Best of British Weekly Round Up 20th January

This week Lyndsay at Pie's Eyes has created a beautiful Feather Manicure using her stamping plates.

31 day challenge still going strong over at Emma's Little Corner with this watercolour mani and this stamping over a gradient.

Wendy at Wendy's Delights found a gem of a very old untried Saffron polish which is super sparklicious!!.

Sam at Polished Art was inspired by all the Christmas chocolate she's still munching away on to create this Ferrero Rocher manicure!

This week The Teenage Shopaholic has been... trying out furry nails! She swatched and reviewed MUA Fur Effects and was pleasantly surprised!

Susan at Lacquerland has been trying the 3 day oil & naked nail challenge here and was very happy with the results!

JustTalkNails has swatches of A Englands Dragon one of the best scattered holo greens!

This week Nada tried her hands at some flocking she couldnt resist her furry nails! check it out!

Mimi tries her hand at tribal eye nails and LOVES them!

Simple Star Stamping this week for the ABC Challenge on Enigmatic Rambles

Tara at TarasTalons took her basic flock mani up a notch! Chick it out here :D Why wait until Easter!

Claire at nuthin' but a nail thing has been doing some nail art with incorporating her latest Lush Lacquer haul. This one's a blue fishtail manicure with Dreamsicle.... sparkles!

Ruth hasn't had the chance to post since New Year's, but why not look at her New Year nails until she has the time to some more fun posts!

Steph at Never Mind Suzi is getting to grips with stamping after all, practice makes perfect.
Vic is finally back (and already has posts scheduled to the end of February, just in case she runs out). One of her faves from this week is Song of the Black Swan.

PrettyKittyClaws is trying out the new Enchanted Polish Care Bear collection with Daydream Surprise. So sparkly and pretty!

Pish Posh and Polish's Kerrie has been working on her 31 day challenge this week, but a simple swatch of ORLY's It's Not Rocket Science is her favourite post of the week and may be her top green polish of all time!

Danielle created a purple skittle manicure using a-England and Zoya favourites over at Totally Nailed and also swatched some new Zoya purchases this week!

Lou has been having lots of fun with Illamasqua polishes this week starting with the Raindrops reissue and then the lovely Glitterati. This may be the beginning of a beautiful love affair.

CrisCros has been rocking penguin and snowflake nails finally letting her use her Models Own Wonderland flakie polish Go pick up a penguin!

Penguins and snowflakes!

Ahhhhh what a day - so snowy and pretty:) I hope you've all had fun, bf and I have been shopping for holiday clothes; as we'll be climbing Machu Pichu on our holidays I needed some sensible walking shoes (bluergh - I'm not known for my love of sensible shoes) and a waterproof. This meant a trip into town; we decided to walk and the snow looked so magical. Until we got to central Birmingham, then it was just grey slush. Still. Nice while it lasted.

So in honour of the snow, I decided in needed some appropriate nails. Penguins! Penguins are one of my fave animals (it's their waddle; watching a penguin wander around can take me out of the foulest mood) so I was very keen to pop some on my nails. And this mani finally gave me the chance to use my only flakie, Snowflakes from Models Own, in an attempt to recreate that soft shimmer of new snow.

Et voila!

The base was the stunning Barry M Blue Moon. This is a polish I'd overlooked for quite a while, but it caught my eye the other day and ended up in my collection. I'm so glad - it's a gorgeous pale blue, with a lovely shimmer, and unlike a few pale blues I have, it suits my skin tone  It is blooming sheer though - you can see this below, and this is with 3 coats! Patience is required peeps:)

Have a good Saturday night peeps, I'm off to my big glass of wine:) 

Snow and Mermaids :)

Happy snow day peeps! He he he. Hope you're all safe and warm, I've been sent home from work cos it was getting to the point where we were worried about being snowed in - eeeeeeeep!

So I'm sat in my warmest clothes and painting a snowy scene on my nails. In the meantime, here's the mani I've been rocking for the past few days. After nipping into town last weekend and splurging on a few lots of new polishes, I now have in my possession a colour I've been lusting over for ages:)

This gorgeous emerald green glitter! Oh happy days. 

I've never used this brand before, but when I saw this colour I couldn't not buy it - it's stunning. This is 2 coats layered over a coat of Barry M Watermelon, but could probably be made opaque in 3 or 4 coats. It's easy to apply, no gloop or clumps. 

I love it so much that I've had it on for 3 days - and I think it's lasted pretty well as you can see. I just nipped out in the snow to take pictures of my hand (think my neighbours think I'm crackers!), sadly the camera couldn't quite 'get' this colour; it's really a deep emerald green, no teal-ness as the pictures suggest. 

Whilst I was outside, I HAD to take some pictures of the snow! SNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW, yippee, yippee, yippee, SNOW:) I'm off sleighing now, enjoy the snow peeps, stay safe and warm x.

Red Alert! It's Purple Rain! Swatches

Eurgh, I've had the most horrid day; it started by being iced out of my car because the door had frozen shut and gradually got worse and worse. As such I'm not in a very chatty mood, so thought I would post an old swatch that needs little explaining. 

This is a manicure I rocked in January when I had mini nails. I thought I was over crackle, and as such didn't actually intend to buy Purple Rain Crackle by Barry M - I picked it up accidently as part of an offer in Superdrug. However, I kind of the simple contrast of it over the red below. 

