nailbox - July Review

This week I received my second box of goodies from nailbox and was very impressed with what I found inside. Apparently nailbox usually post about the content of their monthly subscription service but this month was a mystery with the teaser of a Tropical Theme.

Here's what was inside!

OPI - Kiss Me I'm Brazilian

Barry M - Need for Speed 

China Glaze - White on White

Elegant Touch - Cuticle Eliminator

AND a MoYou Tropical Stamping Plate and Squishy Stamper

Here's the plate with images in full:

These images are slightly smaller that some of the ones I've seen on other MoYou plates, but plenty big enough for my little nails. I did a couple of stamping manicures with this and the squidgy stamper you also get in this box works a treat.

Here was my first go, I painted a black base and then used two MoYou stamping polishes I already had in pink and blue to stamp with and create this gradient stamping. I fancied a matt look so popped a matt top coat over the whole caboodle to finish the look.

Rather pleased with the overall effect. Then I decided to use the polishes in the box to create a new manicure with palm trees.

First I painted my nails with two coats of China Glaze 'White on White' let those dry and then sponged the Barry M and OPI polishes over the top to create the gradient. The Barry M was picking up the previous gradient layer, not sure if this was due to it being a quick dry polish or if my white base wasn't completely dry. So I sponged the gradient three times to get the colours bright. I also used a liquid latex to cover my cuticles before sponging the gradient. Much less clean up.

I topped coated with HK Girl and as it was late, left the stamping bit for the next morning.

I used all three palm tree designs from the Plate and I also wanted some birds in the design too, but didn't have any stamping plates suitable, so just painted these on free hand. Then when dry just finished off with a regular top coat as I didn't want to smudge the design.

As for the polishes the OPI and China Glaze as always were spot on. The China Glaze was a little runny so make sure you do thin coats as it will pool in your cuticle if you load the brush up with polish. Also my step daughter painted her nails with the Barry M polish and it dried super quick.

Well done nailbox I love what you sent me this month, and what I'm also super impressed with is that as I have A LOT of polish, so far not received anything I have already!

Can't wait till August's box. Have you subscribed to nailbox, and what do you think of the service and what designs have you created with this months Tropical Treat? 

Recent adventures in nail varnish

I've not had much time to do my nails justice recently and took pleasure in having a break from trying to keep up with January's 31 Day Nail Art Challenge.

There have been some techniques I've wanted to try out however and I STILL have a fair amount if untried polishes in my possession. 

Doing Nail Art is a great way to try out polishes that have not yet graced your fingers and the below manicure is a perfect example of this. 

Occasionally the Nail Polish facebook Group I'm a member of has an anything goes weekend where you can post not only nail varnish you have for sale but anything else from, clothes to makeup and baby and children's toys.

I picked three Barry M polishes for the meagre price of £1.50 and I used them to create this tie dye effect manicure.

I used a sponge to create this pattern and just blobbed on spots of four different colours and sponged them on to my nails over a white base. I repeated this a couple of times until I was happy with the colour and design. This would have worked well as a galaxy too.

The manicure I did before didn't stay on as per usual I didn't have enough time or patience to wait for the polishes to completely dry before taping up and painting the triangle colour. I also wanted to add a few gems or stick something on my nails from my recent hobby craft and Instagram win.

Here's what I came up with, you can see the unstraightness (that's not even a word) of the lines. Colour combo OK, I used the free Nails Inc polish that came free with Marie Claire magazine last month and Essie's 'Fair Game'. Bobbed a gem on the accent nail from a set I bought a Hobby Craft. Next Blog post will be of all the gubbins I've bought recently and where from.

I created a glitter triangle on my thumb nails for this manicure which came out quite well too. I love how this looks on the macro pic below, I used 'Girls on Film' by GOSH!

Last but not least I have to start using the Models Own polishes I purchased in the sale a little while ago, they are sat on the top row of my untried taunting me! 

This one is from the BeetleJuice Collection called 'Purple/Blue'. It's a Duo Chrome of my two favourite colours. Lovely! 

My Top 5 Polishes

This post was inspired by Samantha Rogers over at The Nail and Beauty Files who did a post on her Top 5 polishes. Go check her blog out, she has some great post on not just nail related stuff but also make up reviews. 

