British Nail Bloggers: Top and Base Coats

Hello!

Some members of the British Nail Blogger Facebook group are doing another group-post today, this time about base and topcoats. So here's my input!

Here are all the polishes I'm going to talk about...

Base Coat: I didn't always use a base coat when I first got into nail-art, I felt like it was an unnecessary step. But because of all the polish use, my nails aren't in great condition, they're a bit stained and they used to bend and break a lot. So I started using Nail Envy after I picked up a bottle cheaply on eBay. I like to think this has begun to really help get my nails back into a better condition, but as well as using Nail Envy, I've also tried to stop picking off my polish, and messing with my nails in general, and taking more care of my hands, so I reckon it's a combination of my own efforts and Nail Envy's powers that are keeping my nails nice and long (touch wood)

Topcoat: My favourite favourite topcoat is Insta-Dri by Sally Hansen. The one in the pic above is about my fifth or sixth bottle. It's only about £6 and easily available in Boots and Superdrug, which is great. And it makes my nails sooo smooth and shiny. And it dries in seconds! All amazing features.
However, I've recently bought myself a bottle of Poshe topcoat, after a recommendation from AJ of Nail Lacquer UK. Her nails always look super-shiny! This bottle literally only came today in the post, so I've not used it yet, but I will let you all know in future posts what I think of it!

I bought a bottle of Seche Vite a while back after seeing it mentioned a lot, and I loved the super shiny finish, but didn't like how it would shrink around the edge of each nail and ruin my manicure- it really frustrated me for the price I'd paid which is why I now stick to Insta Dri.

Also worth a mention but that I forgot to photograph is my recent discovery of Ciate's Speed Coat topcoat. I've only used it once bit I was really impressed with both the drying time and the shiny finish. I don't think I would buy it as I'm guessing it would be pricey, but I'm happy with the mini bottle I have from the advent calendar - it's much better than I expected!
On the right in the picture is the matte topcoat I have, from. Rimmel. To be honest, I rarely use it, but thought it should be allowed to feature in this post about base/topcoats! I much prefer my nails shiny rather than matte, but this topcoat has been really fab the times I have used it to matte-ify my manicures! 



So there we go! I'm also going to use this post to show off my latest feature in Look mag... only realised they'd used my nail-art again when I was flicking through the mag at work! I'm very happy to get my nails used again, but they do pick some random/old manicures... this one I submitted months and months ago, and was very basic compared to some other ones I've sent in! If you want to submit any manicures, the address for it is look.co.uk/nails and they use them on twitter as well as the magazine. 

Rich In Heart / Look Mag

Hello!

I went shopping yesterday to the Metro Centre in Newcastle, and while I was passing Boots I nipped in to see if they had any Sinful Colors polishes. The Boots in my local town centre is a big one but doesn't have Sinful Colors, so I was happy to find the stand in the one at the Metro Centre. As I was getting other stuff from Boots I limited myself to just one, and I selected a beautiful dark shimmery red - almost brown/black. It looked AMAZING under the shop lights. This one is called Rich In Heart and like all the Sinful Colors range only cost £1.99.

I applied it this morning before work. I found the polish quite thin, and went into my cuticles really easily when painting, which was really hard to clean up and looked a state! Despite the thinness, the polish is still really dark in just one coat, however I did two just to cover up a few streaks. It was so shiny even without a topcoat, but I added one to stop the polish marking my white walls! Unfortunately as I was getting ready for work I'd not let my manicure fully dry and I smudged one nail really badly and got a few nicks/imperfections in some of the others which annoyed me so much all day - it could have looked so flawless if I'd just let it dry longer arghhhh.

Here are some pics with the flash on (first pic) and off (second one), it was hard to capture the deep red shimmer, but I tried! In normal light they mostly just looked dark and shimmery, it was only in direct light (sunlight or in a shop etc) that the red really stood out.

