Pocket Money Polishes Harden My Heart

Earlier this week Charlie of Pocket Money Polishes included some one hit wonders in her restock- polishes which she had tried out but didn't want to add to her main line for what ever reason. One of these polishes caught my eye and that was Harden My Heart, a mix of blue glitter with lavender circles and hearts.

I layered this over Liquid Sky Lacquer Teal it like it is and I love the difference between seeing the glitter over the pale blue and over the dark teal.

Pocket Money Polishes is restocking tomorrow so make sure you head over there to pick up some fantastic glitter toppers from the September collection.

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Liquid Sky Lacquer Teal it like it is

One of the new polishes I showed off yesterday was this one, Liquid Sky Lacquer Teal it like it is. I'd never heard of Liquid Sky Lacquer before but I'm really pleased I went for them because this polish is amazing! This is two coats of the polish and the first photo shows what it looks like most of the time if you have a free edge of your nails.

And below I have a collage of different photos showing the different colours this polish moves between.

The polish is pale when warm and dark when cold. The weather here is really warm so the polish really only wanted to show the pale shade, I had to get a cup of ice water out to show the colour change. The holographic flash of this polish is gorgeous.

I would highly recommend this polish, if you're looking for something a little different. I got mine from Norway Nails.

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Haul Post

I just got back into Cambridge after being home for a few days to find lots of exciting nail mail waiting for me. I have Liquid Sky Lacquers

A England polishes from the Mid Summer Fayre Sale

And Dragon Glass Nails polishes:

I already tried out one of these polishes Teal it like it is which is a colour changing polish, but it's so hot here at the moment that it's not changing colour unless I put it under the cold tap!

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Enchanted Polish Wish Me Good Luck

Last week I received Enchanted Polish Wish Me Good Luck in a Llarowe Mystery grab bag (I also got Nail'd It Water and Dollish Polish Hip Hop Hippity Hop). Since Llarowe has stopped restocking EP this is probably the only one I will ever own. I don't really see what all the fuss is about anyway, there are other indie brands I would much rather support.

I paired this glitter with two different base colours OPI My vampire is buff and piCture pOlish Freya's cats. To wear this I added a small silver square stud to my ring finger but I don't have any pictures of it.

I think this is a poorly thought out glitter mix as the majority of the glitters look best over a dark base but then the black matte glitters don't show up. I love it over the dark blue, the glint of green is really pretty but you can't see the black at all in real life. 

This polish fills a gap in my collection and I will probably hang onto it for a while (or rehome it to someone else), but considering all the hype surrounding EP I'm not especially impressed. I might do a post soon on my favourite indies and where I get them from as I have now tried 27 different brands with five more brands currently on their way to me. Would anyone be interested in this?

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Pocket Money Polishes Fever Nail Art

I was totally overwhelmed by the response to my Electric Fish mani on Sunday! Thank you to everyone who commented telling me how much they liked it :). Today I am showing you some nail art featuring another Pocket Money Polish- Fever. I am an amateur singer and Fever is one of the songs I used to perform so it holds a special place in my heart. Fever is a gorgeous glitter topper with small red glitter, silver holographic square glitter and large red circle glitter. Because the bottles are so small (4ml) you only need to dip your brush in a couple of times to get the circles out which I prefer to fishing around. You are seeing one coat with placed large circle glitters.

The base colour for this is A England Bridal Veil and I stamped with Barry M Silver Foil. I chose the peacock's tail from the plate for the silver flourish

I also entered this manicure into PMP's contest for photos of their polishes with you holding weird things so here is this manicure with me holding a trilobite (a fossilised marine creature from 250 million years ago).

One of the best things about manicures with stamping and glitter accents is that it is relatively straight forward to get matching nail art on both hands. I am having a glitter topper moment right now and I can't get enough of the Pocket Money Polishes that I own (and I stocked up on a couple more at the latest restock including a one off called Harden your Heart) if you want to get hold of your own click here in the UK and here in the USA (USA is a pop up shop in September).
As a bonus end of post treat here is Peggy Lee singing Fever:

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Guest Post on Polished Art

Hi guys, today I have a guest post over on Polished Art so head over there and check it out by clicking below :). I wrote the guest post a little while ago so the watermark is back to how is was last week, sorry about that. Click here to see it in it's full colourful glory!

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Electric Fish

This post is showcasing the fabulous piCture pOlish Electric Dream, a bright pink polish with gold shimmer. This polish was inspired by the coral reef in Fiji and therefore I have decided to pair it with a fish scale nail.

