Best of British Roundup - 28/10/2012

Hello everyone!

It's time for another weekly roundup, take a look at what all these lovely ladies have been up to over the past week :)

Emma's Quest for the Holy Grail continues with some unusually successful watermarbling and other foes to face including this triple colour striping mani at Emma's Little Corner

Claire at nuthin' but a nail thing is getting Halloween started early with a SPOOKY MANICURE! Aroooooooooooooooo!

Jazz at Glitter Infatuation has been having fun with the new W7 Glitters, Mosaic, Glitter Dazzle and Salt and Pepper!Glitter is appropriate no matter what the occasion.

Over at Pie's Eyes Lyndsay shows off her Good Food Show Theme Manicure which she wore last weekend.

Jo at Northern Nails is going to a Halloween party tonight and will be wearing this mani!

This week The Teenage Shopaholic has been... scaring herself silly! She was wearing China Glaze Midtown Magic to a horror movie marathon sleepover!

Sam at Polished Art is 'feeling the love tonight' with her Lion King inspired manicure for the 31 Day Challenge (yep, that's still going!).

Wendy at Wendy's Delights shows us her Green Glitter Nails for Llama Nails A-Z challenge

PishPosh and Polish's Kerrie has been having fun with her new Brazilian polishes this week. Also she has been swatching Pretty and Polished Candy Corn Is it orange? Is It Yellow? This mood changing polish is both!

Danielle has had a busy week this week so drafted in some help from Rachel at Phoenix Nails who created an awesome Halloween Mani for her Guest Post at Totally Nailed

Enigmatic Rambles has been getting her freehand on this week with MEG and MOG do you remember them?

Kerry at JustTalkNails has done a manicure of Ghoulish Ghosts with a host of Barry M nail paints.

Laura at She Who Does Nails had a go at freehanding a pattern she found on Pinterest this week.

Carlyn has spent the week decorating so not many posts but friday she went nail polish crazy Nail Polish Haul Going to have fun swatching all these

Vic's been playing with some of the Orly Fired Up collection for Fall and creating some Autumn Jewels.


Abi at Volatile Varnish experiemented with silver stamping over Gosh Holographic Hero and got some really cool results.

Rachel at Phoenix Nails wore it pink for Breast Cancer Campaign's Wear it Pink Day with a pretty Monarch Butterfly mani

8 Spooky Nights Challenge - Candy

Hello everyone!
It's day three of the 8 Spooky Nights Challenge and the theme of todays post is candy! I really struggled with this theme as Halloween isn't very big in the UK so we don't get loads of cool sweets and stuff like the Americans do. However, I decided to base my nail art on what my family gives out to trick or treaters on Halloween...

My family always gives out these amazing sweets, I never remember the name of them but they're little sweets and when you bite into them they ooze out juice and they're just amazing! So that's what my nail art is based on :P I was originally going to do candy corn as it's pretty recognisable to everyone but I thought it wouldn't be very creative for me.

For these nails I used three coats of a franken I made that is still unnamed. I then added a oozing tip of colour using OPI Pink Friday, OPI Rumples Wiggin', OPI Fly & OPI Who The Shrek Are You? (L-R)

I apologise for the crappy pictures, my camera doesn't like me juts recently. I'm getting it sorted soon thouhg! :D I quite like these nails even though they're quite simple, I think they're good if you want some subtle nails with a small spalsh of colour to liven them up :)

Thanks for reading :)

8 Spooky Nights Challenge - Vampires

Hello everyone!

Today I have another post from the 8 spooky nights nail art challenge! Today's theme was vampires and I was so excited for this one. Originally I was going to do anti-vampire nail art with stakes and garlic and things that vampires don't like :P Then I changed my mind and decided to challenge myself, here's what I came up with...

For these nails I used two coats of Sally Hansen Iced Coffee for the base on all nails, I then used red, black and white acrylic paints to create the lips and teeth using a small nail art brush. These took me around an hour to create, I was getting so frustrated with the lips and teeth :P

Whenever I think of vampires I always think of their teeth first so this is what I decided to base my nail art on. I honestly thought these would turn out terrible because there's so much detail in not much space. I'm actually really pleased with how they turned out though! :) 

What do you guys think?

