Over The Rainbow

                                                                                                                                             *Samples*

Sorry I have been absent from blogging for a while. I've been too busy to paint my nails for the last few weeks, but I'm back with another lovely Essence polish. This is a Colour & Go polish called "Over The Rainbow" and it is a pale purple-blue with an almost holographic turquoise/violet shimmer. It doesn't photograph well, but it is very pretty.

I used Cheeky Jumbo stamping plate N and tried out the black Essence Stampy polish. It is very opaque, but dries super-fast so you need to work quickly or the design won't transfer fully (see my index finger). The consistency is similar to the Konad stamping polish.

I finished with Essence Gel Look Top Coat, which didn't smudge the stamping and I have found to be pretty chip resistant.

Essence products are now available from your local Wilko store or through www.wilko.com who currently have a 3 for 2 sale on Essence products .

Numbers

Just a quick post for some quick and simple nails. I've been training to be a volunteer at a science museum and today was my final training day before I am let loose on the visitors. I've decided I'll wear science and engineering themed nails whenever I'm volunteering so I thought I'd start that tradition today. A while ago I used some Born Pretty loyalty points to buy this QA9 stamping plate featuring letters and numbers (it only ended up costing me three pence!) so I went with a mathematical theme.

I used  two coats of Maybelline Color Show in shade Cool Blue (usually available in 3 for 2 deals at Boots) for the background and stamped the nails using blue Konad Special Polish. On my ring fingers I used two coats of Party Time Blue by N.Y.C., which is a deep blue jelly with red, blue and holographic silver glitter, over one coat of Cool Blue. I finished the nails with Limited Collection Matte Top Coat (Marks & Spencer).

I also have a 10% discount code for Born Pretty to share with you. If enough people use this code I will be sent some nail art goodies to review, so next time you are buying nail art supplies please take advantage of the discount by entering this code when you check out: PUNDX31

The Weekly Haul - N.Y.C.

This week my new purchases came from the Beauty Bargains stall at Bolton Market. My attention was draw to the basket of N.Y.C. polishes for £1 and I found a lovely glitter jelly from the Expert Last range called Party Time Blue. It has medium sized blue hex glitter and lots of small red and holographic silver square glitter in a rich blue jelly base. It is really glossy and in real life it is much more sparkly and the flecks of red glitter really pop.

I also picked up an N.Y.C. Foil Explosion polish in Magic Earth, which is a metallic silvery sage green. I love the Foil Explosion polishes because they are great for stamping and excellent value even when they are full price, so I was really excited to find this one for half what I usually pay!

You'll only have to put up with my badly lit photos for another few posts because I have a light tent on the way!

Although the two polishes are are not an obvious combination to put together I really liked the way they looked next to each other when I took them out of the bag. I used three coats of Party Time Blue on all of my nails, except my ring finger on which I used two coats of Magic Earth.

I stamped over my thumb and middle finger using Magic Earth and this QA65 Born Pretty stamping plate which I bought when it was $0.99. On my ring finger I used Konad Blue Special Polish for the stamping and I like the inverted colours effect this gave.

It's not my most elaborate nail art but I've enjoyed wearing it and I'm very pleased with these bargain polishes. Have you found any good polish bargains on market stalls recently?

Tropical Aquarium

Here is the tropical fish nail art I created for the Superdrug competition and I love it! I'm much happier with this than I was with the goldfish nails from my last post.

I started with a coat of Seventeen Fast Finish polish in shade Wave, a lovely rich turquoise that I picked up for 50p in a Boots clearance sale. I topped this with my favourite glitter of the moment, Jess Sea Breeze. This is another of the new Poundland exclusive polishes and it is beautiful. It contains tiny square turquoise and silver holographic glitter and turquoise micro glitter. For some reason this glitter seems to dry quicker than Jess Flash Harry, but that might just be my imagination. Here is a close up of one coat of Sea Breeze over Seventeen Wave but it's a bit messy as it's my right hand.

I stamped over the glitter using a wavy, slightly zebra-print like pattern from Cheeky plate N and NYC Foil Explosion polish in shade Aqua Mystic, a metallic silvery blue. I love how watery the waves of glittery and metallic blue look together. On my ring finger I used three coats of L.A.Colors Tahiti Sunrise which is a shimmery orange.

I painted lots of little tropical fish and seaweed using Vallejo acrylic model paints and a tiny paint brush. On my ring finger I used these diamond glequins again, but this time in red and orange. I topped it all with Konad Special Top Coat to protect it.

I took a few more photos in an improvised light tent to try to show the colour of the glequins better. I really need a better setup for taking photographs!

