Tri Polish Challenge November 2013 - Manicure 1

Greetings All!

The TPC is back! I skipped last month, as I was way too preoccupied with Halloween! This month the colours are grey, purple and blue, pretty perfect for November actually! I'm sure we're all familiar with the rules by now - to create four manicures using three polishes representing three pre-determined colours. If you want to join in, you can do so here. I chose three polishes from the same brand for my manicures, which always pleases me. I like them to match!

Sally Hansen Salon Manicure in Dorian Grey, Good To Grape, and Thinking Of Blue. Three fairly muted shades (TOB being a touch brighter, but still) to match the time of year! Here is my first manicure.

There will be three more manicures this month, hopefully all featuring all three polishes, but definitely featuring at least two!

UK Indies - Nail Lacquer UK Jolly Snowman

Greetings All!

Are you ready for the Winter polishes to come creeping in? I know I'm feeling ready, with the cold weather! Not Christmas polishes, I refuse to blog about them this early, although yesterday I did swatch a few. Snowmen aren't exclusively Christmassy though, so I'm happy to post about snowman polish!

This is 3 coats of Jolly Snowman, with no undies.

Bonus shots - matte!

I think the icy blue base and blue glitter is very perfect for a Winter polish. It looks so...cold! The sprinkle of colour makes this a very cute polish, Wintry, but still bright and pretty.

You can buy Nail Lacquer UK polish here (and for once, I'm blogging about a polish that is still available!!).

The Crumpet's Nail Tarts 33DC Day 25 - A New Technique For You

Greetings All!

Another new week begins! Autumn is steadily turning into Winter - all the lovely browns are being replaced by grey and cold. I'm not a fan!

For today's manicure, I had to think/search for ages to find a new technique. Not that I've done everything, not by a long way, I just found it difficult to think of something. I'm more comfortable sticking to what I know - I hate the feeling of not knowing what I'm doing!

Finally using a fan brush occurred to me. I have one sat with all my brushes, I must have had it about a year and I've never used it. I looked at a few tutorials, and dived right in!

Now, I could lie at this point, and say that's how I meant it to look. But it isn't. I could not get the strokes to go the full width of my nail, at all! In the end I gave up, filled one side in a little more, and I'm not completely unhappy with the result! In fact, I quite like it. Ignore what I said earlier, I totally meant for it to look like that!

Two more untrieds used for this manicure - both Revlon. My base is Bare Bones, a rather lovely neutral that's pretty perfectly named. I'm not one to resist a bony polish! The blue is Blue Slate. Both of these were pound shop finds by my mum (I have her well trained!). For the price (£1, not the £5.99 some places charge!), you can't do much better than Revlon.

UK Indies - Iconic Effect Disney Holos

Greetings All!

It's fairly rare for me to post about a holo polish. I tend to wear them 'away from the blog', and quite often I don't even try to take photos! Recently though, I, erm, learned how to use my camera. I've had the thing for several years, not realising that it had different settings! So now I can photograph holos (not brilliantly, but enough so that you can see what they are!), and I've even had a go at glow in the dark polish.

I've still been buying holo polish, of course! Iconic Effect are well known on the UK indie scene for their holos, especially their holo topcoats, and they always seem to sell out super quickly! Somehow I was in the right place at the right time, and I managed to grab these two.

Cruella De Vil I sort of tricked myself into thinking was black. It's actually blue, but the darkest blue I've ever seen! Both these polishes are rather sheer, and definitely needed undies. Cruella's were Color Club Blue Topia (I think!), and this is 2 coats and no topcoat.

The first two were taken under 'normal' artificial light, and the last three are my usual photo setup (daylight bulb). You can clearly see that my usual method isn't anyway near as holographic! Such a beautiful polish though, plenty of colour in natural and artificial light, and a lovely effect!


Lotso is a bubblegum pink holo. This is 2 coats over SH Courtesan, again with no topcoat.

Dark colours always seem to make the holo 'pop' a little more, but this is a great colour (we learned this week that pink is my most owned colour!), and I really love how it seems to pick up the orange most (pink and orange...mmm).

Iconic Effect are usually sold out of most things! However, I believe there will be a restock this Friday (22nd), so keep an eye out!

