St Patrick's Day Cling Film Nails

Happy St Patrick's Day! Are you doing anything to celebrate? I've been at work today so I think I'm just going to take it easy, but I did paint my nails last night to reflect my Irish ancestry (I'm a quarter Irish). I decided to do a cling film/saran wrap manicure because I haven't done one since the Olympics last year!

I started with two coats of Revlon Minted and, when this had dried, painted on a coat of Essie Mojito Madness. When this was still wet I dabbed it with scrunched up cling film and followed with a coat of China Glaze Golden Enchantment for a bit of sparkle.

You can see last year's St Patrick's Day nails here.

Sonnetarium After the Rain & If We Could Meet By the Sea

Good evening! Sorry for not posting for a bit, I've been on a course in Wales. To make it up to you I'm showing you two swatches from the indie brand Sonnetarium. I've had these for a while - I bought them at the same time as Samurai Princess - and I've worn them both before, but kept forgetting to photograph them. Anyway, here they are.

After the Rain has a blue shimmer base with multi-coloured glitter - I could see white, red, green, yellow and purple glitter. The base is pretty opaque so it doesn't need undies; this is two coats on its own. It has a great balance of glitter to base and was a breeze to apply.

If We Could Meet By the Sea has small teal and white hex glitter, smaller white glitter and teal bar glitter in a clear base. It's a really pretty combination and it does remind me a bit of the ocean. I've shown a single coat over Essie Turquoise & Caicos - again, it application was very easy. I think this is my favourite of the two!

OPI Stay the Night (Liquid Sand)

Good evening! Today I have one of OPI's new Liquid Sand effect polishes to show you, Stay the Night. I ordered this and Can't Let Go online before Christmas but they only arrived on Friday...and, fair warning, I am about to rant about why.

I ordered from Nail Polish Direct and my previous experiences with them have been very good, but there is no way in H-E double hockey sticks I'm ordering from them again. When my order hadn't arrived after two weeks I emailed them twice to ask where it was and received no reply either time. Like I said, it finally arrived on Friday with no word, just as I was planning to see if I could get my money back through PayPal. Their Facebook page, it turns out, is full of stories similar to mine - although I'm one of the lucky ones because my order did eventually turn up. So basically...order from them at your own risk.

An-y-way. I had to put Stay the Night on immediately. It has a black base with hot pink glitter and dries to a gritty finish. I thought it would mostly just be like glitter that hasn't been top-coated, but it's definitely got something matte going on. I used two coats for the photos.

I wasn't sure what I'd think of the Liquid Sand effect but I actually really like it. I'm still wearing it and I keep running my fingers over my nails to feel the texture. It's rough but not enough so that it's going to catch on anything. My dad is usually pretty uninterested in my nails but when I showed him these he thought they were pretty cool - then suggested I sandpaper the banister with them!

Have you tried any of the OPI Liquid Sand polishes? What do you think of them?

Glitzology Swatches - Part Two

Good evening! This is the second part of my swatches from the indie brand Glitzology; you can find the first part here.

Bad Things is inspired by the TV show True Blood, so I knew I had to buy this polish. It has a deep red jelly base with different shaped red glitter, small black hexes, and silver holographic micro glitter. It also has red hearts - you can see one on my middle finger! This is a surprise favourite for me; I didn't expect to like this polish quite as much as I do. You can build it to opacity on its own but I chose to layer one coat over Orly Ruby.

Second is Diet Cokehead. I love love LOVE the name of this one - it describes me perfectly! Hello, my name is Sophie and I am a Diet Cokehead. I drink it every day (sorry, teeth). Anyway, the polish contains red square and hex glitter, black hexes, and red and black bar glitter in a shimmery silver base. Basically, it looks exactly like a can of Diet Coke can. As with Bad Things it's opaque on its own but I layered it over Barry M Silver Foil instead.

Finally I have Snow Day to show you. It has matte white glitter and disco glitter (which looks slightly yellow in my photos for some reason...) with an iridescent blue shimmer. It's a wintry polish but I think it can look good all year round depending on what you wear under it; I used Essie Borrowed & Blue here. It's packed with glitter so I dabbed it on rather than applying normally, but it wasn't really a bother.

As with yesterday's, the polishes needed two coats of top coat to make them perfectly smooth, and there were no curling glitters. I am a huge fan of Glitzology now and I'll definitely be placing another order very soon. :)

Glitzology Swatches - Part One

Good afternoon! Today and tomorrow I'll be showing you some nail polishes from the indie brand Glitzology. It's quickly become one of my favourite indies, both for the quality and uniqueness of the polishes and for the fantastic customer service. The three you'll see today are glitter bombs in clear bases; the ones tomorrow each have a coloured base.

First up is As You Wish. I'm not ashamed to admit I bought this mostly for the name, as The Princess Bride is one of my favourite films. It has large white and holographic teal hex glitter and smaller fuchsia and lavender glitter in a clear base. I layered it over China Glaze Gothic Lolita; there is a lot of glitter in As You Wish so I had to be quite careful applying it that I didn't overload my brush. It gave great coverage in just one coat.

Next up is My Viking Boyfriend. The creator of Glitzology, Stacy, says this is named for her boyfriend, which I think is really cute. This is blue and silver holographic hex glitter, silver squares, dark blue hexes, and silver holo micro glitter. As with As You Wish it's absolutely packed with glitter, so I found it easier to dab it on rather than apply it normally. This is one coat over Nails Inc Baker Street.

Finally I have Skeleton Key. I believe it's inspired by the movie Beetlejuice, which I haven't seen. I absolutely love this one, I think it's my favourite of the three. It has matte black and white glitter (instant WIN) and two shades of purple glitter, all of various shapes and sizes. It contains bar glitter so if don't like that I'd steer clear; I personally love bar glitter! Again this polish is crammed with glitter so you have to be a little careful applying it. I layered one coat over Rimmel Grey Matter; as you can probably tell, I did a slightly thicker coat on my middle finger.

As a general note about all three polishes, they gobble up top coat so I did two generous coats of Poshe to make everything smooth. I'm happy to report I didn't experience any problems with curling glitters (hurrah!). Thanks for reading and pop back tomorrow for part two! :)

Barry M Magnetic Sparkle Gold

Although I've gone off magnetic polishes a bit since the market was flooded with them, I randomly decided a couple of weeks ago that I wanted a gold one (I was feeling in the Christmas spirit.) Barry M Magnetic Sparkle Gold fitted the bill nicely. It's an antique gold, not too much yellow in it, which is the sort of gold I generally prefer. It also has some gold glitter in there - hence the sparkle part of its name. It comes with a diagonal line magnet but I decided to use a chevron one with it instead.

I just realised I do own another gold magnetic polish, but it's a dud one from Nails Inc - I think it was actually recalled because the magnetic effect doesn't really show up! To see really bad photos of it from over a year ago, click here.

Happy New Year!

I'm a day late, but happy new year! Did you do anything exciting? A couple of friends and I went to the top of a hill and watched about ten different firework displays going off in the town below us. It was really beautiful.

Today I'm showing you the manicure I wore to celebrate. It doesn't really scream 'New Year' but I haven't done leopard print in a while so that's my excuse! I used a base of OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons, which is now my go-to nude shade, and China Glaze Angel Wings, a dense gold glitter, for the blobs. Finally I outlined it using my trusty black Models Own Wah nail art pen.

This might be one of my favourite leopard print designs yet! :) What did you wear on your nails to ring in the new year?

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?

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.