Peach & Bows

Yesterday, a few of the Instagram nail girls had a nail meet in London. It was so nice to just sit and chat about nails over coffee, without the other person's eyes glazing over with boredom. Which is what usually happens when I talk with my non-nail friends who have no interest whatsoever in having a full blown conversation about the latest OPI collection or how I achieved a gradient look!

I wore something very simple. Mainly because I was very busy to do anything elaborate but also because I've been loving these simpler looks recently. Although it's still freezing here at the moment, I'm starting to love pastels as spring is just around the corner.

I used Collection 2000 Fruit Loop which is a very pretty pastel peach but the formula was a nightmare to work with. It's extremely streaky, requires three coats and doesn't even itself out! The accent finger is Milani Jewel FX Silver over a coat of Zoya Trixie and I added the cutest little bows from the Born Pretty Store. A pack of 10 bows is $2.98 and they come in various colours. Use discount code VA7J61 for 10% off.

*Some of the products in this post were provided to me for review

Screaming Teal

A very quick and bright mani today with two polishes from my untrieds stash. This is 2 coats of Pure Ice Scream with Milani Teal on the accent nail (also 2 coats layered over a coat of a random teal polish I had laying around).
This is my first time trying Pure Ice and I loved the formula. It's very buttery and opaque in two easy coats. I'm a massive fan of the Milani chunky glitters, if you like your blues and greens, you will love this chunky glitter too. It reminds me of mermaids.

Chromed and Bejeweled

Happy New Year everyone! Bring on 2013, I hope it's going to be a good one! We didn't really party this new year's eve but did go to a friend's house for some dinner and drinks. I still had to do some sort of celebratory mani to ring in the new year. Plus, this polish completely matched the metallic silver pumps I wore.

I chose a simple mani, mainly because I didn't have a lot of time to do my nails. I enjoyed wearing this colour on it's own so much (I had only ever used it for nail art before), that I still have it on today! I just love how metallic silver looks irl, which is strange for me because metallic is usually my least favourite type of polish.

2 coats of Stargazer Chrome Silver 232 and two coats of Milani Jewel FX in Silver on the ring fingers.

The Pinky And The Brain

I've been wearing such dark colours lately and the weather is so dreary at the moment that I just had to opt for something really bright and fun. This is Catrice The Pinky And The Brain, a hot, deep raspberry pink, with Milani Jewel FX in Silver. The Catrice photographed quite reddish on me for some reason but it's much more pink and bright irl.

I loved the formula (opaque in 2 even coats) but it was the first time I've used the new Catrice wide brush and I hated it. From what I gathered they were meant to introduce a new wide and flat brush but instead it's uneven and bushy.

All Hail The Queen's Golden Glitter Zebra

Today's mani was inspired by Ivana. She always has the most amazing zebra and leopard pattern combos in all different colours and glitters. So when I received Butter London All Hail The Queen in the post a while back, I knew it was the perfect base colour for this mani.

I sponged Orly Glitz & Glamour onto the tips and halfway up the nail, to add that extra bit of sparkle and topped it all off with one coat of Milani Gold Jewel FX, before stamping with BM223 and Konad Black Polish. I think my camera freaked out a little bit  and created so much glare because of all the sparkle, I couldn't get a decent picture of it.

And here is All Hail The Queen on it's own. It's such a pretty brownish nude packed with tiny scattered holographic glitter. I love nude polish so this is a nice addition to my stash.

 

Snakeskin Nails - Double Take!

I've been meaning to try this mani for a while now but as usual for me, I only just got around to doing it.

I originally saw this version of the snakeskin mani on Kari's blog back in May and again in this post from Rebecca. But it was Sammy's version that made me give it a go. I thought the concept was really genius!
It's basically using plate BM215 and layering the stamp twice with different colours over your base colour to create that snakeskin effect. Other than Milani Devoted 2 U for the base, I used Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream and Gosh Metallic Purple.

Obsessing over the Salvatore brothers makes for bad polish application!

Back in October, I posted about my only other Milani nail polish Metallic Mango.

The polish I am showing you today is a deep shimmery purple with tiny blue and red shimmer particles called Devoted 2 U. Indoors or in dim light, it just looks inky, almost black.

I bought both of these together as part of mini discount pack on Ebay! I read somewhere that Devoted 2 U is part of a spring limited edition collection but found no other info on it.

I had a bit of trouble applying this one but not sure why. The formula isn't bad at all. I think it was just me having a bad day! My nails looked terrible and stained and I needed to cover them with something but after spending most of the weekend in bed watching Vampire Diaries, I didn't have much in me to do my nails.

Speaking of Vampire Diaries. Yes, I know! It got to me to! After finishing all seasons of True Blood  a while ago, I was having vampire withdrawals. So much so that I even went all the way to the cinema and actually bought a ticket to watch Breaking Dawn. It was so disappointing but I won't go into that now, I would be here all night! Can't fault the books though, they really did make for a good read.

Vampire Diaries is no True Blood but at least it's not as "PG" as Twilight! It brings something else to the table! And who can resist Stefan and Damon Salvatore? Lucky Nina Dobrev!

source: google images

The not so scary Halloween mani

I didn't do any Halloween nail art this year. I'm not very good at themed manis and even worse at freehand. I suppose I could have used some BM plates but I rather admire what other bloggers have been creating. I have seen some amazing Halloween manis floating around this year :)

So, trying to at least keep with Halloween'ish colours, here is a not-so-scary scotch tape mani in orange and black. You can tell by the title, I had no idea what to call this one!

The burnt orange polish used is Metallic Mango by Milani. Orange is one of my least favourite colours, I'm not even sure why I bought this one, I think it was really cheap on Ebay! It's a shame I won't use it much because it's orange as the formula is amazing! The consistency is perfect and so manageable I didn't even have to do any clean up. Perfect is 2 even coats!

Milani Hi-Res

I had heard many good things about the Milani holos so when I placed my Beauty Joint Kleancolor order a couple of months ago and saw that they also sold Milani, I thought this would be my chance to try it (we don't get Milani here in the UK).

I used 1 coat of Milani Hi Res over 1 coat of Rimmel London Perfect Plum. I wanted it to be completely opaque and also use less of the Milani to achieve this.

Hi Res is such a soft and dreamy purple. The rainbow of colours (red, green, gold and blue) in all their holo goodness add to that fairytale feel it has. I love it! This one is definitely a keeper for me and the price is amazing ($3.99) considering how good the formula and the overall polish is.