Black and Gold French Tips

Evening! It was my birthday on Friday - yup, I was born only three days after Christmas. A lot of people seem to think this sucks, but I actually really like it. I don't usually have to work on my birthday, and my friends are usually all around too so it works out pretty well. I turned a quarter of a century old so to mark this feat I went on a night out with my friends. I was pretty restrained in my alcohol intake and only got a little tipsy, yay me. I was wearing five inch wedge boots so my feet were not happy by the end of the night, but apart from that I had a great time. :)

Because I am a weirdo I always like to have a colour theme when I go on a night out, and for my birthday it was black and gold. For my manicure I started with OPI Goldeneye and added a coat of holographic glitter, China Glaze Golden Enchantment, on top. Once it was completely dry I used tape to paint the tips black. Simple but effective.

Do you have a colour theme in mind when you dress up for a night out, or are you less anal than I am? How do you do your own nails for your birthday?

KIKO Holographic Nail Lacquers

Evening! Did you have a good Christmas? I had a very relaxing day with my family which was nice. My birthday is in two days so I'm looking forward to that now. :)

Today I'm showing you three of the four KIKO Holographic colours that came out a while ago. I got these in London in October but only got round to wearing them quite recently. Shame on me! A general thing I want to mention about these is that the formula is better than I'm used to with holographics - I used a normal base coat underneath without any problems. They all dried to a slightly matte finish so I risked using top coat on them, and I think rather than dulling the holographic effect, it enhanced it. o.0

First up is KIKO 400/Steel Grey, a grey/black shade that was opaque in two coats. This was the most holographic of the three. I decided to test the wear on this so the photos were taken after three days; there is tipwear but it's not horrendous (unlike some holographic polishes that chip after a couple of hours!). I think being able to use a top coat with these is a great advantage.

Second is KIKO 401/Peacock Green - don't be fooled by the name, it's actually a very pretty blue-with-a-splash-of-turquoise colour. I used three coats for full coverage. There is a bonus photo of what it looks like in daylight because I was actually around during the day when I wore this one (gasp!).

Last but not least is KIKO 402/Jewel Pink. The name of this confused me because I thought it was red! I did some Googling and apparently it is pink...but I swear it still looks red to me. Hmmm. Anyway, this was the least holographic of the three and was opaque in two coats.

Christmas Penguins

Evening! I have my final Christmas design for you today. I wore this to my work's Christmas lunch last week because it matched my jumper, which is this cute one from ASOS (that is obviously not me wearing it. I only wish I was that slim):

Before painting the design on my nails I did some Googling to see how other people had done penguin manicures. To be honest I wasn't overly impressed with most of them, so in the end I blagged it and just tried to loosely copy my jumper. And here's the result:

The black and white are Barry M polishes, the beak and feet are Topshop Louder, the gold bow tie is China Glaze Angel Wings, and the red bow tie plus red nails are China Glaze Ruby Pumps.

Aren't the penguins super cute?! I absolutely love how this turned out, and I received so many compliments from co-workers at our lunch. Yay for penguins!

This will probably be my last post before Christmas. I'm having a quiet one at home with my family and hamster Claude, what about you? So yeah... Merry Christmas!

Christmas Snowflakes

Happy end of the world! I celebrated the fact I'm still alive by going shopping and buying myself lots of clothes I don't need. It's my birthday in a week and my friends and I are going on a night out, so obviously I had to get some new shoes. I bought the most ridiculous/amazing black studded wedge boots from Primark...I might break my ankle but at least I'll look awesome doing it. How have you spent the non-apocalypse?

Anyway. Today I have a Christmas snowflake designed inspired by one I saw on AbbieNail last week (you can find it here). Abbie is really talented at freehand nail art and I am so envious of how long her nails are - how does she not break them all the time?!

I didn't have the same polishes as her so I had to improvise. The purple base is OPI Ink and the silver glitter is China Glaze Fairy Dust. I used a Models Own nail art pen for the snowflakes, which took forever to draw. I tried to make them all look a bit different, as everyone knows no two snowflakes are alike. Finally, I stuck a rhinestone in the middle of the larger ones and disco glitter around the edges of the smaller ones.

I also drew them on my right hand and they didn't turn out completely terrible! Hurrah! I actually loved wearing this design - unfortunately it chipped quite badly on the third day, otherwise I'd probably still be wearing it!

Christmas Trees

I have my first Christmas nail art to show you today, and as should be obvious from the title, it features a Christmas tree!

