Alessandro International - Pomegranate Swatch & Review

Hi all, happy Sunday, and Happy Mothers Day to UK people.

No stamping challenge for me this week as I haven't had time. I do however have some swatches of a lovely polish I was sent by Alessandro International.

Here's what I was sent

Little product booklets, colour charts, note pad, pen, invitation, and the polish

And here's the swatches, this is two coats no top coat, look at how shiny that is!

Alessandro International - Pomegranate

Pomegranate is a really gorgeous Coral creme that has jelly properties, and really pretty warm gold flecks. it tends to photograph a little more orange. Dry time on this is quick, and the coverage was great, as you can see. Overall I was very impressed with this polish, and I really liked the design of the lid, I thought I might dislike it, but it was really convenient.

I'm not sure where you can buy Alessandro at the minute, but I've recently seen they have a polish called Nail Dots, which is similar to OPI Spotted, so hopefully I'll find out where you can easily get Alessandro polishes.

**This product was sent for consideration of review**

Essence - Choose Me! & Gosh - Holographic Hero Stamping

Hi all, happy Thursday :]

Scheduled post today, as I'm at work. I must have done these nails about a month back now, and this was my first time stamping with a holographic polish - which was an experience, as it would dry so so quickly!

Base Coat: La Femme

Base Colour: Essence - Choose Me!

Stamp Colour: Gosh - Holographic Hero

Image Plate: Dashica Big SpD-A

Top Coat: Rimmel 60 Seconds - Clear

And here are two swatch photos. This polish was extremely hard for me to photograph, so shiny, and sparkly, and not the best lighting in the world. This is three thin coats, that didn't fully cover my nail line, but as I was stamping I wasn't too bothered.

Hope you're all having a good Thursday :]

Essence Nail Colour3 - Ticket To The Show, Front Row Or Backstage & Gold Lighting Bolts With BM 305

Hi all! Today I have a delicious combo for you, Essence Nal Colour3, Ticket To The Show, with a Layer of Front Row Or Backstage and some stamping.

First up is the finished mani:

Base Coat: La Femme

Base Colour: Essence Nail Colour3 - Ticket To The Show

Layering Colour: Front Row Or Backstage (on all nails except ring finger)

Stamping Colour: Barry M - Gold Foil

Image Plate: Bundle Monster BM 305

Top Coat: Sally Hansen Advanced Hard As Nails

 
Now onto the swatches. Ticket to the show is so beautiful, a very rich black with rainbow shimmer, and it's a one coater! I used two coats for the swatches, but that's just habit! It was quite hard for me to capture the rainbow with the overcast day we were having in the UK :(

Here's a swatch shot of Ticket To The Show, with one coat Front Row Or Backstage? I love how chocolatey and warm this looks. Something I'll seriously be wearing again soon.

Hope you're all having a good Tuesday!

Sinful Colors - Daddy's Girl & Hot Pink Chrome Konad

Very quick post from me tonight (Wednesday as I write this) as i'm super tired and just want to go to bed!

I finally got around to getting some swatch shots of Sinful Colors - Daddy's Girl, and although it's a pain to get colour accurate photos, I think I did okay. After that I really wanted to see what a pink chrome would look like stamped over it. It's strange though, as before I added top coat the colour was a lot brighter, and stood out against Daddy's Girl really nicely. Maybe it's the age of my top coat.

Base coat: La Femme
Base Colour: Sinful Colors - Daddy's Girl
Stamp Colour: NYC - Foil'er Up
Image Plate: Konad M60
Top Coat: China Glaze - No Chip Top Coat

 

Ahh Daddy's Girl is so pretty! I just love the pink glass flecks floating around this gorgeous purple jelly. The flecks take on almost a silver quality too at times.

I hope everyone's having a good Thurday so far :]

Leopard Print Over A Pink & Purple Gradient

As I mentioned Thursday today's post will be covering some nails I did for my friend Vicki. I really wanted to do a gradient with stamping, so I started with a base of Models Own - Pastel Pink, and Sponged on both Pastel Pink, and Sinful Colors - Daddy's Girl. I then stamped with good old Konad M57 in BYS - Black Satin.

Daddy's Girl is a polish I lusted after a couple of years ago, but totally forgot about it, until I spotted it in the pound shop. I still don't have any swatches even though I've wore it a few times.

