Tag Archives: nail polish

Nails of the week – orange with gold French

A couple of weeks back I went to the Cointreau rendez-vous and as part of the activities, I had a mini manicure. The colours available or varying shades of – you guessed – oranges, including corals.

I had my nails painted a lovely shade, but being particular about how they get painted, they didn’t last 24 hours on my hands. However, I decided to keep within the colour scheme and painted my nails this lovely shade of orange-coral from Impala, called Twenty Years. On top, I applied Max Factor’s Bronze, for a gold shimmer.

Two days later, I applied a gold French manicure, using Barry M foil effects nail polish.

I have to say the colours complemented each other very well. The Impala polish was quite opaque with two coats; the Bronze on top delivered the right amount of golden shimmer. Application was smooth, and durability great, even with the French.

Overall, a cute look.

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Nails of the week – dark with glitter flakes

Resisting is not my forte – and I couldn’t when  saw W7 Jupiter, from their Planets collection, for £1.50 in a stall in my local market. I had to pick it up.

Have to admit I wasn’t very impressed with the effect; in the bottle, it is so colour changing that really looks like it could be something out of this planet, of curse, the Venus surface. But it wasn’t. In fact, it was just a metallic brown with a pink or blue shimmer at times.

Anyway, it served perfectly as base for a glitter flakes topcoat I wore before – Glow, by Ana Hickmann. Seriously, I wore it over red and the effect was beautiful, but over this brownish colour, it was just stunning. Golden, orange, red, to green, as it caught light; the colours and texture of this effect was formidable. I started with just the tips, as I wanted a dipped effect, but it was so lovely I decided to cover the whole nail. It did look a bit gradual, as the tips had more layers of glitter. Loved it!

Application was great for both. Two coats of the W7 polish provide a good coverage. Durability was also ace, even with the many coats I used there wasn’t a single chip in sight after a week.

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Nails of the week – cold tones and silver glitter

A pretty pale mint green dress with silver sequins from Lipsy was my choice to attend a wedding, and I thought I would give myself a manicure to match.

I first thought of contrast, but then decided to go with several cold colours and a sprinkle of glitter to glam it up!

Most of the nail polishes I used are from Nails Inc;  the lilac (Cambridge), the blue (Oxford) and the lime (Wimbledon). The green is Anna Hickmann in Vibe and the pale mint green (which is a perfect match for my dress) is H&M in Pear  Ice cream.

Have to say that for being creamy colours, all of them were easy to apply and two coats were enough for the a solid finish. I had tried the blue and both greens before, and they didn’t disappoint. The lilac one bubbled a bit, that was annoying; but as it was in the corner of the nail, it didn’t bother me as much as it would normally.

The lime colour is stunning; I must wear it again soon,alone, need to come up with something interesting to use in more extensively!

Then I applied the glitter puff – I am in love with them! This time I used the silver again, but not on the tips but near the cuticles, as I used the gold a couple of weeks back. I am having to hold myself now to buy a bigger set from eBay, damn, they can glam up any manicure!

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Nails of the week – green and pink polka dots

Recently, I bought a nail dotting tool kit from eBay; it was very cheap and I love polka dots!

I wanted to try the pastel green and pink combination for quite a while; so thought polka dots would be perfect.

The green is called Vibe, from Ana Hickmann and the pink, Candy Pink, from Kiko. Both had a good coverage and were good to apply, especially for being creamy colours; there was very little unevenness, the colours were quite solid and two coats provided a great coverage! It does “bubble” a tiny bit, but not too much to bother me!

Initially, I did all nails green with the pink accent one and put pink dots on all greens and green dots on the pink. Thought that was a bit too much, so left the spots only on the accent nail; think that was a wise decision to ease myself into the idea! Looked too busy before!

The tool was easy to use, as I expected; the dots were of the same size; just one thing I wasn’t very happy about is that I didn’t quite nail the positioning of the spots; I am a bit ocd with symmetry; but I suppose that with practice I will get to a positioning of the dots I am happy with!

Overall, quite cute. Wasn’t sure about it soon after I applied, but it grew on me. I am really enjoying trying different things on my nails at the moment!

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Nails of the week – red and gold glitter

I don’t need to go on about how much I love red nails. Think I’ve done that enough in the past, so I won’t bore you with that.

I used Colorama 40 graus – this polish is actually one of my favourites and if you have been to my blog before, you probably came across it somehow. It is a very bright red, intense, very shiny and leaning towards orange.

Jubilee nails were my intention, but, somehow, I couldn’t be bothered to paint Union Jacks and wasn’t feeling the blue (I know, very lame), so I went for red with gold.  I used the Andrea Fullerton’s Georgia Glitter Duo, and was very pleased with the result. I applied the glitter near the cuticle to still wet nails, and moved my finger downwards, with a gentle shaking motion, so it would fall towards the tips, I also had to very delicately spread a bit with the tip of my finger to get a more symmetrical effect.

Durability was good. The Colorama polish lasts really well, and the glitter at the bottom, instead of the tip kept really well for the six days I wore it.

