piCture pOlish - Candy

Finally the day has arrived! I'm going off on holiday tomorrow and I'm super excited! Although it's been really warm in London recently, I really need a holiday in a place with some sea and sand.

Before I go, I will leave you with one of my favourite piCture pOlish lacquers - Candy! This colour really surprised me because it just looked like a standard barbie pink in the bottle but once I put it on my nails, it really popped. Some pinks really don't go well with my skin tone but I absolutely adore how this one looks on me. It makes my hands look really tan too, or it may have just been the lighting that day!

This is 2 coats of Candy with some nude leopard on the accent nail:

 

 

piCture pOlish can be purchased directly from their website - picturepolish.com.au. They do international shipping. You can also purchase it at various etailers throughout the world. Check out their Network page for more info. You can keep updated on any piCture pOlish news via their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

*The product featured  in this post was sent to me for review.

Matte Black & Nude Leopard

I recently received this matte black polish from the Born Pretty Store and I've been so obsessed with it. People seem to like matte nails and I've received many compliments from people who don't usually look at my nails twice. It looks really edgy as well.
The good thing about this polish is that it's opaque in one coat and applies really smoothly. Whilst it's drying it has a rubber look to it like the Illamasqua Rubber finish or the Orly Plastix. Although it's matte, it doesn't have that chalky unattractive look.
To cut up the boldness of the matte black I added a leopard accent nail, which I also matted of course :)

The Born Pretty Store has a bunch of other matte colours. I really want to try the white one, it looks really interesting. You can get a 10% discount if you use my code VA7J61 at the checkout.

Born Pretty Store

Pastel, Leopard, Crosses and Studs

I want the Winter and cold to go away so much that I've already started wearing pastels. Haha! Wishful thinking! This is Illamasqua Purity. A lovely peach creme that's super pigmented and opaque for a pastel. I had some trouble with the formula but it is a pastel after all!

I've also been wanting to mix patterns and ideas on my nails so I went for a mish-mash of leopard print and gold studded crosses. I used Nails Inc Big Ben for the leopard spots and the round gold studs are from the Born Pretty Store.

You can use discount code VA7J61 to get 10% off your Born Pretty Store purchases.

Thanks for reading and commenting :)

OPI - Casino Royale (James Bond 007 Skyfall Collection 2012)

This is Casino Royale from the OPI James Bond 2012 collection. I was really excited to try this one. It's a perfect bright and rich plum creme with magenta and red undertones. A killer shade for Autumn/ Winter and I love that it's not too dark that it looks almost black. I found it to be lighter and brighter than the bottle swatches I had previously seen and love it even more for that. It's sexy and vampy yet such a classy and warm colour too.

I think this may be the base polish used in the promotional picture for Man With The Golden Gun. As it looks so well with gold (and sadly I don't have Man With The Golden Gun), I added a gold leopard accent with Orly Glitz and Glamour which as it turns out, reminds me of Golden Eye because of how saturated the gold flecks are.

I'm so glad I picked up a bottle of this after turning my nose up at it during my first browse around the OPI stand!

Caramel Frappuccino Leopard

This is one of the only three Topshop polishes I own, it's called "Naked" and it's a warm caramel creme. It reminds me of caramel frappuccino! Topshop has a great choice of shades and the bottles are so cute and retro looking. However, they are quite pricey at£5 to £6 for 8ml!

The formula is good and opaque after a third coat. I did have a problem with bubbling on my pinky, I'm not sure why as it's never happened before with my regular base and top coat.
It's not so bright irl, more of a nude and not so much of the yellow undertones seen on camera. I like that it's one of those nude polishes that doesn't blend in with your skin tone so it looks like you actually have polish on!

I added a row of pink and green leopard print to the ring fingers and thumbs only as I didn't want to cover the whole hand with leopard print!

Going Bananas Leopard

Seems like forever since I last posted. I've been on a much needed holiday and my nails have grown quite a bit since the last time I posted. I'm going to try and keep them like this for a while, either until I scratch myself or they start getting in the way! Lol!

A very simple mani today. Leopard accent stamped with BM221and some loose glitter placement on the other nails.
The base colour is Going Bananas by H&M, which has been sitting in my untrieds stash for over a year. It's a soft, light, almost pastel yellow with green  and pink shimmer which was impossible to capture on camera. It reminds me of Chanel Mimosa!

H&M polishes are good, I don't own many but have never come across a really bad formula. The one thing I hate is the shape of the lid! The plastic square bit isn't detachable like Butter London, which makes for really awkward application.

Bella's Minty Leopard

Hi everyone! I've been away for a few days and feel like I've missed so much. I've had a quick glance at my blog roll and you girls have posted up so many great things, I'll need to catch up on everything this week.

Since I haven't even had time to do my nails since I got back, here is a leopard mani I did a few days before I went on holiday.

I used OPI Alpine Snow as a base, stamped with BM221 and used scotch tape to add Essence Bella to half the nail. I really like how it turned out but I must say that waiting for all the layers to dry before applying the tape was a pain!

Pyjama Leopard

Since I've been in bed all day, in my pink and gray leopard onesie pyjamas (it's a Bank Holiday in the UK today), I decided that my most comfortable item of clothing deserved it's own mani! Lol!

It didn't turn out how I expected, in fact, it's one of the worst leopard manis I've done but this is pretty much all I could ask for after doing a mani in bed on a piece of cardboard!

I still like the colours! In theory, a pink and gray leopard sounded cute :)

Foil Leopard

Leopard time again!

