Before I went away, I decided to do a simple, but effective mani, as I knew I was getting my talons done professionally for the duration of my stay.
So I use the beautiful Stargazer Chrome nail polish in 236, a beautiful blue hue on my very short nails – I broke one really badly so had to give them all the chop!
118118 Beauty is a pass that offers you discounts on beauty treatments around London – I’ve had mine since they started, so decided to pay them a visit at their nail bar at Westfield Stratford.
They are offering free manicures (with the lovely Morgan Taylor nail polishes – really fantastic colours!) to all who subscribe to the pass – it costs £29.99 for the whole year and you get a trial month for free!
With the card, you can get a fantastic 50% discount on hair, face, body and nail treatments in affiliated salons across London – at the moment, there are around 1,000 and the number keeps growing.
After I attended the lovely L’Oréal event to launch the new SS14 Color Riche nail polishes Les Blancs and Topcoats I came home with the amazing polishes, and could not wait to use them! Without wasting any time, I thought about something nice to make justice to the lovely Les Blancs pretty spring shades.
Well, we all know I cannot get enough of a good old easy marble – it is up there with gradients and leopard spots – so here is another one.
In reality, this was to satiate my need for red talons – and being one not able to have just plain nails, something had to be embellish it… I give you gold! Now, that’s an embellishment!
Sometimes I forget about my dotting tools, and when they come out, they do so in full force!
I decided to use the new shades from the Liz Earle Spring/Summer collection launching in March.
Awakening is a pretty solid coral and Moonlight a lovely light grey. I couldn’t decide which one to try first so I decided to use both together!
This polish was picked up at Olympia Beauty 2013 (that’s how slow I am getting through stuff – so much!) – no surprise I was attracted to it, given my undying love of duo chrome nail polishes.
“For the Twill of it” is a beautiful metallic olive green which shifts to metallic mauve. Sometimes, it can look a bit gunmetal grey.
Application was great – funnily enough, this is my first Essie polish (weird, I know, just realised it when applying it!). The brush is a good size, the polish applies well and there are no brush strokes. it also dries quickly.
Durability is also great, went through my usual seven days with looking fantastic.
Yes, I am floating around in Christmas spirit (better late than never, no?).
I am not usually a fan of little animals, flowers and drawings in general on my nails but what the hell? It is Christmas after all. So here they are – my super festive Christmas nails!
It has red, gold and a reindeer! Yes, Rudolph is my special guest!
For the red and gold gradient I used the sponging technique with the beautiful The Spy who Loved Me and Golden Eye, both from OPI’s James Bond collection. It was quite a hard gradient to put together, as the gold is not quite glitter – it is like a foiled effect, so a few layers were needed!
I drew the reindeer’s head with the polish brush. I used a deep metallic brown which is the darkest colour from Andrea Fulerton’s duo polish Petrol in Water. Then added the eyes using a dotting tool and Collection Nail Tip Whitener white polish. Used The Spy Who Loved Me red for the nose (with a larger dotting tool) and Barry M’s nail art pen in black for the antlers and black dot in the eye.
I then finished them all with a top coat!
Must admit I like it more than I thought I’d ever like a drawing on my nails – very happy with the result!
How festive!
Happy Christmas to all! 
For the first time, I have a “nail of the week” backlog – I am about three weeks behind!!!
This is quite a simple one, but I really like – still from when I was in Brazil! My lovely manicurist Irma is not a nail art one, at their salon, they just have people wearing nudes and reds, so I usually drive her crazy with my colourful requests.
The base colour is one I loved, Colorama’s Noite Quente – I had it in plain my toes. It is a beautiful warm purple! I then had a coat of Risque’s Diamante Fúcsia added to the top. This is a lovely and very saturated magenta and silver fine glitter suspended in a clear base.
The accent nail was done with the super metallic silver Cromo from Impala. It is a really shiny chrome-like nail polish, one of the best effects I’ve seen.
A simple combination great for the party season – not too out there but still sparkly enough for the festive spirit!
This post is a bit different, as I have no idea what base polishes were used.
I’ve been to Brazil and my lovely manicurist Irma looked after my talons for two weeks. She is the only person I will let touch my nails. Although I enjoy doing my own manicure, there is something lovely about sitting there and letting the professional her do her job, while I rummage through boxes of nail polish so she can make my crazy (in her view – but quite tame in mine!) ideas come true.
So I went frantically picking all blues and purples that tickled my fancy and ended up with this lovely selection. The common element: the silver foil string topcoat from Impala, called Atitude Pop, from their Rebelde collection.
The topcoat has a decent saturation of fine silver tinsel like strings suspended on a clear base. I just love the effect, really brings all the colours together beautifully!!!
You know when I obsess about a nail design I just can’t stop. I am actually surprised it took me this long to be at the leopard spots again…
This time, I went for a blue base with the beautiful L’Oréal’s colour riche in Rebel Blue.
Then I used Barry M Foil Effects in silver to add the spots and the super handy Barry M’s Nail art pen to add the black outlines and small spots, using the same tools as previously on this colourful leopard print manicure.
I am very pleased with the result; this design is very straight forward and has a great effect!
Rating:
So Many Lovely Things 