Cute french mani with a twist

Hey everyone, I hope you're all having a fab weekend so far. I've been quite busy and have only just had a chance to create a design for everyone to try. It's pretty straight forward and if you're good with a striping brush this design will be a doddle. I hope you like it!

To recreate this design you will need:

Black, white and gold polish of your choice
Top coat
Small striping brush
Tape (if you want a neat mani)
And a steady hand.

Firstly paint all your nails black apart from your accent nail which you paint white!

Once that is dried add white tips to the black nails and a black tip to the white nail.

Then with a black/white striper, or striping brush dipped in black/white carefully paint 2 black/white stripes on the tip. Then once that is dried add a gold stripe and top coat. Easy!

Boots 17 Fast Finish Nail Polish - Fury

Drooling over Peridot but cannot bear to part with £17.50, Boots have come up with a wallet friendly alternative. Part of their new autumn/winter collection 'Fury' is a warm gold/bronze metallic with subtle hints of green --- I've just realised this sounds like a press release! I think I'll leave the writing to the professionals and just get on with showing you the pictures!

Chanel Peridot on index and ring finger in case it's not obvious!

As you can see it's not really a dupe but it does have Peridot qualities to it and at £2.99 I don't think you'll complain.

Who's going to buy it?

Chanel Peridot vs Diving in Malaysia - a comparison

Last month I mentioned that Sephora's Diving in Malaysia was a dupe of Chanel's Peridot but was not able to provide the evidence! Well now that Peridot is in stock again I can do a side by side comparison for you.

Can you tell which is which?

No?

Nor can I, I only know because I know which fingers I painted Peridot on, which proves it's a dupe, a superduper dupe. There's no time to do a randomised control trial here so you're going to have to take my word for it. Formula, drying time, glossiness, duochrome greeniness was all pretty much the same. If I had to state one difference I guess may be Peridot is lighter but this is negligible to the untrained eye! Still can't tell? Have a guess and tell me!

*Peridot swatched at a Chanel counter!

Caught on Camera!

There I was checking out the new Colourcopia store in Westfield Shepherd's Bush, minding my own business and bam I was papped...

image: OPI UK Facebook

Yes I know I'm a little crazy because I went the Stratford Westfield earlier in the week but SB is quite easy to get to and I wanted to find a card and present for my dad's 60th. Admittedly I got side tracked but I had to have a look however once again I showed great restraint and bought nothing (well not in there anyway) !!!

Stratford Westfield mini haul

My lectures finished early today so I took the opportunity to visit the new Westfield mall in Stratford, London. Not sure what all the hype is about to be honest because I much prefer the one in Shepherd's Bush which is less claustrophobic and has a better layout. Anyway one store which Stratford has that SB doesn't is Kiko (actually now they do have one in SB). I've read and seen swatches of this brand on other blogs so was keen to check out their polishes. I exercised great restraint and only bought 2 polishes from their large collection which I think deserves a pat on the back! From Beauty Base, which by the way is rubbish compared to the Shepherd's Bush store I came away with a lovely bottle of polish by L.A. Colors and in John Lewis I picked up a tin of Burt's Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream. Aren't they pretty!?

Kiko 255 (Purple with holographic glitter) and 348 (Khaki green) £3.50, L.A. Colours Cactus (Antique Gold/Olive) 99p, Burt's Bees £5.99

Kiko 255 reminds me a lot of Color Club's Wild at Heart and OPI's Extravagance...why do I always pick polishes that are very similar? Are you the same?

Peeling Nails NOTD

Hey guys today I want to show you a quick nail design I came up with that I've named 'Peeling Nail'!!! I know the name doesn't make it sound very appealing but hopefully you'll understand the logic (or not ) behind it. I was messing about with some polishes and thought it would look cool if the top nail colour looked like it was peeling in the corner to reveal another colour underneath. This is what I finally came up with. Not sure if the intention is obvious but I'm quite happy with the overall design.


You can paint the tips any colour or even make a pattern. The triangle bit in the center is supposed to be the peeling bit!

Perhaps a little shading would help with the effect?