Thanks for reading :)

Heres the other ladies who are taking part:

Peace Love Lacquer

XO, Noelle

College Polished

PishPosh & Polish

Beauty Dish

Nail By Katie

Jenerally Speaking 

Galactic Lacquer 

Tres' Chic Nails 

Charlottes-nails 

Manic Manis

The Life, Time and Lacquers of Lilmoon

Makeup and Nails, Not War

Not Too Polished

Mimi Manicures

Seriously Swatched

Jilltastic Nail Designs

8 Spooky Nights Challenge - Skulls

Hello everyone!

Today I start another nail art challenge! It's called 8 spooky nights and it's based around Halloween, so obviously I had to join in as I love Halloween! :P Here's a list of all the themes...

 

So todays theme was skulls and as soon as I saw this, I thought of sugar skulls so that's what I went with. Here's how they turned out...

 For these nails I used two coats of Barry M White as a base on all of my nails. I then added dots in Revlon Lunar, OPI Pink Friday, Essie Tour Ded Finance using a variety of different sized dotting tools. I then used a small nail art brush dipped in acetone to create the hollowed cheeks at the sides of my nails.

Overall I'm quite pleased with these nails, I think they could have turned out a lot better but I'm still pleased with my first attempt at sugar skulls. I may attempt these again in a few days time so keep an eye out for that :P I apologise for this being quite a short post today but I think the pictures speak for themselves.

Here's a list of the other ladies taking part:

Peace Love Lacquer

XO, Noelle

College Polished

PishPosh & Polish

Beauty Dish

Nail By Katie

Jenerally Speaking 

Galactic Lacquer 

Tres' Chic Nails 

Charlottes-nails 

Manic Manis

The Life, Time and Lacquers of Lilmoon

Makeup and Nails, Not War

Not Too Polished

Mimi Manicures

Seriously Swatched

8 Spooky Nights

Jilltastic Nail Designs

Thanks for reading :)

Best of British Roundup - 21/10/2012

Hello everyone!

It's time again for another Best of British Roundup post. I hope you enjoy reading what these lovely ladies have come up with :)

Emma has started a Quest for the Holy Grail in honour of the retirement of the a-england shade she has rarely used and is now trying to use it in a personal Holy Grail challenge at Emma's Little Corner

Mimi does freestyle Halloween nails funky halloween nails

Lyndsay at Pie's Eyes has taken a delivery of some new Christmas themed HB image plates for stamping with and has been trying them out to see how they perform

In need of distracting this week Enigmatic Rambles' spent waay to much time painting frog eyes on her nails for a Sat-ART-Day nail challenge.

Claire at nuthin' but a nail thing has been doing some checkerboard themed manicures. Pink, White and Black and a more spangly Blue, Black and White checkerboard mani, which do you prefer?

Sam at Polished Art has made her second and final attempt at water marbling for the 31 Day Challenge. Never again!

More Halloween spookiness over at Never Mind Suzi, Steph is playing with ZOMBIES

Jo at Northern Nails has been entering a few competitions this week, from skulls to coming up with Taglines!, She has also joined in with Pink October, with a lovely pink bead mani !

Polished Criminails has been busy showing us the OPI - Skyfall Collection this week in her Skyfall Swatch Series with an added insight to each of the corresponding James Bond films

Vic's been carrying on with the Halloween theme but has also managed to fit in some non-Halloween related nail art. Her Frogs mani fits somewhere in between. Check out the cute pic of her two year old who insisted on getting frogs on his nails too!

Jazz has been continuing with her love/hate affair with frankens and has also been divulging in a little bit of halloween nail art! Frankens! Glitter is appropriate no matter what the occasion!

Ruth finally posted up her first fishtail attempt this week!

Carlyn has fallen in love with OPI Diva of Geneva A gorgeous shimmering red then added a rose stamping design

Charlotte at Charlottes-nails has swatched a polish from Born Pretty Store for a review post this week.

Wendy from Wendy's Delights has been going round in circles with her new Circular Magnetic & Magnetic Polish and while your over at Wendy's Delights check out her Nail Foil for the Llama A-Z Challenge

Kerrie from PishPosh and Polish has been on holiday this week. She decided to try out some Sally Hansen Nail Effect Wraps to create Denim Nails and loves the result!

Mimi tries her hand at freestyle nails Halloween and thinks they are really cool!

Danielle gives her first tutorial on Black velvet manicure at Totally Nailed

This week, The Crumpet has done a series of posts for Depression Awareness. Feel free to join in and share your story, or do a green mani in support

Kerry at JustTalkNails has gone all out for Halloween with Daring Digits Trick or Treat a perfect Halloween glitter.

Here is a pastel green manicure with a glitzy difference for Abi's first post back at Volatile Varnish.

