Cuccio Colour - I Left My Heart In San Francisco

Last year at the Olympia Beauty Show, I came across a stand of Cuccio products. I had never heard of the brand before that, as we don't see a lot of their polishes floating around the blogosphere. I've done some research into it and other than a few bottles for sale on Amazon, it seems to be sold for trade only. That's such a shame because I absolutely adored the formula and they have the most gorgeous range of shades and cool names to match.

Cuccio describe their polish as:
"Cuccio Colour™ Professional Nail Lacquer is formulated with Triple Pigmentation Technology for rich coverage in one coat and true coverage in two coats. For the Love of Colour™. Contains no DBP or toluene."

I'm not sure what "Triple Pigmentation Technology" is but I'm happy about the fact that it contains no DBP or Toluene.

I fell in love with this pale pink milky shade called "I Left My Heart In San Francisco". It's appropriate for every occasion and such a great palatte cleanser. Another reason I'm really happy with this polish is durability. It was like wearing gel polish. It stayed put for literally 11 days, no chipping. There was already substantial nail growth and the polish was still intact. I was very impressed. I'm glad I picked up four different shades to try. On my ring finger I have OPI Crown Me Already.

If anyone knows where I can buy this brand, please do let me know.

Subtle Nude & Gold

Yesterday, I was sitting in front of my helmer and didn't know what colour to go for or what kind of nail art to do. Whenever this happens I usually opt for a nude polish.
I wore OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons (Germany 2012 Collection) for a day on it's own and then decided to do some subtle stamping (using Barry M Gold Foil and Cheeky plate CH14). I love nude polish and am on a quest to own them all (haha!) but the stamping was a little too subtle for me, maybe next time I should keep to white or black stamping.

Don't Pretzel My Buttons on it's own, a very flattering nude on all skin tones I've seen. It's slightly cooler toned than in the pictures above but that's simply because it was taken on a different day with different lighting.

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

OPI - Live And Let Die (James Bond 007 Skyfall Collection 2012)

Today I have another one of my picks from the OPI Skyfall James Bond Collection to show you. This dark shade really captured my attention. It's a blackened green creme packed with gold flecks. It is very dark but the green tinges are still visible, even in dim lighting. A perfect winter colour in my opinion, I can see myself using this shade a lot in the coming months. I can't say a single bad thing about the formula either. It's buttery perfection in one coat.

I thought that adding a little extra gold wouldn't go amiss so inspired by one of my Instagram friends, Nic, I added chevrons to the accent nail and some loose gold glitter.

Two Tone Purple Chevrons

I really fell in love with this two-tone chevron design when I saw one of my favourite Instagramers, Rachell, doing it in blue and pink! When I'm not doing nail art on all 10 nails, I'm a one-colour-with-ring-finger-accent kind of person, so it's novelty to wear two accent nails and alternative colours on all other nails! I love it.

I used scotch tape for the not so neat chevrons. I had a little trouble with the scotch tape this time, it kept pulling off my base polish so in the end I just gave up and my chevrons ended up being different sizes. Ugghh!! A not so good nail day overall!

The polishes I used to create this look were Kiko 332 and OPI Lincoln Park After Dark, one of my favourite winter polishes. The glitter base on the accent nails is Accessorize Crystal Shimmer.  

OPI - Casino Royale (James Bond 007 Skyfall Collection 2012)

This is Casino Royale from the OPI James Bond 2012 collection. I was really excited to try this one. It's a perfect bright and rich plum creme with magenta and red undertones. A killer shade for Autumn/ Winter and I love that it's not too dark that it looks almost black. I found it to be lighter and brighter than the bottle swatches I had previously seen and love it even more for that. It's sexy and vampy yet such a classy and warm colour too.

I think this may be the base polish used in the promotional picture for Man With The Golden Gun. As it looks so well with gold (and sadly I don't have Man With The Golden Gun), I added a gold leopard accent with Orly Glitz and Glamour which as it turns out, reminds me of Golden Eye because of how saturated the gold flecks are.

I'm so glad I picked up a bottle of this after turning my nose up at it during my first browse around the OPI stand!

