China Glaze Traffic Jam

Hey everyone, I'm still doing The Challenge, hence the lack of posts. Sorry about that! But anyway here's a polish that you'll probably recognize from this post.

This is China Glaze Traffic Jam:

Its such a lovely berry shade that isn't too girly! I'd say it leans mainly to a raspberry pink shade but looks different depending on the light.

The thing I loved was the opacity! One coat would do if you were in a rush and adding a second gives it this high gloss squishy finish!

Application was delightful too. Smooth and easy to apply with no dragging or patchiness.

And guess what? Despite the fact that my mum hates my polish addiction, she went and stole this polish from me!

A England Saint George

Here is one of my all time favourite polishes! This is A England Saint George, the most amazing teal holo polish I have ever come across!

Saint George is a green leaning teal shot through with scattered holo. This is the most saturated teal polish I have ever come across! It’s just so rich and lux! The holographic aspect isn’t mind-blowingly strong. Rather it is scattered throughout and I think that was a better choice than a linear holo because it looks so luxurious this way!

The application was amazing! Like seriously it was buttery smooth, flowed beautifully AND a one coater! (Although I did two for photographic reasons.) It was thick, but in a good way! Also there was no dragging, no streaking and no bald spots! Dry time was great too! Less than a couple of minutes and its dry! Oh and by the way? No topcoat!! It dries to such a glossy shine that it’s simply not needed.

I wore this for about a week and besides minimal tip wear, it still looked perfect! Also, removal was blissful! And for such a saturated polish, there was no staining what so ever!

As soon as I first saw pictures of Saint George, it seriously stole my heart! Now that I own it, I just can get over how awesome it is!

My photos really don’t do this polish justice!

Do you own A England Saint George? And do you love it as much as I do?

Glitter Gradienting

Hey everyone, sorry I've not posted since Wednesday. I'm doing The Challenge and was in the middle of the countryside until this morning. I wont really be home for the next three weeks so if anyone would like to do a guest post for me, feel free to type it up and send the HTML to ddshah96@googlemail.com. :)

Anyways, back to the mani:

This is a mani I did a while ago but never got round to posting, so here it is. Glitter gradients are one of my favourite nail art techniques because they are just so easy to do once you get the hang of them and the colour combinations and possibilities are quite literally endless!

For this mani I used China Glaze Traffic Jam, a gorgeous raspberry pink, as my base. I then used Color Club Jingle Jange, a mix of blue, purple and holographic glitters, for the gradient. I topped it all off with a thin coat of W.I.P Midnight, a clear polish with large purple glitter and smaller blue and purple glitter, to tie it all together.

I really like this combo of the icy glitter against summery pink!

Anyway, thanks for reading! x

Hairspray Inspired Nails

So like I told you in this post here, the school play this year is Hairspray and so of course I had to do some nail art to match!

I didn't want to do anything fancy so I just recreated the original logo of the musical.

I tried to replicate the colours and letters as closely as I could. And it was actually really easy to create! All I did was paint the background colours, then using a nail art brush and polish, drew on the letters. Sealed it all in with a nice thick coat of Seche Vite and tah-dah!

Not too bad if I say so myself!

North London Hauling

Hey everyone, just a quick post today. I'm totally and utterly exhausted and have been for the past two weeks or so (hence the lack of posts). I have no idea why, maybe it's the heat, but most likely I think I've just taken on too much at a time when one aspect of my health has just gone completely downhill... :( Anyway, enough about me, back to the post.

Last weekend I went to up to North London with my mum to visit my grandparents and cousins because my grandma hasn't been very well recently. And so apart from seeing my family, going up north basically means one thing... Shopping!

