12 Days of Christmas: Do You Wanna Build A Snowman?

Today's prompt for the 12 Days of Christmas Challenge is Snowmen.
Of course, being a primary school teacher I had to paint everyone's favourite snowman of the moment... Olaf!!

I used a Primark Blue Glow in the Dark Polish for this. It doesn't actually glow, but the colour is just beautiful. Although the polish is blue, it has a very subtle gold shimmer which appears in certain lights. I also added a coat of Sally Hansen Sugar Coat in Royal Icing on my index finger. Olaf is painted using acrylics.

The snowflakes were sent to me to review by Born Pretty Store. 

They arrived in a little plastic pot which was actually a lot bigger than I had expected.

They are very cute and sparkly. Because they bend easily they sat quite flat on the nail, meaning they stayed on around a day... which is longer than I manage to keep most 3D type things on my nails! I would say they are definitely worth the £2.33 they are on the website for!

Get 10% off these here or other items at the Born Pretty Store with voucher code: EHG10.

Check out the other entries to the challenge here:

An InLinkz Link-up

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! :)

Review: Wonderful and Strange Nail Lacquer

A few weeks ago now a page called Wonderful and Strange Nails liked a photo of mine on Instagram (@nailsmustbepainted). I visited their IG (@wonderfulandstrangenails) and realised they made Indie Polishes.

At the time I had been considering buying some indies for a while. However, there is not a huge number of indie polish brands in the UK and I was struggling to find one selling polishes I loved.

Not anymore! Straight away I knew I was going to love the brand, so I visited their website and soon bought two polishes to try out! Doll Parts and Neon Nude.

This is Doll Parts. A beautiful pale blue base with neon pink, dark blue and white glitter pieces.

I am so in love with this polish! Apparently the name is very relevant too... I showed this to my bf, who didn't know the name of the polish and he said it made him think of children's toys!

I applied four thin coats of polish for opacity, although one coat would look great layered over a white or pastel blue polish. The glitter pieces spread themselves out nicely, without too much persuasion!!

Next up is Neon Nude:

The colours of this polish are pretty amazing too! It is a slightly off white/cream base colour with neon green, yellow and orange glitter pieces. 

 I have to admit, after using Doll Parts first I had high expectations for this polish.

Although I still really like it, I was slightly disappointed in comparison. This polish was much thinner than Doll Parts. The pictures were taken after 4 coats and you can see it is still not fully opaque. This polish was also a little bit more difficult to apply, with a patchy finish.

However, I love the glitter and will definitely still wear this polish, I will just be sure to wear a white/nude base underneath next time!

Overall, I was very impressed with these polishes, especially considering they were only £3 each.

Delivery was speedy and they arrived in a super cute packaging which brightened my day! :)

I have to tell you, I have already bought another polish from this brand as I was so impressed, so keep an eye out for swatches of that soon. I'm waiting for a sunny day as it's a super glittery holo!

Now, everybody go check out my new favourite polish brand here! :D

H&M Peachy Girl Swatches

Today I have got a review of the H&M polish, Peachy Girl.
I picked this up in their sale last week for £1, along with another H&M polish, Blue Bliss.

Here it is! 

This went on really easy and smooth, no problems. As I was applying it I thought it seemed a bit streaky, but once on the nail it seemed to smooth itself out as it dried. 

Drying time was quite fast, faster than I expected for a cheap polish, probably faster than most of the polishes I own. But not too fast that it was difficult to apply!

I did find the brush a little bit awkward to hold, as the lid of the bottle is rectangular, but the brush itself was good.

This polish lasted really well too. I wore it by itself for a day. I then painted my Yorkshire Rose nail art on top of it and kept this on for two days. When I took it off at the end of the three days there were still no chips, and hardly any wear on the tips either.

These pictures are taken with two coats, no topcoat, in natural light. It is definitely not a one coater, but two coats is perfect. You can see it is super shiny and smooth. The colour is gorgeous too, I don't own any other similar polishes either which is always good!!

Below is a picture with the two closest polishes I could find in my collection, just for comparison. On the left is OPI Where did Suzi's Man-Go, in the middle is Barry M Papaya and on the right is H&M Peachy Girl.

Overall, I really like this polish. It will definitely be well used and it is making me very tempted to buy more H&M polishes!

Neon Pink Sinful Colours

Today I bought my first Sinful Colours Polish, in Cream Pink, which is actually a gorgeous neon.

The photo's are two coats. I love how bright this polish is, and its such a lovely shade of pink. So summery, perfect for today! It went on nice and easy. Was touch dry very quickly, but I soon realised it wasn't completely dry underneath when I managed to smudge my thumb!

  On my accent finger I did a layer of Barry M Diamond Glitter, followed by a coat of Barry M Crystal Glaze. I managed to get this amazing macro of this nail and it looks so good!! Unless you look really close it just looks glittery but I love the detail in this picture!

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!

Fingerfood Theme Buffet & Africa Inspired: Fishtail Braids.

So this week I entered the Fingerfood Theme Buffet, for the first time ever, although I was a little late! The theme was fishtail, which was apt considering this was one of the techniques I wanted to include in my Africa Inspired Mani's, so it works as both!

I wanted this included as an Africa inspired mani as all the girls in the school who actually had any hair, had their hair braided. Apparently, this is a bit of a status symbol. Many of the children had their hair shaved, including girls, for ease. Those who had their hair braided are the ones who have a little bit more money. The girls in the school also began to braid my hair whilst I was there, although they didn't get very far, as I have so much more hair than them!

I've never tried a fishtail technique before and found it to be very time consuming, despite two of the polishes I used being Insta-dry! Hence why I only did the technique on one finger, rather than the full hand. I just wish I had got the sizes of the stripes a little more accurate, as some are much smaller than others.

The colours I used are MUA Plum Noir, Sally Hansen Grape Race and Sally Hansen Fuchsia Flare.
I also wanted to give a quick review of the MUA polish in this post. I had heard good things about them, so invested in two, Plum Noir and Frozen Yoghurt. I used Plum Noir in this mani, (the main base colour) and have to admit I was not very impressed. The polish was difficult to apply evenly and left lines on my nails from the brush which you may be able to see in some of the pictures. This was two coats, but really it needed at least another one, if not 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?