Nautical Love

I've finally managed to cross the "Nautical" themed mani off my to do list! The Beauty Department's Nautical mani is very popular all over Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram so I've always wanted to recreate the look, and it was very fitting for the weekend I had :)

I didn't use the same method as they did on The Beauty Department, instead I used striping tape to create the thin lines! The whole thing wasn't at all difficult to do but as you know striping tape can get quite fiddly and annoying!

The white base is OPI Alpine Snow and the navy blue is CND Midnight Sapphire (I will be wearing this polish quite a lot this winter). I even used a prop for the picture!

Dark Amethyst & Gold Flakies

As I didn't have time to swatch the second colour of the CND The Look for Fall/ Winter 2011 yesterday, as promissed, here it is:

 

Dark Amethyst is a deep purple creme. Very close to plum shade. I like the fact that it's very deep purple but doesn't look nearly black like my OPI Lincoln Park After Dark often does. Formula is perfect as with Midnight Sapphire yesterday.

 

And here it is with one coat of Sheer 24k Sparkle:

Thanks for stopping by :)

Midnight Sapphire & Gold Flakies!

A couple of months ago I went over to the UK distributor for CND and when I saw this little trio on the shelf, I couldn't help myself. This is was the "Look" for Fall/ Winter 2011 (I know I'm a little late...sorry) and it consists of 2 cremes and a new effect:

Today I'll be showing you Midnight Sapphire. It's been a busy day so I haven't had time to swatch both :(

Midnight Sapphire is a deeply pigmented sapphire blue creme. It goes much darker on the nail compared to the bottle colour. Although it's not the first time we see a blue like this, it is still a very pretty shade! You can't go wrong with a deep inky blue. The formula is absolutely amazing but then again I have never had a problem with CND formulas - always opaque in just one coat and very easy and smooth to work with.

 

Once you apply the 24k Sparkle Effect, a gold flakie, it transforms the base colour and gives it that extra sparkle. I really like CND Effects. They can be worn over so many polishes to spruce them up:

 

I couldn't help but mattify it as well. I love my flakies matte:

Thanks for reading and commenting :)

Gingerbread Man Cookies

As I didn't really do any Halloween themed manis this year, I'm going to try to run with it for Christmas! Plus I have to put some of the Xmas designs on the Bundle Monster plates to good use. Here are some yummy Gingerbread Men topped with sprinkles of glitter, over CND Fireberry which I've had on since Thursday:

Fireberry

This is my new favourite red (for now)! It's the perfect red for the nubbins I'm sporting at the moment. I've had to file my nails right down as I've been overloading them with polish and sometimes using pure acetone remover.

Fireberry is a bright but cool toned red. I can't really see any tinge in it, it's just that - a bright red creme. I only have one other CND polish (colour) and this one is every bit as good as the other one. The formula is perfect, it applies a dream and opaque in one coat. My favourite red before this one was OPI Keys To My Karma but it's nowhere near as opaque. It now means I can do tape manis with red!

Here is an extra pic of Fireberry with a black diamante ring I bought this week. Looking at this pic now, it looks a bit big for my hand, but hey.... I like big rings. The bigger the better right? And it only cost £1.99.

Pink Wednesday!!! - Creative Nail Design Raspberry Parfait

Good afternoon! I've finally joined Pink Wednesday :-)

My collection of pink polishes may not be as large as my other colours but it's definitely growing as I use more and more pink in my manis.
Today I want to show you CND's Raspberry Parfait - a gorgeous and vibrant bright pink.
CND's new polish formulas don't disappoint. There are 50 colours available to purchase in the UK at the moment (if I'm not mistaken) and 15 effects. Although I've been told by one of the CND representatives that their Colour & Effects range can create up to 800 different colours, I still don't think I'd choose their colour range over brands like OPI and CG.

In the colour polish itself, the formula is an amazing hybrid of jelly and creme finish with high pigmentation so 2 coats are more than sufficient.

I love the brush as well, it's thin and narrow with very flexible bristles that soak up polish like a dream!

Hope you like this pink as much as I do :-)

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

Moroccan Jewels

I posted these yesterday but because of the problems blogger has been having, my post was deleted.

I came back from holidays in Morocco on Wednesday afternoon and decided to do a Morrocan inspired mani. Although it was the worst holiday ever (I won't go into it here, it would take forever), I really like the vibrant mix of colours they use in their tapestry, arts and crafts, etc..

I also got some new polishes at the airport which was a plus :-)

Sorry about the lighting in the picture, it was a really dark and cloudy day.

Products used:

Nails Inc - Teal

Orly - Glitz & Glamour

Creative Nail Design - Raspberry Parfait

Thanks for stopping by :-)

xoxo

French Tips: Glittery Silver and Raspberry Parfait... Yum Yum!!!

Hi Everyone ;-)

Today's design is inspired by Erika's (http://chloesnails.blogspot.com/) scotch tape manicures. She is so talented and can create amazing things with a piece of tape.

Here is the base colour I used - CND's Raspberry Parfait:

I added a little "rhinestone explosion"  (at least that it what it's supposed to look like) to the ring finger as silver glitter and bright pink are quite funky colours themselves.

After I had done the first couple of tips, I realised that this silver glitter was probably not the best polish to go over bright pink. Although I love the colour combo, the silver glitter was quite sheer and needed way too many coats which is never good if you are doing a tape mani.

My tips didn't come out as crisp as I wanted as a result of this.

Next on the list, I have to try the patchwork mani.

That's all for now. Have a great day/ evening :-)

xoxo