Nails Inc Lucky Dip

Nails Inc sent me a delightful email last Thursday night - Friday, it proclaimed, was to be a lucky dip sale. 7 Nails Inc polishes from a selection of either Special Effect, Metallic or regular polishes for only £18.

I nearly had an aneurysm. I snapped up one of the regular lucky dips, which brightened my Monday by arriving super fast!

I love Nails Inc polishes - up until now I only had the three, two of which were snagged from giveaways with Glamour magazine and the other which I got for free when I signed up to the Nails Inc VIP program. The two polishes free with Glamour were Motcomb Street. a super dark navy (almost bordering on black) and Elizabeth Street, which is baby pink. My freebie for joining the VIP program (which is totally worth the £5 yearly fee - everyone should check it out) was Blenheim Terrace, another dark blue which I can only really describe as "like TARDIS blue, but a bit darker". Lovely colour, more things should come in TARDIS.

So, my 7 new polishes arrived, putting my total stash up to 118!

Left to right these beauties are...

• Keats Grove, a rich red-brown
• Gosfield Street, another shade of TARDIS
• Marble Arch, a pink-lavender-ish shade
• Walton Place, full on Barbie pink
• Westchester, a rich dark red
• Parliment Hill, concrete grey but without the horrid texture
• And last but not least Covent Garden, another dark shade of TARDIS

I'll try to get these swatched in the coming weeks, even though a couple of the colours aren't really my usual thing. This was the reason for getting the lucky dip though - force me out of my colour comfort zone. Who knows, I might end up loving every single one of them!

Totally regretting not getting a metallics dip though.

My first gradient

I've never done a gradient before. I've stared at the fabulous tutorial on The Nailasaurus god-knows-how-many-times and thought "I'll do that... at some point. Maybes." Because I am a lazy wuss who is disappointed by anything less than perfection first time.

So, I figured I'd do a subtle gradient on a polish I'd not used yet - Essie's Bahama Mama!

Sponged over top of my ring finger is a lovely muted bronze polish from Sleek called 'Truffle' which actually looks a lot more subtle in real life than it does in these photos. 

I adore both polishes, both Bahama Mama and Truffle, as they both go on quite easily and give wonderful colour. Bahama Mama is difficult to clean up however, as I found last night when I did these and had to scrub my cuticles when my hand slipped! They're still not totally clean on the middle finger.

New BarryM Gellys

The new BarryM Gelly Hi-Shine colours came out Feb 13th in Superdrug - Lychee, Greenberry, Papaya and Dragonfruit. Being not the biggest fan of pinks I opted out of buying Dragonfruit, a bubblegum-pink shocker, and picked myself up the other three. I was massively excited to use them in a mani... and then never really got around to it.

I've used Lychee plenty in my Pokemon Challenge nails, its a beautiful beige-cream colour and perfect for quite a few pokemon, but I've finally gotten around to using my favourite of the lot - Greenberry.

Greenberry is a beautiful light green-y turquoise - not as blue as it appears in the pic above - that dries to a super high shine like the rest of the Gelly range. It goes on quite streaky at first but soon evens out, and would be perfect on the second coat if laid on slightly thickly.

I was originally going to substitute Lychee for Papaya, which is the coral orange/pink, but as much as I love the colour I couldn't bring myself to not use Lychee. Might try some sort of gradient with them tomorrow for work?

Perfect summery solution to the completely unexpected three inches of snow that fell today. I really should watch the weather forecast more...

Done with BarryM Gelly Greenberry, Lychee on my ring finger and LA Colours Art Deco in Black for the stripe.

Pokemon Challenge Week 6

I couldn't resist doing Snorlax for my normal pokemon week. It was either him, jigglypuff or ditto and they got scrapped as I couldn't cope with that much pink on my nails and Ditto came out looking just the tiniest bit creepy haha.

There will be no pictures of creepy ditto.