On to Vic's Nails:

Base coat: La Femme
Base Colours: Models Own - Pastel Pink
Sinful Colors - Daddy's Girl
Stamping Colour: BYS - Black Satin
Image Plate: Konad M57
Top Coat: Rimmel - 60 Seconds Clear

I really love the colour combo, and i'm planning on wearing it at some point with a different stamp, or some free hand stuff maybe.

Anyways I'm gonna take this time to tell you about Vicki's new Facebook store she's just opened, Blingin Covers.

Blingin Covers specialise in hand made bling iPhone covers using Swarovski element crystals. At the minute she only sells iPhone covers but is looking to expand if demand is high enough. She also sells some seriously cute headphone jack plugs, I think my favourite being the Giraffe which I'll show you later. I think these plugs (or dust stoppers) are such a great idea. My last phone I had used a regular sized jack, and it broke because of dust and fluff getting stuck in the jack.

So here's the Giraffe dust stopper dangle I was talking about:

 So yeah check her out if you're in the market for some iPhone goodies, or some dust stopper dangles :] She accepts Paypal or cheque, and is so much cheaper than American competitors.

Happy Saturday :]

Black And Red - We Stamp On Sundays

This week's challenge was for black and red stamping. For this; I knew what polish I wanted to use, and knew I wanted to use one of my new Bundle Monster plates, now my faulty plates are being replaced and are currently on their way to me.

The Red I used came from my swap with Susana, as did the shimmer. I used Essence Colour3 - Kiss On Top Of The Rock, and Dancing In The Street. So I chose to use two images from BM316 to stamp in black, and while I didn't hate the outcome, I wasn't buzzed about it. The image seemed to transfer a bit thin too - you can kind of see the shimmer through it.

Base Coat: La Femme
Base Colour: Essence Colour3 - Kiss On Top Of The Rock
Shimmer: Essence Colour3 - Dancing In The Street
Stamp Colour: BYS - Black Satin
Image Plate: Bundle Monster BM316
Top Coat: Sally Hansen - Hard As Nails

Here's Kiss On Top Of The Rock; it was so lovely to apply, If I'd been careful one coat would have been fine.

Here is Dancing In The Street; I didn't get any swatch shots though.

I hope everyone's having a good Sunday!

Natural Collection - Antique Coral, Flakies & China Glace - Evening Seduction, Dashica Hello Kitty Stamp

So this is going to be a scheduled post, because I’ll be at work! Yay! It’ll be my first day, and I’m going to be back where I used to work with people I love!  So I hope everything with this post goes well as I’ll not be able to fix things until the night time.

So yeah, less of the excitement, more of the nails! This is a colour I never did swatch, I’ve had it in my collection for about a year now, and it’s my only true coral (I think, haha.) Gorgeous coral, with tiny blue glass flecks running through it. It had thickened a little bit in the year it’d gone neglected, but the formula was still pretty good, though I had a little problem with streaking 3 coats was perfect.

If I didn't want to take a swatch shot, I could've got away with 2 coats easily, especially with the flakie top coat too. So after this I added Golden Rose - Scale Effects 03, and then used two images from my Dashica Big SpD-A using China Glaze - Evening Seduction. I really love using Evening Seduction as a stamping polish as the base colour changed the outcome slightly. I've used it over lilac and got a true dark berry purple, and here it looks more like red.

Base Coat:  La Femme
Base Colour: Natural Collection - Antique Coral
Flakies: Golden Rose - Scale Effects 03
Stamping Colour: China Glaze - Evening Seduction
Image Plate: Dashica Big SpD-A
Top Coat: China Glaze - No Chip Top Coat

These were so adorable to wear! I had stripes/waves on my thumb too.

I also got my Bundle Monster plates in the mail today (Wed) so I'll be testing them out this weekend, and will do a post about them. I'm curious if you'd want to see swatches of the plates too? If you do I'll test them out a little neater :P

Revlon - Sunshine Sparkle

Hi all! TGIF! Little swatch post today, it needs to be a quickie post as I have a lot to do :] My interview that was going to be near the end of the month has been moved up to Monday, so I have some planning to do, I have no idea what to wear either :/

Anyhoo - Sunshine Sparkle is a really pretty yellow, I thought it was going to be a horrid formula but It wasn't really that bad in the end, pretty milky yellow with glass flecks. This is three coats, no base or top coat.

