Instagram Giveaway Prize from Effiena's Hand Made Polish

I've recently been getting into the old Instagram thing, and even sent my first Direct Message on there last week. I did NOT know you could do that. One thing that I'm really enjoying is finding new people to follow, especially UK Indie Nail Polish makers and also winning my first Giveaway!

Many Instagramers (if thats's what you call them) celebrate like Vloggers do on YouTube, when they reach a significant number of followers or subscribers. Often to celebrate they will run a giveaway where all you usually need to do if you follow them, is repost their giveway pic and tag it to interested and participating parties.

I was lucky enough to win one of these giveaways run by a UK Indie Nail Polish maker called Effiena. I found her through the lovely Samantha Rogers over at The Nail and Beauty Files.

Effiena was giving away one of her lovely polishes and some nail art goodies for reaching 500 followers on Instagram and I was the lucky winner. Here's what she sent me!

As if I hadn't acquired enough shinies at the weekend, thanks to Effiena I have more nail stickers, gems and guides to use along with some pretty good nail art brushes too. I really need to get cracking. But before I do I wanted to try Effiena's polish which is from her chameleon collection, The one I chose is called Plum Ultra-Marine.

Look at this! I layered it over a dark purple polish. She describes the colour shift on this polish as Lilac to Blue to Green. You can see the shift in the picture and I guess it may depend what effect you get on what colour you choose as your base. So I'll be trying this over a few different colours I think!

Formula was very good. The above shows one good coat for this effect. I also found this dried surprisingly fast too, considering I had two coats of base colour, I had no issue with dry time and didn't feel the need to top coat.

You can find Effiena over at facebook, Instagram and purchase her polishes on her Etsy shop called EffienaNailPolish. They retail from £2 up to £4.50, so a really good price for an Indie polish. Oh and I just found out she has a blog too. I was right about the dry time, her Chameleon polishes are quick dry!

Thank you so much Effiena for the wonderful giveaway, looking forward to creating some funky nail art with my new found supplies.

Stellar Nail Polish

 Through the Nail Groups I follow on facebook, I've discovered some great indie nail polishes and Stellar Nails is one of them. The lady who runs the business is active on the All Things Nails Group and I was lucky enough to benefit from one of the offers she posted on facebook. I received a free nail polish with my order and free postage, Whoooo Hoooo.

This is my second purchase into the world of Indie polishes and delighted that I found these readily available in the UK. The first polish I tried (above) is called Ayla and is a gorgeous blue with shed loads of glitter. Metallic purple and blue with silver micro glitter running through the whole polishly loveliness! I didn't notice, until I put this on, it has purple butterflies too! An added bonus!

This polish along with the polish on the left below called 'The Warmth' are both thermo polishes. These are my first and when you dunk your hands in cold water or when eating a Jubbly as I was the other day, the polish turns purple! To get a better idea of what that looks like, check Stellar Nail Etsy Shop here, my pictures just don't do this polish justice!

The blue on both of these polishes is gorgeous, yet hard to describe. It has this lovely colour dimension to it, blue leaning to a purple.

The middle polish is called 'Two Princes' and I layered this over OPI's 'Lincoln Park After Dark'. This one is a green and red gold flakie glitter topper. Going to be perfect for Christmas manicures too. I love putting Glitter over a cream it makes the whole manicure pop and also makes it last for much longer. Here's may attempt to capture the polish and failing miserably, lights in my house are rubbish!

The last item I bought from Stellar nails was a nail polish ring, she has just brought out some earring which I'm going to have to purchase too! These are so cute, they come in a range of different colours, the one I chose is the Purple Galaxy, of course!

Stellar nails are running a Giveaway at the moment. You can win two full size bottles of nail varnish and a pair of her new nail polish earrings. Enter here for a chance to win, as of today the Giveaway is open for four more days.

So far very impressed with all my Indie Nail Polish purchases, will definitely buy more Stellar Polishes. If you like the look of these, be sure to follow Stellar Nail Polish on facebook to keep up to date with the latest additions and offers they have.

Detash Swap and my first Indie polishes

As I mentioned in my last post, I recently took part in a facebook Group Nail Polish Swap and this is the lovelies that I received! 

My first of three brands here, a Seche polish in 'Pretty Little Heart Breaker' the pink polish on the left, a KR polish in '004' which is a lovely turquoise colour with gold, turquoise and purple glitters (think there is some bar glitters too), a Laval gelly polish in 'Sugar Plum' (I'm thinking gelly Sandwich here) and a 17 polish in 'Copper'. As well as these four polishes my swap partner sent me some sweets, a card, some striping tape and some tip guides. Overall a very enjoyable experience which I will definitely do again, only when I feel have have some polishes I can bear to part with. That was the hardest part!

Last month I also bought my first indie nail polishes from Rainbow Connection (Oh crap I've just gone to the site to get the URL and they now have Cirque polishes for sale!). Another find thanks to the lovely ladies on the facebook nail Groups, these are so bad for my addiction and purse!

I went on the site to buy the latest top coat everyone is raving about, HK Girl. Forget about your Seche Vite ladies, HK Girl doesn't smudge your nail art and doesn't get thick and gloopy like Seche does, so go check it out, you won't regret it.

So it would be rude just to buy the one item, I mean lets face it, Top Coat is not really nail polish is it? So I had a shifty round the many Indie brands they stock. One thing that is annoying about the site though, is many polishes are sold out. I found myself finding something I like only to find it wasn't available, so annoying. Anyway I didn't let that stop me and bought two! The first is a polish by a company called Wing Dust and it's called 'Steel Town Girl'.

Lovely, lovely dark blue gelly polish with shredded glitters in gold and teal. Opaque in 3-4 coats so I layered it over Color Clubs 'Baldwin Blues' as the colour match was pretty accurate. Love it, very pleased with my first Indie polishes. The other was 'Ember' by Ethereal Lacquer, swatches to come soon when I also show you the Indie polishes I bought from Stellar Nail Polish.