So it got me thinking on what mine may be, a few sprung to mind straight away, and then when delving into my stash, it became very difficult to whittle them down to five. Here's what I came up with:

My choices are from top middle, and clockwise order:

Deborah Lippmann - Video Killed The Radio Star

Barry M - Persian

Color Show - Rose Chic

OPI - Love, Peace and OPI

Orly - Oui

Let's start in no particular order with 'Video Killed the Radio Star'. This stunning blue polish is from Deborah Lippmann's Summer 2014 80's Rewind collection. It's the brightest pure blue polish that I own and formula is spot on.

WARNING this polish stains like a bitch if you're a doofus like me and apply it without a base coat, but hey I was out and about and had to try it. I've topped it here with 'Floral Street Muse' from Nails Inc. If you're a fan of blue polish, like me, you need this in your collection. The shade is like no other blue polish I own.

Next up is a Barry M polish from their Aquarium collection called 'Persian'. It's a Duo-chrome that shift from purple, to gold to burgundy. I do have a soft spot of Duo-Chrome polishes and this one really delivers on the colour shift. 

It's one of those polishes that when you put on you can't stop looking at. Barry M just keeping coming out with these gorgeous effect polishes and glitters at the moment and they are so well priced.

Up next is a colour that I don't normally wear, it's a pink, well rose gold polish if you want to split hairs, from Color Show. I'm not sure what made me buy it, think it was when Superdrug were doing one of their buy one and get on half price offers. However I'm a sucker for a textured glitter polish and this is exactly what this is. 'Rose Chic' is one of four textured polishes from the Crystallize collection. Just a mini rant here, Maybelline released four Crystallize polishes over here in the UK, and in the US they released six, this seems to be a common theme. 

Next is a polish I love but haven't warn in ages and decided to pop it on my nubbins tonight as I didn't have a swatch to show. Possibly my favourite polish brand when I first started collecting these little bottles, OPI was something that I thought was unobtainable, at first...

This is OPI's 'Peace, Love and OPI' and is another colour shifting polish. As per, the picture does this polish NO justice, as it shifts from a gun metal grey to burgundy/brown which you can see here and green. Blummin gorgeous and formula amazing, I wish I hadn't left it so long to wear again.

Last but not least is Orly's 'Oui' which is everything I hoped that this polish would be. Again this was a brand that I can't buy anywhere near me and on a trip down South I was taken to a shop called Bond Link and I bought this polish and I think I may have even bought 'Love, Peace and OPI' at the same time too. 

Now I have several polishes that look to be the same type of colour and effect in the bottle but this is the only one that really transitions the shimmer on to the nail.

It shifts between a purple and burgundy, again like some of my other polish picks, but this also has a gorgeous gold shimmer running though it. I think I may need to pop this on my nails next.

Hope you liked this post and that the polishes I picked weren't too similar. I made a conscious effort to pick polishes from different brands but not colours or effects. I love Duo-Chromes and purple, burgundy and blue polishes so this is where my favourites lie. So I think I'll blog soon about my fav. purple polishes, as I have A LOT.

 I'd be interested in hearing what your Top 5 polish picks are, let me know in the comments below.

Days 29 and 30 of 31 Day Challenge - Blue Base and something you haven't tried before

Ug this picture is awful, but all the ones I took were and the manicure is GONE now darling, GONE! Still digging through my unused polishes and picked out all the blue ones I had yet to use. This is 'Blue Sparrow' by China Glaze. It says it's a neon on the base and it is pretty bright (not that you can tell from this pic). I thought I'd pop a flakey glitter over the top which is Barry M 'Atlantis' and because the colour combination of the glitter had some green I alternated the base colour on my fingers.

This Glitter is gorgeous and Barry M along with Rimmel was one of the first brands I started to collect. Their collections are just getting better and better and at £3.99 for a polish, with constant offers at both Boots and Superdrug, you can't go wrong. I still have bottles that I bought over 5 years ago that are still good to use. Today they also released their new speedy nail paint collection!

So on to something I've never tried before... double stamping! I bagged a few of the new Models Own Chrome polishes which I heard were good for stamping with and used the Indigo and Mauve to double stamp this image on a base of 'Tempest' by China Glaze.

Still need a bit of practise at this stamping business but quite happy with this attempt, one word of warning though, you have to be quick with these Chrome polishes if stamping with them.

They dry quite quickly and if you're too slow the image won't transfer to your nail and stay stuck on the stamper.

