USA Flag July 4th Nail Art

Hello everyone! Wow, it's been a while.. I've just had so much going on the past few months so I haven't had any spare time at all to blog but I'm now going to make a real effort to find the time to post as regularly as possible.

Ok so I know I'm a day late with these nails, but never mind! Thought I'd post them anyway since they're fun. It was Independence Day yesterday in the states, as you'll all probably know. Whilst I'm not from the USA, I've always had a huge interest in America. It's one of my favourite places despite the fact I've never been, I definitely want to take a trip over there one day. I love an excuse to do themed nail art so this was my latest design.

Stars and stripes!

The nails above were inspired by the USA flag/July 4th. The colours I used are as follows:

RED: OPI Cherry Much In Love

WHITE: OPI Alpine Snow

BLUE: OPI Ogre The Top Blue

It's really simple to get the look - create the red and white stripes first, then add the blue to each tip. To finish off the design, use a small nail art brush or pen with the white nail polish to draw three small stars on each nail and you're done! Make sure to leave lots of drying time before you put on a top coat!

Did anyone else do an American nail art design yesterday?

Topshop Holographic Nail Polishes in Winterfrost and Moondance

I love looking at the make-up in Topshop. They have some really nice products on offer and they also always come at affordable prices. On a recent shopping trip, I saw that they had their nail polishes on offer - 2 for £8, a bargain considering they are usually £6 each. This was obviously incredibly hard to resist, even though I knew deep down I certainly don't need any more polishes at the moment! So after much debating and walking round and round the stand, I decided to pick up these two holographic polishes. I'd seen that this collection was only just released so I thought I'd give them a go. There is a third polish in this holo range that is pink, but I have way to many pink shades so I thought I'd go for something a bit different for a change.

Topshop Nails in Winterfrost & Moondance

I'm a sucker for holographic effect - it's so pretty - especially when it sparkles in the sun (not that we get much here, but still). OPI's older Designer Series polishes are some of my absolute favourites in my collection, but I'm always very cautious about how much I use them as you can't buy them anymore, so I thought these ones from Topshop may come in handy as an alternative. I'm quite excited to see if the silver one is sheer enough to use as a holographic top coat that could be placed over any regular colour.

I haven't had chance to try them yet (I have way too many other untested colours that I'm trying to get through), but I usually find Topshop polishes easy to apply, quite chip-resistant and who can really resist the cute packaging? I adore the polka dots on the lids.

Do you have any Topshop shades in your collections?

WAH x Models Own Nail Art Pens

Hi everyone!

Today I just wanted to do a quick post on the WAH Nails and Models Own collaboration nail art pens. These aren't new on the scene, but I'm going to do a post on them anyway because they are some of my favourite tools to use when doing my nails. The colours they are currently available in as follows: Black, White, Blue, Pink, Yellow, with recent additions of Silver & Gold (festive season, yay!).

I absolutely love these pens! I have them in all the colours. They're great because the have one end that acts as a dotter for precise detail and then the other end is a striper brush to create smooth, straight lines. They are really easy to use, even if you don't have the steadiest of hands. I was really surprised even when I did my other hand, yes the result is never quite as perfect as my left hand, due to me being right-handed, but it still looked great - much better than trying to do free-hand patterns.

If you haven't got any already, they retail at £6 each and can be bought at Boots (in stores nationwide and online), the Models Own website and the Models Own Bottleshop located in Westfield at White City, London. Boots quite often run promotions such as 3 for 2 or a free nail art pen when you buy two other MO products so it's definitely worth keeping an eye out for any special offers.

Here is some striped nail art I created with the help of my all time favourite WAH x Models Own Nail Art Pen in White.

OPI Planks a Lot is the purple base colour.

In terms of the colours themselves, the shades are actually really lovely. The pink, blue and yellow are all very bright but I didn't have a problem with that because I like my statement nails, haha. The gold pen that I bought most recently appeared to be not as gold toned as I would have liked, more of a bronze to me, especially when applied on the nail (see previous post on Rita Ora Nails). However, I don't know if I just got a bit of an "off" bottle, so they might not necessarily be all like this. All in all, I would definitely recommend this product to anyone, regardless of your skill with nails.

Which colour is your personal favourite? I don't think I can call it!

Nails Inc in December Issue of Glamour Magazine

Hi guys! How are you all?

Just wanted to let you all know about some fabulous freebies. You probably all know about this now - I intended to post this earlier but I had been waiting until I managed to get all the colours.

In the December issue of Glamour magazine, four Nails Inc polishes are being given away. Cheryl Cole is in the front cover (see image above), just so you know what you're looking for if you go out to pick up a copy. If I remember correctly, I think Glamour did a promotion like this the same time last year too, I just didn't pick any up because I wasn't particularly fond of the colours and by the time I decided to get them anyway I couldn't find them in shops.. Maybe it's going to be an annual thing though? I do hope so!

So, the colours available are as follows:

St James - a true red

Elizabeth Street - a pale pink

Motcomb Street - a dark blue, bordering on black

*EXCLUSIVE TO GLAMOUR MAGAZINE* Glamour Glitter - a sparse gold glitter, best for use as a topcoat

I actually think all of these colours are really nice, unlike usual when I sometimes don't like one/any of them. I have read that some people were disappointed with Glamour Glitter, as they wanted it to be more opaque, but I really like it because it is different to any other glitter polishes I have. I would actually say it's my favourite out of all of them and the fact that it can't be bought anywhere else is most definitely a bonus.