(Please ignore my fingerprints all over the bottle!)
OPI We'll always have Paris
CG For Audrey
CG Below Deck
And a white polish!

Anyway I hope you liked the design and will give it a go. If you do be sure to show me!

Sorry this post is short, I've been doing 12 hour shifts and am shattered!

A x

Inspired Silm Silhouette NOTD

I recently saw this post by All Lacquered Up and felt inspired to do my own take on the 'silm silhouette' look created by Jin Soon Choi for Prabal Gurung.

Shot in direct sunlight
Reminds me of a warm Indian summer.
What do you think?

**Update** Recreate this look using:OPI Take the Stage (Burlesque collection) - orange
Boots 17 Exquisite - green
China Glaze DV8 (OMG collection)- teal/blue
Milani 3D (3D holographic collection) - gold
OPI Reflection (DS series) - pink/red
OPI Extravagance (DS series) - plum/purple

ME ME ME Mediterranean Olive

Here's a quick swatch of a polish I found in Poundland several months ago. If I remember correctly it's by ME ME ME which is a brand available from Superdrug. This is obviously old stock so I apologise if you like this.

As the name suggests it's a olive/khaki metallic with a small amount of glitter that twinkle deep within the polish. It's rather similar to ELF's Metal Madness.
My cuticle area looks really greasy and ugly well that's because they are haha. I obviously didn't rub the cuticle oil in enough :-P

Despite the rather naff brush the polish applies well and only requires 2 coats. The real issue is it stinks of something chronic, lingers for hours in your nose and the back of your throat, and hence why it's been sat in my 'cr*p polish' box unnoticed until now... but it's gone straight back in. I'm determined to find a none smelly dupe and hopefully with the recent popularity of army/khaki/olive greens it should not be a problem!

BeYu Brilliant Shiraz 209 Swatches

Today I just wanted to do a quick post to show you guys what BeYu 209 looks like over Rimmel's Midnight Blue. It was quite difficult to capture the colour shifting shimmer and I ended up having to experiment with different cameras and lighting. In the end I decided I didn't want to over saturate this post with too many pics so I've selected three that I think show the polish best.

This is the polish in it's 'normal' state, deep burgundy leaning more towards red than purple. I'm not sure why it looks so patchy because it didn't in person!

Hints of brown, orange and green creeping in.

You can see the green effect nicely on the index finger.

Okay the pictures are out of the way here's the exciting part, I have a non-dud bottle to give away but I'm not sure how, when, or if anyone actually wants to enter a giveaway to win this. I thought may be I could enter the first 50 followers of my blog as a little thank you? What do you think, I know it might take a while!!? hehe

Ax

Urban Decay Bruise

Hey guys hope you've all had a good week and looking forward to the weekend. I'm a little sad because not only is this the last weekend of my summer break (I've had 6 weeks off lol) before I go back on clinical placement, but the last big summer break period because I will hopefully be qualified by next July and have a job sorted - I cannot wait to have a regular salary again. Anyway in preparation for Monday I have chopped my nails down which is making feel like I have the smallest nail in the world but hopefully you won't have to see them just yet because I swatched a few polishes and have them all line up for you guys to see.

First up is a discontinued Urban Decay polish I picked up from eBay or a discount cosmetic etailer pretty cheap, I can't remember which. It's called Bruise which is quite fitting because I think the deep plum red jelly is similar in colour to a bruise or a haematoma if you want to get technical! On it's own the base colour doesn't do much for me but the green/blue shimmer adds that extra punch!!!!


It was quite difficult to capture the base colour without the shimmer showing but you can just about see it I hope.
Application is fantastic, requires about 2-3 coats and dries quickly. If you can get your hands on this I would recommend picking one up for your collection.

Have a good weekend!

Ax

Twit Twoo! Owl Manicure

One of the gifts I received for my birthday was The Usborne Book of Drawing, Doodling and Colouring. Inside there are pages and pages of activities to complete all designed to get your creative juices flowing... and flow they did, on to my nails!!


A super cute page filled with owls caught my attention!

(sorry about the naff picture)

I painted my nails with a white nail polish and used black acrylic paint (Daler Rowney System 3 in case you wanted to know), then topped it off with a coat of Seche Vite.

