Pokemon Challenge Week 15

The final week of the Pokemon Challenge! I'm a little bit sad, to be honest, because I absolutely loved this. Also I'm about to finish the very first nail art challenge I started!

Week 15 is dragon type, which doesn't leave much choice in Gen 1 - we've got Dratini, Dragonair or Dragonite. So I decided to go for the middle child - Dragonair.

I don't quite understand the evolution from Dratini to Dragonite - it starts off kinda looking like a big worm, gets all super graceful and water-snakey... then turns in to a massive dinosaur? Hey-ho. I suppose its Pokemon, it doesn't have to make sense, haha.

Swatched: Pretty & Polished Tomboyish

I'm gonna say this in advance - pardon the slightly shoddy photography on this swatch. Pretty & Polished Tomboyish is a heat sensitive colour changing polish, and my body temperature would not sit still the day I had this on my nails.

Tomboyish is part of Pretty & Polished's temperature sensitive range of polishes, which changes from forest green when cold to an incredibly pretty pastel blue (when I finally managed to warm my hands up).

ER31DC Week 8 - Metallic

This week, I've gone for a colour combo I've not seen used much - brown and gold.

With it being metallic week I figured I'd have to include either silver or gold in my mani, but after that I was a little stumped. Silver is usually my go-to colour for anything metallic, so I went for gold to try and push myself out of my usual comfort zone of colours... then I sat and stared at my stash for ages. I have reds, pinks, greens... but none of them grabbed my attention. I'd used them all before or they didn't quite look good sat next to gold, until I opened my purple/brown drawer and pulled out one of my as-yet-untried Sally Hansen polishes - Coco-a-go-go from the Insta Dri range.

I'm quite a fan of brown as colour, and as soon as I sat it next to my chosen gold (Ciate's Sand Dune, one of my Marie Claire Freebies) all I could think about was chocolate. I was sold.

Pokemon Challenge Week 14

I'm far too excited about this week to produce justification of my pokemon choice. There ain't enough Ghost pokemon to have much of a choice from in the first generation, but they're all awesome anyway so it doesn't matter.

GHASTLY!

Swatched: Orly Viridian Vinyl

On one of my many rambles through eBay I stumbled across a couple of Orly polishes being sold off consistently cheaper than others. Whats wrong with these polishes I asked myself.

The Answer? Not a sausage. This is Viridian Vinyl, a gorgeous teal that claims to be matte but as you can see it comes out as a more rubberized finish than truly matte.

BarryM Nail Art Pens

When I saw that BarryM were releasing a line of nail art pens I was over the moon. I have shaky hands with a brush, and doodling on your nails with a little pen is miles easier. I remember having nail art pens when I was younger that had an almost needle like point, and I remember finding them quite easy to use.

The BarryM pens are slightly different, with tips that are more like felt tip pens. When you first get them you have to pump the nib like a metallic pen to get the polish flowing, but after that you just doodle all over your nails to your heart's content.

I got black, white and silver, but there is also a pink available

I have to say that they work slightly better on matte nails than shiny, mainly because the matte surface gives them more to grip on to then the smooth finish of a gloss polish.

As you can see on the picture, I graffiti'ed on my nice black and white 31 day challenge nails to try these out on the various finishes. The lines are lovely and thin and (to me anyway) much easier to control than a brush.

Expect to see lots more of these pens coming soon, I absolutely love them! I really hope they bring out a couple more colours (blue/turquoise please if anyone is listening!)

Please note I didn't receive these for review, I bought them when I really shouldn't have because I'm on a no-buy! Hahaha!

ER31DC Week 7 - Black and White

This is a terribly conveniently timed week. I am over the moon.

I live in Newcastle Upon Tyne, where the local religion is football (or soccer to any Americans). Twice yearly we must vanquish the savages from the next city, and the next fixture is sunday.

Newcastle United play in black and white stripes, so my nails this week are dedicated to my football loving other half and his religion.

Pokemon Challenge Week 13 - Rock

Because I am Queen of the derpy looking pokemon (judging by my previous choices), I totally couldn't resist doing another odd choice for rock week....

Look at those eyes, how could I not paint that vacant little face?

...Omanyte! Handily, Rock/Water type, which allowed me to test out my latest Sinful Colors buy - Savage, a matte blue.

Pokemon Challenge Week 12 - Ice

A week late, but last week's attempt wasn't fit to be shown to humans and then work got in the way. This weekend I have a long weekend, so I figured I'd better get them done eventually.

Didn't do so great.

Last week I tried Dewgong. This time I tried to go for Cloyster.  Didn't do very well on either run.

Background is Sinful Colors Snow Me White, topped on four out of five fingers with an un-named glitter from a Color Club pack of minis. Cloyster is painted in Revlon No Shrinking Violet, BarryM Grey and Models Own Pro Jack's Black.

There are no close ups, I'm not proud of this one.

Swatched - KBShimmer's Where My Peeps At?

I've been wanting this polish since I saw the first reviews of it come out and I think I nearly exploded with joy when,. come last pay day, Harlow & Co. actually had it in stock.

Clearly it was fate.

So I also splashed out on Lottie Dottie as well, just to say thank you to fate, and also because I really wanted that too. I'm terrible when payday rolls around. No self control. Oh well.

Where My Peeps At? is a beautiful lemon yellow creme-jelly base, full of glitter in pink, blue and green rounds, along with accompanying fine specks.

Ciate Marie Claire Freebies - Pocket Money and Sand Dune

Perusing the magazine section in my local Asda a couple of days ago and I happen upon the May issue of Marie Claire. I don't normally read fashion magazines - I'm what people would politely term "plus size", haha - but I do like to have a nose and see what freebies are on offer. Thats how I got my first Nails Inc polishes after all.

This month's freebie with Marie Claire is one of two full size bottles of Ciate, in either Pocket Money...

... or Sand Dune.

ER31DC - Week 6 - Purple

Week 6 already!

With the colours in the first few weeks of this challenge I'm trying to do manis and styles that I've not really tried (or succeeded at!) before. SO, I humbly present....

In artificial light...

... my first ruffian.

I have no idea why I've never actually done this before. Its not even like its difficult, especially if you use tip guides. I do have the terrible feeling that it'd be a massacre if I tried to freehand these.

... and in natural light! We've been allowed to see the sun!

The polishes used were Sinful Colors Snow Me White for the base, with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Grape Escape for all but the ring finger, which is Sinful Colors Verbena. Grape Escape is an amazing, deep purple which is that opaque in only one coat. Its awesome!

Swatched: OPI's Austin-Tatious Turquoise

In what may be a never ending quest to swatch all of my stash, next up is OPI's Austin-tatious Turquoise. I love teal-y colours, and this is an absolutely amazing metallic teal.

There are a few problems with this polish however.

It goes on very sheer and streaky. The pictures here are just the polish itself on top of my clear base coat, but it took about five thick-ish coats to get it this opaque. Each coat went on streaky and even at five coats I still had the slightest hint of VNL.

Also it stains. After I removed this, despite my basecoat being fabulous and stopping everything else I own from staining, my nails were horribly yellowed. I only had it on for a couple of hours too! If you're aiming for this colour, I'd say either go for a super heavy duty basecoat, or go for a different polish all together. BarryM do a delightful almost dupe called (unsurprisingly) Teal - I'll swatch and compare that next week.