Freckles Polish Neon Watermarble

 With all this hot weather in the UK, I want want to do is wear neons! One of my favourite neons recently has been Jelly Shoes by Freckles Polish.

This is such a bright pink, and nothing like any other pinks in my collection. For a full review of click here!

I have been really into watermarble recently. Something about summer and hot weather just tells me to watermarble!

Products used:

Barry M Coconut 

Kester Black Sugar Daddy

Freckles Polish Jelly Shoes

Nails Inc Optic Glow (2014)

Nail Mail Mess Free Mani (Liquid Latex)

I started off painting my pinky and index finger using Coconut by Barry M. This is a slightly creamy off white polish. I also painted Sugar Daddy by Kester Black on my ring finger and middle finger. 

I've been seeing a lot of watermarble where people have used a clear polish over glitter. I have done it before and loved the results. 

Nails Inc Optic Glow is a very very very sheer pink polish and it's fantastic for water marbling. 

I think the final result looks so cool! But I wish I was better at creating shapes and designs. 

Check out Freckles Polish on Etsy and Instagram! 

xx Elaine

Free Nails Inc Polish with InStyle Magazine

This month Nails Inc is giving away four free nail polishes with InStyle magazine. It's a great combination of brights and pastels so there's something to suit everyone!

There is a gorgeous minty green, a red, pink and a purpley grey. The pink and red aren't very unique, and as you'll see from my comparisons coming up, it's easy to pass those up. The other two shades are great and I'd definitely recommend them.

First up is The Tide Is High.

This is a gorgeous mint which leans slightly more blue than green. It's beautiful and my favourite of the 4.

I used 2 coats for the swatch.

It was streaky on the first coat but the second coat covered everything up.

I did do 2 very careful coats, I think this could easily be a 3 coater, especially on my other hand!!

I compared it to Optic Wave from a little over a year ago.

Optic Wave is 1 of 3 polishes that I actually have a back-up of.

The Tide Is High is a much lighter version of Optic Wave. I think both are equally beautiful.

More info and swatches after the jump! 

Kings Day Manicures!

King's Day in Holland has just passed and I've been busy creating 3 different designs for the occasion. I'm currently living in the UK so unfortunately I didn't celebrate.

The Dutch flag has Red, White and Blue, however the colour that symbolises Holland is Orange.

I also used a few OPI colours from the OPI Holland Collection.

The first design I created is this super easy dotticure. I used OPI A Roll In The Hague for my index and middle fingers and the very appropriately named King from Fun Lacquer on my pinky. I used Cream In My Coffee, again from OPI as the creamy white base and Big Apple Red and Keeping Suzi At Bay for the dots.

It's super easy, but I love the way it turned out!

The second manicure I did was a little less bright.

I used a much more muted orange OPI Where Did Suzi's Man-Go and applied some heart studs from H&M. Again I used King from Fun Lacquer on my index finger and Cream In My Coffee from OPI as the creamy base. From the flag I used OPI Red Lights Ahead... Where? From the Holland Collection and No Room For The Blues. I used King in the middle.

Again super easy to do, I just used some striping tape!

Lastly I created this fun floral design.

I used Cream In My Coffee as the base and used a dotting tool do apply flowers. I used OPI Red Lights Ahead Where and No Room For The Blues.

I then used Nails Inc Wembley for the golden centre of the flowers. The random polka dots are Where Did Suzi's Man-Go from OPI.









I hope everyone had a great King's Day. What did you think of these mani's? Which one is your favourite?
xx Elaine

Free Nails Inc Nail Polish with Colgate Optic White Toothpaste

I feel like Nails Inc is ALWAYS giving away free nail polishes with EVERYTHING. This time they're with Colgate Optic White toothpastes.

This isn't anything new, last year at this time they had the same offer. It also included a red, blue and pink with the same names, but I have compared (bottle shots) and they aren't anything alike.

I fell in love with all three colours last year, and I'm not sure if this years collection quite matches up, but that blue kind of makes up for it! That being said, all three colours have an incredible formula.

More info and swatches after the jump! 

Free Nails Inc with Marie Claire

This month Marie Claire magazine is giving away 4 Nails Inc nail polishes! Yes... I bought the same magazine 4 times....

I think Nails Inc is a great brand. The majority of  my polishes actually came from magazines or toothpaste. Not only can you always get freebies, the quality of the nail polishes are fantastic too! One of the nails polishes that came with the Optic White toothpaste I ended up wearing to my brothers wedding!

Anyway, back to the point. These are the four freebies! Very springy.

First up is Fizz. Fizz is a stunning very light pastel pink. It's one of the lightest pinks I own with a creme formula.

I only needed 2 coats for the swatch! It's a very opaque formula, but not thick at all. The first coat was only slightly streaky and if you do a thicker coat you can probably get away with just one.

I didn't use top coat.

The second colour is Fiesta. This is a bright raspberry pink! This isn't the most unique polish, but it's another great formula.

I find that Nails Inc polishes practically apply themselves. I never have issues with flooding my cuticles or getting an uneven line around my cuticles.

I used 1 coat for the swatch and no top coat.