What do you think of this tropical nail art? I'm really enjoying wearing it!

Fish Fingers!

First things first, I am now on Nailpolis which is a new site for sharing and showcasing nail art, with monthly contests and a "featured" section of curated nail art. Membership is "by invite only" but at the moment you can just request an invite and they will send one. I'm really enjoying being able to see so much nail inspiration in one place! My owl nail art made it to the "featured" section too, so I am rather proud of that.

And now for the fish...

After seeing an aquatic themed nail art competition run by Superdrug, for which the prize is the new Barry M Aquarium collection (and if there is one thing better than cheap polish it's potentially free polish!), I decided to do paint some goldfish on my digits.

This is not the nail art I will be entering into the competition as I have since done some more fishy nail art which I prefer, but I will share these goldfish with you anyway because they are still rather cute.

I used one coat of Jess All That Jazz (bright blue) under a coat of Revlon Chroma Chameleon in Topaz which is a gorgeous blue/green duochrome and is one of my favourite big-brand Poundland finds. I stamped some waves and bubbles from Cheeky plate N over the top using a Seventeen polish in shade Wave (bought for 50p in a Boots clearance sale) and then painted all the goldfish using black and white acrylic paints, a shimmery orange polish by L.A.Colors called Tahiti Sunrise (£1 from my local pharmacy) and a W7 polish in shade Neon Yellow (Poundland). I stamped organic shapes from my Poundland Allura plates using white Konad Special Polish at the tips of some of my nails to represent coral and gave the tips of my nails a dab of Jess Sea Breeze glitter for the sea bed.

On my ring finger I used diamond shaped Born Pretty glequins in blue, green and light green to make a fish-scale pattern. I applied them using a coat of clear polish (L.A.Colors in Voltage) and a toothpick. I finished everything with a coat of Konad Special Top Coat.

I'm not convinced by the colour combination I chose for this nail art. I don't really like the colour orange and there is just too much of it on these nails! The glequin nail doesn't really fit with the rest of the nails either and the duochrome polish didn't show up on camera in a way I was happy with.

There will be new, improved aquatic nail art in my next blog post along with a review of the gorgeous Jess Sea Breeze glitter featured on the tips of these nails.

Spring Greens

My local indoor market has recently reopened after a major refurbishment and I was excited to discover that the discount cosmetics stall has got bigger and better. They have lots of branded nail polish for between 50p and £2 a bottle and when I saw a pale, minty green NYC polish called "Cupcakes and Latte" for £1 I had to buy it because I'm a sucker for green polish.

Sorry about the out of focus photo!

The other two polishes I used for these nails both have some sentimental value for me, and by coincidence are both also NYC polishes. Before I discovered the wonders of £1 polish, I bought quite a few NYC polishes because they have a good range of colours and are £1.79 at Superdrug (and are often part of mutibuy offers). They are good quality, fast drying polishes, but I have found that they tend to get really thick and goopy within six months of first opening them.

High Line Green is one of the polishes that I bought and wore for my wedding day. I love this shade and it makes me all sentimental! I used it for the stamping because it is really opaque and I also used it for the first layer of polish on my thumb and ring fingers. The pattern is from my newly purchased Born Pretty plate, M83.

Green Day from NYC's Rock Muse collection is a dark smoky jelly with medium sized green hex glitter and tiny gold and green micro glitter. It is the first glitter polish I ever bought and it was the first step of my journey from having colourful but plain nails to sparkly patterned madness! I used a coat of it on my thumb and index fingers over the High Line Green.

I topped everything with a coat of P.S. Matte Top Coat because I still can't get enough of the stuff! The one problem I have found with this top coat is that although the surface of it dries very quickly, it softens up the layers of polish underneath which doesn't dry fully again for two or three hours. Your nails might look and feel dry on the surface, but put a little pressure on them and all your polish will just wrinkle and slide off. This is not a top coat to use when you are in a hurry.

I really like this pattern in these colours - it makes me think of wallpaper from a grand Victorian house - but I think I'd prefer it if I'd stamped it the other way up. I also realise, looking at these photos, that I really need to use more cuticle oil!
What do you think of these nails?

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 - Jess Nail Polish

Jess is a new budget nail polish brand exclusive to Poundland with an exciting selection of cremes and glitters, all available for (surprise surprise) £1 a bottle. Today I'll be doing a review of two of the creme polishes, Brazen and All That Jazz.

