Sublime Sapphire - Scratch Nail Wraps

A few weeks ago, Scratch contacted me about their nail wraps. If you have been following me for a while, you'll know that I'm not the biggest fan of nail wraps, I've always been on the fence about them (see my holo snakeskin foil wraps post).
There are some lovely patterns out there and it's a quick way to achieve amazing nail designs but I can never get them completely smooth on my nail and to last longer than a few hours. However, as more and more brands start developing and improving their nail wraps, I'm always up for giving new ones a go.

Enter Scratch, the best nail wraps I've tried so far. Before I tell you all the positives about these nail wraps, let me show you what they look like. These are the "Sublime Sapphire" ones. A beautiful blue, gold and black pattern. I would normally use wraps for accent nails but this time decided to switch it up and actually use polish (and studs) on my accent nail to break up the rich pattern a little (Nails Inc Baker Street).

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What I love about these wraps:
- Extremely pliable and therefore easy to work with and adhere perfectly to the curve of the nail
- Excess wrap doesn't even need filing, you can literally rip it off at the edge after it's covered your entire nail
- Don't need to use heat of any sort so no fumbling with the hairdryer
- If you make a placement mistake, the wrap can carefully be pulled off the nail and placed back down in the correct place
- Unbelievable longevity. I still can't believe I got 5 days wear out of these nail wraps with only minor tip wear. I did use use a top coat over the wraps (as I do with all other wraps I've tried) but I was still really impressed .

Scratch nail wraps retail for $12 and this includes two sets of 8 varying sized wraps (16 wraps in total), a wooden cuticle stick and a pink nail file. Check out their website for more information and you can also follow them on Twitter (@goscratchit), Facebook, and Instagram.

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

Candy Shop Glitter and Skulls

Last week I had the chance to try out another Born Pretty stamping plate. I believe it's one of the newest additions to their plate collection, it's the QA8 and it sells for $2.99.
This plate consists of five full nail images and three smaller plant/ flower images. The reason I picked this plate was because it has three animal prints (I love animal prints), a checkered pattern which I have wanted for a long time and a skull image which I thought was so cute.

The manicure I put together involves the skull image and I tried to keep it part rock chic and part cute girly. What do you think?

Here you can see all the images the plate has:

Polishes used:
Thumb, middle and pinky - Justy Cosmetics No. 293 and Claire's Candy Shop
Pointer - Barry M Black
Ring - OPI Alpine Snow, stamped with Konad Black Polish

About the plate - If I am comparing to my BM and Cheeky plates, the image size on the QA8 is quite good (apart from that middle cow sort of pattern). They are rounded off as apposed to a full rectangle but I guess that doesn't really matter. 
I've seen some Born Pretty Store plates on other blogs that the image was too small to fit the nails, even on girls who had very short nails, but that isn't the case with this one. They are also etched really well and my stamper picks up all the polish nicely. I have no complaints about this plate thus far (I haven't yet tried the other images).

Get 10% off your Born Pretty Store purchases by using discount code VA7J61.

*Some of the products in this post were sent to me for my honest review.

Barry M "Rose Quartz" (Jewel Glitter Paints)

I went into Superdrug the other day to buy some polishes for a swap but then saw the new(ish) Barry M glitters from their Jewel Glitter Paints collection on the shelf and they looked so cute! I came back with a few for myself too of course!

Rose Quartz is a clear based polish packed with rosey pink hex and fine holographic glitter. Yes, that's right, I said rose glitter although for some reason it looks more brown'ish than anything else in these pictures. I'm not sure why that is, it just catches the light like that but the glitter is a really pale pink in the bottle. The holo in there really makes it shine bright in the sunlight and it looks so pretty and sparkly. It's a very delicate and feminine glitter.

I layered two coats of Rose Quartz over two coats of Nails Inc Elizabeth Street which is a very pale pearly pink polish. Rose Quartz reminds me a little of OPI Pink Yet Lavender from the Mariah Carey Collection but I actually like the fact that the holo micro glitter in this one is more evident. I just wish it photographed better!

Impala - Festa "Sua Noite"

Today I have a Brazilian polish to share with you guys. Impala is such a great brand because of the longevity of their polishes. I own four Impala polishes and all of them last between 5-7 days on my nails without chipping.
The colour I'm showing you today is part of the Festa Collection and is called Sua Noite, sent to me by the lovely Bia. It's a gunmetal polish with a foil finish, packed with tons of ultra-fine silver shimmer. Two coats provide complete coverage.

I've just come back from holiday and wore this polish the entire time I was there. It's the perfect holiday polish for me because it's an interesting dark colour without being plain black, yet it's not over the top glittery and it goes with all my outfits :)

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 :)

Midnight Masquerade - Pretty & Polished

Pretty & Polished Midnight Masquerade was one of the first indie polishes I ever purchased. Well, the one that really got my attention was Elvis Pink Cadillac but as I made my way to the checkout, I saw this blackened base packed with magenta and green glitters so I knew I had to buy it too!

Although this polish is opaque on its own in two coats, I still layered it over a coat of black creme. I like my polish very opaque. The formula was slightly thick but not too difficult to apply. It dries quite glossy and its not even that gritty at all, considering all the hex glitter packed into it!

I wish I could have got the glitters to show up a bit more on camera but I really couldn't work around the glare on this one. However, the last picture which was taken with my iPhone in natural daylight, shows the depth of the glitter better.

What do you guys think of this polish?

You can find Pretty & Polished products (polishes, cuticle balms and oils, etc) on Etsy.

Jade +Teal = Mix + Match

Can you guess which blogger today's mani is inspired by? Of course you can! She has the most perfect nails and her designs are always fantastic and inspiring - it's Amy Grace from The Polished Perfectionist.

I didn't have all the polishes or the stamping plate that Amy Grace used so I chose the following products instead. By the way, how amazing is CG Atlantis? Can't believe this is the first time I'm wearing it!

pinky and thumb: Rimmel London Misty Jade
ring: Nails Inc Electric Teal, BM221, Konad Special Nail Polish in White
middle: one coat of Nails Inc Electric Teal, two coats of China Glaze Atlantis
index: OPI Alpine Snow, Rimmel London Misty Jade, dotting tool

Thanks for reading and commenting :)

I really, really, really like you Kiko 336

You know when you just really, really, really want to wear a certain colour? Well, today I really felt like wearing an electric blue like this. I spent a lot of time on YouTube this week looking at videos of my favourite make-up and fashion gurus and a lot of them were wearing blue on their nails! I went to my helmer and immediately grabbed this Kiko 336 which was sitting in my untrieds!

I know that every girl on the other side of the Channel probably owns this polish but because Kiko isn't as easily available in the UK, it makes me love their polishes even more! This blue gets me all excited, i cant stop starring at it. It's so fashionable as well! It also reminds me of Nails Inc Baker Street which I get a lot of compliments on when I'm wearing it. I could easily wear this type of blue all year around!

What do you guys think of this blue? Do you like it?

Thanks for reading and commenting :)

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.