Hello! Really sparkly nails today! This polish is by Kim at Nails Inspire, a UK indie brand. I bought it when I went to see her at a local craft fair, and I picked the glitter myself from a big list of colours. I didn't have long to decide so just went for my two favourite colours - magenta and turquoise - and picked a third glitter that was bigger and irredescent to go with it. I think if I'd had longer (my mum was waiting, and Kim was really busy!) I might have picked a more unusual combo, but actually I love how this has come out. I also love that I got to watch this being made!
I applied two coats of this polish (I've decided to name it Unlimited in honour Glinda and Elphaba from Wicked!) over grey. The grey is Pillow Fight by Ciate, one of my advent calendar treats. Here's the grey on it's own - three coats to get full coverage.
Then here is the glitter! It was waaay more dense and glittery than I expected it would be - I was going to do a gradient on the tips, but it was so thick I just went for full coverage to make the most of it. It's stunning! The irredescent larger glitters really make the polish great - they sparkle all sorts of colours.
I finished off with two coats of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri. As much as I love this topcoat, it doesn't smooth out glitter as well as I'd like - anyone got any recommendations for a topcoat I can get in the UK, not too expensive, that is better for adding a smoothness over glitter? :-)
Also I had a breakage yesterday :-( Luckily it was on my thumb nail, and on the hand I don't photograph as much, but still.... it's so short! Waaah. I did it unplugging the xmas tree lights!!
Anyway - hope you like my sparkly nails today! x
Hello!
I've not posted much about my amazing Ciaté advent calendar, which is shocking because I love it! I got it as an unexpected gift from my boyfriend, and have been loving opening it each morning to see what colour I will get. I think it's got pics of all the polishes on the back, but I've not looked so every day it's a complete surprise when I open the little door.
The thing I love about it is that the colours I'm getting aren't necessarily colours I would choose or buy, but ones I totally am loving. This is what I've got so far:
Stunners! From left:
Sequin: Miss Mistletoe - this is a fab loose hex glitter which I'm really looking forward to trying - I think as a gradient on my nail tips. I rarely use loose glitter so this will be fun!
Snow Globe - An iridescent flakie glitter - I did try to use this quickly the other day but it was a bit gloopy - looking forward to giving it another go when I have more time.
Fit For A Queen - A silver foil. This is what I'm going to show off in this post. Beautiful.
Pillow Fight - A lovely creamy grey - I have a light grey and a dark grey but this is inbetweeny and I can see myself using this one a lot. One of my favourites so far!
Sugar Plum - a pastel purple that I used as a base for my monochrome reindeer in my last post.
Kiss Chase - A beautiful barbie pink. I love pink, and although I have lots of pink polishes I don't think I have one quite like this in my collection. It's pastel, but still bright.
Hopscotch - A bright, dark orange. More summery I think, but very pretty.
Encore! - I can't decide if this is a rich dusky pink, or a burnt orange, or a dull red or what. Definitely not like anything else I have. Another beauty!
Boudoir - A rich red. I don't have a red like this - the few I have are brighter. So yay! This one is very Christmassy.
So that's my first nine, I'm very lucky to have lots more to come! I think a few are going to be caviar beads, not looking forward to those so much, but I'll do my best to try everything I get. So much fun!
So today, I decided to apply Fit For A Queen that I got a few days ago. This is a beautiful Silver foil-like polish, like nothing I've ever owned! I've admired these sorts of polishes on other blogs but it's never seemed to be a priority to buy. I can't believe I haven't had one like this before though, it's gorgeous!! I only needed to use two coats to get this consistency. It's so thick and luxurious and looks so shiny. It looks like my nails are made of metal! I adore it.
The only slight problem was that although the polish seems thick as it has such good coverage, I found it was quite watery, in that it flooded quite easily into my cuticles when applying. This was quite difficult to clean up because of how glittery the polish is!
I'm hopefully going to have time to add a design over this tomorrow, but for now I'm just appreciating the shinyness. Ooooh so shiny <3
Hello!
These are my nails today - black and white reindeer! I had my black and white nail art pens, and I had my mind set on doing reindeer, so I did. It was only after that I realised there were more suitable Christmassy animals to do with black and white - penguins?! Polar bears?! But no, for some reason I did black and white Reindeer!
I started with a base of Sugar Plum by Ciaté. I have their advent calendar this year, and I've really liked all the polishes I've got so far! There's been a dark red, two shades of orange (?? odd!), a irredescent flakie and a little bottle of red and gold loose glitter. And of course this pretty pastel purple today. I've not wanted to post immediately every day about what I'd got in case other people with the calendar happened to see my blog before opening theirs! But it's a really fab calendar, I love finding out what colour I will get each day.
So, I began with a base of Sugar Plum, mainly because I was testing out my Day 6 polish. I then picked up my trusty black and white Barry M nail art pens to doodle on a design. I went for cute reindeers. I couldn't decide whether they should be white with black eyes/noses or vice versa, so went with both, alternate on each nail! I top-coated with Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri as usual. It's a lifesaver!
Also, today I painted my mum's nails for a Christmas night out with her friends. After filing them all to make them all even, we went for a base of Utopia by Models Own topped with Glitterball (silver glitter) by No7 and Queen Of Hearts by Nail Lacquer UK (excluding the black and red hearts because she just wanted red glitter and this is the only one I own - and so pretty with it's different sized pieces!) Here are her nails looking very pretty and Christmassy, and I have been booked again to do another design next week before her work Christmas do. :-)
Hello!
Here are my nails today. This is Strawberry Jellie by Nails Inspire, a UK indie polish brand. This polish is a gorgeous shade of pink with some holographic glitter added - so pretty and so me! I layered it over white because it's quite sheer. This is two coats over white!
