GOSH Wild Lilac Nail Polish

Indoor - with flash

I absolutely love pretty much any shade of purple and this ticks all the boxes for me.

Indoor - no flash

It's such a gorgeous shade and so shiny! I never put any topcoat on because I didn't think it was needed really. I've had this one for a couple of days now and I still have no chips or scratches in it.






I felt it was actually good with just one coat but I did 2 anyway. I added a photo of it indoors with no flash (2nd picture) so that you can see the slight colour difference between the bottle and the polish on the nail. Although not very visible with flash, I think in real life it does look slightly darker on the nail than in the bottle so I tried to illustrate this.

Overall I really like this colour, along with its texture and longevity. :)

Natural light - no flash

Simple Matte Blue with Gold Tips

Artificial Light - flash

After buying the Rimmel Matte Finish top coat, I really wanted to try it out in a simple design.

I first used Barry M All-in-one as a base, painted 2 layers of Barry M Cobalt Blue and then used the matte topcoat. I really like it! I find it's more obvious that it's matte on non-metallic/plain nails sometimes, however I still painted the Barry M Gold Foil tips on after the matte topcoat to allow them to retain full glossiness.

The texture from the matte topcoat is awesome. It's so smooth for it not being glossy and it just adds a really nice effect if you want something different! I'm hoping to do some ideas where I cover only part of the nail matte, or incorporate it into some nail stamping. Shall see!

Natural Light - no flash

GOSH Galaxy Nail Polish

Taken in natural light - no flash

Taken in artificial light - flash

Here's another GOSH nail polish (I also have a  review on Wild Lilac coming up later too!).

I only bought this when I saw it in Superdrug looking for GOSH Holographic Hero but I think I actually like it more. I left my ring finger with one coat, and put 2 coats on the other nails (sorry about the messiness). It's got a really lovely shimmer, in some lights it shimmers a bit of yellow/gold and blue which I tried to capture in the pictures. I think it would actually be quite nice with one layer over another colour, but I have yet to try this out!

I actually don't have much to say other than I think it's great and nice and shiny even without a topcoat!

GOSH Holographic Hero Nail Polish

 Finally writing up some of my blog posts! Been busy for a couple of days so I've been taking the pictures, but not writing anything up!

I was really excited to get GOSH Holographic Hero, even though I knew it wasn't as good as the original GOSH Holographic --which I unfortunately don't have, boo! :( Shame they stopped making it and replaced it with this... should have re-released the original!  Anyway, about the polish itself, I found it very difficult to photograph it because in a lot of lights it just looks silver, only when using flash did it kinda show up. I have to say though, as I was in a bit of a rush, I didn't bother using a basecoat for once but I doubt my one would have made this any less disappointing. PrettyKittyClaws has a really great post showing you the difference between the original and the new polish and you'll see how it looks in comparison.

I may use this from time to time, but I can't say it's my favourite - and when I have enough money, I'll invest in some OPI or something!

Best of British Weekly Roundup 26/08/12

The weather in the UK may have improved a little but not enough for Vic to justify running off to Cornwall to catch the surf. Instead she's made do with her Surfin' USA mani.

It's been KBShimmer Week this week at The Crumpet 5 polishes, but which was her favourite ?

Laura has been trying out stamping for the first time this week and was particularly fond of her classy black and silver floral design.

PrettyKittyClaws has been making the most of the sunshine by copying The Crumpet with a Red Holo Dotticure. feautring Ozotics 518

Helly at the Nail Newbie got her holo on with a purple holo gradient featuring OPI DS Original!

Charlotte at Charlottes-nails has been catching up with the lazy days of summer challenge with a ruffle accent nail.

Alexis at Glitter Tips managed to overcome a nasty case of nail art block with a Black and Gold NOTD inspired by her jewellery collection.

Claire at nuthin' but a nail thing managed to get hold of some OPI Black Spotted and gave it a go over some bright NEONS.

Seeing as the British weather has been seasonably rainy, there has been a lack of barbaques this year. Unless it is in the form of nail art from Enigmatic Rambles.

Lou entered the Golden Jungle over at Painted Nails & Baking Scales finding some new polish species to describe

This week at Northern Nails there are Turtles in a Guest Post , Also Jo has started a new series of posts called Mashups!

Emma's been busy swatching the new Barry M Burgundy Croc Effects over different colours on Imagination In Colour!

It's texture time in the BFF Challenge and Kerrie from PishPosh and Polish made great use of Heart-Shaped beads but was it a success?

Ruth had some fun with pastel colours and created some colourful zebra nails using her new stampers!

Steph is showing off. Peacock feathers in the (rare) sunshine.

It's been a special week for Allie and in celebration she's been wearing some Sea Green Glitter Birthday Nails.

Dimpal is absolutely loving these fish egg nails Fish Egg Nails she also did Nicole's Me+Blue Mani

Sarah Louise reviews LeaLaC's Stamping Plate XL - A See the post for swatches and a manicure using her first Bettina Nail Polish.

