Urgh!

Sometimes, I can't help gilding the lily:

Had a perfectly good Rococo Utility manicure, and I went and added a layer of Inglot flakies to it, and ended up with this hideous mess. Both gorgeous shades on their own, added together just made me feel all "urgh" about it!

Have you ever made any terrible errors of combination?

Mannequin Hands? Precision Nail Lacquer P300 Kismet

A couple of months ago you couldn't move for blogs with people showing you their "Mannequin Hands".  Basically, a mannequin hand is one where you've painted your nails the same colour as the skin of your hand, making you look like you have longer, slimmer fingers.  Sadly, my hands are more sausage fingers than mannequin, but this polish - P300 Kismet from Precision - seems to have worked better for me in this craze than some other, more beige shades I've been trying.

Yes, it's a bit frosty - and therefore not a "real" mannequin hand, as you're meant to use a creme shade - and yes, it's a lot paler than I thought the skin on my hands was in the first place, but I do kind of like the shade, I can't deny it.  But I also can't deny that this looks dated in the picture, because what you can't really see here is the amazing green/pink duochrome that's in the polish! It's very visible in the bottle, but sadly not on the nail, and not in these pics ... The pics have also washed out the shade a little, it's actually slightly more pink than it appears here.

Pics show four coats - I still had some visible nail line, but I can live with it - over an Orly sticky basecoat, and under a layer of OPI Rapid-Dry top coat.  The polishes last well, the picture above is several days old now, and there's no chipping or signs of tipwear.

Precision polishes cost £5.95 and are available from Venus nail and beauty supplies.  I've not bought from these people though - this polish was a gift - so buyer beware, and all that.

What's your take on mannequin hands?

All for Eve Launch Sophy Robson Nail Varnish on June 15th

Yeah, I talk about All for Eve a lot.  It's a cause that's close to my heart, and because of that I'm not going to make any apology for mentioning them yet again!

This is just a quick post to let you know that the nail varnish created by Sophy Robson for the charity goes on sale via the All For Eve website on June 15th.  A gorgeous, classic red - perfectly complementing the Daniel Sandler lipstick that was released recently - it's a fine addition to any nail wardrobe.

Sophy Robson has painted the nails of (amongst others) Yasmin le Bon, Kate Moss, Claudia Schiffer and Natalie Portman.  She's also taken the mickey out of yours truly once or twice (never offered to do my nails though, I notice!), and she created this shade as it symbolises a "strong, stylish woman".

This is is how it looks on my alien-blue-fleshed fingers, but I think it will work on many skin-tones.  It's a lovely shade, averagely long-lasting (I found it a bit chippy after two days, but that's a common problem with a lot of reds, but I suspect a rushed application was also slightly to blame), and with a jelly-finish.  The picture shows two coats with no base, and a Chanel topcoat.

Buy it, wear it, love it. But just make sure you buy it.  And, if you haven't had a gynaecological checkup recently, book one, your ladygarden will love you for it.

Nail of the Day - OPI Meet Me At The Starferry

This might not be the most exciting nail polish you've ever seen, but I adore it.  A work-safe mauvish-pink with multicoloured sparkles, it has a lovely depth on the nails, and is very pretty.  I spent several days last week admiring it. I'd seen it on a lot of blogs recently, and it appealed to me a lot more than, say, Jade is the New Black, for some reason!

Swatches shown are two thin coats over an Orly base and with an OPI topcoat, and are around three days old at the time of photographing, it wears much better than a lot of polishes in my collection!

The day before I removed it, I decided to mattify it just to change it up a little:

Unlike the red creme I tried this with last time, I think this one looks better shiny, what do you think?

The Fine Print: I bought this from Selfridges.  I might as well get my entire salary paid to them and have done with it, let's face it.

Nail of the Day - Nubar Lustful Red

One from the Nubar Risque Reds collection that was released recently, I really like it.  A blue-red creme it applies smoothly (if a little on the thick side, but nothing that can't be fixed with a couple of drops of thinner), and evenly. There is no shimmer, and no glitter I really like it for a dramatic old-school"Hollywood" nails look.  Pic above is two coats shown over an Orly basecoat, and without a topcoat. Okay, it's not very edgy, but it is classic and pretty, and I like it. You can buy Nubar polishes from Beautyshed, who are lovely people, they cost £8 each.

Speaking of "edgy" though, I was at Boots No7 Autumn/Winter trends preview last week, and they're releasing a matte topcoat for nails in August, and I managed to snag a bottle.  I was wondering what a classic glossy red nail would look like mattified and here it is:

I think I kind of prefer this shade matte, to be honest, it's more of a raspberry/cranberry colour once the gloss is removed,  what do you think?  No7 Stay Perfect Matte Topcoat will be available in Boots stores from August 11th, and will cost £7.25.  I've just doubled my varnish wardrobe!  Hmn ... wonder what matte toenails will look like?

