Nails of the week: Pretty pastels

Pastels… and to think at one point I would shun light nail colour in favour of dark ones… pah…What was I thinking?

Truth is, that lilac changed my life… and this week I went for a pastel colours manicure with a holographic glitter topcoat and bird details!

It had been a while since a painted each nail a different colour, so I thought it was tome I did it again: lilac from Miss Sporty (cannot see the number anymore!), pretty blue from Nails Inc, Oxford, pink from Kiko (376), green from ColorClub (no name or number on bottle, sorry!) and this amazing yellow from Nails Inc, Wimbledon. Add Nails Inc topcoat in Electric Lane and a couple of uber cute bird nail tattoos from Nail Art UK and voilà – spring ready nails!

Application was good, all applied evenly and with no streaking. Durability was great – 7 days perfection, no chips, then the cracks started to show; a couple chips in the pink and the birds lost a wing each. Tragic. As I am super busy with my essays, I just fixed the chip with a dot of polish and topcoat and filled the birds in with a Sharpie – gotta love it – to keep it going for a couple more days when I can finally do my nails. Desperate times, desperate measures!

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Nails of the week: warm colour gradient

Yes, I am still obsessed by gradients. I just love them. So, I gave myself another one: a lovely yellow, orange and red, to go with my tropical mood, as I am on holidays in Brazil (hence the lack of posts).

I used the H&M bright yellow summer sunrise, Impala’s orange aleixo and one of my fave reds ever, Colorama’s 40 graus. I used the sponging technique and applied the gorgeous Nails Inc electric lane topcoat. Ended up with a good seven layers and a lovely heart nail tattoo on my ring finger, from SkinArt UK to finish off the design!

It lasted very well – eight days including pool days!

This mani lifted my spirits, it is cheerful and looks forward to the summer!

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Nails of the week – blues and purples

It had been quite sometime since I painted each nail one different colour, and I was certainly in the mood for this week.

I decided to go for blues and purples – I love purples on my nails, and one of the blues I used is one of my favourite nail colours ever!

I used Nails Inc Oxford (light blue), Nails Inc Cambridge (light lilac), Kiko 336 (royal blue), H&M Pale violet (purple) and Nails Inc Belgrave Place (darkest blue) and added the super pretty Nails Inc topcoat Electric Lane (another obsession of mine – so versatile and so pretty, a great investment , finishing it off with a cute star nail tattoo!

Really love the look! Application was smooth and easy, and durability is ace – 8 days, no chips.

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Nails of the week – antique gold

Antique gold. Well, not quite. I called it like that because I cannot think what colour this is. Weird.

This Gosh Galaxy promised a lot from the bottle – a sort of antique gold base with some colour shifting between blues and pinks. However, it didn’t delivery upon application.

The colour is intriguing; you can spot the antique gold base and the multicoloured flecks. If you look really carefully, in some lighting, there is a very subtle colour shifting. Sadly, not enough to wow me.

I added a pretty star from Nail Art UK, but not even that could save this mani. A waste of two stars, really…

Polish application was fiddly, one coat is very sheer, I have three on. it doesn’t dry too quickly, so the next coat was a bit gloopy. It seemed to get quite thick quickly. Durability is ok.

Overall, the colour is pretty; I like the base colour, I like the flecks but the fact it was beautifully colour-shifting in the bottle really let me down.

As I wasn’t super happy with it, I slapped Barry M croc black effect on it after a couple days, leaving only the star finger as it was, creating an accent nail, which made the mani more interesting. The crocodile skin effect is cute, very delicate and the texture is not too bad. I could still see some gleaming flecks from galaxy through it. But I encountered the same problem with this as I found with crackle topcoats: the durability is appalling – it flakes away very quickly. Plus, as I applied a couple days after I had my nails done, it wasn’t the prettiest finish, you can see a few untidy bits around the cuticle, it was really hard to clean the excess!

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Nails of the week – silver glitter, black and nail sticker

silver nails with black tips and nail tattoos

click to enlarge

I am in love with this week’s manicure! Glitter is one of my guilty pleasures – I love sparkly things, especially on my nails, even though it is a major pain to get it off.

This week, I am wearing Barry M in Silver multi-glitter, a fine, silver based glitter with lots of other colours – red, blue, pink, a bit of gold. Really really pretty. Actually, Barry M’s glitter polishes are really amazing, at a great value! This particular one is very saturated, two coats were enough to achieve a good coverage. I ended up using three, but could’ve done with only two.

With Barry M in plain black, a staple in my mani box, I created the diagonal tip, using normal sticky tape.

To finish it off and give it that extra cuteness, I added a SkinArt UK’s bow nail tattoo on each of my ring finger nails to create an accent nail. The tattoos come in a pack of 60 individual stickers with varied designs – bows, stars, hearts, birds, crosses, anchors – all very pretty and you shall be seeing more of it very soon! I found application easy enough; it is quite delicate, as it is a small sticker, but I applied quickly without a problem, with the aid of tweezers. A good topcoat (I use Seche Vite) is a must after you apply the sticker, and also to smooth the diagonal french tip.

Durability was great, full week with no chips, sticker in place! But above all, how pretty is that?