Taras Talons Order

Hey! Im a day late with this post. Sorry!

A few weeks ago you may know that indie polish maker Tara of Taras Talons had a sale on. Now, this is a brand I have been following on social media for a long time, however I have this little rule with myself that I will never buy a brand for the first time at full price... just in case!! So, of course I had to take advantage of this and buy a few to try.

I ended up with 6 of her polishes and this week I have managed to try out 3: 'Ol' Blue Eyes', 'Candy' and 'Fairy'.

First up was 'Ol' Blue Eyes'. As soon as I opened the parcels I needed to try this out! I am a sucker for a good blue polish and I found instant love with this polish!! It applied smoothly, opaque in two thin coats, is the most amazing electric blue AND it has a beautiful holo shimmer. 

Next I tried out 'Candy'. I loved this in the bottle and it applied well, again opaque in two coats which is great for such a light shade. However something about this polish didn't really do it for me. I think I expected some bigger pieces of glitter in there. I have nothing bad to say about the polish, it's just not a winner for me.

Finally we have 'Fairy'. Again, great application, becoming opaque in two coats. I didn't have to do much fishing for glitter in this which was good, though I did give it a good shake beforehand! This is another polish I really loved and can see myself getting a lot of wear from.

I did do some art over two of these polishes, but this post is going on a bit now so they can wait for another day! Or they are both already on Instagram if you want to check them out @nailsmustbepainted :) 

Catch-Up: Swatches

Over the past year there have been many times I have done my nails, photographed them, edited pictures then for whatever reason, not put them up here on this blog.
I want a fresh start in the new year, not to be uploading old pictures! So today I have a series of 3 posts where I am going to show you some of the nail art that never quite made it, for various reasons!

This first post is going to show you four swatches that never quite made it:

I love this picture and the polish (Make up Gallery, Scarlett Sparkle) is one of my favourites. It is a beautiful raspberry coloured gelly with tiny pieces of glitter. I would recommend anybody to go buy this! I love it so much!

This was never posted simply due to lack of time! Such a shame as it is so gorgeous!

This second swatch is H&M Blue Bliss, which is a glitter topcoat in a very pale blue gelly. I swatched this over lilac, blue, grey and black, though I don't remember what the polishes were! This picture was taken back in August, hence the pointed nails and I honestly don't think I have used the polish since, it didn't make a good first impression!

This third picture shows you Ciaté Baby Doll, which is actually a pastel pink, not orange as the poor photography appears, hence why this was never posted. Oh and no, I don't have green fingers either! Also, all my nails are different lengths and shapes. What was I thinking?!

The polish has a lovely matte 'porcelain' finish, however it chipped off within hours.

Finally, another that I love. This is an unnamed PS by Primark polish. It is a beautiful dark pink and gold textured holo polish. It is truly beautiful and the colours change completely in different lights.

This was also not posted due to poor photography, however I managed to find this one awkward looking, but salvageable picture.

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!

Sinful Colors: Savage

Anyone who follows my Facebook or Instagram will know that a few days ago I bought a new polish... Sinful Colors in the colour Savage which is a turquoise greeny colour.

I love the colour of this in the bottle and was excited to put it on my nails!

This is two coats.

But I got a shock when I put it on to find it was a matt polish. Why would they have no indication of this on bottle?! So strange! I don't own any other matt polishes as I always think if I want it matt, I will use a matt topcoat! I do prefer the colour of the polish in matt though. When I put topcoat on it seemed much greener.

As always, I added some nail art on top of this. I really wanted to try a tribal/aztec type design as I thought the colour lent itself to this, but at the same time I really didn't as my only ever previous attempt at this type of art was horrendously bad! If you REALLY want to you can see it here. But I'd really rather you didn't!!

So I decided to have a go but to try and keep it fairly simple and this is how it turned out! I used white acrylic paint for the pattern.

I actually quite like it. My lines are fairly straight and its not too busy! My right hand is not appearing today as I discovered I can't paint straight lines left handed! Although, I still think it's better than the previous attempt!!

I did try to add some glitter  to the stripes on one nail using Pretty Scatter effect polish, which I wish I hadn't done but apart from that I am pleased with it!

