Polish Haul from London + GOSH Holographic Hero Swatch

Hey guys,

Sorry for not posting on Monday (had too much packing to do) or Thursday (was out all day). I'm currently in London, and will be starting a summer course on Monday (exciting!) so I might not update as much as usual, but I will try to.

The first thing I did when I got to London was hit up the nearest Superdrug. I had made a little list of polishes I wanted to get in London, since the Barry M polishes are a good bit cheaper in the UK than they are in Ireland. I also really wanted to try out the GOSH Holographic polish, which I think is only available in Superdrug. I also picked up some nail art supplies from Topshop because they're cheaper here too.

 Barry M Foil Effects in Gold and Silver, £3.99 each, which is €4.66. In Ireland these cost €5.99 which I personally think is WAY too much.

Barry M in Teal, £2.99, which is €3.50 but in Ireland these actually cost €4.99

Barry M Nail Art Pen in Silver, £4.99

This one was free since I spent over a certain amount on Barry M stuff.

GOSH Holographic Hero, £4.99

I got these from Topshop for £3.50

And these for £7, also in Topshop

Barry M in Acid Yellow only £1.49 in Topshop! They also had their normal yellow polish for £1.49 but since I already have that one I decided not to get it.

The GOSH polish is called Holographic Hero. It's silver but when the light hits it you can see a load of other colours, which give it the holographic effect. On the cap of the bottle it basically says it'll only last one night, and I've heard that it starts chipping a few hours after you apply it. But it's almost been a full 24 hours and mine is still perfect (bottom pic).

 

Well that's it for now! I'll start putting up swatches of the other polishes in the next few posts, so stay tuned!

-M

Throwback Thursday!

Hey guys!

Today's post is just about a few nail art designs I've done since I got into it last year. Some of the pictures aren't great, you can blame my old BlackBerry for that. Also, excuse the mess in the backgrounds of some of them, I was doing my leaving cert at the time! Those of you that follow me on Instagram have probably seen some of these already.

Water Marble Effect

The very first time I did nail art, I did this design. It just looked so cool and so easy, I had to try it. While I was right about it looking cool, I was very wrong about it being easy. At least at first. Having the right temperature of water, getting the polish to spread in the water, not making a mess.These were the main three things that I struggled with at the start. But after using this method a few times, I got more comfortable doing it and my results didn't look too bad.

Newspaper Nails

I've only done this design once, way back in 2011. I absolutely loved this design!

Color Block Nails

I showed you my Inglot recreation of this design, but here's the other (and much nicer) recreation:

Palm Tree Nails

I did these ones last summer

Tribal Nails

This has to be my all time favourite design to do. I absolutely adore tribal prints so this design was so perfect for me!

Rainbow Gradient Nails

First attempt at gradient nails. Didn't turn out quite as nice as I was expecting.

Rainbow Spotted Nails

Loved this design!

Cupcake Nails

I did this one around my birthday

Galaxy Nails

If you want to see the video tutorials that I followed for any of these, I made you guys a playlist containing all the videos, so enjoy!

-M

Essence Stampy Polish

Hey guys!

Sorry this post is so late, I had meant to have this written and published sometime last week but I was so tired after work everyday and so I kept putting it off. And then the weekend came and I was still quite exhausted, and so I put it off again. But better late than never right?

Around two weeks ago, I found Essence Stampy Polish in Pennys and I just couldn't help myself, I had to get it. Back in December I had received a stamping nail art kit as a gift from my aunt. But every time I tried using it, the designs just wouldn't come out properly as the polishes were either too thin or too thick and thus not suitable for stamping.

So I never really got to use the kit properly. Until now.

This polish is a specially designed for stamping, which was exactly what I needed. The polish has the perfect consistency for stamping, it's neither too thick nor too thin.

Do do this nail art, you'll need a stamper, a scraper (or an old credit card, loyalty card etc.), a design plate and obviously some nail polish. (I actually ended up using a different design plate instead of the one in the picture).

I started off by painting all of my nails two coats of white. Then I let them dry for about 20 minutes. They have to be completely dry for this to work.

Then, I covered the design that I chose with the black polish. Using the card, I scraped the polish across, with the excess polish being scraped off onto the paper. I then took the stamper and quickly transferred the design onto it, and then onto the nail. You do this by bring the stamper across the polish once in a rolling motion and then onto the nail using the same technique.

And that's it! The design transferred quite well, and there weren't huge chunks of the design left behind on the stamper, which was what would happen with my other thicker polishes whenever I would try to use them for stamping.

I'm still getting the hang of stamping, as you can probably tell from my less than stellar alignment skills. But hey, practice makes perfect right?

