Help!

You may have noticed that my nails have been getting progressively shorter and shorter for the last few weeks. This is because they have been splitting and breaking like nobody's business! While I'm very lucky in that I can wear whatever nail polish I fancy to work, what I do is not very kind towards my nails. It probably doesn't help that I change my polish every couple of days at the moment - so I'm using nail polish remover more and therefore drying my nails out more.

Here is what I have done so far to try and combat the damage:

- Switched to a nail polish remover that doesn't contain acetone. It works fine on cremes but is useless on glitter
- Started taking skin, hair & nail vitamins (as of today)
- Considered changing my nail shape to something more oval than squoval as I believe they will snag less...but I'm awfully attached to the squoval shape and not sure I can bear to change it!

What I'd like to know is if anyone has any suggestions for anything else I can do? For example, can you recommend a nourishing base coat (preferably an inexpensive one) that really works? I normally use OPI Natural Nail Base Coat, which is fine beneath polish but does nothing for the nails themselves. I would really appreciate some advice. I know breaking a nail is very much a first world problem, but it still bothers me!

Topshop AWOL

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I bought Topshop AWOL, and I finally got around to wearing it the other day. It's a bright and bold electric blue that is apparently quite similar to Nails Inc Baker Street, although I don't have that polish so I can't say for certain. (I can tell you that it's lighter than OPI Dating a Royal, if that helps.) I'm a sucker for blue polishes, so this is pretty much my perfect colour. Even better, the formula was fantastic - I only needed two coats to achieve full opacity, and it was so easy to apply.

I think I must have held my hand at a weird angle when taking these photos, because it almost looks like an ombre manicure - getting a lighter shade of blue on each nail towards my pinkie. Weiiiiird...

I really can't express how much I love AWOL - I actually think this might be one of my favourite polishes that I've worn so far this year! I believe it originally came out last spring and I've heard it's getting quite hard to find, but my nearest Topshop still has a plentiful supply of it. (Mind you, the Boots just down the road from it still has bottles of Max Factor Fantasy Fire in stock...so clearly the people in my area do not appreciate inredible nail polishes when they see them!)

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! I'm not religious, so for me today is more about celebrating the fact I get to eat a ridiculous amount of chocolate than it is anything else. XD I hope everyone has had/is having a brilliant Easter. I was working this morning (no four-day weekend for me - I'm working every day of it!) but I've spent the afternoon baking Easter-themed cupcakes. Yum.

Anyway, today's nails are a variant on what I've seen on a few other blogs recently and are inspired by Easter eggs - the painted kind, not the kind you eat. Pictures first (featuring the special guest appearance of my thumb!):

Why yes, that is a Cadbury Creme Egg. And yes, I did eat it after taking these photos!

I painted my nails at 11 o'clock last night so I wasn't entirely awake and alert during the whole thing, but I'm still rather pleased with my efforts all the same. For the most part I used the same polishes as in my rainbow cheetah manicure, as you may notice I also did a rainbow with the base colours:

Peach - Barry M Peach Melba
Yellow - OPI Banana Bandanna
Green - Revlon Minted
Blue - Barry M Blue Moon
Lilac - Barry M Berry Ice Cream
White - Models Own Wah Nail Art Pen

And one more bonus photo:

China Glaze Flying Dragon

Here's an interesting/weird (interestingly weird?) polish for you today: China Glaze Flying Dragon. It's a fuchsia-purple hybrid with very small pink and blue glitter. I did some Googling and apparently there are two versions of this polish - it sounds like I have the newer one, which is fuchsia rather than a blue-toned purple.

Flying Dragon calls itself a neon, and although it packs a punch in the sun I wouldn't say it's that bright - in normal light it looks much darker. The formula was okay, it needed three coats for opacity, and the glitter in it is so fine that it felt a little like I was painting wet sand onto my nails. It dried with a gritty, matte finish, so I suppose it really is a neon! I finished with a coat of Seche Vite, which was promptly slurped up by the polish, but I, erm, couldn't be arsed to do a second coat.

(Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain hair on my nail.)

Flying Dragon seems to have pretty mixed reviews from what I've read online, and although I'm not a fan of its gritty texture, I have to say that I fall firmly into the 'like' camp.

China Glaze Sweet Hook

I haven't featured China Glaze on here that much compared to other brands. This is because, until recently, I had no way of getting hold of it - but since I discovered a Sally's in my local area (okay, 10 miles away - that's local when you live in the countryside!), I have been making up for this gap in my nail polish collection. Today's polish is Sweet Hook, a gorgeous creamy shade from this spring's Electropop Collection.

Sweet Hook is a pink-toned lilac that's just perfect for spring. I kept admiring my nails while I was wearing it! Depending on the light I noticed it shifts between looking more purple or more pink - you'll see what I mean in my photos. It was a tad sheer so I used three coats. I had no problems with the application, but it looks like there was some fluff on my brush when I did a coat of Seche Vite over the top and it transferred onto two nails! I didn't notice this while I was wearing it. *sad face*

Spring Flowers

Here's a quick and easy manicure I did using a dotting tool. The base is two coats of China Glaze For Audrey, the white centres are done with OPI Alpine Snow, and the two petal colours are Nails Inc Little Miss Naughty (purple) and OPI Strawberry Margarita (pink).

Again, my cuticles look rubbish. Sorry! I'm working on moisturising my hands more effectively, but now that the weather has turned a bit cooler again it should be easier. My skin just wasn't used to 20C or more in March!

And as a bonus, here's a photo of some actual spring flowers - the magnolia that overhangs my garden fence.

Comparison: Nubar Innocent Whispers & OPI Give Me the Moon

Last month I showed you Nubar Innocent Whispers, a pretty grey/pink duochrome. I mentioned that it reminded me a bit of OPI Give Me the Moon, so here is the proper comparison between them!

In the bottle, these two polishes are clearly very different. The Nubar looks lilac with a blue shimmer, while the OPI just looks...grey. But as we all know, what a polish looks like in the bottle very often doesn't translate onto the nails, so here's what they look like on me:

From left to right:
Nubar Innocent Whispers (two coats)
OPI Give Me the Moon (two coats)
Nubar Innocent Whispers (four coats)
OPI Give Me the Moon (four coats)

Hmmm, they're still not as similar as I thought they'd be! The Nubar is much pinker - and sheerer. The OPI is paler and more opaque, and it doesn't shift colour the way Innocent Whispers does. What is similar, however, is the blue shimmer apparent in both these colours. Oh well, at least we know now that they're not even remotely dupes!

P.S. Apologies for the horrendous state of my hands! The freakily warm weather in March has played havoc with my skin, and even my beloved E45 cream has been powerless against it.