Peach Daisies

Where has the sun gone?! It's back to being all rainy and miserable. I'm flying to Berlin tomorrow and the weather isn't looking much better there either! Anyway, enough weather chat, these nails are enough to brighten things up after all. I did these as a quick mani when I was struggling for ideas, and I wasn't 100% because they make me think of fried eggs a bit, but I like them enough to not hide them away in my deleted folder forever so I'll let you decide: eggs or flowers?

Lost City - Meebox May '17 Nail Art + Review

Hey everyone! It's been a while since I did a review of Meebox thanks to my unscheduled break, so I actually have two different boxes to show you at the moment, the first of which is the 'Lost City' Meebox* from last month. When this landed on my doorstep I was a bit stumped on what to create with the contents of the box, which were:

Annika - Blue Lagoon
Cuccio - Pier Pressure
Ruby Wing - Hello Sailor
NCLA - Take It Off Soy Remover Sheets
House of Wonderland Decals (exclusive to Meebox)

Worth more than £40 in value (despite the box only costing £20 a month, or £18 if you pay for 3 months), they're definitely worth trying out if you haven't already. All these brands were completely new to me, and pushed me to create something I wouldn't usually do.

Anyway, I was struggling to come up with a design so I decided to completely wing it. I've never used water decals before so I started with those on top of the Cuccio polish, and I accented with Ruby Wing - Hello Sailor over Pier Pressure. Then I decided to play around with striping tape, and by the end of it I really loved the result, and I hope you do too!

Essie Spring 2016 Collection Review + Swatches

Hey everyone! Hope you're having a lovely weekend so far. The European Championships are on, which means I'm being roped into watching a lot of football with my boyfriend. Or alternatively, it means I have a lot more time to do nails because I don't want to sit and watch TV! I never watch football, but there's something about international football that's slightly more exciting, and I do end up getting sucked in even when I hate to. 

Today I'm reviewing the Essie Spring 2016 collection*, I wanted to include this with my post about the Rankin event but I thought it would make the post too long. I've already shown the collection in this nail art, but I wanted to show the colours individually too. This is the first full Essie collection I've reviewed, and I hope it's not the last, but I was very impressed. I don't own many Essie shades, I don't have the need to buy many new polishes (as you can imagine) so apart from my trusty bottle of Essie - Beyond Cozy which I bought ages ago, I only have one or two others. This collection consists of some 'typical' spring shades, but also some darker shades that make the collections lightly unusual. 

Essie Flower Crowns

Hey everyone! Just a quick post as these are my follow up nails to my Nails on Holiday: Edinburgh Weekend post. I didn't want to include the full design in the post as it was already long enough. I was recently sent the Essie Spring 2016 collection*, and it's just the perfect collection for florals, so I couldn't help but create some with them all. The only polish I didn't use from the collection was Lounge Lover because I already had a red and I thought the pink would clash. I really liked how these turned out, and they reminded me a lot of flower crowns, so I decided to stick with that idea and name them as such.

Gradient All The Nails!

Hey everyone! Myself and a number of very talented bloggers are part of a small Facebook group called 'Paint All The Nails'. Each month we will be doing a themed link-up (although I may not do it every month) and this month's theme is gradients. I must admit that I just went basic with my design, it completely bypassed my to do anything extra to it, which is very unlike me! But I love a gradient on it's own anyway so why not. Also, my memory card broke and decided to delete the other half of my photos so I'm afraid I've only got one photo for you today. I've bought a new memory card now so fingers crossed it wont happen again.

I used OPI - A Great Opera-tunity* (from the Venice collection), and Barry M - Cotton for the gradient, topped off with Seche Vite

What do you think? Let me know in the comments!

Alice

P.S Don't forget to check out the other lady's designs in the inlinks widget below!

An InLinkz Link-up

Review Week, Day 5: Models Own Fruit Pastels 2014 Collection Swatches

Hey everyone! It's the last day of review week today, and I have yet another Models Own review for you. It seems like this has been more a Models Own week than anything else but they've released so many amazing products recently that I just couldn't resist! Today's post is the gorgeous new Fruit Pastel polishes they've released recently to add-on to their previous collection. These are scented polishes, in the colours Coconut Cream* and Peach Melba*, and I absolutely love the scents! Of course, if you read my recent review of the Barry M Summer Gelly collection you'll have noticed that there's a very similar shade to Coconut Cream in there, unhelpfully also named Coconut, it appears that great minds think alike! So below I have compared both of them for you, along with OPI - My Vampire is Buff

Review Week, Day 1: Models Own Polish For Tans Collection 2014 Swatches

Hey everyone! In case you missed my announcement yesterday, this week I'm going to be doing another review week as I have so many polishes to show you. Today's post is a well-overdue review of the Models Own Polish for Tans collection*. I've had these polishes sat in my review pile for quite a while, and I must admit I'd been quite reluctant to try them. As you will have seen from my pictures, I am not a tanned person, and mistakenly I believed that these were only really suitable for people with tans. I was, however, completely wrong, and I have fallen in love with these polishes. The collection consists of 5 colours, three of which I received to review. I was also slightly put off but how similar the colours looked in the bottle to each other, but once I got them on the nail I was in love with each and every one of them. My gradient from yesterday demonstrates how wearable these polishes are. They also made my hands look particularly tanned, even though I definitely am not!

Review Week, Day Four: Deborah Lippmann Polishes

Hey everyone! I'm so excited for today's post, because this is the first time you've seen Deborah Lippmann polishes on my blog, and these are gorgeous polishes to start off with. I have two polishes from the Spring 2014 collection to show you and a couple of polishes from upcoming collections!

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.

Butter LONDON Spring 2013 Collection Swatches

Hey everyone! I have some more fabulous Butter LONDON polishes to show you after yesterday's post, this time from the Spring 2013 collection. You probably all by now that I'm a sucker for pastels, so I absolutely love all 6 of these, especially Fiver. 

Collection 2000 Hot Looks: review and nail art

Hey everyone! I've still not taken the easy way out and gone home yet, battling through it (though I wish I didn't have to) so again I'm bringing you a post that I did before I came here. The lovely Hannah from Collection PR was so quick in sending me these and I intended to be quick in posting them. I swatched them straight away but the stress of moving got in the way and I've only just got around to editing them. I hope you enjoy my first official review even if it took longer than intended! All pictures were taken in natural inside light. I'll show you swatches first and then at the end I'll show you the nail art I created with these 4 polishes, but I'm warning you now of the extreme overload in pictures you're about to receive!

Ikat and beads

This post was just as a result of me messing around with yesterday's nails, I really debated whether to post these and I'm still not really sure about them. Mainly because I dont want you all to think I'm being lazy with posting because I posted twice about my feather nails as well. I tend to like seeing how designs can be transformed into something, be it with matte top coat or beads and I'm sorry if you were expecting something new today, I'll try not to do this too much! 

I hope you like them anyway :) Alice

Geometric Ikat

Hello everyone! So, I've been wanting to do ikat nails for a while but I never really intended to do it on these nails. I was just going to do shapes like these nails with peach and white, but they ended up looking really .. plain (see the first picture after the jump) but then I didn't know what to add to them until I remembered I'd been intending to try ikat nails, so here you go!