The Fine Print: Both items featured in this post were provided by PR for review purposes. Opinions are all my own work, feel free to ignore them though, it's cool.

Nailgirls

I held a tiny Twitter competition recently, and invited one of my readers along with me when I went to check out the Nailgirls salon in Islington.  The adorable Lauren Marks was my companion for the evening, and we had a fine old time. As much a great place to hang out as it is your traditional nail salon, we had a great time, we met the lovely and very friendly owners, had a glass or two of wine, and - of course - got our nails done! 

Here's Lauren's impressions of the evening:

I joined the lovely Louise at a manicure evening at Nail Girls in Islington and must say I wasn’t sure what to expect when I turned up at a small building in a side street – but it seems the best things come in small packages. I was greeted incredibly warmly and made to feel welcome within seconds of my arrival. All the staff were very friendly and chatty, making the effort to come round and chat to everyone – and even after doing tons of manicures they were all smiles. Now considering my nails are bitten to shreds – terrible habit I know! – the girls still made them look fantastic. I picked a coral/red colour, trying to be bright and colourful in preparation for the summer, and had many compliments on the colour as it was being painted on from fellow party-goers and staff – a great confidence boost. Certainly a lovely, pampering experience and I left feeling confident, happy with my bright, shiny nails and that despite the spa not being that local to me – I would definitely be returning. A great find, very reasonably priced and highly recommended by me!

I have to agree with all of that - I'll be going back, I'm wondering what their pedicures are like!  Sadly, we forgot to get a picture of Lauren's nails on the night, but I went for a gorgeous khaki shade shot through with golden shimmer, as below:

,

I adore it! This shade is Green #2.  I have to say that one of the most impressive things about NailGirls is that they use all their own products and treatments, it's great to see so much creativity and ingenuity around.  The quality of the polish is amazing too, the colour above lasted about five days before I chipped it! Fairly reasonably priced too, at £10 a bottle.

Where do you get your nails done?

Nails of the Day - Nubar Risque Reds and Fortress Collections

Beauty Shed very kindly sent me samples of their new collections recently, so I drafted in a volunteer so I could swatch two colours for you this week!  First up, from the Risque Reds Collection, Torrid Red:

Lovely red jelly with a glorious gold shimmer shot through,  it's a little darker than it appears in these pics, and is all the nicer for it. Both pictures show two coats over a Mavala base, and with a Seche Vite topcoat.  I could actually have got away with one coat, but I wanted to apply two, just to see how the colour came out.  I'm glad I did.  Formulation is a bit on the thick side for Nubar, but it applied and dried very nicely.

Picture of the ring finger there is a fairly accurate representation of how the colour looks in normal light.  Just lovely!







And from the Fortress collection - which is a selection of all grey shades, which is fairly unusual in itself - I selected the one which looked most interesting, Silver Sword, which is a mid-grey metallic finish, and I got the lovely Kerry to be my hand-model for this one:

Above pic shows two coats with a top coat (think it's from No. 17) application was good, and this is a lovely finish which doesn't seem to be blighted with brush strokes.

Looking forward to trying this one myself, it looks lovely! I will bring you more shades from both of these collections next week.

Which do you prefer, the greys or the reds?

Nubar polishes are available from Beauty Shed, and cost £8 each.

The Small Print: I was sent this for review purposes, so I reviewed them.  I'm nice like that ;) All opinions are honest, regardless of the source.

Nail of the Day - Nubar Oh Baby Pink

In the spirit of full disclosure, I've already said that spring, to me, is all about the brights, right? That I'm not about the pastels?  Okay ... in brief, I love this polish ... but...

This is Oh Baby Pink and it's from the Nubar Hypnotic Valentine's collection (which is available from the lovely, lovely people at Beauty Shed) it's a pastel pink creme, that only took two coats to cover my nails in dense, pink colour.  It was a dream to apply, slightly streaky on the first coat, but fully opaque and shiny on the second. Nubars always wear pretty well, and I'm assuming this won't be an exception to that.

My photos wash the colour out a little here, making the shade a lot more pastel than it actually is.  In the flesh, this shade is more of a candy- than a baby-pink.  If Barbie OD'd on Tipp-Ex, then this is what she'd throw up. It's a real love-it or hate-it shade, this one. I think I'm on the wrong side of that particular choice! That said, I've been wearing the colour out and about the last day or two, and some people really, really love it.  I think it'd be a great shade for people with cool-toned pale skin, or very dark, or tanned skin.  I think on my pale (very pale) yellow-y skin that it just makes me look a bit jaundiced.

