Monday's Manicure: Fantasy Butterflies NOTD

Currently watching: L'Auberge Espagnole

Good morning lovely ladies,

Recently I was contacted by Born Pretty Store to see if I would be interested in reviewing a product for the company.  I've ordered nail art supplies from the online shop many times before and have always been happy with the quality of my purchases (stamping plates, glitter and acrylic paint) so of course I said yes.

 

 When given the opportunity to choose a product to review, I decided to pick something I hadn't tried before and which was a little bit different so I ended up choosing these gold butterflies.

Born Pretty Store is based in Hong Kong I believe so shipping (which is free) to the UK can take a few weeks but my butterflies flew here really quickly and actually arrived within a week.

For my first butterfly manicure, I applied two coats of Barry M Fuchsia followed by a layer of Max Factor Fantasy Fire to create a shimmer effect.  I then painted my nails with a top coat and while that was still wet, placed two butterflies on my accent nail.  I used a cocktail stick to pick up each butterfly by the gaps in the wings but you could also use tweezers.  I then gently pressed the butterfly down with my finger to ensure it would stick to my nail.

As you may already know, I absolutely love butterflies so these decorations were perfect for me and I would definitely recommend them for making manicures a little more special and unique.  The pack I ordered contains 1,000 butterflies and cost $8.80 however there are plenty of other shapes and designs to choose from on the website.  As an added bonus, whenever you buy something from Born Pretty Store you can enter the code APL91 at the checkout to get a 10% discount for being one of my readers :-)

 

What do you think girls?  Are these something you would add to your manicure?

Bye for now,

Laura

2012: New to my Nails

Currently watching: Mary's Bottom Line

 

Hello lovely ladies,

 

As the year draws to an end, I thought it would be fun to recap the new brands of polish I added to my collection in 2012.

 

First up: Color Combos

 

 

Ebay purchases: Saffron London

My one and only Revlon:

Max Factor with the polish that took the blogging world by storm, Fantasy Fire:

As much as I wanted Revlon Whimsical, it was never released in the UK.  Luckily for me I found a dupe courtesy of the Korean brand Tony Moly:

 



Courtesy of a friend, I tried Models Own and NYC.  I now have quite a collection of Models Own polishes :-)



 

Treating myself to purple holos from a-England and Catrice:







Marks & Spencer's nail polish range caught my eye:



 

And finally, courtesy of Santa, Butter London:

 

There you have it girls, those were all the brands that were new to my nails this year.  Did you try any of them for the first time too?  What brands did you add to your collection this year?

 

Bye for now,

Laura

Saturday's Special Effects NOTD

Currently watching: One Tree Hill

Good morning lovely ladies,

Today I would like to show you a simple but very effective manicure I did during the week using some special effects polishes.
 

 My first step was to paint my nails with two coats of Barry M Dusky Mauve, a dark brown with flashes of purple shimmer.

 As much as I like this polish, I always have difficulty deciding which colour would be suitable for stamping on top of it.

 So instead of stamping, I decided to use Max Factor Fantasy Fire to create sparks of colour that would be more obvious than the purple shimmer in Dusky Mauve.

 Then I decided that layering with one polish just wasn't enough so I added a coat of Essence Night in Vegas and wow, was I impressed with the flashes of red, orange and green that I saw with every glance at my nails.  I also loved how Dusky Mauve was transformed, under some lights, to a deep amethyst shade of purple.

What do you think girls?  What are your favourite polishes for layering and creating special effects?

Bye for now,

Laura

Monday's Manicure (My Bundle Monster Entry)

Currently watching: The Voice

Good morning girls!  I don't think anyone likes Monday mornings but let's try to start the week off with a bang:

 

 

I started this manicure with two coats of a lilac polish by the Polish brand MV.

 

I then layered a coat of Max Factor Fantasy Fire on top.  You can't really see the flashes of red that Fantasy Fire produced here but under artificial light they were really strong.

I then stamped using Miss Sporty 313 and Bundle Monster plate BM223.

To finish, I then stamped the star design using Barry M Gold Foil and Bundle Monster plate BM21.

I really liked this manicure and actually entered it into Bundle Monster's nail art contest to win a set of their new image plates.  Fingers crossed ;-)

What do you think of this manicure girls?  Have you entered Bundle Monster's competition?

Bye for now,
Laura

Thursday's Talons: A Transformation

Currently listening to: Right Here by HeyHiHello

Good morning lovely ladies!

So, remember the other day I showed you Beauty UK's Soft Lilac and you were all kind enough to let me know how much you loved it? Well I decided to transform it with Max Factor Fantasy Fire:

This mainly came about because I messed up some stamping and when I was removing that I discovered I could remove the stamping while leaving most of the lilac polish in decent condition.

I couldn't leave it as it was though so I chose to cover it up with two coats of Fantasy Fire.

I absolutely love this polish, it is so mesmerising. I couldn't help but glance at my nails every so often while I was at work ;-)

I still felt tempted to add something extra though so the next day I added a coat of Barry M Pink Iridescent. The changing colours of the glitter coat really gave this manicure a magical air, one which I really loved.

What do you think girls?

Bye for now,
Laura

Saturday's Stamping ft Fantasy Fire

Currently listening to: Super Bass by Nicki Minaj

Good morning girls!

Let's start the weekend on a high note with a pretty manicure featuring the elusive Max Factor Fantasy Fire :-)

I decided to use H&M Fashionista as my base before layering a coat of Fantasy Fire on top of it.

In real life, Fantasy Fire is really very pretty and adds dancing specks of red to my nails when worn on top of this purple polish. Unfortunately the photos do not do it justice. Next time I'll layer it over a different colour to see if I can capture the colour-changing glory with more success.

For my stamping I used Barry M Nail Effects in gold and Born Pretty Store image plate m65. I really like these image plates; a fraction of the price of Konad plates yet I've had no problems with quality. Oh and please ignore the ripples in my ring finger nails. These were not that obvious in reality!

[My best attempt at capturing the red flecks of Fantasy Fire]

What do you think girls? Have you joined the Fantasy Fire craze?

Bye for now,
Laura