Purple Holo Flowers

One from the vault today! I had a different mani all planned for you, but I couldn't get the pics off my camera before I had to go to work :( So I'll postpone that til tomorrow.

This is a pretty little stamped mani I did a while back- actually way, way back! Before I had my camera, so you've got another set of dodgy iphone pics....you lucky things.

This is two coats of Color Club Fashion Addict (the holo version, booyah) stamped over with China Glaze Harmony from the Romantique Collection. The stamp was m73 from the Born Pretty fauxnads.

I just love the multicoloured holographic particles in this polish- I always think I prefer linear holos but then I see this and I prefer the scattered ones! There's so many different colours, it totally rocks out some rainbow effect.



And here's a cheeky little shot of Fashion Addict by itself. Don't you just love it when the bottle is a holo explosion?!

Fashion Addict on its lonesome

I loved this- it's not the most in your face manicure but it was so subtle and shimmery I couldn't stop looking at it. A work friendly pattern! Also, Fashion Addict gets additional love points for being holo under normal indoor lighting, not just in blazing artificial light. I live in Wales, where it rains solidly and overcast days are pretty much standard. Trying to get a decent swatch of a holo in natural light can leave you waiting months! This baby re-affirms my faith in holos.

Catch you later,

Alice

xXx

Snow days and Snowflakes

**APOLOGIES IN ADVANCE FOR CRAPPY IPHONE PICS!**

It's been snooooowing! Words cannot express how thrilled I was on the weekend when I poked my sleepy little head out of the curtains and saw snow everywhere! I was especially excited because Lola has never seen snow before and I knew she would love it. For the uninitiated, Lola is my incredibly mischievous little Shih Tzu. She’s a fluffy little teddy bear and I adore her, but she is also the bane of my polish fanatic existence. She strongly believes that I leave polishes around purely for her chewing past time, as the lids are just so damn tasty, and that swatch wheels and my £8 Konad stamp are her personal chew toys (FURY doesn’t even begin to express the sheer rage that happened when I found it!)

Anyway I digress- a snowy day needs a snowy mani! I sponged on different blue for gradients, then used my Konad white polish to stamp on various snowflakes, before topping it with a later of glitter polish to make it extra sparkly.

Like I said in the disclaimer, sorry for the bad iphone pics! They don't pic up the sparkly glitter very much which saddens me :(



What I used:

China Glaze First Mate

No. 7 Stand Back

Barry M Blue Moon

Miss Sporty glitter top coat

Bundle Monster plate BM14

Fauxnad plate M59



And just for shits and giggless here's me and Lola enjoying the snow!

snow day!

Hope everyone had a good weekend, even if there was no snow involved!

Tomorrow I've got something cute, yellow and very busy to tempt you with.....see you then hopefully!

Alice (and Lola)

xXx

Plaid Holo

Simple little mani for you peeps today!

I had an urge to do some stamping the other night (do you guys ever get that?) and I'd been eyeing up this plaid design for a while. It's number m60 from the fauxnad plates, and I used Konad special polish in white for the stamping.

mmm...sparkly holo

The base polish is Milani 3D Cyberspace- a lovely blue scattered holo. It's very thin, and has a tendency to flood my cuticules if I'm not being careful. It took a few coats to get a decent coverage. The pics here are with three generous coats. I find that these 3D polishes wear very thin on the tip quite quickly- after a day it seemed to just wear away, and this is with two coats of wrapped Seche. I had the same problem when I wore the Hi-Res pink version from this series too. Very odd!

blurry holo

Til next time,

Alice

xXx

MAC Pink Freeze, tips included!

Good afternoon my fellow polish mites!

More guest nails today (you've probably forgotten what mine look like!)

I really wanted to practise doing nail tip stamps on someone else other than myself, as it's really tricky. I've just about nailed it on my own nails, but trying to do it on someone else's is a right pain in the arse! It ends up sloping up towards the nail bed, I had to be really vigilant about keeping the stamper level.

The pink is MAC Pink Freeze, a really lovely frosted shade. Three coats for full opacity, then some Seche over for it to dry. I used Konad Special Polish in Blue to stamp, and then my Bundle Monster plate BM17. 

I'm pretty chuffties with the end result! I like the contrast of the colours and the vintage-esque pink. And seeing as I did her nail tips, my friend tipped me right back with some Konad stamping polish in black as a thankyou! So pleased, I can finally chuck that crappy Born Pretty smudgy black of doom!

Love to all,

Alice

xXx

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pretentious arty shot for luck



Stamping in the Buff

Greetings all!

