Krackle Queen

This design started when I decided that I wanted to wear the same nail polish on my last day as I did to my job interview (christmas temp work) and painted all my nails with 3 coats of Rimmel Metal Rush in Pearly Queen, still LOVE it :) See the full post about this polish here.

I then just couldn't wait to try out one of my new polishes, my first Krackle top coat, it was a christmas gift from my mum. It is by a brand called toma, which I am unfamiliar with, called Krackle nail lacquer in TMK11 Mauve. I was only going to do one accent nail on each hand, but liked the effect so much I added another. I find that the purple colour of the krackle polish really complements the purple tones in the metal polish, but also contrasts well with it when it appears more golden.

Here are the photo's, again pearly queen has proved to be tricky to photograph well, but you get the idea :)

Really love how this has turned out, will definitely be using more crackle polishes in the future :)

Bye for now, S x

Christmas Glitter Nails

I know, I know, I have been a terrible blogger lately, what with lack of photoshop, christmas, winter sickness bug and my job I have been hard pushed to find time to blog. Rest assured that I still had time to paint and photograph my nails for you though, so they will appear in good time :)

First of all I thought I would show you the nails that I chose for christmas day. They stayed on a lot longer than that though, as there was so much glitter I put off removing them for a while! I had trouble deciding what to do for my christmas nails, but since I was working so many hours, and with my christmas preperations underway, I didn't have much time for fancy nail art. Eventually I decided on some super glittery nails, and figured I would face the consequences (nightmarish removal) later!

I ended up using a base colour of Models Own Indian Ocean, a sort of pale shimmery slightly holographic icy blue. I followed this with a layer of Radiance by Revlon, a stunning polish with chunky blue glitter, fine blue and silver glitter and green micro glitter. Next was Models Own in Snowflakes, a clear polish with flakes of a shiny silvery holographic type of glitter. Finally I added my Stargazer Red Glitter, to make it a little more festive, and finished with a top coat.

Now unfortunately these photo's don't quite do it justice, it was super shiny and sparkly and awesome in reality, totally worth the hassle of removing all that glitter! Anyway, here they are -

Aah I do miss them! That much glitter is only for special occasions though, until I buy some PVA glue to test out the peelable base coat theory that is :)

Blog you soon, honest ;) S x

I'm Back!

I'm sorry I've been quiet the last couple of weeks, I've been so busy with my new job and preparing for christmas my blog has had to take a back seat :( I have however been photographing all of my nail polishes between then and now, just have a lot of work to do sorting out all the pics!

Anyhow my christmas preparations are almost complete, and it is my day off today, so after doing my last bit of wrapping, I intend to sit down and compose blog posts for every mani I have worn in the last 2 weeks, so they are ready to post on days when I have been busy at work and don't feel like typing much!

In my job I'm only really allowed natural colour nail polish so unfortunately there isn't much mad nail art etc, however, it was a good excuse to buy some more nail polishes, yey :)

Hope everyone is feeling as festive as I am,

Blog you later, S x

Purple Puddings...?

So, I got a little bored of Purple Reign by itself, so decided to experiment with a bit of nail art. I just wanted to do a dripping design, but the colours I chose ended up looking quite christmassy! I think they look like little christmas tree baubles, but my boyfriend says they look like purple christmas puddings! I'll have to remember this one for nearer christmas, and do it again in christmas pudding colours :)

I used Constance Carroll Diamond Gloss in 248 Diamond over Rimmel Metal Rush in 80 Purple Reign and this is what I came up with -

I was trying to capture the different shades in the purple as well as the shininess of the silver :) I created this look using a large dotting tool for the tops of the nail and the ends of the drips, then connecting the 2 parts using a small dotting tool. It was an easy look to create, and I think it is quite cute and fun :) I am so pleased with this silver, it came from a bargain bucket at less than £1, and it is so shiny and really easy to work with.

If I remember closer to christmas, I will use this technique as a base for a christmas pudding design, should be fun!

