Tag Archives: GOSH

So everyone knows that GOSH Holographic can be a pain for never lasting more than a day. I want to first make you all aware that this wasn’t true inspiration on my part – I read a wonderful blog post here by the Polish Insomniac – she did a topcoat sandwich which is slightly different to my technique but may well have the very same effect 🙂 so yeah 99% credit due to the Polish Insomniac!

So basically, here we have 4 coats of GOSH Holographic sandwiched between 4 coats of basecoat and 1 coat of topcoat, making 9 whole coats total. You may read this and think it’s a complete waste of time but if you want the lovely holo polish to last a couple of days it’s worth it!!

The reason I decided to use basecoat rather than topcoat (as the Polish Insomniac did) was because I’ve always heard that basecoat tends to help to stick polish down to the nail, I don’t know how true this is but it seems to make sense.

Here is what I used:

First, I put 1 coat of basecoat on my bare nail. This brand of basecoat dries super fast so I didn’t have to wait long to put on my first coat of Holographic. At 1 coat, it was very patchy. Once that was dry, I put on another coat of basecoat, then Holographic, then basecoat and so on, until my nail was opaque. I then put 1 coat of topcoat over the final coat of Holographic, to finish off.

I have two things to flag up with this polish and this technique.

The first is that GOSH Holographic drags like no other polish… even when the coats beneath are totally dry. I found the best technique was to literally just slap it on and don’t go over any point on the nail twice because that will cause a drag. I also found that while this caused a few undesirable lumps and bumps, the coats of basecoat and topcoat evened out the nail so it was totally flat, so that was good 🙂 See on this hideous picture of my thumb nail at 3 coats of Holographic, I still had drag marks:

The second issue is that when I’d put the topcoat on all my fingernails at the very end (I didn’t put topcoat on my thumb nail for the sake of comparing), I noticed that while it gave a weird and quite lovely dimension to each nail (almost like it had a layer of water over it) it did kind of take away from the holographic effect of the polish, and in some lights the polish just looked like a cloudy blue-silver colour. This picture doesn’t really demonstrate this but you can see that the thumb nail reflects a lot more holographic-ness than my fingernails:

I mean it’s not too bad and the nails still have the holographic effect, and I presume that the topcoat increases staying-power on the nails, but I didn’t notice any difference between the lasting-power of my finger nails and thumb nail so… up to you guys 🙂

So I really hope this helps someone, I don’t tend to wear my polish for more than 2 days usually but I know a lot of people do, so hopefully this will be of use. I also wanted to mention that the whole process is quite quick because the basecoat I use (Rimmel Stronger Double Duty) dries very quickly, as does GOSH Holographic and indeed the topcoat I used. So all in all I think it took me 45mins to 1hr, including drying-time.

Another thing you could try is tip-wrapping, but I’ve never mastered the art of this so I’ll leave you with this link on how to do it!

GOSH Holographic is a fabulous polish, it’s such a shame it was discontinued but I managed to find mine a few months back in a little Superdrug in my town, so keep looking for it 🙂 I don’t quite know why it’s so ‘desirable’ that people spend £20+ on it on eBay as a fair few other polish brands (Nubar, China Glaze, Nfu-Oh, among others) do silver holos that are more or less the same as far as I can see but there we go!

Hope you are all doing well chickies, I went for a wonderful manicure yesterday and my nails look fabulous, but I will do a blog post on that soon 😀

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.

First things first, I don’t know if you’d noticed but my follower count has significantly reduced as I decided to disconnect this new domain from my old blog, in the hope that people will be able to now see my updates when I post! Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you to all of you lovely people who have re-followed and anyone that may be new to my blog, I’ve never gained so many followers in such a short time haha! I sent a newsletter to my old followers (I think!) but since I don’t actually know what a newsletter is, I don’t know if it worked.

EDIT: I went through it with Andy and we’ve hopefully fixed it now – back to my ole 99 followers! I hope it starts updating in peoples’ Google Readers and Blogger feeds? Check out his businesses here and here, he’s good!

OH oh and I’ve done a guest post over on Polish Wonderland today, you can see this here.

Anyway! GOSH have brought out 4 ltd edition polishes this Autumn/Fall and they are gorgeous, I have 2 so far (Attitude and Forest Floor) but it is more than likely that I’ll have all of them before Spring comes around! Today I have Attitude for you, a gorgeous dark cobalt blue creme.

A very eye-catching blue, it seems to have so much depth. It doesn’t really show in these photos but it seems almost jellyish in the finish, although the formula is decidedly that of a creme.

I needed 2 coats to give a near-opaque finish, the streaks you see in the photo aren’t nearly as noticeable in real life but if it bothers you, a 3rd coat would easily remedy that. It has a very glossy finish – no need for a topcoat. Drying time was average – not super speedy but not deathly slow; manageable. Good for a TV sesh. As always it was very easy to control during application.

I’ve had my eye firmly set on Revlon Royal for a long while now and for the moment, my quest for it is postponed while I gaze lovingly into my beautiful Attitude nails… where was I?

