Wednesday Nail Mail

Today I got a nice little surprise in the mail, as I wasn't expecting these until next week. I picked up these little beauties on eBay for £6 with free p&p - bargain right?! With the addition of these to my collection, it means that I'm only 3 polishes away from completing the Let It Snow collection. My only needs now are Blue Years Eve, Glittering Garland and Champagne Bubbles. Definitely in need of a little trip to Sally's next week to see if I can get my hands on them. Unfortunately, they're not all full sized bottles, 4 of them are mini as I got them in a set, but hey, who cares!

So here we have Holly-Day, Twinkle Lights & Poinsettia. I've always been in need of more Reds, as it's such a timeless colour, but for some reason I only had 4 in my collection, until now. After receiving my huge ELF nail mail, that number has quickly upped itself to around 18/19.
As for twinkle lights, I've heard people describe it as 'Christmas in a bottle' and it honestly is. I've already planned out my manicure for Christmas Day, and it definitely includes this polish.
With Holly Day, I have a lot of greens, but they're either really light or really dark, I don't really have that in between colour. So that's the reason this has come into my mits :)

Cult Nails - Time Traveller

These polishes are AMAZING. This swatch is one coat of Cult Nails - Time Traveller from their new Super Powers collection, yes you heard me right, 1 COAT! These polishes are super pigmented and apply like a dream, one dip in the bottle managed to do my whole hand! I can't believe I've waited this long to purchase some!
Time Traveller is my favourite polish out of this collection (with the exception of Clairvoyant/Unicorn Puke too) it's a gorgeous royal navy blue jelly and is perfect for my skin tone. I think it's safe to say that I have an obsession with Navy blues, I have no idea why, I just love them and I'm always drawn more towards them than any other colour.

Pigmentation: 10/10

Application: 10/10

Coats: 1

Tuesday Nail Mail

If you follow my Facebook Page then you'll know what my very exciting Nail Mail is for today, for those of you who don't, here it is.

I can now say that I am the proud owner of some Cult Nails polish!! I pre-ordered the Super Powers collection when I first heard of it's release. After seeing countless posts about Unicorn Puke, I HAD to get my hands on it, to my disappointment there was only 275 made of that polish. It wasn't until I heard through the grapevine that Cult Nails were re-releasing Unicorn Puke under the name Clairvoyant in their upcoming collection that I knew I couldn't miss out on it this time round. Without even hesitating I placed an order. My polishes were dispatched on November 23rd, 6 days later I have them...WOW! Kudos for shipping time. Anyway, enough rambling...

How cute are these little cocoons!

I'd like to apologise for the terrible quality photos, unfortunately in England, there is no such thing as sunshine these past few days, all we have is miserable skies and ridiculous wind speeds! So I can't even go outside to take photos, unless I want to spend hours chasing the polishes around the garden. Note to self: Invest in a lightbox.

I'm so happy to finally have my first Cult Nails polishes, and with the amazing shipping time they have on them, I will definitely be ordering more in the future. I've swatched Time Traveller & Time Traveller with Clairvoyant over the top, but those will be uploaded at some other time, probably when I get better photographs of Clairvoyant (In sunshine, hopefully). For the time being I will just have to sit and stare at my nails! But I'm not complaining about that...Until next time xoxo

ELF - Innocent

I have another swatch for you today in the shape of ELF -Innocent.
Now I'll be the first to admit when it comes to nude shades, I'm not usually a fan, BUT there's something about this colour that just makes me love it. For one, I think it is the perfect nude shade for my skintone & two, for a light colour, it's opaque in 2/3 coats, unlike the similar colour I own from Ciate, that takes almost 5 coats and with a whopping £7.50 difference, I think I'll stick to my ELF polishes!
Innocent is a light beige polish with pink undertones and is just the most perfect nude for pale people, like myself. Love love love it.

E.L.F: Dark Purple Glitter

Now, to be honest with you, I don't know what to make of this colour. A part of me absolutely loves it, but there's another part of me that doesn't. Dark Purple Glitter is one of the many polishes I purchased in ELF's 40% off sale for 90p, usually £1.50. It's a dark, vampy purple with blue toned glass flecks running throughout, giving it a lighter feel. Now, I was a bit disappointed with how this translated onto my nails, in the bottle it looks very glitter heavy, but on my nails there is hardly anything.
The application is very smooth and is opaque in 2 coats, as it is a glass fleck, the removal process is very quick and easy, which was good as I swatched a lot of polishes before and after taking this photo, many of which I'll have to re-do due to half hearted clean ups.
Kudos to all those polishaholic bloggers out there that swatch whole collections in one day, it gets very tedious very quickly, I can't imagine what it's like with full glitters!
If there's any specific polish you'd like to see swatched from my recent ELF Haul, let me know in the comments!!

