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.

   

Confessions of a Nail Polish Addict

When I realised that I had a nail polish addiction it was already too late and I had amassed over 200 bottles of the stuff! I'm not sure what exactly, and still don't fully understand why this cosmetic has captured my imagination.

I was never into make-up as a teenage and only recently towards my late thirties have I taken all that must interest in the confusing and overwhelming world of beauty products out there and how to apply them to your mush!

However I have always had a creative side and perhaps that's why I love it so... the multitude of colours (I have about 50 purple polishes and I swear no two are the same) the effects and things that you can do with them is endless and only limited by your own imagination. Nail polish manufacturers, mostly indie, are forging the way with new effect polishes whether the trend be crackle, thermal, textured, flakies or holo's and the designs that nail bloggers and vloggers are coming out with every week delights and surprises me.

Now I own over 500 polishes and even this doesn't seem to be enough, just this last week when self proclaiming my own 'No Buy' did I buy 6 more bottles!

First up is a polish I've been hankering after for a while. It's a green scattered holographic polish from Orly called 'Sparkling Garbage'. I picked this up in a set of two polishes from TK Maxx for £9.99. So not a bad price for Orly polishes as one bottle from the brand can set you back as much.

I'm not sure if you can layer this polish up to full opacity, so I used it as a topper to a polish I bought from Next called 'Anaconda'. Next have a relatively small selection of polishes in their stores but the colours and glitters they have are apparently irresistible! Their bottles are a unusual rectangular shape and every time I've visited the shop they are 3 for 2, so I now own 9!

I've also been lusting after OPI DS's polishes. Mostly the first set they brought out which is like gold dust and has the most amazing linear holographic polishes. I spotted this next one again in TK Maxx for £3.99 and had to bag it. Again you can pay up to £15 for these silver capped bottles.

This polish is bright red and has a gold shimmer running through it, seen more in the bottle than on the nail unfortunately. It's also quite sheer, probably the reason it was in TK Maxx, and took three coats for some sort of opacity. I topped this one off with another polish from Next called 'Miami Heat' a gorgeous red and gold sort of flakie glitter. They're not flakies in the conventional sense, but the glitter in this polish isn't of any discernible shape.

So I've failed miserably on not buying polish, the only way I can see myself stopping is by not going into any shops that sell it! I still plan to resist, how long for I don't yet know...

Neon Watermarble Nails

So I'm venturing into the scary world of water marbling once more, and this time it WORKED! I think the trick here was that I left a bottle of tap water in the house for a good few days so it was well and truly at room temperature.

Inspired by the Water Marble queen Colette at My Simple Little Pleasures and this tutorial!

I've seen quite a few Vloggers now doing watermarbling designs with clear polish as this one does. Some brands now are selling specific clear polish to water marble with but I used Essie's all in one base coat and top coat for my water marble which worked fine and I think Colette used a regular top coat too. Just don't use a quick dry top coat like Seche Vite or HK Girl as it won't work.

I copied Colette's colour scheme gradient to start off with, using the following polishes:

Purple - Orly Be Daring

Blue - Nails Inc Kensington Park Road

Yellow - Orly Glowstick

Then I did my water marble using China Glaze 'Liquid Leather' as Colette does in her manicure and the Essie All in One base and top coat and when I had cleaned up I topped with China Glaze 'Fairy Dust'. 

Some nails came out better than others, but overall I'm really happy with my attempt, especially the thumb nail in the picture above. I'm also less scared of having a go at water marbling again, although it is still a bit messy!

Neon, Neon, Neons Part II

My Neon order has arrived and I've been trying out some bright nails. I ordered these little bottles of happiness from The Nail and Beauty Link who have the best prices I've seen for Orly polishes. All prices as shown on the website are without VAT, so these came to £6 each. From left to right these are:

Glow Stick

Risky Behaviour

Be Daring

Fireball

Strictly again you could say some of these aren't true neons, GlowStick definitely is and is described as a true highlighter yellow. I've not gotten round to wearing all of these lovely polishes yet, however as purple is my favourite colour, I chose 'Be Daring' to wear first!

Gorgeous, gorgeous bright purple, and considering that I have many, many purple polishes and is probably the colour I have most of, I don't already have this shade. As will most Orly polishes the formula and brush were up to the job and this was opaque in two coats.