Hello!
Tonight I've got some new nails to show you. I've based these around one of my new Nail Lacquer UK polishes from the Alice In Wonderland collection. This is Queen Of Hearts, a dense red glitter with black and red hearts. As with all of Nail Lacquer UK's glitters, this one is beautiful! I love the different sized pieces and the richness of the red, and the heart shapes make it really unique.
The bottle of polish is just so sparkly and red, and has a matching 'Alice' themed charm. This one is a playing card which I didn't realise until I'd finished this manicure, so it matches really well!
The base is Sally Hansen's Lavender Cloud (white) and I've done two coats of Queen Of Hearts over three nails on each hand. For the other two nails, I decided to make them into playing cards, using my black nail art pen and some red polish for the heart and the background for the spade. It's all topped with one coat of Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri.
I've got one more from the Alice collection to try, it's a white base with black specks and has little spade-shapes inside. Can't wait to give that one a go, it's so unusual! I also received an early Christmas present from my awesome friend Naileymabob - another Nail Lacquer UK polish that she had custom-made especially! It's a stunner, so look out for it on my blog hopefully later in the week.
Hello! I've got a beautiful polish to show off today. I've actually being wearing this since Friday night and it's still absolutely perfect. This is Fairy Lights, a thermal polish by UK indie maker Nails Inspire. A thermal polish is one that changes colour with heat. This one is white when warm and pink when cold.
I decided to wear it this weekend because me and my awesome friends have been to London for a day out, so I thought the colour change would work well as we'd constantly be inside and outside. The polish seems to stay white if I am indoors (shop, cafe etc) and it's reasonably warm (although as I'm typing now nails are mostly pink cos the heating hasn't kicked in yet - brr!) ... and pink when outside. What I loved most was the beautiful gradients created by a change in temperature!
I decided to layer this polish over white. I did this to try and maximise colour change, and it did work! My nails were pure white when warm, and bright pink when cold. However, layering it over white meant that whilst when my nails were white/warm, they looked flawless, when they were pink/cold, there were tiny bits around my nail that I'd missed with the thermal polish that would still be white! That's my fault for not applying it carefully enough, but as it was white when I was applying it, it was difficult to see any missed spots.
I also added a topcoat of Sally Hansen's Insta-dri to give a smoother finish as the glitter left the polish a little gritty (which is usual for glitters)!
The glitter in this polish is beautiful, and plentiful! It's a gorgeous mix of pink and blue in different sizes. It's such a fab idea to have glitter in with the thermal, it really makes the polish individual, and really pretty to wear even without the colour-change aspect!
I also love it because pink, white and glittery are my absolute favourite colours for my nails at the moment, so there is no point where I'm wearing this polish and I'm not keen on the look of my nails. My only other experience of thermal polishes was a purple/blue one from born pretty. That one didn't work nearly as well, and the two colours weren't really my type of colour polish. It also peeled off so quickly. I've not had any similar problems with this one.
Pics! This is yesterday morning before I set off, warm at the base and cold at the tips. A lovely gradient, they ended up like this a lot throughout the day!
Another shot of them warm - I adore the glitter over the white! It looks so wintery!
I took this yesterday night when I was walking in London - it was very cold and my nails reflected this - fully pink! They were like this most of the time I was outside but I was too chilly to take lots of pics!
My thumb with a pretty gradient!
This is like a reverse gradient - I was freezing so had my hand clenched with the tips of my nails dug into my palms - which meant the tips got warm and they ended up like this!!
Luckily, Kim of Nails Inspire is restocking her Etsy page at some point tonight, if you want to get your hands on one of these xmas thermals. As well as this pink one, there's a really pretty, wintery blue/white, and definitely a few others.
Hello!
I don't really know what these nails are or what I wanted to do! Last night after trying a few things, I again couldn't come up with anything nice, but didn't want to go to work with bare nails 'cos they look horrible! I decided to just do a simple french mani - I just used white polish and swiped across the tips of my nails. I wore these to work today, and when I was home I got doodling with a black nail-art pen. I first was only going to add the black line under the white, but then I ended up adding the black spike too. Not sure if they look finished or what they're supposed to look like, but these are my nails today!
Also, I've had a rather exciting evening! I saw on Facebook earlier this month that Indie polish maker Kim who makes Nails Inspire polishes was going to be having a stall at a school near to me. I wasn't sure about going along because I don't have a connection to the school so didn't want to look/feel like a weirdo! But me and my mum wanted something to do so we went along, and the fair was fab! It wasn't like a fair for schoolkids with hook-a-duck etc, it was like a proper local crafts fair. It was sooo busy but I eventually found Kim's stall, which was overrun with people interested in her thermal polishes, pretty glitters and CUSTOM made polishes that she was making right at the stall.
Here's what I bought, after a lot of deliberation:
Aren't they stunning!!! On the left is the thermal polish that I wanted the most, Fairy Lights. I specifically went for a pink thermal, so yay! On the right is Strawberry Jellie, a fantastic shade of pink with holo glitter. So so pretty, I didn't plan to get it but knew I had to have it as soon as I saw it! And in the middle, last but not least, is the mini custom glitter topper that Kim made for me at the table. I chose a dark rich pink, a turquoise and a larger kind of colour-shift glitter, which were all mixed together for me. And what a beauty it's turned out to be!
I literally cannot wait to try these, but I'm resisting tonight - 1 because it's late and 2 because I'm only going to work tomorrow - I want to save them until I have a special occasion to wear them on, because they deserve to be shown off.
Kim was lovely, her stall was very busy with lots of interest from both adults and children, and I'm so pleased she was getting a lot of custom!
