Friday 30 December 2011

A Purple Blue Rainbow

Just a quick manicure before the end of the year, here we have Models Own Purple Blue from their Beetlejuice collection with a layer of Rainbow by Gosh. 





I do love me a flakie polish and I definitely think flakies look their most obvious over a darker colour. The different colours catch the light so well over a dark base. Over MO Purple Blue the flakies shift between red, green, orange and brown. 

I think I paid about £5 for this from Superdrug at the beginning of 2011 just when I started getting into blogging. I believe it is slightly harder to find now, but just keep your eyes peeled because if you do happen to come across this I highly recommend grabbing it. 

The next time I blog it will be 2012, how fast has this year gone? Crazily so. I hope everyone has a good New Year's eve and day celebrations.

Wednesday 28 December 2011

Jack Wills do nail polish

Before Christmas I went into Exeter shopping with one of my oldest friends, she persuaded me to go into the shop Jack Wills. Jack Wills, a university outfitters shop full of lounge tracksuits, hoodie and jumpers. They also do dresses and accessories. However, the shop is so flippin expensive. A body warmer in there was over £100. Their tracksuit bottoms are £40 or £50 depending on the style. Anyway I skipped the clothing and went on to the nail polish. 

Electric pink £6

This much brighter in real life I just don't know why I couldn't capture this.




Just to add something extra I applied some black crackle over the top, this one is by Andrea Fullerton.




I know crackle polishes have been done to death, but I quite like having a black crackle over a vibrant base. 

The polish itself applied well, this is two coats, I think I will pop a white base on underneath next time to make the colour pop more. I don't think I will ever see the fascination with Jack Wills clothing but for £6 the nail polishes are very nice. 

Monday 26 December 2011

Hope you all had a good Christmas?

Hope everyone had a good Christmas? I ate way too much as usual! Luke and I went to my parents for Christmas lunch, we had so much food. Starters, main and pudding and lots of tea and chocolate.







After helping mu, clear up we had pudding: honey glazed clementines in a brandy snap basket, I also added a dollop of Devonshire clotted cream. Nobody in our house likes Christmas pudding. I do quite like Christmas cake, which I guess is just fruit cake!


Mum also did two party bags so we could bring those back for the kittens, they had a little bit of turkey and gravy. They spent most of the evening ripping wrapping paper. Lights came on and candles were lit and the rest of the evening was spent watching TV. 



Hope you all had a good Christmas? What did you get up to?

Thursday 22 December 2011

Some more Lush

I went down to Exeter for some Christmas shopping, I got dad Senna on DVD, I watched it a while ago and it is such an amazing documentary film. I also stopped by Lush again and picked up some more goodies. I have to admit these are for me, I couldn't resist.

Another bottle of Snow Fairy, this is my second bottle and I am going to store this one away and crack it open in a few months. I also went through my Cup Cake fresh face mask which I loved, but I wanted to try a different one so I bought Love Lettuce. I also picked up Bubblegum lip scrub which smells just like Snow Fairy. Love.



Excuse the blurry picture but Moses and Leo snuck into the Lush bag to see what I had brought home.


I think I have stocked up with more than enough Lush products for a while.

Tuesday 20 December 2011

Nicole by OPI Iceberg Lotus

This is a polish Nicole at Noir Lacquer gave me a few months back, I don't know why I haven't used this before, it is gorgeous. I introduce Nicole by OPI Iceberg Lotus It took a little effort to get a solid colour, four coats, and even then the nail line is still visible. I love the colour though so I don't mind too much. I may layer this over another green in future though. 

So four coats of Nicole by OPI Iceberg Lotus, I then used glow in the dark flower nail stickers.
I have had these for months and months so thought I should give them a try.



Some pictures of Iceberg Lotus solo:




Such a gorgeous shimmering green, the only complaint I have is that I found the brush tricky to work with. It is sort of flat with irregular length bristles. This is supposed to be the perfect brush stroke applicator, but I just found I made more of a mess than usual. Have you tried Nicole by OPI polishes with this brush? What did you think? 

