Hello!
Finally got round to trying out another of my Models Own buys that I picked up a few weeks ago at the Bottleshop! This one is Absinthe, the dark green one from the Velvet Goth collection. These are all textured glitters, and there are 5 colours. Myself and Naileymabob both picked up the green and the blue, as we agreed these were the most pretty and the most unusual.
I applied a base coat of Nail Envy and then two coats of Absinthe. It's quite tricky to apply because it's so thick - you've got to put loads on the brush. It dries really quickly, which is good, but sometimes it's started to dry before you've fully painted one nail, making it a bit patchy/streaky. But overall, the finish was fab, and I love how packed the glitter is. I also adore the subtle big/small pieces, making it look really 3D. This first pic is without topcoat - it was quite a rough/matte finish.
I then added two coats of Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri topcoat to add some shine, and I think it looks sooo much better! So so sparkly and shiny <3 I think this will be a lovely polish for autumn/winter, and the dark green/sparkly colour reminds me of Wicked the musical, which is always a good thing :-D
Hello!
I wanted to create another bright and bling manicure for tonight. I first tried to recreate my phonecase, which is white with silver studs, but I couldn't get it to look right. After a few attempts I took it all off and thought I'd just do something completely different. After staring at my tin full of different studs and dimantes for ages, I eventually came up with this.
As a base, I used Charm Bracelet by Seventeen from Boots. This is a new purchase that I bought along with one of Barry M's new matte polishes. I was going to get one of their new textured glitters too, but I'd seen some swatches of the very similar one that Seventeen had done and decided I liked this better. And as it was buy-one-get-one-half-price in Boots, I decided to go for it!
This is two coats of Charm Bracelet. I love how packed the glitter is! It feels all gritty to the touch, but I don't mind that with it being glitter.
On an accent nail, I decided to add some random dimantes. Most of these came from a wheel I picked up from Poundland or from those nail-art pens that have some dimantes in the end. I've seen some phone cases recently absolutely packed with gems/pearls/crystals/studs, and although they look slightly tacky I think they also look AWESOME! I'd buy one but I like my phone to be able to fit into my pocket! So that's what's kind of inspired this look.
I don't think these gems will last long despite the layers of topcoat over them, or be very practical, but they were fun to create!
Right hand:
Left hand:
Hello!
To celebrate having 5 days off work from tomorrow, I decided to make my nails really bright and glittery this evening!
I've had my third and final purchase from Nail Lacquer UK ready to test out. Turquoise Is Not Dead is an absolutely stunning glitter, absolutely packed with sparkles! As well as all the turquoise pieces, there's dashes of lots of other colours - I especially love the black and the red that are mixed in.
I thought that I Will Rainbow On You
was the most beautiful glitter I own, but this one has to join it at
the top spot. It's just so....glittery! And the colour combo in the glitter is perfect. And I love the charms round the bottle, as I said before. Lovefest for Nail Lacquer! <3
As a base, I decided to use a turquoise colour. I was going to try it over black, but wanted to try something different this time as I'd swatched IWROY over black and didn't want to be repetitive! I saw another blogger who had used teal underneath TIND, which looked fab. I eventually settled on Guava by Barry M as a base (two coats) and then two coats of Turquoise is Not Dead on all but one finger of each hand.
For an accent nail, I decided to add some hand-placed glitter, sticking to the colour-scheme I used turquoise, green and blue. These are from Born Pretty! It's all topcoated with two coats of Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri.
I'm soooo annoyed because I just couldn't capture the true colour of
these in any of the pics here. The pics make my nails look way bluer
than they actually are. Both Guava and Turquoise Is Not Dead are like a
bright, rich, greeny turquoise, where as in these pics they look blue!
Arghhh. I love how they look in real life though! <3
Hello!
Another beauty to show off today. I didn't want to take My Mint Nails (!!) off but it had slightly chipped after two long days at work :-( I was sad to take it off, but very eager to replace it with another of my purchases from Nail Lacquer UK!
This is Sweetie Belle, from the stunning "Inspired by My Little Pony" collection - genius! The polishes in this collection are all so pretty, lots of pastel colours and glitter. I definitely want more :-)
Sweetie Belle is a white (or v pale pink?!) base, packed with tiny bright pink glitters, and larger pink, purple and white hexes. It just looks gorgeous in the bottle - and on the nail! I actually layered two coats of Sweetie Belle over a base coat of pale pink polish, to see what it would look like!
