Silver Holographics Comparison

I thought I'd do a quick comparison for you of all the silver holographic polishes I own.

Direct sunlight

Direct sunlight
Index: M&S- Rainbow, reviewed this in an earlier post. Easy to apply even without special base coat.
Middle: Sally Hansen Nail Prisms - Diamond - particles very fine, polish quite sheer so you will need a zillion coats. I expected more punch from this polish. Doesn't dry fast or well, has weird rubbery squishy feel like it's not dried properly. Can easily leave a mark.
Ring: China Glaze - OMG - Pain to apply without base coat but very holographic
Little finger: GOSH - Holographic - Best of the bunch but need base coat for best application. Dries fast to give foil finish. Need I say more (unless you want me to).
Thumb: Milani - HD - Quite chunky particles, more inline with CG Kaleidoscope polishes. Dries with that rubbery squishy feel like SH.

Indirect sunlight SH has a more gold tone to the silver, the rest are your typical silver. I think the silver is really ugly when it's not all holographic.

Availability: GOSH fix base and holographic can still be found in some Superdrug stores, not ones in big cities though. China Glaze OMG and Sally Hansen Diamond available on eBay at silly prices. M&S(UK) and Milani (US) still widely available.

Attempt number one

I had a quick go at doing the Mondrian mani, what do you think?
I have never used nail stripers before so my lines are a bit wobbly but I'm happy with the results. Perhaps someone would be kind enough to tell me how I get perfect lines?

June Round Up

I know it's a little premature to be doing a round up especially as there is still another week left of June but I don't intend on buying anymore polishes or should I say I'm banning myself from buying anymore this month.

Everything is expensive here in the UK, houses, cars, milk, bread, you name it we're probably paying double the price compared to our American friends.

When it comes to nail polish a bottle of China Glaze can set you back £6.49 ($10.40) and OPI £10.50 ($16.80) in Sally's so you can imagine if you bought two OPI polishes at full price your bank balance may look rather sad. As much as I want to spend my money locally I cannot afford (literally) to ignore the competitive prices offered by US sellers on eBay. I mainly buy China Glaze or Color Club polishes on eBay because I feel I'm less likely to receive a fake/dud. I've read the hoohaa surrounding OPI polishes and about the fakes that have been surfacing so tend to avoid buying them on eBay. Saying that though I have bought a few on there and everything seems ok apart from the engraved serial number has been scratched out. So anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm not going to be able to bring you all the latest polishes and anything I do share from OPI and CG is a real treat for me.

Ok so enough moaning here is a list of the polishes I bought this month:


OPI Lil Shooters
OPI Femme De Cirque
OPI Little Teasers
OPI Suzi Says Feng Shui, these were all on sale in Sally's which is why I could justify buying them.

OPI Movin' Out I bought from eBay as I had been wanting it up for ages. Think I paid about £7 for it so it's not too bad.

In the new 99p that has opened near to where I live they sell a wide range of LA Color products all for you guessed it 99p, it's our equivalent to the Dollar Tree. I picked up:

LA Colors Color Craze - Sea Siren and four LA Colors Art Deco nail stripers - Yellow, Red, Black Sparkles and Dark Blue for my Mondrian inspired mani.

I bought a couple of Barry M polishes - Coral and Indigo. I bought Indigo to go with my dress that I wore to the summer ball and Coral because I just thought the color was stunning and very summery.

Stargazer 308 and 303

China Glaze OMG which I bought on eBay for less than £9. Everyone must have been snoozing when this was up as others have gone for as much as £23 :-S

Sally Hansen Prisms - eBay purchases again. Happy with Pink Rose Diamond and Diamond, Purple Diamond was thick and gloppy. I've added lots of thinner but it's still iffy, so not happy about that but what can you do!

Random extras that came with the SH Prisms:
Max Factor
Collection 2000
Three Sally Hansen polishes two of which I have given to my friend (Not Pictured).

In total I've added 23 polishes (counting the mini sets as 1) to my collection.
I honestly thought this month was a good month but I guess a polish here, a polish there all adds up!

Piet Mondrian inspired mani

I've been wanting to do a Mondrian inspired mani for a while but just haven't had a good opportunity to do it. I'm on clinical placement during the week so it means by the time I get home and do a mani the lighting is not suitable for taking pics. I have never tried any sort of nail art before and so when I get round to doing my proposed design it'll be my first.

I took a moment to doodle the design I want to do...


If you Google 'Mondrian nails' you'll see others have done similar nail designs.

I'm happy for anyone to do a mani with the above design.

A x

Stargazer ultra cover nail polish - duochrome goodness

When I was at college (10 years ago!!!) I went through a bit of an alt/rock/goth phase during which I bleached and dyed my hair magenta. Back then the go to brand for wild coloured dye was Stargazer. I had forgotten about the brand until recently when I discovered their nail polishes in New Look. Not surprisingly I have picked up a few.