OPI - On Her Majesty's Secret Service (James Bond 007 Skyfall Collection 2012)

Of all the goodies I got at yesterday's Olympia Beauty Show haul, the OPI James Bond Skyfall polishes were the ones I was itching to try first. So as soon as I had a little time to change my mani, I swatched On Her Majesty's Secret Service, part of "The Dangerous" shades.

It's a navy blue/ grey'ish sheer base packed with green, gold and blue shimmer and micro glitter. You can also see red and purple in some lighting. It's an interesting mix of glitters but because of the sheer base, it does need 3 coats for full opacity if not layered over any base colour.

What do you think of On Her Majesty's Secret Service?

Olympia Beauty Show Haul

Today I was lucky enough to be able to go to the Olympia Beauty Exhibition. Well, depends which way you look at it, considering the damage to my credit card! If you are a nail polish hoarder or beauty junkie, this place is like heaven! There were so many pretty polish stands, I didn't know where to turn!

Everything was so clean and neat on the Essie and OPI stands, they were both packed with people browsing and grabbing bottles but the crowds and queues weren't as bad as I thought they would be. OPI had the entire Skyfall collection in stock apart from The Man With The Golden Gun which I wanted to badly but the lady said they sold out about 1 hour after the doors opened!

Here's some of the stuff I bought:

Skyfall Collection:. L-R: On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Live And Let Die, Casino Royale, You Only Live Twice.

Some other OPI's I was lemming. L-R: Hot & Spicy, Pirouette My Whistle, You Callin' Me A Lyre?, Don't Pretzel My Buttons, Every Month Is Oktoberfest.

OPI was selling for £5.80. Some of the American girls on Instagram were shocked at this "discounted" price as that is what they would usually pay normal price. However, OPI is very expensive in the UK and there are hardly any sales ever, so this is an awesome price for us.

Color Club In True Fashion and some of the Winter Affair 2012 Collection. L-R: Gift of Sparkle, Winter Affair, Glitter Wonderland, Berry And Bright, Editorial.

Some random China Glaze lemmings (Lubu Heels, Ruby Pumps, I Herd That and the only 2 that caught my eye from the Wicked Halloween 2012 collection - Cast A Spell and Make A Spectacle.

L-R: Throw Me Something Purple Please, Uptown Glamour, That's My Little Secret, BreakAway, Indescribable.
Misa was selling for £2 so I grabbed these. I really like Misa and it's really difficult to get our hands on this brand in the UK!

L-R: Night Sparkle, Hieroglyphys Purple, Stylish Peacock, Lavender, Beaute, Twlight Kiss. Nubar was 6 polishes for £20.

To be completely honest, Cuccio is a brand I have never heard of but they did have a vast array of colours on their stand. I couldn't help getting some of these nudes and pinks. The formulas look very good, we'll see.

Phew! I'd been saving up for a while when I found out I had a ticket to this event! It is well worth saving up for if you stick to a budget throughout the rest of the year! This obviously means I won't be buying anymore polish for a very long time!

Glittery French Chevrons

How about a palate cleanser? I haven't worn a typical French Manicure in at least 3 years. Before I got really into nail polish, I used to love them and would sway back and forth between typical frenchies, red and dark polishes like OPI Lincoln Park After Dark and You Don't Know Jacques.

I changed it up a little and with the chevron tips instead of regular smile lines and with a holo glitter topper, Crystal Shimmer by Accessorize. I really enjoyed wearing this, mostly because I haven't worn a french manicure in such a long time.

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!

Muted Green With a Stroke of Sparkle

Today I have another Polished by KPT pretty to show you. This is her Spectraflair top coat which is also for sale in two grades in her online shop.
This is a mini bottle but both grades also come in full size bottles. And because Katherine is a sweetheart and wants to share the luuurve, there is also a step-by-step tutorial on her instagram page on how she mixes up her Spectraflair top coats. So if you have Instagram, check it out. Her username is @kptran.

Here I layered one coat of spectraflair over OPI Thanks a Windmillion (Holland Collection) which was sent to me by the lovely Bridget from Polish oh my! I only layered one coat because I don't want this pretty baby to finish but I really like the subtle sparkle effect. If you want a stronger holo effect, more coats will be needed.

Bridget couldn't quite believe I didn't own a muted green shade like this so she immediately sent me a bottle. I love it! It has a slight pastel look to it, although probably a little too dark to qualify as a pastel! Maybe a murky pastel?!