Orly Naughty & Nice Collection

I proclaimed myself on a new polish ban last week, then promptly went and broke it by going in to Tk Maxx and finding more bargains than I had money for - damn you, last week before payday.

I love red polish - I have quite yellow toned skin so I can get away with wearing most shades of red. So I rampaged ahead and swatched it - glitters and all!

Pokemon Challenge Week 5

Its that tome of the week again - Pokemon Challenge time!

This week the type is flying, so I went for the most unlikely of flying types... doduo! It doesn't even have wings!

Doduo, the Twin Bird Pokémon. It runs faster than it can fly.

Probably because I have no idea how it would fly.

New polish

This week's haul is actually a lot larger than this post, thanks to a saturday morning spent shopping with my biggest enabler, Rachel from Racho's Nail Love, but I'm focusing on my favourite two new polishes - NYC In a New York Minute in Park Avenue and Revlon Sweet Nothings in Nude Nightie.

Park Avenue is a lush cool, neutral brown which goes on quite streaky and thin at first, but rapidly thickens up with another coat. The polish is super quick drying which is a complete must for me - I'm terribly impatient with my nails and have a nasty tendency to ruin mani's within about half an hour because I've gone to bed or sat on my hands or something equally silly.

The Revlon Sweet Nothings is only on my ring finger in these images - its a delightful, sheer and shimmery topper which looks a pale lemony yellow in the bottle. It isn't until you get it on top of a colour that it gets interesting; the pale yellowy colour pretty much disappears, leaving behind a polish base colour that is slightly lighter but covered with a cute pink shimmer.

The flash really shows up the shimmer on the topper, and the neutral tone of the Park Avenue below it.

Pokemon Challenge Week 4

Bug type week!

I'm not a great fan of bug type Pokemon - being that my starter Pokemon is usually fire-type they tend to be crushed underfoot quite easily when encountered in-game. And when they're not crushed easily, they irritate the life out of me with their status affects and such.

So the choice for this week was simply a case of - what isn't massively difficult and what do I have the colours for? Which turned out to be...

Venonat!

Sort of Skittles

One of my favourite colour combinations is gray and assorted brights - usually bright yellow or bright blue. Think Swedish flag and school-uniform gray and you're right there. I'm also becoming terribly fond of orange as a colour, which is something I've avoided like the plague up until now. I'm also fond of a mixture of gloss and matte finishes - this is something I've always had a weakness for. Show me a video game box that is both matte and shiny and I'll go mental for it.

Blue & Gold

I've not gotten any new polishes this week.

Well, strictly that's not true. I've not bought any new polishes this week. I was, however, gifted some by the fabulous Rachel of Racho's Nail Love as she had two bottles of a Sally Hansen Complete Manicure in Thinking of Blue and she'd bought me Rimmel 60 Seconds in Torrid which is a beautiful dark metallic/shimmery red.

Even better than the two gifts to keep was the fact that Rachel came over for the afternoon and brought her entire polish box.

Her collection completely dwarfs mine. I mean, I thought I was bad with my three little plastic drawers full, but that's nothing on Rach and her humongous box of polish and nail art supplies. Topcoats, base coats, polishes, glitters, indie's, US brands like China Glaze and OPI, brushes, studs... the contents of that box were pretty much endless.

In amongst the boatloads of expensive foreign polish, however, was a bottle of Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure The Sky's The Limit. I've got most of the Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure range thanks to the wonder that is Poundland (or Poundworld, I can never remember which) but this sky blue is an absolutely amazing colour. Its very summery, and I could really do with some summer right now!

Pokemon Challenge Week 3

Water pokemon!

I'm a bit later than usual with this one, as normally I get it done on a Friday night as that means I can get at least another two manis in saturday and sunday - my teen years playing instruments have drilled in to me necessity for regular practice for everything, even if I can barely remember how to play my saxophone.

And so, on to week 3 - water type pokemon!

Shellder!