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.

12 Days of Christmas: The Song

Today the prompt for the 12 days of Christmas challenge was the '12 Days of Christmas' song.

I have kept it quite simple and chosen the line '2 Turtle Doves'.

I started with two coats of Ciaté Mineral Clarity, which is such a gorgeous deep blue glittery texture polish. I then stamped the doves using George Natural White and this cute stamping plate from Born Pretty Store.

The doves don't stand out quite as much as I might have liked. The George white polish is not the best for stamping, but my favourite Barry M Matte White has thickened too much to use. I desperately need some polish thinner!

An InLinkz Link-up

Dragonball Nails

This week for the Llama Nails challenge the theme is Anime/Cartoon nails.
I wanted to try anime, although again it is not my sort of film. So I asked my boyfriend to name a good anime film, found out a bit about it from him and googled some images!

This is how it turned out! I actually quite like this. 

The polishes I used were Rimmel Golden Hour on my index finger, an unnamed H&M blue polish on my middle finger, Ciaté Amazing Gracie on my ring finger and Sally Hansen Sugar Coat Cherry Drop on my little finger and thumb. The rest of the details are acrylic paint.

An InLinkz Link-up

Yellow Quilting

Today I have done a Yellow mani, for the British Nails Bloggers Colour Me Crazy challenge.

I only own three yellow polishes as it is not a colour I wear very often. Like, at all!! I only really use them in Nail art.

For this mani I used Rimmel Sunny Days and Sally Hansen Sugar Coat Sweetie.

I decided to have a go at a quilted mani. I love the look of these but have been putting off trying it as I have a bad relationship with striping tape! Surprisingly, I managed OK with it today and I actually quite like how these turned out!

An InLinkz Link-up

Glitter, Glitter and More Glitter!!

So, I went a little overboard on the glitter today!! Used 4 different glitter polishes!

My mani is also different on each hand, as I got a bit carried away experimenting, but nevermind! 

So this is how I started out, on my left hand. I used a base colour of Sally Hansen Fucshia Flare. On most fingers this was followed by a coat of Pretty, Pink Polka Dot, which is a clear base with pink small and large hexagonal glitter. On my Index finger I tried to create a sort of glitter jelly sandwich! I did a coat of Pretty Scatter Effect, followed by a coat of Pretty Polka Dot Effect, followed by another coat of Scatter Effect!

I love how this finger turned out! 

 I then topped the whole thing with another glitter - Barry M Diamond.
Before doing my right hand I realised how similar the Pretty Scatter Polish looks to Barry M's White Sequin Effect Polish.

So of course, I had to test them out next to each other for a proper comparison. I haven't used the Barry M polish before, so can't compare with old pics! 

Turns out they are nothing like each other!! I hadn't realised the Barry M polish was textured. It was also more opaque than I expected and the overall outcome was not very nice!!

I removed all polish from that finger and started again. This time doing just 2 coats of the Barry M, without a base colour. It looks much better like this, but I'm still not keen on the texture. I'm just not a lover of textured polish in general.

Once again, I finished with a coat of Barry M Diamond.

Here are your left to right comparisons:

I think I actually prefer my right hand. Which do you prefer?

I seem to have waffled on an awful lot in this post today. Sorry about that, and well done if you made it this far!!!

Pretty Poppies

The sun is shining and it has inspired me to paint these nice, summery Poppies. :)

This is probably one of my favourite mani's I have ever done. I love it so much!

I used Sally Hansen Sugar Coat in Sweetie, as a base colour.
I then used a combination of Rimmel Right Royal Red, Rimmel Coralicious, Sally Hansen Red Hot and Barry M Papaya, to paint the poppies, using the different colours for shading.
Finally, I finished using Barry M Black and a very thin detail brush to do the outlines and centres before covering in a Barry M topcoat.