This time was much easier to use the glitter puff  than the first time I did. The mess was the same, though. Have to admit it is well worth it; I just love the look.

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Nails of the week – warm tones with gold French manicure

Once again, I went a bit colour crazy! I have so many lovely nail polishes, that sometimes is super hard to choose just one, so I decided to do a warm colour palette – from yellow to red.

The polishes I used were :

  • Yellow: H&M summer sunrise
  • Orange: Impala aleixo
  • Lighter pink: Impala confeti
  • Darker pink: Miss Sporty number 130
  • Red: Colorama 40 graus
  • Gold: Barry M effects foil gold

I had used the yellow and the red before, in fact, this red is one of my favourites. I found the orange a bit sheer, still with two coats; the darker and lighter pink were alright, application was smooth for all. Durability was surprisingly long, as

I tend to wear off my French manicure by typing; when I removed, seven days after applying, I felt it could’ve gone for longer! Ace!

I am really into French manis nowadays!

This is a very bold look, but I don’t think it interfered with my clothes or was too out there for eyes to pop; people usually noticed (and complimented!) after looking carefully and closer.  I absolutely love the colours combination – and I am dying to do a cold colours one… we shall see!

I had a friend at home, so she also left with a slight more demure creation of mine; a purple and lilac French manicure, using a lilac from Miss Sporty and Collection 2000’s purple rain.

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Nails of the week -blue and glitter tips

Here I come with another experimental nail creation…

I had spotted Andrea Fullerton’s Georgia Glitter Duo, a pretty set with two glitter puff dusts and a topcoat, a while back but for some reason, forgot about it. What I really liked was the holographic sheen on the gold and silver glitters that came in the set.

So we met again, and I decided to take it, at £6.99 from Superdrug. I had been dying to try this new Ana Hickmann blue nail polish, Rock, which I bought recently, and thought the blue glitter, fading from the tip to the middle of the nail would look fab.

And it does – like a mini winter wonderland! Application of the polish was good, it is quite sheer, more than I expected, but it is good enough on two coats.

The puffs are easy enough to use, although I think I need a small brush to even it out a bit; I did it with my fingers, and was very worried about ruining the polish. Obviously, they are not all the same, and that bothers me a bit, but I am sure that I will improve with practice.

Durability was kind of alright; the glitter rubbed off from my thumb, indicator and middle finger; but I gave it a re-touch five days after doing the manicure, so not too bad.  have to say it wasn’t very easy to remove, as expected from glitter! Still, I cannot wait to use the gold one!

You can get a set with five glitter puffs,in varied colours from eBay too, for only £5.

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Nails of the week: Silver holographic with black French manicure

When I prematurely removed the lovely giraffe foils, I gave my nails a rare breathing day and decided to do a silver holographic and black French I had been wanting to do for quite a while.

I used the beautiful Color Club Worth the Risque, which I wore on its own a while back. I encountered the same problems as before… which I had forgotten about: it takes ages to dry and scratches pretty easily; as I paint my nails in the evening, I had to wait a whole day before feeling safe to use the  strips to do the French mani, then I applied my reliable Barry M’s black and a topcoat (which is the saving grace for the Color Club polish).

Have to say, apart from the pain to achieve, I am very happy with it, and once it is in, it lasts; durability is great, 8 whole days in great state (a very minor re-touch to one of the black tips)!

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Nails of the week – blue/green duochrome (dazzling blue)

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Together with fantasy fire, I also bought Max Factor’s dazzling blue, which is a lovely mint green with pinkish/gold/blue hues.

I applied over Ana Hickmann’s Vibe Nova, a strong mint green, and it looked lovely. Had the same issue with application, as bottle is tiny, but it lasted really well! It ended up showing a lovely mint green to light blue, sometimes with a hint of gold, which I found very pretty.

Now, I didn’t expect much from this one, so that’s probably why I wasn’t disappointed as I was with Fantasy Fire.

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Nails of the week – Purple/green/blue (fantasy fire)

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After hearing about Max Factor’s Fantasy Fire so much and feeling the “panic” on the twittosphere about it being sold out everywhere, I didn’t even bother trying to get hold of it.

However, I went to Westfield before going on holidays and popped to Superdrug to buy some travel essentials when, doing my standard browsing through nail polishes and make up, I found said polish staring me in the face. Yes, it was a sign, so I bought it.

I used a purple underneath, as the polish is too thin to have any effect on its own (unless you do, maybe 5 coats!!!). It really needed two coats on top of the purple to look nice. The super small square bottle is a bit fiddly, but durability is good.

The colour in the bottle is stunning – purples, and pinks, with blues and greens, a plethora of changing hues…. and although you can identify them on the nails, and it does look very pretty – I got compliments on it –  it is not half as impressive as the colour in the bottle.

So, I am a bit disappointed. To me, it is not nearly as amazing as it has been blogged, twitted and facebooked about. Don’t get me wrong, it is very nice, but I think the hype made me expect so much about it, and I got too disappointed… oh well….

Have you tried Fantasy Fire? Did you use a different colour underneath and got better results?

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