12 Days of Christmas: Santa, Baby

Today the prompt was Santa and/or Elves.

I also just recieved my Ciaté Mini Mani Month Calendar, yay! So I wanted to incorporate some of the polishes from that.
BTW, I won't be posting swatches from the calendar on here each day but I will be posting them on Instagram @nailsmustbepainted so make sure you're following me if you want the updates! :)

The grey is Ciaté Sharp Tailoring (Day 2), the red is Ciaté Runway Ribbon and is a gorgeous loose glitter and the white is George Natural White. The Santa is a sticker I got from Poundland a few months ago! I am feeling poorly at the moment so didn't feel like concentrating long enough to do my usual freehand art.

Take a better look at that red glitter! I have never used a loose glitter before but wow this is gorgeous! The picture doesn't really do it justice. It is sooo sparkly and beautiful! 

I discovered just how difficult loose glitter is to clean up though!

Check out the other amazing entries:

An InLinkz Link-up

Nutra Nail Gel Perfect

A few weeks ago I spotted this 'Gel' nail polish in Poundland.
It claims to be a gel which requires no UV light and dries in 5 minutes without smudging.
I was rather sceptical, so I bought it to try out. The colour I picked up was 'Ginger'.

I have kept a diary of my thoughts on the polish over the week:

Day 1:
Having just applied the polish, I found it was fairly quick and easy to apply. Basically each time you want to apply a coat of polish you have to apply a coat of activator first.
Each coat dried within about 30 seconds and once dry there was definitely no smudging despite my best efforts at scraping the polish on the side of my desk!! It is rock solid, as advertised!
The application is a little streaky, but not hugely so.

The main downside of this is the activator. Basically, it smells and feels like I am just applying super glue to my nails! I guess I could be for all I know?!
Also, neat application is key. Although I put the polish on neatly in the first place, I wanted to see how well it would clean-up. In all honestly, once it is on it seems to be staying on! So I wouldn't recommend this if you like to make a mess in application and just clean up afterwards!
I ended up with a strange sort of lump of polish on my thumbnail. Tried to clean this up with Acetone, no chance! The lump is staying for the foreseeable future!

Day 2:
OK, last night I did a quick Google on this polish and found that the activator which I said smelt like superglue literally is just nail glue. Great, I've just covered my nails in three coats of glue!

Anyway, day 2 and my nails are still looking good. No chips or tip wear.

Although, my thumb nail is missing a chunk of polish but that's my fault really... that big lumpy bit I had on my thumbnail was irritating me, so in a conference today I picked the lump off (Clearly I was having loads of fun and concentrating well!). Now it looks like I have 2 weeks worth of growth and need my nails re-doing!

Day 3.
I woke up this morning and it all went downhill!!
I haven't done anything much different to yesterday, yet my nails now look like this:

(Excuse the completely different lighting! I promise it is the same polish!)

 Also, my cuticles seem really dry. Probably because I basically applied 3 coats of superglue to my nails!

I think its safe to say I will be taking what is left off today!

This polish came off reasonable easily. It was no more difficult than a glitter polish, definitely not like removing gel.

Overall, I would not recommend this polish! Yes, it looks pretty at first, but I can get more than 2 days wear from a normal polish and the glue-like 'activator' wreaks havoc with your nail/cuticle health. Don't bother!

Pretty Poppet: Review and Swatch

Last week I picked up the Ciaté Dolls House Collection in TKMaxx for the bargain price of £6.99.

I was super excited about these and wanted to try out these polishes straight away, so I started with a nice, simple mani using Poppet, a pastel lilac shape.

I love the colour of this polish. It is a pale lilac, so pastel it could almost be mistaken for white in certain lights. 

This polish is advertised as a 'porcelain finish'. Basically, it's matte. I love matte polishes, however this dries so fast that is makes application difficult as the polish has dried onto the brush before you manage to cover the whole nail. This means you have to use a really thick coat to ensure the polish doesn't dry too quickly, which then leads to a slightly streaky finish. Kind of a lose, lose situation!

I also found that this polish chipped so easily. On my left hand I wore the mani without topcoat and on my right hand I added my favourite super shiny Essence topcoat.

Considering my right hand generally gets used a lot more, after a day the right hand was still perfect, however the left hand had huge chunks of polish missing. The polish on my index finger literally peeled off in one big sheet, about 3/4 of the way down my nail.

For most polishes this would not be a big deal, as I would usually wear topcoat anyway. But what is the point in having that lovely Porcelain finish, if I then have to cover it in topcoat to make my mani last more than a few hours?!