The polishes come in 9ml bottles labeled as Made in UK, and the only criticism I have of the packaging is that the ingredients are not listed. All That Jazz is a neon primary blue. It's quite an unusual shade and although I own a lot of blue polish I have nothing similar to this. Brazen is a bright, almost neon, blue-leaning emerald green. My camera has a real problem photographing bright and neon shades accurately and I tried every background colour and type of lighting I could think of to make these colours pop, but with no luck. In real life the green is a saturated, rich shade much brighter than the washed out shade in the photos and the blue is also richer and brighter than it looks here.

Both polishes apply smoothly and are very opaque for budget polishes. The brushes are a little narrower than I prefer but the caps are easy to hold. Both shades require two coats for total coverage and dry quickly. They dry to a really glossy finish that seems pretty chip resistant. I wore these for 24 hours without top coat and despite being bashed around aplenty they stayed looking perfect. The quality of these cremes is much better than the Technic cremes I own and as good or better than the best Primark P.S. shades I've tried. I'm really impressed with these polishes and I have a feeling I will be buying quite a lot of Jess shades!

I used two coats of Brazen on my index, ring and little fingers and two coats of All That Jazz on my thumb and middle fingers, then used a floral pattern from Born Pretty plate QA59 to stamp some of my nails with white Konad Special Polish. These photos are all taken without any top coat to show how glossy these polishes really are!

I highly recommend seeking out Jess polishes if you have a local Poundland. These photos just don't do these lovely shades justice! I also picked up a few interesting Jess glitter polishes which I am saving for the next "Weekly Haul" post and I really hope that they impress me as much as the Jess cremes have.

Try Out All The Things!

My inner six year old thinks that this manicure is the most amazing thing ever.

I got carried away in Poundland this weekend. It started with buying some of the new and exciting Poundland-exclusive Jess polishes (which will be reviewed in Thursday's "The Weekly Haul" post), and then, giddy and overstimulated by glitter, I ended up buying four different nail art sets to try out too. I picked up a pack of 12 little glass vials of caviar beads, a wheel containing a selection of tiny fimo butterfly slices and two stamping kits with different plates, all from a brand called Allura.

Back when my nails started featuring stamped patterns and glitter for the first time, I told my husband that if I ever started sticking "gaudy plastic crap" to my nails, he was to stage an intervention. I'm expecting him to check me into rehab any time soon!

When I got all my goodies home, of course I wanted to try them out. The sensible, adult part of my brain told me that I should just pick one thing to try because if I used them all together it would just be tacky and hideous. I ignored my sensible, adult brain and set to work on my nails like a kid in a sweet shop. As I had butterflies and the stamping plates mainly featured flowers, I decided to go with a summer garden theme.

I started with two coats of Constance Carroll Diamond Shine in Neon Green, which is actually more lime than neon (bought last year for £1 for a pack of two at Poundworld). I was planning to use the "seran-wrap" marble technique, but I discovered that we'd run out of cling-film so I improvised by using a plastic shopping bag which seemed to do the trick. I used a Jess polish in shade Brazen which is a bright emerald green (not as teal as it looks in the photo) for the marbling.

I chose to use the Allura stamping set with plate P21. The stamper itself worked perfectly and is very similar to the Konad one I own. The scraper has a plastic blade, works well and I actually prefer it over the Konad metal bladed scraper I have. The plates aren't as finely detailed as some other plates, but I tried several of the designs and they transfer very well. They metal is thinner than other plates and the edges are very sharp (no plastic backing), so be very careful when taking them out of the packaging and handling them. I used white Konad Special Polish for the stamping.

If you are interested in trying out nail stamping I would definitely recommend these Allura sets. For just £1 they contain everything you need to get started except polish. I recommend NYC Foil Explosion polishes (although the orangey shade isn't supposed to be as good) as excellent, reasonably priced polishes for starting stamping and they are often available in multibuy deals at Superdrug.

The Allura caviar set contains a nice range of colours and finishes including metallic, pearl, transparent and opaque beads. I made a mix of the dark green metallic, light green metallic and silver caviar and sprinkled it on top of a thickish coat of the Constance Carroll polish on my ring finger nails. After patting it down and waiting for it to dry I covered it with a coat of Konad Special Top Coat. The colour of the caviar didn't bleed or come off with the top coat and even after 24 hours of wear they have stayed put except at the very tips of my nails. They seem to be good quality for the price.

I have always thought that fimo slices for nail art are rather cute (especially the fruit ones) but I could never really see myself wearing them, but then in my pound store frenzy I saw these little butterflies and thought why not! There is a good selection of colours and designs in this set, some of them are more realistic looking and others are quite cartoony, and the set also contains a nail file and an orange stick. I put a coat of Konad Special Top Coat on my thumb and middle finger and placed the butterflies using the orange stick dipped in a tiny amount of top coat. The slices are quite thin and even, but they don't bend around the shape of the nail very well, so another coat of the top coat was needed to smooth over the edges so they wouldn't catch on things (any top coat that dries quickly to a hard finish would do). 24 hours later all the butterflies are still firmly attached to my nails and haven't caught on anything.

