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:

NOTD: Apricot Punch Summer Flowers

Today I wanted to show you a summery mani I did using Apricot Punch from Rimmel London's I Love Fruities Lasting Finish Collection. The polishes in this collection smell great and the fragrance surprisingly lasts a long time on the nails. I couldn't stop smelling my nails!!

Apricot Punch is a subtle coral creme, very similar to a salmon coloured polish I have. I like the consistency of this polish and in my opinion, it is slightly better than their 60 seconds range. Opacity is good with 2 coats and I had no problems with streaks. The only downside is the 8ml bottle, I wish they came in slightly larger bottles of 14ml.

I then stamped with BM224 and Konad white stamping polish and added some french tips of a complementary colour - Nails Inc Coral.
I add some sort of tips to a lot of my manis. I first saw this on Erika's blog, started doing it and now I have to tip almost everything!!! Her manis are amazing and inspire me a lot.

I've created a Green Gooey Crackling Monster (with a little sparkle)...

...yes I did !!! What was I thinking?! When I finished this mani, I couldn't help but laugh.
I used a really nice shimmery neon green by La Femme as a base colour and was planning to do a tape mani. However, this polish bubbled so much (I'm still not quite sure why) that I decided to do a glitter and crackle sandwich instead.

The end result is something out of Men in Black that went splat! Lol! I won't even tell you how many layers there are in this sandwich *hangs head*!
I'm happy I played around with crackle polish though, which I don't do very often at all.

Here is 3 coats of La Femme neon green (bottle is nameless):

And then...

Pink Wednesday!!! - Polka Dots with a Kick & Color Club In Bloom!

For today's Pink Wednesday I am actually going to show you a mani I did a couple of weeks ago. My nails were still a little long back then and I had them filed in an oval shape - won't be doing that again anytime soon!!! I don't think it suits me at all, I'm more of a square gal! Lol!!

Anyway, onto the mani... I used Color Club In Bloom as the base colour, a true creme Barbie pink with the tiniest amount of shimmer, almost undetectable. Visible in the bottle and on the brush but doesn't translate to the nail!
I then taped off diagonal and "V" shaped sections of the nails and used Rimmel London 60 Seconds Black Out before using a dotting tool to create white larger dots and pink smaller dots. I got the inspiration for this mani from Love4Nails YouTube tutorial. Check it out, this lady is extremely talented and her nails are beautifully long. I wish I could keep mine like that but they would snap in a blink of an eye!

And here is how In Bloom looks like on its own:

Beaded French Tips

Ok, so I have to admit... I don't always have the best ideas for manis. Other times, the ideas are actually good but when I translate them onto the nail, it all goes splat!!
That's exactly what happened with this mani. I wanted to use some bullion beads for diagonal french tips but oh boy!!! Were they hard to stick down in a straight line!!

Sinful Colors Dream On, which I used for the base colour, is an electric purple with hot pink undertones which dries matte because it's a neon and that was how I intended to keep it to contrast with the glossy OPI Lucky Lucky Lavender tips!!!...But oh no... I had to add 2 coats of top coat to keep the beads in place (whose colour also smudged!):

Here is 3 coats of Dream On while it was still satin matte. BTW, I have used Dream On on my nails before and once on my cousin's nails. On both occasions, if left matte with no top coat, it chips within 24 hours :-(

NOTD: China Glaze Wagon Trail Rays of Light Mani

Hey guys! Today I wanted to show you a quick and simple funky french mani with "rays of light"on the accent finger. I used China Glaze Wagon Trail from the Rodeo Diva Collection as the base colour and I have to say that this will now be one of my favourite autumn/ winter colours! I love China Glaze but it's so hard to get hold of here in the UK unless we get it shipped from the US, which I'm avoiding at the moment because of shipping costs and custom problems :-(

I love the colour of this polish. It's a sort of golden green packed with even more olive green and gold micro shimmer. There are also different coloured shimmers thrown in there and in one of the pictures below you will be able to see some red shimmer! I love polishes that are unique, this one is definitely it! I am so happy with the formula as well. The consistency is just perfect (not thin but not thick and goopy either) and it was beautifully opaque in 2 coats.
The ring finger is Miss Sporty Gold Backstage, part of their Clubbing Colours range. I also used it for the French Tips:

 

Laser Mani - Missguided Misstique over China Glaze Sugar High

Hi Everyone. Using China Glaze's Sugar High mani I did for Pink Wednesday (I didn't want to take it off, I love the colour so much), I decided to do a laser tape mani inspired by Jane.  It would have been a lightning bolt but I'm still trying to get the tape right on that one! Lol!

I think these colours go really well together and I can even still see a little bit of the CND Violet Simmer I layered over Sugar High. Barbie would be so proud :-)

 

xoxo