Essie Fest

Hi guys! In another attempt to break away from blues, here's Essie Very Structured with Essie As Gold As It Gets. VS is a dark terracotta colour, somewhere between red and brown. I bought it in the mini set last year but have only just got round to wearing it - for shaaaame! To jazz it up a bit I layered AGAIG, a gold flake top coat, and then used GOSH Matte Effect over it.

GOSH Purple Heart

I wore this GOSH polish a couple of weeks ago. In the bottle it looks like an incredible multichrome concoction, all purple and green and blue and yellow - kind of like petrol, actually. On the nail, the only prominent colours are purple and green. Mostly it looks like a blackened purple until you tilt it, and then the green comes out to play. It's still pretty cool, and it's the perfect vampy colour for winter, but it's not quite as out-of-this-world as I was hoping.

A Simple Halloween Manicure

I'm pretty rubbish at doing facy nail art, so I was ridiculously excited at the beginning of this year when the crackle trend really took off. It's such an easy way of making your nails look a bit different without actually having to do any tricky designs. The first crackle polish I bought was the black Nails Inc Camden, and yesterday I decided to use it to make a very simple Halloween manicure that anyone can replicate.

I started off with a base coat and then did two coats of Barry M Block Orange. I've been a huge fan of Barry M nail polishes for years - they come in a wide range of colours and are actually very good quality given how inexpensive they are (£2.99 usually). I then did a coat of Nails Inc Camden and waited for it to dry thoroughly. I was going to use a standard top coat but changed my mind and used GOSH Matte Dry top coat instead to make it a bit different.

Usually I'm on the fence when it comes to matte nail polish, but I rather like how this turned out. I was going for just the standard orange/black Halloween colours, but I think it looks a bit like glowing lava oozing from a volcano, with the black crust forming on top as it dries (or is that just my overactive imagination...?). A surprising number of stangers told me they liked it today, so it's a win as far as I'm concerned!