't forget to use the code soyoubeauty to get a 10% off from KKCenterhk if you do make an order.

KKCenterhk Purple Stud Review and Chequered Nail Art

Ooh I have some beautiful nail bling to show you today!! KKCenterhk kindly sent me some of their nail products to review. I absolutely love nail decorations so when they arrived I couldn't wait to try them out! For today's design, I've used their square laser purple 3mm studs. You get around 50 in a pack for $4.73 (photo in bag below). It looks like you don't get many but I counted and there were 50, it's just because they're sent in a rather big bag ;) Shipping is really cheap, I checked with my postcode and it's only $0.84 without tracking but as they're based in Hong Kong, the estimated delivery time is 10-20 days. My items arrived within the 10 days. You can get 10% off your order with the code soyoubeauty so make sure to remember that if you do decide to order some of their pretties!!

As you can see these studs are a beautiful purple holographic colour and I knew as soon as I saw them that it was the perfect opportunity to get out the amazing Colour Club Eternal Beauty again! I first of all used Nails Inc Cambridge as the base. This is a beautiful lilac cream. I used 3 coats to get perfect coverage. I bought this last summer as part of the candy shop collection. I then painted on a chequered pattern on my ring finger using eternal beauty. I was going to stamp, but to be honest nowadays I feel more confident with freehand than I do stamping!! I knew I'd probably end up with bad placement so I just painted it. I then sponged eternal beauty onto the tips and applied a coat of sec n dry to seal it all in. To place the studs on my nail I use the same technique as with all nail gems. I blob on a small bit of quick dry topcoat where I want the gem, then pick up the gem with a dotting tool or cocktail stick (dabbing a tiny bit of topcoat onto the stick first) and place it onto the nail. Really simple and quick to do.

The studs are a really nice size. I went for 3 studs on each nail because my nails are pretty long, but on shorter nails one is probably enough (I always follow the odd number rule with things like this, it always looks best). I have pretty curved nails but they fitted on really nicely.

Unfortunately the sun here was really on and off but I tried my best to get a sunshine shot! I really can't believe it's May! The summers here in England are getting worse and worse! I'm just hoping I at least get a nice weekend for my birthday on the 25th :D

What do you think of these nail studs? Do you like a bit of bling on your nails? x

Models Own Coral Reef Review and Butterfly Silhouette Nail Art

It's time for my 3rd Littlewoods online Models Own nail polish review. First of all I wanted to quickly mention a few site updates I've made. I've re-designed the site to be fully responsive. It was sort of responsive before and also had a mobile version of the site but I've removed that now because it should adapt to the size of a mobile. I've also updated the lightbox so that when you click on one of my thumbnail images, the lightbox should now fit to the screen and also there is a pin it button so you can pin the full size picture. The front page now shows just a summary of each post so I can display more posts without it loading too slowly. Just a few little tweaks to hopefully make your experience on my site better :)

On to the important bit, the polish! Today I have the very vibrant Coral Reef. This polish does look red in some lights but it has a definite orange tint to it too, especially in bright light! I love red polishes and bright polishes so this is a definite hit to me, it'd look amazing on holiday for wearing on the beach!

Application wise, the polish is quite thin. You could probably get away with two thick coats but I ended up putting on 3 coats because I had some bald patches. But it goes on really smooth and applies easily so that wasn't too much of a problem. The dry time is fairly standard, but I always put a fast dry top coat on the final coat once it's almost dry as it saves accidental smudges!

I've found that these Models own polishes wear really well and don't chip easily! Which is great if you don't want to change your polish for a while.

I was really struggling with nail art ideas. I thought I'd done so many flower designs that I wanted something different. However, I want to make sure I show this beautiful polish off too!! In the end I grabbed my beloved Barry M Nail art pen in black and drew a silhouette of butterflies in grass. I've seen a few vectors which had inspired me. I dotted on tiny bits of gold paint to give it a bit of sparkle too! The butterflies aren't great in these close up photos but they are very tiny in real life so they don't look as bad at a normal distance!

I hope you've enjoyed my review and nail art. Would you wear Coral Reef?

Nail Care With Littlewoods

*This nail polish was sent to me for my honest review.

Models Own Beth's Blue Review and Daisy Nail Art

Hello lovelies, I hope you're all well! I can't believe it's May already! I'm back with another Models Own polish I was sent to review for Littlewoods online.

This is the very pretty Beth's Blue. It's pretty much identical to another polish I own, Nails Inc Oxford. I have to say though, the application is better with Beth's Blue (sorry Nails Inc!). You can cover in one thick coat if you were in a rush, but here I used two coats. It's a gorgeous blue colour which also has a hint of lilac in some lights. I absolutely love pastel colours, especially at this time of year! The three swatches below show two coats of Beth's Blue without topcoat. As you can see it's very glossy!

The last Models Own polish I reviewed, Golden Green actually remained on my nails for 6 days chip free. So the wear is brilliant!

Of course, I had to do some nail art and I decided to do something delicate and simple. I used the Barry M nail art pen in white to draw some daisies and then some acrylic paint for the centres and the stalks. I was aiming to make it look like a daisy chain. It's all sealed in with a coat of Orly Sec N Dry :)

What do you think of Beth's blue? Check out the other nail products that Littlewoods offer.

*This nail polish was sent to me for my honest review.

