Magnetism

This is just a quick post featuring the last two polishes I bought before I started operation "No More Polish Until I Give Up Smoking". Poundworld was full of bottles of Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in loads of shades this weekend so I picked up Malbec which is a deep plummy purple.

As I've only been interested in nail polish for less than a year, I missed out on a lot of the special effect polish trends of recent years. Instead I get to discover these former trends in pound shops for a fraction of their original price! I picked up a red Sally Hansen Magnetic polish months ago and was fascinated by the effect, so when I saw shade Purple Magnitude in Poundworld I grabbed it.

This polish is a lovely metallic lilac shade even without using the star shaped magnet in the polish cap, and when the magnet is held over wet polish it turns some areas of the polish silver and other areas a deeper purple, giving an optical effect that looks as though it has depth.

I used false nails and three coats of Purple Magnitude, using the magnet on the final layer on the thumb, middle and little finger nails. On the index finger I used two coats of Malbec. On two of the nails I added dots followed by Konad Special Top Coat.

What do you think of magnetic nail polishes?

The Lacquer Legion - Lucky Heather

The Lacquer Legion is a monthly nail art challenge and this is the first time I have taken part. The theme for March is "Lucky".

I took my inspiration for this nail art from heather. According to folklore the heather plant brings good luck and white heather is luckiest of all (hence the accent nail), plus Heather is my middle name so it seemed rather appropriate. There was a perfect heather-like design on the P48 plate that came with one of the Allura nail stamping sets I picked up last week at Poundland.

I used three coats of MUA All Nude, a warm creamy white shade (£1 from Superdrug) then sponged on a gradient with Rimmel Sweet Lavender (£1 from Poundworld) on most of my nails. I stamped the heather design three times on each gradient nail using MUA Frozen Yoghurt (which looks nothing like the colour shown on the website). I finished all my gradient nails with a coat of P.S. Matte Top Coat (£1 from Primark). I was really impressed that the matte top coat didn't smudge the stamping at all. For my accent nail I used two coats of a purple Primark P.S. polish (£2 for a set of 4) and stamped once with white Konad Special Polish followed by a coat of Konad Special Top Coat.

I'm really pleased with the way these nails look. They have a romantic, vintage feel to them. They remind me of the windswept purple moorland near my home.

After I'd already been wearing these nails for 24 hours I then spent two hours gardening, weeding, digging in compost and potting up plants with my bare hands. Even after a vigorous scrub with a nail brush the nails still looked perfect - not a chip in sight! I'm so impressed with the quality of all of these polishes and I've found that MUA polishes in particular seem to be almost unchippable.

The Weekly Haul - Sally Hansen Sugar Coats

When I first started to see textured polishes in shops my initial reaction was "Yuck, why would anyone want nails that look and feel like sandpaper?".

Then, as my obsession with reading nail blogs grew, I saw more and more swatches of various textured polishes and the look began to grow on me. When my local pound stores suddenly seemed to be full of bottles of black and white Sally Hansen Sugar Coat, they both found their way into my polish collection.

I love greens, blues and purples (90% of my polish collection consists of these colours) so when I found Sugar Coat polishes in Spare-A-Mint?, Laughie Taffy and Gummy Grape in Poundworld this week I had to buy them!

I was planning to do some nail art with these shades, but I like them so much as they are that I decided to just keep each nail a single colour. Spare-A-Mint? (middle finger) is a teal-tinged green. In real life it is much closer to emerald green than it looks in the photos. Laughie Taffy (thumb and ring finger) is a rich navy blue and Gummy Grape (index and little fingers) is violet.

They aren't the most long wearing polishes and I usually start to see wear on the tips of my nails within 24 hours, but that is to be expected with such a rough finish. I know textured polishes are old news now, but I really enjoy wearing them. If you do too, get down to your local pound shop because Sally Hansen Sugar Coat polishes are a bargain right now!

