Swatched - Nails Inc Emerald Street

As you may or may not know, Pantone voted Emerald Green as 2013's Colour of the Year. I was over the moon at this because I love green, but I've been searching for the perfect green for months now.

I came across Emerald Street in a blog sale last week and I knew I had to have it.

ER31DC Week 31 - Redo!

Well, the last week of the Extra Relaxed 31 Day Challenge is upon us, and this one was quite difficult. I didn't quite know what to redo.

The other half suggested tribal, but to be honest I nearly wept tears of blood after how long it took to do the first one. Then I was thinking glitter or polka dots... until I remembered I'd not done a gradient mani in an absolute age. I love gradients. Not so massively fond of the cleanup afterwards, but I have a new bottle of pure acetone on my desk that says that isn't going to be a problem any more.

Swatched - Nails Inc Symons Street

I love teal - its a combination of my two favourite colours. I have never met a teal I don't like.

This polish is no exception.

Symons Street is a metallic teal which is now discontinued by Nails Inc - I managed to get it a couple of months ago when they put quite a few sets in to their 'Get it or Regret it' section of the website. This is also how I managed to get hold of a Albert Place, a polish which has rapidly become one of my favourite blues.

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!

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!

More New Polish!

As you may have guessed by now, I'm totally hooked on scouring for polish bargains. Mostly they're coming from Poundland and Poundworld, as they seem determined to sell every bottle of Sally Hansen ever made for £1 each. This makes me incredibly happy as they were still selling the Complete Salon Manicure range in Boots for £6.99 last time I checked.

I've bought far too much in the last week.

For the grand total of £24, I've managed to get myself Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Black Platinum, Gilty Pleasure, Grass Slipper, Calypso Blue, and Green Tea; BarryM in Foil Effects Silver, Peach Melba, Teal, Tnagerine and Gelly Watermelon; also Rimmel 60 Seconds in Sky High (to replace a bottle I had ages ago that seperated badly), Rimma Lycra Pro in Aqua Cool and Revlon Hot for Chocolate. My other half, like a complete sweetheart, sneakily bought me a bottle of Essie Bahama Mama as I've been eyeing up the colour for absolutely months but I'm far too cheap to pay full price for a bottle of Essie.

New Polish

Instead of going shopping for something useful yesterday, like snow boots or a super warm jacket, but instead I went to TK Maxx and Poundland and bought more polishes.

These three were £1 each from the pound shop. I've gotten quite a few of the Sally Hansen polishes lately from there - 7 Insta-Dri and 3 of the Complete Salon Manicure.

I also managed to find something entirely fabulous in TK Maxx, although it was slightly more than £1...