Models Own Golden Green Review And Rose Nail Art

Hello lovely followers! Look who is back with a second post for the week, told you I'd start blogging more again :D

Today I have a gorgeous polish to show you, Models Own 'Golden Green' that I was asked to review for Littlewoods.com. I have 3 Models Own polishes to review, but I chose Golden Green to start with because I've not got another polish like it! This is actually the first time I've tried the brand Models Own, so I had no idea what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised because it applied perfectly. The brush is a nice size and the formula is thin and easy to work with but still covers in two coats.

Golden Green is part of the Beetlejuice collection, described by Models Own as 'Models Own's BEETLEJUICE collection consists of nine multi-tonal shades. Each bottle contains four pearlescent colours mixed into one gleaming shade for an optimum high finish. Inspired by the beautiful wings of a beetle, this collection mimics the complex colour-shifting with flashes of vivid tones and ethereal hues giving a shimmering duo chrome finish.' This polish really does look like a beetle on your nails. It's beautiful! The bottom 3 swatches show 2 coats, without topcoat. As with most pearlescent polishes, you can see a few brush strokes but only in very close up photos.

Finding a design for this polish was hard! Because it's quite a complex polish, it's hard to find colours that'll go with it but stand out too. In the end I went for gold and purple. I hand painted roses using acrylic paints, because I love roses and I wanted something elegant for this beautiful base coat. I finished off with two coats of Orly Sec 'N Dry.

Do you own any polishes from this collection? I'll be checking out the others now after trying this!

Nail care at Littlewoods.

*This nail polish was sent to me for my honest review.

Lace Nail Art Using Barry M Nail Art Pens

I've been sooo rubbish with posts! I promise I'll start blogging more again! Just had a busy couple of weeks and have been putting all my creativity into web work! Today I have a pretty random design for you but I think it looks rather cute! As I posted previously in my Barry M Nail Art Pen Review I picked up the pink, black and white pens. I hadn't had a chance to yet try the black pen so I've used it in today's design. It works just as well as the others and I seriously recommend you pick up some of these if you get the chance. I did this whilst relaxing on the sofa watching TV. Usually I get out a little table and set up all my acrylic paints and have mess to clear up after. Not with these though :D

I really have no idea what this design was supposed to be, I guess it was just randomly doodling but I think it looks a bit like lace so that's what I'll call it! For the base coat I used Sinful Colors Cream Pink. This is an absolutely stunning pink with a slight gold shimmer. The shimmer was hard to capture but wow, look how bright it is!! I actually wore this colour out on it's own! The three swatches below show 2 coats without topcoat. I'm seriously impressed with these Sinful Colors polishes and will be picking up more! They apply brilliantly, wear well and are so cheap!! Unfortunately not all Boots stores stock them yet, check here to see where your nearest store is. You can order them online at boots too.

I didn't intend to use the white pen but it needed an extra something to make it pop so I added dots using the Barry M white pen. As you can see you can get really fine detail with these pens! I also added 3 black rhinestones to my ring finger.

These pens are still 3 for 2 and Superdrug! So go grab a bargain :D

Barry M Nail Art Pen Review

I'm so sorry that I've not blogged in over a week! I've been so busy and away from home. I went to stay with my sister who is at University and to see Pink in concert. She was seriously amazing!!

Whenever I'm away from home I end up not being able to make my nails as pretty as usual because I don't want to carry all my acrylic paint and other supplies around. I'd seen reviews of these Barry M nail art pens and just knew I had to buy them! You can get them from Superdrug and also Boots for £4.99 each. They are currently 3 for 2 in Superdrug so I snapped up the black, white and pink. They do a silver pen also but I'd seen that this one got the worst reviews so I left it. I'm not usually bothered about nail art pens but these ones seem very different. They have a tip like a felt tip pen and you pump to get the colour to come out. You have to pump quite a few times when you first get the pen to get the colour to come out, but after that you just pump every time it runs dry. The colour applies evenly and dries pretty quick on the nail and it doesn't streak when putting topcoat on!

I was amazed how easy these are to use. I did a really quick rose design with the pink and white pens as shown below. Seriously, any one can do this, it's just swirling the pink pen and then the white one and it looks super cute in person! I'll still be using my acrylic paints for my detailed designs, but when I'm away from home I can now easily carry these brilliant pens around with me and still have fancy nails!

For the base coat I used Nails Inc Haymarket. I LOVE this colour so much! There are 3 swatches below showing 2 coats of Haymarket on it's own. Perfect colour for this season!

Have you picked up these nail art pens yet? xx

Sinful Colors Pink Forever Paisley Nail Art

Hello my lovely followers! I hope you're all enjoying spring. I can't believe the sunshine is finally coming out in England :D

Today I have a very happy, bright design! I've wanted to do a paisley design for a while but have never really dared to freehand it but I got some brilliant new paint brushes so I decided to give it a go! For the base coat I used Sinful Colors Pink Forever. After hearing that Sinful Colors was now available in boots for only £1.99 each, I couldn't wait to pick some up! I don't get a chance to go into the store much, but I did an online order and they were 3 for 2 so an absolute bargain!! For this price, I didn't expect great quality, but I was actually really pleasantly surprised. It applies easily and pretty evenly. The 3 swatches below show 2 coats without topcoat. I absolutely love this colour!! I'm such a girly girl and can't resist a gorgeous pink!

