Holo crazy!!

Hello lovelies!

I went a bit crazy with this mani! I got a package from Llarowe and another from Rainbow Honey and I couldn't decide what polish to wear so ... I wore all of them :) Hooray!

I used Jade Holographic Nail Polish - Mystic Gold on my thumb, first finger and little finger and then did two layers of Rainbow Honey - A Little Kindness from their equestria collection. I LOVE this combo. A lot. Mystic gold is a beautiful gold holo with a lot of green going on in there and it suits the pink and gold tones of ALK really nicely. I love the way the holo shows through the glitter. On the other fingers I used Enchanted Polish - Magic Mirror which is a beautiful lavender holo with little silver shards in. I couldn't get the shards to show up in the polish though. Next time I wear it I'll give the bottle a really good shake to see if I can get those shy little shards to show up. I stamped with Barry M Gold Foil and did some dots with Orly - Purple Pleather. You can see the gorgeous scattered holo in both of these polishes in the last two pictures. Nom.

Mughhrrrr I love holos. I wish the sun would come out again so I can utilise my holo collection to its fullest extent. Come on sun!

I hope you're having a lovely day!

Aimee x

Cult Nails - I Got Distracted with stamping

Hello my lovelies! Sorry I haven't posted all week. I've been enjoying the sunshine and the summer holidays :)

I got my Cult Nails Coco Collection! YAYYYY!!! They are all super amazing and I LOVE THEM ALL! Arg. My boyfriend would tell me off for using so many exclamation marks, but I think these polishes deserve them.

Cult Nails - I Got Distracted is a beauuutiifullll blackened jelly base with lots of lovely green and holo glitter. YUM! It's so beautiful and my photos don't do it justice. This is two coats stamped with Barry M Silver Foil.

A zillion photos to follow:
  

How beautiful! You can see the holo in some of the photos but not too well. I loveeeee this polish. It's so sexy and beautiful. I actually wore it as part of a 'costume' (ahem) for my friend's birthday. He wanted to go out dressed as Battle Royale characters so I ended up dressing as a schoolgirl and getting covered in sticky red sugar syrup which was meant to be blood. I thought this colour was nice and vampy enough to go with the whole bloody schoolgirl ensemble. I am way too old to be going out dressed as a schoolgirl. Here's a photo to show how little dignity I have. Haha :) I'm on the left looking bewildered.

Oh. Dear.

Thanks for reading! I hope you're all enjoying the sun! I AM!

Aimee x

W7 Mosaic and stars and stripes stamping!

Hi there! How are you? 

Today I'm gonna show you a mani I did using w7 - Mosaic which is a super cool blue jelly with all oodles of matte yellow, green and blue hex glitter. This was three coats and it's so squishy and fun. I love it!

I also used Rimmel - Strawberry which is a scented polish that smells like sweeties, stamped with stripes from my Dashica SDP B Big plate and stars from the Charming Nails Q1 plate by Konad.

My left hand actually turned out loads better but I cannot for the life of me take pictures of my left hand so you're stuck with the slightly less crisp right hand I'm afraid. It's much clearer if you squint. :)

 

What do you think? I hope you're enjoying your day!

Aimee x

Icecream Nails with Me Me Me polishes and The Hungry Asian Mint Condition

Hello everyone! How are you today? 

I did these icecream inspired nails using some new Me Me Me polishes I picked up yesterday - Pensive which is a lovely pale blue and Playful which is a gorgeous dusty pink. For the 'sprinkles' I used Illamasqua - Load and China Glaze - Light as Air which are both gorgeous. The lovely green is The Hungry Asian - Mint Condition over pensive which I absolutely LOVE! Mint Condition is a beauuuttiful minty green colour with different coloured small glitter shapes floating in it. It looks like mint icecream with smarties in. I love it sooo much! Mint greens are one of my most favourite nail polish colours. Looveeely.

I stamped the stripes with Konad Special stamping polish in red and used Seche Vite to affix the wee heart. Yummers.

 

Thanks for looking!

Aimee x

Guest post for The Crumpet!

Hi! Check out this guest post I did for the awesomely wonderful Debbie at The Crumpet. I was so honoured to do this because I love Debbie's blog and she's also something of a pillar of the nail community. She tells it like it is as evidenced by her stunningly articulate, measured and eloquent post on the Lynnderella debacle, which is required reading fir anyone who wants to know about the whole indie polish explosion. 

Here's a little teaser of my post - go over to Debbie's blog to check out the whole thing and check out her other guest blogger posts too because she has featured some seriously fabulous bloggers.

Thanks for reading!!

Aimee x

Models Own Pastel Pink and Sinful Colors Zeus with Stamping

Hi!

Thanks again to everyone who entered my giveaway. And thankyou to everyone who told me about their favourite band! And don't worry, if you told me about your favourite brand that was okay too. I'm always interested to hear about people :) The reason I wanted to know about people's favourite bands is that I'm a musician, I love music and I like to find new music. I discovered a lot of new artists thanks to you guys so thanks very much!!!

This is a mani I did a while ago using Models Own - Pastel Pink, a-england - Excalibur and Sinful Colors - Zeus. I got Zeus in a polish swap from the wonderful Katee at http://www.agirlandherpolish.com and I think I will love her for the rest of my life for it :) When I'm on my death bed and someone asks me if I have any last words I'm gonna be like 'I will never forget a girl and her polish for Sinful Colors Zeus'... or something like that :) Anyway. Enough rambling. ONTO THE NAILS!