The product(s) in this post were provided by the manufacturer or their PR for my honest review.

An Almost Rainbow of Butterflies

Today's mani which I did about a week ago, started out as an experiment. I had never stamped with more than one colour before and I wanted to find out how easy or difficult it is because I like the final results so much. It turns out, it's quite simple and not very messy as long as you work fast (if you are using regular polish).

The 3 colours I used are very cheap polishes (I don't like to waste my good polish on stamping) and I think it came out really well. The colours are vivid and show enough for my liking. I got quite a few compliments on this mani. A few people asked me if I was wearing stickers or press-ons, so I guess that's a compliment. At one point I just said yes after I tried to explain to the first girl that it's all polish and stamped with 3 different colours. She looked confused and sceptical!

Flip Flop Fantasy gets Crowned Already!

Today I have another mani from the vault to show you. I posted this one on Instagram back in July (it's inspired by Lisa Beth who I follow on IG) but as I was literally on my way to the airport, I didn't have time to write a blog post about it.

Usually summer holiday mani equals neons for me. And what better neon than China Glaze Flip Flop Fantasy to relax at the beach and pool with! This is two coats (such a pain to photograph) with two coats of OPI Crown Me Already on the accent finger. I also added some loose silver hex glitter to each of the half moons and quite a bit to the accent finger to make Crown Me Already pop a little more.

Boyish Chic Polka Dots & Bows

Today I have yet another review for you guys - Born Pretty m-59 stamping plate. I find this plate, consisting of cute bows, hearts and snow flakes very versatile, probably because it has some of my favourite images. It's round and the same size as regular Konad or Bundle Monster plates (unlike the m71 which is the only other Born Pretty plate I've tried).

As you'll probably know from my previous review, I have had good experiences with Born Pretty stamping plates although I have purposely chosen small picture plates as opposed to full nail plates to avoid problems with image size and full nail coverage, etc.

The images are well engraved and detailed, thus transfer with ease onto the nail. This plate retails for $2.99 and I would definitely recommend if you are looking for a cheaper alternative to Konad. To purchase this plate or any other items on the Born Pretty online store, you can use my discount code - VA7J61 - to get 7% off.

The base colour for this mani is OPI I Don't Give A Rotterdam which I received in a swap. This grey toned muted periwinkle packed with silver glass fleck shimmer was my favourite colour from the Holland Collection. For some reason it looks much more grey'ish than blue on me so I shall have to use 3 coats next time.

I used the polka dot image on the plate and kept with the theme on the remaining nails too. To keep the mani quite soft and subdued, I chose a complementing silver polish - Barry M Silver Foil. I liked the final result of contrasting feminine and masculine qualities - bows and polka dots yet they look boyish and muted!

Pastel Watercolour Zebra

Today's design has been on my "to do" list for such a long time. I've always wanted to try a pastel watercolour technique but I don't really like it when all the colours look too messy on the nail. So I only let the four colours I used for this design overlap slightly.

I started with a white base (OPI Alpine Snow) and also used the following polishes to create the watercolour effect - Yes Love 243 (yellow), Yes Love Y17 (pink), Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream and Rimmel London Misty Jade. All of these pastels together remind me of soft scoop ice cream :)

I finally stamped with BM223 (probably my most used BM plate) for a subtle zebra effect.

Untrieds: OPI DS Magic

Today I have a very special polish to show you. Well, it's special to me because I love anything blue and it's my first ever OPI Designer Series. I received it in a recent swap with one of my IG girlies (Marcie) and couldn't wait to try it. I am also trying to decrease the amount of untrieds I have because it's gotten to the point where it's actually becoming a little silly - my untrieds box has more polish than my regular tried stash! >.< I'm not complaining though! It feels like Christmas every time I open that box :)

OPI DS Magic is a blue and purple duochrome which is very evident on the bottle but sadly doesn't translate onto the nail. It doesn't take away from the fact that it's still a beautiful rich blue packed with glass flecks. I also love the formula on these types of polishes, it's wonderfully easy to work with. The first coat goes on streaky and sheer but a second coat provides full coverage.

Look how pretty the bottle shot is! I want exactly that on my nails!