Tri Polish Challenge November 2013 - Manicure 3

Greetings All!

Yet again I've been loving this month's colours together! So perfect for this month - the days are getting very short, everything's a bit cold and grey and dull, and it does put me in the mood for some muted tones. Here's a quick reminder of this month's polishes.

Sally Hansen Dorian Grey, Good To Grape and Thinking of Blue. I do like it when my polishes 'match'!

 I'm saving my favourite manicure until last, so these are today's nails. I took inspiration from a manicure I saw over at Leesha's Lacquer. I do love leopard print, but I wanted to do something sightly different with it.

WingDust Gilt-y Pleasure

Greetings All!

Today I have yet another gorgeous polish I bought from Rainbow Connection. I've been wanting a gold leaf topcoat for a while - I briefly owned OPI Man With The Golden Gun last year, but I decided to sell it (if you can believe it, at the time I didn't think I needed it). This polish is a bit jazzier, and it was in the sale section, and I can always justify a polish on sale! This is 2 coats over black.

I can't believe I ever thought I didn't need a polish like this! I love the shreds of silver and gold, and the iridescent flakes are practically luminous, very bright. The combination really makes this quite special! I was a little worried that the gold and silver would stick up on my nails, but as the leaf is so thin, the few bits that did stick up were patted down quite easily, and hidden by topcoat. I do now think that I need a plain gold one though...

This polish is currently still available in the Rainbow Connection sale section (a favourite hangout of mine!), it's a little pricey at just under a tenner, but personally I think it's worth it!

The Crumpet's Nail Tarts 33DC Day 28 - Lines

Greetings All!

Monday rolls around once again. There are only 2 more weeks left in this challenge, and six manicures. I must say, I think having three a week has been the perfect amount - regular but not overwhelming. Today I had planned on doing pinstripe nails again, as I need the practice! I ended up doing something else though.

Luckily I prepped a couple of manicures this weekend, so I have a few more days before my thumb and my long nails get retired!

My untried for today's nails is Deborah Lippmann Good Girl Gone Bad, a rather stunning polish I regret not photographing plain! Until last month I didn't own any DL polishes, but I found 2 sets of three reduced in TK Maxx, and I can't resist a bargain. Then I taped on some lines, and polishes over it with W7 Black. In hindsight it was a little silly to hide so much of this pretty glitter!

Pocket Money Polishes - December Collection

*These products were provided for review*

Greetings All!

I hope you've all had a good weekend! Mine was...not great. And today I broke my favourite nail! My right thumb nail, which had only recently made a return to the blog after nursing out a few chips...gone. Now the nubbinest of nubbins, no white bit, and a little less pink bit than it had this morning! So of course I now have to file down my lovely long nails, because it looks ridiculous. Halfway through was of course the perfect time to edit pictures and discover that I wanted to redo a swatch, but I didn't want to ruin the continuity (because I'm such a professional!).

Rant over! Tomorrow is the release of the new Pocket Money Polishes Glitter Babies collection, and this collection is based around Dirty Dancing. I'm not really a fan of 'chick flicks' (I'm more of a horror girl, in more ways than one!), and I've never actually seen Dirty dancing (pause for gasps...), so it's possible I'm not the best person to geek out over these polishes. Fortunately Charlie is, and she has a lovely detailed post about the story behind each polish here.

Swatch time!

The Crumpet's 33DC Day 27 - 3 Patterns

Greetings All!

Oh look, another Friday post that's late! I was feeling a little under the weather yesterday, so I stayed in bed and didn't post these nails, even though they were all prepped and everything. I'm lazy at the best of times!

Today I needed a manicure with three different patterns. I didn't want to go down the road of three random patterns - I wanted them to...tie together. The idea I eventually had was really cool in my head, and I stand by the idea, but as a manicure it really didn't wow me. At all.

See, the principle of this totally works. Three patterns coming together to create one image. It's just kind of rubbish as a manicure! Not something I would want to wear. I'm also regretting the use of a metallic green for the leaves, as I wanted to use all untrieds.

Speaking of which, I used five for this manicure! The base is Kiko 341, which I got in a swap from my friend Charlie of Pocket Money Polishes fame. It's my first Kiko, and it's my favourite kind of blue! The branches are OPI A-Piers To Be Tan (love!), the leaves are Invogue Green Sheen, and the flowers are Ruby Wing Fate and Cypress. I know most of these barely count as tried, but they'll count for me!

UK Indies - NailsInspire Thermal Polish - Satin Kiss

Greetings All!

As polish fans, we're quite spoiled for choice these days. The vast array of colours, styles and finishes blows my mind sometimes! One style I've quickly become a little obsessed with is thermal polish. I still remember seeing the Dance Legend thermals with the glitter in. I spent a couple of months pining for one! Finally last month I popped my thermal cherry (there's a phrase I didn't think I would ever type!) with this polish, and currently I'm up to seven thermals!

Today's polish is extra exciting because as well as being a thermal polish, it's also a UK indie! I saw swatches of these shortly before NailsInspire launched, wiped the drool away and then waited patiently! Stocks were very limited (the whole collection sold out pretty quickly), so I'm very happy that I managed to get all four. I'll be posting them separately, as and when I wear them (I like to keep them on for a couple of days!).

The first one to get on my nails is Satin Kiss, which changes between a browny burgundy, and a vivid red. This is 2 coats. It dried to quite a suede finish, but I was wearing dented base coat (this was after work!) so I needed topcoat to even it out a bit!

Thermals are so hard to take pictures of! Luckily I captured the 'gradient' so I didn't bother with the hot and cold versions. You can see them both already! This is a beautiful polish, the colour change came easily (no hiding under the duvet to warm my hands this time!), and I'm just generally super impressed!

You can buy NailsInspire polish here (unfortunately these are all sold out though!).

Tri Polish Challenge November 2013 - Manicure 2

Greetings All!

Just a quick post before I head off to work. This is my second manicure for this month's TPC. Here's a quick reminder of the polishes I'm using this month.

Sally Hansen Salon Manicure in Dorian Grey, Good To Grape and Thinking of Blue.

I started with Dorian Grey, then used Good To Grape and some cling film for a nice mottled effect. Finally I stamped with Thinking of Blue and Cheeky Jumbo plate 'Wild At Heart'. TOB isn't the best stamping polish, but it'll do in a pinch!

The Crumpet's Nail Tarts 33DC Day 26 - Something From Pinterest

Greetings All!

We're now approaching the final leg of this challenge, and for this manicure I needed to get inspiration from Pinterest. I don't tend to use it much, I've tried but I just can't seem to get into it! Nails I like get bookmarked in a folder called, surprisingly, nails I like. That's just the way I like to do it. Pinterest has way too many lovely nails on there - my head explodes every time I click on it! I also find it quite weird to see some of my manicures pinned on there - I think probably because it's an unfamiliar setting. Don't get me wrong, I'm very flattered, it just feels a bit weird!

For today, however, I had to venture over there. I did really well and managed to pick a manicure within 10 minutes. This is the manicure I took inspiration from, and also the comment about wanting to try it with colour instead of black and white!

So I changed the colours, and the accent fingers (I think this is my preferred style of accent finger, I've just decided!). They are slightly similar to the nails I posted yesterday, but I actually painted these first...I guess they were in my head when I came to do my TPC nails!

Two more untrieds used here - Crush and Caramel from the Barry M Matte Collection. It occurred to me half way through that I might have issues if I needed to use a topcoat (what a waste of the matte finish! Should I matte it again?), but fortunately they weren't too bumpy. They remind me a bit of Maltesers, and now I want some!

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!