Also, I managed to get my face in Look magazine again! I go through phases of submitting nail looks to their website, and they often seem to pick mine to feature even though there are other waaay better ones - I think it's cos they're lazy and already have a pic of my face from the first time they asked me. I think this is the fourth or fifth time I've been in. A bit puzzled about these nails they chose though - not only did I do them and submit them aaages ago, they're not even arty! I was just testing out my new Models Own colours, haha. Oh well, at least I got in....chuffed. :-D

Look Mag again

Hello!

Quick post to show off my nails (and also some by Nail Lacquer) that have been featured in Look Magazine again this week! Woop! Basically you submit some nail-art looks to look.co.uk/nails and occasionally (not every week) they feature a small selection in the magazine. They do email to ask (at least the first time) and get you to send in a picture. Awesome! :D Mine are at the bottom.

Here's the link to my blogpost on the manicure they featured, it was quite a while ago now.

Keep a look-out for the nails I'm going to do tonight - I'm back at work tomorrow so I'm going to go subtle again and try out my new Barry M matte. I might add some studs if I can work out how to do that and remain subtle!! I'm not looking forward to trying to remove this Velvet Goth polish though, I reckon it'll be difficult! x

Famous 3!

So I noticed today while leafing through Look Magazine in WHSmiths that they've used another of my submissions - YAY! :-D 

I reckon they only keep featuring mine as it's easy - they already have a pic of my face! There are so many fab manis that have been submitted on the website, so this can be the only reason they keep picking mine. Still, it makes me happy!

Here's the original blog post for these nails if anyone is interested.

Woo :-D

Famous 2!

Quick post to show off the latest issue of Look Magazine. There's quite a few pages about nail art in this issue which is fab, usually it's just a page, but there's some quite nice full-page pics of nail art trends as well as the ideas/readers pics page.

If you want to submit your nail art to the magazine, the web address is look.co.uk/nails. There's some fab fab art on there so no idea why they chose mine again!

Here's my original blog post for these nails, I didn't state they were "galactic" but glad that's what it made Look Mag think of!

Famous! // Aztec Shimmer

Yay, look at my nails! ^ 

I sent these in to Look magazine when I saw they were asking for pics of nail art. I'd only just started out doing pretty things with my nails when I did this design (the cherry blossom, or as the magazine has named them- Fancy florals) so I was really happy when they said they wanted to put it in their mag! Also I didn't find their email for weeks as it'd gone into my junk mail, so I didn't even know if they'd actually feature these or if I'd missed my chance, as they didn't get back to me. I noticed a new issue was out today and had a flick through, and yey, there they are! 

If anyone wants to submit their art, the address is look.co.uk/nails and you can upload as many as you like. You have to log in via Facebook but you can set it so it doesn't spam your profile with posts.

Because I was all happy with this, I decided to buy myself a little reward in town this afternoon:

  I got: 
Sally Hansen - Insta-Dri top coat (£5.99 Boots)
Accessorize - Aztec (£4)
Accessorize - Miss Sunshine (£1.20 in the sale) ...wanted a cheap pale yellow!

I was going to create some more yellow nail art with the pale yellow for this week's challenge, but then remembered I have an assessment at work with my boss tomorrow, and apparently the rule is to have nails that are "one colour". I've kind of stuck to this rule, because I've applied Aztec, which is technically one colour, from one bottle... it just shimmers beautifully from purple to green in the light! 

In these pics, I've applied three coats. It definitely needs more than one coat as it's quite shimmery. I've added a topcoat of my new Sally Hansen.
 (between the second and third coat of Aztec, I picked up the bottle to check the name, but I'd not screwed the top on as I was in the middle of coats. So I dropped the bottle to the floor and some splodged out :-( Good job it's a laminate floor! Shame I wasted some though!) 

The Aztec is gorgeous, I love the way it catches the light. These pictures don't do it justice. It applies beautifully too. The Sally Hansen topcoat is also BRILLIANT. It doesn't dry as fast/rock hard as Seche Vite, but it goes on really well and isn't as gloopy, and still dries pretty quick!
I'll let you know how it lasts!