This polish can look anywhere between pink and coral depending on the light and your skin tone, on me it definitely looks more pink. This is two coats of the fantastic PP formula and then a top coat. I think this dries to a slightly satiny finish but I was painting in poor light so I can't be sure... 

I chose a few different polishes to complete the fish scale nail, but I wish I had chosen ones that were similar in finish- there's something about the contrast between the shimmer and the cremes that isn't working for me. I'm still running on a small collection and brought mostly cremes so I didn't have as much choice as I would in Cambridge. The polishes you're seeing are piCture pOlish Freya's Cats, Essie Naughty Nautical, Barry M Passionfruit and Orly Hook Up.

This accent nail takes a surprising amount of time for what it is, I think because you have to dot a different colour every time rather than being able to do a few dots of the same colour. 

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Packing polish for a short holiday

I am at my parents house for the bank holiday weekend plus a couple of days and as I don't have a nail art post prepared (and am unlikely to have time to remove my nail polish and repaint before a post is due I thought I would instead share with you what I brought with me to allow me to still have a choice of different colours and nail art techniques available to me.

Basic Nail Care

Polish remover, cotton wool pads, nail file, nail scissors, cuticle oil, OPI Nail Envy Base coat, Save the Nail Fast Dry Topcoat and Mavala matte topcoat

Nail art tools

Barry M black and white nail art pens, 2 dotting tools of different sizes, nail art brush, clean up brush, 2 moyou stamping plates (many designs on each plate), stamper, scraper, pot of various studs, striping tape, 2 makeup sponges, striping tape and konad white and black stamping polish.

Nail Colours

Reds: OPI Cajun Shrimp (mini), Barry M Passionfruit

Pinks: Orly Hottie (mini), NYC Greenwich Village, piCture pOlish Electric Dream

Orange: Orly Holla (mini)

Yellow: Orly Hook Up (mini)

Green: Barry M Key Lime, NYC High Line Green

Blue: Essie Naughty Nautical (mini), Orly Blue Collar (mini), piCture pOlish Freya's Cats

Purple: Essie Full Steamahead (mini)

Blacks: A England Bridal Veil, Happy Revolution Aluminium Monster

Nude: OPI My Vampire is Buff (not strictly nude but...)

Metallic: NYC Full Metal Jacket, Barry M Silver Foil Effect

Glitters: Dollish Polish Inconceivable (mini), Enchanted Polish Wish Me Good Luck, Nails Inc Horse Guards Parade, NYC Gramercy Glitz, Pocket Money Polishes Fever and I Want Candy.

Each of these polishes has a purpose, most of the coloured polishes are cremes and where I had a choice I would choose to take a bottle that I had a mini of so that it didn't take up so much space. The glitters are all different from each other with varying levels of glitter and different colours. I have included four polishes in different colours which I know stamp well. I haven't included NYC Ink Stain on this list because I already have a bottle of it where I am going. I would also include Sellotape if I was actually going away rather than just going home. When decided which polishes to bring I have also considered my own person tastes, I tend to uses blues and greens more than other colours so I have included more of them (why there are 3 pinks in is a bit of a mystery to me...)

This combination of polishes and tools should hopefully give me the freedom to do any design that pops into my head while I'm away and it all fit into this Molton Brown toiletries bag. Success!

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The Pussycat went to Sea

I got a parcel from Llarowe yesterday with my new piCture pOlish collaboration shades in it. The two I really wanted were Freya's Cats and Electric Dream. Unusually although I am a massive turquoise fan Lagoon just didn't appeal to me. I immediately put on Freya's Cats a deep blue jelly with silver flakies. It reminds me of the sea and I decided to do some nail art. 

I love this wave image from the Moyou plate but my nail beds aren't quite wide enough to show it off completely. I stamped with my Konad white polish and looks at how well all the small details of the plate came out!

This is Freya's Cats alone in all its shimmery beauty. I would call this a royal blue and you are seeing two easy to apply coats.

The glitter on my index and little fingers is Pocket Money Polishes Magic, the colours in this are perfect to represent the fish and algae in the sea. As with all of my other PMPs this had fantastic formula with this density of glitter (the perfect density in my opinion) in just one coat!

I'm going to call this a completely indie mani because the konad polish doesn't really count ;). I love how this looks on my nails and would definitely recreate it another time :).