For the design I used acrylic paints and watercolor brushes. I went for lime green shades because I wanted it to really stand out! I love bright, bold patterns!

What do you think? Have you tried any Sinful Colors yet? x

Color Club Over the Moon Swatch & Fishtail Nail Art

It's time for more holographic goodness :D I've got the final untried polish from the Color Club Halo Hues 2013 collection to show you tonight. This is Over The Moon, a beautiful, bright blue holographic. I don't own blue heaven from the 2012 collection, but this is a darker blue. I decided I only needed one blue and one pink. These polishes are perfection to me, so easy to apply, fast drying, streak free and opaque in one coat and just as holographic with topcoat. I applied 2 coats in the swatches below.

Of course, as beautiful as this polish is I needed a bit of art. I wanted something I could do quickly, without having to get out all of my acrylic paints, so I followed the amazing fishtail tutorial from Lucy's Stash. I absolutely love her blog and designs! I used Eternal Beauty and Beyond, also from the 2013 collection. I love how they look together! and sooo holographic :)

Am I boring you with these halo hues yet? hehe :)

Blossom Nail Art Tutorial

Happy Easter Sunday everyone! I hope you're all relaxing and enjoying lots of chocolate :)

I know you're probably expecting some easter nail art but I decided instead to do a tutorial. It's only a picture tutorial because I don't have a camera suitable for recording at the moment. Mine has broken. But I've taken step by step photos so you can hopefully have a go at some blossom nails too!

First of all, I'll show you my setup, because I know some of you have never used acrylic paints. I am in no way an expert, in fact I'm very new to using acrylic paints but this is the setup I've found to work best.

First of all, I use a set of Reeves acrylic paints. This contains 12 colours in small 12ml tubes. You can use any acrylic artist paints and you don't need expensive ones! I was kindly given this set by my mum. She also has large tubes of acrylic paints as she uses large amounts for painting on canvas but I find you only use small amounts when working with nails.

I'm currently using a ferrero rocher box for my paint brushes, and I use the lid of it to mix my paints. Acrylic paint dries quick, so if you don't want a colourful, messy lid, soak it after each use or use something disposable. Anything plastic should do.

The little pot (red because I've washed some paint in it) is a pot of water I use to wash my paints in. I don't find you need a very big pot for nail art as you're working with such small amounts of paints and brushes. Above that is kitchen towel, I use this to wipe off excess water from the brushes and to make sure the brushes are clean after each use.

My brushes are just cheap ones from Amazon and Ebay. I'm currently looking around for better quality fine detailing brushes because none of these are good enough for fine details really. But you can still do some nail art with them.

Acrylic paint dries pretty quick, so work quickly or add water to your paints as you're using them to stop them drying out. Letting the paints dry out on your brushes will ruin them, so make sure to keep cleaning them with the water.

To mix my paints, I tend to use a cocktail stick. You can use a paint brush or whatever you're comfortable with.

Onto the tutorial :) click on the image to view the full size version.

1. Make sure your base colour is dry. You can choose any base colour you like, for my design I have used 2 coats of Nails Inc Colville Mews. Paint some branches using a brown acrylic paint. I used a thin striping brush because it's easy to get variable width lines with. You'll need to use the tip of it for the very fine bits of branches.

2. Either mix a pink paint or use a ready made pink paint. Here I mixed equal amounts of red and white. Using a small brush, randomly blob on the pink paint. Make sure the sizes are random and follow the branches you've painted.

3. Mix a slightly lighter pink paint. I just added some more white to my base pink colour. Dot this pink into the middle of the pink blossoms you've painted, making sure you don't cover all of the darker pink.

4. Making sure that the blossoms are dry, use a very fine brush and dot black acrylic paint into the centre of each blossom. If you put too much on, then use some of the lighter pink paint in step 3 to cover it.

5. Once the black is dry, use a very fine brush and dot white acrylic paint randomly into the centre of each flower.

6. Once the paint is all dry, add a topcoat to seal in the design. You might want to add a couple of coats of topcoat because acrylic paint can be a bit lumpy if you've applied it thick. Now you should have a blossom design :)

I hope this helps some of you, let me know if you have any questions! xx

Nails Inc Colville Mews Blossom Nail Art

I hope you're all enjoying spring!! We still have lots of snow and are freezing here in England!! crazy times. I thought I'd have a break from all the holographic loveliness, as much as I love it I don't want to bore all my readers :D

This is the lovely Nails Inc Colville Mews, a light beige, nude polish. I don't usually go for nude colours but I actually really love this polish! The formula is perfect and covers to an even, streak free, glossy finish in two coats. I do love how easy Nails Inc polishes are to work with! The three bottom photos show this polish on its own without topcoat.

As much as I love this polish, I wasn't going to leave it on its own! So I painted on some pretty pink blossoms with my acrylics. I took inspiration from a blossom plant that my mum has in her garden which was even out in the snow!

What do you think of nude polishes?

Color Club Beyond Floral Nail Art

Yet another amazing polish from the Color Club Halo Hues 2013 collection to show you today. This is Beyond, an amazingly holographic black polish. I don't love it quite as much as Eternal Beauty but it is still a brilliant polish and it's opaque in one coat!! I used two coats because I always do and because I am always rubbish at applying dark colours!! In bright light it's amazingly holographic. Below I've got photos of it under LED light so you can see how beautiful it is. In indirect light it's still beautiful, it looks like a black polish with tiny specks of glitter.

