Nubar Prevail (Modern Matte Collection)

(This is a scheduled post, I am currently on holiday)
Today I wanted to show you Nubar Prevail from the Nubar Fall 2009 Matte Collection. Yes, another matte, I've been bitten by the matte bug :) Well, truth be told, one of the UK's distributor for Nubar was having a sale so I bought 3 bottles!
Prevail is a vampy deep brown/ purple with a tiny hint of copper which is visible in the bottle under direct light/ sunlight. It's a matte but there is also a wonderful sort of shimmer to it and it dries satin as opposed to chalky matte. The formula is so great, I applied 2 coats and it's so smooth and easy to control.

Pink Wednesday!!! - Hello Kitty

(This is a scheduled post, I am currently on holiday)
Although I do love Hello Kitty, and there are hundreds of different Hello Kitty nail art out there to inspire me, I've never actually the cute little kitten myself.

I'm not very good at drawing, when I was a kid I couldn't even colour inside the lines, Lol! So I wouldn't attempt anything too complicated, that's when I came across a design by Kayla Shevonne a couple of weeks ago and I thought it was really great. Click here to see her tutorial. I also originally saw a similar post by Rina which you can find here.

These looked amazing but still easy enough for me to give it a go. Kitty's eyes weren't dry enough when I applied a top coat of SV so it looks like she is crying a little..Lol

I used Ciate Cupcake Queen for the base colour and Jessica Samba Parade for the dots.

The LA Colors Seashell & French Tips Incident!

Right, so this mani wasn't supposed to turn out like this whatsoever! I had something completely different in mind. As the polish is called Seashell, I was going to stamp little light brown shells to keep with the beach theme. A sparkly beach! And then it all went downhill from there!

The polish applied relatively well but it was sheer so I added 1 coat of Barry M Lemon Ice Cream base colour before 2 coats of seashell. Then it all turned into a mess!

The drying time was so horrible that I found it hard to actually believe that any polish would take this long to dry, even with 2 coats of SV! The second coat of SV even made the polish lift from the nail a bit. I waited about 30 mins before using scotch tape for the tips and this created massive bubbles of air underneath! I was still trying desperately to salvage this mani, even without my little seashells.
The only thing I could think of was  nail stickers to cover up some of the mistakes. But guess what? As I added a top coat over the stickers, they started curling up at the edges (which has never happened to me before with these stickers)! That's it, I was so annoyed I gave up and this mani came straight off. And not so long ago I was raving about LA Colors, maybe I just got a bad bottle :( *sigh*

Orly Blue Suede & Silver Shimmer French Tips

For the past couple of days I've been wearing Orly Blue Suede from the Fall 2009 Orly Matte Couture Collection. As the name suggests, this has more of a suede, satiny finish but I still consider it a matte because of the way it look on the nail!
I know a lot of people still haven't embraced the matte look, others think it's horrendous (my cousin compares it to felt tip pens) but I have to say that I quite like it. It's not as versatile as a regular gloss finish polish, but for me, it serves it's purpose.

Blue Suede is nothing like OPI Russian Navy Matte, which I don't own but have tried. This is a gorgeous navy with a dusty satin shimmer.
I actually wore a base coat with this polish as I was afraid to stain my nails and it still applied smoothly, without major dragging or patchy problems.

I then added some Zoya Trixie french tips and some rhinestones. I couldn't think of what else to do with a matte polish. I did consider some stamping but I was sure it wouldn't hold without a top coat and it would probably make it look like chalk board!

I was curious to see what this particular colour looked like with a glossy finish so I added a top coat of SV, but concluded that this matte should be left as it is:

Yummy little cupcakes & sparkly cheeries

What an unoriginal title!!! Sorry, I couldn't think of anything to call this mani other than what it actually is *sigh*! Following on from yesterday's swatch of Cliche Atracao, I thought the colour was so girly and candy like that I had to pick cute little cupcakes to keep with the theme!

I stamped the cupcakes at a side angle with BM14 and Konad White Stamping polish, and added some red rhinestones for the cherries.

Pink Wednesday!!! - Cliche Soft Pink & Pink French Tips

Hi Everyone. For today's pink Wednesday I wanted to show you a soft pretty pink from a Portuguese brand called Cliche. My mum was on holiday in Portugal a couple of weeks ago and brought me this one as well a couple of Brazilian brands. I've tried the Brazilian brands before and they are really good however, it's my first time trying Cliche. This polish is named "Atracao" which means attraction.
I'll be looking into this brand a little more when I go to Portugal next week, if I find nice colours, I'll bring some back for my first giveaway which will be happening soon :)

I love the colour, it's a really soft cherry blossom pink full of soft pearly shimmer. The formula is thin and applies very sheer so I used a white base colour (visible in the pics below) under the 2 coats of Cliche.