I took a picture in different light to see if I could capture the full effect of the colour, and these are the best I could do

In artificial light:

In natural daylight

If you  like soft, girly colours, then you will adore this polish. Nubar say it's a lovely romantic shade - I'm not entirely sold on that, being reminded faintly of Pepto-Bismol every time I look at it) but there's no doubting the quality of the polish itself.

This happened today though.  There may have been a couple of tears shed (ironically, it's also the picture closest to the real shade of the polish):

No flowers please, the ceremony will be a private, family-only affair.  MrLippie has been laughing about it ALL DAY.

Unexpected Nail of the Day - Chanel Particuliere

Don't you just love synchronicity?  I was just thinking this lunchtime that my polish needed changing, and was musing about what colour to do them next, when I noticed that the Chanel counter at my local Boots had the spring range in, and they had Particuliere!  I've been lemming this colour for ages, but instead of trying to assuage my NEED with similar colours, I told myself I'd be good and wait ...

It's a taupe shade - somewhat less grey than I was expecting, and it shades almost to a milky chocolate colour in artificial light, but I love it.  I don't own anything quite like it already, and I can see I'm going to be staring at my nails all day tomorrow ...

 

 

Pictures show two coats with a Seche top-coat, application is fine, a little sheer on the first coat, but it builds up nicely on a second.

Apologies for the appalling lack of cleanup in these pics, but I wanted to show you the swatches as soon as I possibly could ... I like it an alwful lot more than the last Chanel special edition I bought you, which was Kaleidoscope, and I hated it.  Normally I avoid browns - I'm scared of them - but this is one I think works quite well with my skintone.

Will you be buying?

Nail of the Day - Chanel Kaleidescope

This shimmering metallic taupe/pewter was a limited edition from Chanel in 2008, the above pic shows two coats over a Seche base and with a Seche Vite top coat. Application is smooth with no streaking, but as it's a metallic you do tend to get visible brush marks.






As for the colour - I'm not sure I like it, there were lots of raves about it at the time, but I think it's actually a really difficult colour to wear as it highlights any pink you might have whatsoever in your fingers, and
makes it look like you have a nasty case of dishpan hands. At least, that's how I feel about it. This is only the second time I've tried it, and it's doubtful there will be a third.

What do you think?

Nail of the Day - Rococo Vayder

If you follow me on Twitter at all, then you might already know I've fallen for Rococo polishes in a big way.  Yes, they're expensive, but all the ones I've tried are so pretty, and the wear on them is simply fantastic, usually at least five days without any signs of tip wear or chipping.  Here's my latest purchase:

It's called Vayder and it's an opaque black with iridescent micro-sparkles.  In the picture it looks like a silver glitter, but under artificial light these little sparkles light up like diamonds, I love it.  The above pic shows two coats for full opacity, and a seche vite top coat.   There's no gritty feel from the glitter on my nails, either.

I now own three Rococo polishes, all in colours slightly different to what's in my usual colour wardrobe, from left to right here, there is Vayder, Utility and Underground:

Also, I want to show you a before and after of my nails now I've been using  my ultra top secret nail regime for a few weeks:

It might not look like much to you, but for me to have ALL of my nails visible from the other side is amazing to me!  Another couple of weeks and I'll reveal all, but this new nail routine is something I'm astonishingly happy with, and I'm beginning to think my nails actually look okay instead of being something I'm really ashamed of and frustrated with.

What are the winter nail colours you're loving at the moment?

Nail of the Day - Rococo Utility

Saw this in SpaceNK yesterday, and kind of fell in love with it!  Grey isn't a colour that normally appeals, but this is a great shade with hints of blue and lilac, not to mention some really lovely packaging. I tried this on one thumb and NARS Rouge Andalou on the other, but this was the one I couldn't take my eyes off for the rest of the afternoon, so it's the one I bought.

Consistency is thick, slightly gloopy,  and it dries very quickly, but it's instantly opaque on the nails. This picture shows ONE COAT, (over a base) so if you're lazy like me, then it's ideal. I've no idea what the coverage of the other colours in the range is like, but I'm really impressed with this.

Incidentally, you may be seeing more nail pictures in the future, I'm trialling a top secret nail system at the moment, and the results so far have been really good. It's hardcore stuff, but if the results keep up, I'll be one very happy blogger!

Rococo nail polishes cost £11.50 from SpaceNK, but if you buy this weekend, you can get a 20% discount online with the code FF201.

Have just realised the colour matches my blog.  This may be why it jumped out at me ...