Short but sweet post today- continuing my theme of guest nails!
I did my sister Lydia's nails over Christmas, and as she's a solicitor it needed to be something less OTT and more sophistated *puts away neon pink whilst softly weeping*

She decided on some pretty stamping, and I have to say I absolutely love what she chose. I never would have picked it out for a design myself but I LOVE the combo!

I used Boots No. 7 So Simple for the base, and then used about a million different plates for the stamps as she wanted a different design on every nail- Konad m2 and m3, fauxnad m20, and probably a few others too! I only had Born Pretty's stamping polish in black, and it wasn't the best to work with- I know from experience that it smudges really badly when you put your Seche Vite on, unless you give them an hour to thoroughly dry.



left hand

<> 

right hand

I didn't know I was capable of classy nails....!

Alice

xXx

Girly Bows

Just downloaded the Blogger App and I've got a feeling it's going to make my life a LOT easier! I'm so useless with updating my blog as my computer at home is sooooo slooooow and it's a massive amount of effort to do anything on it! Hopefully I'll be able to update more frequently now I've got a quick and simple way of doing it.

Just a quickie today- here's some cute little bows I did last week. I did the exact same manicure on my friend Carys a while ago and decided I needed them on my nails too!

I used China Glaze Something Sweet and stamped with my fauxnad plate M56 using Konad Blue Special Polish. They're so disgustingly girly I can't help but love them!

Til next time,

Alice

xXx

Drag-a-licious Pink Zebra Gradients

 I've been seeing a lot of gradient nails around with animal print stamped over them lately, and as I am a drag queen at heart I am LOVING them. I decided to go with bright, garish pink for mine (when in Rome!)

I love how simple these nails are to do- base coat, sponging, then a tad more sponging on the tips, stamping the zebra print then done! I really wanted to mattify this mani but unfortunately I don't have any mattifying polish :( Next payday it will be MINE though, I need it in my life. 

I used:

• Avon Viva Pink for the base
• sponged over that with from Sherbert Pink from George at Asda
• sponged China Glaze Shocking Pink on the tip 
• stamped fauxnad plate m57 with un-named black polish (officially the world's moat irritatingly PUNY sized full nail stamp, I had to double stamp nearly every nail on the sides!
• topped it off with Seche Vite (making it all shiny, boo, it would look so much better matte!)

Can I just mention how AWESOMELY NEON this CG Shocking Pink is- I use it in about 70% of all my manis because I love it so much and I want its little neon babies. You can see in the picture below how eye catching it is on the tips- and I took that photo on the left outside, at dusk, so there was hardly any light on it. And still it glows! Amazeballs.

Not gonna lie, the cleanup wasn't fun, as you can see from the pre-cleanup pics the sponging got a liiiiiittle bit messy......! Bit of acetone and it was all gravy though. I'm not completely thrilled with it- my top coat dragged the print slightly, and I REALLY need to get a proper black stamping polish to make the designs more opaque and less blah. But I guess practice makes perfect!

Thanks for reading, big love!

xXx



Bows and Presents

Hello all!

Apologies for my absence- I've been in Ireland all week doing a harp exhibition. Sounds glamorous? I thought it did....initially! But after a day of lugging huge heavy boxes around, unpacking harps, loading vans and rummaging through music shelves I realised there was no glamour involved whatsoever! I was so worried about breaking a nail, as I usually have a MAJOR break every time I've done an exhibition (I'm talking one of those split to the cuticle, six months to grow out and paying for it forever breaks) but I managed to avoid any major disasters. I did take a chunk out of my middle finger, and I've filed them all down to match, but there we go.

I did my lovely friend Carys' nails for her on the weekend- she's wanted a mani that made her nails look like presents for ages so I obliged! She also bought me a brand new Seche Vite (as I've been whining about mine being on it's last legs for weeks) and Barry M Cyan Blue! Fully aware that I am totally spoilt and have the bestest besties ever :) 

 I used Barry M Blue Moon for the base colour, which needed three coats to be opaque. I stamped with Konad Red Special Polish and fauxnad plate m56. It was an absolute nightmare stamping with this- the pink stamper made the red polish practically invisible, so I had to just guess where to put the stamp! Not the easiest when you're stamping on someone else, as well as trying to place the bows in the same position on all of her nails. 

Despite the faff, they came out lovely- j'adore the colour combo of the red and the pale blue, and I'm pretty impressed I managed to get the bows fairly even! And Carys loves them, so as long as I've got a happy customer I'm pleased.

I've got LOADS of manis to update on here, so I'm going to be good and aim to post every day until I'm caught up.....a hefty challenge for a laze like me, but I am determined!


Hope you've all had a good week,


Alice
xXx