NOTD- Extending a lovely manicure!

Well, this is my first go of kind of gradient nails, these are nowhere near as good as the gradients I have seen with block colours! 

But I loved A Englands Lady Of The Lake so much that when I got tip wear I really didn't want to take it off so decided to add some glitter, then thought I would try gradient!

The gradient is lower than I wanted as I didn't find the best way to do this until my second hand so I went back and did it again! I used China Glaze Prism for the tips and it was so thick that the nest way for the gradient effect was to do it from the tips and drag down so the glitter disperses down the nail

This was my favourite nail! Rubbish shot as it was on my right hand and camera skills with my left hand are not my forte!

Excuse my ravaged skin, can't seem to find any cream or oil to help!

A England polishes are available from http://a-england.co.uk/ and China Glaze from http://www.amazon.co.uk/China-Glaze-Prismatic-Glitters-Holographic/dp/B0071JE27A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345330010&sr=8-1

This was a great way to extend my mani, even if it was a pickle to remove, but that is all to be revealed in my next post......

A Little Bit of Fun!

Hello! As its the summer holidays here I thought I would do a little fun post! Emmy is not allowed nail polish at school (quite right!) so when it is the holidays she is always on at me to do her nails, so here is Emmy getting her nails did! After her mani/pedi she had to sit still for a fair while, not easy when you are 5!

Matching mummy and Emmy pedi! Done with A England Tristam

Matching A England Lady Of The Lake mani!

Also thought I would show you my new improved storage system, I moved all my recipe books to make room! 

Top from left to right is Drug Store brands, Color Club and Leighton Denny (the square bottles fit great!) Chona Glaze, Ciate, Orly, Zoya, Nails Inc, A England, Funky Fingers and Finger paints and the last box is purely OPI!

Bottom row left to right, mini's of all sorts of brands, treatments inc topcoats, base coats, cuticle oil, drying drops and sparkly topcoats, last box is for files, cuticle sticks and bits and bobs :)

It works very well but can't wait to get proper storage when I move!

NOTD A England - Lady Of The Lake

Hello! Today's nail comes courtesy of A England, had been wanting to try these for a while so when a fab promotion came about I decided to get a couple!

This is the beautiful Lady Of The Lake, I only did a mani the day before but that was promptly removed to try this gorgeous shade!

This is a gorgeous purple with a subtle holographic shimmer, it is insanely beautiful and I had it on until I got tip wear then did a glitter gradient over the tipwear so I could keep it on longer!

The application was effortless, 2 coats for full opacity and the holo effect was not dulled by the topcoat

The next two pictures show the holo well, look and drool

Overall this will definitely not be my last purchase, I have 8 in my wishlist! Uh oh!

Lady Of the Lake is £9 and available from http://a-england.co.uk/

NOTD OPI - DS Bold

Morning lovely followers! I would say thank goodness it's the weekend but being a stay at home mum, and it being the summer holidays the days all meld into one!

Today I have another polish from the much loved and rather expensive OPI Designer Series!

This here is Bold, a red polish with red and silver glitter, when I say glitter I mean this is loaded with the stuff!

On my skin tone I felt this pulled pink rather than red but that may also be the silver glitter making it less of a full on red

This truly sparkles in the sun, in fact it sparkles all the time but in the sun it really is a glitter bomb!

Application was so so, the glitter made it drag so had to load the brush quite well, I also had to run my finger across the free edge of my nail to clear the poky bits of glitter hanging off the end!

Removal wasn't too bad, the tin foil method had it off in 5 minutes per hand but I did have to scrape off a few stubborn bits of glitter that refused to budge otherwise!

I got this with my much loved Magic polish from the lovely http://www.buyapowa.com/ but honestly I would not pay £16.75 a bottle for this on its own. I thought that compared to some of the other amazing DS shades that this seemed to feel more like a regular OPI polish!

Bold is available from http://www.lenawhite.co.uk/store/designer-series/bold

More Feet inside - an update on my file!

You may remember I got sent a foot file to test and I shockingly added pictures of my most hated body part here. I hate all feet bar babies so heaven knows how I will cope when I qualify to do pedicures, gah!

Anyway enough of that, on to the file ! I think this did a great job, it got rid of the hard bits, scraggly bits and all I have problem with now is dry feet but I didn't use moisturiser as I wanted to give this a shot on its own to test its effectiveness.

The worst bit of hard skin I get is on my ball, never got this until years of dancing on hard floors and it never went away, but with regular filing it has gone!

Overall I am really impressed with the file, it will last a long time and only needs a rinse under water to get it back to full effectiveness. 

My file was sent to me for review and all views are my own, you can purchase them from http://www.design-glassware.com/luxury-edition-nail-files/969-crystal-file-foot-365-2.html

Well worth it and check out the rest of the beautiful crystal adorned things such as compact mirrors, tweezers, keyrings and even brushes!

NOTD China Glaze - Ruby Pumps

Afternoon lovelies, hope you are having a great weekend! Crazy times here, end of term for my kids, night out on Friday which resulted in a huge hangover hence why this post is a day late!

Today I bring you a pretty festive polish, one that I have wanted for ages!

This is one of China Glaze's most popular and well known polishes and its easy to see why.....

This is a cool toned red base packed with red glitter, although I think there must be silver glitter in too as when this stared to wear off my nail had silver glitter on my nail!

This is the perfect red for my skin tone and I adored this colour, especially in the sun when it really came to life! I imagine this will be featured as a mani for the festive season, unless there are new releases to feed my habit!

Ruby Pumps is a perfect little polish, hardwearing, opaque in 3 coats, average drying time and tip wear only evident after 5 days

China Glaze is only available on the interweb unless you know of any salons that stock it, I got mine from Raven Cosmetics

NOTD- Color Club Fashion Addict

Ever get a nail polish and googles swatches online? I do and in this instance I wish I hadn't!

When I got this I thought it was midly holographic and it looked similar to an OPI DS I have blogged on here, but no, the holo isn't as strong and did not match the google images.

Of course then I found out this is like OPI My Private Jet all over again! Some Holo, some not so

Clearly mine is a not so holo one! Although after wearing this for 3 days and finally getting the sun to take some pictures I was actually surprised by the small amount that did show up since this is pretty flat in grey daylight!

I tried my hardest to bring out the subtle holo shimmer as the next three pictures show! But alas this was a nightmare to photograph!

As you can see this is a pretty flat lilac polish in the regular light and to be honest I found it a little bit boring!

Application was good, no brush problems and no dragging, this was 3 coats as even though it wasn't particularly holo I still got very very annoying bald patches, which are evident on my middle and ring finger in the picture above even though I did three coats!

I got my polish in a swap but you might be lucky on ebay and get one, even the holo one if you are REALLY jammy! Also keep eyes peeled in TK Maxx as they sometimes do the sets in there, I myself have not been so lucky :( but I still go when feeling flush just in case! True polish addict eh?!