I had thought about colouring them in but I quite like the black and white.
Do you like them?

"The ocean looks like a thousand diamonds strewn across a blue blanket"

For my birthday (which is today btw!) I treated myself to my first bottle of Deborah Lippmann polish. £16 (hunnay if you're reading this please don't have a heart attack) for a bottle of polish is very hard to justify but I saw this stunner in a House of Fraser I don't usually frequent and thought sod it I need a high end polish in my life and on my nails hehe. I don't feel guilty for splurging on this because I freakin' LOVE it. I LOVE it way more than Facets of Fuchsia aka Bad Romance because blue is definitely more my colour. I love the dark blue jelly which suspends the glitters at different levels giving the polish so much depth and sparkle. Even the cashier in Sainsbury's liked them!

Deborah Lippmann - Across the Universe

It's applies quite sheer and also requires a little effort to 'place' the glitter but builds nicely. Here I applied three coats plus a coat of Seche Vite which I'm going to curse because it made ATU recede quite obviously :-( Any recommendations for another fast drying topcoat that doesn't recede?

You NEED this haha

Did you get the Incubus reference in the title? No? nevermind, here's the video

ELF Metal Madness

If it had not been for a gift with purchase offer ELF's Metal Madness would never have made it onto my nails! And this is what I would have been missing...

Gorgeous dark grey metallic with holographic glitter

Here you can see the holo much better

I got this polish last Christmas time but it is still available from ELF. Seriously you cannot go wrong with this polish. It dries well and is opaque in about 2 coats. My only issue is with the brush which is really soft and fans out causing all sorts of problems on my little nails!

I would recommend trying other polishes from their range too. From personal experience they can be a bit hit and miss but at £1.50 you can't really complain. Some colours are gorgeous however some like "Champagne" do not look like the colour on the website.

Have you got this polish or any others in your collection? What do you think of it?

Debby ColorPlay 95

Today I want to share with you another polish I picked up from a Monoprix (supermarket?) on my recent trip to Paris, it's Debby's Colorplay 92. Once again this is a brand I've never heard of but after Googling it seems to be popular with European bloggers. It's a violet jelly with gold glass fleck glitter and micro sized red and green glitter that can be seen in low lighting. Sound nice right, well I'm still undecided. I don't know if it's the colour which reminds me of fake grapes or the finish which looks plastic if that makes sense. The polish did recede a teeny-tiny bit when it dried and have a strange smell that lingered for a day but it's quite good wear wise even without a top coat.

What do you guys think?

August purchases

I knew August wouldn't be a good month for my bank balance! No uni/clinical placement has meant I've had plenty of time to wander around shops and browse online for polishes. Also in August I was treated to a trip to Paris for my birthday, which is actually next week, so it would have been rude not to have picked up any from there. Some I've already shared because they're just too pretty to hide away in a drawer and some will be swatched in the near future. I also bought my first Deborah Lippmann polish as a present to myself which I cannot wait to wear!

August has also seen a change in the way I photograph polishes and swatches. Believe it or not I have got a degree in photography, well fashion photography, and I thought it was about time I dusted off my DSLR and put what I know into practise. In the past I relied on using my point and shoot but the pictures did the polishes no justice whatsoever. I'm still getting the hang of doing still life and there is still plenty room for improvement but I hope you guys who read my blog are given a better and more realistic idea of the polishes I share with you.

So anyway back to my haul, in total I accumulated 19 new polishes in August. I'm hoping September will be more restrained as I start uni again and have lots of bills to pay!

Rimmel
Hard Edge
Midnight Blue

Barry M
Blue Moon
Berry ice Cream
Silver Cascade

Revlon (my mum actually bought these for me)
Facets of fuschia
Pink nude

Boots
Purple shatter
Black glitter shatter

LA Color
Black and white Stripers

Deborah Lippmann
Across the universe

Beyu
x 2 - 209

Paris Haul

Sephora
Diving in Malaysia
Moody Woman
Midnight Crawl

Debby
Colorplay 92

Salome
Purple Glitter