Secret Santa!

Hi everyone!

Happy December! I hope everyone's looking forward to Christmas as much as I am :P I'm loving counting down the days with my polish advent calendar!!

A little while ago Rachel from the Imperfect 10 blog put out the suggestion that a group of us nail-y ladies should get together to do a Secret Santa nail box swap, an idea which I loved so got involved in straight away. We had a budget of £15, and Rachel left it up to us to decide if we revealed ourselves to our selected partner.

Well today I received a rather large and intriguing parcel! 

Hmmmmmm....!

I am terrible at waiting. Needless to say Christmas has come a little early for me as I opened my special package...

Inside I found lots of wonderful goodies!! I have:

A nail art wheel with various different studs, rhinestones and microbeads.

A pot of purple flocking powder

A black glitter nails kit

A pack of nail stickers

A pack of hole reinforcement stickers (for half moon manis!)

Two Ferrero Rocher (YUM!)

Three W7 polishes in fluorescent orange, "lava flow" White with black and red glitter, and "metallic mars" a gorgeous metallic plum

A shed load of star glitter, which is now everywhere :P

And.. One OPI silver shatter polish. My first OPI!!!! I can't tell you how excited I was to see this!!

My Santa has decided to remain anonymous... So whoever you are, thank you so much!!

I've nearly finished my own package ready to send off to one lovely lady, but I can't decide wether or not to tell her who I am... We shall see!!

I'm off to play with my new toys :P I shall be back soon to show you the first week of my Tara'sTalons advent calendar pretties, until then, take care!

Xxx

Mamma Mia!

Hey hey! It's been a while, had you forgotten about me?! Heehee, well here I am again, and I'd like to share with you a gorgeous Nails Inc limited edition polish which I won in a competition!

The polish was a special edition tie in with the musical "Mamma Mia" and you got a free polish when you booked tickets. There was also a competition to win a pair of tickets, with runner up prizes of polishes, one of which I won! This was a couple of months ago and it finally arrived the other day! 

The polish is a gorgeous deep pink colour. In the bottle I thought it would be quite similar to my "Phoenix Place" polish, but in reality it's a much richer colour. 

This is 2 coats with no top coat, as you can see it's really glossy and a beautiful deep pink, and as usual with Nail Inc, the formula was really easy to use :D

Now I'm off to watch my Mamma Mia DVD, this has put me in the mood for some dodgy Piers Brosnan singing! 

Until next time! Xxx

Bloglovin and Ramblings

<a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/10910979/?claim=sczgvtew24v">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

Hey! I got myself on Bloglovin!
I was recently asked by Katie (who has a fab blog about, among other things, nails, mental health and general chat, which you can find HERE!) if I was on Bloglovin, and I figured I probably should be, so here we are!

I even managed to get myself a snazzy button like all the cool blogs :-P

I haven't got any photos for you today, but the sun had FINALLY come out so I'm going to get some pictures of my beautiful purple holo from Tarastalons and I'll show you them soon!!

Until then, adios!
(And follow me on Bloglovin! Woo!)

Adventures In Matte...

Hello lovely people!

How have you been? I've had a bit of a break from nail-related fun for a few days whilst I've shamefully been playing on the new Grand Theft Auto game. I've also been working lots and spending time with a few old friends. But here I am again, with the mani I've been sporting today.

This is done using Barry M nail paint in Raspberry, and Rimmel "Rock your colour" glitter topcoat in Disco Gold.

*cue awkward polish-clutching pose*

I was really chuffed with this mani. I've used the Raspberry polish in a post before, and I absolutely love it, plus it gives great coverage, this is only one coat! And of course, anything sparkly has my vote!

So off I went to meet a friend for lunch.

I came home with these...

... That was never supposed to happen! Oh well, they're all lovely! The most exciting for me is the matte top coat, which was £3 from Claire's. I've wanted one for ages but wasn't prepared to pay through the nose in case I hated it! 

Obviously I wanted to try it as soon as I got home, so I popped it on over my fab mani, and here is the result:

This is what love at first sight feels like <3

Until next time!

XX

Luminous Red

Hi! Sorry for the long delay again guys! I think I've resigned myself to the fact that this blog ain't gonna be a thing which happens all that often.. Work keeps getting in the way! But keep those eyes peeled because I will update whenever I get the chance.

Today I want to talk about the polish which I think nearly every polish addict in the UK has by now :P and that's the Nails Inc luminous red which was (not sure if it's still running) available in Boots free with Colgate Max White toothpaste. I'm a big fan of Nails Inc polishes, so naturally I got around the boyfriend's ban on nail-related purchases (boo!) by reminding him that we REALLY needed toothpaste :P

There were two shades on offer, a glossy red, and a metallic red. I opted for the plain glossy version as I already have a metallic red in my collection, but my straight red is very old and goopy... Replacement time! 

This is the polish on its own...

As you can see it's a lovely bright red with a nice shine on it. It was a little sheer though, this was 3 coats.

I then jazzed it up for a night out by adding some gold glitter.

Unfortunately I made a rookie mistake when doing this mani... I painted my nails, forgot to take photos, then got changed. Putting tights on smooshed all the glitter down from the tips, so the photo looks a bit crappy, sorry about that :( but rest assured it was gorgeous teamed with a simple black dress!