I then painted on some bright flowers because I'm trying to get Spring to hurry up!! We're snowed in here in England today. This time last year I didn't even need a jacket, it was sunny. This weather is making me really miserable so I'm cheering myself up with colourful flowers on my nails :)

What do you think of Beyond?

Color Club Eternal Beauty Swatches

Brace yourselves for the most beautiful polish to have ever been created (in my opinion)!! This is Eternal Beauty and it most definitely lives up to its name! I've shown you 4 of the colour club halo hue polishes previously and this is by far my favourite so far. Application is flawless and if you were in a rush you could get away with one coat, but I always wear at least two.

I absolutely love purple and this polish even looks beautiful when it isn't showing its amazing holographic glory. The first 4 photos show just how holographic this polish is. These are taken under an LED daylight bulb and show you what it would look like in direct sunlight. The last two photos are taken in daylight but as it's England it's a dull day! Still look how beautiful it is :D

I wanted to show you this polish without lots of nail art because it really doesn't need anything! I did however add a few gems to my ring finger to give it a touch of glam.

Do you love Eternal Beauty as much as me? Again I bought this from Sally Magpies!

St Patrick's Day Nail Art and Color Club Kismet Swatches

Happy St Patrick's Day everyone! I wasn't really that keen on doing a St Patrick's day manicure because I didn't feel like wearing green and I wanted to try my new 2013 halo hues. But seeing as I am half Irish by blood I thought I'd compromise and I did both :D

I used the beautiful Kismet as a base. I'd describe it as a golden holographic polish with a hint of green to it. Application is amazing, I didn't have to do any clean up. I used two coats but it covered pretty well in just one! I've taken swatches below with my LED daylight bulb so you can see how strong the holographic effect is as we don't have any sunshine here in the UK! I've also taken some in daylight shade. As you can see it looks beautiful even outside of direct sunlight!

For my St Patricks mani I used my acrylic paints and microbeads. I really am loving microbeads at the moment :D

What do you think of Kismet? If you want to get your hands on it in the UK, visit the wonderful Sally Magpies! I picked up 4 from the 2013 collection so I have another 3 to show :)

Goodbye Google Reader and Friend Connect

So as I'm sure many of you have heard, google reader will be no more soon. I absolutely loved google reader, so I'm not very happy. I also loved the Google friend connect widget, but as that's linked to reader I've now removed it from my blog. I can only imagine what those with thousands of followers are feeling!! Anyway I've updated the options for following me in the sidebar to the left.

If you followed me via friend connect you can easily import all your reader blogs into bloglovin. Simply sign up if you do not have an account already. Then click on account in the top right hand corner and click on settings. Scroll down to the bottom of the settings page and there should be an 'Import Blogs' button. Then click on Google Reader, sign in and let it import all the blogs you're following. Bloglovin is great as it allows us to see the number of people following and display it on our site.

Another alternative is Feedly. Again you can easily import all your google reader blogs, just click on the 'Connect to Google Reader' button.

I am on hellocotton too and of course all my posts get posted on my facebook fan page.

I have made sure I've imported all the lovely blogs I'm following to both bloglovin and feedly so I won't lose you all :) I'll be back with a nail related post next time!! xx

Cute Owl Nail Art

I've got a cute little manicure today, inspired by a card I'd seen which had some cute pink owls on the front. I used two coats of Nails Inc Warick Avenue (which I also used for my swan manicure so you can find swatches there). I then hand painted the owl, flowers and hearts with acrylic paints. I added some microbeads onto the owl as she's supposed to have a little flower on her head :)

I'm really enjoying hand painting things. I need some better paint brushes though for fine detailing. That's next on my list of things to get! I'll start doing tutorials once I'm more confident with painting.

What do you think?

Holographic Heart Manicure

Just a simple mani to show you tonight. I've seen so many beautiful tape manicures but I've never tried it before so I decided to just give it a go with something simple. I used my gorgeous colour club halo hues, angel kiss and cloud nine. I then applied a rhinestone to my ring finger and microbeads in the shape of hearts to the others. The tape worked pretty well for my first attempt. It was putting the tiny microbeads on that was fiddly!

I don't think I'll ever get bored of these holographic polishes. Just need more colours now :D

Hope you all have had a lovely weekend!! :)

Pink Rose Nail Art

Have you ever tried a polish you just really hate? That's what happened to me last night. I spent ages waiting for my PVA glue base to dry and then I thought I'd try Nails Inc Richmond. I hoped I could build up the colour but nope, even with 3 coats it was sheer. Really not my sort of thing at all. Some people might like it but I like my opaque colours! I was so uninspired and I didn't have time to take it off and start again. I added a coat of Nails Inc Electric Lane but still hated it! So I quickly got out my acrylic paints and painted all over it. Haha! I went a bit overboard but at least it isn't boring now!

Swan Nail Art

Last night I decided I wanted to attempt to paint a swan on my nails. I used my mum's gorgeous painting as a reference. I first of all used 2 coats of Nails Inc Warick Avenue as a base. This is a cute baby pink colour, you can see swatches below without topcoat. I then used acrylic paints to paint the water and the swan. As I did this late at night I only painted one swan but I think it'd be overload to do anymore anyway :)

What do you think?