Days 24 & 25 of Challenge, White Base and Decals

I've done plenty of manicures during this nail art challenge that start off with a white base, and now I'm understanding just how important a good white polish is. I have three that I've been using, 'Cotton Buds' by Butter London, 'Snow Me White' by Sinful Colours and a white PS polish from Primark which I bought for 80p and this is what I used for my white base here.

Aswell as white other light colours have become essentials when doing nail art, OPI's 'My Boyfriend Scales Walls' is a favourite of mine and of many bloggers as it's an off white. This has led me to start hunting down other off white colours that have a hint of something else in them.

Anyway I digress, this design I found on Pinterest and is by SparrowNails and is her Triangle Gradient Nail design.

I used 'Purple Glare' and 'Blue Glint' both Models Own Hyper Gel polishes and this gorgeous Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure polish in 'Aria Ready'. I used some scotch tape to mask off my nails and used the sponging technique to apply the three colours as a gradient. Very happy with the way the gradient triangles came out. Will be trying this again and the colours worked really well together.

Speaking of Models Own they have an amazing SALE on at the moment where if you buy more that four polishes they are half price!

It ends midnight on February the 4th, so if you've been after some Models Own polishes and fancy picking up some of their gorgeous new Colour Chrome polishes get yourself over to their online store or bottle shop. I had a bit of an accident on their on line store myself today! 

Day 24's theme is Decals and a chance to use some of the lovely stuff I bought from She Sells Seashells a UK shop that sells all kind of nail accessaries. I was after some chevron nail stickers and saw these flower decals for £1.75.

I was still in the mood for gradients so complete the look with a few gradient nails, using varying shades of dusty pink/red.

As last time, I'm a week behind with the challenge, but will be finishing!

2015 Nail Challenge

So start as you mean to go on, especially as I neglected my Blog in December. Let's start the New Year off with a Nail Art Challenge!

I follow some amazing ladies on Facebook doing some pretty funky nail designs. One of these ladies called Debbie, otherwise known as 'The Crumpet' has devised the following 2015 Nail Art Challenge.  I love the picture she has of herself, when she was little at the top of her Blog, I have never seen a face so CHEEKY!

First up, I started my Challenge how I ended lasted years by following a tutorial by another of my favourite Bloggers 'The Nailasaurus'. This 'Nimbus Tutorial' is a technique I've wanted to try for a while. I not only followed her tutorial but also her colour scheme, not the exact polishes, but ones that were the closest colour match.

The technique here is to paint a light coloured base coat, I used a very light pastel purple from Sinful Colours in 'Mauve'. Then pick three to four complimentary colours, I used three. Starting with the lightest first, pop a splodge on a palette or bit of plastic/foil and water it down with some acetone until it's watered down but still retains some colour. A bit like painting with water colours.

You can test it on some paper first before applying to your nails, take a cotton bud, dip it in the watered down polish and randomly apply to each nail.

Then do the same with the other two colours. To tie in the whole design The Nailasaurus recommends to use your base colour as the final colour to water down and apply to your nails. You can repeat the whole process with the colours until you get the finish you want.

Polishes I used are, Salon Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in 'Bewitched' GOSH in 'Altered Blue' and Barry M in 'Prickly Pear'. I may have used GOSH in 'Berry Me' too. I can't remember if it was too similar to the Salon Hansen polish.

Day 2 is 'Tape Mani'! I scoured the intertubes for inspiration and wanted to try something different and challenge. I found this on Google from the Sois Polish, check out the lines on their manicure.

Mine was a combination of striping tape and having a go at hand drawing the lines, which didn't work. I love the design and colours, just a bit more practise and more time I think I could tidy up the edges. Polishes users were Sinful Colors 'Snow Me White' as the base, 2true 'Nicole' and Barry M 'Prickly Pear'. 

November Untrieds Part 3

More glitter toppers used here and a rather nice one from MakeUp Academy Luxe Collection, this one is called 'Odile'. As you can see from the bottle shot this has diamond glitter in lavender, light blue and purple and also bar glitter and purple microglitter. Not too much fishing around with this polish and they do two other glitters on different colour combos.

I popped this over No7's Totally Teal. There are a few No7's in this untried list and I bought quite a few when Boots were doing the No7 makeup vouchers. I bought like 9 and have never used them. Very happy with the ones tried but for the colours available they are a bit pricey at full price which is £6. I think I paid £3 for each.

