Off To The Carnival!

I had seen Bodycare being discussed on a number of British blogs as being very good for cheap nail polishes/nail art materials, so when I was in Livingston I decided to have a look.  I came home with a bag crammed full of polishes, stripers and a little holo to try!

When I spotted this polish I was pretty excited. I love glitter, especially multi-coloured glitter and when I had seen this on other blogs it looked great! So I scooped a bottle up (despite having an almost identical multi-coloured glitter at home).  I compared it to my similar glitter, Essence's Circus Confetti, and the colours in Essence's are much more pastel than this one, so it is acceptable to own both!

I used a Rimmel base, two coats of a nameless black polish from Primark, two coats of Carnival by Technic and Essence's matte top coat Soft Touch. The coverage of the glitter was fantastic, with plenty of glitter in one coat, I just wanted a little extra!  The black, however, was super gloopy. I don't know if that was because I was painting my nails outside in the heat of the sun or if it's just happened anyway, but it isn't even an old polish. But it's Primark so I don't really care too much!

Messy cuticles alert!! The polish has red, green, blue, gold and silver coloured glitters with varying sizes.

While Carnival is a super pretty polish, I wasn't too happy with the unevenness of the black underneath. It just made the manicure look quite lumpy and messy, so I wasn't fully satisfied with the way it turned out... I guess I'll just have to try different colour combinations of bases until I find one that suits the glitter just right!

Thanks for reading!

Peacock Nails

I love peacock feathers. I think their shimmery iridescence is absolutely stunning so when I saw people using the Bundle Monster plate BM212 (which I own) to make peacock nails I just HAD to have peacock nails too.

I had always wanted to do peacock nails and first saw the plate being used when I was searching YouTube for peacock nail art. This is the video I first came across using the plate.  I also saw a blog post by Gwenn at Sugar Nails using this plate too.

I started off with a Goodbye Yellow (Barbara Daly) base and a Rimmel base as the green polish stained my nails really badly, despite a base coat, the last time I wore it.  It's one of my favourite polishes but I always hated wearing it but the base combo seemed to stop any staining, so I'm very happy :)

I then painted two coats of Peacock Green (perfect name for this mani) by Models Own. I added a 2true top coat then I stamped using Nail Supreme's gold and the BM212 plate.  I then used a dotting tool to place alternating dots of Maybelline MNY in 553 and Barbara Daly's Carnival. And topped all of this off with a Rimmel top coat.

All the tutorials and blog posts I saw using this stamp all stamped with a silver polish and I couldn't understand why.  Peacocks have a very warm, golden shimmer through their feathers so I decided to use gold and I definitely think it was the right decision.

I received sooooo many compliments for this mani and it is definitely my favourite of all the manis I have ever done, so this will probably be a regular appearance on my nails!

Thanks for reading!

15. Splatter Nails

15 Grab a straw and do some paint splatters over that blue! One coluor, multicoloured, whichever you please! If you don’t know what I’m talking about, see this tutorial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqiCfnXWw9Y

I hadn't ever considered doing splatter nails before this challenge because I always thought they would be super hard to do.  I was SO wrong! They are really easy, the only downside is the clean-up but that's easy enough.

Right Thumb

I decided to use a purple that one of my best friends bought my for my birthday. Maybelline's MNY in 553 (don't you just hate it when companies are too lazy to give their polishes names?! Such a pet hate of mine) is a gorgeous plum purple with a slight shimmer to it, although that isn't very clear here.

Right Hand

So on top of the blue mani from mani number 14 I added a splatter of 553 with a straw.  I found the technique of dipping the straw in polish and blowing through it very easy although it was kinda frustrating when the straw didn't pick up polish and all you got was air coming through. But when it worked it was marvellous!

Left Hand

I taped up my fingers to just below my nail so avoid getting polish all over my hands, but there was still a lot of clean-up to do around my finger nails.\

Left Thumb4

I really loved how every nail had a different design on it, and the colour combo was very vibrant and striking in real life. These pictures don't do it justice!

Thanks for reading!



14. Blue

14 Today, we will wear blues!
I got this polish for my birthday from my Mum, so I was pretty excited to try it out. It looks s pretty in the bottle and I could tell it was gonna be gorgeous.

This polish is called Carnival by Barbara Daly and is a very vibrant blue shimmer. Application was great, the brush is fantastic. I applied three coats (this is the only downfall, it's quite sheer) over a Goodbye Yellow base and topped it off with a coat of 2true.

The polish is part of a collection of similarly fun named (Waltzer, Fun Fair, Pirate etc.) and I have another four of them, so look out for those. If they are half as near as gorgeous as this polish I will be super happy.

Thank you for reading!