Nails Inc Hyde Park Gate Gradient

Today I have a beautiful, vibrant green polish to show you! This is Nails Inc Hyde Park Gate. This is a limited edition polish that I bought a while back and I absolutely love it. It covers perfectly in two coats and is super glossy without topcoat. The last two photos show without topcoat. I'm not usually a fan of wearing green myself, unless it's really light, so this is just perfect! It really stands out!

I decided to do a simple gradient manicure with hyde park gate as the base. I used Nails inc Haymarket (another one of my favourites) and queensgate terrace. I then dotted on some silver polish and finished off with a nice thick coat of Sally Hansen Insta Dri. Simple but nice and bright :D

Spring Flowers Nail Art

As we're nearing the end of February I thought it was time for some spring nail art! I wanted something bright and happy, so I decided to do some pink flowers on top of Color Club Angel Kiss. I really don't know what sort of flowers they are lol! I just decided to mess around with acrylic paints and this is what I ended up with. I used some cute gold microbeads for the centre of the flower, just to give it that extra bit of glam!

I hope you enjoy my random creation :)

Color Club Angel Kiss and Harp On It Swatches

Tonight I just have a couple of swatches, they deserve a post to themselves without nail art because they are so beautiful! As I mentioned earlier in the week I'd purchased 3 polishes from the halo hues 2012 collection from the wonderful Sally Magpies. I showed you cloud nine in the previous two posts. Here we have Angel Kiss and Harp on it.

Angel Kiss has to be my favourite so far! If I had to describe the colour I'd say it was a light teal, in some lights it looks blue, others green. It covers perfectly in two coats and you can use any base coat with it. I'm actually using PVA glue underneath mine!

Harp on it is a gorgeous silver holographic. Again it applied great, but I did find i needed 3 coats as it seemed a little thinner than the other two.

Both are amazingly holographic and look stunning even in artificial light. The swatches shown below are taken with a daylight bulb with one coat of topcoat. Beautiful! What do you think of the halo hues?

Cloud Nine With Cute Flowers

Just a very quick one today! As I still had my gorgeous colour club cloud nine on, I decided to try some stamping over it. I used cheeky plate CH16, with konad special white polish. I then placed some really cute micro beads that I'd just purchased. Cute & holographic :D

Color Club Cloud Nine Swatches

I have a real beauty to show you today! This is Color Club - Cloud Nine, part of the 2012 halo hues collection. I absolutely love holographic polishes, but there aren't many easily available in the UK. As soon as I saw them stocked in Sally Magpies (a UK store) I couldn't resist buying some! After ordering in the afternoon I received them the next morning. Amazing service!

I bought 3 colours in the collection and decided to try Cloud Nine first. This is a beautiful holographic lilac/dusky pink colour. It applied perfectly in two coats. No problems with patches or anything. The first 3 photos are without topcoat, the rest are with one coat of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri. As you see the topcoat doesn't really affect how holographic it is! What I love about this polish is that even in low light, it still looks beautiful. I've included a picture in the shade so you can see!

These photos were taken in my light box using daylight bulb lamps. The final picture is just because I can't resist doing at least a bit of nail art :)

What do you think? I can't stop staring at my nails!!

Pastel Swirl Nail Art

I fancied a delicate, pastel manicure today. For the base colour I used 2 coats of Nails Inc Oxford, which I've used before for my frosted snowflakes manicure. I love nails inc pastel colours, they're so easy to apply.

I then applied a lilac acrylic paint using a fan brush and handpainted some little swirls and a heart. It's all finished off with 2 coats of Sally Hansen Insta Dri.

I have actually used PVA glue as a base for this manicure. I've heard it's easy to remove and saves damaging nails with nail polish remover. I'll let you know how it goes :)

UPDATE: I bought the Rimmel Matte topcoat a few weeks ago and decided to try it over this manicure. Oh am I glad I did! It's totally transformed it. I love it!! and my nails have a satin feel to them now!

Valentine Heart Nail Art

Happy Valentine's Day to my lovely followers! I'm not a fan of it myself, but any excuse for pretty nails ;)

For today's manicure I used Rimmel London's Purple Pulse. I love this colour! This is 3 coats, because the polish is quite thin, but I don't really mind as long as the end result is good. I took these pictures with my new lightbox! Oh I love it sooo much! These photos were taken last night. No more waiting for daylight :D

I added one coat of Barry M's Amethyst Glitter to my ring finger. I bought this the other week, I just love the colours in it, so vibrant and happy!

I then played about with acrylic paints again and hand painted the hearts. They aren't perfect but I'm sure I'll get better at it :)

It's all finished off with 2 coats of Sally Hansen Insta Dri.

Valentines Red Rose Nail Art

I was feeling very creative last night and braved using acrylic paints! These were inspired by the amazing Robin Moses! I used Nails Inc Black Taxi for the base and Nails Inc St James for the accent nail. I'll definately be playing around with acrylic paints more in the future!

Nails Inc Shoreditch Lane Leather Effects

I think I've just found my favourite polish ever!! I'd seen swatches of the leather effects polish and originally I'd wanted the black, but then once I saw Shoreditch lane I knew I'd have to try that first! As far as I know it's only available as part of a set on QVC at the moment, but I found this on a nail sale page and quickly snapped it up!

Before applying the polish I decided to reshape my nails. Those who know me will know I've always had them rounded, because I absolutely HATE nail files and always have. I've seen so many girls rocking the square shape that I decided I was going to give it a go! It was scary because I had to file off a few mm which is a bit annoying when you're trying to grow them! But here you go, my newly squareish nails!