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Pastel Pixellation Nail Art

Are you ever inspired by the name of a polish to create nail art? As soon as I saw this polish I knew I wanted to draw on my own pastel pixels on my accent nail. Although in hind sight I think the polishes I chose were too pale.

The base polish here is the gorgeous Pastel Pixellation by Smitten Polish, three coats of which produce this colour which changes between pastel pink and purple depending on the light with multi coloured square glitter in it.

To create this very subtle pixel effect I drew on the squares with my Barry M white nail art pen and then went back in with my coloured polishes and a paintbrush to colour in the squares.

My idea was to have a gradient of squares from pale blue through purple to pink.

If I were to repeat this I would change the colour of my pixels.

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I Feel... Wicked Stamped

My Moyou plates arrived yesterday and I had to try them out. I was still wearing my swatch of Smitten Polish I Feel... Wicked, and decided to try a stamp from the Sailor Collection Plate 4 which would show off the polish underneath.

I love this swirly design which leaves a little circle of polish completely clear but I wish I had stamped a little lower on my little finger.

The etching on the Moyou plates is great, the stamp came up perfectly every time. It is worth noting though that this design was only just long enough to cover my entire nail at the moment and my nails are fairly small so check the dimensions of the plates and buy the XL versions if you have big nails. I also got the Suki Collection Plate 1 which is the most unusual stamping plate I have ever seen and I am very excited to try it out.

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Smitten polishes

Today I have two Smitten Polishes to show you, both from the collection inspired by the musical Wicked!

This is one coat of Look to the Western Sky, over a coat of Nails Inc Lowndes Court. I think it could have been built to opacity but I like to be able to control how much glitter goes on my nails without worrying about whether the polish is opaque or level.

This polish reminds me of a beautiful sunset.

And moving on to the second polish, I Feel... Wicked:

This is the most amazing polish ever! It is buildable but I prefer to layer so I am showing you two coats over Barry M Racing Green. Application was easy and I cannot stop staring at my nails.

I used two coats of Save the Nail Fast Dry top coat to smooth this out, but I could have got away with one.

Smitten Polish has surpassed my expectations, I love both of these polishes and would definitely buy another Smitten.

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Nail Inc Swatches

I have three gorgeous Nails Inc polishes to share with you today:
Nails Inc Blenheim Terrace
This is a beautiful blush coloured polish with a shimmer running throughout. Opaque in two medium coats, application was a bit tricky but didn't take over long to correct.

I am undecided over whether this suits my skin tone or not.

Nails Inc Horse Guards Parade
This is a rose gold wonder, it has a pinky gold reflective metallic finish. It looks very classy on and I can imagine it working with all skintones. The first photo is in full sunlight to show just how shiny this is.

Because this a shimmer not a glitter it comes off very easily. I have previously used this in some nail art here. but it was quite hidden in that design so here it is in all its glory.  The next photo is in shade to show off the rosy glow of the polish.

Nails Inc Lowndes Court
This polish is fantastic! This is one coat which applied really smoothly and was incredibly opaque.

This polish is the definition of a blurple, walking the line between blue and purple.

I apologise for the varying nail lengths in this post, these swatches were done over a couple of months.

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Other people's nails

Sometimes I do other people's nails when we have gatherings. I use this as an opportunity to try out new designs and revisit old designs with different colour schemes. I have been seeing brush stroke manis all over the place recently and did one for Heather using my neon polishes.

Unfortunately a combination of my camera and the light conditions made this mani come out very non-neon but trust me that it is. This is a combination of OPI, Orly, Barry M and Colour Club polishes.

My friend Lewis also wanted some nail polish and he chose piCture pOlish Paradise which is a gorgeous colour!

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Holographic Brush Stroke Mani

I have been seeing brush stroke manis everywhere recently and after trying one out on my friend Heather (which you'll see tomorrow) I decided to do one on myself with a pink, blue and grey colour scheme. I also included two holographic polishes which gave this mani an extra dimension in the sun.

The above photo shows how this mani looks in the shade and the below shows how it transforms in the sunlight:

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Flame Nails

Today's post is a quick one of a flame manicure I did.

I based this on this tutorial by Honeymunchkin. If you're going to try this I recommend waiting until your base colour is dry before you start adding in colours with your striping brush.

The polishes used here are: OPI Every Month is Oktoberfest, I'm not really a waitress, A woman's prague-ative, Bourjois Sunny Sun, Orly Holla, NYC Chelsea Cherry, Digital Nails Bad Wolf and Lac Attack Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes.

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