Sunday, 30 June 2013

New Brand - Elevation Polish

I'm slowly but surely managing to break in to the joyous world of indie polishes, a world filled with delightful concoctions handmade by lovely ladies around the globe. I've already shown swatches of my very first indies - KB Shimmer's Where my Peeps at and Lottie Dottie - but now I've managed to branch out in to another brand.

Elevation Polish is made in the US by hand, and are mostly named after mountains due to the creator's love of climbing. As a result I can spell but not say most of the polish names properly!

Friday, 28 June 2013

ER31DC Week 18 - Half Moons

Ah, a blissfully easy week in the 31 day week challenge - half moons. Not really much I can say about half moons, except they always come with the biggest problem... what colours??!? I have a terrible habit of wearing colours that are either too similar (green and green, turquoise and teal etc etc) or ones that would sear the eyes out of a normal human being (offensive pink and super orange orange, as work by me to work this week).

For once, I ended up with something vaguely classy.

Wednesday, 26 June 2013

Swatched - Sinful Colors Kissy

I love teal. And blue. And green. I'm not sure if you've noticed.

When Sinful Colors launched over here I was like a kid in a candy shop - damn good polishes for only £1.99? Get in my shopping basket!

Then I spotted Kissy ... 

Monday, 24 June 2013

Fun With Glitter

As I was playing nice and trying to figure out what base colour & glitter combo to use for my 31 day challenge nails on saturday, I stumbled upon two polishes that I've never really used.

OPI's Thanks A Windmillion is a new purchase from the joy that is Fragrance Direct (OPIs for £3.99? How could I resist!) and is a beautiful pale sage green, wonderfully classy looking and pretty.
Orly's Halo is a super sparkly and super packed gold and silver glitter in a clear base that can easily be used as a full coverage polish - see this post for swatches of it and the other two polishes I got in the trio a few months back.
With one of these polishes being new and the other being a glitter, neither had really been used for anything yet, so I decided to stick 'em together and see what happened - classy, muted green with super bling gold-and-silver.

Long and the short of it - I think its amazing.

Saturday, 22 June 2013

ER31DC Week 17 - Glitter

I don't do glitter a lot, mainly because the cleanup is the biggest chore on the planet. I know there are solutions to this - PVA basecoats, fancy basecoats designed to make glitter removal easier, soaking in polish remover to get evrything off at once - but I'm lazy and impatient, haha. So sadly, this look didn't linger long on my nails.

Which is kinda a shame, because I quite liked it.

Wednesday, 19 June 2013

Swatched - W7 Golden Suede

There's been a lot of textured effect polishes out lately and I have to admit I'm not so fond of the trend. I wear tights to work and I manage to slaughter enough of them with smooth nails, never mind textured ones! I found the W7 suedes to be less on the textured side and more just delightfully matte, which is totally awesome.

Saturday, 15 June 2013

ER31DC Week 16 - Tribal Print

I managed to get the last of the new BarryM summer Gellies last weekend, so I figured what better way to break all five of them in then in a tribal print?

Friday, 14 June 2013

Stormy Skies & Raindrops

I loved the MUA Stormy Skies polish so much I decided to use it in a mani with my new rhinestones I snagged myself from eBay.


Stormy skies aren't something we've seen a  lot of lately, thanks to an odd occurrence of actually warm weather turning up when its actually supposed to.

Wednesday, 12 June 2013

Swatched - MUA Stormy Skies

Its such a shame that the MUA polishes only come in teeny little bottles, because I'd really love a full sized bottle of this.

Stormy Skies is a black/dark charcoal gray polish with a slight golden shimmer, kinda like a black counterpart to last week's Dutch you just love OPI... but 1/10th the RRP. MUA polishes retail for just £1, which is super cheap, especially when the polish is decent quality.

Sunday, 9 June 2013

ER31DC Week 15 - Delicate Print

Apologies for the slightly late-ness of these, this mani was ready to go yesterday but I trapped a nerve in my neck and rendered my right arm useless.

Yeah, I'm not big on delicate stuff. All a bit girly for me. So today's challenge of a delicate print was immediately de-girlified by the fact that I chose rather non girly colours.

Friday, 7 June 2013

Nail Art - Doctor Who

I'm a nerd. A fairly big nerd, I think.

I like anime, sci-fi, fantasy, pretty much everything nerdy. From Sailor Moon to Tolkien via Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

So when I heard the news last week that Matt Smith was no longer going to be playing The Doctor as of Christmas coming. And I was a little sad, because Matt Smith was a good Doctor.


Warning: Post ahead is very picture & .gif heavy. I'm totally not joking.

Wednesday, 5 June 2013

Swatched - Dutch you just love OPI?


I do indeed love OPIs. What I don't love, however, is their RRP. £11 for polish??!? Lordy. At that price I'd only own one or two, if I was feeling expensive that month.

So when I found a local stall selling OPIs for £3.99, I lept at the chance.

One of the beauties that I picked up was 'Dutch you just love OPI?' which, despite its mildly silly name, is a wonderful medium purple with a gentle golden shimmer.


Saturday, 1 June 2013

ER31DC Week 14 - Flowers

Last week's flowery stamping has come in useful - I don't read ahead for this challenge, I just do the weeks as they pop up and thus this is a fabulous coincidence.

My favourite flowers are Cherry Blossoms.



They're so pretty, and delicate. And when they drop from the trees the look like pretty pink snow.