Amazingly, I bought hardly any of it at full price! So anyway here's what I got:

Kiko nail polish (ALL polish less that half price - only £2.40 each!):

River Island crop top (I couldn't resist at only £5):

China Glaze Hologlam polishes (The Sally's next to my grandmas had these marked down to only £4.99! Considering these were about £11 or so at Professional Beauty I have a feeling they aren't selling as well as they hoped):

Topshop skinny jeans (ALL my skinny jeans have stretched and are now too loose so I needed new ones, plus they were 60% off too!):

Claire's unnamed speckled polish (looked pretty cool and only £1 too):

Forever21 scarves and sunglasses (SO would have left the shop with bag-fulls of clothes had it not been for the fact that it was getting late and my younger cousin was getting restless):

Ciate nail foils kit (I don't really care for Ciate as a brand much but mum got this free essentially so I thought I may as well feature it):

Not that bad if I say so myself! ;)

Angelica Brit Pop

I think I may just have found the ultimate budget glitter topper!

Glitter? Check. Multi Coloured? Check. Multi Sized? Check. Densely Packed? Check. Less than £3? Check. Easily Available? Check!

I think we've got ourselves a real gem on our hands!

So what is this gem I'm talking about? Well if you haven't read the title yet, this is Angelica Brit Pop.

And where did I get hold of such an awesome polish from? Primark! Yes, that high-street clothing store that has popped up everywhere! And they have a whole range of polishes available from neons right through to duochromes. And every single one is only £2.50 in store! (You can also purchase them directly via the Angelica website here for £2.75 each)

Anyway back to the polish:

Brit Pop is a mix of large and small hex glitter in a whole array of colours: Red, Gold, Green, Blue, Purple, Pink and Silver suspended in a clear base. Basically a rainbow party in a bottle!

But the thing that really won me over was that it was SO densely packed! A chunky glitter at that sort of price point is usually really sparse but this one definitely was not! And what you see in all of these pictures is ONE COAT!

I started with a base of Bourjois Rose Lounge, which is a neutral jelly/sheer polish. I did about 4 coats to achieve the opacity you see here. I then added one coat of Brit Pop. I didn't use any topcoat at any stage.

And since you probably all know that I love a matte glitter, I obviously had to try it out!

And I love it! Especially since the base was such a neutral colour, it made it look like it wasn't a polish at all. Instead, it looked like all that glitter was carefully placed on, or as if I had confetti on my nails!

Best of all was that the actual glitter didn't go matte, it still shone through and looked really cool against the neutral matte background.

JELLY SANDWICH TIME!! Haha, bit over-exited? Me? Never! ;)

I thought, since I had this polish on anyway, and the fact that the base colour was a jelly, I may as well try out a jelly sandwich! And it totally worked! I used two more coats of Bourjois Rose Lounge on top of the glitter and this is what I got:

(It looked good with just one extra coat but from a distance still didn't look like a proper jelly sandwich so that's why I used two)

So basically, for £2.50 this is one freaking awesome polish!

OOTD ~ 07/07/13

OOTD ~ 04/07/13 (A.K.A Prom)

Prom Nails

It was my school prom yesterday and probably the last time I'm probably going to see most of the people in my year :'(

I'm still tired though so this is just going to be quick,  here's a look at my prom nails:

 3 coats of GOSH Holographic Hero and numerous tiny round blue craft gems.

I did them so that they would co-ordinate with my dress (which I'll post a pic of later) but still have a bit of a wow factor too.

Mini Italian Polish Haul

A couple of weeks ago one of my best friends went to Italy and asked if I wanted anything....

Of course I said yes! I sent her a nice long list but told her only to get one or two of those things otherwise it would have cost her an arm and a leg and so here's what she got me:

Here's a quick swatch of each of them:

From left to right: Layla Bubbly Effect-Black Forest, Layla Ceramic Effect-30, Kiko Sun Pearl-River Green, Kiko Magnetic-704 Purple

She also got me a couple other bits and bobs that were on the list including some Kiko stuff and perfume from Duty Free (SO much cheaper than in the shops!).

So thank youuuu Aisha!! I love them! :D