Oh, in case you’re curious, this is very definitely darker than Barry M’s Cobalt Blue, but you can check that yourself when you’re in Boots. I promise you it’s darker (I accidentally forgot to do a comparison – sorry!) The other 3 polishes are a dark green creme, a raspberry pinky-red creme and a dark indistguishable green-grey-blue-black-brown creme. (I say indistinguishable as really, under the glare of Superdrug’s horrible lighting I really couldn’t tell). In any case, they all look lovely, somewhat similar to the upcoming rubber texture polishes from Illamasqua (check them out they look ahmayzing!)

In other news, on rather a whim I decided to dye my hair, having spent a good 2 years growing out my natural colour. It feels very refreshing. I used Clairol’s Nice’n’Easy Non-Permanent dye in 82- Dark Warm Brown. Beware, it is a little more red than one might anticipate from the box colour. Unless that’s just my hair. Anyway, the only problem I’ve encountered is that when I wash my hair some of the dye runs out in the water – don’t wear white while your hair is wet! I have one lovely (rubbish) before and after photo for you:

Left = before, right = after

I like it! I’ve had lots of compliments on it, it’s nice to have a bolder colour than my bog standard natural hair. I did need 2 boxes though – they’re £4 each.

Hope you’re all well my lovely lovely readers, I have a giveaway coming up soon but not until I can find a polish I’m hunting down as my local Superdrug is utterly utterly inadequate.

Emma xxx

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.

I’ve never really ‘got’ the whole mint-green nails thing, I absolutely hated Barry M Mint Green on my nails (don’t hate me!), but I think I’m starting to understand it, Miss Minty is a much better tone for my hands and I may even go so far as to say that I really quite like it. I have to say, when I bought it, I only remembered AFTER that I really don’t like mint green on my nails. Moments of madness.

I have an amazing colour on at the moment but trying to resist posting a 2nd blogpost today, so I’ll have to wait til tomorrow. Or maybe late tonight. All I can say is that it is PERFECT for summer!
Emma xxx

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.

I wore GOSH’s Midnight Blue (a slightly darker version of Nails Inc. Chandos Place) with my prom dressfor my cousin’s wedding party last weekend, which was absolutely lovely and so nice to have all my family together in one place after so long 🙂 The next day, after 3 days of wear, Midnight Blue was starting to show some tipwear so I decided to brighten it up a bit with LOTS of glitter!

First of all, sorry for the large amount of photos, I blame the fact that it’s a duochrome and I’m not satisfied with the usual 3 pics! And second of all, sorry for not blogging as much, I don’t actually have a reason, I just… haven’t. My nails tend to get a bit raggedy before I take photos which I suppose I could use as an excuse but that’s not why- I’m just lazy and unmotivated and as soon as I feel like I ‘have’ to do something I automatically don’t want to do it, which is also the reason why I’ve taken down my ‘Upcoming Posts’ list – because now that everything’s on the list I feel a pressure to do it and that makes me put it off and blah blah blah, enough of my mindless rambling, and well done if you’ve bothered to read all of this! Anyway, I’m in a positive frame of mind and feeling happy about my blog again, hence the appearance of this post. Shut up Emma! Photo time!


Do you see the beauuuuutiful green duochrome?




This is yet another of those black-ish but not quite black polishes that I adore, since you probably have deduced by now that I really dislike pure black polish on me, but I love the very dark, not-quite-black polishes.
GOSH Purple Heart is essentially a graphite-black base with all that lovely purple floating around. I will just mention, the polish looks largely purple-black in most lights, but in some indirect sunlight (don’t ask, I can’t work it out either) it does have a lovely green sheen to it, like the feathers of a raven or crow. For this reason it has nudged it’s way into my top 10 (if I could ever decide exactly what they are) because I have always had a weird fascination with the lovely iridescence of bird feathers, and always had a desire to replicate it. Anyways, enough of my weirdoness.
The photos show 3 coats, although the polish actually only takes 2 coats for full opacity, but I used the third after a day of wear and I needed to touch up a few edges on my 2 problem nails (peeling and flaking – not the polish’s fault!)
Application-wise, I’ve found this a little thicker than other GOSH polishes, but it still is lovely and dries quickly and lasts forever with a topcoat!
All in all I’m in love, I couldn’t stop staring at my nails both times in the last 2 weeks that I’ve worn this baby.
I know this isn’t exactly a new polish, but it’s one I’ve never been grabbed by in the shop, then on a whim I went crazy and bought 3 GOSH polishes and this was one of them, and I am very glad I did! So if you’ve never been totally convinced in Superdrug then maybe this will help you one way or the other 🙂
Hope you are all doing well and lovely, I have a couple of photos of my school ball and my AMAZING (if I say so myself) dress, but I myself am not looking amazing, but I’ll probably put it on anyway. Argh, too much waffling. Too much of my thought pattern is appearing in this post so I’ll leave you with that! (P.S. I have 2 gorgeous brights coming up in the next couple of days! Get your sunglasses ready!)
Emma xxx
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.