Kitten Mondays Marathon - Models Own Pro Olive Pearl plus KIKO crackle

Todays going to be a long Kitten Mondays post. It's long cause this polish really gave me a hard time, but I managed to get a nice manicure out of it in the end. ;)

 Ah, she always knows to sit exactly on top of what I'm trying to get at. Such a good kitten...

The look of incredulity.

 ("Move? But me comfy now")

Let's start at the beginning of my story. I really like green polishes and I'd been umming an ahhing over whether to get Models Own Pro polish in Olive Pearl. The other week I took the plunge and bought it. That's where the trouble started.

Here's my first attempt at wearing it. It was all streaks and bubble, humph! :(

Never mind, I'm not one to give up so easily, so I gave myself extra time one evening to apply it really slowly.

 Much better this time, but it took about 45min for just 3 coats and a topcoat.

The topcoat really helped even out the appearance of the streakiness.

As much as I liked Olive Pearl in the bottle, on my hands it kind made them look dead; which is fine if you're going for a "dead hands" kind of look. ;)

To try and warm up my dead hands I added a coat of Essie Luxeffects As Gold As It Gets. I think it really helped, and I've tried to capture the golden flakes in natural...

 h

 .....and artificial lighting.

Of course I couldn't stop there so I added a crackle topcoat in KIKO Light Gold (615) on my ring and pinky and Taupe (613) on my index and middle finger.

 

I am so glad I added those crackle top coats. The Taupe is my new favorite (great colour and formula), but the Light Gold is gorgeous too.

I hope you enjoyed that long post. I'll try and post a more sensible Kitten Mondays post next week. :P

Kitten Mondays! With Bourjois Rainbow Apparition (No. 14)

Hi everyone, Kitten Mondays are back! Today I have for you my very first animated gif of Toasty. This is one of her favorite games, "attack the headphones".

Ah my little predator...

The weather has been so depressing lately (well continuously) here in London that I find myself reaching for sparkly, glittery polishes to add a little bit of well, light to my day. I saw this Bourjois polish in my local Superdrug and knew it would be a perfect "day brightener".

Bourjois Rainbow Apparition (No. 14) is a sheer purple base packed with holographic glitter and microglitter. For my pics I used 2 coats of Rainbow Apparition over my base coat (Color Club) and I was good to go. The glitter isn't that gritty so I decided not to wear a topcoat. 

The brush is a wide, short fan shape making it easy to paint your whole nail in a couple of quick strokes. "One seconde" application it's not, but it makes things a lot easier. I also noticed that it dries faster than average so that was another plus.

 

  Here's a couple of out of focus shots to show off the holo-glitter.

 And finally a full hand shot to finish off. ;)

Overall I'm really pleased with my first ever Bourjois polish purchase, and it's definitely not going to be my only "one seconde" pointy bottled polish. I plan to start a mini collection. :P

We stamp on Sundays - Stamping shoes

Hi everyone, just a quick post today. I'd been wanting to try out a new stamp from my Bundle monster collection. I find that I'm usually drawn to the same patterns again and again, so this time wanted to avoid my usual stamps.

I used Barry M White as my base colour. I've heard that this polish really stains so I made sure to put on a layer of base coat first (Colour Club top/base coat is my current fav).

 

Admittedly not my best stamping (index and pinky are my favorites)

 

Luckily you can't see from a distance. ;)

For the stamping I wanted to do a really bright red show stamp. I used the Beauty UK bright red that comes with in the Wild Child collection. It came out pink when I stamped it but I still quite like it. For the black stamping I used Rimmel Black Out. The shoe stamp is on Bundle Monster plate BM213, cute isn't it?

Butter London Wallpaper Nail Skins

Hi everyone. Sorry for my absence, I had a lot going on in my life that needed some sorting and that unfortunately that takes it's toll on my posting. Happily I can say things are slightly more sorted now so it's back to posting! :)

Today I have something a little different for you: Butter London Wallpaper Nail Skins. (phew what a long name). You get 12 stickers with Butter Londons signature "background art". There's something quite "vintage" about the imagery. My favorites are the crow with the crown and the yellow rose. :)

There's been a real explosion of nail skins/stickers over the past year. They're everywhere but some look really papery and you can almost see the pixels of the images printed on them. I've always been hesitant about buying any nail stickers, until I saw these on Ebay.

I'm a big fan of the Butter London brand, even though I don't own any Butter London polishes. yet!;)  The only problem is that they're a bit expensive. These nail skins aren't cheap either. They retail for £8 (minus delivery) but I got mine for £4.00 on Ebay.

So I have to say that application of these nail skins was very easy and I was lucky that most of the stickers fit my nail pretty well, but be warned they are quite narrow. They were easy to trim and then file down to fit the shape of my nails.

You can see on my pinky where the stickers doesn't quite fit, but that was easily fixed by added a bit a black nail polish round the edges of the sticker.

I then sealed the stickers in with one coat of Seche Vite. In order to make things last longer I would reapply the Seche Vite if the stickers had started to peel.

Using my daily touch up method I was able to make these babies last 4 days! before they drove me crazy and I had to get them off.

Ok, so just to warn you that the next pics are what my Butter London nail skins looked like after 4 days of wear.

g

 Sorry about the kitten fluff!

 

  

Unfortunately all good things come an end and I couldn't re-stick the sticker edges, so they kept getting caught on everything ( my hair, clothes, paper, kittens).

Overall I would rate these nail stickers as very good in terms of the quality of the image and sticker itself. The cons are that they are best suited for narrow nails and like I said earlier £8.00 is a bit much for 12 nail stickers that only last 4 days...

 I hope you found this post interesting and I'll be back soon with another proper polish post soon. :)

Kitten Mondays! Topshop Gypsy Night

It's Kitten Monday again and as always lets start off with some pics of Toasty the kitten doing her thing.

There's something borderline "Barry White" about this pic to me. ;)

Ah it's a tough life for you isn't it Toasty? 

Zzz...All that relaxing can tucker a kitten out.

Ok, nail polish time!

Remember a couple of posts back when I swatched Barry M Black Multiglitter? It was such a waste of money, disappointing polish. Meh :(

If you are considering buying it so should really take a look at the pics in my post before making that decision here.

Well, good news! I have now found a black polish with holo glitter that actually looks the same on the nail as it does in the bottle. It's Topshop Gypsy Night, and not only does it have holo glitter and microglitter it also has flakies that flash red/orange to green. That's the kind of formulation we like! ;)

In the pics below I used 3 thin coats but no topcoat. The polish is so glossy on it's own that you don't need it.

I think it's a super easy way to get the background for a "Galaxy nails" look. I should really try some galaxy nail art since I've got a whole collection of them on Pinterest.

Below is an out of focus shot to try and show off the holo glitter. It's much more sparkly IRL but it was cloudy so I could get much in the way of sparkle which I tried to photograph this.

If you guys have any recommendations for black glittery polishes or your galaxy nail art I'd love to see it! Topshop Gypsy Night is £6.00 (well worth it in my opinion) and is available in Topshop stores and online here.