White Nails: No.7 - Snowflake

Hello, white polish today. I think white polish reviews have to be done. There's not the most exciting polish colour (well to me at least) but it's essential. As a nail art person, white polish is absolutely must-have whether it's for the base or the painting; there's always something that has to be painted with white. Though Snowflake isn't really a nail art polish, a review is still essential (let's pretend ok)!!

Ok so Snowflake is a white jelly. Snowflake is different because it's a jelly. But that's about it. I'm not gonna talk about shades of white cause that'll be too interesting for everybody (and I don't know much about shades of white).

This is my final No.7 polish to show, it's a shame that this brand is so underground cause the polishes are genuinely brilliant. I know I say I'll get more then I don't but again I'm very selective with my polish purchases. But maybe I'll have more No.7 to show you one day. Also I like the name Snowflake.

The formula of this is actually really good and I didn't even realise. Normally with jelly polishes the moment it gets on mah nails it bubbles. Like crazy. I thought this was all my fault but I did thicker coats than I was meant to, as usual. I didn't wait very long between coats, as usual. But no bubbles!!
Since jellies are a bit sheerer than cremes I used 3 coats (which isn't bad at all) and while it's not completely opaque, it's pretty good. It also applied completely smoothly and easily, I'm thinking of making this my new white base. I've had this for YEARS but it's not gloopy at all!! And of course Snowflake is brilliant for jelly sandwiches.

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

The totally doable I have a life challenge! - Saran wrapped japanese jungle tree

Hi there guys, I know, I have posted quite the title. I've tried saran wrapping (or cling filming) once before and I have to say I really liked the results. So I decided to make it the background for a Japanese jungle tree. I know that's not an actual thing, I just have been wanting to do nail art of a Japanese tree since I saw a painting in Japan which was so nice but I couldn't take a picture (cause of a camera ban in that museum). I based this version off of memory and randomness.

 Ok so the saran wrap got eaten, but I wore the saran wrap look by itself for days and I really liked it. I like that if you feel one area is taken up too much with one colour, you can just keep dabbing until you feel it's right.
With this tree I did the leaves purposefully weirdly, they're oval shaped with some kind of support underneath with yellow spots. I don't know why but I felt like this tree would be in the jungle.
I liked the blue flowers, that was the colour of the flowers in the painting. But the flowers weren't as big in the painting and my flowers are big by accident, it just kind of happened. I was going to add more detail but I really like them the way they were so I left them. Which sometimes is the right decision :)

You know how the saran wrap is done. Saran wrap really does sound much fancier than cling film.
I started with the tree trunk which was all curly and cool but then I painted the leaves over and that masked all of that. The flowers did that even more. As you can imagine it was all toothpick. I know this section might seem redundant but sometimes I write the different toothpick techniques I use :P
Finally I fished for some glitter and randomly placed them around. You know I always need glitter but I felt the flowers needed some dotty friends(?), so the glitter came in.

Base: OPI - Japanese Rose Garden (Coincidence? I think not! But actually not cause I planned it)
Saran wrap colour: Max Factor - Cool Jade
Brown: w7 - Brownie
Green: Illamasqua - Nomad
Yellow: Topshop - Naked
Dark Green: OPI - Jade Is The New Black and China Glaze - I'm With The Lifeguard
Blue: M&S - Ultraviolet
Dark Blue: H&M - Blue My Mind
Sparkly Blue: Essie - Lots Of Lux
Teal glitter: Claire's - Dizzy

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

Yellow Nails: Topshop - Naked

Hello! I have a yellow polish to show and it's becoming one of my most used yellow polishes. You'll find out why as you read this post ;)
As I'm writing this I'm yet to go back to school, which is one of the single grimmest things that could happen :P As I'm entering 6th form it seems like everyone is really excited. Except me (and my bezzie), I don't get it, I love doing nothing!! Well it's inevitable and by the time you read this the 1st day will have happened; with the trying to find a good seat for the rest of the year(!) and finding out your classes and teachers. You know the drill. Seriously the summer is never long enough ahahahahahahahahaha (that was a long laugh).

Naked is a mustard yellow creme, simple as that. Mustard yellow isn't really a colour I'm fond of but weirdly I kind of like the colour of this. But not that much. Also I'm not sure if it suits me.

I recently mentioned how great Topshop polish is but if you missed that it's very good. I recommend you go to your local Topshop and take a look at the polish. There's a bunch of colours (some very unique, specially the glitter polishes) and it's very likely that the formula will be awesome. The names are generally pretty good. But Naked... Well that's debatable.

Ok THE FORMULA IS SO GREAT!! Come on how many 4 coat yellow polishes are there?? I have them and I just want a fuss free yellow and we have it right here. If you did 1 thick coat you could totally get away with it!! I used 2 thin coats but look at how opaque it is!! And how smooth and shiny it is!! It did apply like a dream, the formula is the perfect medium between thick and runny and so it's perfect to apply.

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

The totally doable I have a life challenge! - Tribal splatter

Hello there my cool peeps!! I have some tribal nails today and not gonna lie I really love this design. So it happened that this design coincided with the 5K that I did (last Saturday) and I wanted to combine this theme with that. The 5K I did was called The Colour Run and from the title it's quite self-explanatory. It's a rather colourful run. I got a t-shirt for it and decided to use the colour scheme and concept for this tribal design.

So here is my creation. I did a kind of monochromatic tribal and put some paint splats over it. I love it; maybe it's the contrast with the black and white and the bright colours. I like the added silver, I think black by itself would've been very overwhelming to the design. Also paint splats look awesome, I've never done them before (or a proper splatter manicure, I should get to that). I was really unsure if this design was going to work (by 3rd nail I thought I had failed), but hallelujah it did!! The outlines of the splats actually really helped.

