Easter Daffodils

Hello ladies. I hope everyone is excited for the bank holiday weekend :) I am still working tomorrow but have the other three days off after that which I am looking forward to.

Since it's now practically Easter I decided it was time to do some Easter inspired designs. For today's manicure I wanted something that wasn't totally in your face Easter, but still had the feel about it.. so I went for daffodils (I still have an in your face Easter post to come). I was perhaps being a little ambitious with these but I don't think I did too badly :).

For more details on this manicure click below.

Piss Up and Pandas.

Hello everyone. How are you all? One more day until the weekend people, I am in need of a lie in!

So today I am going to show you the nails I wore for my trip last weekend. I flew up to Edinburgh with four of my friends for a weekend of sightseeing, shopping, eating and drinking.. but the main reason for our trip was to see the Pandas at Edinburgh Zoo. I had a wonderful weekend and the Pandas were very cute and cuddly looking. Naturally I needed panda themed nails to match the occasion :).

For more details on this manicure read on after the jump.

March Tri Polish Challenge - Green, Blue and Purple.

Hello girlies. How are you all? If you haven't already entered my giveaway it closes at midnight so check that out. I just want to make it clear also that the international giveaway excludes UK entrants, since I have my UK giveaway for that. I have had a lot of UK entries on my international giveaway, so make sure you enter the right one or your entry won't count!

So today is the last Tri Polish Tuesday for this month's theme; green, blue and purple. I have really liked this colour combo, I think they go well together. 

To see what I came up with read on after the jump.

I Love Nail Polish Swatches and Nail Art.

Hello lovelies. How are you all? I don't usually post on a Friday.. I meant to post this yesterday but I've got the flu and was in bed most of yesterday. I'm still not well but I have managed to drag myself out of bed to post this today cos I wanna share them.

Today I am going to show you the polishes I got from the I Love Nail Polish Spring Collection. I thought this collection looked amazing so I had to snap up a few when the pre order started. I managed to restrain myself and just bought two. I decided I liked the look of them together so I did some nail art too :).

For swatches and more pictures click below.

March Tri Polish Challenge - Green, Blue and Purple.

Hi everyone. How are you all? 

Today I will be showing you this week's Tri Polish Challenge manicure, if you missed my last post the colours are green, blue and purple :).

To see what I came up with read on after the jump.

March Tri Polish Challenge: Green, Blue and Purple.

Hi everyone. How are you all? 

Today I will be showing you my first design for March's Tri Polish Challenge. The colours this month are green, blue and purple. 

To see what I came up with click below.

Rainbow Connection Haul

Hi loves. How are you all? I'm currently in a strop because I just got a new phone and it doesn't bloody work! What a rip off! Anyway...

Today I have another indie haul to show you, this time with purchases from Rainbow Connection since I went on a little spending spree there recently. I haven't bought much from Rainbow Connection before, but I am loving the fact that it is easier to get hold of international indies in the UK now without having to pay top dollar for shipping so I have a feeling I may be doing posts like this more often!

To see my swatches please click below.

Belle Glamour Swatches and Review.

Hello lovelies. How are you all? I'm about to go and get ready for a night out tonight, it will be nice to let me hair down :).

I'm back with my second post for today, which are swatches of some new releases from Belle Glamour. I was contacted by Catriona recently and offered the polishes at a discount to swatch them, so of course I said yes. These were all released this morning so if you like what you see go and grab them while you can! 

There's some really cool polishes in this bunch, so I strongly recommend you carry on reading to see what they're like! :)

Week Of Love Valentines Nail Art Challenge - Roses

Hi everyone. I hope you are all well. I nearly forgot to post this today, I got carried away swatching and suddenly remembered I hadn't published this.. but luckily I remembered :).

We are half way through the Week Of Love and today's theme is roses. I haven't done a rose manicure in ages so I was really excited to have another go at them. 

To see what I came up with read on after the jump.

Week Of Love Valentines Nail Art Challenge - Candy Heart Sayings.

Hello everyone. How are you all? I am glad to be home this evening, I don't like Mondays!

This week I am taking part in the Week Of Love Valentines Nail Art Challenge, so everyday until Friday I shall be posting Valentines themed manicures. I'm really excited to show you what I have come up with.

The first theme is Candy Heart Sayings. Click below to see what I came up with.

Abstract Floral Print.

Hi everyone. How was your day? Mine was busy and I still have lots to do, I'm glad I wrote this post up in advance!

