Guest Post: Lauren Loves…Nail Polish Trends of 2011
Today I have a guest post over on Lauren Loves… blog about nail polish trends in 2011 so far. The lovely Lauren is away on her holiday and hope she is enjoying her the nice weather! Here it has been raining all day and I’m wearing boots, two coats and carrying an umbrella! Not nice! Hope on over to have a look at the Spring/Summer polishes before the weather gets any worse! :P
Miss Sporty Lasting Colour Nail Colour
I have no idea what this polish is called because it doesn’t seem to have a name, or even a number. I picked it up because I had a Boots voucher in the post to pick up a Miss Sporty polish for £1 or something to that effect. I picked up this bright pink colour. It’s a Barbie pink, but it has slightly metallic/shimmery look to it. I’m not sure how to describe it, but it looks like the pictures! :P It’s a little sheer. Even after three coats I still have a VNL, but it’s not too bad and I don’t mind a VNL. It dried pretty quickly and it did last, chip-free until I took it off about 3 days later.
Do you like Miss Sporty polishes? What would you name this polish?
Illamasqua Gamma with Nails Inc London Nights Tips
Hello to my new followers! I’ve been very happy this week as I’ve had a few new followers, it makes me happy that someone wants to read my driveling nonsense! :D <3 I was a bit bummed after I posted the first picture of myself a few weeks ago and I lost a follower, how depressing it that? :p Oh well, I’ll try not to scare the rest of you lovely people away!
My last nail post was Illamasqua Gamma and I didn’t want to take it off. It had no chipping or tipwear after 4 days with no topcoat, quite impressive! So, I decided to jazz it up a little with some black tips.
I taped off the ends at random angles and painted on some Nails Inc London Nights. It’s a shiny black one coater, perfect for taping. I accidentally put the black on a little thick on some nails so when I pulled the tape off it looked a little scruffy. It looked really obvious next to the bright orange so in order to fix my now scruffy looking manicure I finally got the nerve to give the paint brush a go! I have a load of paint brushes I bought from The Works years ago when I used to paint a lot. I think they were £1 for 5 different thin brushes, bargain! I used a thin angled brush and Models Own Sterling Silver and dabbed a line of silver along the join to disguise my untidiness. I do have a very thin stripe type brush, I think I’ll try that one next time. I was dabbing more than brushing so it’s not perfect. For a first attempt it isn’t that bad though. In person it looks okay because no one looks that closely at my nails, so I’m happy with it :P
Here is a picture as proof that I did that on both hands! It took quite awhile and I think I was getting the hang of it while doing my right hand. I think if I do this again I’ll section off larger bits, it’ll look better :)
What do you think? Do you use paint brushes to do any nail art? I’ve seen the Models Own nail pens, has anyone tried them and how are they? :)
Hope you are all having a lovely week so far! Sorry for my absence lately. I have a lot more free time now that it’s the Easter break, so hopefully I’ll be posting more often! xxxx
Illamasqua Gamma Toxic Nature Collection
I finally submitted my postgraduate application yesterday, a few days early too! I’ve been working on it for weeks so I’m quite glad it’s gone so I can’t stop re-writing it. I’ll have free time again! Yay! It was the one good thing that happened yesterday, the rest of the day just felt horrible. Feel free to skip my moan if you like :P
<moan>I had to do a presentation yesterday, it was awful. It had a really strict time limit of 20 minutes, with 5 of us having to present, which is about 3-4 mins each. A whole chapter summarised in 3 minutes is horrible. We had to write scripts so we knew how long it would be, there was too much information to do my usual thing, which is just learn it and know it. I’m normally fine with presentations if I know my stuff. I very much dislike reading from a script. As I’ve mentioned before I’m dyslexic and trying to read from a script and the added time pressure…not good! I managed to forget to move onto a slide, lose my place more than once and in general I was a driveling wreck. I was completely bummed about it. How can I be absolutely fine without a script, doing a 20 minute presentation on my own, but as soon as I have a script and only 3 minutes I become an idiot. Very annoyed at myself. Anyway, I’ve got one more presentation left on Thursday, it’s just me and I know the topic so I’ll be fine. Although I’m concerned I’m going to take part in a repeat performance. By just not having a script I’ll be happier, I prefer to just chat about the topic, that way you can re-word anything that elicits a furrowed brow! </moan>
I feel better for my moan :P Onto better topics!
