Owl Always Love You

Happy Valentine's Day! I'm single (again) this year, but instead of moping I like to think of it as a 'me' day. So I'll be spending the day with my hamster Claude, plus Molly Ringwald and the rest of the Brat Pack - yup, I will be watching cheesy eighties films this evening. :) Are you doing anything for Valentine's Day this year?

My Valentine's manicure this year is based on a design by Chalkboard Nails. She freehanded an adorable pair of owls and I knew I had to give it a go. I love owls - according to my parents I've been obsessed with them since I was little - and recently I've been going owl mad. I've bought an owl necklace, jumper, snood and ring. Owl nails seemed an obvious progression!

The base colour for this design was OPI My Very First Knockwurst, a pinky nude. The two pinks I used for the owls themselves are Essie Tour de Finance and Essie Sure Shot (which I also used for the hearts on my thumb). The heart-shaped rhinestones are from a set I got on eBay.

Right, I'm off to watch Sixteen Candles and eat too much chocolate. Have a great day!

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 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! :)

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!

Halloween Bats

Happy (almost) Halloween! I've had a busy day today. After work I came home and baked sugar cookies in the shape of bats, pumpkins, ghosts and witches for my friends to decorate tomorrow. I then carved my pumpkin, which was a lot easier than I thought it would be (I've only carved a pumpkin once before, back when I was about sixteen). I went for a vampire face and it looks really cool.

Anyway, for my final Halloween design I decided to attempt stamping again and settled on bat design from one of the Bundle Monster plates. I love bats. We have pipistrelles in our garden and I love watching them swoop around in the evening - which is where my inspiration for this manicure came from. I started with two coats of Barry M Matt White before using LA Colors Shock (yellow), Barry M Block Orange (um...hopefully self-explanatory) and OPI Strawberry Margarita (pink) to create a sunset gradient. It's only the second time I've done a gradient (the first is here) and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. Finally, I stamped the bats on using Nails Inc Black Taxi.

The smaller of the two bats didn't transfer very well. The larger one was fine so I think it might be the plate rather than my own ineptitude. I tried to fix it with a brush but ended up making the higher bat on my little finger look really bloated! Oops.

Halloween Mummies

Hi, quick post today because I'm really busy. I've literally just finished watching the latest episode of Downton Abbey, I can't believe it's the series finale next week? What will I do with my Sunday nights once it's gone?!

Today I'm showing you a Halloween mummy design I did a couple of days ago. I followed a tutorial by Kayla Shevonne, although hers turned out a lot more mummy-like than mine! I asked a few people what they thought the design was and no one got it right - my mum thought they were supposed to be gladiator sandals with eyes. WTF? Let's see what you think!

I started with a base of Barry M Matt White before sponging on OPI San Tan-tonio to make it look dirty. I then used my trusty Models Own black nail art pen for the bandages. The lines aren't as opaque as I'd like, but oh well.

What are you up to for Halloween this year? I'm having a few friends over - I'm baking Halloween-shaped sugar cookies in advance for my friends to decorate on the night. Because we're cool like that. I have an awesome costume idea that I'm really excited about, but I'll keep schtum about it until the actual day. :)

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... Lucy's Stash

Hola! I'm still in Spain (today I'm travelling from Seville to Madrid) so I have another scheduled post for you. Today's manicure is one inspired by the blog Lucy's Stash. Lucy does a lot of beautiful nail art looks, and her swatches are so amazing that I always lust after every single one of the polishes afterwards (even the greens!).

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Recently Lucy showed a stunning half-moon manicure, and I knew as soon as I saw it that I had to try it for myself. Hers used Models Own Jade Stone which I don't own, so instead of searching my stash for a close match I decided to use a completely different polish. I settled on Kiko 336, a bright blue that's a very close dupe for Nails Inc Baker Street.

I began with two coats of Barry M Matt White, and once this was completely dry I used some hole reinforcers to create the half-moon design with Kiko 336. When this was dry too I used my Models Own nail art pen for the small black detailing. I think it looks a lot like a lace doily or something!

You wouldn't believe how many compliments I got when I wore this. In Boots the girl who served me told me my nails looked 'lush' and then called over one of the other sales assistants to look too!