Today I have another random manicure to show you all. I saw a top whilst I was out with a print like this on, so I decided to put it on my nails. I'm not sure if it is meant to be, but it reminds me of flowers, so that is what I am going with.

For full details on this manicure click below.

Belle Glamour Swatches and Review.

Hello lovelies. I hope everyone is well.

Today I am back with some more swatches from Belle Glamour, I have swatched for Belle Glamour before so if you missed that post you can read that here. The owner of Belle Glamour, Catriona, contacted me again to see if I wanted to try any more of her polishes. Of course I said yes, especially since there were thermal polishes to be played with!

Click below to see my swatches and my thoughts on these polishes.

Copycat Saturday - Tartan Nails

Hi everyone. How are you all? I am enjoying my time off work while it lasts :).

I have the start of another new series to show you today, as you can tell by the title I have called this Copycat Saturday. I find myself more often than not stealing other peoples ideas when it comes to nail art, there are so many cool designs out there to try! But I do feel I should probably try and come up with my own ideas more often. So I have decided to do a copycat manicure once a week, then the rest of the time I shall be forced to think of an idea myself. 

For my first design I decided to go for this pretty, which was a twin manicure by amkuch15 and majikbeenz on instagram. I thought this was seriously cool and on trend.

For full details on this manicure click below.

12 Days Of Christmas Challenge: Day 12 - Freestyle Christmas Mani

Hello my loves. I hope everyone is okay. I'm not very well at all today, I have had to take the day off work. I hope I shake this off before Christmas! I'm glad I had this post written up in advance because I think I need to go back to bed now lol.

It's the final day of the challenge, as I have said previously I shall definitely miss doing this. I'm not sure I'll know what to blog about now I won't have a theme to use lol. Maybe I need to find another challenge to join :).

Today's theme is a freestyle Christmas mani, so I took that as anything Christmassy. I wanted to do something a bit different and when I came across this design by Nails by Kayla Shevonne I decided that I needed to try it. I was going to try and think up a design myself and be original, but her mani was way cooler than anything I was thinking anyway lol.

Click below for more.

12 Days Of Christmas Challenge: Day 11 - Christmas Trees

Hi everybody. I hope everyone has exciting weekends ahead of them. I am feeling rather under the weather so I think I shall spend mine resting.

Its day 11 of the challenge, just one more prompt after this :(. Today the theme is Christmas Trees. 

I was experimenting with my Color Club topcoat to see what its like with nail art, and it smudged my baubles :(. So apologies for that, CC topcoat is good but not quite as good as Seche Vite in my opinion.

Click below for more.

12 Days Of Christmas Challenge: Day 8 - Holly.

Hello lovelies. Happy Sunday. I have a roast dinner in the oven which I am very much looking forward to.

Its day 8 of the 12 Days Of Christmas Challenge, just a few themes left to go. I will be sad when it is over. Today's theme is holly.

I decided to keep it simple for this manicure.

My base colour is China Glaze - Dandy Lyin' Around.

I then freehanded the holly. The red is China Glaze - Hey Sailor and the green is Barry M - Spring Green.

Finally I outlined it all with Rimmel - Black Cab and added some highlights on the berries with a white cream.

I really loved how these came out, I'm glad I left it as it was and didn't go over the top with detail. 

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Thanks for looking.

Belle Glamour Swatches and Review

Hi everyone. I hope everyone has had a good weekend so far. I have just got home from work for a well needed rest.

Today I have some swatches of a new indie brand to show you. I was contacted recently by Catriona of Belle Glamour to see if I would like to purchase some polishes to review. Now I don't need an excuse to buy more polish, so of course I said yes (although these are the only 3 polishes I have bought since I last got paid, I have been very well behaved this month). I picked out 3 to show you today.

They come in nice square bottles, the ones I got were 10ml. The brushes are good quality and easy to use. One thing that I would like is for the names of the polish to be on the bottles, if I wasn't so pedantic to have a spreadsheet listing all my polishes I would completely forget the names.

Onto the swatches..

Up first we have Belle Glamour - Purely Pumpkin.

Purely Pumpkin is a lovely shade of orange, its not too in your face which I find oranges can often be. This one was the most difficult to work with, you have to let it dry for quite a while between coats or the polish will drag. It was also quite thick, but still manageable. This needs to be applied with care as it does show up brush strokes a bit. Opacity was good, this photo shows 2 coats. Despite all this, I think the extra effort in application is worth the final outcome as this is a very pretty colour and quite a unique orange in my collection.

