London baby!

This weekend I move to London to start my new job so I have been packing like crazy and trying to do some extra nail art to schedule for next week because I will be too busy to blog. A while ago I got the Moyou London plate which has stamping patterns linked to London on it and thought this was the perfect time to try it out.

The base polish here is a fantastic Nails Inc that I have had in my collection for months and never tried. There is just the perfect amount of glitter, you can see it through the cream base and it is opaque in two coats. I give you Nails Inc Grove Cottages:

The patterns included are the tube map, the skyline and a beefeater.

Yesterday I also discovered the app Citymapper which is just incredible- if you are visiting London you need this app, it offers you multiple different ways of transport between points and tells you how long it will take and how much it will cost as well as many other cool features-genius!

I had fun making this little tribute to my new home city (slightly over excited!) if you have any great suggestions for things to do/eat in London please let me know.

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Monkey See Monkey Do with Snowflakes

I think everyone in the blogging community who stamps has this design from Moyou but I really couldn't resist using it over Colors by Llarowe Monkey See, Monkey Do an amazing blue glitter with full linear holo- this polish is literally the most glittery thing I've ever put on my nails!

I got the Moyou plate with the smaller designs (Festive 06-I think) because otherwise I struggle to fit the patterns on my nail bed. This combination of colours is just perfect and the holo just adds a little magic :). I stamped with my Konad White.

Monkey See Monkey Do is so complex- some holo polishes look really boring in grey light but not MSMD, it just glitters away as you can see in these two pictures.

I only own two Colors by Llarowe polishes but they have both been excellent and there are definitely a few more I would love to get my hands on (or on my hands) when I have a little bit more money.

This has been a very heavily winter themed week! I promise no more snowflakes at least until Monday ;)

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33DC Manicure with 2 Patterns

The challenge for today was to do a manicure with two patterns, I could have cheated a little and done a different pattern different nails to produce a skittle mani. I decided instead to test my stamping skills and stamp two patterns onto each nail, one half each.

I used two patterns from my Moyou Sailor plate 4 but they're a little unbalanced as the image on the left is so much busier than the one on the right.

I'm not sure that this is something I would wear again- it definitely doesn't show that I had to stamp twice.

Oops almost forgot to tell you what amazing base colour this is- it's Whimsy by piCture pOlish- the perfect blue.

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33DC Artwork with your favourite brand

I couldn't really pick a favourite brand- for a start I have a load of indie brands I couldn't choose between for my glittery and holographic polishes. So I decided to change this prompt a little bit and I am showing you artwork with my favourite cheap polish brand NYC. NYC is only available at Superdrug, all their polishes are named after New York City and they do a good range of amazing cremes, glitters and foils.

I got Lincoln Center fairly recently from Fragrance Direct and it is an amazing burgundy colour in two coats (on the first coat it does look like blood). The foil effects range has four amazing stamping polishes in it (avoid the orange) and their gold is actually my go to stamping colour and as they're so cheap at £1.50 you don't mind the wastage you get with stamping so much.

I decided to do a tone on tone stamp with these two colours and I hope you like this more subtle look. I got the stamping centre on my nail by rolling the stamper vertically up my nail- looking from the tip towards the cuticle end to make sure it was lined up.

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31DC Inspired by a Book

These nails are inspired by the cover art on the book Beauty by Robin McKinley. It's a fantastic retelling of Beauty and the Beast, slightly darker and a lot more realistic. Anyway the cover of the book is red with silver roses and flourishes so I thought I'd recreate that look.

The base colour is Deborah Lippmann Through the Fire, the glitter is Pocket Money Polishes Sparks Fly. I did the stamp with Barry M Silver Foil which I also used for the roses along with A England Dorian Gray and Dance Legend Teleportation. Teleportation is incredibly holographic and I love the effect this gives the roses.

The stamping plate is Moyou plate 04 from the Sailor Collection. My moyou plates are simply incredible, perfectly etched with really cool designs.

I love how this turned out, the contrast of silver on red is exquisite and the tiny holographic flash is great. I actually have plans to do some more holographic roses for a later manicure in the challenge.

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31DC Water Marble

I really struggle with water marbling I just don't have the time or the patience for it (or the filtered water). So knowing this I decided to go into the water marble prepared with some plastic bags and I picked up the marble onto the bags then picked my favourite part and made a decal

I think I marbled with NYC Ink Stain, Rain Drop and a pink polish, I then applied the decal on top of a white polish. I hand placed glitter out of Hare Polish Dauphine of Decadence along some of the curves.

I will go into detail about the other fingers tomorrow, but if you're desperate to know today leave a comment :).

So as I took the water marble finger off immediately you'll be seeing most of this manicure again tomorrow for my Inspired by a Colour look. 

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31DC Glitter

For my glitter mani I used a couple of my untried polishes in this design. This is three coats of Dollish Polish I Survived The Fire Swamp a gorgeous flame red jelly polish with red glitter in it. I then topped it with a single coat of Pocket Money Polishes Sunshine which has red, yellow, orange and gold glitter in it.

I stamped with my Moyou Sailor 04 plate and NYC Full Metal Jacket with this fabulous fan pattern. Here is the glitter combination alone, what you can't see in this combination are the glitters in the Dollish which are quite subtle in the red jelly base and the red glitters in Sunshine, but don't they look amazing together.

I'm having a bit of a jelly polish moment right now, I love the options of making jelly sandwiches and I've just ordered a few of the Nails inc ones on sale.

This is a very different colour scheme than what I normally wear so it catches my eye a little more than normal and I really like that :).

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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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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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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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