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!

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 :)

I'm Still Here...With a Bunch of Swatches!

Hi guys! Yep, so I'm checking in to let you know I'm still around. Sorry I've been MIA lately and haven't been updating my blog often. Sometimes life just happens, I've been extremely busy lately and probably won't be able to post as often as I'd like to.

Although I haven't had a lot of time or patience for nail art, I have been painting my nails regularly (can't stand the sight of my naked nails, lol!) and I've been posting all those pictures on Instagram. My IG name is '@nailstories', if you have an account you can follow me there too :)

Here are some of the polishes I've been wearing for the past few weeks. Apologies about the quality of the pictures, I don't use Photoshop or crop pictures before posting on Instagram.

Butter London - The Black Knight

Jade Holographic - Rosa (sent to me by Bia)

Nails Inc - Baker Street & Essence Prince Charming

OPI - It's My Year

Tip Top Nails - Fairy Dust & Nubar Violet Sparkle

Homemade gold leaf top coat (sent to me by @bedizzle)

The Hungry Asian - Strawberry (sent to me by @nic_tchelly)

Essie - Brooch The Subject

Essie - Splash of Grenadine & OPI Crown Me Already

Color Club - Glitter Wonderland

Thanks for visiting
xxx

Autumnal Gradient

I wore this two-tone red Autumnal gradient a couple of weeks ago. The weather had just started to change then, and the colours seemed season appropriate.
Since following Sammy's gradient tutorial, I find them a little easier to manage but I still get annoyed at the amount of polish I get around my finger and the clean up afterwards. I guess it's something I have to endure since I really love gradients!

For this gradient I used two shades of red. Butter London Come To Bed Red and Nails Inc Victoria. I have to say that CTBR is not my favourite of reds. It has a jelly-like finish and although I don't mind some vnl, I hate vnl with red polish. It needs 3 coats for full opacity.

I always feel the need to complete my gradients with a glitter or some sort of topper so I added CND 24K Sparkle Effect. I reminds me of fallen golden leaves and it also gives it a rustic looks. I'm not sure what version I prefer though! You?

Purple Clouds

Today I have another cloud mani to show you! It was so much fun doing a pink cloud accent a few weeks ago, that I just had to try a few more colour combos! This time a purple themed one!
One of the main reasons I really like cloud manis (other than looking cute) is because they are good "quick" manis! No lengthy drying times and no fiddling with tape!

For the base colour I used Nails Inc Elizabeth Street, a pinkish nude, China Glaze Senorita Bonita and for the darker cloud I used Mavala Mexico!

60's Red Polka Dot French

A nude and cherry red polka dot French. That's what I wanted to show you guys today! I thought it was very retro and 60's looking, hence the post title :)

Since I've been back, I've been so busy that my nails have been naked for a few days! I managed to finally paint my nails last night with a Speciallita polish I recently received in a swap and I will post that as soon as I've posted these last few manis I did before I went on holiday!

For this mani I used Nails Inc Elizabeth Street, a creamy nude shade with the slightest hint of rose. I use this polish very often as a base for funky Frenches! The tips and polka dots are Nails Inc Victoria, a dark cherry red which is much darker than what you can see in these pictures but as I just applied one coat over the tips, it looks lighter.

Thanks for reading and commenting :)

Beautiful dark cherry red - Nails Inc Tate

Hi everyone. It's been a while! I'm back now! I missed blogging a lot and have been trying to catch up for the past couple of days.
The 17 magnetized polish I wore for my holiday was completely chipped so although I'm very tired today, I had to remove it!

Today I have a Nails Inc polish called Tate to show you. This is a beautiful dark cherry red creme, great formula as expected of Nails Inc and fully opaque in 2 coats. If you live in the UK, grab the latest edition of Glamour magazine NOW!! They are giving away 4 different Nails Inc polishes for £2.00 each which is a bargain as they retail for about £11.00! (Tate, Piccadilly Circus, Victoria and Basil Street).

Switzerland was so breathtakingly beautiful! The nature there is just indescribable and the infrastructure and architecture can almost be called cute, so I have to share a few pics with you. If you are thinking of visiting, I recommend Interlaken and Lauterbrunnen.

Victoriana Teal Chevrons

I wasn't sure what to do with yesterday's mani. I fell in love with Victoriana so much that I didn't want to "ruin" it with nail art. Then again, I can't leave a mani alone, especially if I'm in the mood to do my nails again but don't yet want to remove my good polish! So I went for the safe option - tape! I was going to just go for french tips but instead decided on french tips with a twist!

Keeping with the blue, green, teal, silver micro-glitter, etc, theme; here are some Victorian(a) inspired teal chevrons. Additional polishes used were Zoya Trixie and Nails Inc In Style free polish in Teal.

Nails Inc Magnetic Polish - Trafalgar Square

A few weeks ago, I posted this information post about the 3 magnetic polishes Nails Inc were launching in September. I finally managed to get my hands on one of them - Trafalgar Square which is a metallic silver chrome.

As soon as I got home today, I knew the package was here and so I had to try this polish! Although I vaguely know how to work with magnetic polishes from reading other blogger's instructions, I still wanted to check the instructions on the bottle, but guess what? They were only in French! Lol!