Next up is Festival. This is the least spring-like nail polish of the bunch, but I guess if you're in a neutral mood this'll be great.

It's a a pretty brown. I kind of know how to describe colours, but a brown is a brown. It's not too dark or too light. It's more warm toned than a taupe, but not orangey.

Another amazing formula and I only needed 1 coat.

The last colour is Fashion. This is Fizz's little brother. It's another very light pastel but this is a blue/purple/grey shade. I think it's a very unique colour and best of all... it's a ONE coater!

I only applied 1 coat for the swatch and no top coat.

It's another very opaque formula, just like Fizz, but I had no streakiness with this one.




Again I'm in love with all the freebies. Nails Inc retails for £11 and Marie Claire is £3.99. I'm happy Nails Inc has decided to include some unique shades rather than all the reds.

Yoomoo Frozen Yogurt Competition

A few weeks ago the frozen yogurt brand YooMoo had a competition to create nail art inspired by their brand. The prize was a Nails Inc Nail Polish. There were two competitions, one by YooMoo itself and one by @thepolishlist on Instagram. I entered into the second competition and created this nail art inspired by their strawberry swirl flavour.

I watched YoungWildAndPolished's YouTube video on how to water marble. She had so many great tips and advice and thanks to her I am finally able to water marble properly!

For the water marble I used three Essie colours: Urban Jungle, Cute As A Button, and Go Ginza. For the Ombre I used Essie Urban Jungle, Leighton Denny Babydoll, Essie Cute As A Button and OPI Koala Bear-y For the Yoomoo logo I used Urban Jungle by Essie as the background and Leighton Denny Babydoll for the cow.

I am so excited... I WON! @thepolishlist chose my entry as well as @firefly5 and @lisas_nails1 to win an exclusive YooMoo Nails Inc nail polish.

The polish is called Udderly Shocking Pink, and it's this beautiful bright pink. I love Nails Inc polishes are they're always super easy to apply.

I used two easy coats for the swatch and it dried with an incredible shine.

I'm so happy and proud of myself that I won a competition!

DIY Peel Off Base Coat

I have never been a huge fan of glitter and that's because it's such a pain to take off! When OPI brought out their peel off base coast I immediately wanted it. Unfortunately I couldn't find it anywhere in Australia, and being back in the UK it was still tricky. I finally managed to find it online and it cost £16.95! That's a little pricey... so I decided to look into making it myself. I had heard a lot about it, but never really thought about trying it. I recently starting getting back into glitter polishes and want to wear them, without having to worry about taking them off!

I had an almost empty Seche Vite bottle laying around so I emptied and cleaned it. I poured out any remaining product and added a bit of nail polish remover and slowly moved it around the bottle. I did this about three times and then filled it up with hot water. This got rid of any remaining product and nail polish remover. I cleaned the brush with acetone and used a little nail art brush to clean the inside of the lid.

I then poured in some modpodge, which is basically watered down elmers glue. That's it! Super easy, and I already had everything in my house so free!

Now let's see how it works...

I applied one coat of the polish on all 4 nails. It applies like a very streaky white polish, as you can tell from my pinky in the top photo, but dries completely clear, as though I'm not wearing anything (bottom photo). It only takes a couple minutes to dry.

I then applied two coats of Gloucester Walk, a super dense chunky mixed glitter. I'd literally never dare wear anything like this.. It's a mix of smaller golden glitters and larger copper glitters (see close up below). It's a very reflective polish, so for the macro shots it looks like there are black glitters in it, that's just the reflection of my camera.

The nail polish applied really smoothly for such a densely packed glitter and only required 2 coats to be fully 100% opaque.

I waited about 2 hours before removing the nail polish. This gave the modpodge time to completely dry. I used my finger nail to slowly start pushing the nail polish off from the bottom of my nail. You can also use a cuticle pusher. Once it lifted, you can pull the nail polish off. There were a couple little bits of glitter than didn't come off the first go, but I just pushed those off once the majority was pulled off.

It was so easy and it makes me excited to start wearing glitter polish again! The photo to the right is right after I took the polish off, before washing my hands. My nails don't look damaged at all!

Will you be making your own peel off base coat?
xx Elaine

Nail Art Challenge June - Destinations

During the month of June I decided to take part in two nail art challenges. To view my other posts click here! Doing two challenges has been a little much, but I'm slowly going through them... Day 28 of #nailartjun was Destinations. As you may know I have traveled up the East Coast of Australia throughout May and it was amazing! One of my favourite places was Sydney (amongst many others). I felt right at home in Sydney and my boyfriend and I walked the Harbour Bridge. When I saw this design by @sparklicious_nails I know I had to recreate it. This is the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge in Sydney. I actually took a photo of this view during the day. 

I started off with a white base, of course OPI Alpine Snow. When that fully dried I taped up the tips of my nails and used a sponge to create an ombre. I used Nails Inc Notting Hill Carnival (yellow), Nails Inc You're A Peach (orange) and OPI Kiss Me On My Tulips (pink) for the ombre on my index finger. I then used the above 3 colours as well as Mecca Cosmetica Timandra (purple/pink) as on ombre on my middle finger. I used a new part of the sponge and used Nails In You're A Peach, OPI Kiss Me On My Tulips, Mecca Cosmetica Timandra and Kester Black Bougainvillea (purple) for the gradient on my ring finger. I used Mecca Cosmetica Timandra and Kester Black Bougainvillea for the ombre on my pinky. 

