Sarah Smiles!

Hello!

Two lovely polishes to show off today, from new UK indie maker, Sarah Smiles. Sarah released her first collections of hand-made polish at the beginning of the month, and I've got two to show off to you today. I picked one glitter topper, and one semi-opaque glittery polish, which both turned out to be from the Music collection - there's also a Dr Who and Mario inspired collection.

The polishes came wrapped up really well, and looked so pretty! Once opened, the labels are colourful, and the little charms around the bottle really make them seem extra-special. Lots of thought has gone into not just the creation of these, but the presentation and packaging as well.

Also in the pic above is a cute little keyring that I couldn't resist purchasing - these are little glass bottles with cork stoppers, coated inside with the polish of your choice from Sarah's collection. I chose it to be coated with a polish called Everyone's Favourite Italian Plumber - I didn't buy this as a polish because I'm personally not keen on 'bar' glitters on my nails, but I loved the pink in this, and the stars and the glitter, and thought it would look perfect as a little keyring to go on my house keys. It's unusual, eye-catching and shows off my love of polish! <3

Back to the polishes - these are the ones I eventually picked:

On the left is We All Look The Same In The Dark, which is a beautiful purple sparkly base with turquoise and blue glitter pieces, and different sized stars. 
On the right is Good Morning Sunshine, the glitter topper, a really pretty mix of pink, red and blue small glitter shapes. 

Firstly I'm going to show you We All Look The Same....  Firstly, I just want to say how beautiful this looks in the bottle before I even started applying it! The turquoise glitter and stars really shine and catch the light, and look beautiful against the purple base. I couldn't resist a few more bottle shots...

This polish isn't totally opaque, and I didn't want to build up lots of coats of it to achieve opaqueness as I thought it might look a bit thick, so I applied this polish over a base of Prickly Pear by Barry M which is a pale purple. I added just one coat of We All Look The Same In The Dark, with a bit of placement/fishing needed to get the stars where I wanted them (which I always expect for larger glitter pieces like stars and hearts, so wasn't a problem). I then added a topcoat of Gelous, to seal in those spiky stars!

I really liked the fact that the stars varied slightly in size and colour - some were small and purple, some larger and more holo.... these ones were harder to get on the brush, but looked beautiful when I could catch them! I do think this polish would be really pretty even without the stars - I love the purple and the turquoise glitter together.

I think the key to applying this polish is to decide whether you're just going to go for the one coat over a similar shade, which shows off the stars really well, or build it up with several coats, which does start to cover up the stars, but gives the polish more depth. You can see in these pics that I went over my middle nail again with the polish to cover up a bit I'd missed, but the second coat has ended up making the polish look quite thick and the stars at the tip of my nail to become a bit lost. It just depends on your own preference, but do try to stick to the same amount of coats over all of your nails to keep it consistent - unlike me!!

Secondly (I apologise for the length/amount of pics in this post - it's getting so long and full!) is Good Morning Sunshine. I love this name! This was the one I had my eye on immediately when Sarah released her polishes. I couldn't decide what colour to use as a base for this, so I did a gradient. I used pastel shades which I thought would go really well with this polish, although I reckon it'd look quite striking over a darker shade like black as well. I used Miss Sunshine (matching name!) by Accessorize for the yellow, and Pepperminty by Ciate for the green. I then added just one coat of Good Morning Sunshine, and a topcoat of Gelous. Piiiiiiics:

I love the mix of glitters and colours in this one. It just seems to work so well! I do like polishes that are just full of small glitters - of course I love big, novelty glitters like massive circles and hearts/stars etc, but sometimes, just a load of little glitter can look so pretty and delicate. This polish is such a winner for me! <3

So if you want to browse Sarah's shop, or follow her on other social media, here are all the details - she's very nice and friendly so add her! Also, she's in the process of running giveaways depending on numbers of followers - all the more reason to add her :-)

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/SarahSmilesxxx
https://twitter.com/sarahsmilesxxx
https://www.facebook.com/sarahsmilesxx
http://instagram.com/sarahsmilesxxx

An InLinkz Link-up