Pastel Retro Squares

Good evening! Sorry I haven't blogged for a while, life got in the way. :( I'm back with a fun nail art design inspired by spring and the sixties: pastel retro squares. I chose pastel colours because I thought it was very nearly spring. Having said that, I did this design on my nails last night and woke up this morning to a blizzard!

I started with a white base before using striping tape to mark off the squares. I used the bottle brushes to carefully paint each coloured square - you definitely need steady hands for this! The colours I used are OPI Done Out in Deco (lilac), OPI Banana Bandanna (yellow), Revlon Minted (green), and a random Color Club pink that doesn't seem to have a name.

I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out, but if you look closely you can see the white bled a bit on my index and little fingers. Boo. Oh well, you can't tell from a distance. :)

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.

Illamasqua Baptiste Covered in Diamonds

I've said it many times before, and I'll say it again: I love purple nail polishes. I bought Illamasqua Baptiste recently and it's quickly catapaulted itself onto the list of my favourite purple polishes - maybe even the list of my favourite polishes in general. It is a dark purple with a shimmer that gives it a ridiculous amount of depth - it's one of those cool polishes that looks like it's glowing from within. Baptiste is almost a one-coater, but I used two for the photos below.

SO PRETTY.

After a couple of days I decided to layer something over the top, and I reached for Color Club Covered in Diamonds. Here's the result:

Urban Outfitters Twinkie

Just a quick(ish) post to show you what I layered over yesterday's manicure, Color Club Revealed. I had no idea Urban Outfitters sold nail polish, but I stumbled upon this interesting one the other day. It's little holographic glitter and turquoise and pink star glitter (!!) in a clear base. I've never seen a polish like this before, so naturally it had to come home with me. XD The stars were a pain in the arse to get out of the bottle and I ended up using an orange stick to place them on my nails, but I was expecting this so I wasn't too bothered. Anyway, here is Urban Outfitters Twinkie over CC Revealed:

Eugh, horrible blurry photos. Sorry! And these were the best ones. *hangs head in shame*

Peachy Keen

I love the expressions 'I'm peachy' and 'peachy keen'. I don't know why. Clearly I am just very easily amused!

Anyway, today I'm showing you one of the two peach polishes I own (the other being Barry M Peach Melba, used here and here). I got this polish in a Color Club set that calls itself one half of spring 2011's collection, but some Googling has proved there are a couple of usurpers in there. Oh well, with seven polishes for £7.99 I can't complain too much, can I?! This polish, Color Club Revealed, is definitely from last year's spring collection though. It's a warm peach with a red shimmer, but disappointingly the shimmer didn't show up in my photos at all. I did three coats of polish, which made it completely opaque. I don't have many Color Clubs, but considering how cheap they are I'm always very impressed with the formula.

The rubbish weather meant I only had artificial light for these photos. Dear Mother Nature, let's make a deal: I won't complain about the rain every 0.5 seconds if you actually give me sun when I want to photograph my nails, okay?

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Erin go Bragh!

I don't know about you, but I'm celebrating St Patrick's Day in two very traditional ways: by having a lovely pint of Guinness, and by painting my nails green!

For today's manicure I started with two coats of China Glaze Holly-Day, which is from their Let It Snow collection that came out last winter. It's a deep green creme that covers perfectly in two coats. I then used a dotting tool to draw shamrocks on all my nails using the green foil Color Club Kiss Me Mistletoe, also a Christmas shade from last year. The shamrocks were surprisingly easy to do - I did three little heart shapes with the points all facing each other. I drew a large shamrock on all but my ring fingers, which got mini ones. In hindsight I wish I'd just done another large one, but oh well. The stalks were done using a striper brush.

Yes, I mucked up the stalks a bit. It wouldn't be normal for one of my manicures to actually turn out perfectly! XD In truth it's because I did this last night while I was watching New Girl, so only half my attention was actually on painting my nails (the other half was on Nick. I can't help it. I love him so!).

February Haul

It's a little silly doing a haul post for February halfway through March, but I simply forgot to do this sooner! I bought quite a few polishes in February and I thought you might like to see a few of them. A couple of them I've already shown on here as I am posting this a bit late. (Please excuse the quality of the photos. I know they're a bit rubbish. The lighting was awful when I took them.)

OPI Dutch 'Ya Just Love OPI?, I Have a Herring Problem & I Don't Give a Rotterdam!

I only bought three colours from the new OPI Holland collection. I want more, but I can't justify buying them so I only got the three I was desperate for. I'm actually wearing Dutch 'Ya Just Love OPI? at the moment, so you'll see it on here very soon.

OPI Magic Garden & OPI Peacock Feathers nail apps

Nicole by OPI Kim-pletely in Love & Honey-Dew You Love Me?

Most places seem to be selling OPI nail apps for £13 or more, which is insane, but Lena White has them for £3.50 at the moment so I nabbed these two designs. I haven't actually used nail apps before so it will be interesting to try them out. The two Nicole by OPIs are also from Lena White. It was the blue shimmer in Kim-pletely in Love that made me fall for it...and Honey-Dew You Love ME? has blue glitter hearts, so it was a no-brainer!

China Glaze Awakening & Midtown Magic

Sally's has a promotion on at the moment where, if you buy a China Glaze polish, you get one from the Metro collection free. I have a couple from this collection already but not Midtown Magic, so I'm happy to have filled that void.

W7 The Fab Four

I have no idea if these polishes have individual names as they're not listed on the packaging. I got them from TK Maxx for less than four quid. It's hard to see, but they're all kind of shimmery.

Color Club Back to Boho Autumn 2011: Boho Mojo, Nouveau Vintage, Voodoo You Do, Artsy Crafty, Blue-topia, Rebel Spirit & Top Coat

Color Club Alter Ego Spring 2011: Ulterior Motive, Secret Agent & Alter Ego

The Back to Boho collection was also from TK Maxx. It was reduced to £6 - that's less than £1 per polish!! The others I got on Amazon. I absolutely adore these colours.

Topshop Gypsy Night & AWOL

I've already shown you Gypsy Night here. AWOL is supposedly very similar in colour to Nails Inc Baker Street which you might have heard some buzz about.

Revlon Secented: Pineapple Fizz, Orange Fizz, Grapefruit Fizz & Grape Fizz

I have already done swatches of Grapefruit Fizz and Grape Fizz, and they smell amazing. My mum bought me the other two a couple of weeks ago (thanks Mum!) and I can't wait to try them on.