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.

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. :)

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!

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.

Nails Inc Victoria & Foubert's Place

Good afternoon! I have a couple of Nails Inc swatches for you today.

The first is one of their classics, and a colour I think every nail polish addict should have in their collection: Nails Inc Victoria. It's a dark, vampy red jelly. In terms of colour it's quite similar to Revlon Vixen, maybe a tad darker, but with a much better formula (no bubbling!). I could probably have got away with two coats but I did three just in case.

The other is Nails Inc Foubert's Place. I used this as a base for OPI The Man With the Golden Gun, and it looked pretty great. On the website it's described as a grey khaki shade, which is a pretty bang-on description. It has a smooth, easy formula and was opaque in two coats.

OPI The Man With the Golden Gun

Hello! I have a very special nail polish to show you today. OPI The Man With the Golden Gun is the only other polish I bought from the Skyfall Collection (you can see Goldeneye here and On Her Majesty's Secret Service here). I initially passed on buying it because of its completely insane price tag of £30, but guess what? I caved. I know, I'm weak.

The reason The Man With the Golden Gun is so special, and so exorbitantly priced, is because it's a gold leaf top coat. I was so excited when it arrived in the post that I put it straight over what I was already wearing, which was Nails Inc Foubert's Place, a grey/green shade:

This is one coat plus a bit dabbed on where I felt it needed it. The clear base colour was a bit watery and didn't really have enough gold leaf flakes in it, but with a little effort I think it looks great. I tried it over a different colour and I think I like this combination even more. This is one coat over Nubar Boyfriend Jeans:

Do you think the price of this polish is justifiable? What's the most you've ever spent on a single nail polish?

OPI On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Evening! I've got another OPI Skyfall collection colour to share with you today. OPI On Her Majesty's Secret Service has a greyish blue base with a green, turquoise, pink and purple shimmer. The shimmer is pretty special in that it's really lots of very small flakes (my camera is rubbish at extreme macro shots, but A Polish Addict has a great one here). It's really really beautiful. It had an easy application but the formula was a little sheer and needed three coats for opacity.

So I mentioned recently that when I reached thirty followers I'd have a giveaway. I've already bought the polishes but I was wondering if anyone knows the rules about posting polish within the UK and abroad? I had a look on the Royal Mail website but it wasn't very clear and basically seemed to say, 'Nail polish bad'. Obviously others have done it though so there must be ways!

Deborah Lippmann Mermaid's Dream

Hi guys! Did you have a good weekend? I went to the ice hockey with some friends last night. In my opinion it's not a good game unless there's a fight, and there was the FUNNIEST FIGHT EVER yesterday. A player from each time got pissed off with the other and were both sent to the sin bin. As soon as they were released they threw their hockey sticks to the ground, then their helmets, then their gloves. They stared at each other for a while sizing their opponent up, circled a bit, and finally went for each other. The players and referees just stood there and watched. The whole thing was hilarious/ridiculous.

I managed to cross something off my wishlist recently - it was actually number one on my wishlist! Between March and August I was working seven days a week between my regular job and my internship. It was pretty tiring but my internship is over now (I wanted to do it to improve my CV), so as a treat to myself for all my hard work, I bought Deborah Lippmann Mermaid's Dream on eBay.

Mermaid's Dream has quickly become one of DL's best-known polishes, and it's easy to see why. Its seafoam base with microglitter and larger blue glitter is pretty unique - and simply, well, pretty. There's nothing worse (slight exaggeration...) than getting a nail polish you've wanted for ages and finding out it's not worth the hype, but Mermaid's Dream doesn't disappoint. I think it's actually one of my favourite polishes now. The colour is stunning, and it has a great formula - this is two coats.

SO PRETTY. And it reminds me of this, which makes it even better:

As Seen On... Swatch and Learn

Hola! If all has gone to plan I'm in Madrid now and hoping to pop into Sephora while I'm here. Obviously I'll visit some cultural places like the Prado too, but what's wrong with a little retain therapy?! Today's replicated manicure is from Swatch and Learn. Mary's blog was one of the first I started reading when I discovered the wonderful world of nail polish blogs. She posts gorgeous swatches and a lot of easy-to-follow nail art tutorials.

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I've been wanting to try the fishtail manicure for a while but thought it would be really difficult to do. In the end I decided to bite the bullet and just go for it using the Swatch and Learn tutorial. Turns out it's not that hard to do after all!

It took me ages to decide which colours to use for this. In the end I just stared at my stash and my eyes fell on my mini set of Essie polishes from last autumn. All four colours complement each other really well, but I picked the three that I thought would work best: Carry On, a deep plum; Power Clutch, a grey-tinged green; and Very Structured, a reddish brown. As you can see, I decided to do the fishtail as an accent on my ring finger and use Carry On for the rest.

I love how this turned out - I think the fishtail has a slight camoflage feel to it because of the colours I used. The only bummer is that I was impatient with my top coat and smudged it! Sad.

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! :)

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?

Studded V-Gap

Nailside is a blogger I admire immensely. Her tape manicures in particular are incredible. So when I saw a tutorial for this look, I knew I had to recreate it. Funnily enough I was already wearing Nails Inc Little Miss Splendid, which matched the base colour of her design pretty well. I used Nails Inc Black Taxi and Barry M Silver Foil for the rest. Here's my go at the studded V-gap:

You can see I was a bit impatient putting my top coat on and smudged the black, but other than that I'm really happy with how this turned out. I've actually done another manicure based on one of Nailside's tutorials as well, so keep your eyes peeled for that soon!