Best Christmas Present EVER!

Happy New Year!!!

I hope your 2012 gives you everything you desire and all the happiness in the world! I'm excited about mine. I am hopefully going to go and do my masters degree and finally be able to properly provide for my little family. I already got into Cardiff, so I'm pretty excited!

My mum bought me Konad stamping set B for Christmas! Hooray! It comes with Konad special polishes in red, white and green and a couple of plates. She also bought me a load of Bundle Monster plates which are AMAZING! I tried some stamping before, but never quite got the hang of it, however, after doing everyone's nails with it pretty much all Christmas, I think I'm finally getting there. I'm not nearly as good as people like Marta from Chit Chat Nails, Sammy from The Nailasaurus or Marina from Forever the Ugly Duckling (how does she get all those stamps on there without smudging?!)who are some stamping virtuosi, but maybe one day!

I can't remember what plate I used for these, but I used Konad Special Stamping Polish over Misa - Dirty, Sexy, Money which is just the most gorgeous dusty dark teal kind of a shade. I LOVE IT! I cannot stop staring at this colour, it's just so amazing. I stuck a few rhinestones in the middle of some of the flowers and finished with a coat of Seche Vite. Yummy!!!

I hope you guys have a wonderful New Years Eve and a brilliant New Year! Happy 2012!

Glittery layering fun!

Hello! I haven't posted in ages because I've been visiting family and friends and generally having Christmas fun. Hooray! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday period!
These were my Christmas day nails, which were subsequently my boxing day nails, my boxing BOXING day nails, and all the way up until the 28th when I finally took them off.









I used:


Miss Sporty Base Coat
17 Fast Finish Nail Polish - Peacock

China Glaze - Atlantis

Kleancolour - Aurora

Seche Vite

...plus some random star glitter to finish it all off. I LOVE 17 polishes. The coverage is excellent and the colours are wicked. Peacock is just yummy. China Glaze Atlantis is awesome - it has teeny tiny multicoloured glitter in a blue jelly base; perfect for layering over anything blue/green. I love it! Aurora is pretty, but I find Kleancolour polishes to be really goopy and a bit difficult to work with. It's still lovely though.

Look what my lovely boyfriend put in my stocking!

Yay!
Happy New Year everyone!

Paperchase Nails!

I LOVE Paperchase. For those of you who might not know, it's a shop which sells stationery mainly, but all kinds of other lovely things, like bags, umbrellas, hot water bottles etc. all with super cute and lovely designs. I bought a load of wrapping paper from them this year and they were so cute that I had to do nail designs based on them.

My Seche Vite has gone a bit gloopy so I bought China Glaze - Fast Forward top coat to try out and I have to say I'm not all that impressed with it. It smeared my designs really badly, smelled REALLY weird and wasn't as shiny as Seche. I really like Seche Vite but it goes so gloopy so quickly and I definitely have some shrinkage issues which can be really frustrating. Anyone have any top coat recommendations?

Onto the nails!










For these I used:

Beauty UK - Black

Nail Pop - Vintage (owl body)

Barry M - Peach Melba (owl face and the heart)

E.L.F - Gum Pink (for the owl wing)

Barry M - Matt White

Collection 2000 Hot Looks - Siren

Miss Sporty - Orange Crush

China Glaze - Fast Forward Top Coat

E.L.F - Matte Topcoat

The little heart is on my left thumb and I got a really bad case of the non-dominant hand shakes, so he's a bit wibbly. I think they're really cute though! I especially like the owl and the bear. I used tiny brushes and a dotting tool and then added a matte top coat at the end to make all the colours pop. I really like E.L.F matte top coat. At only £1.50 it's a bit of a bargain and works really well!

I am loving seeing loads of different blogger's Christmas nails. If you've done any Christmas nails, feel free to send me a link in the comments. I'd love to see them!

Thanks for reading.

Aimee.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!!!

... So I did EVEN MORE Christmas nails. I love these, they're so shiny. They didn't survive an epic present wrapping session, though. Boo :( Sorry about my bashed up fingers. I've been baking and crafting and all kinds, and my hands are suffering. I have burns and cuts all over!






