My so called life - weddings, houses and some nail polish! Pic heavy!

Oh wow - it's been so long since I've posted as my life has been chaos! 

As I mentioned in my last post, as well as house hunting and job hunting, I'm also planning a wedding - STRESS! Things are looking up though - we've found a house we love and have had our offer accepted; it's so exciting to think that we should soon have a house that we can start a family in. On this note, I've been banned from watching One Born Every Minute as fiance is a bit worried by my obsession with babies, birth, pregnancy, nurseries..........:)

Anyhoo, I've been making all the decorations for my wedding and I thought I'd share them with you (partly as proof that I'm not just a slacker lol) so here goes;

First off, I've made buttonhole for all of the groom's party, as well as one for my Dad and one for my gay best friend who'll be in my bridal party (bride-male instead of bridesmaid?) As I'm totally obsessed with buttons, I took the term buttonhole quite literally!

I then made 4 bouquets for my bridesmaids - keeping with the button theme. These seemed to take forever! But for the last few months I've been coming home to find packets of buttons and ribbons awaiting me - sheer joy:) They've been so much fun to make.

As well as these, I've been making metres and metres of bunting - 75 metres so far, only 25 metres to go. This has been less fun than the bouquets and buttonholes - I've had to cut out a billion triangles of fabric, tack them onto the bias binding, sew them on using my sewing machine and then unpick all the tacking. Sad face. 

The craft that has given me the most joy however has been making my bridal bouquet. I knew I wanted a button bouquet as soon as I saw them on Pinterest. As much as I love flowers, it makes me sad that once they're picked they die so quickly - also, the sheer expense of them put me off! I honestly couldn't find a bouquet I liked for less than £100, and button bouquets were even more expensive, so I decided to make my own. I used broaches and buttons from my grandmother's collection and topped it up with many, many purchases from ebay! It has taken months but I'm so proud of it! Here it is................

This hasn't left much time for my nails, but I have been buying and applying, just not posting. So here's a very brief update on my nails for the past few weeks;

The gorgeous Aquatic collection by Barry M - Mediterranean, a lovely pinky-gold...... 

......the even more stunning Pacific from the same collection........LOVE.......

 ......the adorable Barry M limited edition released for Superdrug's 50th birthday (purple, white, red and pink glitter in a hot pink glitter - er, amazeballs much?!) .......

.....and the lovely White Splatter by Maybelline - this goes with EVERYTHING! If you don't already, invite it into your life, it will make almost everything better:) 

Wow - that was a long post. I'll (hopefully) be back asap peeps, thanks for baring with me for so long:) Toodle pip! 

Haul!

Oh I've been sooooooooo bad recently! And yet, what with house-hunting, job hunting and wedding planning I've not been able to post:( In fact, I've barely found the time to paint my nails. Foolishly, I decided that I would make as many as the wedding decorations as possible and so have been spending my evenings sewing bunting, making place settings, pinteresting like a crazy lady..................my nails have barely had a look in. 

But somehow I've found time to buy polish.....

Starting at the top, going clockwise; Barry M Silk Mist, Barry M Silk Heather, Maybelline White Splatter, Sinful Colours Sugar Sugar, Barry M Aquatic Collection Pacific, Barry M Aquatic Collection Mediterranean, Rimmel Sherbert Sweetheart, Ciate Roller Coaster, Ciate Big Yellow Taxi, Ciate Megaphone. 

Swoooooooooon - these little babies are courtesy of one of my lovely work friends - we've been swapping:) 

Oh Barry M - you're so good to me:)

Barry M Sour Apple over Maybelline Blackout

Happy Wednesday peeps! Hope you're having a great week? Ok, so embarrassingly I'm still working on my untrieds, including using up some of those polishes that, as the time, I needed sooooooo urgently and then.....ahem.....lost in the pile of others. Shame faced. Barry M Sour Apple is one of those polishes; and yet it has remained unused.

