30 Days of Colour - Harvest and Thanks Giving

The eighth prompt for the challenge was 'Harvest' and my other half suggested I do something around a Harvest Moon. I lacked the imagination to make that manicure happen so instead chose to do another stamping manicure with leaves.

Again making use of the the new Revlon polishes I've recently bought, I started off with a base of Revlon ColorStay in 'Fall Mood' a rather appropriately named polish for this manicure. It's a gorgeous copper shimmer polish with really fine glitters. 

I then used a variety of polishes to stamp the leaves using MoYou's Mother Nature Stamping Plate 02. Polishes I used included OPI, and other Revlon ColorStay polishes in Red and Orange, the yellow is Revlon Parfumerie in 'Sunlit Grass'. 

It was such a task to take a photo of this manicure, I top coated everything with Leighton Denny 'Gold Save the Queen' which is a fine Rose Gold Glitter to give it extra sparkle. So getting a picture without the light bouncing and reflecting off my nails and obscuring the leaf pattern was tricky. The Extreme Close up above gives you a better idea!

Next was 'Thanks Giving' and being British I didn't really know what to do. After googling it I opted for more leaves in Thanks Giving themed colours, no Turkey!

Not overly happy with this one, it look's very child like and I made a couple of errors whilst creating this design. I decided to use acrylic paint for the leaves and after painting a base colour of white, I remembered to put a top coat on so I could remove mistakes. But what I should have also done, is paint a matt top coat so that the paint would adhere to the nail rather than just pool on the shiny top coat.

I'm happiest with the thumb on this design, this was the first nail I painted. It all went pear shaped from there! Again I topped this design off with the Leighton Denny 'Gold Save the Queen' to tie all the design in and Bob's your Uncle!

30 Days of Colour - Quilted and Pink Glitter

Still chugging on with the 30 Days of Colour Challenge, next prompt was quilted. Wasn't really sure how to tackle this one so spent sometime googling it, to see what others had done. I wanted something a little subtle.

I used striping tape to make the design and after painting the base coat I sponged the glitter polish over the striping tape to create the design. It was difficult to see how well the glitter faded at the top of the design, and you can see it's rather blunt. I would have preferred it to blend out more.

Next prompt was all about the pink again, this time pink glitter! I think pink is actually growing on me now, because what I like most about this manicure is the accent nail. Not sure the glitter worked on the other nails.

Love these Revlon Parfumerie polishes though, this African Tea Rose smells lush. Think the problem here with the glitter was that it didn't contrast with the light pink polish enough. All Revlon polishes here, the light pink is Revlon ColorStay in Natural Pink and the Pink Glitter is Revlon Shining Strength. 

30 Days of Colour - The Progress

We're about half way through the 30 days of colour challenge and I've completed six manicures, so only four behind. Not too bad and I'm going to keep going. The next prompt of the challenge was denim and I wasn't sure what to do, I saw a few manicures online where they had painted stitching and pockets on the design. There were even designs for acid wash denim.

I didn't want to have my nails too obviously looking like a pair of jeans as I had training on Tuesday night, so I just went with a denim like polish. I had several to choose from, a Barry M one aptly called 'Denim'. 

Or an Essence Polish that is called 'Blue Jeaned' and labelled as a Jean Effect polish.

The polish I picked however was from OPI and is from their Suede line which I never knew existed until recently. This is the Suede version of OPI Ink and it dries to a Matt finish.

OPI Ink is such an amazing polish and the Suede version is nice if you don't want to faff around with a matt top coat, however it doesn't have quite the same colour shift that the original has. This is all I have to say on the matter and manicure...

The challenges next prompt was 'Leaves'. I really wanted to do some stamping for this prompt, but am limited to the very few stamping plates I have. Luckily a recent Nailbox subscription box included a MoYou Tropical Stamping Plate which included some foliage and leaves, although not quite the autumn design I was hoping for.

