Orly - Lunar Eclipse and guest nails (my boyfriend!)

Hello!

I was feeling inspired by some pictures I took of a super clear night sky in Gambia, plus I've been wanting to use Orly - Lunar Eclipse for ages and ages! Ugh is so beautiful it hurts. Its a stunning blue with superfine blue and purple glitter so it changes in the light from blue to purple. I couldn't capture that very well in my pictures.

I just love how beautiful and glittery it is!!! The stamping is done with a-england - Excalibur which is my all time favourite silver stamping polish! Loveee it! :) This mani actually made its first appearance on the hand of my boyfriend, who's currently in an 80's hair metal band, complete with Bret Michaels facial expressions, spandex and mullet wigs (they TOTALLY don't take themselves seriously!). He wanted the nails on one of his hands painted 80's style so I willingly obliged:

Tee Hee. Apparently he got lots of compliments!

Thanks for reading! xxx

China Glaze Dreamsicle, Bows and Polka Dots

Happy Saturday!

I've had China Glaze - Dreamsicle for a while and have never really used it. This polish is so, SO pretty! It's a sort of tangerine orange jelly with golden/green/orange glitter particles floating in it. It's quite sheer and takes about four (!) coats to get really nice coverage, but it's so very beautiful that it's kind of worth it. I think it would be one of my most favourite colours in my whole collection if it weren't for one thing: the horrible formula! It's goopy and annoying and leaves the ends of your nails all scratchy - I filed mine a little bit with a nail buffer to try and soften the edges after I'd painted them - and the very worst thing is that it chips something awful. I had this on for slightly less than 24 hours before I took a photo because my camera needed new batteries, and it had already chipped by then. Annoying. Plus it doesn't just chip a little bit... oh no... it comes off it enormous sheets, almost like you've painted your nails with glue. It's a big pain and a massive shame because I really, REALLY love this colour. What a bummer.

So for these nails I used Dreamsicle as a base, and then I used Konad plate M59 for the bows and added a little black heart-shaped rhinestone. This was my first ever proper stamping attempt. The left hand was really good, I thought, but the right hand was a big smudged. I don't have a proper stamping polish and my usual black just wasn't cutting it, so I ended up using the black from the striping polishes I got from ebay for about £6, which seemed to work okay. I made polka dots on the rest of the nails with a dotting tool. I kind of wish I hadn't now because the bows were so pretty, but I got a bit carried away! I topped it off with a coat of Seche Vite.

Here you can see the chip in my ring finger. Boooo!

I've tried to capture the shifting colours of the glitter here. You can see the greens, golds and oranges floating in the polish. Yum!

And here's a picture of the aftermath! Look how massive the chunks are that have peeled off! The thumbs could almost be false nails! Ha! Rubbish.

Here's a picture of my tree that we put up today! We let my son and my five year old sister decorate it and then we subtly 'rearranged'. ^_^ All the lovely colours have inspired me to do some mega Christmassy nails!

Have you put up any decorations yet?

Thanks for reading!