I think I'll try a gradient with the other colours and maybe a go at water marbling like this amazing manicure from My Simple Little Pleasures.

Wish me luck, not had much luck with water marbling, but hopefully using just two polishes I may get away with! 

Here's my other polish purchases I made last week in Manchester from Urban Outfitters, I love their W.I.P polishes and the neon yellow was only £3 in their sale, the shade is very similar to Orly's Glow Stick but this one has a shimmer running through it too.

The other two I picked up where Glitter polishes and these are 'Bits N Bobs' which is a lovely mix of all types of glitter in neon yellow, white and green. The polish at the front on the right is called 'Mardis Gras' and you can see that it's an explosion of all different colours and sizes of Hex glitter. Can't wait to try these, not sure what I'm going to do with them yet!

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.

31 Day Challenge Completed!!!

Only 12 days behind, but I've done it! The last days theme was 'Your Signature Style' and to tell you the truth I don't think I have one. However what I do really like is doing is Saran Wraps and Water Colour techniques. 

I thought I'd do a Saran Wrap effect as I did on the last day for my last challenge. This time I didn't merge the colours all together and dabbed them on individually over a base of 'Boho Bonnet' by Orly. Too much going on here I think, and again colours I chose were not contrasting enough. I chose Cirque 'Epoc' and pictured here one of the lovely Urban Decay polishes I have yet to try called 'Addiction'.

Here's some of my favourite manicures from the challenge. I have now used 69 'dude' of my untried polishes and tried many nail art techniques which I hadn't before. Looking out for another challenge in a couple of months maybe whist I catch up with every day life!

Holo and Inspired by Pinterest - Days 13 and 14

It's safe to say that I have fallen behind in the second week, but I shall continue on. Realistically doing a new manicure (with nail art) EVERY day just isn't going to happen. As with the last challenge I'm enjoying trying new techniques, challenging myself and using my untrieds. This is going very well, I have now reduced my untried down to a mere 191 well below half of my collection.

So Day 13's theme was holographic and a nail polish effect I love, but only have a handful of. I'd never used GOSH 'Holographic Hero' before so wasn't sure if it was opaque or not, so I layered it over Revlon Parfumerie in 'Spun Sugar'. I'm not sure why the GOSH polish says for 24 hour wear, I'm not going to be wearing it longer than that anyway.

I topped with HK Girl, as I needed these dry before heading about my day, and the top coat seemed to dull the holographicness (is that even a word?). So I decided I needed something else and stamped this pattern from a Bundle Monster plate. Pretty chuffed with how this looks!

Next was to recreate a manicure from Pinterest, which I do all the time anyway. This is one I've tried before without much success, I couldn't figure out what order to put matt top coat and glitter on and whether to paint or dab the glitter. This time it came out much, much better. Here's the pin:

And here's my attempt...

I used Nails Inc 'Wigmore Street' as the base and Orly 'Fowl Play' for the glitter, turns out painting it on a sponge and then dabbing it on my nails worked best. I then topped them both off with a OPI Matt Top Coat. Lovely!

Catching up with day's 9 and 10

Day 9 asked for a Red Base, and red isn't a colour I choose to wear very often, but when I do I'm pleasantly surprised. In this instance I didn't know what to pick as I have quite a number of red polishes that I have yet to try... here's a gander at them! Which one would you have chosen?

That's 10 red polishes I own and have never worn. Now some can be justified, the essie which is a beautiful pillar box red, was part of a set I bought from TK Maxx, and my first essie polishes. Two of the the OPI's were presents, oh and the Nail's Inc and Leighton Denny were freebies from a magazine purchase, so that's half of them justified for.

So I chose, OPI's 'Affair in Red Square' for my Red Base manicure and topped it off with Orly's 'Star Spangled Banner'. Picture does this NO justice and I'd be interested to see how opaque the Orly polish would be on it's own, as this really has depth. The micro glitter really looks suspended in the polish. This is going to be my go to manicure if I want red.

Day 10 was glitter base and the last few days with work and training all day Saturday have left me little time to embellish these manicures with some nail art. However the polish I chose below, Maybellines Color Show in 'Rose Chic' from the Crystallize range needs nothing else. 

I can't believe I have NEVER used this polish before, it's freaking gorgeous! Formula is great, finish is slightly textured but not too bumpy and the other thing about this polish is it's one of those that when applied, doesn't look messy AT ALL. You could get a monkey to apply this to your nails and it would STILL look fabulous. I have no idea if you can still get these Crystallize polishes and looking online the range they had in the US was even more awesome!