Anyway back to the polish. It's magical because it applies just like a normal Nails Inc polish but as it starts to dry tiny little bumps appear that create the leather effect. I've posted a picture of it half drying! I find you need two coats, but two thin coats! If you apply too much you don't get the leather effect as much.

What's really great about this polish is that it isn't just matte. You can see from my photos that it definately still has a shine to it, but it does feel gritty. I expected to hate that feel because I love glossy nails but it really isn't a bad texture at all!

I added 3 little studs just to make it a bit different. One word of warning, do not a topcoat with this polish! I tried with a matte one just to see what would happen and the leather effect completely goes!

I think I'll be after the other leather ones now :)

Barry M Copper Polish with Heart Stamp Design

I have a beautiful polish to show you today! I went shopping at the weekend and picked up a few polishes (of course!) I applied this very quickly for a night out and I absolutely loved it. This is one coat of Barry M gold foil with one coat of Barry M copper. Barry M Copper is such a beautiful polish with tiny gold and copper sparkes, which is very hard to photograph! It did seem quite thin but applied perfectly over Barry M gold foil! I applied a coat of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri to seal and gloss it :)

I've had this on since Saturday but today I decided to add some stamps to make it a bit more interesting! I used cheeky plate CH15 and konad black stamping polish to stamp multiple heart designs. I again added some Sally Hansen Insta-Dri on top.

I hope you all had a lovely weekend :)

Dotty Manicure with Striping Tape

Really sorry for the lack of activity!! I've been busy working on a web design project and I find it really hard to leave things. Anyway I finally have a post and will be catching up with reading the posts from all the lovely blogs I follow too!

This is just a simple little manicure using 2 coats of Nails Inc's The Thames as a base. I absolutely love this colour, I've posted it before with spectraflair and also with other nail art. The first picture is a swatch under artificial light. I dotted on 3 metalic acrylic colours. The other photos are taken in natural daylight.

What do you think? :)

UPDATE - Decided the manicure had something missing so I added some pink striping tape and 3 new photos :)

Nails Inc Brook Street With Cheeky Floral Stamps

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

I don't know about anyone else, but I am thoroughly bored of winter! Especially seeing as we didn't even seem to have a summer here in England. So today I bring you a gorgeous bright colour so that I can pretend it isn't so miserable and grey outside! This is the beautiful Nails Inc Brook Street. It's a gorgeous pinky/coral colour! Application was OK but not amazing. I found it streaky for a Nails Inc polish. Still, it managed to cover in two coats and looked gorgeous and glossy!

My nails are growing soo quick! You can see below a picture of my nails a week after they were cut. I love having long nail beds! However, I thought I'd use my Cheeky full nail design stamps while they still fit my nails! I couldn't decide on a design, so I decided to use a few stamps. Before stamping I applied wellington square to create a subtle gradient. I then stamped using Konad special polish in black and using designs from cheeky plates CH12, CH14 and CH16. After stamping I dotted on some Sinful Colors UFO glitter polish to make it look a bit more interesting.

I've been trying out a new quick dry top coat - Orly Sec 'N Dry. This is gorgeous and glossy but it streaked my stamping so badly on my thumb nail!! I used Sally Hansen Super Shine on my other nails which wasn't as bad and then used the Orly on top of that.

New Year Stamping

So, I had a couple of nasty breaks during Christmas. My pinky had torn REALLY low a few weeks ago but I'd managed to patch it up, then it fully came off. Thankfully it had grown enough not to be painful but this is the shortest I've ever had my nails. It feels rather strange not having barely any free edge. You can see them in natural here. Anyway I'm not going to get all sad. This is a fresh start for the new year and my claws will be back with time and for now I'll keep my nubbins pretty :)

I decided to get my stamping plates out seeing as the designs will now fit my full nails! I first of all used Rimmel Lasting Finish in purple pulse. This is 2 coats. It's a beautiful colour, I really love Rimmel's lasting finish collection. I'd say it's just as good as Nails Inc but I found this in the pound shop! Bargain! I was going to directly stamp on this but new years nails need a bit of sparkle! I added one coat of nails inc princes arcade nail jewellery. I can't believe I've never used this on my own nails! It's beautiful, so sparkly!!

I finished off by stamping a new year design from cheeky stamping plate CH9 using Konad black stamping polish & 2 coats of Sally Hansen Super Shine. Even though from afar you can't really tell what the stamping is, it looks pretty cute :)

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas :D

Christmas Holly Nail Art

Oh I just couldn't resist doing some more Christmas nail art! This is using the beautiful Nails Inc St James which was free from glamour magazine the other month! I have to say usually the free nails inc polishes are not as good quality as the store bought ones but this one applied great! I sponged a nail polish by Exposed called 'Crown Jewels'. I picked this up a while ago, it's a beautiful gold glitter, perfect for Christmas!

