Tuesday's Thanks (I Love Your Blog Award)

Hi girls!

Today I'd like to thank the lovely Lydz over at Sekhmet's Purple Castle for giving me the I Love Your Blog award. This girl's nail art is fabulous so if you don't follow her already, please pop over and say hi now :-)

The rules of the award are:
Add the logo of the award to your blog
Add a link to the person who awarded you
Nominate at least 7 other blogs
Add links to those blogs on your blog
Leave message for your nominees on their blogs

So, without further ado, I would like to nominate the following blogs for this award:

Pretty Digits
Sara Loves Pretty Little Things
Nailxchange
Red Hair and Black Nail Polish
heartNAT
Cutesville
It's All About the Accent

Well done girls! Please visit these blogs if you don't already follow them, they're great and written by lovely ladies.

Bye for now,
Laura

Monday's Manicure(s)

Currently watching: One Tree Hill

Good morning ladies!

Did you all have a good weekend? What did you do?

Late last week I received an image plate from Born Pretty Store which I'd been excitedly waiting for so I thought I'd try it out this weekend:

This is the first manicure I used my new image plate (m59) for. I used a white polish as my base and then stamped a houndstooth print using Konad Special Polish in pink and MASH plate m63.

I then stamped a black bow to finish the manicure.

It turned out pretty well I thought except for a few issues. If you didn't know this already, let me tell you that stamping on top of a topcoat is a nightmare. The polish won't stick to your topcoat. And if you don't use a topcoat to seal your stamping, it will gradually peel off.

Aside from those issues, I loved this manicure and would happily create it again. What do you think of it?

I then decided to try another bow manicure, loosely based on a few I'd seen using China Glaze For Audrey. I don't have that polish but I thought Eyeko's Vintage Polish would be a good substitute. Wrong!

The green polish didn't show up at all over E.L.F's Desert Haze so I ended up using Barry M's Pure Turquoise which wasn't great either.

Since the bows were so faint, I decided to lift the manicure by dotting white polka dots in the empty space.

I must say I was disappointed by this manicure and quickly removed it after taking these photos as I just couldn't imagine wearing it to work. I'll show you what I'm really wearing on my nails today soon!

Bye for now,
Laura

Thursday's Talons

Currently watching: Birdsong

Good morning girls! How are you all today? Not long until the weekend now, yay :-)

Today I'd like to show you a manicure I created after being inspired by The Polished Perfectionist and Nail Stories:

My base was a white polish by Natural Collection. The first coat was very streaky but its appearance improved with the second coat.

I then painted three roses on my two accent nails using acrylic paint and a nail brush. This was my first time free-handing roses. What do you think of them?

To finish I then free-handed the tips of my remaining nails with All About Nails Honey Pink.

I think it's the first time I've ever done a manicure like this and I have to say I was really pleased with the way it turned out. I hope you like it as much as I do :-)

Bye for now,
Laura

Tuesday's Talons

Currently listening to: Rude Boy by Rihanna

Hello dear readers,

Today's post is short on pictures as I wasn't too happy with my manicure. I thought you might like to see it anyway though:

The plan was to do a pink gradient using three polishes: No7 Practically Pefect, Boots 17 Simply Perfect and All About Nails Honey Pink and a sponge. Practically Perfect is a new polish I bought last week using my No7 £5 voucher. I will do a post on it another time. All I'm going to say for now is that it is a lot less opaque than I expected. Perfect for French manicures but not what I had in mind. Anyway. The gradient turned out all right but it was too plain for my liking...

...so I stamped over it using E.L.F Pearl and Red Angel plate RA112. I didn't like the results because overall this manicure was just too pale for my skin tone. I removed it after about half an hour.

Has anybody else had any nail fails recently?

Bye for now,
Laura

Monday's Manicure

Currently listening to: A Different Beat by Boyzone

Good morning ladies,

Did you have a nice weekend? What are your plans for this week? My plan is to blog a lot to make up for last week's silence ;-)

Today I'd like to show you a half-moon manicure I attempted using yesterday's Saffron polish as my base:

This is the second time I've tried this style of manicure and although it's not perfect, it's a lot better than my first attempt.

I started with my pink Saffron base then when it was completely dry, I placed reinforcer stickers on the bottom third of each nail and painted the remaining nail with H&M's Fashionista.

As soon as I'd finished painting a nail, I removed the sticker and after repeating that nine times, I was left with this:

What do you think?

Bye for now,
Laura

Sunday's Swatch ft Saffron London

Currently reading: The Help

Good afternoon ladies! How are you all? I can't believe I haven't posted for a week! This lack of sunlight during the winter is really bad news for my blog.

Anyway, here I am, with swatches of one of my new Saffron London polishes:

These polishes don't have names, just numbers. This is number 62.

Application was easy. I applied two coats and a topcoat.

If you read my Revlon post then you will know that I consider this colour to be fuchsia and it was what inspired me to buy Facets of Fuchsia.

Considering I bought this online without ever having heard of the brand, I'm impressed by this polish. What do you think of this shade?

Bye for now,
Laura

Sunday's Swatch ft My First Revlon

Currently listening to: Need You Now by Lady Antebellum

Good morning ladies!

Today I'd like to show you swatches of my first ever Revlon polish, Facets of Fuchsia:

Ooh isn't it lovely?

I know a lot of you already have this polish but I'd be swithering over buying it for months. It was only when I tried my new Saffron London polish and decided that the colour of that wasn't pink or magenta but fuchsia that I realised Facets Of Fuchsia would be the perfect polish to layer over it and I really rather desperately wanted to own it.

However, due to circumstances outwith my control (work), the first chance I had to wear this polish was this weekend, layered over my lilac magnetized polish that I showed you yesterday. It wasn't the combination I had in mind but I think it works really well.

What do you think? Do you own this, or any of the other Revlon glitters?

Bye for now,
Laura