Christmas trees are one of my favourite things about this time of year. Every year my parents and I go to our local tree farm to pick one - my mum and I are really particular about what tree we get so we often spend over an hour choosing. I remember one year my dad had to work at the weekend so my mum and I went together, found a tree, and had a hell of a time squeezing it into her VW Polo to take it home!

I wanted to try this design by Nailside but was short on time, so I simply used a striper and China Glaze Holly-day to make a green triangle on my thumb and ring finger. I filled it in with China Glaze Golden Enchantment and then added some loose disco glitter to represent baubles. Finally I topped the tree with a gold rhinestone and covered with top coat. On my other nails I did two coats of OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons and one of China Glaze Golden Enchantment.

Color Club Alter Ego & Ulterior Motive

Hello, today I'm showing you a couple of Color Club polishes from their Spring 2011 collection. Except in sets of 7 from TK Maxx, Color Club isn't widely available here - I got these two recently on Amazon.

First up is Alter Ego, the namesake of the collection. It's a grey and purple polish with a gold/silver glass fleck shimmer that was opaque in two coats. As purple and silver is one of my favourite colour combinations, this is pretty much my perfect polish.

Second is Ulterior Motive. I had to use artificial light for these as there was no sun the entire three days I wore this. Boo. (I took the photos on day three so I'm afraid there is some tipwear.) It's a fuchsia pink with blue and purple micro glitter. It was a tad sheer and I needed three coats.

Nails Inc Victoria & Foubert's Place

Good afternoon! I have a couple of Nails Inc swatches for you today.

The first is one of their classics, and a colour I think every nail polish addict should have in their collection: Nails Inc Victoria. It's a dark, vampy red jelly. In terms of colour it's quite similar to Revlon Vixen, maybe a tad darker, but with a much better formula (no bubbling!). I could probably have got away with two coats but I did three just in case.

The other is Nails Inc Foubert's Place. I used this as a base for OPI The Man With the Golden Gun, and it looked pretty great. On the website it's described as a grey khaki shade, which is a pretty bang-on description. It has a smooth, easy formula and was opaque in two coats.

Polished Nail Bar

Last weekend we had a Christmas Fair at work, and I was lucky enough to be one of the stallholders. My colleague in charge of the Fair asked the staff if any of us had anything we wanted to sell and so I suggested a nail bar. To my surprise she loved the idea - the Polished Nail Bar was born!

I had so much fun painting nails. I was there both days and although the weather was rubbish we still had a fantastic turnout (the final figure for the weekend was over 3000 people!). On Saturday I only had six customers, but I was much more popular on Sunday and had a steady stream of people who wanted their nails painted. As it's only a hobby I don't have any professional equipment, but I think I managed to make my stall look pretty good anyway.

The base coat I used on everyone was Nubar Foundation Base Coat, and the top coat was Poshe Super-Fast Drying Top Coat because it dries really quickly and isn't toxic like Seche Vite. Interestingly, although the Christmas-inspired nail wheel I created for the occasion was much admired, everyone went for standard nail painting rather than art or rhinestones. Two of the most popular colours were a-england Avalon and Perceval, which I showed in my previous post.

Finally, here were my own nails for the occasion. On Saturday I wore China Glaze Poinsettia with OPI The Man With the Golden Gun (not my favourite gold leaf combo, it turns out) but I forgot to photograph it, and on Sunday I wore Nails Inc Baker Street with China Glaze Glistening Snow as a French manicure, plus a line of rhinestones.

People keep asking me since if I would do the Christmas Fair again if given the chance, and the answer is: in a heartbeat. I wouldn't want to make a career of it, but if I could spend a couple of days a year painting nails and discussing nail polish...how could I resist?!

a-england Avalon & Perceval

Hello! I have a couple of a-england swatches to show you today from The Mythicals. I've had these for about a year and I wear them quite frequently, but I don't think I've swatched them on here before.

Avalon is probably my favourite purple polish ever. It's blue-toned and glowy and glorious. It has fantastic pigmentation and is opaque in two effortless coats. (Unfortunately it began to rain as I was taking these photos; the blobs on a couple of nails are raindrops!)

Perceval is along the same lines as Avalon in that it's rich and glowy, but it's a vivid red rather than purple. As I've said before I don't wear red polishes that often, but I'll make an exception for this beauty. Again, this is two coats.

You can see swatches of two other Mythicals colours here.