After a coat of Seche Vite I then painted on some holly leaves using acrylic paint and then added some little red rhinestones for the berries. I added another layer of Seche vite to lock it all in! Ahh this has really got me in the mood for Christmas :)

Frosted Snowflakes Nail Art

I've seen soo many beautiful festive manicures out there I decided it was time for me to start being festive! I'd worn so many dark colours lately I thought I'd do a lighter manicure. I used Nails Inc Oxford for the base colour. I'd purchased the candy shop collection a while ago when it was on offer on the nails inc site but I haven't tried out any of the colours yet! This is a beautiful baby blue colour. 2 coats and it's perfect and glossy :)

I then sponged on Nails Inc Warick Street. This is a special effects fine sprinkles polish that I got earlier in the year from the QVC TSV. For added sparkle I dabbed a bit of Nails Inc electric lane holographic topcoat. I had some rubber nails stickers lying around. I got them free when I'd ordered a nail kit from amazon a while ago! I knew they'd end up coming in handy! They were REALLY fiddly to peel off in one piece but with a topcoat on they have stayed for days!! I sealed with one thick layer of Seche Vite. I added more electric lane for the last few photos to give it more bling :P

Leopard Print Nail Art Tutorial

This is a manicure I did a while ago back in the summer but it was before I had a blog so I thought I'd post the tutorial here.

1) I started off with 2 coats of Nails inc Colville Mews. This is a glossy creamy colour.

2) I sponged Nails inc Fenchurch Street onto the tips when the base coat was dry. (See my gradient tutorial if you've never tried sponging)

3) Once dry, I used cheeky plate CH2 and Konad special polish in black to stamp on the leopard print pattern. (See my stamping tutorial)

4) Use a dotting tool, or something similar like the tip of a hair pin to dot Nails inc Fenchurch Street randomly. This doesn't have to be perfect because animal prints are random!

5) Finish with a glossy top coat like Seche Vite.

This is one of my favourite manis :) I did a multi colour version too, which you can see below!

17 Magnetic Polish

Wow 2 blog posts in a day! I did these the other week but hadn't had a chance to post them yet! When I first heard about magnetic polish I could not wait to get my hands on some! The first ones available in UK stores were 17 Magnetized in Boots. I picked up all 4 colours and used up all my points on them! These polishes are lovely and SO easy to use. I used to use just one coat before I really knew what I was doing, but I find it's best to use 2 coats. You simply hold the magnet over the nail when the second coat is still wet. I tend to hold over my nails for about 10 seconds.

For this very simple design I used two colours; blue and teal. So quick and easy but still so eyecatching :)

You definately need a top coat with this polish because it chips really easily! I used one coat of Seche Vite.

p.s. These polishes are on offer at the moment in boots at only £4 each :D

Liebster Award

The beautiful Alyssia from Rose Tint My Nails nominated me for this award. Thank you so much and I think this is a lovely way to get people looking at new blogs. Alyssia has provided me with 11 questions to answer about myself and then I'll provide a new set of 11 questions for 11 blogs with less than 200 followers. They will then hopefully continue this :)

Here are the answers to Alyssia's questions:

What is your favourite colour? This is a really hard one because I love so many colours, especially on my nails. I think at heart I'm a very girly girl though and my blog is pink, so I'll say pink :)
What made you start your blog? I've always been interested in makeup. I started off becoming obsessed with Mac Pigments many years ago at university. I then needed the best tools for applying my makeup, so then I discovered all sorts of brands like Too Faced and Urban Decay. I'd always liked painting my nails but it wasn't until my Nails Inc obsession began last summer that I started to love painting my nails. I began collecting their polishes and posting on their facebook page. Then I started trying out nail art and from there I haven't looked back. I'd seen many amazing nail and beauty blogs around and I wanted to join in. I love getting inspiration from others and hope that my blog will provide inspiration to others too.
What is your favourite blog of the moment? There are so many wonderful blogs out there but I'm going to say Michelle's is one I always look forward to reading. She's so creative and it's always fun to see her unique designs!
What manicure that you have completed is your favourite? I think I love my galaxy nails the most. They aren't one of my most complicated designs but I love galaxy nails.
What is your biggest inspiration? I take inspiration from so many things! clothes, nature, things I see around online or in person.
Whats your favourite song? I love lots of songs and not sure I could really pick out just one. Songs remind me of different times in my life, so there are many close to my heart. I'm a big fan of Pink though, so my favourite song of the moment is Pink - Try.
What is your favourite manicure? Again I'll go with galaxy, because everyone's attempt is unique :)
Where do you buy polish from? I've bought many from the Nails Inc site as I have VIP membership. Most the others I get in stores like boots.
What is your favourite brand of polish? Nails Inc
Who is your hero? I can't say I have a famous hero! I think the person that provides me with the most inspiration is my mum, Ann Marie Bone. She followed her dream of being an artist and that really inspires me to do the things I love.
What is the future of your blog? I hope to just continue showcasing polishes and designs. I want to start reviewing all the beauty products I purchase so that I can help others decide if they should buy.

Here are my 11 questions:

What inspired you to start a blog?
How often do you do your nails?
Do you have a nail care regime?
What is your favourite polish of all time?
Do you have a favourite nail polish brand?
Do you like nail art or do you prefer just a solid nail colour?
Are you into other beauty products or just nails?
How many polishes do you own?
Where have most your polishes come from?
Do you have a favourite nail art design?
What nail polish is the top of your wish list?

Here are the 11 blogs I've nominated:

My Christmas Party Nails

Woo! I've managed to get google friend connect onto my blog! I found a workaround which involved creating a blogger account and redirecting here. Please join if you follow my blog :)

On Friday I went to my old works Christmas party. I wanted some elegant but striking nails for the occasion. I decided to paint them in Nails inc Black Taxi and then I stamped a floral design (cheeky plate CH14) with Nails inc Park Crescent. I also added a little dragon fly sticker onto my pointer finger but you can't really see it that well in the photos.