I then removed the tape and create a horizontal gradient on the bottom bits. On my index finger only sponged on Kiss Me On My Tulips. On my middle finger I used Mecca Cosmetica Timandra and Kester Black Bougainvillea, On my ring finger and pinky I used Kester Black Bougainvillea and Mecca Cosmetica Cobalt. 

I then slowly started to draw using my Barry M Nail Art Pen in black. I started off drawing a line between the two gradients. After that I outlined the shape of the opera house and coloured it in and drew a line at the end of my pinky. I then applied some of the nail art pen product onto a note card and used my extremely thin nail art brush (that I thinned myself) to draw the Harbour Bridge. I started with the bottom line, then the first arch and then the second. I drew the zigzag line inside the arch and then drew the straight lines down. It was pretty tricky and needed a lot of patience and concentration, but I'm so happy with it! 

After waiting for about an hour I applied my top coat. I wanted to ensure that the design was fully dry before I do anything! 

The ombre looks so beautiful and it's the best sunset look I've ever created. It's also the most incredibly "scenery" or 4 finger nail art I've created. I'm so proud. Thank you to @sparklicious_nails for the design idea! What I love most about it is that I've seen that view in real life, and also that I walked over that bridge! 

What do you think of these nails?

xx Elaine 

Free Nails Inc Colgate Toothpaste

A couple days ago I posted about free Nails Inc polishes with InStyle magazine, but they have another offer! There are three nail polishes with Colgate Optic White Toothpaste at Boots. There is a bright red, a pink and a blue. Unfortunately I have only been able to get my hands on the red one so far, the blue one is set to come out on the 11th of June. I guess I'll be needing another toothpaste then!!

This polish is called Optic Flame and it's a bright orange toned red. The name Optic Flame fits with it really well, because the first thing I thought of when I wore it is that it looked like a fire red. Like all Nails Inc nail polishes, this formula was fantastic. It was super smooth and even to apply. With one coat there was a slight visible nail line, but the second coat completely covered that. I always love applying Nails Inc polishes and I've never had a problem with any of them.

The shine on this polish is incredible. I thought it was beautiful with just one coat, but as soon as the second coat dried it was beautiful and smooth. It's as though I've applied the shiniest top coat, but that's all Optic Flame!

This polish is gorgeous, both the application and the colour. It would definitely make it into my top 5 favourite reds!!

Free Nails Inc - InStyle Magazine

I first fell in love with Nails Inc when I bought their Lucky Dip deal, where you pay £20 to receive 7 nail polishes, which are £11 each. I loved the bottle shape, the formulas, the colours. Overall they were amazing. Nails Inc often have amazing offers where you get a free nail polish with a purchase. My friend has tons of Nail Inc nail polishes, but managed to get all of them for free! They've had them with coca cola, colgate toothpaste, magazines and probably more.

In the June Issue of InStyle magazine you could choose from three beautiful nail polishes. A pink called Sugarloaf Sunset, a nude called Sao Paulo Streets and a red called Copacabana Coral. Of course if you wanted all three, you'd have to buy the magazine three times.

First up is Sugarloaf Sunset. This is the first one I swatched because I thought it would be my least favourite. Well... I was wrong. This was such a gorgeous pink! Being back in the UK I've been reunited with all my polishes and I learnt that I have the most pinks out of any other colour category. That being said, this pink is definitely unique in my collection, surprising right?! It's a bright pink that's slightly more muted so it's not quite a hot pink. The formula on this fantastic. The swatches show one coat and no top coat.

Sugarloaf Sunset, 1 coat

The second nail polish is Sao Paulo Streets, definitely my favourite colour. I love nudes and this shade is perfect. It's a really light almost white colour, that's a bit more beige toned but still has a slight pink-y look to it.... if that makes sense? The formula on this is again great, but not quite a one coater like Sugarloaf Sunset. I used two coats for the swatches. The first one was slightly streaky, but the second coat easily covered that up. The nail polish was really smooth and just so so easy to work with. Again I didn't use a top coat.

Sao Paulo Streets, 2 coats

And finally Copacabana Coral. This was another surprise for me because it's a very different red. It's slightly coral like the name suggests and a bit more muted and softer than most reds. The formula was so smooth! That's probably what I love about Nail Inc polishes the most, the smooth application. I used two coats for this swatch. The first coat was beautiful, even and streak free, but there was a slight visible nail line, so the second coat covered that up. Again no top coat, this one was the shiniest of them all.

Copacabana Coral, 2 coats

I'm so impressed with these nail polishes! It really reminded me how much I loved them. The formula on these was amazing, Sugarloaf Sunset was so opaque it only needed one coat, and the others needed two. The colours are great for the summer, but not too in your face neon like some of the other collections that have been coming out. I would definitely wear Sao Paulo Streets all year round.