A little girl at the school I work at today told me my thumb and little finger looked like they had Christmas tree's on them!! I can see where she was coming from but no, they are not christmas trees!!

MUA Luxe: Luna

Today I bought the new MUA Luxe polish in Luna. My previous experiences with MUA have not been great, but I couldn't resist buying one to try as they looked so pretty!!

This is a glitter polish with hexagonal pieces in blue, white and lilac, glitter bars in black and white and very tiny, fine blue holographic glitter pieces.

This was the finished result. I swatched it on several different colours, to compare how it looked best and to ensure all the colour were visible on at least one of them!!

However, although the finished result was good, this is how it looked after one coat:

Not great. I applied a thin layer, but the glitter seems to stick to the brush. I found that the best way to apply was to not wipe the brush on the side of the bottle, just use it straight out. This meant that the polish was extremely thick and took an awful long time to dry. But, this is also the way to get the glitter!!

I do like the finished look of this polish but it has certainly not changed my thoughts about the quality (or lack of!) of MUA polishes.

I also took close-up photo's of the individual nails to make it easier to compare how it shows up on different coloured bases. It stands out the most on the grey and pale blue nails. The base polishes I used were: No Polish, just base coat, Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream, Barry M Silk Heather, Sinful Colours Cool Grey and Barry M Matt White.

OPI, Where Did Suzi's Man-Go?

Here is the next swatch from the OPI Brazil Copaca Babies Collection.
This is 'Where Did Suzi's Man-go?', which is a pale orangey crème.

I am in love with this colour! It's a really one off in-between type colour. I would say it's somewhere between pastel orange and peach. However, my boyfriend described it as Coral. I would say Coral is a bit pinker, but you get the point, this isn't really any particular colour!

As with the other OPI's in the collection, I found it applied quite streaky, needing 3 coats for an even, opaque finish. I have decided this streakiness might be something to do with the brush rather than the formula, as it doesn't seem to hold the polish very well and I find myself re-dipping between every stroke. However, I found this one dried smoother than the other two I have tried and has a much shinier finish. The picture is without topcoat.

I am much happier with this one than the first two. :) 

Hopefully the last one, 'Kiss Me I'm Brazilian' will be more like this too!

OPI: Next Stop... The Bikini Zone

Today I have swatched another of the OPI Brazil Copaca Babies Collection.

This time I have used Next Stop... The Bikini Zone. This was incredibly hard to photograph, so apologies for the pictures, they are not the best! The first is in natural light, the second in my light box.
This is a lovely, shimmery, duo-chrome polish which changes between silver and purple, depending on the light.

My biggest issue with this polish is that it took 4 coats to get to this opacity. And I'm still not completely happy with it, but I got bored!! I think it is probably one I am more likely to use as a topcoat, to add a bit of a shimmer to another colour.

When this first arrived I thought it looked very similar to a Barry M polish I already had called Dusky Mauve. However, putting them side by side I can see that the OPI is much more silvery.

On the nails there is a clear difference! The OPI is much lighter and has more of a shimmer to it, whereas the Barry M is a thicker consistency (this was only 1 coat), which is more of a brown colour with only a slight hint of purple in comparison.

I have had the Barry M several years, and can't say it's had much use, so hopefully I will use the OPI a little more often! It is definitely a prettier colour, but the thinness will put me off using it, as I tend to go for thicker, 1 or 2 coat polishes which don't take long to apply!

OPI AmazON... AmazOFF

These little beauties arrived earlier this week.

My first ever OPI polishes. Lets see if they live up to their popularity!

Today I have tried out AmazON... AmazOFF. In the bottle this looks like a very deep forest green type colour, which is similar on the nails.

I found this polish was quite thin. The first coat was rather streaky where the polish was so thin, meaning I had to do at least 3 coats. I did like the brush though. Quite often mini polishes have mini brushes, meaning it takes twice as long to apply, but the brush in these was a normal sized brush in a mini bottle. I love the colour and it dried nice and smooth and shiny, even without topcoat.

I'm not sure I'd pay the price for a full sized bottle of OPI from this swatch, but at £2 a mini bottle it's not too bad. Maybe the other colours will be better!

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!