Stamping With Mentality Dapper

Greetings All!

I have a new crush. I got Dapper for my birthday from my mum (thanks mum!), with a little help from Sally Magpies. I'd been curious about them for a while, with their holographic, duochromatic claims, and at £6 for a 15ml bottle, they're not that extravagant (in fact, the same price per ml as Barry M Gold Foil!). It's described as a nude polish with gold tones, but to my eyes at least, it's pretty gold! I would say gold with nude tones lol.

When I first looked at the bottle, I thought "no way this will stamp. It looks like a four coater!". It does appear quite sheer, but once I opened it, it was clearly very opaque, and it absolutely, definitely stamps!

You can just catch a hint of the holo on my index finger. It isn't crazy holo, but it is definitely there! I haven't seen much duochromacity(?), but duochromes were never really my thing anyway. What is my thing is golden stamping polishes! Especially with a pretty, subtle holo sparkle. And it stamps just about perfectly. The stamp is from Plate 3 of the MoYou Pro XL Collection, and I'm starting to be pretty impressed with them! The size especially is just perfect for me, you can see on my thumb that they're just the right size!

My base, if you're interested, is Pahlish Still Alive, a rather gorgeous polish with crazy amounts of depth.

I know, I know, how did I even bring myself to stamp over it! This is my first Pahlish, apparently it's blue-green, but it's looking quite green here! Either way, stunner. I picked this up at Rainbow Connection.

So, lovely base, lovely stamp, lovely stamping polish! I love it when a plan comes together.Will Dapper replace my beloved Barry M Gold Foil though? Time will tell! But yes. Yes, it will. I also have Proper still to try, so watch out for that!

Different Dimension - Drops of Jupiter

Greetings All!

Today I have another polish that I snagged from Rainbow Connection (and another one that's currently sold out!). I have a serious weakness for anything in a black base - I instantly justify it (it's black!) and into the cart it goes. This one also has holo glitter, and stars, so I never really stood a chance!

This is 2 coats over black.

I've seen some swatches where the glitter is quite sparse, and it does look really pretty, but that's not me. I like full-on glitter! And this is pretty full-on, especially when I tilt my nails just right, and create a whole rainbow! Holo circles are nearly the best glitter ever - they really light up with a rainbow of colours so easily, it's like they were meant for each other!

I bought my bottle from Rainbow Connection, you can also buy DD from Etsy, Llarowe, Mei Mei's Signatures...the list goes on!

The Crumpet's Nail Tarts 33DC Day 24 - Art With Your Most Owned Colour

Greetings All!

For this prompt, I immediately knew which colour I owned the most of. Would you like to take a guess? Even though I knew the answer, I was still a little bit surprised when I found out!

Pink?! yep. My pink collection is hew-ge, it's only a few bottles short of filling up a whole drawer in my Helmer! I do like a pink polish, and I guess they so run the spectrum from very pale, right up to burgundy type colours, so there's a lot of variety. Or maybe somehow, deep down I'm a girly girl. Yeah, no.

This manicure was done with three pink untrieds, Color Club Angels N' Pink as the base, Barry M Princess from their new Textured collection as the chevron/half moon detailly bits, and Deborah Lippmann Some Enchanted Evening as the glittery tips. I think I might have gone a bit too far - after I did the triangles (taped this time, instead of freehand) it was still looking a little plain, and I thought some glitter on the tips would really round it off. Lesson learned!

Glam Polish - Juggling Jupiter

Greetings All!

Today I have a very cute polish I got from Rainbow Connection. I couldn't resist such a pretty glitter! When can I ever resist a pretty glitter? Anyway, apparently I also really liked the swatch picture they had, because I ended up choosing a very similar colour for my base - oops! This is 2 coats over Barry M Gelly in Blueberry.

Isn't it cute? Actually, all of their polishes look gorgeous, all fun and bright colours...I think this discovery is going to end up being very expensive! Not the most Autumnal range of polishes, but so much fun.

I bought this polish from Rainbow Connection (where it's currently sold out! I do have a knack for picking polishes that aren't readily available!), but you can also get it from the Glam Polish site, or Mei Mei's Signatures. Probably other places too, I never do enough research!