Mariah Carey OPI Liquid Sand Polishes - The Impossible & Stay The Night

Hi everyone!

I have been meaning to do a post on OPI's first liquid sand polishes since they came out over a month ago now, but I've only just recently had the time to test them out! I love how OPI are always one of the first brands out there to invent new types of polish like these. These are part of the Mariah Carey collection and there are 4 liquid sand polishes and 4 regular polishes.

The colours in the collection are:
The Impossible - a bright red with star shaped confetti
Stay The Night - a black/pink mix
Can't Let Go - purple
Get Your Number - blue

I absolutely love these polishes. They give off such a unique effect. The texture is amazing, it's like gritty but not so gritty that it's sharp, horrible to touch or would easily snag on clothing or anything. I've had this polish on a week now and it's starting to become a bit more 'flat', shiny and less textured if that makes sense, but it still looks and feels fine. The polishes also seem to last really well on your nails, I only have very minimal tip wear - no chipping yet whatsoever. I've received so many compliments and people asking to touch my nails whilst wearing this! I can't yet comment on removal because I haven't taken it off yet but I'm hoping it isn't as bad as normal glitter...

The Impossible with Stay The Night as an accent nail

It's important to note that these polishes only give off the "sand" effect when used without a top coat. By all means if you want to achieve a slightly different look, then go ahead and apply one. It just means the texture won't be present and the polish will appear to be slightly more  'jelly' looking. I've heard that these polishes can eat insane amounts of top coat too, so if you do want to give this a go then I'm guessing you're gonna have to layer quite a few coats! It's really cool for an alternative though because it's almost like getting two polishes in one. :)

I can't wait to see what other liquid sand polishes OPI release this year! What do you think?

18th Birthday Weekend & Nail Art!

Hey everyone!

It was my 18th birthday on Friday (25th). I did mean to do this post then but I was just so busy and didn't have time over the weekend either as I took a trip to London. For my birthday I got money, nail polishes (duh!), jewellery, a new pink OnePiece, Juicy Couture Perfume and some other bits and pieces. I also got a really cute box full of little surprises from one of my friends at school with some makeup and nail polish in, it's so nice! The trip to London was also part of my present from my mum and I went to see 'Stomp' on Friday night. It was amazing - so much better than I expected! I would recommend seeing it if you haven't already. It's choreographed really cleverly and has lots of humour throughout, considering the actors don't talk at all. I also went to see Pitch Perfect on Sunday morning. I had wanted to see it since it came out back in December but I was so busy with revising for my English exam that I just didn't have the time. Glad I got to finally see it before it leaves cinemas. It was really good! It made me want to live in America and be in an acapella group like that haha. Some parts were absolutely hilarious, Rebel Wilson gives an amazing performance as 'Fat Amy' throughout. I can't wait until it's out on DVD so I can watch it again! But anyway, enough about my life and onto the nails!

Birthday cupcakes with a number 18 accent nail

I absolutely love doing my nails for special occasions like this. I received many compliments on these across the weekend. In particular, when I visited the Models Own Bottleshop at Westfield Shopping Centre (White City/Shepard's Bush) one of the sales assistants couldn't believe that I'd done them myself and they were my own nails! She even ended up getting all of her colleagues over for them to have a look at my nails too. We then went on to have a conversation about our favourite shades from the brand. It's so nice when you speak to fellow polishaholics!

The polishes I used were as follows:
- OPI Play The Peonies as a base underneath the cakes
- OPI Kiss Me On MY Tulips for the cupcake cases and the accent nail
- OPI PEdal Faster Suzi! for the icing
- OPI Rainbow Connection for the sprinkles
- Nicole By OPI Step to the Beat of My Heart for the cherries on top
- My trusty WAH Nails x Models Own Nail Art Pen in white for the stripes on the cupcake cases and the '18'

I did originally intend to do a tutorial for these nails but I forgot to take pictures step-by-step :( sorry about that!

Hope you all had a lovely weekend, until the next time :)

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!

Happy Halloween!: Nail Art

Happy Halloween everyone! Hope you've all had a good day.Did anyone do anything nice to celebrate? It wasn't really for halloween, but I went to see Skyfall at the cinema earlier - it was fantastic! I'd definitely recommend a trip to see it if you haven't already.

Just a quick post today, I wanted to show you guys some Halloween nail art I did this morning. I absolutely love doing themed nails.

The orange I used is OPI In My Back Pocket and the black is Barry M Black. On my pinkie I also used OPI Metallic 4 Life for the glitter on the spider's web. My favourite nail art pens by WAH / Models Own were used in black and white and the orange nail art pen was just from a set I bought in Topshop (link here if anyone is interested).

Now onto my thumb, I'm really excited about this one! This is In My Back Pocket with OPI BLACK SPOTTED over the top. This was a French Sephora exclusive that launched with the spiderman collection over the summer. I won't got into too much detail about it because I'm planning on doing another post on it in the near future. But doesn't it look fabulous? I LOVE IT!!

That's all for now, thanks for reading :)

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?