I then added some darker pink tips with Color Club In Bloom. I love french tips, it sort of seals and finishes off a mani :)

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).

NOTD: Going Dotty over First Mate

I wasn't too sure what to add to this mani today because I didn't want to ruin such a lovely navy blue and I wasn't really in the mood for nautical type manis. That's when I remembered that a couple of week's ago I came across a very simple but great idea by Rebecca and then again a similar version by Deniz - check out their posts! I used GOSH Metallic Purple and MUA shade 13 for the larger dots :-)

And Rebecca was right, it's hard to come up with names for dotted manis so I went with "Going Dotty"...Lol!!

(Apologies for the picture sizes, my camera had different settings for each of the pics and I only noticed when I had taken all the pics!)

China Glaze - First Mate from Anchors Away Collection

I got the China Glaze First Mate from the Anchors Away Collection a couple of months ago but hadn't yet tried it. If it wasn't summer, I would have swatched it as soon as the post arrived! It is such a luxurious and rich navy creme, one of those colours that I would gladly wear all winter (and autumn and spring!!). This is an amazing navy blue and not dull at all as is the case with many navy blues.

The formula on this was slightly on the thicker side and it's so pigmented that you may get away with 1 coat. However I did apply a 2nd coat to correct some application issues I had whilst applying the 1st coat (due to the thickness).

Paradise Pink - French Tips & Salient Flowers

For Pink Wednesday yesterday, I went on and on and on about L.A Colors Paradise Pink! Lol. What can I say, I was impressed!! So before I took this mani off, I added some black french tips and fimo flowers last night.
This probably seems like a really impractical mani because the fimo is so salient, however I was actually surprised that they were still there after a whole 18 hours. They do easily get caught in my hair though...Lol!

I wouldn't usually wear this much fimo on an everyday mani but it looks pretty for the pictures :-)

Pink Wednesday!!! - L.A Colors Paradise Pink... What a bargain!

I decided to use an L.A Colors polish for this week's Pink Wednesday - Paradise Pink.

I know that in the US, these polishes are readily available at many stores and for a very low price but that's not the case here is the UK. Here you can find the odd colour here and there if you buy online in places like Amazon and none of our drug stores sell it (none that I could find anyway).

I wanted to try L.A Colors so I had been been looking for them for quite a while (I know they existed here somewhere), until my husband found some in a little beauty store near his office. I don't even know how he spotted those... he bought me 4 bottles! Here they still cost £1.50 which is about $2.30 I think.

As these are found at the dollar store in the US, I wasn't expecting a lot from them, maybe that's why I'm quite impressed. I've only tried 1 bottle but based on this one, I can say that the formula is better than a lot of more expensive polishes I have tried like Maybelline (sorry I'm not a fan of their polishes), Bourjois (not a massive fan either) and a couple more UK brands which retail at about £1.99 per bottle.

Paradise Pink is a vibrant reddish rose colour (maybe a cross between crimson and rose) with lots of pearl shimmer. It was opaque in 2 coats although you could still see VNL outdoors.

Definitely the thumbs up for this bargain polish!

Ciate Paint Pots - Mojito & Cupcake Queen Tape Manis

Hi Everyone :-) Last week I was contacted by the lovely Rachel from Budoir PR asking me if I would like to try some products from one of their clients - Ciate. Of course I said yesssss!!! As soon as the goodies arrived in the post, I swatched them straight away. She sent me Ciate's Mojito and Cupcake Queen.

What stands out the most for me with Ciate polishes is the packaging. The flat rectangular shaped bottles which are slightly curved, the long thin cap and an adorable little bow on the front of the bottle all make it look elegant yet very girly. Even the Ciate logo, although playful looks vintage.

Both these polishes had different formulas, Mojito was thinner and needed 3 coats for opacity whereas Cupcake Queen was on the thicker side but very easy and smooth to apply and opaque in 1 coat. Drying time is quite fast on both polishes, even after 3 very generous coats of mojito.

Mojito is a really bright lime green which I thought I would love since I'm really into my greens but this one didn't live up to my "green" expectations! It looked absolutely lovely in the bottle but didn't pop on my nails. I wish I could have achieved the bottle colour!

Cupcake Queen is a hot pink packed with blue micro shimmer which is easily visible in the bottle but nearly impossible to detect on the nails unless under strong sunlight. Like I mentioned before, the formula on this one was perfect.

I couldn't help but add a little something extra to my nails so I did a quick tape mani on each colour. I got some of those kids play scissors in the post the other day so decided to use each pattern on these.

Mojito:

Cupcake Queen: