St Patrick's Day NOTD (+ easy how-to)

Sorry that its a day late, I needed to get a tripod for my camera in order to photograph an awkward hand pose. Here is my version of a manicure inspired by St Patrick's Day.

The gold represents a pot of gold, the multi coloured glitter is supposed to resemble a rainbow and the green is *cue awkward hand pose*...

A lucky shamrock!

Here is what I used:

L.A Colors Energy Source, L.A Colors Atomic, SNB Gold 06, Saffron Gold Speckle, Technic Carnival and L.A Colors Voltage.

If you would like to recreate this look, here is how to do it:

Step 1. Paint all nails with a white base coat.
Step 2. Paint nails 1 & 3 with a green nail polish. I used 2 coats.
Step 3. Paint nails 2 & 5 with a gold colour, followed by a gold glitter.
Step 4. Paint nail 4 with a multicoloured glitter. I used about 8 coats to get it opaque.
Step 5. Finish with a clear top coat.

Please note: each coat of polish should be completely dry before doing the next coat.

Did you do a Paddy's Day mani? I would love to see your take on it.

Haul Unboxing

I had a delivery today nice and early this morning, I was expecting one package to come yesterday as I already arranged with Royal Mail for them to deliver on that day. I waited in all day and they didn't turn up. They didn't even let me know so I was a bit annoyed by that. It finally turned up today though so all is forgiven (almost). Mini rant over, phew! 

I had 3 lovely packages today, you may notice in the photo above I kinda cheated and opened the box, I wasn't gonna include that in this post but I changed my mind.

This is a set of 4 eyebrow stencils, they were 99p including delivery from eBay.

Here they are, I know the picture is bad as the stencils are clear but they have the markings on them so you can match them up easily with the angle of your natural brows.

This is what was in the box, its loads of magnets to use with magnetic nail polish. I actually sell these on but I thought you might like to see the different styles available:

They work with any magnetic nail polish so its nice to be able to do different patterns now.

Next is the package that should of arrived yesterday..

It was very well wrapped in lots of bubble wrap.

*in Aussie accent* Can you tell what it is yet?

Ta-da! L.A Colors haul!

Left to right: 

Energy Source NP402

Atomic NP420

Exotic Pink NP434

Lightning NP422

Nuclear Energy NP417

Left to right:

Electrified NP408

Live NP409

Tropical Storm NP439

Goddess NP442

Left to right:

Treasure Island NP444

Aqua Crystals NP448

Glistening Purple NP445

Left to right:

Voltage NP401 (clear)

Sparkling Diamonds NP446

Star Light NP443

Jewel Tone NP447

Sassy Sparkle NP441 

I also got Saffron Speckle in Gold and Silver (these were the closest things to the Milani Jewel FX I could find in the UK) It will be interesting to see if they perform.

Look at the shape of the bottles though, is it just me that thinks they are a bit weird different?

This is the one I am most excited about , Technic - Carnival!

The nail polishes were from http://www.themakeupbagonline.co.uk

For all 20 nail polishes & delivery, they cost me £26.40. Not bad! 

Oh , I forgot to mention, they also threw in a free gift in the shape of 5 make-up bags:

I love the way these were packaged - a bag in a bag in a bag in a bag in a bag!

That is everything that I got so as always, I would love to hear what you think of them!

DISCLAIMER: Everything included in this post was bought and paid for by myself. Except for the bags which were a free gift for spending over £20!

Adele Inspired Nails!

Well hello there! A couple of days ago I did a post on Adele's Grammy Awards style and those awesome nails she had. Well... now I have created my own version of them! I noticed a lot of people commenting on Adele's manicure elsewhere on the net, and they were saying how it must be so difficult to get the brush behind the nail to paint it.

The answer is simple. You don't have to! Well if you have short natural nails anyway that is. If you use fake nails, you can paint the back of the nail before you glue it on.
I used short, European, full coverage nails in a natural finish. Here is the finished look:

Please excuse the ill-fitting nails, and the fact that you can see my natural nails at the back. I glued them on with PVA glue just to take the photo then peeled them straight off. If I was actually going to wear these nails for longer than 5 mins, I would trim my natural nails back, file the false nails to a better shape and use proper nail glue!

This was quite simple to make.

1.  I used Catherine Arley Holographic Nail Polish in shade 667, I used 2 coats.
2. Then, I painted the back of the nail from the tip to just under halfway down in MUA shade 15 (the one from my secret valentine) I would advise using some of those white guide stickers if you have some. I couldn't find mine as you can see by the messy painting but you get the idea.  
3. Then, I added some holographic glitter from my nail art pen haul  to the front of the nail where the pink was showing through. 
4. Finally, I added some MUA clear polish (shade 17) on top of the glitter to make it extra sparkly. I didn't apply this to the whole nail as holographic polish is best left as it is. 

In this case, I wanted the pink to show through slightly at the front but if you didn't want this to happen, you would either use a completely opaque colour or paint the front of the nail white as a base. If you do acrylic or gel nails, you could just use coloured tips and then completely paint the front of the nail for the same effect.

