Nailbox - June: Review + Nail Art

Hey everyone! Today I have another Nailbox review for you. I showed you May's Nailbox here, and this is June's box. Each month subscribers are sent 5 nail products, usually 4 nail polishes and a nail tool. All products are from high end brands and you definitely get your money's worth. When I opened this month's box I was in shock because there was a full sized bottle of Seche Vite, and we all know how expensive it is! I really do believe that you get brilliant value for money with these boxes and if you like a surprise it's definitely worth signing up. You can do so here. If you want to just sign up for a one-off box it's £15, which is a great deal. And it's slightly cheaper if you sign up on a monthly pre-pay basis.  I decided to once again create some nail art with the polishes I received as I thought they worked really well together. 

Gel Series, Part 3: Removing Gel Manicures

Hey everyone! Part 3 of the gel series was supposed to be 'applying and removing gel manicures' with a video tutorial for the application but unfortunately I still cant get my iMovie working so I'll put the video up as a part 4 whenever I can fix it, however long that might take! You can see part 1 here, and part 2 here. Part 3 is the removal of gels, and I know that for some this can be the most daunting part of gel manicures. I often hear people saying that they don't want gels doing as they will damage their nails. Gels SHOULDN'T ruin your nails, unless they are applied and/or removed badly.  Today I'm going to compare two gel removal kits, and also talk about what to do when removing gels to prevent damage.

Gel Series, Part 2: Practising Gel Manicures

Hey everyone! I'm a bit late with posting this, but part 2 was actually supposed to be a video and unfortunately my iMovie has broken and wont open so I'm going to try and fix it but if not I'll have to have a rethink for part 3! So instead, part 2 is a collection of all the nails I've done on other people (and on myself) using gel in the past 2 months. If you missed part 1, where I compared gel starter kits, you can see it here. Because these nails were all done at different times of day in different places the picture quality is definitely not consistent so I apologise in advance!

Gel Series, Part 1: Comparing Starter Kits

Hey everyone! Today I'm starting a brand new 3 part series on gel nails. I should be posting today, tomorrow and Saturday night, but I wont make any promises because we all know how great I am at time keeping! If not everything will be up by Sunday. My first part in the series is a comparison of three gel polish starter kits. I've got the Gelish Pro 5-45 Kit*, the Elegant Touch Lux Gel Starter Kit*, and the Red Carpet Manicure Gel Polish Pro Kit*. I'd like to point out before I start that I am not qualified to do gel nails (although I am hopefully going to be soon!) and these are purely my perspectives as a consumer, and of course as a blogger. Gelish is a more salon-based brand, but both Elegant Touch and Red Carpet Manicure are for home use, and I think it's useful to compare the three to see their pros and cons. 

Something a little different

Hey everyone! I know you're probably expecting the last of my 'Which is Best?' series today, which would have been about matte top coats. I shall be doing it next weekend instead due to some technical difficulties so keep an eye out for that. Today's post is a little different. As you will see, these are not my nails. I have a tonne of posts lined up for you, so don't panic that I'm not doing my nails or anything like that. My lovely friend Natalie wanted to make an appearance on my blog, and help me out with some of my product reviews. You may recognise her nails from my YouTube tutorials, as she is often my guinea pig. It's a bit like a guest post, except I actually did the nails!

To do this design I used Born Pretty Store's Sweet Color nail polish in Shade #105* on the alternate nails. This was 2 easy coats. Unlike the picture on their website shows, this is actually a very opaque creme polish, rather than a translucent one. 

  Once that was dry I applied some Fake Tattoos* (see picture above) to the nail. I've never used nail tattoos before and I'm surprised at how simple they are to apply. All you have to do is cut, peel and apply some wet kitchen roll to your nail to transfer the design and you're done! I used the hearts and the bows from the bottom middle set. 

I then applied Elegant Touch Patterned Colour Wash Wraps* (see picture above) to the remaining nails. This was my first experience using nail wraps and I was expecting to absolutely hate it. I've actually had this wraps for months because I was so wary of using them. Luckily I was proved completely and utterly wrong. These are super easy to apply, super easy to remove creases from, and they last well too. I would 100% recommend these for those of you who want nail art but don't have the time or confidence to do it yourself. You can get them here for just £5!

Finally, once I was done applying the nail wraps, I applied these gorgeous peach studs* (#5) from Born Pretty Store. They've recently just got in a tonne of new coloured studs and I ordered pretty much all of them. They're just so irresistible! And they definitely lived up to expectations. These are not only a brilliant size but also the colour doesn't come out when you apply topcoat as is often the case with coloured studs.  

What do you think? I hope you didn't mind seeing some different nails today!

If you fancy some of the Born Pretty Store products, don't forget to use my code KHL91 for 10% off

Alice

*Some of the products in this post were provided to me for review but the opinions provided are entirely my own and were not influenced in any way.