Now the easy to do this would be to paint the tribal then paint splat on top. But no I never take the easy way. I knew the colours would show up better on the white so I started with the paint splats. As usual it was a toothpick affair and I think the best method is to just be loose and free with the curvy lines. Then I did some little lines.
I made things hard for myself by adapting the tribal around the already existing splats (with the little extra dots). It was hard, and I was making up the tribal design on the fly based on generic tribal designs. I did like the tribal design I was ultimately able to come up with. It still looked a bit off. But yay for outlines!! They saved everything :)

White: No.7 - Snowflake and M&S - Light Mix (which added a nice delicate touch in some lightings)
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black
Silver: w7 - Silver Mirror
Green: China Glaze - I'm With The Lifeguard
Dark Green: Barry M - Kiwi
Yellow: American Apparel - Neon Yellow
Mustard: Topshop - Naked
Orange: Models Own - Beach Party
Darker Orange: Bourjois - Tangerine Fatal and Essie - Fear Or Desire
Pink: Nails Inc - Notting Hill Gate
Dark Pink: Barry M - Fuchsia
Teal: Barry M - Guava
Dark Teal: M&S - Peacock

That writing was originally black

Oo surprise bonus picture, of me!! :O Ok you can't really see me but I just wanted to show my nails with the t-shirt to show the colour scheme. This was me after the 5K, and I'm glad I did it even though I am extremely unfit because I hate exercise haha.
So the thing that happened during this run was that people threw coloured flour at you and this picture doesn't even describe how messy I looked!! You can only see a little bit of colour but my shower was thoroughly pink and purple (the only colours that really stuck) and that flour was seriously everywhere. You don't even want to know :P

Thank you so much for reading and I hope you have a wonderful day!! :D

Black Nails: Topshop - Gypsy Night

Hey there guys!! I have a swatch today; this polish was actually one of the very first polishes I ever swatched. It actually wasn't too bad, but the cuticles were shameful and for that I apologise :P But this is legit a cool black polish. I'm not a black polish kind of girl (it's too gloomy) but these ones make me feel differently.

See already this isn't your typical black polish. Gypsy Night is a black polish with opalescent (red/orange/green) flakes and holographic glitter. Yeah, that's how you make black cool.

I really love Topshop polish, it's really really good stuff and I think totally underrated and under-appreciated. The colours are fab and the formulas are brill. I have said before I want to get more Topshop polish and I would but I guess generally my wishlist is very small nowadays (watch that change in 2 seconds) so I don't get anything. Yes I am a controlled lady.

I used 3 thin coats but as usual 2 thick coats would do you good. It applies very easily with no fuss. It builds very well as it may seem sheer but it's not really (really good descriptions from me as usual :/).

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

The totally doable I have a life challenge! - Rose french tip

Hi there!! Another episode of the challenge here. Today was french tip; I feel like french tips get a lot of hate nowadays. But I don't think they're too bad. Whilst it's rare that I do a french tip; before I started blogging (this was a while ago) I used to do quite funky french tips. I was even going to throw it back to when I would do glitter gradient french tips and they were pretty cool.
I think french tips are disliked cause they're boring, but I brought it upon myself to do a cool, visually simulating french tip (how ridiculous do I sound right now?) for the prompt.

Hey I tried, and I really like it. It's quite delicate which is something I like about this manicure. I very much like the look of the bundled roses. It's a tried and tested design, it gave it a good chance to succeed. I also thought through my colour combinations of the roses, I chose the more neutral background for them to stand out.

I suck at roses, it's something that's very hit or miss for me. I think I just about hit here, but close to falling off the target. I used the method of blobbing 2 colours beside each other and getting a bobby pin to dab in the middle of the colours and paint 'c' shapes. it didn't work out very well here cause there was no definiton cause the roses are quite small. So after I got another toothpick to make the rose shapes form. And I just painted the leaves with toothpicks.

Yellow: Topshop - Naked
Pink and orange rose: No.7 - Me! Me! Me!, OPI - Where Did Suzi's Man-go?, Barry M - Fuchsia and Per Una - Fuchsia (no name)
Red and beige rose: Barry M - Carousel, Nails Inc - Sao Paulo Streets and M&S - Poppy
Purple and blue rose: Illamasqua - Jo'Mina, Barry M - Berry Ice Cream, OPI - My Current Crush and Essie - Lots Of Lux
Green leaves: Illamasqua - Nomad and Barry M - Kiwi

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

Mushroom Nails: Nails Inc - Porchester Square

Hi there folks!! Don't be confused by the title, unfortunately this ain't a nail art post. It's a little swatch of Nails Inc Porchester Square. Took me a while to get this swatched, I got this Christmas '12. I want to first apologise for my swatches, Porchester Square is a great polish but I used the mother of all bad topcoats and the bubbles were horrendous. I cannot even deal with that topcoat it's so bad T.T So I'm sorry for the bubbles, it's not Porchester Square's fault!!

Honestly I struggled to get this colour accurate, it's a darkish mushroom creme with pink tones. It's slightly darker in real life than in the pictures, and yeah more pink toned but not too much more. Porchester Square is one of my favourite neutral polishes, it's just a nice colour.

I do like a nice Nails Inc polish; but full sizes are steep. Now they have to very special Nails Incs (or free ones in a magazine!!). I tend to just get the minis in TK Maxx cause that's just the best way to get Nails Incs (I do not know the plural for this brand).

The formula is very great, it's so opaque it's ridiculous. I used 2 coats as my nails are a bit longer but it's so opaque that if I got a thicker coat I could've done 1 coat. It's easy to apply but it's a thicker kind of formula that is more viscous.

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