Grab your sunglasses because this is bright! So bright in fact that my camera had a lot of trouble even focusing on it! I love Illamasqua products, but I’m normally too out of pocket to buy them. I picked up this and Bacterium from the new Toxic Nature collection with my Asos Groupon voucher. I had to try this one first just because it was so bright and fun. I really love how Illamasqua create collections with a great theme running through them. Toxic Nature has a mixture of earthy, dirty shades and bright, radioactive shades. Illamasqua describe it as “an atomic-botanical environment”, sounds great!
This polish is really bright and even strangers commented on it. It’s a really great colour, probably not a great match to my pale/yellow skin, but I like it! I think it would great with some black polish. I might tape some bits off and give it a go before I remove it. I’ve not tried taping off polish without my quick drying topcoat, so it may end up a disaster, but I’ll give it a go. If it’s awful you won’t hear anything about it on here, you can just assume it was a catastrophe! :P
The polish itself is fantastic, as with all Illamasqua polishes it applied easily and perfectly. I put on two coats to even out the colour, but it was pretty good even with the first coat. It dried really quickly to a smooth, shiny finish. Most neon polishes dry matte, but this polish is nice and shiny even without a topcoat (I haven’t used a topcoat in the pictures). Although, now I look at the pictures the polish doesn’t look very shiny. This is because if the light was shining on my nails, my camera couldn’t focus on the colour, so I had to turn my nails away from the light to get the true colour to be captured. The polish dries as shiny as normal polishes, it is definitely not a matte finish.
Illamasqua polishes are also pretty hard wearing. I’ve had this on for two days and it hasn’t got a scratch or a chip on it even though I’ve done all my housework. Not bad! :)
What do you think? Are you happy to wear such BRIGHT, brights? Or should it be left to someone with not such a deathly skintone? I always read that brights look better on tanned or darker skintones. Oh well, when have I ever done what is best :P Hope your all having a lovely week so far and enjoying the lighter evenings! xxxx
OPI Charged Up Cherry
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted a good old nail post! I chopped my nails off after my last post and I hated them! They were all stubby and horrible. I’ve had a manic week with lots of assignments due (I just this minute submitted two essays!) so I’ve just been slopping on quick drying polishes like Essie Bermuda Shorts. I figured you wouldn’t want to see the same polish over and over on my short stubby nails!
Now they have grown back a bit though I’m happy to showcase this pretty, neon, salmon(?) pink, Charged Up Cherry! It’s pretty bright! It looks like quite a nice boring pink in the bottle, but the name does hint at the almost neon glow it gives off! It does seem a tad more neon in person, but the pictures aren’t far off. I must invest in a camera in the summer.
This is a super Spring colour. I’m liking all the brights that are popping up this Spring. I definitely need to pick up some of the polishes from the Illamasqua Toxic Nature collection, especially Gamma, it looks great! But for now I will settle with this one :)
I bought this from a blog sale a little while ago and it applies quite nicely. It really needed 3 coats, it was very streaky on the first coat. The second coat evened out the colour but it still looked patchy in places, the third sorted that out though. It dried pretty quickly, even with 3 coats, I think it was all completely dry in less than 15 minutes.
I really like this polish. I expect to be wearing it a lot throughout the Spring and Summer :) Now for the pictures!
I also want to note that I am not wearing topcoat on my nails. This polish dries this shiny, which is unusual for a bright polish. I’m very anti-topcoat atm because I’m half way through my Essie Good To Go and it has ridiculous shinkage! It’s fine and dries quickly and looks good for a couple of hours. Then BAM, shrinkage up from the base of the nail, from the sides and the tips, even if you seal the edge. It’s not even slight shinkage it’s about 3-4mm off each edge! I have some cheap topcoats, but they don’t dry very quickly, or bubble, or both! So no topcoat for awhile because it keeps ruining my pretty paint job!
In awesome news I’ve bought tickets to Art Brut’s album launch gig! Yay! I knew they were touring in late May/early June, but that was no good for me as that is exactly when I have my exams. I didn’t want to buy tickets and get my exam timetable and not be able to go, I would’ve been really sad! However, yesterday Art Brut released their album launch gig tickets and it’s during the Easter break, so I snapped some tickets up and now I am super duper happy! I’ve missed the last 4 gigs I’ve wanted to go to because of assignments or exams, but this one I’m going to! :D Happy happy, joy joy!
What do you think of the polish? Are you liking bright colours now that Spring appears to be here? :)
Hope you are all having a lovely week and looking forward to the weekend! xxxx



























