Nude Polka Dots & Bows

So I posted this mani a few days ago on Instagram and although it's extremely simple and easy to do, I received quite a lot of positive feedback.

The base colour is Color Club Best Dressed List, a warm caramel toned nude. I've been wearing quite a lot of nude polish lately. I just love how elegant it looks. I stamped using Born Pretty plate m59 and white polish. If you would like to buy any Born Pretty products, you can use discount code VA7J61 for 10% off.

Sorry about my upside down watermark in that last picture. Just noticed I rotated it after watermarking! Lol!

Thanks for readings :)

I'm Still Here...With a Bunch of Swatches!

Hi guys! Yep, so I'm checking in to let you know I'm still around. Sorry I've been MIA lately and haven't been updating my blog often. Sometimes life just happens, I've been extremely busy lately and probably won't be able to post as often as I'd like to.

Although I haven't had a lot of time or patience for nail art, I have been painting my nails regularly (can't stand the sight of my naked nails, lol!) and I've been posting all those pictures on Instagram. My IG name is '@nailstories', if you have an account you can follow me there too :)

Here are some of the polishes I've been wearing for the past few weeks. Apologies about the quality of the pictures, I don't use Photoshop or crop pictures before posting on Instagram.

Butter London - The Black Knight

Jade Holographic - Rosa (sent to me by Bia)

Nails Inc - Baker Street & Essence Prince Charming

OPI - It's My Year

Tip Top Nails - Fairy Dust & Nubar Violet Sparkle

Homemade gold leaf top coat (sent to me by @bedizzle)

The Hungry Asian - Strawberry (sent to me by @nic_tchelly)

Essie - Brooch The Subject

Essie - Splash of Grenadine & OPI Crown Me Already

Color Club - Glitter Wonderland

Thanks for visiting
xxx

Olympia Beauty Show Haul

Today I was lucky enough to be able to go to the Olympia Beauty Exhibition. Well, depends which way you look at it, considering the damage to my credit card! If you are a nail polish hoarder or beauty junkie, this place is like heaven! There were so many pretty polish stands, I didn't know where to turn!

Everything was so clean and neat on the Essie and OPI stands, they were both packed with people browsing and grabbing bottles but the crowds and queues weren't as bad as I thought they would be. OPI had the entire Skyfall collection in stock apart from The Man With The Golden Gun which I wanted to badly but the lady said they sold out about 1 hour after the doors opened!

Here's some of the stuff I bought:

Skyfall Collection:. L-R: On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Live And Let Die, Casino Royale, You Only Live Twice.

Some other OPI's I was lemming. L-R: Hot & Spicy, Pirouette My Whistle, You Callin' Me A Lyre?, Don't Pretzel My Buttons, Every Month Is Oktoberfest.

OPI was selling for £5.80. Some of the American girls on Instagram were shocked at this "discounted" price as that is what they would usually pay normal price. However, OPI is very expensive in the UK and there are hardly any sales ever, so this is an awesome price for us.

Color Club In True Fashion and some of the Winter Affair 2012 Collection. L-R: Gift of Sparkle, Winter Affair, Glitter Wonderland, Berry And Bright, Editorial.

Some random China Glaze lemmings (Lubu Heels, Ruby Pumps, I Herd That and the only 2 that caught my eye from the Wicked Halloween 2012 collection - Cast A Spell and Make A Spectacle.

L-R: Throw Me Something Purple Please, Uptown Glamour, That's My Little Secret, BreakAway, Indescribable.
Misa was selling for £2 so I grabbed these. I really like Misa and it's really difficult to get our hands on this brand in the UK!

L-R: Night Sparkle, Hieroglyphys Purple, Stylish Peacock, Lavender, Beaute, Twlight Kiss. Nubar was 6 polishes for £20.

To be completely honest, Cuccio is a brand I have never heard of but they did have a vast array of colours on their stand. I couldn't help getting some of these nudes and pinks. The formulas look very good, we'll see.

Phew! I'd been saving up for a while when I found out I had a ticket to this event! It is well worth saving up for if you stick to a budget throughout the rest of the year! This obviously means I won't be buying anymore polish for a very long time!

Golden Leaf

I'm back to stamping! It seems like ages since I last stamped but in fact, it's only been a couple of weeks! That's the kind of relationship I have with stamping, I can do it for four manis in a row and then go months without touching my plates! You probably wouldn't believe if I told you that 60% of my plates still have the blue cover sticker on them :(

Anyway, last night I dusted them off and stamped with BM210 and Barry M Gold Foil over Color Club Alias which I received in a swap. I also added some thin french tips (and had a bit of an accident with my pointer).

I completely forgot to take pictures of Alias on it's own, I was watching Glee and got a bit distracted. Alias, from Color Club's Alter Ego collection, is an amazing multichrome but it's so hard to capture all the colour shifts on the nail. I want that bottle look on my nails!!!