We'll Gather Lilacs in the Spring

This is definitely my most feminine manicure to date, and after I'd done it I realised that I own a summer top in a very similar colour and design, so why not photograph my nails against it!

I started with a gradient, with Rimmel 60 Seconds in shade Sweet Lavender (Poundworld) at the base of the nail merging into Frozen Yoghurt by MUA at the tips. I'm rather in love with this MUA shade, and for £1 a bottle at Superdrug it is an excellent value polish.

I used Cheeky Jumbo plate N and white Konad Special Polish for the stamping, and on the accent nail I used a coat of Chit Chat glitter in Violet (Poundland). It's all topped off with a coat of Konad Special Top Coat, which dries quickly to a hard glossy finish and doesn't smudge the stamping when it is applied.

These nails make me feel like spring is on the way! What do you think?

My First Water Marble

On a whim I decided to have a go at water marbling my nails. I used a whole bunch of blue and purple polishes and started to experiment. I'm not thrilled by the look of my nails - my thumb, index finger and ring finger nails look sort of interesting, but my middle and little fingers are not great.

I did learn some useful things for next time I try it though:

• Just because one polish spreads out nicely on the water, it doesn't mean that another polish from the same brand/collection will.

• Don't use icy cold tap water. Your polish will turn to tar.

• Use a shot glass, not a cup. The smaller the better!

If you want to know how I did these nails, just google 'water marble nails'. There are loads of videos and articles showing the process step by step.

I quite enjoyed doing them, but boy is it messy. Even though I taped my fingers, the clean up operation was huge. It wasn't helped by the fact I chose some really skin-staining colours so my cuticles were left with a greeny-blue tinge even after cleaning them up with a paintbrush and some acetone.

I think that in future when I try water marbling again I will just stick to doing one accent nail. Taping, dipping and cleaning up ten nails requires more patience than I have!

Have you tried water marbling? Do you have any hints and tips for next time I have a go?

P.S. Pop Art Skittles

I bought a box of four P.S. polishes for £2 from Primark at the same time as I bought the very exciting matte top coat from the last post. The bottles are 6ml each, so about half the size of a full sized polish. There were three or four sets like this with various colour schemes and the one I chose contains a lavender, a rich purple, a neon pink and a bright red.

Here I have two coats each of the red (thumb), lavender (index finger), purple (middle and little fingers) and pink (ring finger):

The pink looks like a bubblegum colour in this photo, but in real life it is a vivid neon that my camera is unable to capture. The red is similarly neon-bright.

I was really impressed with the lavender and purple polishes. They were both highly pigmented and opaque in one coat and they dried with a nice glossy finish.The pink is a shade I would never usually wear and was a little more streaky to apply, but was totally opaque in two coats. The red was rather disappointing as it was really sheer and was only just opaque after three coats. It seemed to have a totally different formula than the other polishes in the set. Both the red and pink polishes dried to a satin finish. The tiny bottle caps and brushes are tricky to handle but all the polishes were smooth and easy to apply.

The colours of the swatches were so bright that I thought I'd turn them into a pop art inspired skittles manicure.

The formulas of the purple and lavender polishes were excellent, easily the best I've come across in a budget-brand polish, and it got me wondering if they would work for stamping. It turns out they are not bad at all - not completely opaque, but better than any other non-metallic polish I've tried that isn't a special stamping polish. I used Cheeky Jumbo plate N for the stamping, and stamped the purple on the lavender and vice versa. I topped all my nails with Konad Special Top Coat to make them all super glossy, then used some striping tape and the P.S. Matte Top Coat I was raving about in the last post to add some diagonal stripes to my thumb, ring and little fingers. I still really love this top coat and I think I'll be picking up another bottle next time I'm in Manchester as they only contain 7ml and I have a feeling I'll be using a lot of it!

This manicure is far brighter and bolder than anything I'd usually wear, but I quite like it. Please excuse the dry cuticles. I had put on handcream to try to disguise them, but that just caused fluff to stick to me, as you can see in the photos!