Green Nails: Illamasqua - Omen

Hello there guys!! This is another new polish, I got a bunch of new polishes cause I did my Grade 8 piano and right after I went to town (in every sense of the phrase). Shopping is just ahhhhh :3 It was all very satisfying and I had my Chinese New Year money with me and it was great.
But yes this was one of my purchases, guys I've mentioned many times how great TK Maxx is. I saw a bunch of beautiful Illamasqua polishes (i.e. my favourite high end nail polish brand) and the price, I got 3 Illamasquas for the price of less than 1 full priced one!! And seriously the colours were ones I'd been eyeing before but wouldn't buy because of the price. It was so perf.

I love green polish and this is so pretty, Omen is a medium grass green with a ton of silver shimmer (which turns green in the polish) polish. It's so fun, like it's so bright and crazay (I need to stop).

Illamasqua is my favourite because it releases gorgeous polishes like this, Omen is just fab. I adore the bright greens Illamasqua does. I've just realised that all my favourite Illamasquas are green. Their green polishes are just so good!! I'm excited to show the other ones cause they're real nice. Again the high end brand that I think is worth the price cause of the colours and the formula. The bottles are never aligned though. Just wanted to put that out there.

The formula was good, it was easy to apply and pretty opaque. I say 2-3 coats cause 2 coats may a lil bit streaky. It's not really a creme so the formula is different but not bad at all, I'm not doing a good job of describing hahaha.

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a nice day!! :)

Green dripping chevrons + poppy nail art

Hey there!! It's a nail art day, been a bit obsessed with dripping chevrons this year they are just so cool. I had these on for St. Patrick's Day, I mentioned in a March post I had green nails for St. Patrick's Day, now you have an idea about how far behind the backlog is. I'm very behind!! But girl legitimately doesn't have time haha, still don't really have time hahahaha oh dear.

Dripping chevrons are just the coolest. I love green too, it's just so unnatural and great!! I contrasted it with some pink and the little flowers, I like the look but I think I could've used a brighter yellow. but yellows are generally are so sheer and nobody got time for a white base!! Awk it was a cute look.

I just used my toothpicks, I did like circular shapes for the flowers and then for the dripping chevrons I tried to paint the chevrons as randomly as possible colour wise and then just added the drips at the points again randomly, like it's hard to not do it randomly.

Pink: Models Own - Radiant Pink 
Red: OPI - Dutch Tulips
Orange: OPI - Where Did Suzi's Man-go?
Yellow: Topshop - Naked
Green: Barry M - Kiwi
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black
Light brown: Nails Inc - Sao Paulo Streets
Light green: China Glaze - Re-Fresh Mint
Dusty green: Illamasqua - Melange
Dark green: OPI - Jade Is The New Black
Yellow green: Etude House - No. 86

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a wonderful day!! :)

Doodles on a chalkboard (Ciaté chalkboard manicure)

Hey there!! I said in a previous post that I would be showing the Ciaté chalkboard manicure and yeah I'm gonna go ahead and do that now haha. Not gonna lie I like it.

So I got the pens and just did some doodles which I suppose is the idea like a chalkboard. Got some stars, polka dots, rain, chevrons and an anchor. I took some of the ideas from the booklet, not gonna pretend I knew what I was going. I really like the polka dots, the more colours the better. But drawing it was fun and generally it was super fun to wear :)

So you get these pens and you just draw really, the nibs were pretty thick but that wasn't too much of a problem. Getting the pens starting to flow was the hard part, especially the pink one (which was not a hot pink as the pen suggested) seriously sat there violently stabbing the nib onto a pice of paper for quite a long amount of time, I gave up and did all the other colours before going back to the pink. I got it to work!!
After you're done you matte topcoat it (super legit matte topcoat, I've been using it a bunch), unfortunately the white smudged but that could've been my fault as I should've waited longer.

So all the stuff comes in the kit and it has instructions and ideas of what to paint. the idea is that water can rub out mistakes before you topcoat, Don't know how legit this is but I would just paint over the errors with the black.
See I like to do so many different things that I don't know think I'd do this again but I think I can find ways to incorporate the set into my nail art. But drawing it was so easy, literally like you're just drawing on something um easier than nails haha.

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a lovely day!! :)

Wild ikat hearts + diamonds nail art

Hi there guys!! I have a nail art look today and it's ok, I wasn't in love with it when I did it and generally it was alright. Went a bit overboard with the lines but at least I tried something new and learnt from it.

Did an accent thing with the green and the pink, the bases by themselves looked a bit off cause one's a pastel and the other's a neon. Didn't get that much better from there haha, no I didn't hate this look but I struggle to say I liked it.
Got some contrast with the hearts and diamonds (like cards!! Diamonds are my favourite suit) and it still wasn't looking right so I added more colours to the base. Still wasn't working so I added the billions of black lines which helped in a sense but we were too far gone by that point haha.

I used the brush of the polish for the general shapes of the hearts and the diamonds then toothpicked all the other colours and the black pen. It was all pretty freeform and it didn't work for this design. A bit too messy for my liking.