Until now! I ummmed and arrrrrh about what to pair it with and decided that a dark background would help it pop and boy was I right. I love this combo; what do you think? 

Just lovely:) 

 

Maybelline Color Show Polka Dots - Rainforest Canopy swatch

Hey hey amigos,

Still crazy busy, but some of that business has been exciting prep for holiday business, making it somewhat easier to cope with:) Sadly, I won't be visiting the rainforest whilst hitting South America, so to compensate I purchased this rather lovely newbie from Maybelline.

I have to say, I prefer this Polka Dot polish to the other in my collection, Speckled Pink, which is cute......but this is cuter!

This is a fairly sheer polish, so I layered it over a random jade I found knocking round in my collection. I then painted 2 layers of Rainforest Canopy over the top. It's really easy to apply, although to give a coverage even enough for moi, I did place a few pieces of glitter here and there to even things out.  Et voila.............lovely speckly nails. 

Happiness.

Maybelline Polka Dots Speckled Pink

Hello peeps,

Sorry my posts are so sporadic at the moment; work is totally bonkers, and I have to admit my polish-loving is flagging at the moment.......but thankfully my interest have been grabbed by Maybelline's latest offering!

I was so excited to grab 2 of their Polka Dot range whilst in Edinburgh - I love black and white glitter polishes, you may have noticed I became a little bit obsessed with Confetti by Loreal, so these are perfect for me:)

It's a gorgeous polish, sheer pink packed with black and white matt glitter, in large, medium and small. The application is great, and it didn't go clumpy like some other polish i won't mention (oh, all right, Confetti; I'm talking about you!). Because the polish is very sheer, I decided to layer it over Barry M Bright Pink, which ended up giving it an almost neon quality; happy days! 

I've seen other blogs who have used this without layering, so I will try it at a later point, but for now I've got to try my other Polka Dot polish, Rainforest Canopy.......swatch coming as soon as i can fit in some more nail painting:) 

Recycling - Black tips on copper.

Arggggggggggggh sooooooo busy, I only just had time to recycle my mani from yesterday. And when I say recycling, I mean lazily sticking some black tips on it. Quick, but effective:)

Secretly, although this is a VERY lazy recycling effort, I'm super pleased with them because I managed to do them freehand:) Eeeeeeeeeeeep!

Swatch - Maybelline Color Show Brick Shimmer

Come esta amigos y amigas? Lol - my Spanish is still pretty basic, how I'm going to cope on my hols I don't know:(

Anyhoo, this is a quick post to show you my other Maybelline Color Show purchase. Like I said, Color Show is a nice, but not remarkable, new collection from Maybelline. This little cutie caught my eye, and I fee=ll for the cute colour with a slightly pinkish tinge. 

It's application is really good; fast drying and a nice brush. The above is two coats, no top coat. There is one weird problem with the bottle though - the neck of the bottle is so long that it's really hard to get enough polish on the brush. While the bottle is full this isn't a huge problem, but when it gets emptier it's going to be super annoying. A design fault or Maybelline's cunning plan to make us buy the polish before we even finish the bottle? Lol:) 

Swatch - Maybelline Color Show Wine Shimmer

Happy Monday peeps!

So I've been a bit naughty recently and picked up several polishes, including some of the new releases by Maybelline. They've put out a collection called Color Show which has several lovely looking colour in. I have to be honest and say that, considering how so many companies have really raised their polish game, trying new textures, finishes and colours, this is a pretty tame collection. Don't get me wrong, they have some great colours, but only a couple really interested me, and only one made me go "WOW!"

And that was this one, Wine Shimmer. It's a very sheer raspberry red jelly sprinkled with teeny, tiny specks of holographic glitter. Odd, but it works. So here it is (2 coats over Barry M Raspberry, as I can't cope with VNL).

