Thursday 27 February 2014

SUPER HOLOGRPAHIC & SPARKLY RED GLITTER NAILS!

Hi my beautiful friends, how are you all today? Are you happy it's Friday tomorrow? I am :)
Ok, so when I saw these nails I fell in love and I knew I'd have to recreate them on ma nails and so here you go !
I applied two coats of Color Club Ruby Slippers and then placed the red holographic glequin discs on to the nail before applying one coat of Gelous and 2 coats of Essence Better Than Gel Sealer which helped get a smooth finish, unfortunately on my middle finger I had a tiny edge of glitter which stuck up and wouldn't lay flat and it drove me crazy! Other than that though I really really loved these nails!








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Wednesday 26 February 2014

NEON BLUE POLKA DOT GLEQUIN NAILS

Hey guys, how are you all doing today? I'm quite a fan of Wednesdays they are the turning point of the week because after Wednesday we only have Thursday and then it's Friday :D 
Anywho so todays nails are done using some amazing matte neon blue glequins* I received from The Glitter Shop. They are the same colour as Nails Inc Baker Street/ Kiko 336 even though they don't really look it in the photos. 
I started off with 2 coats of Gosh High School Flirt and then used a slow drying topcoat and applied the blue glequins in lines before applying a generous layer of Essence Better Than Gel Sealer. 




This doesn't look as polished as I'd like it to but hey ho!
The glitter itself is gorgeous, it's a stunning colour, great size and it's matte as well which makes it just a little bit special in my books because I don't have a lot of matte glequins. 
You can buy the glitter from their ebay store here. 


*These products were sent to me for my honest review. See my disclosure policy for more details


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Tuesday 25 February 2014

EASY & QUICK GLEQUIN NAILS

Hey guys, how are you all doing? Recently when some friends came up to stay, my friend asked me to some glitter placement skittle nails, this design was on one of the nails and I just thought it was so beautiful so I had to recreate it on myself. 
I started with 2 coats of Essie Penny Talk and then used these red, blue and gold square glequins before applying a generous layer of topcoat. 
Apologies for only one picture here, for some reason my skin was a really weird colour on all the pictures and it was too distracting!


This is so simple and easy to do and it only takes 10 extra minutes to do all your nails so I would definitely recommend you try this out when you get a chance! 

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Monday 24 February 2014

ILLAMASQUA PHALLIC

Hey guys, another post from the vault today.
This is Illamasqua Phallic, it's such a beautiful navy blue with gorgeous blue and purple shimmer. My photos don't show it's true beauty. I used two coats of Phallic and one coat of top coat




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Sunday 23 February 2014

WHICH BASECOAT TO USE WITH OPI PUSH & SHOVE?

Hi everyone, how are you all today? Looking forward to tomorrow? Yeah didn't think so, hehe !
So earlier this week I picked up OPI Push and Shove, this was pretty much the only polish I wanted from the Gwen Stefani collection. 
When I got it I was curious to find out the best basecoat to use with this and so I decided to do a little experiment and share it with you guys as well. 
The polish comes with a special base coat called Lay Down That Base which is the recommended base coat for this polish. 

I used 3 different base coats.

On my pinky I used Essie Ridge Filler Base Coat
On my ring finger I used OPI Lay Down That Base
On my middle finger I used the Nfu Oh Aqua Base equivalent by Jessica
On my pointer I didn't use any base coat. 


Chrome polishes such as this one tend to highlight every single imperfection on the nail and their worst enemy is ridges, so it's recommended that you buff your nails prior to using this to get a lovely even finish. 

I didn't buff any of my nails and I've included a picture of my naked nails to try and show my natural ridges (please excuse the staining) 
My accent nail has the worst ridges and my pinky also has some noticeable ridges but my middle and pointer nail are pretty smooth and don't really have any ridges. 




Ok, so here is one coat of Push and Shove on all the nails. 



As you can see on my pinky the polish does not work with regular base coat. 
It does have the potential to be a one coater but the application is a bit tricky so I prefer to use a second coat to smooth it out. 


This is two coats of Push and Shove, I waited 10 minutes after applying the first coat before painting on the second coat.



As you can see a second coat has made all the nails look better, the pinky looks a bit lumpy.
The middle finger is the brightest of them all and also the smoothest looking, Aqua Base does tend to brighten holographic and chrome polishes though so that's not too surprising. 
You can still see some ridges on the ring finger but I do think Lay Down That Base has smoothed out the ridges a tiny bit.
You can see every imperfection on the pointy finger so base coat is a must unless you are blessed with perfect ridge free nails!