For these I used:

Miss Sporty base coat

China Glaze - Ruby Pumps

Barry M Silver Foil

Seche Vite top coat


China Glaze Rudy Pumps has to be one of my favourite polishes ever. I have so many that I haven't tried, yet I keep using this one, over and over. It's just so deep and beautiful. Do you have any polishes that you just love to use over and over again?

I hope everyone having a great pre-Christmas week!

Mint Chocolate Chip!

I wanted to try out Emerald Sparkled's Mint Chocolate Chip nails because they are simply awesome. I got lots and lots of compliments on these. I used:

Miss Sporty Base Coat

E.L.F - Mint Cream

E.L.F - Chocolate

E.L.F Matte Top Coat








They look so yummy! I want to eat them up. I might try strawberry chocolate chip nails next!


I have like three followers right now, and I wanted to thank them for being awesome! It's exciting even to have one follower, so thankyou very much! :)

Aimee.

Hello Kitty Super Sparkly Awesomeness!

Hi!

So I wanted to try some of the new polishes I bought yesterday. For this I used:

Miss Sporty Base Coat
Accessorize Nail Polish - Teal
E.L.F - Gum Pink
Nail Pop - Bling
China Glaze - Snow Globe
E.L.F - Black (for the dots)
Seche Vite Top coat


How amazing does Snow Globe look over the teal? AGGHHHRRR!!!


Outside pictures. This is the best light I could find. The weather is GRIM!






I was right about Bling, it's definitely a layering polish, but it's super pretty and looks really nice over the pink, I think. It has teeny tiny shimmery pink glitter and larger hex glitter and it's quite dense in two coats. It's also really smooth, so it doesn't eat your top coat. I really like it! So far Nail Pops are excellent!
The teal is a bit of a pain, it's quite streaky and difficult to apply but it's also really pretty so I forgive it. I added some Hello Kitty stickers I got from ebay, and some dots using a dotting tool. I really didn't want to take these nails off because I loved them SO much! But the teal didn't last too long even with two coats of top coat, and I accidentally dyed the pink blue with hair dye, so they only lasted about a day. Boo!

I've been thinking about buying some A England polishes, even though they're mega expensive. Would anyone recommend them? Are they worth the price?

Thanks for reading!

Aimee.

New Things!

Hello!

So I went Christmas shopping yesterday and picked up a few new things, plus some nail mail, that I thought I might show you.

From left to right:

Me, Me, Me - Outrageous
Accessorize Polish - Dream
Accessorize Polish - Teal
Nail Pops - Bling
Nail Pops - Vintage
China Glaze - Papaya Punch
Barry M Nail Paint - Peach Melba
Collection 2000 Hot Looks - Jitterbug
Collection 2000 Hot Looks - All That Jazz

Close ups!

Vintage, Jitterbug and All That Jazz. Vintage seems to be really close to China Glaze - For Audrey but I will have to test them next to eachother. I think For Audrey is slightly more green toned. Anyway I've been looking for a perfect dusty blue for a while and I think this might be it!

Outrageous, Dream and Teal

Teal, Peach Melba, Bling and Papaya Punch

Close up of Bling. Look at all those lovely sparkles! It's rose pink glitter in a clear base, which reminds me a lot of China Glaze - Material Girl. I don't have Material Girl to compare, but I strongly suspect the china glaze will be one you can wear on its own and this polish will be a layering polish. I've never heard of Nail Pop and randomly came across them in Superdrug and had to give them a try, so I will let you know how they hold up in the next few days!

Close up of Dream. It was three for two in Accessorize, and I was buying a really cute pair of gloves for my friend as a Christmas present (I hope he doesn't read this!) so I picked up two polishes for £4! Bargain. Dream is blue and purple glitter in a clear base and I cannot WAIT to try it! It looks SOOOO pretty in the bottle.

Some water decals I got from Ebay.

These water decals are pretty cute, right? I thought so too but they're also essentially completely useless. I tried them over clear polish first and they're so transparent that they just look rubbish, and over a colour, they just look like a smudge. Plus it's a nightmare to get them to stay. Oh well, they only cost me 80p or something. Still. Annoying.

Some nail art brushes to replace my old ones and a sweet little pill case of different coloured rhinestones. Both of these were from ebay and a TOTAL bargain! I think the rhinestones cost less than a pound and the brushes cost no more than a couple of pounds. I love ebay!!!

Okay, that's all for now. I'm off to write my scholarship application.