Overall, I was not impressed with this polish at all. I love how it looks but the poor application and lasting power really let it down. I really hope the others in the collection are a bit better and this was just a bad bottle!

I was however really impressed with the studs I added. This were a bargain from Poundland. I used a blob of a cheap No.17 clear topcoat on the bottoms of them and stuck them in place with tweezers. I wore this mani for two days and managed not to lose a single stud, even on the hand without topcoat! :)

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!

Feather Effect Pretty Polish

A few weeks ago I reviewed this glitter 'pretty' polish from Poundland. I was surprisingly impressed with the results and wanted to try more of their polishes.

So I bought two more:

• The first is a purple feather effect polish, with long pieces of purple, white and silver glitter.
• The second is a scatter effect polish. A white base with blue, pink and red pieces of glitter in.

First, I tried the feather effect polish. I used a Barry M Matt White base coat on the thumb, middle and little fingers. On the ring and index fingers I used Sally Hansen Grape Race. I then painted the feather effect onto just two of my nails. 

The first picture is the most true to colour. This mani was incredibly hard to photograph to get the full effect of the polish. Again, I was impressed with this polish, considering what it costs. It was easy to apply, with a nice even spread of the feather pieces. The different coloured pieces within it created a pretty effect, which seemed less flat, as they were not all the same. I used two coats to get a nice, thick coverage of the feathers, but I think this would look even better with more coats. The only downside of this polish was drying time. It took an awfully long time to dry compared with most polishes. Even once it was touch dry, it was still extremely easy to smudge for a long time afterwards. I ended up making a complete mess of my left hand!

Overall, I am again impressed with the 'pretty' polishes and will definitely consider buying more.

Pretty Poundland Nail Polish

So, for a while I have been buying the likes of Sally Hansen, Revlon and Rimmel nail polishes from Poundland. Every time I go in there I wonder what their own brand polishes are like, (which are called 'Pretty') but I never bother buying them as I would rather get ones I know will be good! So, as part of my birthday present my bf bought me this gorgeous looking pink glitter topcoat to try.

I have to admit, I didn't have high expectations but I was actually pleasantly surprised!!

It goes on reasonably easily, although a little fishing was required to find the larger pieces of glitter, and  didn't clump together. I was most impressed with the finish. I have had cheap glitters before that dry really rough, where the glitter sticks out of the polish, but this didn't happen. It dried with a nice, smooth finish, almost like a gel. Smooth enough I didn't need a topcoat (And that's something from me, who hates non-smooth nails!!). This meant it easily survived my shower and hair washing, which is always the challenge for glitter, when little strands of hair get stuck underneath!! It did take quite a while to dry though. The first hand I ended up smudging whilst trying to photograph them, and having to do again! (So excuse any pictures where it looks a bit dodgy!!)

                             

It has definitely made me want to buy some more of their polishes to try out. This is just a topcoat, so It will be more difficult to see how it lasts, but I am considering buying just one or two colour polishes to try.

The colours I used were Barry M Matt White, as a base for the glitter, and Rimmel Purple Pulse. I love this mani.. Just enough glitter to be pretty, without being OTT!

 Has anyone else tried the Poundland 'Pretty' polishes? What did you think of them?

Bargain Haul!

So, for those who don't know, Poundland have had a whole load of branded nail polishes in recently. Get down there, quick! Who can resist Sally Hansen, Revlon, Rimmel and Maybelline for £1 each?!

So I made a trip to see what colours they had out today.
This is what I bought:

• Sally Hansen Sugar Coat in Sweetie, which is a textured polish. I've never used textured polishes before so am interested to use this. Not sure I'll like it, I love the feeling of nice smooth nails. Such a cute colour though!

• Sally Hansen Extreme Wear in Kiwi Bikini. I love the colour of this! I've also been looking for a nice shade of green to use as leaves when I paint flowers so this is perfect!

• Sally Hansen Magnetic in Cosmic Blue. Again, I haven't used a magnetic polish before so am excited to see what interesting patterns can be created.

• And last, I got a matte topcoat. I love the look of matte nails but have never tried them before, so when I saw this for £1 in Primark I had to buy it. And it doesn't matter if I hate it as it was only £1!

Such a bargain day! 4 new polishes for a grand total of £4!!

Oh and here are all the polishes I have got from Poundland in the past month!! Such a bargain I can't resist buying them! 5 Sally Hansen, 1 Maybelline and 1 Revlon! :)