Anyway, I suppose applying the magnetic polish wasn't very difficult, what I was worried about was not touching the wet polish with the magnet as you have to get it quite close to the nails for it to create a shape!
That isn't really a problem with this polish as the detachable lid (which holds the magnet) also has a rest lip to rest your finger up against so your hand won't shake at all and it allows you to get as close to the polish as you can without actually touching it (see pic 2).

1 coat of this polish is quite sheer (for me) so instead of using 2 coats which would mean I would run out of it much quicker, I applied a base coat of another silver polish (Miss Sporty - New Black) to make it more opaque. Dry time is quite fast. I still have to get my head around creating slightly different patterns with the same magnet!

I loved this polish so much (it creates a nice effect on the nail when you don't have much time for nail art) that I went straight onto the Nails Inc website and bought  Houses of Parliament and Big Ben!

Nails Inc Magnetic Nail Polish Collection - Launches September

Magnetic polish isn't a new thing by any stretch. It's been done before but I haven't yet seen bigger companies (other than L'Oreal and now apparently with Revlon announcing a line as well) jumping to accommodate this trend like they did for crackle/ shatter polishes. Do you think OPI or Essie will ever launch a magnetic line?

This picture is courtesy of Handbag.com

So I was quite surprised when I came across this post by British Beauty Blogger, Nails Inc are launching their own Magnetic polish collection in September (don't know exact launch date) and they will be available in 3 shades:

Big Ben - metallic gold
Trafalgar Square - metallic silver/chrome
Houses of Parliament - metallic blue

This picture is courtesy of cosmeticbusiness.com

Polishes will cost £12.00 which is only £1 more than regular Nails Inc polishes.

I searched the Internet for more information on this but couldn't find much apart from news that the collection will be launching in September and a bit of info on how magnetic polishes work -  Handbag, Fashion Monitor, Cosmetics Business.com and Kissandmakeup.tv. No info on the Nails Inc website either. Not sure why?

Pink Wednesday - Nails Inc. OMP (Oh My Pink!)

A few weeks ago, Nails Inc had a collaboration with Fabulous Magazine here in the UK where they were giving away 2 bottles in exchange for collecting 3 tokens from the News of the World newspaper (now non-existent). The papers were about £1 each and 2 Nails Inc polishes are worth about £22, so a bargain really!
The two colours were Atomic (which I have included for you guys in my giveaway) and OMP (Oh My Pink!).

As is the case with all my Nails Inc polishes, OMP was an absolute wonder to work with! A raspberry creme shade with defined undertones of red makes it a rose-reddish colour, almost like amaranth. It's a highly pigmented one-coater (so no problems with opacity) although the pictures below are 2 coats for smoothness (and because I can't help it but always use 2 coats)!

Barry M Instant Nail Effects - Black Crackle Polish

Hi guys,

I thought I'd post about crackle polish, particularly Nail Paint by Barry M Instant Nail Effects.

Crackle polish has been amongst the nail tech and nail blogger world for quite some time now. To be honest, the first time I heard about it was when OPI introduced the Katy Perry collection. I've tried both OPI and China Glaze's crackle polishes but was reluctant that a cheaper brand would have the same effect.

I must admit that I have not yet seen anyone wearing crackle polish in public, as in regular people I see on the train, in the store, at the gym, etc who are not in the "nail world" per say. Does anyone know why this is when its so readily available?

Anyway, I was searching through polishes at the local drug store and found that Boots is currently selling Barry M Nail Paint for buy 2 get 1 free. Regular polish retails for £2.99 and the crackle polishes for £3.99 so I bought myself these 3 little gems. Isn't the blueberry ice cream to die for?!

I was told to apply crackle polish as follows:

1 - Paint base coat - I did this with regular nail polish (i.e. they don't have to be the same brand as the crackle polish). Polishes I used were:

Barry M Nail Paint - Silver
Barry M Nail Paint - Bluberry Ice Cream
Nails Inc. - Coral
Jessica - Samba Parade
Boots 17 Lasting Fix - Mini skirt

If you are using black crackle, you should obviously opt for bright or even neon base coat so the contrast is more striking. Its really up to you what base coat to use as I've experimented with a few and the ones I thought wouldn't look good actually turned out nice.

2 - Paint crackle coat - Let the Base coat polish completely dry and simply put on a thin layer of crackle polish. The crackles will start to form straight away. I put on thin layers because I find that the thinner the  layer, the smaller the crackles. Thick layer = bigger crackles.
I love  the bright colours but I must say that I'm also loving the silver!

What's your favourite base coat colour for crackle? How about multi colour base coats?

3 - Paint Top coat - As with regular polish, a top coat will help seal in the polish and protect the crackle effect on the nail.
The good thing is, I have worn crackle on my nails for nearly 2 weeks once and although the polish was starting to chip, you couldn't really tell because the crackle is a messy look in itself! :-)

P.S. - I apologise for the picture quality. I don't have a very good camera and it was night time. Also for the false nails. I had freshly manicured nails and din't have anyone willing to let me use their nails :-(

Thanks for reading guys.