Confessional of a Nail Polish Addict - Part 2

I've done it again, I only popped in to SuperDrug to buy, well I don't know what and out I walked five minutes later with three brand new polishes in my bag. The next day I purposely went to a different SuperDrug to see if I could pick up the rest of the set... 

So here is my reasoning, SuperDrug have been selling these 2true polishes for a while and I've read from other Bloggers that these are great for stamping. I can confirm they are... I created this mani last night will little trouble from the polish, plate or stamper!

Usually these retail for £3.99 each and it seems that SuperDrug may be discontinuing this line as all 2true cosmetics were on sale for £1. I managed to pick up the red, blue and purple on my first visit and bagged the green and the teal on my second. These as the names suggests are metallic polishes and swatched really well with only two coats to make opaque.

Along with the Metallic polishes I also picked up three others from their Salon Shine line. I already had the purple from this collection which I bought over a year ago so I picked up the other three. I think there are only four colours.

Again formula was great on these polishes and two coats were used on the following swatches, in particular I really like the shade of red and orange. 

These are an absolute steal at £1 each and because I had clocked up some SuperDrug Points it cost me a total of £6 for all 8 polishes, what a BARGAIN! So get yourself down to your local SuperDrug if you fancy picking up these lovelies, before they're all GONE!

Seeing Spots - Off Centre Dotticure

So as I'm on this supposed 'No Buy' and probably remain on it till the end of the year, it's time to return to my untried polish stash and see what designs I can conjure up.

 These two polishes are my favourite type, dark and vampy with a slight metallic finish to them, and I thought they'd make a pretty good pairing allowing me to tick TWO more polishes off the untried list.

These gorgeous beauties are:

No7 - Temptress (The burgundy one)

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri - Grape Escape

Lovely colours and formulas, only two coats of Grape Escape but three coats for Temptress. I kept this manicure for a day and then decided I needed to jazz it up a little. So searched Pinterest and saw a design where the dotting was only on one side of the nail. So this is what I did. I kept the colours to gold, silver and copper, and then decided to add a few dots of the alternate base colour to finish off.

I'm now eagerly awaiting the arrival of Septembers NailBox this is the only polish I'm allowing myself, yeah right). Think this one is gonna be Halloween themed so spooky manicures coming your way soon...

Bokeh Nails

Many Nail Art Bloggers and Vloggers are doing the 31 Day Challenge this month and I'm missing out as I thought it was next month as there are 31 days in October but not September. The challenge is to do a different manicure every day for 31 days based around the following themes.

I've completed this challenge twice once in January this year and for the first time in September last year (why I thought it was October, I have no idea).

Whilst following others progress I came across a nail art technique called Bokeh so thought I'd have a go. Bokeh is a photography effect where you blur a background on a photo so that it appears as little circles of light, much like the affect on the 31 Day Challenge image above.

I first found inspiration from ohmygoshpolish who created Bokeh nails for her Day 1 Red Nails manicure, here's what she did and how she did it:

I followed her tutorial to create my look but used blue varnish along with white and a light metallic blue as my base.

 

Very happy with how this manicure turned out, I think next time I'll do more layering of the dots to give the design more depth, I only did three layers, so maybe so four next time.

THEN I saw this tutorial for Bokeh Nails when rummaging through YouTube created by Cute Polish, so I thought I'd give this a go too. Super easy to do, actually both of the nail art effects are and they really look amazing.

I omitted the gold accents, and used purple, blue, pink and teal colours, but you can use what ever colour combination you want.

 

Really love the way these look, I'm wondering what these might look using black acrylic paint to create the Bokeh-lites!

Which one do you like best, or have you tried Bokeh nails, and how did you create the effect?

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...

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? 

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!

Leopard Print?

For some reason I've become a big fan of animal print things lately. I used to really hate any thing animal printy, but it's become less tacky now especially with the interpretations and colour mixes you can now get rather that the old fashioned Bet Lynch leopard print.

Double Leopard print, this has to be a worse fashion faux par than Double Denim.

Anyway, I spotted (no pun intended) this polish in Claire's sometime ago and kept revisiting it, so last time I was in there with the 3 for 2 offer I thought I'd pick it up. I've never seen a polish with Leopard print shaped glitters in it. Here's what it looks like...

and here's the extreme close up...

The polish was a little gloopy and it took a little fishing to get the leopard shaped glitters out, but once you started they were like buses and you seemed to get two or three at once. In fact the shot above looks like I have two layered together.

Not sure I like this look so next time I'll try this over a lighter colour. Also I think I'll just pick out the leopard shaped glitters and place them on my nail leaving out the flakies. Needless to say, this was a bugger to get off the nail. Acetone and foil was required and some picking at the bigger glitters. Let's see if I can make this polish work with some thinner and nail placement.

How do you created your animal print nails? Do you stamp, free hand or use wraps, let me know what you find works best.