I wore a gorgeous Lipsy dress I'd been wanting for ages and the nails went perfectly. I had a really good night catching up with my old friends :)

Nails Inc Hampton Court with Stamping

I love wearing dark colours in winter, so today I'm showing you a beautiful dark berry colour, Nails Inc Hampton Court. In low light this polish looks almost black. It applies perfectly with 2 coats and has a really glossy finish even without topcoat. The first two pictures are swatches without topcoat.

I then decided to add a bit of shimmer. I used Nails Inc New Burlington Place to stamp a diamond pattern. New Burlington Place is a gorgeous ducohrome glitter. If you don't apply a topcoat it gives a matte and gloss finish. I decided to add Seche Vite as I love my nails really glossy!

What do you think? :)

Nails Inc Garrick Street and Electric Lane

Today's post isn't that creative, but these are my nails I had at the weekend. I had a very busy, but amazing weekend in London so I wanted to make sure my polish lasted. I applied Nails Inc Garrick Street. I absolutely love this colour! It's a duochrome that changes from blue to purple. The photos were taken at night with my phone so they don't really do it justice.

I decided to sponge on Electric Lane at the tips so I could easily fill in chips while I was away. It almost looked like frost at the tips of my nails, but in light it really sparkled!!

Perfect for the Christmas shopping season :)

Vintage Floral Nails

Wow, it's so depressing and dark today in England. I can't even take a decent photo it's so dark, so I apologise for the awful quality!

I thought I'd do a delicate little manicure last night. The base colour is Nails Inc belgravia, which is a beautiful, shimmery, brown colour. Perfect for autumn/winter! I applied two coats of this and then painted on a small floral pattern onto each nail. Not my usual crazy manicure, but quite pretty :)

I'll add some better photos if it ever brightens up!

Purple Ombre Butterfly Nail Art

Sorry for the lack of updates! I've been working on my site. Adding lots of blog links, etc. I'm working on a mobile layout too so that my site loads a bit faster when viewing on a mobile.

Anyway earlier this week I decided to test out one of my Nails Inc lucky dip polishes. There was a lot of upset about the lucky dip this time around because Nails Inc decided to give out the EXACT same lucky dips as they did in the summer. Not good for fans like me who had ordered 2 previously! Somehow I ended up with 5 new polishes though so I was extremely lucky!

This is the beautiful Westminister. It was perfect to apply, as are most of the nails inc polishes! Last Night I decided to make it a bit more jazzy. I sponged on Nails Inc Cambridge, added some silver dots, cute 3d butterflies and Seche Vite. I love it, I hope you do too :)

Gradient / Ombre Nails Tutorial

I have a picture version of this tutorial on deviant art too: http://fav.me/d5dfhu6

Quick Stamping Tutorial

I've posted this on my facebook page but I thought I'd post it here too :)

Shooting Stars Nail Art

Here is my NOTD :)

I started off using Sally Hansen Baby Doll nail polish. This is a beautiful shimmery pink colour. I then sponge Rimmel London Lasting Finish Azure at angles and a small bit of fine glitter polish. I then added tiny dots in silver and a 3d star on each nail. Finished off with a nice thick coat of Seche Vite.

Not exactly scary for halloween but I hope you like! The gorgeous painting in the bottom 3 photos is one of my mum's (annmariebone.com).

Gosh Holographic Hero with Stamping

I've been a bit obsessed with holographic nail polish recently. We don't seem to have much available in the UK, but I'd heard of Gosh Holographic Hero and really wanted to try some! I'd given up hope until I found one bottle on its own in Superdrug when shopping the other day!

Application wasn't great. It was quite streaky and needed 3 coats to look perfect. I also added Seche Vite top coat because it did seem like it'd chip really quickly and is only advertised as 'one night wear'. It is beautiful though. In some lights it just looks silver, but you can really see the rainbow holographic effect in other lights. This is a linear holographic but the particles look a lot larger than spectraflair. I've taken some photos so you can see.

I decided to add some stamping using a Cheeky stamping plate and Konad black stamping polish. My nails have become way to long for a full nail design to fit so I had to try and repeat it. It isn't perfect but it really goes well with this holographic polish :)

Nails Inc The Thames Nail Art

I can't keep my nails the same for long. Here is yesterday's polish with a red and white design :)

Nails Inc The Thames with Spectraflair

So I thought I'd share with you how beautiful this polish is. I'd bought The Thames from nailsinc.com last month with a few other polishes (well a lot of other polishes :P). This was my first time using it and it was beautiful to apply, as are most of the nails inc polishes. Unfortunately because I did my nails in the evening I didn't get a good photo of The Thames on it's own and I'd decided to add a spectraflair topcoat to it. I bought 3 topcoats from a seller on ebay, because I'd no idea which grade of spectraflair I'd love the most. I've decided I love the coarse grade (1500-35) the most, because it's so noticible!

We don't get much sunshine here in the UK, but I managed to get a few pictures to show off the beautiful holo! This is with 2 coats of The Thames, 1 coat of spectraflair topcoat and 1 coat of Seche Vite. Click on the thumbnails for full size photos :)

Let me know what you think :)