I originally purchased the the pink (Elizabeth Street) and the red (St James) saturday before last, as they were all WH Smith had in stock. I then took a trip to Sainsbury's later that day and they did have the blue (Motcomb Street), along with Elizabeth Street and St James again but I resisted buying it because I didn't think it was that special and I wanted Glamour Glitter so much more. It was a proud moment haha. Several shop visits later (Tesco, M&S, more WH Smiths, Fenwicks, and numerous newsagents) and I still had no luck finding the glitter, every place I went either had a mix of the coloured polishes or absolutely none at all. I was having an absolute nightmare and honestly didn't think I was going to get it as it was tuesday at this point and the magazine has almost been on sale a week. Then last wednesday, one of my friends went to another tesco store near when she lives and by some chance they had several copies of the magazine, a few of them containing the elusive Glamour Glitter! How lucky was I?! To have a nice friend in the first place who picked it up for me, and the fact that they had it in stock. It was a good day hahaha. Anyway, I thought it was a shame not to get the blue polish when I had the other three in the set, so back I went into town yesterday to pick it up - I just couldn't resist any longer because it was such a good saving.

All the polishes in their boxes

The magazine costs £2, an absolute bargain considering a full size Nails Inc polish like these will usually cost you £11! If you do want any of the shades, I would advise getting them as soon as possible since they are hugely popular and are only available while stocks last. I don't think you should have a massive problem when looking for the colours, it's only the glitter that is hard to find - probably due to the fact it is exclusive to the magazine.

All 4 polishes - Motcomb Street, Glamour Glitter, Elizabeth Street and St James

Which is your favourite and what have you bought? Leave a comment below!

OPI Nicki Minaj Collection - Pink Friday, Fly, Save Me & Super Bass Shatter!

Hey guys!

Hope you're all well. I'm reaalllyyy sorry about the lack of posts of the last few weeks, I've just been busy settling back into studying at sixth form! I've moved into year 13 now, which is kinda scary - it doesn't seem like two minutes ago since I started secondary school way back in year 7 and the last year has gone incredibly fast! Anyway, onto the post:

So today I have for you a Nicki Minaj themed manicure I did using some of the colours from the OPI collection released earlier this year. I thought it was very appropriate for today since she's just announced her UK arena tour - exciting stuff!!

Nicki Minaj Mix Up!

Here you can see Pink Friday (obviously the baby pink!) with the Super Bass Shatter over the top. And then on my other two fingers I layered Save Me over Fly.

The shatter is definitely my favourite of it's kind from OPI - when you look closely and in different lighting, it has a real shimmer/sparkle and it looks fab against lighter colours - especially the ones it's paired with in the collection! My photo is rubbish, so it's hard to tell here, but it's the only one I have. I would describe the actual colour itself as being plum.

Pink Friday is a gorgeous baby pink creme, not much else to say other than that it's super pretty and a girl can never have enough pink nail polish! In my opinion, it's a perfect pink and a must have if you're a fan of pink in general. It's like the ultimate girly colour. The formula could have be better, but it's workable. It took three coats for this photo because I had to get rid of brush strokes etc.

Save Me is a clear base containing regular silver microglitter particles along with bar shaped holographic glitter. I really like this because there isn't many other polishes like this around, even if it is an absolute pain to remove. I bet it looks fab on it's own, but as it's quite a sheer polish I chose to layer this because I'm stingy when it comes to wasting polish unnecessarily! HAHA. But I would say 4 coats alone might possibly be opaque? I used 2 layering.

As for Fly, I do like the colour - it's a mix between a blue and teal, sort of turquoise? I don't really know, it's kinda hard to describe. But I don't really feel like it's that special or unique compared to other colours in the collection. Still very nice though! Again, as with Pink Friday this was another 3-coater.

All in all, this has got to be one of my favourite OPI collections to date. Which is your favourite from the above?

Diamond Jubilee / Union Jack Nails!

Hello everyone :) I've just started this blog and I hope to update it as often as possible with various swatches and my nail art designs. So I'll stop rambling and get on with the post now!

Happy Jubilee Weekend! Hope you've all had fun celebrating. For the occasion, I thought it would be appropriate to do some sort of jubilee themed manicure, so here it is:

Colours used:
OPI Ogre-the-Top Blue, Models Own Juicy Jules,
OPI Get Your GLAMOUR On
and Models Own/WAH Nail Art Pen in White.

What do you think? I thought it was pretty cute myself, and not a bad attempt at some nail art. Doing an accent nail using the union jack was stressful/tricky enough, so I didn't manage to do all my fingers - my hand isn't THAT steady lol. I chose to do red and white polka dots on my other fingers. Then I decided that I wanted to bring some blue back in so I did a glitter gradient on the thumb with it... well, it was supposed to be a gradient but I still haven't fully got the hang of the technique yet :P

That's all for now, if anyone has bothered to read this then thank you! I hope to see you back on my blog soon.