If you have a stamping set (or if you're thinking of getting one) I would highly recommend this polish. Konad are said to have the best stamping kits, so I'd recommend you get one of those. They can be bought here or on Amazon/eBay. You could also get an Essence starter kit from Pennys.

Well that's it for today. I'm going to try an update every Monday and Thursday, so keep checking back on those days especially. And yes, I promise there will be a post this Thursday!

-M

O.P.I Swatches + Ciate Freebie!

Hey guys!

So I finally have the swatches of the O.P.I Liquid Sand polishes I showed you the other day!

Honestly, when I tried out the first polish I thought this set may have been a waste of money. I tried the black one first and it was a bit of a disappointment. After two coats, it still wasn't looking as nice as I had expected it to. But the other colours really blew me away.

 So, starting with the black one. This shade is called 'Stay the Night'. It's supposed to be a black polish with red glitter but it's more grey than black. Out of the four shades, this is the only one I personally didn't like.

This shade is called 'Can't Let Go'. It's a pretty purple glitter polish and I simply love it. I don't really wear purple polish very much but this is so pretty, I can definitely see myself using this a lot!

Next is the red shade. It's called 'The Impossible' and its a lovely light red shade. With the first coat, it came out quite pink but the second coat brought out the red. This is my second favourite shade of the set.

Last, but definitely not least, 'Get Your Number'. This shade is by far my favourite out of the set. I just think it's stunning! Again, two coats were needed to get it to this level of opacity.

I used two coats of each polish, and I used a coat of the Essence peel off base coat underneath. I'm happy to say that I had much better luck with the base coat this time around!

Overall, I do think this is a great set. The first polish was lacklustre but the other polishes made up for it. If you're in TK Maxx any time soon and happen to spot one of these sets, I really recommend you get it! 

And now onto the Ciate freebie!

With this month's issue of Marie Claire magazine, you get a free mini Ciate caviar manicure set. This includes the brown polish and the beads, and the retail price of this set is £10, which is almost €12. 

If the caviar manicure is something you want to try out, I'd say get the magazine. If you don't like the look in the end, at least you haven't spent a fortune on it (Ciate is really expensive!).

Well that's it for today! Thanks for reading guys :)

-M

Free Ciate Manicure + Some Cool Finds

Hey guys!

I have some great stuff to share with you today! I was shopping in town yesterday with my sister when I remembered seeing something about a Ciate pop-up bar in BT2 and we decided to go check it out.

And am I glad we did.

Upon arriving, we were told that Ciate were doing free demos using their newest kit, the Chalkboard manicure kit. This is a pretty cool nail art kit that consists of a black matte polish, a matte top coat and four coloured pens: one in blue, one in pink, one in yellow and one in white.

It also comes with a little booklet that has some designs that could could try out.

I decided to get the chevron pattern and my sister decided to get the little daisies (in the picture of the nail wheel)

We got our nails done by Chantelle, who did such an amazing job! We both loved our designs so much, I just can't stop looking at my nails!

 The only thing I didn't like about this kit was the price. Priced at €29, this was a bit out of my price range. And I think you could probably get a similar look using normal polishes with a matte top coat on top, which would be a lot cheaper.

While I didn't get this kit, I did get a few different nail polishes and nail art tools.

I got the Mariah O.P.I. set from TK Maxx for €12.99. It came with the following four shades:

The first shade is a black polish with red glitter in it, which you can't really see in the picture. I thought this set was great, since you get all four colours. Yes, they may be a lot smaller than the normal bottles, but you get to try four colours so I think it's great.
I'll have swatches up sometime over the weekend or early next week.

They also had a few Nails Inc sets for €19.99 but they had all been opened and had shades missing or doubled in the pack, so I didn't bother picking one up. Hopefully you'll have better luck in your nearest TK Maxx. The Nails Inc sets come with four polishes as well, but they're all full sized bottles.

The nail tools I got where the fan brush, some sponges and a thin nail art brush. I'll try them out next week and post my results. I also got a black nail stamping polish to use with my stamping set, as none of the polishes I have seem to work for stamping. I got all these from Pennys, they are all from Essence. The fan brush was €1.99, the sponge and brush were €2.49 and the stamping polish was €1.89

So, we're nearing the end of the post (finally!). I would highly recommend checking out the Ciate pop-up nail bar in BT2. They are here for the entire month and its worth going in for a free manicure. They also have this deal where you can get a free file and paint when you buy a polish, so if that's something you are interested in, it's definitely worth checking out! Also, keep checking with your nearest TK Maxx, you never know what you may find!

Also a huge thank you to Chantelle for doing our nails, we absolutely loved them!

I'll have the O.P.I. swatches up as soon as I can and also a review of my new Essence goodies, so watch this space!

-M