This week Sally of NailPron bared her soul with a green manicure and came out as an anxiety survivor, oh and she broke the news about the new Speciallita Hits Glitter World polishes

Fall Into Autumn Challenge - Football

Hello everyone!

Today I have another post from the Fall Into Autumn Challenge, I'm slowly but surely catching up with the other ladies who are taking part. I'm also looking forward to some of the other upcoming posts I have planned for you all.

I really struggled with this theme as most of the ladies taking part are American so their interpretation is a lot different to ours. I really didn;t feel like attempting any fancy nail art to create a football teams badge or anything so I took the colours and patterns and came up with something I like...

 For these nails I used three coats of Sweet color #232 on all my nails except the accent nail, which was 3 coats of W7 Salt N Pepper. I then added two coats of Lynnderella Connect The Dots over all the green nails.

 My idea behind these nails was to take the green of the football pitch and the black and white colours of a football and combine them together. I think these ideas worked quite well together and I really enjoy the overall look they created on my nails.

Overall, this challenge was quite difficult but once I had came up with an idea I was very pleased with the end result :) I would have loved to have freehanded some footballs onto my nails but I know it would have turned out looking awful :P I can't wait for you all to see what I have in store for you in the coming days and weeks :)

Thanks for reading :)

Born Pretty Store Product Review

Hello everyone!

Sorry for not posting much recently, uni has been absolutly crazy but I've caught up on posts this week so you'll be seeing a lot more from me!

Recently, I was contacted by Born Pretty Store to review some products for them, I chose a beautiful nail polish available from this link: http://www.bornprettystore.com/sweet-color-lolita-series-friendly-candy-nail-polish-varnish-p-3988.html

 So without further ado, onto the pictures!

 This is three coats of Sweet Color #232, the colour in the above picture is pretty colour accurate. The interesting thing about this polish is that it's a jelly, I think you can kind of see this on a few of my nails as there is a faint nail line. However, three coats covers very well and you cannot see any visible nail line in real life.

The polish I received from Born Pretty Store was very saturated in colour. The consistency was really good to work with, not too think or too thin or runny. I applied three coats with a drying time of around 5 minutes between each coat. These photos show the colour with no topcoat so you can see just how shiny the polish is on it's own. I'm really very pleased with this polish and would definitely try others from the same brand. This polish also didn;t stain my nails or cuticles so I was very pleased with that as greens tend to stain a lot on me.

Overall, I would reccomend this product to anyone, they're aren;t any negative points with this polish apart from the fact that it doesn';t have a shade name, just a number :( But It is a beautiful collour and really nice to apply. If you would like to buy anything from the Born Pretty Store then you can receieve a 10% discount on your order quoting the code: CLL91 at the checkout.

Thanks for reading :)

Best of British Roundup - 14/10/2012

Hello everyone!

It's time for another Best of British Roundup post! I hope you enjoying reading what these wonderful ladies have all been up to :)

Northern Nails is back on track this week with Pink Wednesdays Posts and More Adventures in stamping Posts and even a few surprises . Jo has also changed the look of Northern NailsHope you like it !

Jazz is trying her hand at franken for the first time! Glitter Infatuation Enjoy!

PrettyKittyClaws has a extra special mani to show you this week, it's her Wedding Mani featuring Sally Hansen, Girly Bits and Lynnderella

Wendy from Wendy's Delights has been stamping for another week's challenge set by Adventures In Stamping this week's theme being Metallic Madness and while your over at Wendy's Delights check out her 200 Follower Giveaway and you could win some fab Nails Inc Polishes!

Very few posts from Emma as she has been away and also got the lurgy... but she did post this Autumnal mani with a little bit of rare stamping.

Whats this? Whats this? PishPosh and Polish has Nightmare Before Christmas Nails on the blog this week 

Inbetween dyeing her hair, fingers, walls and face there was time for another awareness manicure on Enigmatic Rambles, this time for Hospice and Palliative Care Day.

Lyndsay from Pie's Eyes has had a No7 filled week this week comparing their top coats and trying out Star Shower one of their newly released polishes.

It's nearly Halloween and Steph has been flirting with the "Ghost with the Most" and swatching the new Hocus Pocus collection from 365 Days of Color.

Claire at nuthin' but a nail thing has been trying out gold beads and adding a bit of sparkle this week.

Dimpal at Crazy Polishes showing Born Pretty store stamping polishes stamping polishes and over light and dark base this week.