It's a stunning combination, and applied really well as all of these polishes do! The cute little charm made it extra-special!
Hello!
Soooo excited today! I got home from a long day at work to find that the Nail Lacquer polishes I ordered had arrived already - I only bought them a couple of days ago so that was a fab surprise! When I opened up the package I found an order note that said as well as the two polishes I'd chosen, there was also an additional one because I had made the 100th purchase! I was sooo eager to unwrap the little bubble-wrapped parcel to see what my extra polish would look like and be called. It turned out to be this beauty:
And look - looook what it's called! :-D
It's named after my blog! How AWESOME is that?! And it's mint-coloured, with gorgeous white and pink different shaped bits in. And applies beautifully. I love it! I struggled to capture the proper colour of this in my pics - it looks really pale in these photos but it's actually a lovely pastel mint green.
Thank-you so much to AJ from Nail-Lacquer - it was so thoughtful and it's such a beautiful polish!
I'm also really excited to try out my other two purchases, seen below with My Mint Nails (lol, that still sounds awesome), there's Turquoise is Not Dead in the middle and Sweetie Belle on the end, so keep checking back for pics of these on my nails soon! And don't they look fab with the charms?! <3
Visit Nail-Lacquer UK's shop on Etsy if you've not already to view all her new polishes, including some really pretty ones inspired by My Little Pony (Sweetie Belle above is from that collection) I seriously wanted them all!
Hello!
These are my nails today. I'm back at work tomorrow so needed something not too obvious. I wanted pink and I wanted studs, so came up with this!
I've used a Color Club pink I got in a set that helpfully doesn't have a name on it for the base - three coats. Then on all the nails except the accent nail I added one coat of Revlon's Popular. On the accent nail I applied square studs in a cross shape, topped with a few coats of Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri to keep them all in place.
The colour of these is more accurate in the bottom pic. I didn't knit the awesome shrimp, it was a present from my manager! X
Hello!
Today, myself and Naileymabob (click for her matching post!) are showing off our London Fashion Week freebie! We got these in our goodie bags provided by LFW/Vodaphone (Naileymabob won the tickets through vodaphone). We were very happy to get a free nail polish, being nail art bloggers!!
So this is Vodaphone Red, by Nails Inc.
This polish, despite being bright red, is still quite jelly-like and see-through on the nail. Despite three coats, you can still see my "nail line" through it, and I think to get it how I'd like, I'd have to layer it over white.
I immediately decided to add some glitter (the fab I Will Rainbow On You by Nail Laquer UK) to try and hide the fact it was see through, which improved it!
Hello!
Gorgeous polish to show you tonight. I picked this one up after much deliberation at the Models Own bottleshop at the weekend. I'd been planning to pick up one or two from the Velvet Goth collection, but me and Naileymabob decided to take advantage of a 6 for £20 offer (three each) so I needed to pick something else. I settled with one of the Beetlejuice collection, called "Pinky Brown", which is exactly what it is!
This is two coats with a topcoat.
This polish is beauuuutiful! Look how it shimmers! I can't stop looking at my nails, and moving them about to see the different colours. (ignore the bits of blue in some of the pics, that's a reflection from my TV that I just noticed, haha)
While I was painting these, resting on the lid of my laptop on the arm of the sofa (as usual) I managed to drop the brush, getting a big gloop all down the arm of the sofa. The cream sofa. Ooooops.... acetone did a fab job of getting rid of it!
Anyway, fab shiny two-tone nails. Loooooooove.
Hello!
I've just come back from a really fab weekend (and have to go to work soon, boo!). My lovely friend Bob (Naileymabob) won two tickets to see a catwalk show at London Fashion Week, and invited me to go along! We were both intrigued to see what it was like, and although we didn't know the designer we were seeing, it was a fab experience in general!
We arrived and were taken to a V.I.P lounge (set up by Vodaphone, who ran the competition Bob won) and were given champagne and nibbles. Here's our nails for the occasion, we both used our neon studs from Born Pretty, but in different ways! We both received a goodie bag, and I joked it better have nail varnish inside. AND IT DID! We both got a special edition Nails Inc polish called Vodaphone Red. Myself and Bob will be showing it off on our blogs during the coming week so keep a look-out for that.