Cherio for now, S x

Another Metal Rush

So, I was going out for a meal with my boyfriend and his friends from Ju Jitsu, and quickly decided it was a perfect excuse to try our the other Rimmel Metal Rush polish that I bought the other day, after how in love with Pearly Queen I was. This colour is 80 Purple Reign, it is beautiful, but I still prefer Pearly Queen!

This one is quite a bright purple with just a hint of gold, it doesn't have nearly as much variation in colour as Pearly Queen does, but it is still really shiny and pretty, and being a brighter colour, is ideal if you are going for a more striking look.

This is 2 coats, over base coat and hardener -

It's pretty huh? As with all Rimmel polishes I have used I was impressed with the ease of application, and how quickly it dried :) this is another one that is striking enough to wear as it is, and this is how I wore it out for dinner, It didn't receive as much interest/compliments as Pearly Queen did, but I still loved wearing it.

Bye for now, S x

My First Day

So, for my first day in my new job I wanted a subtle look again, I am so happy to once again be in a job that allows nail polish, that I don't want to push my luck with extravagant nail art and such like just yet!

Anyway, after a little while pondering, I eventually settled on one of the colours from the fcuk gift set I got for christmas last year. The colour is called Soft Pearl. In the bottle it just looks like a creamy peachy colour, pretty near the same colour as a peach yoghurt! I didn't think to take a photo of the bottle, sorry.

The best way I can describe how it looked on my nails is sort of like a french pink, but peach instead of pink. Just a really shiny finish with a hint of colour -

I think it is quite pretty, although the actual polish was not my favourite to use, it was quite sticky, and on a couple of nails strands from the brush got left behind. I had to use 2 thick coats, and it took forever to dry as well. I do like the finished look though, and I feel that this colour would be ideal for doing nail art over, if it wasn't so tedious to apply.

Until next time, S x

New Favourite Polish... (maybe)

So this post is about the Rimmel Metal Rush polish in 100 Pearly Queen. I was looking for something subtle yet eye catching to wear to my job interview on Tuesday, and thought it would be the perfect opportunity to try out Pearly Queen, and am happy to say that I absolutely LOVE it. It is so shimmery, with hints of silver, gold, pink and green, though I'm not sure if I managed to capture these at their best in the following photographs.

I have photographed what 1 coat, 2 coats and 3 coats of this polish look like, to show you that you can easily wear it any of these ways, with quite a different effect for each.

1 coat of this polish just gives a subtle shimmery look -

(This is over base coat and hardener) as you can see this does not provide an opaque finish, but it still adds a pretty, shimmery look if you only wanted a subtle look. Whilst I have not captured the full range of colours in the above photos, they are all still present even with one coat.

2 coats results in an almost opaque look -

I was happy with my nails just like this, but added a 3rd coat anyway just to see how it would look -

This nail polish is awesome, it looks different under different lighting, it looks really awesome in the dark under a street light or something, it's just so shiny! I loved it so much I didn't even want to do any nail art over it, and wore it until it started chipping. This nail polish was fast drying, easy to apply (I love the big brush in Rimmel polishes) and pretty hard wearing! It took 3 days before there were any noticeable chips!

All in all, very happy with this polish, and I'm sure I will be wearing it lots in the future, especially when I want really dazzling nails but don't have time to do nail art. Also, I GOT THE JOB!!

Blog you soon, S x

Not My Nails

The post today is going to be a brief description of the nails I did for my friend for our night out on friday. We decided to do mattified black nails with a silver accent nail on each hand. I was intending on stamping a design on the silver nails (Genie chose little bats) but however much I tried, I could not get the design to transfer to the stamper, let alone onto her nails. I tried 3 different black polishes and a dark purple, but it wasn't happening (may have had something to do with the numerous tequila cocktails though!)

In the end we just left the nails as black with a silver accent nail, but this worked well anyway and was a good look, my friend was pleased with the effect that the matte top coat resulted in too. I used the Constance Carroll base coat and hardener, followed by Stargazer nail polish in 129 (black) on all but the accent nails, finished with Rimmel Matte Finish Matifying Top Coat, and Constance Carroll Diamond Gloss in 248 Diamond on her ring fingers. Here is the final result -

Pretty basic, but we were both happy with how they turned out in the end. I was also very pleased with the silver nail polish, being a cheapy from the bargain basket I was pleasantly surprised that in only required 2 coats :)

In my post tomorrow I will show you the Rimmel Metal Rush polish in Pearly Queen, I love it, it is so pretty and I'm not bored of it yet despite not having any nail art on the go at the moment.

