Illamasqua Muse Blinged Up

OK, I promise I have some more non-blue nail posts coming up, but in the mean time here's one that's not exactly blue. Illamasqua Muse is a bright teal creme that is opaque in two coats. As with all Illamasqua polishes I've tried, it goes on easily and effortlessly. I topped it with one coat of Lilacquer Selkie (you can see swatches of it over black here), a duchrome top coat with a blue/green shimmer, and finally a line of square studs down my ring finger.

Unfortunately my top coat bubbled horribly when I put it over the studs. Boo.

I only have ten days until I go to Spain! Not that I'm counting or anything... Being the insanely organised person I am, I'm already compiling a list of all the places I want to visit while I'm there. I'm going to Seville and Madrid, so if anyone has any suggestions of what I should see, please let me know! :)

Accessorize Colorado

I realised recently that I've been wearing almost nothing but blues on my nails recently, so I'm making a conscious effort to wear different colours now! Today I'm showing you Accessorize Colorado, a light grey polish with gold shimmer. I had a little trouble capturing the shimmer but you can kind of see it in the first photo. I used three coats for opacity.

This isn't the sort of polish I'd normally wear and I'm not 100% convinced it suits my skin tone, but I kind of like it anyway. It's a nice palette-cleanser. It reminds me a lot of Nails Inc Covent Ballet Garden but at half the price (yay!). I think Accessorize nail polishes don't get as much notice as they deserve - they have a good range of colours and they're purse-friendly. What do you think?

China Glaze Rainstorm French Tips

Hi guys! Yesterday I showed you China Glaze Rainstorm, and I liked it so much that even when it got tipwear I didn't want to take it off. I wore this a couple of weeks ago when I was helping with the filming at work, and I was getting back so late at night that I didn't have time to do anything fancy. Enter...the French tip.

I like the French tip because it's quick and easy to do, but effective. I started with a line of Nails Inc Black Taxi on the tips and followed it with a swipe of a silver striper from Claire's Accessories. Hasta la vista, tipwear!

The lines are a bit wobbly because I was in such a hurry, but oh well. Macro is pretty unforgiving; from a distance it looked fine.

China Glaze Rainstorm

So you've probably realised by now what a sucker I am for blue nail polish. When I saw the discontinued China Glaze Rainstorm on Chalkboard Nails last month I knew that it had to be mine. Rainstorm is a sheer periwinkle blue shimmer with flecks of blue glitter. I wasn't going to attempt to get it opaque on its own, so I used China Glaze Electric Beat as underwear and followed it with two coats of Rainstorm.

I'm really glad I bought this! Thank you, eBay. :) Tomorrow I'll showed you how I jazzed it up after a couple of days' wear.

On a completely random note, this time in two weeks I'll be holidaying in Spain, and I AM SO EXCITED!!

Work Hard. Play Hard.

Happy Monday! Did you all have a good weekend? I went to an ice hockey game. I don't think I've ever voluntarily been to a sporting event before...in fact, I've actively avoided them in the past! But it had a great atmosphere and our team won, which made it even better. Also, it was all kinds of excellent watching the players try to beat the *bleep* out of each other! XD

Recently I went on a night out in London and I wanted some fun nails that would stand out against the black dress I was wearing. I settled on an old favourite, China Glaze Flip Flop Fantasy - you can see my swatch here - but I blinged it up a bit with China Glaze Golden Enchantment, a holographic gold micro glitter top coat (what a mouthful!). Then, as if that wasn't enough, I used some square studs that I got recently from the Born Pretty Store.

Okay, so the end result is kind of tacky and possibly something that would grace the nails of the girls in The Only Way is Essex, but I like it anyway. Oh, and the best/weirdest thing about my night out? I bumped into one of my cousins! Neither of us live or work in London but we both happened to be out with friends from work on the same night. Of all the pubs in all the towns in all the world...

OPI Glacier Bay Blues

OPI Glacier Bay Blues has been on my wishlist for a while, but as it's hard to find these days it was one of those nail polishes that I thought would stay just that - a wish. Then, a few weeks ago, a friend from my internship came in with a couple of nail polishes that she'd got from her mum and didn't want any more. One of them was an OPI polish that looked like it had barely been used, so when she asked if I wanted it I said yes immediately. The label on the bottom was missing but I thought it looked kind of familiar, so I did some Googling...and realised I had got my hands on a bottle of Glacier Bay Blues! I love weird coincidences like that.

