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?!

Essie Bikini So Teeny

Hi all, I have Essie Bikini So Teeny for you today. It's a light blue polish with an almost invisible silver shimmer. The first and third photos are in full sun and you can still barely see it! It's still really pretty though, I love blues like this. Unfortunately the formula was rubbish - it was quite streaky and I had to be really careful applying the second and third coats so it wouldn't create bald spots. Also, my Seche Vite went insane and bubbled. :( Haha I'm really selling it, aren't I?!

Nails Inc Sugar House Lane

I showed you Nails Inc Pudding Lane a couple of weeks ago, which is part of their new Sprinkles Collection of four polishes with a coloured base and matte glitter. The other polish I bought from this collection is Sugar House Lane. It has a beige base with black and silver glitter. It covered well in two coats, and ate the two coats of Seche Vite I put on it. Om nom nom.

I think it's supposed to represent chocolate icing with sprinkles, but the fact the base colour has a grey tint makes me think it's no icing I would ever want to eat!

I think this is an interesting polish and I certainly don't own anything else like it, but I'm not sure it's for me. I do like that its colour scheme means it is potentially work-appropriate though.

China Glaze Flying Dragon

Here's an interesting/weird (interestingly weird?) polish for you today: China Glaze Flying Dragon. It's a fuchsia-purple hybrid with very small pink and blue glitter. I did some Googling and apparently there are two versions of this polish - it sounds like I have the newer one, which is fuchsia rather than a blue-toned purple.

Flying Dragon calls itself a neon, and although it packs a punch in the sun I wouldn't say it's that bright - in normal light it looks much darker. The formula was okay, it needed three coats for opacity, and the glitter in it is so fine that it felt a little like I was painting wet sand onto my nails. It dried with a gritty, matte finish, so I suppose it really is a neon! I finished with a coat of Seche Vite, which was promptly slurped up by the polish, but I, erm, couldn't be arsed to do a second coat.

(Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain hair on my nail.)

Flying Dragon seems to have pretty mixed reviews from what I've read online, and although I'm not a fan of its gritty texture, I have to say that I fall firmly into the 'like' camp.

China Glaze Sweet Hook

I haven't featured China Glaze on here that much compared to other brands. This is because, until recently, I had no way of getting hold of it - but since I discovered a Sally's in my local area (okay, 10 miles away - that's local when you live in the countryside!), I have been making up for this gap in my nail polish collection. Today's polish is Sweet Hook, a gorgeous creamy shade from this spring's Electropop Collection.

Sweet Hook is a pink-toned lilac that's just perfect for spring. I kept admiring my nails while I was wearing it! Depending on the light I noticed it shifts between looking more purple or more pink - you'll see what I mean in my photos. It was a tad sheer so I used three coats. I had no problems with the application, but it looks like there was some fluff on my brush when I did a coat of Seche Vite over the top and it transferred onto two nails! I didn't notice this while I was wearing it. *sad face*

Revlon Grapefruit Fizz

When I was younger, maybe eleven or twelve, my friends and I were obsessed with gel pens. They were pens (obviously) that came in an array of colours, anything from pastel yellow to metallic green. We used to love writing with them at school - and even drawing on our skin with them. Our favourite thing about them, though, was that you could get scented ones. Grapes, bananas, apples...they had them all. We'd sniff these like they were crack.

So you can imagine my excitement when I was in my local Boots the other day and spotted some of Revlon's scented nail polishes. I've never actually seen them in there before. They only had three colours/scents, Grapefruit Fizz (pink), Grape Fizz (purple) and Watermelon Fizz (red). I bought the first two, because I need another red nail polish like I need a hole in the head. I've used scented nail polishes before (more on that in another post) but they usual smell disgusting and make me feel nauseous. I've heard such great things about Revlon's scented polishes, however, that I decided to take a chance on them. Am I glad I did? Read on to find out.

The one I'm showing you today is Grapefruit Fizz. It's a Barbie pink polish with large glass flecks. I could tell just from looking at the bottle that it was going to be very sheer, so I layered it over a coat of Models Own Baby Pink, which is, erm, a baby pink polish. Baby Pink is a bit paler than Grapefruit Fizz, but it's the closest match I own. I then did two coats of Grapefruit Fizz. The formula was so-so, a little thin perhaps, and I did have a bit of pooling on the cuticles. I immediately sniffed my nails afterwards (good thing I did it in the privacy of my bedroom or I would've looked really weird!). To be honest it smells more like a poor imitation of grapefruit than the real thing, but it's not an unpleasant smell. It's just generically fruity.

Yup, it's veeeeery pink. Perhaps a bit too pink for my tastes, but oh well. I put a coat of Seche Vite over the top for these photos, and I was surprised to find I could still smell the grapefruit afterwards. The scent lasted about two days before it faded completely - it would probably last longer if I hadn't used a top coat.

I thought these polishes were new for Spring 2012, but I've had a little look at some other sites and apparently these have been out since last year! They seem to be new to the UK, anyway, so you can probably find them in your nearest Boots right now. They're £6.49 each, but Boots has an offer on at the moment where you can buy two Revlon lip/nail products for £10.

Honey, I Shrunk My Manicure

This was originally going to be a post on one of Nubar's duochromes, Moon Shadow. And it still is...kind of. But mostly it's now a warning on what not to do with your nail polish!

There is some confusion about the name of this Nubar duochrome. Originally called Moon Shadow, it's now listed on Nubar's website as Moon Eclipse, and on Beauty Bay as Moon Shadow Eclipse. I've done some Googling and it's definitely the same polish, just retitled. As for the colour, it's a rich purple duochrome that flashes bronze, gold, and even a little green. It's really pretty. I found it a little sheer, however, so I used three coats on my nails. I then did a coat of Seche Vite to seal it...and herein lies my problem.

I started using Seche Vite late last year, and I love it. It dries in a matter of seconds and keeps my manicure looking perfect for days. I've read on other blogs that it can cause shrinkage, which is where the nail polish underneath shrinks and pulls back from the tip of the nail, but I'd never experienced this myself until yesterday. Here's what I mean:

See what looks like major tipwear? That's actually where the Seche Vite made my manicure shrink. I took these photos about an hour after applying Nubar Moon Shadow, and already it looks like I've been wearing it for days. Not cool.

The good news is that I figured out why this happened, so I can prevent it from happening again and impart my wisdom to others. Normally when I apply a top coat I wrap it under the tip of my nails, as it seems to make my manicure last longer. It also appears to prevent the Seche Vite from shrinking, presumably because it means the Seche Vite has nowhere to actually shrink back from. For some reason I didn't do that this time, hence the craptacular manicure.

To see better photographs of Nubar Moon Shadow/Eclipse go here, and for more information on how to get the best out of Seche Vite, go here.