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?

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?

Nails Art Inspired by Rita Ora's 'R.I.P' Video

Hi guys!

How's your week been? It's exactly one month until christmas today and I'm so excited! I managed to do lots of christmas shopping this week due to all the black friday deals. Did anyone pick up anything nice? I don't know about you but I feel so much better about spending when things are on sale, haha.

Just a quick post today - I'm going to show you my most recent nails. Rita Ora is one of my favourite artists right now so I decided to do a set of nails similar to her's in her video for R.I.P.

To do this, I used Nails Inc St. James and then WAH x Models Own Nail Art Pen in Gold. It was really easy to achieve this look, but I did my dots a bit smaller than Rita's, hence my having 5 on each nail rather than 4. The dots also aren't as close together as Rita's but I still like the way they turned out. I think these nails are quite festive too, due to the red and gold. Many people said they looked christmassy and didn't actually realise they were inspired by the video until I said so. :( I guess you wouldn't know though unless you're a big fan of Rita, like myself!

What do you think?

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!

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.