Nude on Nude

Today's mani was inspired by one of my IG friends, Nicole. If you have an IG account, check out her amazing manicures, she is super talented and her nails are gorgeous (@nic_tchelly). Nicole also sent me a bunch of amazing goodies from Hawaii which I can't wait to share with you, Color Club Love'Em/ Leave'Em being one of them.

Love'Em/Leave'Em is such an unexpected holo because it's a nude! I don't have any other nude holo in my stash so this is a perfect addition! The holo effect is subtle which adds to how delicate and classy the polish looks. The pictures below are only one coat so I think this polish has very good coverage. It also applied like butter, no aqua base coat needed!

I took the "nude" theme all the way through to the mani as well and decided on a nude half moon mani with copper coloured loose pieces of hex glitter which I stuck along the half moon line.

Thanks for reading and commenting!

Retro Dots

Time for some polka dots! I just love everything about polka dot manis. They always look great and are extremely quick and simple to do with no major drying time between layers.

This is the last mani I did before I went on holiday, thus the reason my nails were still short. I haven't filed them right down in a while so they are quite long at the moment. I guess I'm giving the long nail look another go, until I break one, scratch myself or do something idiotic like that.

I went a bit crazy with the dots for this mani. I just started layering smaller dots over larger dots and when I finished, maybe because of the colours I used, it looked quite retro to me. I used Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream as my base colour and for the dots I used Color Club Best Dressed List and OPI Alpine Snow.

Here is what Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream looks like on it's own! It's such a gorgeous blue. In fact, I really like all the colours in the Barry M Ice Cream collection.

In the nude: Colour Club Best Dressed List

Today I opted for a little less colour and went for a warm nude tone.
Best Dressed List from Color Club is from their Spring 2010 Rebel Debutante collection. This tone of nude is slightly darker than most of my other nudes, you can most definitely see the light brown in it but that's one of the reasons I went for it. I think it's really soft and complements my skin tone. Nudes are almost always my go-to polishes and this one is a keeper.

The formula is really good, applies evenly with no streaks. Then again I've never really had many problems with the Color Club polishes I own. So far their creme formulas are pretty consistent. This is 2 coats:

  

Yummy little cupcakes & sparkly cheeries

What an unoriginal title!!! Sorry, I couldn't think of anything to call this mani other than what it actually is *sigh*! Following on from yesterday's swatch of Cliche Atracao, I thought the colour was so girly and candy like that I had to pick cute little cupcakes to keep with the theme!

I stamped the cupcakes at a side angle with BM14 and Konad White Stamping polish, and added some red rhinestones for the cherries.

Pink Wednesday!!! - Cliche Soft Pink & Pink French Tips

Hi Everyone. For today's pink Wednesday I wanted to show you a soft pretty pink from a Portuguese brand called Cliche. My mum was on holiday in Portugal a couple of weeks ago and brought me this one as well a couple of Brazilian brands. I've tried the Brazilian brands before and they are really good however, it's my first time trying Cliche. This polish is named "Atracao" which means attraction.
I'll be looking into this brand a little more when I go to Portugal next week, if I find nice colours, I'll bring some back for my first giveaway which will be happening soon :)

I love the colour, it's a really soft cherry blossom pink full of soft pearly shimmer. The formula is thin and applies very sheer so I used a white base colour (visible in the pics below) under the 2 coats of Cliche.

I then added some darker pink tips with Color Club In Bloom. I love french tips, it sort of seals and finishes off a mani :)

NOTD: Leopard Ice Cream Mani

I know that my last leopard mani was only done a couple of weeks ago but I guess leopard print has become a sort of go to mani when I'm slightly uninspired. It's easy to do and rarely gets messy.

To do the gradient, I used some pastel colours for this one which remind me of ice creams, especially since they are named after ice creams as well, (Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream, Barry M Lemon Ice Cream and OPI Lucky Lucky Lavender) and then used pink for the leopard spots (Color Club In Bloom).

Pink Wednesday!!! - Polka Dots with a Kick & Color Club In Bloom!

For today's Pink Wednesday I am actually going to show you a mani I did a couple of weeks ago. My nails were still a little long back then and I had them filed in an oval shape - won't be doing that again anytime soon!!! I don't think it suits me at all, I'm more of a square gal! Lol!!

Anyway, onto the mani... I used Color Club In Bloom as the base colour, a true creme Barbie pink with the tiniest amount of shimmer, almost undetectable. Visible in the bottle and on the brush but doesn't translate to the nail!
I then taped off diagonal and "V" shaped sections of the nails and used Rimmel London 60 Seconds Black Out before using a dotting tool to create white larger dots and pink smaller dots. I got the inspiration for this mani from Love4Nails YouTube tutorial. Check it out, this lady is extremely talented and her nails are beautifully long. I wish I could keep mine like that but they would snap in a blink of an eye!

And here is how In Bloom looks like on its own: