Paralympic Saran Wrap Mani

OK, first off I know this isn't really a Paralympic mani but I was just really feeling these colours that day and I just got my OPI Germany collection so I wanted to use it, this is also my first ever saran wrap mani, which I guess should be called a cling film mani as that's what we call it in the UK!

I wore this mani to the Paralympic opening ceremony and for a day out shopping in Westfield  Stratford with my soon to be step-daughter. We had a lot of fun and I picked up my Kiko holo's which are just beautiful and I will show you later. We also saw a lot of the athletes shopping which was exciting too!

For this mani I started off with 2 base coats of OPI's Don't Talk Bach to Me from the Germany collection. To be honest I wouldn't have usually picked up this colour, it reminds me of pea soup, but I actually don't have anything in my collection which is close so why not? This colour really grew on me. As always the formulation with OPI is good and it was opaque in 2 coats.

Then I thought I'd try a saran wrap mani. Initially I tried a coat of OPI Just Spotted the Lizard from the Spiderman collection but it was just too light so I went with OPI Number One Nemesis instead.

If you haven't done a saran wrap mani before they are really easy and I found a great tutorial on Nailed It which you can find here. To be honest I think a plastic bag or a bit of screwed up paper would have probably done the same job.

Number One Nemesis has a really pretty shimmer to it which I really liked, unfotunately it was a really grey day when I took these photo's so it doesn't show up as much as I would have liked.

 

 

Now, I know this has nothing to do with mani's but it was so special I wanted to share it with you. In case you are interested or didn't see it the Paralympic opening ceremony  it was amazing, the theme was Enlightenment and it was opened by Professor Stephen Hawking who is perhaps the world's most brilliant physicist. He is an absolutely amazing man and I am in even more awe of him after reading this. The things that people can achieve are just incredible!

 

 

 

After the opening of the ceremony there was a video clip played about 4 individuals who had or were competing in the games. The talked about their hopes, how they became disabled and what they had done to overcome their difficulties. They each had a role to play in the opening ceremony and we didn't have to wait long to find out what one of them was - a flypast in a plane lit up with blue lights and trailing fireworks. This flypast was by aerobility, a British charity that helps to train disabled people to become pilots. It was so touching and beautiful, I had a tear in my eye. I took a photo of the big monitor so you can see what the stadium looked like too!

This was the moment the British athletes came out - it went wild and there was glitter everywhere!

In the final moments of the ceremony  there was a huge firework display and you can see a large scale reproduction of a famous and controversial sculpture by Marc Quin entitled 'Alison Lapper pregnant', which has famously been displayed in Trafalgar Square.

 

So I hope you enjoyed those pictures as well as the mani - good luck to all the paralympians!!

Nails Inc Borough Road

Do you ever buy a polish and love it in the bottle but feel so disappointed once you get it on the nail? Well my dears, for me that is Nails Inc Borough Road.

I bought a Nails Inc Todays Special Value from QVC about 9 months ago and they had 2 auto-delivery shipments and Borough Road was included in the third. I can't even tell you what the rest of the polishes were, they were so boring I could barely be bothered to look!

Borough Road is a dark blue glass flecked polish with a pink micro glitter which is really pretty in the bottle, unfortunately it just does not show up much on the nail. Don't you hate that!

I tried to find swatches online but didn't come up with anything so here is my offering. I don't know if this is from a yet to be released autumn or winter collection but I guess we'll see.

This polish was really hard to photograph but you can see here that I did capture some of the pink shimmer, this was about as good as it got.

I did manage to capute it in some sunlight, where is all that pretty pink shimmer that we can see in the bottle??

This polish just isn't me. I've already take it off and am going to use one of the new OPI Germany's which I picked up today - I'm excited!!

British Bloggers Weekly Round Up....

So what's been going on this week in the UK?? Find out with a selection of posts from the 3rd instalment of the British Nail Bloggers:


The weather in the UK may have improved a little but not enough for Vic to justify running off to Cornwall to catch the surf. Instead she's made do with her Surfin' USA mani.

It's been KBShimmer Week this week at The Crumpet 5 polishes, but which was her favourite ?
Laura has been trying out stamping for the first time this week and was particularly fond of her classyblack and silver floral design.

PrettyKittyClaws has been making the most of the sunshine by copying The Crumpet with a Red Holo Dotticure. feautring Ozotics 518.

Helly at the Nail Newbie got her holo on with a purple holo gradient featuring OPI DS Original!
 
Charlotte at Charlottes-nails has been catching up with the lazy days of summer challenge with a ruffle accent nail.

Alexis at Glitter Tips managed to overcome a nasty case of nail art block with a Black and Gold NOTD inspired by her jewellery collection.

Claire at nuthin' but a nail thing managed to get hold of some OPI Black Spotted and gave it a go over some bright NEONS.

Seeing as the British weather has been seasonably rainy, there has been a lack of barbaques this year. Unless it is in the form of nail art from Enigmatic Rambles.

Lou entered the Golden Jungle over at Painted Nails & Baking Scales finding some new polish species to describe

This week at Northern Nails there are Turtles in a Guest Post , Also Jo has started a new series of posts called Mashups!

Emma's been busy swatching the new Barry M Burgundy Croc Effects over different colours on Imagination In Colour!

It's texture time in the BFF Challenge and Kerrie from PishPosh and Polish made great use of Heart-Shaped beads but was it a success?

Ruth had some fun with pastel colours and created some colourful zebra nails using her new stampers!

Steph is showing off. Peacock feathers in the (rare) sunshine.

It's been a special week for Allie and in celebration she's been wearing some Sea Green Glitter Birthday Nails.   Dimpal is absolutely loving these fish egg nails Fish Egg Nails she also did Nicole's Me+Blue Mani

Sarah Louise reviews LeaLaC's Stamping Plate XL - A See the post for swatches and a manicure using her first Bettina Nail Polish.

Sam at Polished Art kicked off the 31 Day Challenge with a red leopard print mani.

Kerry starts the first off Nail Inc Sprinkle swatches with Sweets Way.

Julep Helena and OPI Black Spotted

Happy Friday everyone!

So I was lucky enough to get OPI Black Spotted from one of my birthday group girls who lived in France and raided Sephora for a bunch of us! In case you haven't heard Black Spotted is an OPI France exclusive and replaces the green shatter in the French Spiderman collection. It's a bit similar to a shatter but instead of shattering it gives a sort of oil on water effect which you will see below.

I wanted to put a bright base under it to make it pop so I chose Julep Helena which I was sent as part of an awesome swap. We don't get Julep here in the UK so this is only my 2nd one.

Helena is described as an ultra-saturated fuscia creme, I think that is a perfect description. For this mani I used 2 coats of Helena to get full opacity. I really loved this polish, not sure about the bottle being so tall as it would be easy to knock over but the formula was great!

And here it is with Spotted:

I need to practise with this. I saw on facebook that Spotted really only needs a very very thin coat, almost with the brush dry or otherwise it covers too much of the nail so that's what I did. In the main I got the effect but as you can see there are some drag marks so I do need to practise with this one. I'll be posting more mani's with this so keep an eye out.

This is Julep Helena on it's own:

I actually have 2 bottles of Spotted - the one I didn't get from my friend in France is on my swap page on this blog so if you are interested you are more than welcome to contact me.

Ozotics 518 and a Dotticure!

Well first off I just wanted to say Hi to anyone who just signed up to my blog. It seems that everyone wanted to know about GOSH Holographic Hero!!

So, we have still been having sun in the UK and I want to make the most of it before the gloom descends and holo's are not an option anymore. I also realised that I never wear reds. Ever. So here you go - a red holo.

For this mani I used Ozotics 518 from the recently discontinued 500 series. I was lucky enough to have a lovely polish friend on Oz who sent me my Ozotics - I got all of the ones I wanted before they went so I'm happy with that.

First off I should say that if you like reds this polish is beautiful and the formula is great. I used a coat of my usual OPI Nail Envy Maintenence, a coat of GOSH base fix and then 2 coats of Oztoics 518.

I did worry about applying a topcoat to this because sometimes that can dull the holo effect but I tried it on my thumb first and it was fine so the pictures are taken with 1 coat of Cult Nails Wicked Fast as a topcoat.

Now over the weekend I was obsessed with looking through almost entire blog of The Crumpet! Have you heard of her? - Debbie at The Crumpet that is.

If not you need to look at her blog which you can find here.

I love the way she writes, it's almost like chatting to a friend and getting great pics of nails too. I also love that she doesn't try and be perfect, you see awesome mani's on her blog and she also posts ones she doesn't like. I love that - a real person who isn't always perfect. I think in this nail blogging world sometimes people seem so perfect and so amazingly talented it makes me scared to try in case mine turns out rubbish and I fail. People like Debbie at The Crumpet help me to see that you just have to do something - and if it doesn't turn out the way you wanted then it doesn't really matter. She also has an amazingly creative mind and posts a lot (and has massive hauls which make me feel much better about mine! lol).

So in tribute of my Sunday morning looking at The Crumpet's blog I decided on a dotticure. Debbie does a lot of them and she inspired me. So here my dotticure with Ozotics 518 and Enchanted Polish Austin Powers. Austin Powers was a bit hard to work with for this dotticure because it has quite a bit of glitter in but it was worth it.

And if you are like me and live somewhere where the sun rarely shines this is what it will look like the rest of the time!

And here are the polishes I used (sorry both are discontinued):

I really liked this mani - it did remind me of Christmas baubles a bit - maybe I was aiming for Christmas in August or maybe I'll just have to try it again later in the year!

GOSH Holographic V's GOSH Holographic Hero - Are They The Same??

So unless you have been living under a rock you know all about how awesome GOSH Holographic is. This polish is just simply, in my opinion, the best silver holo there is, I've previously blogged about it, if you want to check out that post then you can see it here. Unfortunately this polish is has also been discontinued for several years so unless you want to pay at least £25 on ebay then you might be out of luck.

Well, a few months ago one of my birthday group girls contacted GOSH about how popular their Holographic is and would they consider releasing it again.? We were all astounded by their response - they knew and they were releasing it again in August!


We have all been waiting with baited breath..... Superdrug has probably had double the traffic it usually gets and we have been updating daily on forums as to whether there has been any sightings. Imagine the excitement when on Saturday I casually walked past my Superdrug and thought I had just better pop in, even though I checked the previous day when they had had their delivery, and there on the shelf were 2 bottles of  GOSH Holographic Hero.

I promptly snatched them up and ran home to post my find. I've been excited about this ever since but the one question on my mind - is it the same formula????

I don't do many swatches but today I got out of work early and came home and did some. I just had to know. Please bear with me, they are not perfect and were rushed because the sun was going down and in the UK you can't rely on any more than a minute of sunshine at a time, I didn't want to miss my opportunity. Why do you always see your mistakes so much more on photo's? Anyway, ignore the bits where I have coloured outside the lines and look at the nails.

Here goes:
















I









I could have cried right there in my garden. IT DOESN'T LOOK THE SAME. It's pretty and it's holographic but it doesn't look the same as the famous GOSH Holographic. (Edited 25/08/12 - A reader posted on one of the comments below that GOSH have said that both GOSH Holographic and GOSH Holographic Hero ARE the same formula but it is just evaporation over time that has caused the difference, see comments below)

Here's some more pictures so you can see better: GOSH Holographic is on the index and ring finger and Holographic Hero is on the middle and pinky.

You know, I am actually still hoping that I might be wrong - maybe I got a bad bottle?? I guess as other bloggers do comparison posts we'll see.

In the bottle they look different. GOSH Holographic (on the right) appears more grainy whilst Holographic Hero (on the left) appears more holo - I wish this was true on the nail.

I did look under the halogen lights in my kitchen also and the difference in appearance was much less, it would seem that sunlight really accentuates this polish.

After this discovery I thought I may as well try it with topcoat. Last time I wore GOSH Holographic I topcoated one nail with SV or Poshe, I can't remeber which and it completely dulled the effect so I didn't use any and just accepted it would be a one day wear mani. Today I topcoated Holographic and Holographic Hero (my ring finger and pinky) with one coat of my new favourite topcoat, Cult Nails Wicked Fast (which you can find here). I don't think it dulled the holo effect at all so next time I wear it it's Wicked Fast all the way!

I will be buying another bottle of GOSH Holographic off ebay it seems and probably just keeping this one Holographic Hero in my stash. If you don't have the original I would say it is still worth buying a bottle but be prepared it may not look quite the same as the original GOSH Holographic. What a shame.

British Bloggers Weekly Round Up.....

This is the second post of what has been happening in good old Blighty again this week. My most exciting polish related news is that I found GOSH Holographic Hero today in Superdrug and promptly snatched both bottles! Holographic Hero is supposed to to be same as the original GOSH Holographic that has got to be so famous. I haven't tried the new one yet but I will let you know!

So here we go......

It's been a week of Themes over at The Crumpet - the new collection from 365 Days of Color and Red Week - which was your fave? Naturally Debbie wants to show everyone her Monkey See, Monkey Do mani: Britishness.

Vic got a little carried away with one of her Summer Challenge manis this week.Bumble beessuddenly takes on a whole new meaning. Perhaps you've already guessed...

Lou played with some of her polishes from a recent US Polish Swap and had a lot of fun!