Sam at Polished Art kicked off the 31 Day Challenge with a red leopard print mani.

Kerry starts the first off Nail Inc Sprinkle swatches with Sweets Way.

Pastel Zebra Nail Stamping

Been a little busy the last few days, but really wanted to share this nail art I did a couple of days ago. I actually did it twice, just changing the last colour in the list.

1st try - taken at night with flash

1st try - taken in daylight

 I started off with a base coat, then 2 coats of No7 Snowflake, I then blended on nail colours from thumb to pinky in the order of the list. I then used Barry M Silver Foil to stamp (using plate BM-223), used Essence: Love Top Coat Rose Shimmer and then Barry M All-in-One coat.

List of colours used (from thumb to pinky):

Fearne Cotton Lime Green
Barry M Mint Green
Barry M Blue Moon
No7 Lucky Lilac
Barry M Boots Limited Edition
Barry M Coral (1st try) MUA Shade 16 (2nd try)

2nd try, taken in daylight (changed pinky nail colour)

In other news, I got the Sally Hansen Black Out and White On polishes for stamping and they seem to be relatively good! Much better than the ones I had - will definitely show these in future. I also hope to show some other GOSH polishes I purchased a couple of days ago, but I think I will keep this nail art for a few days first!

Nail Stamping - First Effort

So yesterday I got my Bundle Monster plates and my Konad stamper & scraper. YAY!
I'm posting this today because after trying the system out, I got a massive headache and just couldn't be bothered to stay on the computer much!
I mucked about with it for a while, trying to figure out which polishes I could use - turns out, not many! I first tried out some of my No7 collection but even though they are 'pigment rich', they didn't show up at all. I then tried out Barry M, which generally worked better. The best ones were the silver and gold nail effects.
I have ordered Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear White On & Black Out, so hopefully they'll work better than my black and white!

This is my best effort from yesterday and it is pretty messy but I really wasn't bothered much about it because I was just trying out techniques.

This is what I used:
Base colour: Barry M Vivid Purple
Stamping colour: Barry M Instant Nail Effects Silver Foil
Stamping plate: BM-208 for both stampers.


The ring finger is done from the same plate as the others but is the inverted one.

It very much resembles crackle nail polish, but it's a lot neater and obviously isn't bumpy. I'm looking forward to trying out some of the other designs I have, and seeing if there are any other polishes i have that also work.

Best of British Weekly Roundup 19/08/12

It's been a week of Themes over at The Crumpet - the new collection from 365 Days of Color and Red Week - which was your fave? Naturally Debbie wants to show everyone her Monkey See, Monkey Do mani: Britishness.

Vic got a little carried away with one of her Summer Challenge manis this week. Bumble bees suddenly takes on a whole new meaning. Perhaps you've already guessed...

Lou played with some of her polishes from a recent US Polish Swap and had a lot of fun!

Helly wears her heart on her nails with her Love Love mani featuring OPI Steady As She Rose

Has Misha mastered the freehand acrylic paint flower on Enigmatic Rambles?

Abi celebrated her A-England haul with one of her favourite stamps at Volatile Varnish.

PrettyKittyClaws is feeling summery with a Summer Sunset Gradient and has been making room for more with a blog sale!

Emma put up her first giveaway of GOSH Golden Dragonafter arriving back from a relaxing holiday!

Sarah played with some of her recent Tony Moly Glitter polishes and created a Strawberry Love Affair Manicure . Also check out her swatches for Tony Moly's GS10 - Pinky Star, GS08 - Milky Way & GS09 - Shooting Star

Jo has been real busy in the real World this week and has a rather empty blogBusy Busybut if you check back later today you may find a suprise post! ;) .

Steph showed us a few of her "favourite things" Also check out her attempt at some nail art =)

Kerrie over at PishPosh and Polish attempted Tribal Nailsas part of her Black and White Challenge this week and is happy with the result.

Charlotte from The Colour and The Sparkle has a review of some W7 fluorescent polishes.

Charlotte at Charlottes-nails has been swatching China glaze deviantly daringfrom her recent polish haul.

What I'm Looking Forward To...

STAMPING PLATES! Oh yeah!

Ordered some BundleMonster plates a few days ago so I'm super excited for that! No way could I afford to buy 25 discs of Konad and I've read that BundleMonster is just as good so I'm looking forward to trying them out!
I have no Konad polishes (yet) so I'm going to have to do a lot of trials to see what polishes work and don't work. Hopefully I won't need to buy many (or any) polishes but I shall see!

Barry M Magnetic Burgundy Nail Polish

 This is my first post about what probably is my favourite nail polish brand, Barry M. I have a box full of them so I will probably have quite a few posts about this brand in the future!

This is a gorgeous colour, even without using the magnet (by the way, the magnet forms the darker lines, the lighter lines are the original paint colour).