Here's another untried bought in a 2 for 1 deal at Superdrug this time, and this is a textured polish from Barry M called Lady. Looking at the picture I could have benefitted from a third coat to completely hide that nail line. Perfect for Christmas and really catches the light and sparkles in the sun. I've topped this with a December purchase one of Barry M' limited editions for Xmas from Tesco called 'Twilight'.

Another recent purchase in order to obtain 'Twlight' for FREE was this rather lovely two tome chrome polish called 'Persian'. This picture really doesn't do this polish any justice and the colour shift is from purple to burgundy to gold, this is now one of my favourite polishes. Barry M seem to have really upped their game recently with their effects polishes and when they often do deals at many retailers, even at full price you can't really go wrong.

This next manicure was done for the works Xmas do, but unfortunately I didn't go as I got the lurgie and it knocked me side ways for a good week. I did this the night before in the hope that I would be well enough to go, but it was not too be.

It was inspired by this post on Pinterest and I used China Glaze 'Mingle with Kringle' for the Gold and China Glaze 'Liquid Leather' which is an amazing opaque black polish. Some were painted free hand and some were done using various types of striping and scotch tape, I think the striping tape left the neatest lines.

31 Day Challenge - Galaxies and Water Marble

Day 19 was one of my first attempts at Nail Art, Galaxies. I love this design and I have to say this attempt was much more successful than my first.

Really, really love this design and again not a manicure that I wanted to take off once done. This was a base colour of black using Revlon Parfumerie in 'Espresso' (my new favourite black polish) and various polishes in white, yellow, purple, green and blue to create the galaxies. Just used a random sponging technique for the patterns. The real finishing touch to this was topping it all off with China Glaze's 'Fairy Dust'! 

Day 20 of the challenge is probably the day I feared the most! From reviewing Instagram I was not alone! A Water Marble manicure was required. I had NEVER been able to water marble despite several attempts before. I have studied this technique on YouTube for sometime, and the top tips I picked up from failing previously, were to use bottled water, ensure it was at room temperature and use the newest polishes I owned.

I had a couple of dummy runs with no particular pattern or colour combination in mind and managed to come up with a few marbles swatch sticks that were passible. So I decided it was time to stick my fingers in the watery polishy mess. Here's what happened!

It looks OK, I mean I've obviously seen better, but pretty happy that it worked AT ALL. The pinky is the favourite I think.  My thumb adopted a pretty weird design. But I'll be having a go again now that I know I can marble.

Design was marbled over Barry M 'Carousel' a limited edition polish for Boots, and the accent nail is topped with China Glaze 'Fairy Dust' too!

Also note, the nail on my middle finger broke last Sunday I think, and it's been patched with a bit of a tea bag and some nail glue. Surprised it lasted this long but now you can see the crack, so that's a gonner. Replaced it after this mani with a false one until it grows any decent length back. Always the middle finger nails that go with me!

31 Day Challenge - Animal Print and Flowers

Well after being chuffed with my last two manicures for the challenge, I really struggled with Day 13, Animal Print. 

I wanted to do something different, and when looking through my Bundle Monster stamping plates for inspiration I came across a plate that had an Octopus on it, and some rather spectacular tentacles.

I thought, this will be a great idea! I knew what base colour I wanted to use for the sea and the glitter topper I wanted to pair it with... the trouble came with the polish to use for stamping with. I was going to aim for a deep red for the octopus, and maybe something in a metallic finish. Unfortunately all polishes in this arena either didn't show up on this base colour or just didn't stamp well. So this is what I ended up with...

Stamping with the same Barry M Foil Effect polish I used for my metallic manicure on Day 7. You can just about make out the tentacles on my thumb and on the middle finger. Trust me this was the best picture I could get, the images were just not up to scratch. 

I love this deep duo-chrome polish though. It's from Sally Hansen's lustre shine line in 'Scarab'. Perfect for mermaid or peacock nails. Just ruined by my stamping efforts.

Day 14 however proved more fruitful! The challenge was flowers and I saw this post on Pinterest and I thought this is what I'll do! 

Anyway, needless to say mine, didn't quite come out as planned but overall happy with the effect.

I used Barry M's Gelly Shine in 'Blue Grape' and Sinful Colors 'Snow me White' for the accent nail. Both great polishes, particularly impressed with the white from Sinful. I created the flowers using a dotting tool and the two polishes.