What's the best nail freebie you've ever found? I've had a couple of nice polishes from magazines, and I've got a shed load of micro-beads off the front of kids mags!

Until the next time, whenever that may be!

Lyndsay xx

Cartoon nails

Hey there! 

Last weekend I went to a family wedding, so naturally my mum and sister decided to exploit my nail skills! They asked me to make them sets to match their shoes. I've already shown you my mum's orange nails, but here they are with her bright orange shoes

Aren't they lovely! She was really pleased with them, they also matched her top :)

I also did a set for my sister, who had a gorgeous pair of turquoise shoes she wanted me to match. Now my sister's not a particularly girly girl, and she has a (frankly disturbing) aversion to glitter, so my usual shinies were out of the question. Eventually I came across a tutorial for "cartoon nails" online, and used that for a starting point. First I painted the nails mint green, to match the shoes!

I then painstakingly painted a black outline around each nail. This took me bloody ages, as I don't have any special brushes so had to use the ones in the polishes! I had to be veery careful!

On consultation with the sister, she said she didn't really want the cartoon style "shine" on them, so in the end I left them like that, after some top coat, and she was thrilled with them :D

Do you guys like to match your nail to your accessories? I love doing it!! And I love seeing other people wearing my nails and loving them!! 

Until next time :)

Long time, no polish!

Hello there my lovelies! 

Sorry I've been absent for so long! First I went away to the depths of mid-wales for a few days so had no contact to the outside world at all, then I went off to Leeds festival with a couple of friends, which was absolutely incredible, but again, I couldn't really use my phone for fear of running out of battery (they were charging £8 a go to charge it up... No thank you!!) and then it was straight back to the day job! But here I am again, and today I'm going to show you a really gorgeous mani I did using BarryM polishes.

To create this I used 2 BarryM polishes, a gorgeous deep red called Raspberry, and the gold Foil Effects polish for the dots. I used a dotting tool to create the dots, using the biggest and the smallest ones in my set!

I loved wearing this mani, but to me it felt more Christmassy than August-y.. Maybe I'll have to revisit this later in the year!

... Although, having said that... I work in a shop, and christmas for us officially started last Tuesday. Mince pies available from next Wednesday guys!!!! I'll be begging for it to end by November!!

Next time I'll show you the nails I did for my sister to wear for a wedding, custom designed to match her shoes, yes ladies, this is the service level I am happy to provide :D

Until next time :) 

Xx

Shooting stars

Hi everyone!

I've been round at my parents house for my little (not so little anymore!) sister's birthday, cue lots of cocktails and cupcakes :D. I also painted my mum and sister's nails, which is always fun.

Today I'm going to show you a mani I did using BarryM Gelly in Blue Grape, silver striping tape and some rhinestones.

I was really pleased with these, this is the first time I've used striping tape on my own nails and I think it went really well. They look a bit like shooting stars! I love the gelly polishes, they look really "squishy" and that's awesome :D

It's off to work now, have a nice day everyone!

Bronzed nails

Hi there!

I've been working today (in the day job, boo!), but I've been chilling out since I got home, designing a second set of halloweeny nails to go on my shop on etsy, I'm very excited about these :D. I was also rummaging through my polish collection and spotted a shimmery bronze nails inc polish which I haven't tried before, so I thought I'd give it a go and show you :)

This is the polish, it's called "horse guards parade".

It goes on really easily, and gives a really good coverage even with one coat. It's so gorgeous and shimmery, it looks more like a foil polish than I expected

This is 2 coats without top coat. Apologies for the messy cuticles, but I wanted a shot in the sunlight, and it literally shone through the clouds for a few seconds, before I had a chance to clean up!

I really like this polish, and am now thinking of ways I can use this in a new nail design for my shop :)

Until next time!

Chevron Nails

Hello!
For my first proper post, I'm going to show you the nails I've made for my mum to wear for a family wedding. These are the same as a set available in my shop, but I did them on custom sized nails for a perfect fit :)
So I started by painting the nails with a gorgeous bright orange by Nailsinc called Porchester Place 

I then taped the chevron design on the thumbs and accent nails and filled in the gap with BarryM Foil Effect Gold polish

I then outlined the gold with black striping tape (the very fiddly part where I ended up with striping tape stuck all over my fingers!)

Et voila! A gorgeous set of nails for a summer wedding, tailor made to match my lovely mum's outfit!
I'm also making a matching ring for her to wear...

 ... Obviously not finished yet but it will be set in an antique bronze flavoured ring to make a lovely matching statement piece.
Now I'm off to create some more awesome nails for my shop :)

Until next time!

Hello World!

Well hello there!

So I've finally gotten down to it and started a blog of my own! I've been meaning to do this for ages (to be honest, I wanted to start a blog years ago, but didn't have anything fun to write about!).

In the past few months I've developed something of a nail polish addiction, and gone from having about 3 polishes, to a whole drawer full. Oops! I've also discovered the joys of nail art, but I'm not allowed to wear nail polish in the day job, so I've been putting my creations onto false nails and I'm now selling these online, because if I can't wear them, someone else should have the pleasure of fab nails instead. It's a public service really :P

So I'll be raving about whatever new polish I've bought, or showing off my latest designs, or occasionally just rambling about cake.

I hope you enjoy it!