Seasonal

I’m a big sucker for Valentine’s Day, I’m a big romantic and I love any reason to get back in touch with love (and I don’t think that it means I love my man any less on other days of the year either, it’s just nice to get caught up in everyone else’s love, romance and happiness when you don’t see it every day!). That’s not to say that I want to alienate anyone who doesn’t like Valentine’s Day either, and it’s cool to be single too! 🙂 Just a no-offence-meant disclaimer for you all 🙂

So here is the product of a Valentine’s brainstorm… okay I didn’t go very crazy with it but I didn’t want to spoil it, as you will probably see by following the pictures, lol!

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So as we all know, it’s our good ole Queen’s Diamond Jubilee this weekend. I love celebrating being British, and I have a lot of respect for much of the Royal family. I decided to attempt Union Jack nails… they look a LOT worse in the photos than they seem to in real life, I suppose because you tend not to scrutinise real life nails like photographs allow you to! My brother thought I had nail wraps on, which is good enough for me!

If you look at my nails out of focus then they don’t look so bad 😉 This is the illusion real life has given my nail art 🙂

I used:

• Barry M Navy
• Barry M Matt White
• Boots 17 Knockout Red
• Rimmel Pro Superwear Ultra Shine Topcoat
• Nail Art Brush set

Now I am not blessed with ambidexterity. I struggled using my dominant (right) hand for this so, if you want to see how my right hand turned out, well, prepare yourself for a nail fail!

I didn’t even bother to clean up – sadly I am walking round with my right hand still looking like this. Ah well.

What nails are you sporting for the Jubilee?

x

Disclaimer: Everything mentioned in this blog post was either bought by myself with my own money, or given to me as a gift from friends/relatives. All opinions expressed here are my own.

Last Easter I did mini egg nail art, so this year I was casting around for more inspiration. You know when you get the cute little chocolate eggs in coloured foil? That’s what inspired me this time. My camera seemed to be playing up a little, the second photo is a bit blurry (sorry!).

These were done with sellotape (lots of it!) for the straight lines and many many polishes…! Here’s what I used:

• BeautyUK Moonstone
• Max Factor Angel Nails
• 2True Shade 4 (Crystal Polish ‘Regal Purple’)
• Deborah Lippmann Glitter in the Air
• Accessorize Goddess
• Boots 17 Fury
• Models Own Indian Ocean
• OPI Rainbow Connection

Hope you like them! What did you adorn your nails with this Easter? Link me up if you have any pictures/blogposts on Easter manicures!

x

Disclaimer: Everything mentioned in this blog post was either bought by myself with my own money, or given to me as a gift from friends/relatives. All opinions expressed here are my own.

So after doing my blog post on Barry M Lilac Foil Effects from Superdrug, a few days later I wandered into Boots and lo and behold, Boots are doing a Ltd Edition Boots exclusive Barry M too! The offer is identical – spend £6 or more on any Barry M products and get Silver Glitter for free, or just buy it alone for £3.99.

One thing has me totally confused about this polish… The lid has a holographic sticker on, implying the polish is holographic… however, it is just literally a silver glitter top coat. Observe:

See what I mean? The name on the base is ‘Silver Glitter’, so I don’t really know where the holographic lid sticker came from. Maybe it’s for eye-catching-ness.

I’ve literally just put this on over my naked nails, hence the yucky stainage 😛 I did 1 coat on my pinkie, 2 coats on my ring finger, 3 on my middle finger and 4 on my index finger, to show you the opacity (or lack of!). I think realistically this is best suited as a topcoat, because at 4 coats it still isn’t totally opaque.

Silver Glitter dried quickly which is good, especially if you want to wear it alone as a silver glitter polish… you can afford to rush it 😛 At one coat the polish is quite smooth as it’s mostly a clear base with random bits of glitter, but with the increasing amount of coats comes the increasing amount of glittery grittiness so you will need a nice thick topcoat if grittiness bothers you. The glitter is very sparkly without a topcoat.

Oh and by the way, it’s really a lot more sparkly than my pictures let on, it’s because my nails are quite curved that my camera can’t pick up the reflection on the sides, but I promise it is sparkly all over!

So this is a lovely holiday/party/Christmas season polish as it’s very eye-catching. On the other hand, I don’t think it’s anything particularly special as it’s essentially just another silver glitter top coat. So if you already have a silver glitter, I wouldn’t bother with this one unless you’re already buying £6 worth of Barry M products. Even if you are, I’d recommend doing it in Superdrug as the Lilac Foil Effects are far more unique and I certainly haven’t seen anything quite like it before!

You may have noticed that my nails are once again shorter… this is because tomorrow I have a practical exam and they like everything to be clinical and pristine, which means nails must be short and bare for infection control. Which makes me a tad sad, but at least my nails will be nice and strong and I can work on growing out these stains! I am very nervous about tomorrow by the way. Eep.

