Zoya Gem - A Disappointment

Time to try out my latest purchase. Zoya's 'Gem'! What a disappointment, that lovely gold shimmer you see in the bottle doesn't show up on the nail at all.

The colour, although gorgeous, shows up very purple on the nails and not at all the deep red you see in the bottle either. I tried an accent nail in China Glaze's 'Electrify' to try and bring some sparkly to the manicure, but I think the red and the gold glitter are completely the wrong colours to pair with this polish.

I cooked dinner after painting my nails and chipped the hell out of them, so redid the accent nails with Color Club's 'The Uptown' which works so much better!

This is a flaky polish in a sheer purple base, I swatched it over a blue polish to see what effect it would give. The gold/copper flakes you can see above looked pink over the blue polish, so something to experiment with. 

I do like the combination above, just disappointed with the lack of dimension on the Zoya polish. If it had looked as good on the nail as it did in the bottle, no glitter would have been needed!

Wedding Manicure

On Saturday my friends Steph and James got married in a lovely country pub in Cheshire. I love a good wedding I do, and this was certainly an eventful day.

The weather was a bit wet and windy, but we didn't have to venture out and it was lovely a toasty in the pub, especially after a bit of wedding dancing, looking like a fool.

Anyway down to details, I wanted something to match this amazing dress I bought from Debenhams, and although you probably can't see it from the picture the detail on the top half of the dress has green and purple in it. So I painted my nails in OPI's 'Don't Mess with OPI', a polish I hadn't used and broke out my Konad stamping polishes in White and Black Pearl.

I used Konads stamping plate M82 and alternated two of the different flower designs on each nail. I'm hiding my ring finger behind the polish as I broke this sometime Saturday night. It was already half broken, but quite far down and I'd cobbled together a fix with some nail glue and part of a tea bag, something I saw on You Tube.

You also can't see my thumb in this picture as I've just purchased the most amazing polish by Color Club called 'The Uptown' and I'd tried it on my thumb to see what it looked like. I can't describe it, I'll have to do one of my next manicures in it and show you just how amazing it is. I caught a first glimpse of it on Nail Call's Blog. The polish looks nothing like the colours on her swatches here as it does on my nails and I think that it's going to be one of polishes that changes colour depending on what you layer it over. So let's see...

21st Birthday Manicure

So a disappointing turn of events at the hen do as we simply didn't have time to do nails. A great time was had by all despite the lack of a finely painted nails.

However, this weekend was my friend Charlotte's 21st and she asked if I could paint her nails. She had gel nails done without a colour and I was able to paint and do a design to match her dress.

I was inspired by this manicure from Beauty Tutorials, for the accent nail and Charlotte asked for horizontal striped on her thumb.

I used striping tape for the lines and started with Essies 'Wrapped in Rubies for the base colour on Charlotte's accent and thumb. I finished off with China Glaze's 'Liquid Leather' for the rest of the nails and stripes. I topped the look off with Color Club's quick dry top coat.

Very happy with the results, a great night was had by all and hopefully this manicure will last Charlotte a few more days until Wednesday when it's her actual birthday!