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?

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 Tasmanian Devil Made Me Do It

Evening! A quick post today because I'm trying something today called intermittent fasting and I am so. So. Hungry. It's supposed to have all sorts of health benefits though (such as lowering one's risk of heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and cancer) so I'm sticking with it. All I can think about right now is food so I'm going to bed pronto - I'm looking forward to eating normally again tomorrow!

OPI Tasmanian Devil Made Me Do It is my favourite red creme in my collection. It's bright and orange-toned and kinda sexy. I don't wear reds very often but when I do, this is the sort I reach for. It has a fantastic formula and slides on in two easy coats.

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!

Post Halloween & OPI Goldeneye

Hi guys! Today I'm showing you my Halloween nails. I meant to post this yesterday but I was ridiculously tired and fell asleep really early! Oh well. Instead of doing more nail art for Halloween itself, I wore a polish to match my costume. I dressed as Clio, the Muse of History, because I am a nerd and history and Greek mythology really interest me. I wore a white Grecian dress and everything else was gold - lips, eyes, nails, jewellery, etc. I think I looked pretty good, if I do say so myself!

The exact nail polish I wore was OPI Goldeneye from the recent Skyfall collection. I absolutely love this polish - definitely one of my favourites of the year. It's a stunning yellow gold colour that seems to be comprised of tiny gold flakes. The first coat was very sheer and I could feel my heart sinking, but by the third coat it was opaque and I was smitten.

I love it so much that I've worn it for four days and will probably wear it even longer. I honestly can't remember the last time I wore the same nail polish for that long!

My Halloween night was brilliant. Three of my best friends came round and we decorated the Halloween-shaped sugar cookies I'd made (you are never too old to do things like this). We then ate too much food and played on Just Dance 4. I even had some trick-or-treaters, which was fun because they were all under the age of about eight and accompanied by their parents. They looked so cute in their costumes! Here are a couple of photos from the night:

My vampire pumpkin

I bought some fingerpuppets which we constructed. This is my friend Becca's Dracula puppet trying to eat her cookies!

The (blurry!) Halloween design I did for my friend Hayley. Two coats of China Glaze I'm With the Lifeguard, one of a random glow-in-the-dark polish and one of Nails Inc Camden crackle - it's meant to look like radioactive waste or something

What did you do for Halloween this year? Is it something you get really into or are you not fussed?

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 Spider Webs

When I was in Spain a couple of weeks ago (I can't believe it was that long ago already!) I went on a mission to find some Essence polishes. I thought they'd just be sold in chemists like nail polish is here, but apparently not. After some Googling I found a shop on Calle de Fuencarral called Beautik. It turned out to be a great place - not only did they sell Essence, they also stocked Catrice, Konad, two Layla ranges, and a few other brands. I was quite restrained and limited myself to one Catrice, a Konad plate, and four Essence colours, one of which I'm showing you today.

I really like grey polish at the moment, so Essence I'm the Boss is right up my alley. It's a medium to dark grey polish with sparse-ish silver glitter. It's really pretty and was opaque in two easy coats. To make it Halloween-y I stamped spider webs using a Bundle Monster plate and Barry M Silver Foil. I'm still working on my stamping skills so the image didn't transfer perfectly, but I think it adds to the effect rather than detracting from it (that's my story and I'm sticking to it). Finally, I used Nails Inc Black Taxi and some striping tape to make black French tips.

I went to Waitrose today and they had a section dedicated to Halloween food and decorations. I bought a bunch of it. Apparently if something is coloured orange and black at this time of year, I will buy it. All of it. People don't really trick or treat where I live but I bought some spooky chocolate just in case - and if we don't get anyone, oh well, more for me!