What you have to remember is that you only need to hold the magnet to the wet polish for about 2 seconds (I ignored the instructions on the bottle the first time I got it thinking 'surely it needs more than a couple of seconds!' but holding it longer actually makes the lines disappear as quick as they appear so be careful of that. Also, instead of just putting the magnet on it, I also roll it slightly from side to side so that the sides get a little bit of effect too because if you have quite curved nails like I do, only the middle bit gets the effect otherwise!

It can be a little tricky to use because you have to be pretty quick in using the magnet after applying the second coat, or else it won't work well. Also, while it says you need to be quite generous when applying the nail polish, you have to be careful not to apply too much or else it will form bubbles. Sometimes a bit of practice is key!

Dotty Nail Art

 Here's a nail art idea which is really easy and let's you use any colours you wish!

I started off with the usual clear Barry M clear coat I use, and then used a nude coloured nail polish (No7 So Simple) and dotted on different colours at the tip. On the left hand, I curved the dots towards the left as you can see in the pictures instead of just a straight tip. On the right hand, I made the dots go up the right side so that there is symmetry between the hands.

The dots would have been a lot neater if I had used my dotting tool but for this, I just used the ends of the nail polish brushes.

Water Decals: Pink Flowers on Blue

 Normally, I do my own nail art, but from time to time I enjoy doing water decals because they look awesome and I'm not exactly a Van Gogh either!

There are quite a few methods of how to apply water decals but this is what works for me:

1. Clean nails completely, push back cuticles.
2. Do a clear coat on your nails (I use Barry M All in One).
3. Cut out desired decal, it is not necessary to cut water decals exactly to size (which is why I love them).
4. Place decal in water for about 15-20 seconds or so and slide decal off the paper backing (these work similar to fake tattoos).
5. Place decal on your nail, using dry cloth to dab away water and push out any air bubbles.
6. Paint another coat of your clear polish on top. The excess decal begins to curl when in contact with polish so take a toothpick or any wooden stick to gently take this excess off.


I love these nail wraps, I've bought them a couple of times because they look lovely. My favourite!

No7 Stay Perfect Cheeky Chops Nail Polish

Here's a really lovely summer nail polish, Cheeky Chops 240 by No7 at Boots. These nail polishes are, in my opinion, really nice and are quite pigment rich. In the pictures, I put two coats on each nail apart from the ring finger which only has one. As you can see, it is a little easier to see the nail and appears slightly duller than the others but otherwise is actually pretty good!


No7 polishes are very nice but I must admit, I wouldn't buy any if it wasn't for the £5 off vouchers which Boots gives out from time to time as £7 for them is a little steep for these in my opinion.

In the second picture here, I am showing a little bit of nail art using this nail polish as the centre of the flowers using a dotting tool to create this and the petals. The base is the nail polish used in the previous post - Fearne Cotton Mint Green.

Fearne Cotton Mint Green Nail Polish

 I got this nail polish (along with a couple of others I will also review later) a couple of months ago from Boots - it was 75% off and I'm a sucker for a nail polish bargain! These pictures show 2 coats of the polish, but it's actually not half bad with just one coat, even though it appears rather thin on the brush.

I didn't really expect to like it very much, to be honest, as blues/greens aren't really my thing, however I love this shade! It's bright in daylight (apologies for these pictures not being taken in daylight) but it's not to the point that it's neon or anything.

The label calls it Mint Green which I can more or less agree with, it is a bit more green than what it looks like in the pictures, but if I was naming it, I probably would have called it Green Aqua! Such a lovely colour that paints easily!

Tropical Sunset Nails

This is some nail art I done about a month ago. It's not exactly one of my best, in fact it's pretty bad, haha! For some reason I took a picture of my right hand instead of my left, probably because the left was worse. Usually, though my left hand looks neater as I am right handed but anyway, that's useless information!

So, to do this, I started off with a clear base coat as I always do and then used a fine sponge (basically a make-up sponge as these work the best) to apply the different shades of nail polish in order to make the rainbow gradient effect underneath. Then, I did a technique called water marbling, using clear and black nail polish. The stripes were then drawn on with a nail varnish pen (and I attempted a palm tree with a black nail varnish pen), followed by another clear coat on all nails. Sounds like a lot of work, but it was rather fun! Like I said, not my best as the lines are pretty bad but I hope to try something like this again soon. Youtube show these kinds of techniques pretty well, but I will hopefully make a picture tutorial on here at some point too!

Welcome!

Hey all!
So this is my first post on this blog, I hope it's the first of many! I'm starting this blog due to my love of nail polish and nail art. Over the last few years, I have collected numerous nail polishes and I thought 'HEY! Wouldn't it be nice to start my own little blog about them?'
Some of my first pictures may not be fantastic quality but I have a few snaps taken previously which could go up before my newer ones.
I may also be reviewing some make-up pieces I have from time to time!