Glacier Bay Blues originally came out in 2004 and I can tell my bottle is from then because it smells absolutely horrendous - definitely pre-3-free. It's a shimmery blue/teal/green duochrome with a bit of purple at extreme angles, but it was elusive on camera. It's really pretty and I don't know why OPI don't release more like it.

I love it! The smell might put me off wearing it too often though...

Do you have any HTF nail polishes that you got through a stroke of luck?

The Hungry Asian Sneeze Breeze Glitter Gradient

Following on from the two The Hungry Asian polishes I showed yesterday, here's another one: Sneeze Breeze. It consists of small matte blue and black glitter in a clear base, although there's more blue glitter than black. Here I've layered it over Essie Borrowed & Blue in a glitter gradient. I like glitter gradients because they're so easy to do - instead of using a sponge you can just use the polish brush to drag the glitter up the nail.

The Hungry Asian Twenty Ten & Vote For Purple

I was reorganising my nail photographs on my computer at the weekend (what an exciting life I lead...!) and came across some photos I took a while ago of some polishes I bought from The Hungry Asian on Etsy. Somehow I forgot all about them! You don't want to know how long ago I took these photos. *cough* May *cough* I bought four mini polishes (I love the bottles!), and I'm showing you two of them today.

Twenty Ten has a black jelly base with fine red, blue and copper glitter and larger blue hex glitter (for some reason the colours make me think of Alice in Wonderland - I have no idea why!). I layered one coat over Nails Inc Black Taxi for the photos below. As far as I can remember I had no application issues, and the glitter distributed itself evenly.

Vote For Purple has small purple and silver hex glitter in a shimmery base. It's pretty sheer but the glitter gives good coverage. I layered it over OPI Done Out in Deco.

What do you think? Do you have any polishes by The Hungry Asian?

Reswatch: Dior Saint Tropez

Hi, I have a reswatch to show you today. Dior Saint Tropez is a gorgeous turquoise polish with that sparse, almost invisible shimmer Dior is known for. The colour does have a green tint to it, but it seems to pull quite blue on me - which suits me fine!

This is still my one and only Dior nail polish but I'm desperate to get my hands on Amazonia, so watch this space!

An Impeccable Dinner Suit

Yesterday I went to a murder mystery party at a friend's house for her birthday. Ahead of time my friend gave us our character names and some background information. My character was a male Cambridge-educated wine merchant (funnily enough my dad actually is a Cambridge-educated wine merchant!) and under costume suggestions it said:

An impeccable dinner suit

What with being female and all I don't actually own a tuxedo (shocking!), so I decided to put the dinner suit on my nails instead. I've done tuxedo nails once before and didn't want to just repeat myself, so I did it as an accent nail on my ring finger (using Barry M Matt White and Nails Inc Black Taxi). I painted the rest of my nails with two coats of Rimmel London Grey Matter and one coat of Sonnetarium Samurai Princess, which is packed full of matte black and white glitter.

On a completely unrelated note, the new series of Downton Abbey starts in half an hour. Eeeee, I'm so excited!!

China Glaze Love's a Beach

What was I saying yesterday about wearing autumnal nail polishes...? Here's a colour that couldn't be autumnal if it tried. China Glaze Love's a Beach is a neon pink shimmer polish. It's warmer-toned than Hang Ten-Toes, but I can't decide which of the two I like more. I used three coats but probably could have got away with two.

And here's a photo of it in the shade to show just how neon it is:

Orly Rococo A Go-Go

Now that it's September and autumn is approaching I'm slowly transitioning to wearing darker colours on my nails. A perfect autumnal colour is Orly Rococo A Go-Go, which has a red-toned purple base with flashes of gold, red and orange. It's the love child of a glass-fleck and a duochrome polish. It's quite pigmented and was opaque in two coats.

Yikes, my hands look so pale in these photos. I swear I'm not so ghostly-looking in real life!