More about that tomorrow, S x

Interlocking Dots Design

Hi all! Sorry I have been quiet for a couple of days, have been recovering after a big night out with the girls! It was an awesome night, even if I am a little out of practice, my neck still aches from all the windmilling 48 hours on! So worth it though.

Anyway, this post is about the nails that I created for that night out, we were going to my favourite rock night in Bristol, so I needed something suitable for the occasion! I thought I would do something a bit more exciting than the usual all black, and eventually settled on trying an interlocking dots design in black and red, and I've got to say, I was very happy with how it turned out, and can't wait to try it in other colour combinations.

I started off with one coat of 17 Fast Finish in Knockout Red, used a striper brush to paint a diagonal line across my nail in Rimmel I <3 Lasting Finish in 080 Black Cab and just used the nail polish brush to fill in the area below the line so my nails looked like this -

Actually really liked them just like that too, but wanted to try out the interlocking dots design. This is what I ended up with, after finishing with glitter topcoats in Stargazer 148 red glitter and on my thumbs and ring fingers BarryM in 339 Gold Glitter -

If you would like to see the tutorial I followed to achieve this look (with a couple of minor tweaks) here is where I found it http://nailsbeautiqued.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/blue-monday-interlocking-dots.html. I added the gold glitter mainly just to test out one of my new polishes, but I like how it turned out, made the whole mani a little more eye catching I think :)

If you try this design, be careful what nail polishes you choose, I chose ones which were quite difficult to work with, the fast finish 17 polish kept on going tacky when I was trying to add the dots and leaving fine lines of red between the dots. The black that I chose was also quite tacky, but that is just because it is an old one, and nearing the end of the bottle.

Anyway, hope you like this one as much as I liked wearing it, tomorrow I will be posting about my friends nails for that night, a birthday treat for her (I think) they didn't quite go according to plan, but I will tell you all about that next time.

Mwah, S x

Black Over Holo

Just a quick update, I decided to add some black nail polish to my holographic base coat, and this is what I came up with -

I achieved this look using only the nail polish brush, if I attempted a similar look in the future I would use a striping brush just to outline, in order to get crisper edges. I really like this look on the whole though, it was easy to achieve, and has made the holographic nails completely different for another day of wear.

Weirdly, after doing the washing up, the whole lot just peeled off of my index fingernails, strange! I don't know if this was due to the base coat or the holographic nail polish, I wasn't complaining though, there was very little tip wear and I wore them for almost 3 days, and they pretty much fell off when I got bored of them, perfect! I have a different nail art design now ready for my night out tomorrow, I will show you that soon. Not sure if I will get a chance to blog you tomorrow, as I am out most of the day and all night.

Until next time, S x

Holographic Nails!

So, I have just been trying out a couple of the new nail polish colours that I bought. I tried the technic strawberries and cream colour, just because I was really curious to see what colour it actually is on. I apologise about the quality of these pictures, it really was just to see what the colour was like, so please ignore the blue stained cuticles and the mismatched nails on my right hand - when the broken one has grown a little bit, I will cut all of my nails to match. Anyway, here is technic strawberries and cream on -

I quite like the colour, it did require 3 coats, and take a long time to dry (hence smudgyness) but it is subtle and shimmery and just pretty :)

Nevertheless I was so excited to test out the holographic nail polish that this pretty much came straight off. After a shower most of the blue came off of my cuticles too, thankfully! I took quite a few photos of the holographic polish (17 Holo in silver) to try to capture all of the different colours.

Pretty huh? I really love it, having never worn holographic nail polish before, it is strange to look down and see all the different colours sparkling up at me :) This is 2 coats over base coat and hardener, but even just one coat provided quite good coverage.

Anyway, that's it for today :)

Blog you soon, S x