I'm very impressed with the quality of all the Allura products I bought. The nail art I created with them is very over-the-top and silly, but it makes me smile. I know that the six year old me would have wanted to wear nails like this every day!

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?

Midnight in Morocco

After being so impressed with the Born Pretty stamping plate I used for my last manicure I decided to try out one of the designs from QA65, the other plate I bought.

I picked up a bottle of Rimmel Lycra Pro in Poundworld last week thinking it was a black polish, but getting it out in the sunlight and reading the label I realised that it was Blue Vogue, a rich midnight blue. I decided to use it as a base for this manicure and it's fantastic - perfect coverage in one coat, quick drying and super glossy.

I chose a stamp design which reminds me of Islamic tiles and made me think of the photos my parents brought back from their holiday in Morocco. I used NYC Foil Explosion in Aqua Mystic (often available as a 2 for £2.49 deal at Superdrug) which is a fantastic polish for stamping. Just as with the last Born Pretty plate I tried, the stamps came out perfectly. This plate was only $0.99, an absolute bargain, so I have a feeling I'll be treating myself to a few more Born Pretty stamping plates in the future.

The only problem I have found with the Born Pretty stamping plates is the designs are quite small. My nails are quite short and narrow and the designs just cover my finger nails, but my thumb nail is slightly too wide. Instead I used some silver diamond shaped glequins (a name I have borrowed from The Nailasaurus to describe sparkles that are too big to be glitter and too small to be sequins) from this set (#4) to make a star shape on my thumb nail.
I topped everything with a coat of Konad Special Topcoat, but unfortunately I didn't wait for my base coat to dry enough on my thumb, so the glequins shifted and the base colour dragged over the glequins a bit. Oops!

I also managed to catch the ends of my nails before they were fully dry so there are a few little wrinkles on my index and ring fingers. The moral of this story is don't drink a massive mug of tea while you are painting your nails - nature will call before your polish dries!

The shine on the topcoat makes it a bit difficult to see what is going on with my nails, so here are a couple of close up shots of my thumb and fingers without the direct lighting. The dark blue is a pain to clean up if you make a mistake, so of course I managed to get it all over my cuticles!

I love this pattern and colour combination, although I'm not so happy with the glequins on my thumb. What do you think?

Peppermint Paisley

Last year I fell in love with some swatches of Illamasqua's Fragile, a gorgeous polish that is way out of my price range. I realised that I could create a similar look by layering a sheer pastel polish with black glitter, and for a while I wore speckled egg nails in a different shade every week. I decided to use a more subtle version of this look for the base of this manicure.

I started with two coats of Pool Party from the Technic Pretty Pastels collection (Technic polishes are available for £1 a bottle at branches of Bodycare and other discount stores, or for £1.25 from www.lovethymakeup.com). Pool Party, like many Technic polishes, is thin and sheer. It's almost jelly-like, takes four coats to become opaque and it dries really quickly which means it is great for layering with glitter. It's a lovely pepperminty turquoise colour and I wear this polish quite a lot.

I added a coat of Violet by Chit Chat (a Poundland purchase). Chit Chat is another budget brand, apparently made by the same people as Technic. This glitter polish is a bluey purple with small and medium hex glitter. The violet glitter gives a more subtle speckled effect than the black glitter I usually use.

After another two coats of Pool Party the purple glitter shows through as a matte blue colour. These nails are pretty enough to wear as they are.

A month ago I discovered the Born Pretty store, ordered some goodies and last week my order arrived. I bought striping tape, some diamond shaped glequins and two stamping plates.

I've never used striping tape before so I thought I'd start simple. I found some Sally Hansen Sugar Coat textured polishes in Poundland last week and I thought the white Sugar Fix would work well with the peppermint colour and the texture would add some interest to horizontal stripes.

On the rest of my nails I used the paisley pattern from Born Pretty stamping plate QA59. I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the plate. It's a really detailed design and it stamped just as well as the Konad and Cheeky plates I own, even with the slightly uneven nail surface due to the glitter. I used white Konad Special Polish for the stamping - it came as part of a Konad stamping set that I picked up cheap on Amazon. I used Konad Topcoat on the stamped nails.

I know it's not the neatest manicure - the stripes are messy and the skin around my nails is horribly dry at the moment - but I rather like these nails. What do you think?