Hope you are all doing well, it’s getting so close to Christmas and I am ridiculously excited by this 😀 have you entered my giveaway?

Emma x

Disclaimer: Everything mentioned in this blog post was either bought by myself with my own money, or given to me as a gift from friends/relatives. All opinions expressed here are my own.

Sooo… I’ve always been one of those ‘oglers-from-afar’ when it comes to American nail polish brands (purely because of the price), I usually pick out my favourites, put them on a wishlist then realise the wishlist total comes to £100+ and think “Oh my God, step away from the laptop Emma, put your debit card DOWN!”. So it’s quite rarely that I actually buy more than one polish from a collection, and if I do so, it’s usually long after I’ve seen the collection. But then OPI came up with the wonderful glitters of the Muppets Collection and I am on such a glitter kick that of course, I had to have them! That and the fact that ASOS had a 25% for students day meant that I simply couldn’t resist. I bought three of the six glitters in the collection, the first of these being Rainbow Connection.

I wanted to not only show you Rainbow Connection but also what it looks like layered over different polishes. So here we go 🙂 lots of pics btw, hope I don’t crash your browsers!

Click on the pictures to enlarge!

 

1 coat of Rainbow Connection over 2 coats Ciaté My Fair Lady

 

2 coats Rainbow Connection over 2 coats My Fair Lady

So hopefully these pictures give you an idea of how the polish looks alone. As far as I can work out, there are 6 colours involved: orange, yellow, turquoisey-blue, green, red-violet, and silver. There are 2 types of glitter involved – small hexagonal glitter and large hexagonal glitter. It’s important to be aware that this larger glitter doesn’t always lie flat and can catch on things, which is why, every time I’ve worn this, I’ve worn a generous coat of topcoat.

Black: Rimmel Black Cab. White: Barry M Matt White.

Index and middle fingers are both 1 coat of Rainbow Connection over 2 coats of the base colour. Ring and pinkie fingers are both 2 coats of Rainbow Connection over 2 coats of the base colour.

I looooove how it looks on the middle finger!

The coloured glitter really ‘pops’ when layered over the bold black and white – I love this combination, particularly over black.

Thumb to pinkie finger (base colours): Boots 17 Fury, Barry M Spring Green, Barry M Yellow, Missguided Misstaken, Eyeko Saucy Polish.

All shown with 1 coat of Rainbow Connection over 2 coats of base colour.

Thumb to pinkie finger (base colours): Barry M Cyan Blue, GOSH Attitude, Barry M Bright Purple, Boots 17 Pink Grapefruit, Rimmel Your Majesty.

All shown with 1 coat of Rainbow Connection over 2 coats of base colour.

I don’t know about you guys, but I definitely prefer Rainbow Connection over black, white, dark blue, gold, or silver. Somehow the rest just don’t do it for me, but I hope I’ve helped someone in doing this 😛 I did notice, just by the way, that Rainbow Connection does look a lot better over shimmer polishes than it does over cremes, so maybe I’ll do another post on that soon!

I have to say… there’s something about this one that makes me think ‘treasure trove’! I’m not so keen on Fury on its own as it clashes with my skin a bit, but paired with Rainbow Connection it looks ah-may-zing!

Application:  Rainbow Connection itself is those six different colours of glitter (and 2 different sizes) suspended in a clear base. The glitter is rather sparse, but in my opinion, that makes for a rather good layering glitter 😛 it was quite easy to push the glitter into place if you’re that way inclined, but it does give a fairly even spread of glitter. I have no idea how many coats it would take to make it opaque 😛  It did require quite a thick coat of topcoat to ensure that the larger pieces of glitter weren’t semi-attached and ready to cling onto any loose material it could get hold of. The polish dried quickly so the topcoat requirement wasn’t a problem. I did notice that without the top coat, the clear base seemed to dull the glitter almost, and the topcoat certainly brought it to life!

Now I know that this is VERY similar to Deborah Lippmann’s Happy Birthday, some bloggers go so far as to say they are dupes, but after careful research on Google 😉 I discovered this wonderful Happy Birthday vs Rainbow Connection comparison. So for those of you who are wondering, the general consensus is that they are not dupes – the hexagonal glitter in Happy Birthday is considerably smaller than in Rainbow Connection.

This one will be PERFECT for the party season! 😛 I personally loooooooove this polish to bits, and I have had so many compliments on it at university. People have started paying attention to the fact that my nails are different practically every day – haha! Sorry this is a bit of a long, wordy post, I just seem to have so much to say! 😛

Also, kudos to ASOS Customer Services – at the checkout I was only given 20% off but they refunded me the extra 5% off within 2 days of my order!

Hope you are all doing well my lovelies, give me your thoughts on Rainbow Connection!

Emma x

Disclaimer: Everything mentioned in this blog post was either bought by myself with my own money, or given to me as a gift from friends/relatives. All opinions expressed here are my own.