This mani was done using two Barry M polishes - Instant Nail Effects Gold and Silver foil! It's inspired by a mani that Deniz posted on her "My365" calendar on 29th Jan! The contrast between the two foil colours isn't as obvious as a dark and light colour would create but it actually looks kind of "spacey" irl!

Leopard Heart - Quick & Easy Valentine's Nails

I have another quick and easy Valentine's mani to show you. I've done two Valentine's manis today, I will be posting the other one on Tuesday of course! So a grand total of 3!!! Not bad for someone who can't keep to themed manis at the appropriate time...Lol!

I used a barbiesque pink Maybelline New York polish for this mani. There no name on the bottle and I can't find it online either, it does have a number - 264. The formula is good, a bit thin but two coats are sufficient. There's the tiniest amount of micro-shimmer in it but it's not visible on the nail at all, I can just about see it in the bottle if I squint very hard!

The accent nail is a leopard heart shaped sticker so I just added some black bullion beads around it.

Ice Blue Snow Leopard

I decided to do a different take on leopard print for this one. Usually, if I'm doing leopard, I cover the whole nail but I quite like the electric blue brightness of this polish so I only put the leopard print on half the nail. I used scotch tape to cover off the top half diagonally.

Snow leopards are obviously not blue (!) but these "cold" colours remind me of them. They are such beautiful creatures!

"The snow leopard (Uncia uncia or Panthera uncia) is a moderately large cat native to the mountain ranges of Central Asia.The total wild population of the snow leopard was estimated at only 4,080 to 6,590 individuals by McCarthy, et al., 2003. Many of these estimates are rough and outdated. There are also 600-700 snow leopards in zoos around the world." - Wikipedia

source: smashinglists

A Hot Pink Chrome Leopard & A Snoozy Cat

I wasn't sure what to add to yesterday's Stargazer Chrome. When I'm in doubt of what to do or am lacking inspiration, I do leopard, Lol!

I used a Primark polish for the leopard spots. It's a hot pink with red undertones, the bottle has no name and a 001 number. It's my only Primark polish as I'm always afraid their polishes will lack pigmentation. I must admit this one is very good, I swatched it on my thumb and it was fully opaque in 2 coats!

The Stargazer chrome may look a bit too shiny in these pictures but that's because I added a coat of Barry M Silver to it as I showed you yesterday:

And here is a pic of Eggbert. When I got home yesterday, I found him snoozing in the bath tub! WTF?! My cats sleep in the weirdest places!

NOTD: Leopard Ice Cream Mani

I know that my last leopard mani was only done a couple of weeks ago but I guess leopard print has become a sort of go to mani when I'm slightly uninspired. It's easy to do and rarely gets messy.

To do the gradient, I used some pastel colours for this one which remind me of ice creams, especially since they are named after ice creams as well, (Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream, Barry M Lemon Ice Cream and OPI Lucky Lucky Lavender) and then used pink for the leopard spots (Color Club In Bloom).

Missguided Splash - New Polish Collection Swatches & NOTD

A while ago, I posted a Cat inspired mani I had done using a nude polish by a company called Missguided . Missguided is an online shop "which provides a range of celebrity led women's fashion clothing."
A representative of the company stumbled across my post and posted a link to their blog and facebook page. I was so surprised and pleased!! They then contacted me requesting if it would be possible to send me their 2 new polishes from the upcoming collection, and if I could review them and do some nail art for their blog readers. Of course I can!!! With pleasure!!!

Here are samples of the 2 colours - Misstaken:

I personally find oranges difficult to work with. Maybe it's because I'm not a massive fan of orange polish on it's own. The formula on this one isn't highly pigmented and so I needed 3 coats for full opacity. Although it's a bit on the runny side, application was smooth and I didn't have trouble with flooding.

Misstique:

I loved this polish!!! Everything about it was great! I was instantly drawn to the colour. I have a lot of blues but this shade of turquoise was just so pretty. The formula is great and it's one of those polishes that can achieve opacity with 1 very generous coat (although I used 2 thin coats). The brushes on both these polishes are quite narrow but when pressed, they spread easily and soak up polish well.

I had previously done a laser mani with Misstique and China Glaze Sugar High (which I will show you later this week) but wasn't too sure how to mix both the orange and the turquoise together.

The logo of the company is Peace, Love and Fashion so I used BM07 on the ring finger against some sponged tie-dye and created a heart with some bullion beads. The black tips I then added look like moustaches...Lol:

The second mani I created with these colours was a leopard print. I never get tired of leopard print in all colours, shapes and sizes. I freehanded this one as everyone knows I'm not the best "stamper" to use the BM plate on this!!

Hope you guys like it:-)

xoxo
Vanessa

Multi-colour Leopard Print

Good morning girls

Today I wanted to show you a mani I did last week - multi-coloured leopard print.

I know leopard print has been used left, right and centre in all forms and colours but I don't think I'll ever get tired of it. It goes out of fashion but it always finds its way back in :-)

I used OPI Alpine Snow for the base colour and various nail art pens for the leopard pattern.

xoxo

Pink Leopard Sparklers

Hi all

I'm feeling a bit under the weather today, couldn't get out of bed for most of the morning, boooo !!!

I wanted to do leopard pattern (again) as you all know how much I love it. There are so many variations of leopard and zebra that I want to try out. Here is the latest one:

I started off with a pink base colour topped with some glitter:

Then drew a leopard print stripe in the middle of the nail and some silver dots around the stripe. Voila!!



I'm also going to try this leopard print variation again but without all the sparkle and glitter.

Products used:

Creative Nail Design - Raspberry Parfait

Saffron London - Glitter No44

Nail Star Nail Art Brush - Black

Thanks for stopping by :-)

xoxo