Ultra Cover Nail Polish 308, 303, 307, 308

As soon as I swatched these I knew they were exact dupes of the Accessorize Illusion nail polishes. 307 is the same as Aztec and I have a feeling 303 is the same as Electric Blue (I will do a comparison at a later date). The only difference is the packaging and price. Accessorize bottles are like shorter fatter cousins of GOSH bottles and Stargazer are round and a pain to store. For £4 you get 10ml of Accessorize polish and for £2.50 (£3 if you get it in New Look) you get 14ml of Stargazer polish.

I bet these polishes are made in the same UK factory!!

Anyway Accessorize polishes have been compared to polishes from the Orly Cosmic FX collection but unfortunately I don't own any Orly polish. I'd be interested to see how these Stargazer polishes compare.

Duochrome goodness! 308 - Purple/Black, 303 - Blue/Purple, 307 Goldie green/purple

My pictures are rubbish and don't do the polishes any justice what so ever. I really should get my DSLR out...

What do you think? Should I get a few more?
Stargazer polishes are available online from here.

Never a blue moment

I can't get enough of flakies at the moment especially when they're layered over coloured creams.
Here I've layered Golden Rose Scale Effects No. 3 (I think!!) over Barry M Indigo. I chose to wear this manicure on Saturday for my summer ball as it complimented my dress perfectly.

NOTD On Fire!

This week has been such a blur but what a relief, no more revision and no more essays for the rest of the academic year! Not really sure how I did in my exams as there were questions that I just had to make up answers for!!! Oh well, re-sits are in August but fingers crossed I passed even if it's just by 1% LOL

I broke my nail the other day which meant they all had to go. I was a bit gutted because I wanted long nails for the summer ball on Saturday and had planned to experiment with some blue rhinestones I had bought that match the colour of my dress. Not really sure what to do, any suggestions?

Anyway I finally got round to using one of the Golden Rose Scale Effects nail polishes I ordered from www.enchantra.eu back in April..... what do you think? Gorgeous huh?! It's not exactly an original nail of the day but I've wanted to try this look after seeing it on a few blogs.

Golden Rose Scale Effects No. 10 over Barry M Raspberry with NYC Grand Central as a top coat.

Gorgeous Flakies that look orangey red or green. There are a few sneaky blue flakies hidden too.

If there are any UK readers who want to order from Enchantra but are a little apprehensive there isn't any real reason to be. Just email them with your order and they will send you a link to a Dutch payment site called Multisafepay. When I first did it I was a bit alarmed because I didn't receive any confirmation of my payment but it was fine. Shipping is 13.50 euros for a 1Kg package via UPS and comes within in 2-3 days.

I'm back on clinical placement for 7 weeks before breaking up for summer so the short nails will be staying I'm afraid!

Your dreams could come true...or mine could!!

Ever wanted to own the entire China Glaze OMG collection? Well it could be a reality!!! The ever so generous Carina over at GildedNail is giving away the entire collection to one lucky person. To find out how to enter just visit her blog by clicking here.

Good Luck!

So much for No-buy May

I can't believe it's June already, it really is quite scary how quickly days and weeks go by. I've not posted as much as I would have liked to mainly due to the amount of uni work I've had to and still have to do. My end of year exams are next week and I'm still trying to finish an essay before fully immersing myself in revision. My brain isn't as cooperative as it used to be, this is my 2nd degree and I'm finding I have to go over things again and again before it sticks in my mind!
Anyway enough about uni. Today I thought I'd give you guys a full list of polishes I bought in May. In my previous post you will have read that May was supposed to be a no-buy month but I had failed and succumbed to all the pretty colours and glitter!

So in my last post you will recall I purchased:

Sally Hansen Nail Prisms in Lavender Pearl
M&S Rainbow
Star Gazer 307
LA colors White
Astor in VIP White
Andrea Fulterton gemstone overcoat
Mini set of Beauty UK nail polishes -Wild Child

And was gifted:

Sally Hansen High definition colour - Hi-def
Sally Hansen High definition colour - Pixel Pretty
MAC - Varicose Violet
MAC - Nocturnelle
GOSH - Green Dragon

Since then I've added:



Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear - Night lights
Urban decay - Burnout
Urban decay - Bruise
China Glaze - Hey Sailor (half price at Sally's)
Blue Cross Pop Rock - With the Band
Sally Hansen No Chips 10 day nail colour - White Tip
Revlon cuticle remover (not sure if this is any good but I got it in the £ store!)

I'm still waiting for the Milani 3D holographic polishes to arrive from Cherry Culture. It may take at least 2 weeks as I'm in the UK.

In total I added 30 nail polishes to my collection, 5 gifted to me. The most expensive purchase was the the M&S Rainbow. A polish here, a polish there doesn't seem a lot but listing everything this way makes you realise just how much you've been buying.

This month I'm going to try and buy even less but it's going to be difficult as there are so many lovely collections out at the moment. Oh my poor bank balance!!

[update! My Milani polishes came today (2/6/11) after I said it would probably take 2 weeks haha! It took a total of 8 days to get here which is amazing. I'm really pleased with my first experience of ordering from Cherry Culture and hope to make more purchases in the future]