31 Day Challenge - Dots and Stripes

I'm getting more behind with my challenge but persisting as much as I can, and I have to say I think the last two days have been a breakthrough in my previous dodgy attempts at striping and nail art.

Day 11 was Dots and I tried out a few colours and combinations and came up with this!

I cannot however take the credit for this idea. I was showing the other half my practises and he said, oh they look like pebbles on the beach. So I thought, that's a top notch idea, that's what I'll base my design on. I used China Glaze 'Metro Pollen-Tin' as the base for the sand. Maybe could have been a touch deeper and browner in colour, but I went with it anyways. 

I started off with a large dotting tool for the brown in Sinful Colors 'Nirvana' and did some smaller dots in the same colour. Then I alternated between the small dotting tool and large one with black, white, silver and a darker brown. I actually liked the manicure just with the base colour and brown dots. Really happy with the way it came out!

I also had a little moment in PoundWorld and picked up my first Sally Hansen Triple Shine polishes.

Seems they have a few of these brand coming through the door, alas they had no more of the Revlon Parfumerie or ColorStay polishes. These from left to right are, 'Changing Tides', 'Grape Jelly' and 'Sparkling Water'. The middle one I hear is like the OPI Sheer Tints, the name suggests it a Jelly but you can see how sheer it is from the photo as you can see the brush.

I also popped in to Boots and they were selling Barry M, buy one and get on half price, I picked up these limited edition polishes, but I think they have been out for a while. This was going to be the original colours for my dots manicure. 

Love the caps on these, left is 'Carousel' and right is 'Bikini.' I picked up Carousel as I'd seem some gorgeous swatches on-line.

 Day 12, was stripes and I think this may be my best striping work yet! Look at these badgers!

To start off the base cost is a gorgeous purple holo from Color Club called 'Eternal Beauty' and this is the business just on it's own, without any frills. I used striping ribbon to create the design on all nails and then a small nail art brush to fill in each colour. The black is Revlon Parfumerie in 'Espresso', the dark purple OPI 'Vant to Bite my Neck' and the light purple is Rimmel Pro in 'Purple Rain'. I DO NOT want to take this design off for Day 13, especially as purple is my favourite colour and I spent some time over this! Anyway I shall have to, as tomorrow I have a few days to catch up on. Really enjoying the challenge, it's really making me practise my nail art and use all these little bottles I collect.

Next up, Animal Print (Have no idea on what to do here) and Flowers!

31 Day Challenge - B&W and Metallic Nails

Days 6 & 7 of the 31 Day Challenge were a little more involved that previous days. First up Black and White. My other half mentioned I should do Humbug nails, but didn't have the time or patience to do the stripes so I did THIS! 

For the base I used Revlon's Parfumerie polish in 'Espresso', it was a toss up between this and China Glaze 'Liquid Leather', but I've not used the Revlon Polish so another one checked off my untried list. Great polish, goes on so smoothly and finishes to a lovely shine without top coat. For the white splatter I used Color Show's Acid Wash Effect in 'Top Splatter'. Really quite happy with the effect and will definitely do this manicure again and try the Splatter polish over other colours.

Day 7 was Metallic Nails and I totally ripped off this idea from Lou is Perfectly Polished. Her manicure is amazing and much neater than mine, I need to practise stamping more! Here's my efforts...

Smudgy at best, but you get the idea! check out Lou's Blog to see how it should have been done.

For this I used Barry M 'Denim' as the base, pretty much opaque in one coat and sooooo pretty. It's a dark blue with a silver shimmer running through it. I have worn this before but not on it's own, it's good to go without the smudgy stamping! The pattern is from Konad's m65 plate and stamped with Barry M Foil Effect polish in Silver.

Children In Need Nails

On Friday there was lots of activities going on at work to raise money for Children In Need. Some of these included wearing spots, guessing the bears name and bringing in your own bear.

This was my contribution to Show your spots and let's raise lots. I thought trying to paint Pudsey was going to be too difficult so this is my attempt. Inspired by this post on Pinterest by Lick My Lacquer. 

I was going to take my paints and polish in to work and offer to do peoples nails for donations, however this manicure took ages. The Barry M polish in Yellow took three coats to get it to this consistency and application was awful.

However worth the time and lots of people complimented me on my nails, will do charity ones in future and look for quick drying quick application polishes.