I'm STILL wearing this, and don't want to take off, and I need to do Day 11's manicure. I do have a feeling that it's gonna need a soaking in acetone and wrapping in foil for removal.

31 Day Challenge - Delicate Print and Geometric Nails

Day 15 was entitled 'Delicate Print' and I didn't really know what that meant or how I was going to interpret it. Looking around Instagram and the Internet in general I got the impression it was pretty much fancy nails with a very fine or complex design... I was going to stuggle.

The only way I was going to do this was by searching through my stamping plates and finding some sort of intricate design. Inspired again by The Nailsaurus by her manicure for the theme. I went with a light colour which I normally don't wear and looked for a gold polish to stamp. And here's what I came up with...

I used Models Own in 'Peach Melba' as my base, a polish I bought a while ago and hadn't yet worn. I then tried stamping with practically every gold polish I had. The only one that really worked was Revlons Parfumerie polish in 'Italian Leather'. Both of these are scented polishes and the combination seemed to smell quite nice, although primarily of nail polish!

Stamping efforts still not great and the above took a few goes to get it to even look half decent. Still waiting for my new rectangular stamper to arrive from China, hoping it's here soon!

Day 16 is geometric and I love these type of designs, what I hate though is the lack of time I have this week to wait for each coat to dry before I can tape it up and paint the next colour and shape.

I rummaged around my polish draws looking for three untried polishes that would go together in this design I wanted to do. 

I started of with 'Loden Green' from Sally Hansen's Complete Salon Manicure line. I've wanted to go Khaki green nails for a while, but have to say once painted on it reminded me more of diarrhoea! Or is that just me?

Once two coats were done, I'd gone to far to turn back, so I started with my design doing the grey colour first in Orlys 'Boho Bonnet'. The last shape in the dark blue is Revlons ColorStay in 'Midnight'. The Orly was a bit sheer for this type of nail art, I really needed something more opaque and the Revlon polish was perfect for the striping shapes. I used the last shape to cover up the mess I'd make with the first design where I could. 

Overall I like the design and colours, just wish I'd had more time to be careful with drying the polish before each colour. Now firmly two days behind with the challenge! 

Mini Haul from BeautyBay.Com

Last week I was scanning the internet for polishes on my want list and found one, China Glaze - Electrify (Hunger Games collection). It was on a site called BeautyBay.com for the very reasonable price of £4.17 with free postage and packaging too, even for one polish.

The site has a large range of beauty products, not just nail polishes, and at very good prices. Whilst browsing I picked up another two polishes pictured above. Orly's 'Masked Ceremony' and Essie's 'Hor d'Oeuvres'. All very, very sparkly. You can't see here but the Orly one has square silver glitters and purple glitters too which I really hope you can see on the nail! This was £5.13 and the most expensive was the Essie polish at £7.48 but it's a relatively new polish.

Shipping was really quick, I ordered these on Friday evening and they arrived on Wednesday the following week. I also paid £1.50 extra for a Premier order which meant I would be sent free samples too. I received a eye shadow colour (I think) in a nude colour called 'Warm Sienna' by Jane Iredale. (Around the dinner table I've have been advised to find out if it's an eye colour to put in on my lids and see if it stings!) Anyway I'll let you know how I get on... and two small bottles of skin toner and cleanser from a make called Mario Badescu who I've never heard of. The smell of them reminds me of something my Nan would use however.

My first Orly

Went to visit friends down South last weekend and had to go and visit a store called Bond Link. My friend had been telling me about this place for a while, that it was like Sally's and sold OPI and other nail varnish, along with all sorts of other beauty gubbins.

So I asked if we could go and visit and aswell as OPI they had a rack full of Orly. I don't own any Orly polishes but many Bloggers rave about the make and aside the price of OPI it's much cheaper at £6.95. There were a couple of colours I fancied but I opted for this one, it's called 'Oui' and I think it's holographic.

In some lights it looks a lovely purple and as you can see in this picture it has a lovely gold dimension to it. In other lights it looks brown or burgandy. Formula is great, went on lovely and opaque in two coats. I've been wearing for three days now with no chips and only minimal tip wear. I'm going to seek out more of this brand, very, very happy with my new polish and perfect for Christmas.