. It is very difficult to photograph holo polishes / glitters so in real life this looks absolutely stunning and so sparkly, much better than in the photos. I hope you enjoyed this post, here is another photo to finish off with that really shows off the holographic polish as much as I could get it to:

When I come to actually wear these, I will probably do a follow-up.

DISCLAIMER: All products used here were bought by me :-) 

Adele at the Grammy Awards!

I am just here for a flying visit today but as soon as I saw the pictures I knew I had to post about her.

What an inspiration this lady is! She totally stole the show in more ways than one. She did her first performance since she had throat surgery, she won a whopping SIX awards, she looked absolutely stunning in a sparky Giorgio Armani dress and in great shape and then there were her double sided nails (which also matched her Christian Louboutin Fifi shoes:

Mmm shoe porn! 

See? Silvery and glittery on top and red underneath. I want NEED these in my life! With a price tag of $ 3,395 , which at the time of writing is £2,160.54, I can only dream. Looks like I will have to settle for the manicure instead!

The top side is a silvery and glittery polish, not just any glitter either, it full of holographic goodness. And the underside is bright red polish. Both polishes are from Ciate and the look was created by Mike Pocock.

Left: Ciate - Jewel  / Right: Ciate - Mistress

Jewel is painted on top of the nail and Mistress is painted on the back. Each polish retails for £9 on the Ciate website. 


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Top 10 EXTREME nails!

Hiya everyone! Today I have gone for a bit of a different type of post: my top 10 favourite extreme nails. I find nail art very addictive and once you have done one design its all about going bigger and better. Since my Nail Art Pen Haul, I was scouring the internet for inspiration. I decided to include 10 of my favourites in a post for all to see. So without further ado, at No. 10...

Monopoly Nails! I love these! They are definitely different.

No. 9

No nail art list would be complete with some Hello Kitty!

No. 8

This googly bug design is from Katrina's Nail Blog. She has loads more on her blog too so you should take a look. I would actually wear this myself.

No. 7

Yes, they are REAL sprinkles!! They are actually Katy Perry's nails. She wore them for one of her shows and had to have the gel done extra thick to prevent chipping it while she played guitar. She posted this photo on her Twitter account.

No. 6

Now I'm not sure I could pull this off, I like kawaii and I like decoden but this is a little too extreme for me.

No. 5

Stilletto Nails! These ones look like painted icicles to me haha but I like them.

No. 4

These really are mini works of art. Amazing!

No.3

Some more amazing brush skills here with these yummy Cadbury's nails.

No. 2

Woah. I don't even know what these are supposed to be but you have to admire the talent and creativity that has gone into making them. I don't think they would be very practical to have for everyday use! This was a competition entry  for the Fantasy category at London's Nailympics. (Yes, you read that right, Nailympics!)
This was by Italy's Lorena Amici and she won 1st place in her division.


And the winner in first place is....

Au Naturel!  This is Christine Walton, Guinness World Record holder for having the longest nails. She has 10ft 2in (309.8cm) of nail-age on her left hand and 9ft 7in (292.1cm) on her right hand. My first thoughts when I saw the photo was that I am pretty sure I have seen a lady with longer nails than this. So after a bit of googling I found Lee Redmond:

The thing with this type of record is that you have to actually still have the long nails to keep the title, so when Lee Redmond tragically lost her nails after a car accident in 2009, she also lost her record holder status.  She does still hold a Guiness World Record for longest fingernails (female) ever though. I really don't understand how you can do anything when your nails are that long, imagine how long it would take to paint them!?

So that completes today's post, it was a lot of fun to write and I hope it was also fun to read, please let me know what you think.

Nail Art Pen Haul & A Half!

I have only had a really tiny nail polish collection for way too long so I decided to update my collection a bit! I went on eBay and settled on some nail art pens:

There are 80 of them!! There are metallics, glitters, shimmers, pearls, pastels, opaques and soooo many different shades! While I understand I may of grown my collection the lazy girl's way ( I bought all of these in one transaction), this gives me chance to experiment and discover what I like.

There may be 1 or 2 dupes, I can't really tell straight from the bottle so I have got some nail design wheels on order so I can swatch them all. There are smaller bundles from other sellers on there but I just went for the biggest! And while I wanted to love all of my new babies equally, I instantly found my 2 favourites!

Of course I went for the 2 most sparkly! Holo glitter :-)  I have been looking for holographic nail polish for ages now and while it isnt full on linear holographic, this will satisfy my urge for now!

These pens are actually 2 in 1 so it can be used as a pen...

... or unscrew the lid to get a thin nail art brush, perfect for stripes / flicks! So how much did all of this cost?
£24.65 I paid but the price does change by a pound or 2 quite often. This was including shipping and from a UK seller too.

Oh, and to make the best use of my new goodies..

I also bought 5 double sided dotting tools, for perfect polka dots and paint splodge nails, they cost £1.15 including delivery from China,

and finally, 15 Nail Art brushes for £2.19 delivered from a UK seller. So now I just need to improve my painting skills and I should be creating beautiful nails very soon!

If you would like to have the item link to any of the items I got, please let me know! I would also like to see examples of your nail masterpieces. :-)