Green base: Etude House - No. 86
Pink base: Etude House - No. 60
Extra green: Barry M - Kiwi and Illamasqua - Melange
Extra pink (though can't really remember...): Barry M - Boots LE 2012 B, OPI - Japanese Rose Garden and Color Club - Wing Fling
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black
Purple: Essie - Lilacism
Dark purple: OPI - Plum & Get It and Barry M - Fashion Icon (glitter couldn't even save it :/)
Blue: Barry M - Malibu
White: Barry M - Matt White

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a really nice day!! :)

Black Nails: Ciaté - Chalkboard Paint

Hello there cool dudes(?)!! Man I haven't written in ages, I've made it through the first week of exams and not gonna lie it's been a rough week. Like really rough, exams are hard :( This is my intellectual comment I have to impart. So the backlog has been massive for ages so I'm trying to tackle it bit by bit. Starting with this swatch, this was my last polish to swatch but then I um bought more polish and those swatches will go up at some point ("some point" cause who knows when?). My best friend got me the Chalkboard manicure set for my birthday (which was another while ago) and I've done the set and it's cool, that'll go up at some point too haha :P

Chalkboard Paint is a matte black nail polish, a so-called chalkboard effect as is intended. Does what it says on the tin, black has never really been my colour. It's just so...not bright, which if you didn't know is basically my favourite things ever.

I don't know what interesting things to say about Ciaté that hasn't already been said, maybe this chalkboard manicure idea was stolen from a blogger but I don't know and don't get involved. In TK Maxx Ciaté is heavily discounted so like in the end I win :P

This chipped like nothing else, the chips were so massive and I attempted to paint those patches back but you can still kind of see it. The formula was pretty runny but pretty sure you can get full opacity with 2 coats. The chips were so horrendous though, it wasn't just tip wear like a chuck of a quarter of the polish would come off and I wasn't doing anything too crazy. See I probably won't wear this again (unless I do the chalkboard manicure again, and that is pretty cool) not only because of the colour but because of the ridiculous chips.

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a really great day!! :)

Purple roses + cream polka dot nails

Hello there fine fellows. With me flower nail art is very hit and miss, we know this from the floral flourishes and fails (I tried really hard with that alliteration) but today I have a flourish and I adore this look. Nothing groundbreaking but when it's done well, it's soooooooooooooooooooo nice.

For me its the colour scheme, I realise I'm in love with the combination of brown and purple, I never realised pairing these polishes would work so well. Again recently I've been obsessed with polka dots cause they're so easy and cute. Roses always seem to go wrong with me but not today. I don't really know what I did differently but it worked and I was so happy!! Maybe I kept it lumpy? Really good advice I know. Also I like the "dimension" with the leaves.

I got a bobby pin to do the polka dots which were almost completely evenly spaced which doesn't really happen for me. I spaced the roses in a kind of not ordered way (which I really liked) and started with a blob of pale purple then got toothpicks and darker purples and did 'c' shapes on top. Sometimes if it got too overwhelmed with one purple I'd go back with a lighter purple to make the rose shape clearer. I finished with my leaves with toothpicks as always and added the little bit of light green.

Brown: M&S - Golden Sands
Cream: Nails Inc - Sao Paulo Streets
Light purple: Essie - Lilacism
Medium purple: Illamasqua - Jo'Mina
Dark purple: OPI - Plum & Get It
Purple glitter: Barry M - Fashion Icon
Green: China Glaze - I'm With The Lifeguard
Dark green: OPI - Jade Is The New Black

Thank you very much for reading and I hope you have a spectacular day haha!! :)

Brown Nails: M&S - Golden Sands

Hello you guys!! I hope you're enjoying this nice day. I know I've been away for a while but this has been a recurring theme this year. Exams are becoming very real very quickly, the backlog is also real but I hope I can catch up once all the exam madness is over. I can't wait cause these exams have kind of been the focus of my life for this year and I miss the blog. I miss painting, summer and chilling cannot come coon enough. Today I have a nice brown-ish polish to show you. It's my last M&S polish to show!! I had 12 and it only took me um a year or so to get them all up. Brown isn't really my colour but this is is genuinely super pretty!!

I know this is called Golden Sands I think it's much more of a shimmery brown than gold. So Golden Sands is a brown foil-y shimmer and it totally glows. I like that it has an orange tone to it, it brings the polish to life :P Honestly I think this polish is real nice and I did nail art on top and I loved that look, that'll go up soon (soon being a relative word).

M&S food is amazing, I love from there. Just saying M&S prawn crackers are some of the most addictive things, Chinese New Year was good. But yes I do wonder into their polish aisles and they've got a really good range of cremes, like they've got everything and I think their pricing is good. Just nothing that makes me need to run in and buy polish, but maybe now that I've swatched all my Marks and Spencer's polishes I'll try some more.

It may seem that the polish doesn't completely cover in the photos but it was fine in real life. I used 3 coats and it built really well. The formula is pretty thin so it dries fast so adding more coats wasn't an issue.

Thanks for reading and I hope you have a nice day!! :)