Helly wears her heart on her nails with her Love Love mani featuring OPI Steady As She Rose

Has Misha mastered the freehand acrylic paint flower on Enigmatic Rambles?

Abi celebrated her A-England haul with one of her favourite stamps at Volatile Varnish.

PrettyKittyClaws is feeling summery with a Summer Sunset Gradient and has been making room for more with a blog sale!

Emma put up her first giveaway of GOSH Golden Dragon after arriving back from a relaxing holiday!

Sarah played with some of her recent Tony Moly Glitter polishes and created a Yummy Strawberry Manicure .Also check out her swatches for Tony Moly's GS10 - Pinky Star, GS08 - Milky Way & GS09 - Shooting Star.

Jo has been real busy in the real World this week and has a rather empty blogBusy Busy but if you check back later today you may find a suprise post! ;) .

Steph showed us a few of her "favourite things" Also check out her attempt at some nail art =)
Kerrie over at PishPosh and Polish attempted Tribal Nailsas part of her Black and White Challenge this week and is happy with the result.

Charlotte from The Colour and The Sparkle has a review of some W7 fluorescent polishes.

Charlotte at Charlottes-nails has been swatching China glaze deviantly daring from her recent polish haul.

Candeo Colors Joker

So I was thinking..... I haven't worn a full on glitter for ages and I also received some nail soakers which I bought from ebay that are supposed to be good for glitter removal and I want to try them (I will post about those later), so here comes a glitter bomb for you all.....

Today I chose Candeo Colors Joker. Joker is described as clear base with multi-sized and different shades of purple glitter and large silver hex glitters and it is absolutely gorgeous. I love Candeo Color polishes and have been really lucky to be able to get quite a few from the Big Cartel store here and from Llarowe here which both offer international shipping.

For this mani I used 2 coats of Savvy Deep Amethyst which perfectly describes the colour of this polish and 2 coats of Joker. The glitter wasn't difficult to fish out at all and suprisingly it isn't gritty at all. I used 1 coat of Cult Nails Wicked Fast (which I am loving)

This is such a super sparkly mani, I'm loving it!

I thought you might like to see what this looks like in the shade, it's still gorgeous!

Here they are:

It was a rare super hot day today and we are having the floors in our house done so poor Miagi is relegated to the kitchen for today. He was doing a bit of sunbathing while I was taking these pictures. Isn't he adorable?!

Pretty & Polished Jawbreaker

I have been lemming this polish for a long time but living in the UK it isn't easy to get your hands on Pretty & Polished polishes as Chelsea doesn't ship internationally. Luckily I have a wonderful friend who gave me this in a secret polish swap. Thank you El!

Pretty & Polished Jawbreaker is a white base splattered with the best original jawbreaker colors! It is packed with blue, green, yellow, red, and purple glitters in all different shapes and sizes in a sheer white base.

For this mani I used 2 coats of Jawbreaker and a topcoat of Cult Nails Wicked Fast. You can see on my middle finger a large red square glitter which has curled and although it bothers me in these pictures it really didn't bother me in real life - weird!

Anyway, I really like this polish, it is certainly a fun summer polish and now international ladies can get it from Llarowe too. Yay for international shipping!

As it happens I just got 3 more Pretty & Polished polishes from one of my birthday group girls this morning so keep an eye out for those!

Summer Sunset Gradient

Well, I've been a busy girl this week. I finaly realised that I have too many polishes! In fact I have way too many polishes....

Well over 700 to be precise. I don't state an exact number because anyone looking at this post will know that numbers of polishes is a fluid thing. I have some on the way and some I have taken out of my stash to swap or sell. So what is a girl to do? Well I've decided to have my first ever blog sale. It's actually quite a lot of work setting all this up but I thought August is a good quiet month for me to do it in, so take a look if you like.

Now, August is also the height of summer (yes, even in the UK apparently), so I though before the opportunity passes I better use some of those polishes I won't be using later in the year. I've also wanted to try a gradient for ages too.

I did this mani using this tutorial from Makeup Withdrawl which you can find here, however I found that the sponge made the polish very texturised on the nail, so half way though I decided to try the sponge a bit damp - this worked much better. This mani isn't perfect but it was my first try and whilst looking for the tutorial above I found a great one from The Beauty Department which I will use next time. You can see it here.

Isn't this summery (or depending on how you look at it a bit like Candy Corn!)

For this mani I used Nails Inc Peach Sorbet, Nails Inc Hobart Place and Nails Inc Mayfair Mews