The red underneath you ask; well that would be Red Alert by Models Own, an oddly sheer red that builds up to a glossy and lovely finish. Dried quite quickly as well, so a bonus:) 

This is with no topcoat - very glossy:)

Right, I'm off to bed to say goodnight to this silly day; here's hoping tomorrow is a better (and warmer!) day. Night night peeps x

Splatter nails and Accessorize Pink Spice confusion

Buenos dias amigos. I hope you've all had a good Monday. Did you get much snow? I had to scrape 3 inches off my car! As mentioned yesterday, I attempted splatter nails for the first time ever this weekend. I was feeling like I was just swatching, and checking through my last few posts, turned out I was thinking right. So I knew I needed to push myself a wee bit. And boy did this push me!

Don't get me wrong - the actual process is fairly simple (I found a really useful tutorial here) but the clean up! Oh the clean up:( All the tutorials and blogs I looked at recommended putting tape around your nails first to stop getting polish everywhere. But did I listen? Nope. Oh my godness, peeps, I have learnt to listen to those wiser than me. The pictures below show the results after 3 rounds of clean up!

Round 1 - cleaning the polish off my hands with cotton wool and polish remover. Didn't work well, still have golden knuckles.

Round 2 - using a cotton bud soaked in polish remover to try and get the bits near my nails that were covered in black. Didn't really work, just smudged things.

Round 3 - clean up brush to clean cuticles. Limited success.

Ah well, here they are.

I think next time I'll try using a thinner straw, and maybe thin down the polish a bit to make it easier to SPLAT! But I have to say, I'm a bit proud of these. I get so little time to sit down and really do nail art as opposed to swatches, and I'm happy to have tried a new techniques.

I do wish  mine were at good at these by Alexis at Glitter Tips though, the girls got a gift! 

These were the splats so to speak:) From left to right; Barry M Grey and Black, Nails Inc Old Queen Street, Models Own Gold Rush. 

And now for the confusion..........

The base for this mani is Accessorize Pink Spice, shown below. It's a creamy pale pink with a golden shimmer running through it, which translated well from bottle to nail. It had a good application, drying quickly. But..............

..........if you Google Accessorize Pink Spice, you get a totally different colour to the one shown above. It was actually a hugely popular polish a while ago, as it was believed to be a dupe for Mac's Bad Fairy. Here are links to swatches of the 'old' Pink Spice at Lucys Stash and Nailxchange, so you can see what I mean. Odd, very odd. I can't imagine that Accessorize are so hard up for names that they're reusing old ones. Anyone know what's going on here? I'd love to know, cos I'm nosy like that:)

Anyway, toodles for now peeps, speak soon.

Swatch - Scandalous by Revlon

Hola amigos! I'm practising my Spanish as bf and I have been booking our flights to sunny Peru and Argentina! No tengo dinero ahora, pero soy feliz! (Roughly translated as, "I have no money now but I am happy" lol).

This post was supposed to be showcasing my first attempt at splatter nails, however I was foolish enough to not prep my nails with tape to save on clean up, and am still trying to get black polish off my cuticles...so until I've finished you can't look, it's too ugly lol:)

So to tide you over until operation clean up is finished (estimated time, 2016!) here is a little swatch from one of my untrieds. Shockingly, I've had these photos in my pictures for ages, I just totally forgot about them. Anyhoo;

This is a black jelly-like base jam packed with purple hex glitter, as well as tiny purple specks of glitter. I didn't need to fish for the glitter or place the glitter, it went on easily and evenly.

I was pretty impressed with this polish. I wasn't sure whether it would be opaque or not, as the  base is quite sheer, however it built up easily. This is 3 coats. I loved the depth of colour it gave and this got lots of compliments. It did need plenty of topcoat though; I think the shiner it is the more it shows of the awesomeness of this polish. I love this polish and can't believe I forgot about it!

Enjoy the week ahead peeps. Adios!

Swatch - unnamed Models Own goldy greeny gorgeousness!

Happy Thursday peeps!

After a very good nights sleep and much looking after by my wonderful bf, I'm feeling normal again - wooohoo! I'm in the process of piling glitter onto my nails to celebrate:) So while my glittery project is in process here's a little swatch for you lovely peeps:)

For those of you who couldn't resist immediately spending your Christmas money on polish, you may have been as desperate cool as I was, and hit the shops on Boxing day:) Bf was not happy, in fact I only managed to get him to the shops by pretending I needed urgent girlie things (always unspecified, seems more urgent that way) and then headed straight to the Models Own stand.....the game was up! But my mini haul did compensate for bf's grumpiness. One of the lovely shiny things I picked up was this polish, as part of a free gift when I bought two other MO polishes (this polish came in a pack with a black nail art pen, so a total BARGAIN). 

When I looked at this in the bottle I thought it might be a bit garish, but honestly, the second it was on my nails I loved it! 

I did think that when I put this on it might be a one coater (you know sometimes you just have that impression), but alas, alack, twas not so. However, 2 - 3 coats is fine with me really, and it went on easily, smoothly and dried incredibly quickly. 

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep - love:) 

Sadly this is unnamed (why, why, why?!) I haven't seen this polish in their normal collection, and as it doesn't have a name maybe it's only a freebie polish? Maybe it's one they'll bring out into their main collection soon. I have no idea. But I really hope they do - and I really hope they give it a name, it deserves it! 

Have a great Friday peeps - it almost the WEEKEND!