Ruth finally got her hands on some Barry M Gelly polishes and tasted the pomegranate and the watermelon this week!

Sally of Nail Pron has attended another funeral, received a right slating from her step daugher but cheered her week up by finding a dupe for Gosh Holographic which is cheaper, and easier to apply!

Jazz is trying her hand at franken for the first time! Glitter Infatuation Enjoy!

Kerry at JustTalkNails shares the new Nail Inc Fine Sprinkles this week starting with a nail gradient.

The Crumpet and the Digit-al Dozen have been arting it up for Halloween this week - spiders, witches and zombie blood - oh my!

Carlyn has a nail polish to go with her tan China Glaze Pink Plumeria and stamping using her new konad plate

Vic is well and truly into the Halloween spirit (swamp vodka jelly if you're wondering) - her Ghosts are simple enough that anyone can give them a try. In fact, she dares you to give them a go!

Best of British Roundup - 07/10/2012

Hello everyone!

It's Sunday again so that can only mean one thing... that's right, a weekly roundup! I hope you enjoy seeing what all these lovely ladies have been up to once again :)

Wendy from Wendy's Delights is having a dotting time with her first ever Dotty Mani for the Llama Nails A-Z challenge.

Wendy has also participated in the Facebook Group Adventures in Stamping and this weeks theme is French Nail Tips.


Lyndsay from Pie's Eyes shows off her Swatchicles and explains how they make keeping tabs on her ever growing collection a little easier, she's also done a lovely leafy stamp manicure.

Claire from nuthin' but a nail thing completed the 30 Day Challenge! Which one was your favourite?

Emma has lauched her first giveaway and played with dotting tools again this week, this time creating rainbow manicure using them over at Emma's Little Corner

Charlotte from Charlottes-nails has been swatching some of the new Models Own Wonderland polishes for you all to enjoy!

After taking the weekend off after completing the 30 Day Challenge, Polished Criminails is back with 3 more BarryM Gelly Nail Paints which are bang on trend for the Autumn months!

When life hands you lemons, paint your nails with Avon's Lemon Sugar! Or at least that's what Ruth did this week. Including a slightly annoying design!

Vic has started her gel polish course but she's determined not to give up regular polish - after all, she does have over 400 bottles of the stuff. The inspiration for her Sparkle Zebracorn mani was taken from a gel polish tutorial but it works just as well with the lacquers we all know and love.

Spreading depression awareness through nail art, while checking off another ABC Llama nail challenge is Enigmatic Rambles this week.

Sally of Nail Pron is having a month of pink for Breast Cancer Awareness while having a very emotional week

Northern Nails had a little Hiatus this week, after all the posts in the 30 Day Challenge,then Her nails broke! So she decided to give Northern Nails a make over, Hope you all like the New Look!

Carlyn uses China Glaze's Foie Gras and Konad plate M64 to create a stunning Floral manicure, before she gets her nails shellac'ed for her holidays.

Sarah Louise is taking part in a Halloween challenge created by Crumpets Nail Tarts. For the second challenge she creates a Black Cats themed manicure - Enjoy! x

Abi invites you to take a look at her round up page for the 31 Day Challenge that she completed this week!

Lots of new items Spotted! instore this week over at Painted Nails and Baking Scales as Lou keeps her eyes peeled for all things polish!

Ever wondered what Indie polishes are and where to buy them ? Well this week The Crumpet tells you everything you need to know!

Hello Kitty Got Dat Thang & Barry M Diamond Glitter

Hello everyone!

Today I have a post with two newly released polishes for you! I have one of the new Hello Kitty polishes, named Got That Thang. These polishes are available from Superdrug stores and online for £4.99, the bottles are also in the shape of Hello kitty so they're super cute! The other polish I have to show you today is a new Barry M called Diamond Glitter, it's so sparkly and beautiul! Barry M are available from Boots and Superdrug and also online for £2.99 each.

Here's a bottle shot for you!

The Hello kitty bottle is just so cute! Plus I love pink so it was the first one I had to pick up, however, I think that £4.99 is quite expensive for a drug store brand polish that's mainly aimed at little kids. The Barry M is beautiful as you can see from the bottle shot, it's super sparkly and well worth it's price tag.

I used two coats of Hello Kitty Got Dat Thang for the base on all of my nails, I could have gotten away with one coat if I was careful but my tips had a few bald patches that another coat neatened up nicely.  I then added one coat of Barry M Diamond Glitter over the top, I think this glitter is just beautiful. It applied lovely and I had no problem with getting the glitter to distribute evenly.

