Nails of the week: Essie “For the Twill of it”

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.

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Nails of the week, Christmas edition: red, gold and… Rudolph!

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!

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Nails of the week: purple and silver

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!

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Nails of the week: blues and purples with silver

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.

blue, purple and silver nails - somanylovelythings

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!!!

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Nails of the week: blue and silver leopard print

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!

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Nails of the week: purple and blue

This week I went back to a design I really loved: the vintage inspired heart tip. But with with the twist of less vintage-y colours.

I selected the stunning OPI Purple-iscious, which is a special edition polish to celebrate the 20th birthday of QVC – purple is the brand colour!

This is a metallic purple, shimmery with extremely fine glitter. It has a very subtle orangey-reddish pearlescence; it doesn’t colour-shift but gives this polish an amazing dimension. However, in essence, Purple-iscious is a fabulous (and delicious) purple. Application was great, as with any OPI polish and durability was also ace. Happy birthday QVC and thank you for bringing this gem of a polish out!

The blue at the tip is L’Oréal’s colour riche in Rebel Blue, an amazing royal blue with a fantastic sheen to it.

I followed the same process as on the nude and red manicure I did before and achieved the same results.

I really like it, although I don’t think it beats the nude and red one… As for the purple, I will definitely use it alone! It is gorgeous!

You can get the amazing Purple-iscious celebrating QVC’s 20th birthday at the QVC website; it comes in a special kit with the amazing Nail Envy base coat and it costs £20.16 plus P&P.

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This post contains PR samples. This review, however, is based on my own true experience with the products and reflects my honest opinion on them.

Nails of the week: Gold, green and blue colour shifting

This week I rekindled my relationship with colour shifting polishes. Once a favourite of mine, they gave way to some dabbling with nail art.

When I found the beautiful Specialittá Hits Marimoon Cool sitting at the bottom of my polish box, I knew this was the time.

And this beauty delivered an amazing colour, shifting from an old gold into a deep dark green and then a teal-ish blue, with impeccable metallic finish.

Application was great; I used two coats. This polish is really pigmented and for a metallic like this, sets with very little brush strokes. Durability was fantastic; I actually wore this for two whole weeks and chips just appeared around day 10 (and still only where I bit the skin on the side of the nail!).

This certainly brought back my love for colour-shifting polishes!

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Nails of the week: Red and nude

Yes, you are right. I cannot stay away from the red and nude combo for too long. I just love it on my nails. I wanted to do a half moon plus French tip for quite sometime and I finally got round to it.

I used L’Oréal Color Riche in Macaron Noisette (the most beautiful nude ever to grace my talons) as a base – two coats are sufficient. When dry, I used a hole re-enforcer as a guide for the half moon and French manicure guides for the tips, splashing them red with the beautiful Brilliant Red from Lola. This red is fantastic. It is sheer but almost cream and the coverage is excellent – so pigmented. The colour is great – a deep, vivid blood red. I love it and will certainly be using is on its own.

This was the first time I used nail polish from Lola and was really impressed. Application was smooth, the polish quality is very good, which translated into great durability of seven days with no chips – all bearing in mind it was tip only!

I am pleased with this mani; maybe I should have had the French tips slightly thinner (which I always do and think maybe I should have had it slightly thicker… oh well). Overall, I think it lacked a bit of oomph. Should’ve used the Lola red alone!

As for the Lola Make-up by Perse polish, I loved it – and you can find their range at M&S, in-store or on the website!

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(for the mani)

(for the Lola polish)

Nails of the week: Rainbow gradient

It is no news I love a gradient on my talons, so this week I went a bit further – a four colour rainbow gradient.

The last one I did was a long time ago, and this was due. After seeing a rainbow gradient on some Brazilian nail polish Facebook page, I decided that was going to be the next one.

The technique is the very same I used before: sponging, and I found it a bit more challenging with four colours to make sure all nails had about the same amount of each and that the transition was smooth. But it happened in the end!

I used Colorama’s 40 Graus (red), L’Oréal Banana Pop (yellow), Kiko 385 (blue) and 343 (green), applied a stripe of each to a wet make-up sponge and stamped to previously painted white nails. I went round three times! I then added the magical Electric lane holographic topcoat from Nails Inc and a clear topcoat(Seche VIte) to seal it all.

To be honest, before I did it, I thought it was going to be a bit too much. It turns out I love it and don’t want to take it off. At all. Seven days have gone by and it still looks perfect and I am struggling with the idea of removing it and moving on to the next mani…

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Nails of the week: colourful leopard print

You probably know by now I obsess about things. After loving last week’s leopard print soooooo much, I decided to do another one, of course. I went for a lovely white/gold base and my leopard spots were very colourful!

First, I am going to say how much I love the OPI Ski Slope Sweetie, which I picked up at Olympia Beauty. It is part of OPI’s winter collection and the colour is just amazing – a metallic white base with some colour shifting from a shimmery gold with a tiny little spark of green and red sometimes to a colder white, almost silver. Stunning. Seriously, rarely do I fall in love with a light coloured polish, but this got me. I sense it being used more – it is and amazing base for art: non intrusive but so not boring! It applies alright, there were no bush marks – the OPI brush is great, but this polish is a bit on the thick side.

After applying two coats of SSS and letting it dry for about 15 minutes, I drew the spots with a fine nail brush and normal nail polish – I first did all blue (Kiko 385) spots, then purple (L’Oréal Flashing Lilac), green (L’Oréal Wasabi Hint), yellow (L’Oréal Banana Pop) and pink (L’Oréal Acid Watermelon), making sure they were well distributed and no nail had the exactly same pattern!

After that, I used Barry M’s Nail art pen (seriously, how did I have this at home for soooo long and never used? Love this thing!) to add the irregular black outlines and random flecks to the spots.