Boots 17 Holo Nail Polish

So I went shopping for some make-up the other day and I nearly escaped without buying any nail varnish but a new one from boots own brand 17 caught my eye. It's a holographic silver, I own a few already but for £3.99 I figured one more wouldn't hurt.

The nail polish went on really smoothly, I found 2 thin coats were opaque enough for me. It did not need a top coat so I didn't use one in case it dulled the holographic effect.

I might grab a few spares of this as I think it would be really good for stamping with as well. It has changed my mind about the brand as I considered it to be just "cheap" but they seem like good quality, over all I'm made up with it.

Available from Boots online and in-store.

Models Own Wonderland Collection Part 2 (with a real camera)

So I managed to borrow a camera :) Here's a few pictures of Jack Frost over Color Club Revvvolution (as I've run out out of plain black :-S) with a foil accent nail.

Models Own Wonderland Collection

First off, sorry for the absence, I'm a bad blogger, lol. I have no camera and I've started a nail technician course so I'm not actually painting my nails all that much, I generally have someone else on the course do them for me so its not all bad. Models Own have a brand new collection called "Wonderland" that are all super glitzy, they are on sale on the website from Oct 12th but available in Boots stores and their flagship store in London as of now. I only picked up 3 of the 5 as I have something similar to the other 2 already, aren't I good?

I picked up Jack Frost, a blue/pink shifting glitter, Snowflake, iridescent shards and Southern Lights which is a light purple holographic glitter. Please excuse the terrible grid photo, instagram style. I really need to sort out a camera ASAP.

My favourite is Jack Frost, its easy to apply and dries quickly. It looks really nice over dark colours but looks completely different over light ones, so might look interesting over a gradient mani.
Snowflake looks great in the bottle but just appeared golden on the red and green I used, so very Christmas appropriate, it was a little difficult to apply like most "shard" polishes.
Last but not least was Southern Lights, super pretty but the purple was a little too subtle to me, maybe I need to layer it over a dark purple to show it off better, it did dry nice and quickly as well.
I am really glad I picked up all 3 though as I'm sure I'll use them lots over the next few months.

Summer Fun Challenge Day 8 - Last Day :(

I can't believe this is the last of the challenge, it went so quick but it was great fun. So thanks to Lindsey at Neverland Nail Blog for organising it. Todays mani was an anything goes sort of deal and this week my Rainbow Honey glitters had arrived so I wanted to use one of those.

I used 2 coats of Zoya Zuza as a base, which is a stunning polish all on its own and then 2 coats of Rainbow Honey's 20% Cooler, it went on really easily. Its packed full of glitter and shimmer. I added a thick topcoat to smooth it out.

Below is a bottle shot to show how complex and shiny it is, lol.

This is Zoya Zuza on its own, it applies perfectly and dries super quick, I cant fault it.

Summer Fun Challenge Day 7

Let me first of all apologise for the bad pictures, I can't find my camera :-O so I had to use my phone.

Today's challenge is the second to last one, "Summer Stylin'" Were we are supposed to create a mani based on our favourite piece of summer fashion. So I went with something Black Milk inspired. Black Milk is my new obsession. I did this design to go with their Owl Swimsuit, scroll down the page for a picture.

I used my faithful A-England Camelot for the black base and used Bundle Monster Stamp no. 309 for the owl designs. I then, not so carefully dotted some Color Club Antique on the owls body and mixed Antique with Bettina Starfish for the eyes and detail on the flowers to help coordinate the colours with the swim suit.

Edit: Here's a pic from the camera, I added some metallic orange stripes

Summer Fun Challenge Day 6

Super quick one today. Day 6 of the Summer Fun Challenge, hosted by Lindsey of Neverland Nail Blog, the theme was "The Big Blue". So I went with a super pretty blue from Nubar called Night Sparkle and added Pure Ice's Heartbreaker to give it a green shimmer. I used one of the new Bundle Monster plates (number 307) and stamped on a few octopuses 

Below is a picture of Nubar Night Sparkle on its own, its a really dense glitter which goes on easily but has a very gritty texture.

Only 2 more challenges to go.

Summer Fun Challenge - Day 5

Here is my mani for the 5th day of the Summer Fun Challenge. I know I'm a day early but I'll be out and about tomorrow so wont have a chance to put this up.
The theme was "most creative road trip or vacation mani". As I've only been away once since I started doing my nails obsessively, lol, this was simple for me. I don't know why I didn't photograph this the first time round but hey ho.

I used Dior Waterlily as a base. I love this polish, it has a great brush and applies easily, dries fast and smells lovely :-) I then added Girly Bits Cosmic Ocean to enhance the sparkle. I used A-England Dragon and A-England Saint George for the dots.

Dior Waterlily

Dior Waterlily with Cosmic Ocean

Summer Fun Challenge - Day 4

Day 4: We like it Hot, Hot, Hot! Design your nails to match the summers scorching temperatures. Don't burn yourself though :)

This made picking colours easy. I went with something nice and easy to do today as I didn't have much time.
I used 2 coats of yellow Bettina as a base coat and then used "starfish" and red for the drips.