Nail Mail

I was supposed to post this yesterday, but I was so busy I didn't get around to doing so. Yesterday, I went to my local Sally's to see if they had any of the new China Glaze - Eye Candy collection, to my disappointment they didn't. What they did have, however, was the Let It Snow collection. I've been eyeing some of the colours up for a while now, so I thought I may as well purchase a few. Unfortunately they had sold out of some of the full sized bottles that I wanted, but they did have the minis. I also found the mini Metro collection too! Now usually I'm not a big fan of mini bottles, but they were having a 3 for 2 on the Christmas collection, so I picked up a full sized Winter Berry and Snow Globe and then Santa's Little Helpers which contains Tinsel Town, Icicle, Ring In The Red & Velvet Bow, Tinsel Town & Velvet Bow being the two bottles they didn't have in the full sized version. In the mini Metro there was CG In The City, Skyscraper, Midtown Magic & Urban-Night, I had seen swatches of Midtown Magic & Skyscraper and wanted to try them, unfortunately, again, my useless Sally's didn't have ANY of the full sized bottles, so I had to settle for the mini. I also picked up the Ghoulish Glow from the new Haunted Halloween collection. All of this came to just under £30 with my 20% off voucher, which isn't too bad I guess, I just wish they had had the full sized versions as it's also 3 for 2 on any China Glaze polishes at the moment!

L-R; Tinsel Town, Icicle, Ring In The Red & Velvet Bow

L-R; Skyscraper, CG In The City, Urban-Night & Midtown Magic

L-R; Winter Berry, Snow Globe & Ghoulish Glow

I was going to write a little description about each individual polish, but I am currently in the process of swatching all of my collection, so I think I'll save it for then! Otherwise I'll just be repeating myself. 

Collection 2000 - All That Jazz

Silly me, this was supposed to be a scheduled post, but for some reason it never went up! Today my lovely boyfriend took me out for a meal at Frankie & Benny's, maaaan I love that place! And my boyfriend too, of course.
Anyway, today I have Collection 2000 - All That Jazz for you. All That Jazz is a charcoal grey with a silvery shimmer. When I first picked it up I thought it looked more brown than grey, maybe that was just the lighting in store.
I love Collection 2000 polishes, they're so inexpensive and are also good quality. You can get Collection 2000 Hot Looks in Superdrug & Boots for £1.79 each. There's also usually some sort of offer on with these as well, but for less than £2, who really needs offers? The drying time on these are amazing, some 'fast dry' polishes never actually do live up to their promises, but these little beauties certainly do. I can paint my nails and head straight out the door, no smudging in sight. Love, Love, LOVE!

Application: 6/10 (the brush in this particular polish is WAY too wide, and is also split a little too, otherwise 9/10)

Pigmentation: 9/10

Coats: 1/2

Andrea Fulerton - Naomi

2 coats, in natural light with flash (only way I could
get the colour to show!)

First of all, please excuse the poor cleanup! Why is it that when you think you have it all nice and neat, the camera picks up an angle which looks like you've not even bothered? Technology, eh?!
This is my first (and only, for now) Andrea Fulerton polish, the reason for this being that we don't actually have it in our local Superdrug, so I've never just though 'Ooh, I'll get that'.
Andrea Fulerton retails for around £5 in Superdrug (There's an offer on them at the moment, bringing some down to £3.99!) for single 5.5ml polishes like this one as well as their Stripe & Sparkle polishes and Peel Off Polishes. Prices go up to £7.99 for their Trio Polishes which I have been dying to try, but haven't got around to it yet!
Anyway, back to the polish...To be honest, I'm a sucker for Red nails, there's something about them that just makes you feel instantly sexy and sophisticated regardless of whether you're in your pj's/sweats or the most fancy frock you own, and this is no exception to that. Naomi is a Deep Berry Red creme polish that oozes sex appeal, it's also one of the hardest polishes to photograph to gain that true to life colour. Maybe it's just my camera? Regardless, this colour is b-e-a-utiful. My stash does lack in the red department, so what better way to bring it up to date than with Naomi!

Application - 10/10

Pigmentation - 10/10

Coats 1/2

Friday Nail Mail

Yep, you guessed it. I received some more Nail Mail today. I finally received my packages from Superdrug that I ordered online. These 3 polishes, however, are the ones I ordered for myself. I did order a lot more, but they are for a swap I'm doing with Lauren from A Polish Change so I obviously can't show those otherwise it would ruin the surprise!
The three polishes I got for myself were GOSH - Lambada, Andrea Fulerton - Naomi & GOSH Peachy.
I have already swatched these, but you're going to have to wait until I put them up to see the colours ;) I've set myself a goal to post at least 2 reviews a week. So keep a look out for those!
I've also just finished my Nail Trend - Winter posts, so they should be going up again soon, I even risked my health to go out in the freezing cold to get some outdoor photos for you!