Hmmmmmm, pretty cute. Btw, this was the polish I wore for 4 days! And I have to say the wear time is amazing - no chipping, no peeling. Epic. The glitter isn't in your face, so it's actually quite an elegant polish. Good work Maybelline:)

Swatch - Accessorize Speckle Jupiter/Ladybird

It's Thursday baby - the weekend is nigh!

Righty, have another Accessorize polish with a muddled named for you! Shocking after the Pink Spice confusion. The polish I'm going to show you is called Jupiter on the bottle. However, looking through various swatches at other blogs such as Brit Nails and Never mind Suzi , it seems to also be called Ladybird. Baffled! Totally baffled! And actually really annoying. My camera is totally unable to focus closely enough on the bottle to show you the name, so hopefully you'll trust me when I say that my bottle says Jupiter.

Anyway, enough whining, onto lovely swatches:) These are 1 coat of Jupiter/Ladybird over a coat of Maybelline Deep Red.

Can you believe that when I first tried this polish I almost binned it? I didn't put a base colour on and tried to build the colour up with multiple layers instead. As the red base is so sheer, it took 3 coats; the black glitter almost covered the colour totally and made it look muddy and just horrid. 

It was only after seeing some swatches on Brit Nails (links above peeps, I urge you to check her out, she crazy talented) that I thought about layered. Face palm!

Swit swoo, twit twoo!

Ok, I can't actually describe how much I love these nails! I've wanted to do them for so long, but felt didn't feel confident enough. But, after finding the wonderful tutorial by Let Them Have Polish I finally did it:) Whoop whoop!

Presenting...........drum roll please.......................OWL NAILS!

I'm so flipping pleased with these, I can't stop staring at my nails. I used a lot of polishes for these bad boys, so I've pictured them below. 

Top row - Barry M Blackberry, Indigo, Watermelon, Raspberry, White, WAH gold nail art pen, black nail art pen.

Bottom row - Barry M Strawberry Ice Cream, Berry Ice Cream, Blueberry Ice Cream, Mint Green, Models Own Disco Heaven, Gold Rush, Maybelline Rose Poudre. 

I feel hungry after listing all of them:) Hope you have a good weekend peeps, I'm off to buy some ice cream.

Ps - as I simply cannot take these nails off until I have no other choice, my next post will be showing you my snazzy new nail polish storage unit - I'm really rather pleased with it:) So are my polishes! 

Lost in Space!

Hello peeps, hope you've had a good week? I'm on my hols for a week, super excited. Off for a romantic meal with bf tomorrow night and then a week of lie ins, napping, playing with the kitwits, sleeping, painting my nails, sleeping.......you get the idea. A lazy week.

Nail wise, I've been trying out the rest of my Models Own haul from a few weeks ago. First up was Hayley's Comet, a gorgeous duo chrome pinky-blue. It's really stunning, sadly the pictures below do not do it justice! It's very sheer, so I put it over my fave base colour, MO Nude Beige. The pictures below are two coats of Hayley's Comet, with no topcoat. They photos make it look like dated, like an 80's style shiny pink, but in actual real life it's a shimmery peachy pink with a blue colour in the light. It actually looks like the inside of a shell, stunning. 

After another breakage, my next polishes were painted upon new little stubs. But, for the first time I filed them into a shape that I was pretty happy with. I was keen to use my MO Hed Kandi Ibiza Mix again, so decided that it would look lovely over my trusty black by Maybelline, Black Onyx. The application of the glitter was a bit tricky, in the end I resorted to the dabbing method, but I was super pleased with the results. May I also add, the reason my cuticles look so sad and thirsty here is because this morning bf and I had to clean the house top to bottom (house inspection form landlord) and I got bathroom duties! The glamour! However, the polish still looks brilliant. Glossy, no chipping, happy days:)

I luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurve glitter - it sooths my inner magpie. This mani will be staying for a while (and not just because I'm dreading removing the evil twosome of glitter and black polish!)