The only problem I had with the Hello Kitty polishes was that the brsh had some splayed out bristles, they were easy eough to just cut off but I feel that for £4.99 the brush should have been better quality. Overall, I really enjoyed using these two polishes and I think that they're both beautiful polishes :)

What do you think to my new nail shape? and the two new polishes? let me know in the comments :)

Thanks for reading :)

Models Own Wonderland Collection Swatches

Hello everyone!

Today I managed to get hold of two of the new models own wonderland polishes! So I rushed home as soon as I could to swatch them for you all! These polishes are currently available in boots stores for £5 each, however they are currently running a 3 for 2 promotion on cosmetics. Run to your nearest boots store and pick these gorgeous polishes up!!!

 

First up is Models Own Northern Lights. Models Own describe this polish as "a fine holographic multi-tonal glitter in a pink finish." I think this description is spot on. One coat of this polish leaves you with a sparse glitter top coat, while using three coats will give you a completely opaque look. The polish is not thick or thin, it is the perfect consistancy and is easy to work with, it applies beautifully to the nail and sparkles in the light, here's some more pictures of this gorgeous polish...

 

 This is one coat of Northern Lights over OPI Pink Friday, Revlon Lunar, Barry M White & OPI Rumples Wiggin'. As you can see this polish is also gorgeous to layer and adds a lovely sparkle to all of the base colours, I especially like it over black :)

Moving on to Models Own Southern Lights. Models Own describe this polish as "an opaque holographic multi-tonal glitter in a lilac finish". I agree with this description again, I think it's pretty spot on. This polish is purple based with glitter and holo glitter. Here it is on it's own with three coats...

And here it is layered over different base colours, with one coat of Southern Lights on each nail...

I apologies for the quick post, I was just so excited to show these polishes to you guys! They're so beautiful and I highly recommend that you go and buy them as soon as you can :)  I should have some more swatches of these polishes up tomorrow in daylight for you all to enjoy :)

Please let me know what you think of these polishes in the comments :)

Thanks for reading :)

 

Fall Into Autumn Challenge - Cloudy Days

Hello everyone!

Today I have another post from the Fall Into Autumn Challenge for you all, there's only one more after this one then I'm all caught up! :) So the theme for this post was cloudy days. Now we all know how much I love doing cloud mani's, so I thought I'd try out a different colour scheme for this one...

Autumn in the UK usually makes me think of dark mornings and dark evenings, where the sky is a deep inky blue, the clouds are dark grey and the weather is cold. I wanted to portray this in my nail art.

I used two coats of OPI Ink Suede for the base on all nails, I felt that this polish recreated the colour of an Autumn sky perfectly for me. I then added two coats of Barielle Platinum Ring to create the first cloud shapes. I then added two coats of OPI Russian Navy Matte to the top to create the final cloud shapes. I then added one coat of Barielle Starry Sky on my ring finger to create the look of stars. 

I really enjoyed doing these nails, it took me a while to settle on a colour combination as I had such a specific idea in my head :P But I think it turned out really pretty, this would also work well as a winter based mani as the glitter on the accent nail kind of looks like snow :P It's just so beautiful!

Thanks for reading :)

Fall Into Autumn Challenge - School Spirit

Hello everyone!

I'm pretty far behind in the Fall Into Autumn Challenge because of university so it's time I caught up, they'll be a few posts over the next few days from me :P

So the theme for this post was School Spirit. I really struggled with this one as schools in the UK aren't like the ones in America. We don't really have huge turn outs at football games or pride in our schools even. So obviously my only choice was to do something based around my university. My universitys official colours are white and red, our mascot is a kind of tiger/dragon thing that I didn't really want to attempt on my nails. So here's what I came up with...

I decided to do white and red nails to honour my schools colours and I added some blue in there too, as one of the buildings I have lectures in is a beautiful shade of blue that I love.

For these nails I used two coats of Barry M White for the base on all of my nails. I then added one thick coat of Barry M Jewel Britannia, which has become my new favorite glitter polish :P I then topped this off with two thin coats of OPI Don't Touch My Tutu! to create a nice subtle finish :)

I know these aren't the most original nails for the theme but I was really struggling! :p Plus I think that this is still a cute way to wear glitter without it being too in your face. I'm really looking forward to wearing more autumn colours in the coming months as you'll see in a few of the challenge posts I have lined up for you all :)

Thanks for reading :)