I hope I saved it from looking too tropical with the colour combination. I picked up a couple of No.7 polishes from Boots last week and the base of this Manicure is one, called 'Star Shower'. It's hard to describe, it has very fine gold, blue and silver glitters in it. I think the base is clear and just jammed packed with glitters, so I was able to make it opaque in three coats.

I used one of the 2true Metallica polishes in 'Aphrodite' I picked up from Superdrug a wee while ago to stamp the leaves with, and it stamped really well. I had to give it a bit more glitter as the leaves hide some of the base so topped the design off with China Glaze's 'Golden Enchantment'. LOVELY!

How well do you get on with stamping and do you have any favourite polishes to stamp with?

30 Days of Colour Challenge - Catching Oop

So it's fair to say that I'm already behind with the 31 day challenge for this month EVEN though it's a new mani every three days or so. I'm in between jobs at the moment and looking for a job and figuring out what I want to do next is like two full time jobs at once! 

Anyway, enough of my belly aching I'm keen to show you the wonderful creations I've done for the next two prompts! First Up PINK, yes I know, not my favourite colour, however I incorporated a nice Hot Purple/Pink into my Mani below. It's more a gradient than a Pink Ombre, but I can't rock an all pink nail. The inspiration for this manicure was a Thank You card I gave to my other half for supporting me during my time out of work. The card had a lovely purple to pink to orange gradient that I wanted to recreate. Colour is a little off what it truly was in picture below as I've fiddled about with it. The Pink though is a must have from Sally Hansen's Complete Salon Manicure line called 'Aria Ready'.

Day three's prompt was 'Floral' and if you excuse the pun, I nailed it. Not very Autumnal but I don't give a stuff and really didn't want to take it off!

As per usual I looked for ideas online for design and found this design on mycosmeticsbag along with a super easy idea on how to create the flowers. Super easy and really affective.

For my vintage blue I used OPI 'Can't find my Czechbook' one of the first OPI polishes I ever bought. A lovely shade of blue with a drop of green. For the white stripes I used a striping polish I picked up from eBay ages ago, super impressed I managed to get the lines so straight.

Then I used a variety of red and white polishes to create the flowers as per tutorial on mycosmeticsbag and the leaves using a lighter and darker green polish. Simples!

30 Days of Colour Challenge - Day 1 and bargain polishes!

This month I saw Knitty Nails on Instagram post the following challenge, and as I missed out on last's month challenge I thought I'd take part. Here's the prompts...

I liked the themes and also that it's every couple of days and not every day. I'm catch up with the first prompt already and did it today. Here's my gold manicure.

I saw this on Pinterest and loved the combination of the mint green with the gold, it was either that or purple and gold, that's a classic combination.

I used Revlon's 'Minted' which is a gorgeous colour, but it did take three coats for full opacity. The formula is good and it goes on smooth after the first coat, but as it's a light colour it was a bit patchy. I sponged on the glitter as I didn't want a massive amount of clear base building up on my nails, using Sally Hansen's Complete Salon Manicure in 'Crown Jewels'. Picked this one up in Poundland last week, what an absolute BARGAIN!

This polish is from Sally Hansen's 2013 Sequin OverCoat Collection, I picked up a couple more CSM glitters too, these appear to be from New York Fashion Week Designer collection from 2014. Definitely worth keeping your eyes peeled in your local Poundland, they're also selling pack's of three New York Color (NYC) for £1.

Speaking of affordable polishes, I also picked up these beauties this week as they came free with Elle (Orly) and Bazaar (Leighton Denny) magazine.

There are four to collect of the Orly and six I think for the Leighton Denny, I do like Elle magazine, however I do remember buying Bazaar magazine before for a Leighton Denny polish, it's a little bit up market for me! Also spotted Glamour magazine are including free Nails Inc polishes too this month, so more polishes to keep your eyes peeled for.

Where do you get your bargain polishes from and have you bought any magazines for free beauty products? Let me know in the comments section below.