I like how this looks from far away but I think I could have done with a slightly darker red so it showed up more.

Summer Fun Challenge - Day 3

Pool Party is the theme for today's challenge "Make a splash with a pool party inspired mani, Swimsuits, floaties and sunscreen...oh my!"
So my first thought was to do something water related, until I noticed Day 6 calls for water/ocean nails, silly me.
Luckily I spied my swimsuit out the corner of my eye and realised that would be fun to replicate. Although the colours aren't very summery (black/white/grey) the swimsuit always works with whatever colour my hair is at the time, so its a favourite and I figured the nails would work too.

I used 2 coats of Bettina Marshmallow and then used my Bundle Monster leopard print stamp as I was too lazy to freehand :) and then dotted on some grey. Although my camera had issues focusing these came out looking really clean and look like stickers so I was happy with them.

Summer Fun Challenge - Day 2

On to my second mani of the day :)

This is part of the Summer Fun Challenge started by Lindsey of Neverland Nail Blog. The titles of this one is "Summer Lovin'" So for the summer part I went with neon colours and the love part had to be hearts really :)

My camera refused to take a decent colour matching photo of this but oh well. The base was Neon Lime from Kleancolor, which is a really pale neon green and I used Konad's Neon Pink to stamp the hearts on and their Neon Green to dot with. It looked better under my uv lamp.

I've been really liking neons lately but I didn't like this mani at all, its so not me :) Also when I went in the bath the neon colours darkened a little which is strange.

Summer Fun Challenge - Day 1

I'm 2 days late with this but as my college tutors always said to me - better late than never :)
This is another challenge set by Lindsey from Neverland Nail Blog. I really enjoyed doing the girly-girl one so I wanted to give this a try.

So today as I'm catching up I will be doing 2 mani's but I'll do 2 separate posts.

The first challenge is Grill Master. I was going to do flames with a black background but then I decided I wanted to do something a little less literal.

I used a base of Illamasqua Raindrops to represent smoke and rain, as to be honest whenever we plan a BBQ it ends up raining, lol. And then did "flaming" dots on top. I used yellow, starfish and red Bettina's and a hair pin as a dotting tool. I really am happy with how this turned out.

Here's a close up of raindrops, its such a pretty polish.

And in the bottle.

Next up is Summer lovin'...I love Grease :)

Black and white

I decided I wanted to do a bit of nail art yesterday but was in a bit of a hurry so had to go with some thing simple. I decided to use the technique I tried in the girly-girl challenge in march. I went with a black and white colour scheme.

This is really easy to do, you just paint half your nail with one colour, using a lot of polish and then paint the other half with the other colour, again using a lot of polish. Then use a pin or small dotting tool to mix the two shades together. I used A-England Camelot and Bettina Marshmallow, both really nice opaque polishes.

Color Club All About Color Set with Neons!

I picked up this and a few other sets in my local TK Maxx shop for a whole £9.99 for 7 polishes. 4 of them glow nicely under UV light.

I tried them all out, all of them needed 2 coats and dried fairly quickly. For the neons I used a white base coat as this seems to be better than trying to get them to be opaque on their own and it makes the colour nice and bright.

Here is the orange under a UV light:

The pink is slight darker and more neon in real life.

I, for some reason, only did one coat of the purple, which is a shame. Its a really nice purple and looks less blue tinged in real life, I think it'd make a nice gradient mani with one of the neon pinks.

I really liked this green, its minty and it still glows a little under the UV light.

This is slightly more purple and slightly darker in real life

Nerd Lacquer: Dont Panic!...And I'm Back :-)

I can't believe how long its been since I last posted. I went on holiday and then I got the flu, so I haven't painted my nails much. I have got lots of untried though so hopefully I'll get back in to the swing of things and post regularly again. I need to sort of my comments and stuff as it looks like I've been nominated for a few awards - thanks guys x

I wanted to wear Nerd Lacquer: Don't Panic on its own but It just looked a little too thick with more than one coat so I used Zoya Meg as underwear. Zoya Meg is such a great shade of green, its a foil so it dried quickly and applied easily, I didn't think it looked streaky at all but I forgot to take a picture of it on its own. I used one coat of Meg and one coat of Don't Panic.

Normally I'd link to Nerd Lacquers etsy shop or Harlowe and Co. The etsy shop appears to be closed and Harlowe and Co have stopped selling Amanda's polishes for now but I'll update this if they become available again.

I think it looks like a green version of Deborah Lippmanns Mermaid's Dream, what do you think?

A very late St Paddy's Day Mani

I completely forgot to put these pictures up. This is what I wore for St.Patrick's Day.

My dad changed the lens on the camera and I didn't want to ruin my nails changing it back to my usual one so the pictures are a little strange :)

It was a fun mani to do and pretty quick, other than having to let the varnish dry between coats :)

I used two coats of Illamasqua radium as a base and made these shapes in the corner with Bettina Mojito and an old unnamed yellow polish I had lying around. I used Bettina Disco on my ring finger to glitz it up and popped some dots on there for good measure.