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!

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! :)

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!

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.

a-england Avalon & Perceval

Hello! I have a couple of a-england swatches to show you today from The Mythicals. I've had these for about a year and I wear them quite frequently, but I don't think I've swatched them on here before.

Avalon is probably my favourite purple polish ever. It's blue-toned and glowy and glorious. It has fantastic pigmentation and is opaque in two effortless coats. (Unfortunately it began to rain as I was taking these photos; the blobs on a couple of nails are raindrops!)

Perceval is along the same lines as Avalon in that it's rich and glowy, but it's a vivid red rather than purple. As I've said before I don't wear red polishes that often, but I'll make an exception for this beauty. Again, this is two coats.

You can see swatches of two other Mythicals colours here.

Catrice Dirty Berry

Evening! Today's polish is one I bought in Spain recently. It was the only Catrice shade that really called out to me in the shop. Surprise, surprise...it's purple!

Dirty Berry is a dusty purple with scattered holographic microglitter - so micro that it took me ages to realise that there was a holographic element at all! It's pretty subtle and didn't photograph well, but it added a little something extra to the colour to make it extra special. The formula was great - I only needed two coats. Unfortunately it wore very quickly. The photos show it after only two days - just look at all that tip wear!

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!

As Seen On... Rebecca Likes Nails

Hola! Today is the final day of my holiday... I'm leaving sunny (hopefully) Madrid for my dear (but probably wet) Surrey. Today's post features a manicure from Rebecca Likes Nails. She posts stunning nail art and swatches, and I owe her a lot because I got the idea of these posts from her! She always does an 'As Seen On' series when she's away.

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I was originally going to do a different design of Rebecca's, but it shows part of the bare nail and mine are horribly stained at the moment. She recently did this manicure however, which is itself based on someone else's, and I knew I had to try it for myself.

The original version uses a green creme, but as you can see I decided to go with purple instead - specially, my favourite purple creme ever, Nails Inc Little Miss Naughty. The grey is Rimmel London Grey Matter and the black and white are my trusty Models Own nail art pens.

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So that's it for my 'As Seen On' series and my holiday! I hope you've enjoyed seeing these designs as much as I enjoyed doing them. :)

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.

Burning Bright

Hi guys, this is my last post before I go on holiday on Tuesday. I'm off to Spain, and I have some very exciting nail art posts to keep you entertained while I'm away. :)

I also have a bit of nail art for you today too. I was wearing Orly Emberstone, a gorgeous glowy orange, for a few days when tipwear began to appear. I didn't want to take it off so I used Sctoch tape to make a large triangle with Orly Rock It. As a final touch I used gold striping tape along the lines where the two polishes met.

I like this manicure, but what a nightmare the striping tape was! I've used it as a guide before but not in an actual design - I did this at night, and the next morning it was peeling off the nail despite the top coat! I had to redo it on a couple of nails before taking these photos.