Autumn Days

Today I have an autumnal mani to show you.
 I have been planning this one a while but was awaiting the arrival of the leaves from the Born Pretty Store which took two months to arrive. Hence, this is not really seasonal anymore!

The above photo was taken in natural light and is a lot more colour accurate. The below photo was taken under my new LED lamp, which is a lot better than photographing under my 'normal' lights, but still not great. I am contemplating making another light box.

Anyway, I was going for a 'leaves blowing in the wind' look for this. I quite like how it came out, though it's not quite as I envisioned it would be! My pinky was supposed to be the pile of leaves, then the other fingers showing them blowing away, with the swirly lines representing the wind.

I used Jess polish in Innocence for the background. The swirls were Sinful Colors Nirvana and an unnamed gold PS by Primark polish. The gold leaves were from the Born Pretty Store.

You can get 10% off these leaves and anything else on the Born Pretty Store with my discount code: EHG10.

Silver Rose

With Christmas in the pipeline I am starting to introduce a bit more sparkle into my mani's, christmassy without being full-on!

For this mani I used Ciaté Boudoir and Ciaté Fit for a Queen as christmassy colours. Then to tone it down I used my MoYou London Mother Nature Collection Plate 01 to stamp the rose. The Ciaté polsih didn't stamp too well so I ended up painting over most of it again to make the colour stand out! I then finished with a matte topcoat by Jess Polish.

I really like how this turned out. I don't wear silver polish very often, but I really like this one. Just a shame the red isn't more opaque so that black stain didn't show through.

This could easily get away with being a Valentines mani, 3 months early!!

Fairytale: The Swan Princess

For the Fairytale theme of this weeks Llama Nails Challenge I already posted my Ella nails. However, I had forgotten that I painted these last weekend for this theme!

The Swan Princess was one of my favourite films as a child. In fact, I still have the VHS but am unable to play it!

I'm afraid this mani is a bit of a nail fail! I contemplated just ignoring the fact that this had ever existed as I don't really like it!

Although I am quite pleased with my sunrise, the swan looks more like a goose due to having too short a neck!

The other two nails I did in a super sparkly silver holo, which is not captured well on these photo's. This was supposed to represent this princess-ness, however I feel it just doesn't go with the other nails.

The holo polish is by Wonderful and Strange Nail Lacquer and is amazing! The background for the other nails was Jess Polish, Calypso. On my middle finger I created a gradient with this and an orange Missguided polish. I then painted the sun with Sally Hansen Sugar Coat in Sweetie.

The swan/goose was painted with Barry M Matte White.

Avatar Nail Art

Science Fiction is the prompt for this weeks Llama Nails Book/Movie Challenge.

I decided to go with Avatar:

I really love my index fingernail and kind of wish I had done the other half of her face on my middle finger, rather than the tree of souls.

I mostly used acrylic paint for this mani, because of the detail. However I used Maybelline Dark Denim as the base colour, Sinful Colors Nirvana for the tree and Revlon Aquamarine as a topcoat on my ring finger, as the white was too bright. I finished it all with a Jess Matte Topcoat.

Fingerfood's Challenge: Something New

Today for my something new nails I have gone all out on the 'new'!
I have used 2 new polishes and 2 new techniques. :)

The first new polish is the 'Jess' Polish, in Madison, which I reviewed here yesterday. This is the base colour in these pictures, and is actually a deep purple. The second new polish I have used is a crackle polish. I have to admit to having never used a crackle polish before. The look just doesn't do anything for me. But I saw one yesterday and thought I'd give it a go so this is Sally Hansen, Star Burst, on my index fingers. The crackle effect actually looks better than I imagined  and it has glitter in, which creates quite a cute look, so maybe it will get a bit of use!

 I also tried out two new techniques today. First, I tried the Saran wrap method on my ring fingers. I love how this looks on other people's pictures, but mine doesn't seem to have had the same effect. I did think this might be because I used an insta-dry polish so it dried before I could get much off, but I'm not sure. The top polish I used was Sally Hansen, Grape Race.

The second technique I tried was making my own decals. These are on my thumb nails and I kept it nice and simple with just a star on each hand. I used the sandwich bag and clear polish method of doing this and was surprised how easy it is and that you can't see or feel any edges at all of the clear polish once on the nail. Although, peeling the polish from the bag was extremely difficult and I ended up breaking one star in half, then having to line it back up on my nail!! I will definitely be doing this again, as it is so much easier than trying to paint designs straight onto the nail.

I then finished the whole mani off with a matte topcoat. :)

 Does anybody else's Blogger keep turning their photo's around? At least 3 of these photo's started off the other way around! It's very frustrating!

Jess Polish Review

Today I bought new nail polish!! Standard Saturday!
I'm just going to tell you about one of them at the moment, which I tried out this afternoon.

This Poundland 'Jess' polish. I was just looking at what colours they had and I fell in love with a purple polish called Madison. I'm not usually a big purple lover, therefore don't have many purple polishes, so I thought 'why not!'. My biggest issue with this polish was it's inability to appear the right colour in photo's!

This first photo I edited, to try and make the nails look the colour they actually are!! My skin is not actually this yellow, it's a side-effect of the editing!

They definitely are not this blue at all, I tried several camera's and several different intensities of light to take the photo's too, but no luck... just imagine they are the same colour as above!!

I absolutely loved this polish! One thick-ish coat was enough to fully cover my nails. I began adding a second coat to some nails, out of habit, but realised I could tell no difference whatsoever, so I stopped again! As you can see, the colour is really intense, even in just one coat. It went on so easily and smoothly too! I can't stop stroking my nails, as they have not been so smooth in such a long time! 

 I love how super shiny the finish is too! These pictures are without topcoat and they look so good. This polish also dried really fast. By the time I had finished one coat, they were dry enough to add a second coat straight away, so this mani literally took me 5 mins! Although, I do think this dried so fast, it might cause problems if you like to take your time painting your nails and it would not be very good for stamping.

All in all, I would definitely recommend this polish. Well done Poundland! I think I might be going back tomorrow to pick up a few more, as it is much better than some of the big brand polishes I have, and all for £1!