Pick N Mix Nails Catch up post!

Apologies for my absence, the holidays are always super busy in the Painted Claws household.

Instead of doing a series of posts for my catch up manis for the 52 week challenge, I'm putting them together in one giant post!

Pick N Mix Week 1 - Teal / 2 Colour Gradient

My first post of the epic 52 week Pick N Mix challenge!

The prompts for the first week of the challenge are teal and 2 colour gradient. This being a pick and mix challenge, we get to mix up these prompts and use one or the other prompts - or both!

BarryM Textured Glitters - Countess, Duchess and Majesty

When I saw the two halves of BarryM's Autumn/Winter releases I nearly had an excitement based fit - one half was brown, nude, red and black matte polishes and is super awesome, chic and a good staple for the coming seasons. The other half was textured glitter polishes that are similar to the OPI Liquid Sand polishes in finish, except with a big helping of sparkle thrown in for good measure.

I picked up three of the five glitters in the collection - clockwise from top left in that image above is Countess, Duchess and Majesty - and here they are in all their sparkly and shiny glory.

Warning, post below the jump will be image heavy.

ER31DC Week 23 - Inspired by a Movie

Apologies for the massive lateness of this post, but I'm off on my holidays on sunday and last minute panic is in full swing in the Painted Claws household. And by that I mean my other half keeps telling me not to worry and I keep writing insane lists and losing things.

This mani was inspired entirely by Rachael over at Racho's Nail Love and one of the mani's she did for a recent challenge - Comic-Con Geek Week Day 3.

I love Stargate. I remember watching the film so many years ago and absolutely adoring it. I even had the video game for the Mega drive back in the mid-90s. I was terrible at it. But the thing that captivated me most and the one thing that ties all of the various versions together is the gate itself.

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.

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.

Tri-Polish Challenge May - Toy Soldiers

For some reason these nails really remind me of the toy soldiers off the Nutcracker and I really do not know why.

I've managed to use all 3 colours in all 4 of my looks for this month's tri-polish challenge. Go me.

Hello Kitty Magic Flow - Swatch & Nails

I've had a very busy weekend, lining up swatches and accidentally creating manis for myself when I got temporarily bored of swatching. Yesterday I managed to swatch 8 colours and create two full hand looks on top of two of those swatches, some of which you're gonna see here.

Now, normally if I'm gonna be wearing something other than just a flat colour for work I'd show you that today or tomorrow, however the design I'm sporting this week is part of my nails for this month's Tri-Polish Challenge over at Crumpet's Nail Tarts. More on that come the 21st.

The polish I've used for the base of this look is a Hits Speciallita Hello Kitty polish called Magic Flow. I bought this from the wonderful Sally Magpies at the end of last month and have only just gotten around to doing anything with it.

ER31DC Week 12 - Stripes

I love stripes. I'm actually really surprised that I haven't done more stripey manis on here, but then again I only have one roll of striping tape. I'm preserving it haha.

The base colour for this mani was given to me by my Chief Enabler, Rachael of Racho's Nail Love and is Orly Lola. I have a bit of an odd love for all things "offensively pink" as I like to term it, which is quite amusing as I'm not big on the whole girly thing.

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.

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.

Color Club Foiled Collection

These were brought over for me to play nice with by Rachael of Racho's Nail Love, as she wanted to see these against my skin tone. Rachel's skin is quite pinky toned and I'm much more on the yellower end of the skintone spectrum.

Rachael's post is here, so you can compare the two.

Warning - this post is very image heavy!

Look at the shine on that!

All pictures are two coats - I tried both with and without topcoat and it made little to no difference on the shine as they're insanely shiny on their own. Get out your sunglasses.

I have to say that the polish itself, in all colours, was a dream to put on. Almost completely opaque in one coat and fast drying, these are great colours to make an impact with - there's no way anyone will not notice these bad boys!

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!