Up next we have Belle Glamour - Passionately Purple.

Passionately Purple is a beautiful, deep purple shade with a jelly formula. I really didn't this expect this to be a jelly looking at the bottle, it took me by surprise! It was very sheer on the first coat, but it was build-able and this photo shows 3 coats. The formula on this was nice and smooth, very easy to apply. 

Finally we have Belle Glamour - The Grass Is Always Greener.

The Grass Is Always Greener is a gorgeous spring green with a subtle shimmer. This one was by far my favourite, I love it so much! The formula was similar to Purely Pumpkin, but much better (if that makes sense). You still have to make sure each coat is dry before applying the next or it drags a bit, but much less than Purely Pumpkin. This photo shows 2 coats, although it was almost opaque in 1. 

So overall I would definitely recommend you give this brand a go. I think they are good quality and on the whole the formulas were good, Purely Pumpkin wasn't perfect but you just need to be careful with application. I was also very impressed with the customer service I received, my queries were answered within minutes which is pretty amazing.

Belle Glamour will be launching on 24th January and will be available from her website here.

Will you be trying anything from Belle Glamour? Let me know your thoughts below.

Thanks for looking.

12 Days Of Christmas Challenge: Day 5 - Bells.

Hi lovelies. How are we all? I have just got home and I am about ready to go to sleep already lol.

Today is day 5 of the 12 Days of Christmas Challenge, its almost half way done. I will be sad when its over, I have been liking Christmas nails a bit too much. Today's theme was bells. I was  a bit stumped with what to do for this one, so I took to google and came across these nails. As soon as I saw them I knew I needed to steal the idea and copy them immediately, and I must say, I loved how they came out!

Here is my version..

My base colour is Essie - Like To Be Bad.

I freehanded the whole design with a detail brush. For the holly I used Barry M - Spring Green, China Glaze - Hey Sailor and Rimmel - Black Cab.

For the bells I used an Unnamed W7 Gold. The white on the ribbons is Color Club - White.

I was super proud of these, I think this is the best freehand design I have done. I spent my day at work sticking my fingers in people's faces to show them off. I didn't want to take them off for my next mani.

What are your thoughts? 

Don't forget to check what the other participants have done for their designs.

Pick A Polish: W7 - Green Dazzle

Hi everyone. I have just got home and am about ready to pass out, is it the weekend yet? lol.

It's Monday so that means it's Pick A Polish time, this week W7 - Green Dazzle was picked from my stash. I picked this up last Christmas time, thinking it would be a good Christmas glitter but I never got round to using it. So this is the first time it has been used, I have so many untried polishes, its unreal!

Green Dazzle is a green leaning teal glitter in a clear base. The photo above shows 4 coats with no undies, I think you could just about get away with wearing it like this but you can still see a bit of nail. I did find that the base is slightly tinted so it did makes my nails look very yellow in the gaps. It was also getting quite thick at this point and was quite slow drying.

For these reasons, I much prefer this layered over another colour. This photo shows one coat over China Glaze - Keep Calm, Paint On. Glitter pay off is good and I found it applied very evenly and smoothly.

Onto the nail art...

The base colour again is China Glaze - Keep Calm, Paint On.

I added the animal stripes on using a striping brush and W7 - Green Dazzle.

I really liked how this nail art came out, sometimes keeping it simple can be more effective. I am also glad I finally tried this glitter out as I do love it layered.

What do you guys think? Let me know in the comments.

Thanks for looking.

12 Days Of Christmas Challenge: Day 1 - Presents

Hi everyone. How are we all? I am putting up my Christmas tree today, I'm such a big kid when it comes to Christmas.

I am taking part in the 12 Days Of Christmas Challenge! There are twelve themes which and we will be posting every other day. This is my first ever challenge and I am very excited to be taking part :). I also love Christmas, so this is the perfect challenge for me.

The first theme was presents! Who doesn't love presents? I have to admit these did cause me a few issues, everything just kept going wrong. But I got there in the end.

I used a base of Barry M - Watermelon.

I then freehanded the white cross on with a striping brush and Color Club - White.

I freehanded the bows in China Glaze - Goldie But Goodie and outlined the white with this too. It was the bows which were causing me issues, I couldn't get them right. I am still not 100% happy with how they came out but this was my best try. 

So maybe not my best work ever, but I still have 11 more themes to go so that's plenty of time to do something I like. 

What are your thoughts? Let me know what you think.

Thanks for looking.