The stickers glow only slightly in the dark, as in I could see there was something there, but not enough to see the flower shape. I applied one sticker on each fingernail and two on each thumb. I used China Glaze fast forward topcoat to seal everything in.





Pink glitter and holographic touches

As promised some more glitter manicures for the festive season, this is subtle, office/work friendly but just has a touch of sparkle. Here I used two coats of Milani 3D Holographic in Digital followed by two coats of Confetti's Pink Confetti.



The glitter and holographic touches are not blindingly obvious, but is just enough.







Close up of the Confetti glitter, even though in the bottle the base looks light pink, it comes out clear when painted on the nail, I adore the iridescent particles submerged within. Overall just a work friendly look. I got both of these polish from Nic over at Noir Lacquer months ago in a swap, infact all of my American polishes are from swaps of gifts from Nicole :-)



Sunday 18 December 2011

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

How fast is December going? Actually, scrap that, the whole of 2011 has gone so fast! Picture heavy post full of Christmas photos I have taken.


Ok, these were taken last Christmas but I wasn't blogging then so I will share now. Every year at work we have a Christmas pod competition. People who work on the same desk (or pod) decorates it to win a prize. My work partner and I created this.


A cardboard house with lights, snow topped roof and candy cane and biscuit windows. Other people could then take these and dip them into the chocolate fountain. We also put out marshmallows and fruit. Unfortunately, we didn't win.


Other people did a Shrek manger and a don't drink and drive scene. There were lots of other pods decorated but I didn't manage to get pictures of everyone.





Quality Street tin of chocolates, my favs are the purple ones, followed by strawberry creme! I actually love coffee chocolates which I know lots of people don't, wish Quality Street had some in there! 


Frosted mint and Black Forest hot chocolates, with whipped cream of course! I had the BF one and Luke had the FM. I had a chocolate tiffin slice and he had the creme brulee cup cake. Both gorgeous! 




Friday 16 December 2011

Piccadilly Circus meets Blue Lagoon

I wanted to use some more polishes in my stash which I haven't tried yet, here we have Models Own Blue Lagoon and Nails inc Piccadilly Circus. I used two coats of each, but Piccadilly Circus could quite easily have been a one coater but I painted two coats on out of habit. I then used my black Andrea Fullerton dot and flick tool to just apply dots on a diagonal across each nail.


Lagoon Blue has a slight shimmer to it which I don't think is visible in the pictures, but in real life it is there, but only very subtly. Piccadilly Circus was a pain to photograph! In some lights it looks more pink, other times it has a plum ish appearance and other times it looks more red. According to the Nails inc web site this is a cerise shade.




Ooooh actually, the shimmer in Blue Lagoon is showing up in the picture above quite nicely. 





I think maybe I should try and do more posts on polishes which have been sitting in my collection for a while which I haven't tried before!

Wednesday 14 December 2011

A Snow White Blue Iguana in the Celtic Sun

Bringing out the good old dotting tool as I haven't used it in a while, this is what I came out with, a vibrant spotty manicure, a little different to the Christmas festive manicures around at the moment, but I just craved something bold.


Here I used two coats of China Glaze Blue Iguana which is a gorgeous vibrant shimmery blue with subtle purple laced throughout from their Island Escape collection which was released earlier this year. This is two coats on its own, the nail line is still visible but since I was adding dots I didn't apply a third.



Then using Snow White by Models Own I used a medium sized dotting tool to create the dots waited for these to dry, then I applied China Glaze Celtic Sun over the white. Either this makes the yellow even more vibrant, or this makes the dots look like mini fried eggs. Celtic Sun is an eye squintingly vibrant high lighter yellow, it is very sheer, so if I were to wear this on its own I would definitely need a white base. 






I applied China Glaze fast forward top coat to finish. I like the way this one came out, like I said I just really wanted something a little different and something a bit brighter. I promise I will have festive manicures packed with glitter too!