Revlon - Sunshine Sparkle

Time to go play dress up! Hopefully I'll get up to date with my reading list tomorrow :]

Purple And White Stars

I was going through my boxes of polishes, and remembered how much I loved this polish. And then since my nails were shorties I headed for the first set of Bundle Monster. I wish I'd taken some photos before stamping, as I didn't realise I haven't posted about this polish before. It's such a gorgeous colour, and the formula is so great. Very pretty purple purple :]

Base Coat: Nail RX - Stuck On You
Base Coat: Rimmel - Pompous
Stamping Colour: Konad Special White
Image Plate: Bundle Monster BM20
Top Coat: Models Own - 3 In 1

 

These were incredibly fun to wear. Even though I love delicate and intricate nail art, I looooove having something bold on my nails. Hope everyone's having a good Tuesday =]

Plate Ending In 7 - We Stamp On Sundays

Third challenge for the Adventures In Stamping! This time the challenge was to use an image plate ending in 7, I had a few to chose from, I think it would've been five, two from the first set of Bundle Monster, two from the second set, and Konad M57.

I really struggled in picking a plate to use, I was going to use a tips plate, but recently cut my nails down, so the ratio was a bit off ;(

Anyhoo I spent a good hour thinking of ideas, and then the toothache kicked in (Thursday) so I decided on good ol' leopard print :P

Of course I couldn't help doing some sponging.. And adding flakies! I started with my favourite yellow, sponged on an orange with gorgeous glass flecks in it, added some Nubar flakies, and then stamped with my trusty BYS black :]

Base Coat: Nail RX - Stuck On You
Base Colour: Manhattan - Lemonade
Sponged Colour: Deborah - Sunset Cocktail
Flakies: Nubar - 2010 G188
Stamp Colour: BYS - Black Satin
Image Plate: Konad M57
Top Coat: Models Own - 3 In 1

 Again, no real lobster hands! Just very cold when I did these!

Was really quite hard to capture all the flakies, but in real life they really did shine their way through the space they had :]

Hope everyone's had a good weekend!

Stripey

Ahh; so these aren't the most refined stripes I've ever done, but the were fun to wear, although after a day I added some more colour over half of the white on the pinky finger. Not massively impressed with the outcome, but I got to use the glow in the dark polish I got just before Halloween so I was a happy bunny. I only have a really crappy bottle shot of the bottle in the dark though rather than my nails :(

Base Coat: CND - Stickey
Base Colour: La Femme - Dusky Pink (made my own name up for it :P)
Black & White Acrylic Paint
Deborah - Sunset Cocktail
Rubies - Glow In The Dark Nail Polish
Top Coat: China Glaze - No Chip Top Coat

Just because I love this blue toned pink. Nom

You can sort of see a stripe of the glow in the dark where my pinky is at the top right corner of the bottle. But I couldn't get a good shot of my nails cause I had to close the curtains and squish into a cupboard to get it dark enough to glow xD

Deborah Sunset Cocktail. Orange & Black Candy Striped Nails

So to start with I'm 1, yes 1! Follower away from my first giveaway, I still haven't looked into creating forms, or anything at all so hopefully it won't be too far from hitting 50 that I figure it all out. This being said there's not that many prizes ;( as I'm so skint, but I hope you'll like them all anyways.

Anyhoooo on to the nails ^_^ this is my first mani that remotely reflects Halloween, and I'm so disappointed that I haven't had the time to do all the Halloween looks that i've wanted to. Hopefully I'll still fit some in, cause I love halloween so bad. So so bad.

Base Coat: CND - Stickey
Base Colour: Deborah - Sunset Cocktail
Stamp Colour: BYS - Black Satin
Plate: BM20
Top Coat: China Glaze - No Chip Top Coat

Two coats of Deborah Sunset Cocktail, as you can see there is still visible nail line :( However the colour is so gorgeous, so bright, so shiny, and the glass flecks are just stunning. I have to say, glass fleck is one of my favourite finishes. So yes, hopefully some Halloween stuff to come, but no promises!

Hope everyone's having a good weekend ^_^

M&S Mini & Chrome Multi Stamp Mani

You can't really tell too well from these pictures, but there's actually two chromes, pale pink, and a lilac, which switch top and bottom on alternating finger; if that makes any sense. For this I used 3 different Bundle Monster image plates and one Konad plate.

The blue is from a set of 4 mini's that I got as a "hard work" present from my old managers (<3 them) in the set there was a bright pink creme, a yellow, and two glass flecked polishes; this blue, and a turquoise mint type colour.

Direct sunlight, 2 coats of the blue.

Base coat: CND - Stickey
Base colour: Unknown M&S
Stamp Colours: N.Y.C - Foil For You & Techno Foil
Plates Used: BM207, BM208, BM215 & M64