Nails Inc: 'My Nail Polish Diary' - March

For the main post on Nails Inc's 'My Nail Polish Diary', with links to all other months, click here.

I very nearly forgot this, but March is here (yay!) and we know what that means! Yes, today is the March polish from Nails Inc's 'My Nail Polish Diary' which is called Baker St and is a lovely cobalt blue colour.
If I'm honest, I'm not the world's biggest fan of blue nail polish - it's one of the colours I'm rather picky about when buying, the reason being that many shades of blue, to me, make one look like they have a nail disorder, or only look nice from short distances.

Nails Inc's Baker Street, however, is quite a nice colour, and while I would not wear this in the summer, when I prefer lighter shades, I think it does suit this time of year and the weather it brings (promise of a cold Winter's end built up by that glimmer of sunlight and then bam - rain, does make one feel... blue).

I must admit, I didn't quite get the results that other people seem to have with regards to its finish. While others might say that it dries nice and glossy, that was not the result I observed. I thought it was a bit matte, actually, as you can see in the photos, which shows the polish with no topcoat. There is one coat on each nail apart from the pinky nail which has 2 coats (or so I believe, as it was quite a while ago that I did this, sorry!)

Have a great day!

New Year Nails!

Well, I hope you all had an amazing year! I personally don't care much for New Year - I stay up to watch the countdown on TV and then go to bed, haha. I did decide, however, to do some kind of nail polish with the inspiration of fireworks and lasers in the night...
Before I get into that, I hope you like the new design to the blog... it took me absolutely ages because certain things just wouldn't co-operate to begin with, and after about 3 hours, html becomes extremely irritating.

 Anyway! To the nails! I have 2 designs today, fairly similar really. The main reason is that the first one chipped within 24hrs of doing it, so I had to do something else. This is the first one! I used Barry M Navy and then used some Barry M Jewel Glitter Amethyst at the tips, blending it a bit with the brush so that it was kind of a gradient.

My Seche Vite topcoat didn't hold it though, which was a first. For me, anything that is sparkly on dark polish looks like sparklers or fireworks so BOOM! Glitter on dark blue it is!

 As I said though, the polish chipped fairly quickly so I decided to use some of my new tapes (which I learned- the hard way - loses it's colour if you apply it onto damp nail polish so must applied to completely dry polish). I have such tape on the index and ring finger. The thumb and ring finger have OPI Casino Royale as the base, and the others have the above mentioned Barry M Navy.

 The thumb has the same glitter (Barry M Jewel Glitter Amethyst) as above, covering the nail completely and only the tip of the pinky nail.
The middle finger has Models Own Mirrorball Freak Out! - I found that it matched really well with the tapes I was using.

I took quite a few pics, too many really! I found it difficult to choose because some are better for different reasons.

Anyway, this is lasting a lot longer, I've had it on for about 3 days now!


I hope you have a marvelous new year!

Bourjois 10 Days Nail Enamel No.18 Nail Polish

Natural light - no flash

 Here's another Bourjous nail enamel. I don't normally go for blues as it's not my favourite colour for nails, but for some reason this one caught my eye. Probably because it's quite dark and I do quite like dark shades from time to time.

Artificial light - flash

The polish doesn't have a name other than '18' so if you look for it, that's the number you need.

The bottle claims that the enamel lasts for 10 days -- a claim I can't really verify because I put Seche Vite over most of them, but it has been 3 days since I did them and the parts that have no topcoat are still perfect. It also has an angled brush so that you are able to 'touch-up' any chips that may occur, however I see it more as a gimmick because even touching it up would be obvious because you'd had a small lump where the new polish is so the fact it's pointier at one side is quite irrelevant to me. In fact, I find the angled brush quite annoying because when you're applying the polish, you have to work harder to make it curve at the top of your nail and in a way, you have to apply in a way that is just weird. I like the concept though but not really practical unless your cuticles are completely straight or shaped like the top of a triangle.

Polish on nail

Overall, the colour is really nice. I would say the pictures are quite accurate - however indoors with no flash, this does look darker, like a really dark blue, sometimes verging on a dark teal kind of shade.

Under normal light, it looks like a plain blue, however when you look really closely, you notice that it's got a slight shimmer to it, and in fact you will see this shimmer through the bottle too, if you pick it up in store.

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