Wish me luck!

Aimee.

Emerald Sparkled!

Hullo,

Emerald Sparkled is the name of this super beautiful, green jelly polish by China Glaze and also happens to be the name of one of my favourite bloggers - check her out here: www.emeraldsparkled.com. Not that she needs my endorsements! :)

So this polish is essentially the green version of China Glaze ruby pumps. It's filled with amazingly fine microglitter so it's really deep and rich,like staring into the Hubble Deep Field image:



Because of this I wore it to see Uncaged Monkeys on Saturday night, which for those of you who don't know, is Brian Cox (sexy physicist and D-Ream keyboardist!), Ben Goldacre (science writer and bad science debunker for the Guardian), Simon Singh (another badass science writer) and others including Adam Hart-Davis (!!!) and the wonderful Susan Blackmore who is a psychology PhD and a writer for BBC focus science. Tim Minchin was also there but he's not really my thing and I didn't really enjoy him all that much.

The whole thing was awesome and I wore emerald sparkled because it reminds me of the universe. I used some star sequins, on the green nails and on the silver nails I used Konad plate M59 to stamp some little hearts (poorly). I'm not very good at stamping but these are better than usual because I finally got a proper stamping polish! Hooray!






It's so difficult to capture the beauty of this polish on camera, I think the last picture shows it the best, but it's also the worst picture.
Here are the polishes I used for these nails:

China Glaze - Emerald Sparkled
Barry M - Nails Effects Silver
Konad Special Stamping Polish - Black
Seche Vite Top Coat

Thanks for reading!


Aimee.

Obnoxious Neon Glittery Leopard Print and Hearts (phew!)

Oh my god.

I don't know what came over me or why I chose to do these ludicrously bright, totally tacky, SUPER AMAZING nails! They're so wrong, yet so, so right. They clash ridiculously with the grey, horrible outside, which I'm happy about, because someone needs to counteract the vileness that is OUTSIDE. It's hideous out there! I walked to uni this morning and was quite literally nearly blown away. Horrific. Anyway! Shield your eyes people, because these are BRIGHT!



Look at them. What possessed me?

I kind of really love them. They look amazing from a distance - really bright and I really like the colour with my skin tone. They look a bit blobby close up. This was kind of intentional because I didn't want the leopard print to be too perfect, I think it kind of looks better when it's a bit haphazard. I did the hearts with a nail art brush and the dots and white parts of the leopard with a dotting tool. I did the outside of the leopard print with one of those cheap nail art pens from ebay.

Here are the polishes I used:

China Glaze - Flip Flop Fantasy
Barry M - Matt White (it really annoys me that it's called 'matt' white and not 'matte' - why is it Matt? WHO is this Matt? And why is he so white
E.L.F - Purple sparkle
China Glaze - Snow Globe (for the glitter)
Unnamed Blue Ebay Nail Art Pen

I really love China Glaze polishes. The brushes are super easy to work with and the colours are AMAZING, but Flip Flop Fantasy is a little bit of a pain. It's really streaky and dries to a kind of almost matte/silk finish which I don't really like. It looks fine with a coat of Seche Vite on the top, but the finish is annoying. The only other China Glaze polish that has this finish is Tuned Up Turquoise which is such a beautiful colour, but it needs like four coats to make it look nice. Has anyone else had this with China Glaze or is it just me? It's only these two that do it, it's just annoying.

Sorry for blinding you with my totally seasonally inappropriate nails! I say BOO to convention!

Thanks for reading.

Aimee.

Snowflakes and Glitter!!!

So after putting my Christmas decorations up today I was inspired to do some mega Christmassy nails. I used:
Barry M - Matt White
Chine Glaze - Ruby Pumps
Miss Sporty - Unnamed Purple/lilac
China Glaze - For Audrey
China Glaze - Lorelei's Tiara
Collection 2000 Hot Looks - Fruit Loop
Collection 2000 Hot Looks - Fruit Salad
Beauty UK - Black

I used a tiny brush and dotting tools for the stars, snowflakes, dots and the reindeer, and some little rhinestone hearts from ebay on the ring fingers.

I think my photos are getting better! I could do with some protips though! Maybe I will ask Father Christmas for photoshop. In the meantime, does anyone know of a free editing alternative?

Aimee