Then there was the show, quite short, but there was some really nice dresses. They were very monochrome, which will inspire some future nails! All the models had either black, white or blue nails. Here's a snap from the catwalk, quite a few of my pics blurred but this one didn't. They all had awesome hair too!
Walking round Somerset House (the venue) was great, everyone was dressed really awesomely, and we saw some sights! After the show we headed over to Westfield Stratford for some shopping & food. We excitedly visited the Models Own bottleshop - here's a piccie:
And we treated ourselves using the 6 for £20 offer, getting three each. We spent ages choosing, but in the end we both picked two of the Velvet Goth collection (the blue and green each) and some others. You can see Ibiza Mix in the pic below but in the end I went and swapped it (the lady was very nice and understanding!!) for another Velvet Goth like Bob.
Lastly, here's the nails I had for LFW. I freehanded the leopard print, and the studs (pointy and neon, from Born Pretty) were each applied by hand. None fell off with a good few coats of topcoat (apart from one spike on the train home). Sorry for the pic quality, all of these in this post were taken on my phone!
Hello!
My stud/goth nails are no more, as two of the studs pinged off while I was out today! Also, I find that matte nails tend to show up marks/dents more obviously, so they were starting to irritate me that they were no longer flawless! Plus I needed something a bit less gothic ready to go back to work tomorrow.
So this is my new purchase - Cinderella by Sinful Colors. It's my first one of this make and I picked it up last week - not sure what drew me to it, but I do remember seeing Sammy of the Nailasaurus use it a while back and I loved it. At only £1.99 it was a total bargain, and it applies beautifully. And I love the name!
This is a pale blue polish with a lovely shimmer in it. I first just went ahead with three coats over bare nails, but didn't like that it was still semi-see-through:
So I took it all off started again, this time over a base of white. I then added two coats of Cinderella. To liven it up a bit I took the opportunity to play with my neon studs again (from born pretty). Wanting it to remain subtle, I just added one blue stud to each nail.
Here's some pics with/without flash as it was hard to capture the exact colour and the shimmer!
Didn't have much time to do these nails, which is why they're quite simple! Decided to go for gothic because hopefully going to Whitby tomorrow, and that has lots of gothic/dracula connections! I also wanted to try out my new matte black BK polish!
So this is two coats, with Born Pretty silver studs :-)
And here it is shiny, because I had to add a coat of clear to stick the studs on! Added another coat of matte in the end though.
Hello!
Tomorrow I am going to London, and my very lovely boyfriend told me he'd gone online and bought two tickets for my all-time favourite musical, Wicked. Very excited as I've not seen it since the beginning of the year, so there'll be new cast members in all the main roles - looking forward to seeing what they are like, and just re-living the magic again. Such a fab show, amazing songs, but also beautiful costumes and sets and lighting, which inspired these nails.
I decided to create some Wicked-themed nails for the show tomorrow, and also because my boyfriend asked if I was going to (he knows me well).
As I've said before I'm not great at actually drawing things, so I didn't want to try and recreate the logo or try and draw a witches hat or anything, because I knew I wouldn't be satisfied with the outcome. As I mentioned, the costumes on-stage are great, so sparkly and so much attention to detail & I wanted my nails to reflect this.
Here are all the things I used:
From L-R;
Insta-Dri - Sally Hansen
Hot Stuff - Models Own
Dancing Queen - Models Own
Silver Holo - Seventeen
Grapefruit - Barry M
Grass Slipper - Sally Hansen
Glitterball - no7
& at the bottom;
2x pots of pink glequins - born pretty
dotting tool with blue-tac for picking up rhinestones!
rhinestone wheel - poundland
The
main two characters for anyone who's not seen the show are The Wicked
Witch of the West (Elphaba) and the Good Witch (Glinda) - see above! All of
Elphaba's costumes are dark, and her skin is green! My first two fingers
keep this in mind with the combination of green and sparkle. Glinda loves pink and glitter, and all of her costumes are SO sparkly. I used these in my ring and little finger. My thumb has a mixture of green and pink glitter.
My favourite nail is the little finger with all the glequins - it's so sparkly when I move my fingers about! You can't really tell in the pics because of how the light catches them, but I used a random mixture of dark and light pink glequins. Here's lots more pics because I couldn't decide which ones were best! X