So in conclusion, don't use a regular base coat but do definitely use one and make it either the Lay Down That Base or Nfu Oh Aqua Base or one it's several dupes.
 I personally think the Aqua Base is the best base because it also brightens the nail polish on the nail for an even more of a mirror like finish. 


As a bonus I've included a little wear time test too. The following pictures are after 24 hours of wear in which I washed a few dishes and tapped at the keyboard for a few hours. 



You can start to see the tip wear now, it's worse on the pointer finger where I haven't used a base coat. There is also quite a bit of wear on the middle finger and minimal tip wear on the other two fingers, so whilst Lay Down That Base doesn't brighten the polish or smooth the ridges it does increase the longevity of the polish. 


I'm still wearing this as I'm typing this and more tip wear has shown and it's worse on the right hand compared to the left. 

Ok so here are some regular swatches :)


This was really long wordy post, hope you made it to the end! I hope you found this useful :)




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Saturday 22 February 2014

OPI RUSSIAN NAVY

Hey guys, so the last time I wore Russian Navy by OPI my swatches did not do it justice (you can see them here but be prepared to cringe!) , so when I recently put it on again I decided to take some better pictures, unfortunately they didn't turn out quite how I had hoped but I still thought I'd share them! 




Such a beautiful nail polish, you really need this if you don't have it!

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Friday 21 February 2014

HOLOGRAPHIC DISC FRAMED NAILS

Hey guys, how are you all doing, aren't you glad it's Friday? I'm ill at the moment which is just a pain in the rear when you still have to go to uni and work! Remember how fun it being ill used to be when you were younger, you got the day off school to stay in bed and watch tv all day and have your mum fuss over you *sigh* 
Anyway let's talk nails, I don't know what I was thinking when I did these nails and I wasn't going to post them but yeah, here you go. I started off with 2 coats of Orly Smolder and then used the holographic silver and gold disc glequins to frame the nail. I think my nails are just too short here so it doesn't look good but it might look nicer on longer nails!





Ok guys, hopefully I'll see you tomorrow, take care until then :)

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Wednesday 19 February 2014

TEAL & HOLO RED CHECKERBOARD GLITTER PLACEMENT NAILS

Hey everyone, hope your all having a lovely week :) 
I had a lovely day today, I went to watch Frozen and it was really good, have you seen it? Well, my next manicure will have to be Olaf nails now, haha!
Ok, so onto todays nails, I bought some square glitter from ebay back at Christmas and it was a huge disappointment when I finally got them, but included in this set was a pot of these red holographic rectangles squares and I decided to use them with Illamasqua Muse. 
I applied two coats of Muse and then placed the glitter in a checkerboard pattern before applying two coats of topcoat to smooth it all out. I love this colour combination! 







The glequins weren't all the same size or shape which was really frustrating but from a normal distance you can't tell and it looks awesome ! 
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Monday 17 February 2014

HOLO STRIP GLITTER PLACEMENT

Hey guys, how are you all? I hope you've had a nice day :) 
Today I spent the day eating, food shopping, watching rubbish tv and making a small dent in the enormous amount of work I have to do! 
Ok, so remember when I got a lovely package of glitter from The Glitter Shop a few months back, yeah well it included a pot of gorgeous silver holographic strip glitter*. I've never ordered strip glitter before because I've never been sure of how to use it and it's rather fiddly, so when I got this I saw it as a bit of a challenge and well, this is what I came up with!
I started off with 2 coats of Sparitual Circle Of Life* and then placed the individual glitter strands and cut some of the strands down to fit the edges of the nails before applying 2 coats of topcoat. The glitter pieces did stick up a bit at the edges which drove me a bit crazy but I really liked the end result and the glitter was nowhere near as tricky to use as I initially thought!









You can buy this glitter from The Glitter Shop eBay store here. It is £1.99 for a 3ml pot, which is filled to the brim so I don't think you'll ever use it all up! 
Have you ever used strip glitter for glitter placement nails before? Do you like how these turned out?

*These products were sent to me for my honest review. See my disclosure policy for more details


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Sunday 16 February 2014

ILNP ULTRACHROME STRIPES

Hey guys, how's your weekend going? I have tomorrow off so I'm happy :) hehe and I have just ordered the new ILNP Ultrachromes which of course means I'm happy!
Anywho so todays nails were actually going to be the base for a butterfly wing design but I tried it out on my little finger and it didn't work unfortunately so I wiped off the acrylic paint and left it like this. 
I used ILNP Birefringence, Cygnus Loop and Mutagen to do the stripes. Very simple design, very easy to do and looks just lovely :)















I definitely recommend you try this out, it looks just lovely and it's so easy to do :)

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