I stamped over the purple with Konad Special Stamping Polish in pink and it came out a bit translucent which was disappointing at first bit I actually quite like the effect. I stuck some little nail art circles onto the pink using Seche Vite and did some little dots with Zeus. The image on the purple nails is from my DRK A plate and the image on the pink is from one of those random fauxnads. It's just a leaf image which I stamped in different places on the nails. I kind of like the effect.

Thanks so much for reading!

Aimee x

Summer gradient with stamping

Hello lovelies! 
 
Ugh I've been so bad at posting recently. I've been sooooo tired after being so busy I just haven't had the energy. Plus I hate taking photos when it's drizzly and grey outside. I like seeing my manis in the sunshine! 
 
Anyway! I did this pretty gradient using China Glaze - Sunshine Pop, China Glaze - Lighthouse, Cult Nails - Seduction and Essie - Bossa Nova. I loveeeeddd the way this gradient turned out. It all went balls up when I stamped on it though. This image was from the DRK B plate which unfortunately doesn't seem to work for me. I think the images are too deep or something. Which is a bummer. If you step back from the computer and view this from afar it looks okay, but once you see it close up you realise how rubbish and smudged the design went. Wahhh. So this is a partial fail. Boo.
 
I still liked it though! :)
 
 










I'm getting better at gradients. I may try another one soon!

Also - there are about 8 hours left to enter my Giveaway! I'm so excited about this! I can't wait to see who wins! EEP!

What do you think? Have you ever ruined a really good base mani with rubbish stamping?

Thanks for looking.

Aimee x

Hearts and Roses with China Glaze Preppy Pink

Hello! Happy Father's Day to all the dads/carers/guardians/male role models out there. I hope you have a great day. :) 

This mani was done using OPI - Mermaid's Tears, China Glaze - Preppy Pink and China Glaze - Elephant Walk for the little hearts. I really love Preppy pink, but similar to CG Dreamsicle it chips something rotten. Poop.

Sorry this is such a short post, I'm off to see my dad to cook him a roast :)

 

Have a great day!

Aimee x

Hello Kitty and Deborah Lippman Across the Universe With Bonus ANIMALS!

Hello lovelies! 

I did these a while ago and these pictures were taken at the zoo! Hooray! I love the zoo. It's freakin' awesome. I got Deborah Lippman - Across the Universe a while ago in a swap from a lovely lady in one of my Facebook polish groups. She doesn't have a blog though so I can't link you to her. I love how deep it is... all that beautiful hexagonal glitter swimming in that deep blue jelly base - it is just like staring into the universe... not that I would know, having not had the opportunity to stare into the Universe, but I watch a lot of Brian Cox (I LOVE YOU BRIAN COX!) so I kind of have an idea. :) The pink is Butter London - Disco Biscuit with China Glaze - Fairy Dust. I love both of these polishes. They're just amaazinnggg. I stamped the Kitty with Konad Special Stamping polish. The only problem with these jellies is I find that Seche Vite tends to make the polish pull away from the edges a little bit which is annoying. Anyone know of a good top coat to use with jellies that doesn't cause shrinkage? 

Anyway... onto the photos!!!

And now bonus pictures - ANIMALS! These are from Dartmoor Zoo, which used to be known as Sparkwell and is the subject of the film We Bought a Zoo with Matt Damon. It's pretty cool there. I don't know how accurate the film is, but I read an interview with the guy who now owns the zoo saying that contrary to the film, his kids actually really loved living in a zoo. And why wouldn't you? It's a freakin' zoo! :)
So some bonus zoo pics for you guys:

Meerkat! I love these little guys.

!!!

Tiger!

Bear!

My little one having an awesome time on a boat!

Little Fox

Thanks for reading! I hope it's not too blustery where you are. We're expecting 60mph winds tonight. And I've got to go out in it! NOOO!

Aimee x

Little Owls!

Hello! How are you all? :) Wonderful I hope! 

So I ordered from the Cult Nails sale a while ago. I got Feel Me Up  and Hypnotize Me. I'm such a sucker for yellow that I had to try it out IMMEDIATELY! It's SUCH a pretty yellow. I love the way yellow looks on me and the formula is just great. This is three coats I think.

I also got some of the colours from the China Glaze Safari collection, one of which was I'm Not Lion (fun name) which is a beautiful, quite fine glitter with gold, red and I think some very sparse holo glitter particles. I am ALWAYS impressed by China Glaze glitters. Their formula is always amazing and they're pretty much always opaque in two-three coats with amazing formulas. I've never had a dud glitter from China Glaze. I wish other companies (I'm looking at YOU Butter London) would take note!

So I stamped the little Owl from my DRK B plate using China Glaze - Exotic Encounter and then coloured him in using Chick Nails - Gavie Green, China Glaze - White on White, A-england - Bridal Veil and Cult Nails - Feel Me Up. I also stamped on the yellow with an image from my Dashica SDP B plate using Barry M - Gold Foil. I loveeee the way the little owls turned out. Because the brown is translucent the glitter kind of comes through in the background so he ends up looking like a little mosaic or something. I just put random splashes of the green for the leaves because I wanted it to be a little bit impressionist looking. I also defined his ears with Bridal veil which is holo so it adds to that mosaic look. 

I have loads of other manis to post but I was so excited by this one that I just had to show you right away. I don't want to take it off... hence the little bit of tipwear. Also - sorry about my cuticles. I've been a little under the weather lately and it's really taken it's toll on my skin. Plus I've had a load of gigs recently so I've been playing a lot which leads to thicker callouses and chipping. Ah the things we do for art! Anyone know any good emergency treatment other than Lemony Flutter Cuticle butter that could help me out?

What do you think? I loveeeeee them. Also, don't forget to enter my giveaway! :)

Thanks for looking.

Aimee x