I'm ready to kick myself in to gear and get this blog moving! I also have a few ideas for a giveaway, but I'm waiting for the right time to set one!
Hope you're all doing well and looking forward to the weekend, I know I am.
TTFN

Birthday Nail Mail (pic heavy)

You may or may not know, E.L.F or Eyeslipsface, just had a 40% off sale on their website to celebrate reaching 275,000 facebook likes. Seeing as my birthday was coming up, I thought I'd put a little order in. I got a few make-up items, but the majority of my order consisted of nail polish. Usually their polishes are £1.50, which is a bargain in itself, but with the 40% off offer they went to 90p each. For the quality of their polishes, this is amazing. Without even hesitating I ordered the remainder of the polishes I don't already own (with the exception of the 9 that are currently out of stock). Bringing my total ELF polish collection to 40/49, with 2x Black & Clear.

Don't they look pretty? I will eventually get around to swatching them all properly, but for the time being, I have swatched them onto a nail wheel. If you're interested in knowing a specific colour, if you leave a comment with the number of the swatch you like (pictured below), I'll gladly tell you which colour it is.
It's times like these that I wish I had multiple hands, so I could swatch them all for you in one giant lump. But that's not possible, unless you're a spider with 5 fingers on each leg. Unfortunately, I'm terrified of spiders, so there won't be a spider swatching anytime soon!

Here's the mass of boxes & plastic after unwrapping them all. Impressive huh!






Now for the swatches;

Both Wheels

My first swatch wheel. Numbers 1-11 are the polishes I already owned. The rest are the newbies to my collection.
If you'd like to know colours, as I said let me know in the comments with the number! (if you're unable to read the numbers, the wheel goes from 1-18, starting with the black)

And here is the second wheel with numbers ranging from 19-36. There is a blank nail on here, as one of the polishes I recieved (passion pink) is pretty much glued shut. I think it's a job for the plyers! I tried to get the best photo of them I could, I hope it will suffice!



I'm so glad they arrived today, it makes me feel like it was a huge birthday gift from E.L.F although I paid for them all :). I've been thinking of doing a polish collection post, would any one be interested in that? I'd start off by doing each individual brand, as a collective post would be extremely pic heavy. Let me know in the comments! Hope you're all having a good day!

How To: How I Store My Polish

First of all, I'd like to apologise about the complete failure that was the 31 Day Challenge, I think it's safe to say that's well and truely lost in the days passed. Maybe I'll do a 15 day challenge at a later date to compensate with the ones I've missed!

I thought I'd share how I store my nail polish, a part of me wanted to wait until the end of the week until I have the rest of my polish I've ordered from various online sites (26 being from ELF alone, eeesh I have a problem!) but the other part of me just wanted to post it now, so here it is.

I keep all of my polishes in these 3 boxes (no they're not all filled with polish as you'll see in a second). Since I've been building my collection I've moved them around so much, from a mini 4 drawer storage tower, to a larger 3 drawer paper tower and then to these boxes. I got these from B&M Superstore for £1.99 each, they come in loads of different designs and I plan to purchase more when I run out of space. They're so cute and convienient you can just stick them in your wardrobe or a cupboard or even just on top of your dresser. Usually mine are found in the middle of my bedroom floor as I'm always doing something with them, which doesn't stick well with my boyfriend when he has to get around them.

The first box is where I keep the polishes I have the most of/the more expensive brands such as OPI, GOSH, Nails Inc & China Glaze and then my BarryM, Models Own & ELF. As you can see (with the exception of my CG/Newer polishes) I put a small dot on the lids so I can quickly spot the colour I'm looking for without having to pick out each individual colour until I find the one I'm looking for. 

This works most of the time, unless there are some colours that look very similar on the dot/too dark to see against black such as BarryM's Navy or any black polish. I do wish that polish names were on the top instead of the bottom, a bit like Essie polishes and the one GOSH polish I own. That would just be perfect!

In the next box I keep all my Nail Art pens & equipment. I also have my Top Coats in here too. You can't see it in the photo, but I have a Models Own box that I keep my fimo wheels, rhinestone wheels, nail files, nail art wheels & stamping tools in. The Notebook (which I got from FunkyPigeon.com for about £8) is where I keep all my nail art ideas and also print outs of designs I love and am inspired by with notes of what polishes I'd use instead of the ones in the photograph, it's a bit OCD I know.

I then have a box that holds all my cu-tips and cocktail sticks for when I want to do some fine dotting and clean up. My dotting tools and brushes are kept in a clear plastic zip back just next to those.

And finally my nail wheels. I have so many of these due to the fact I paint them in colour groups (except the brand wheels which is pictured above - it's one of my BarryM wheels if anyone is wondering) so whenever I get a new colour that I have to put on the chart, but it's darker than the last one, I want to do them all again. How can I take the polish off without ruining the wheel? Polish remover doesn't seem to work >.<

Finally I have the last box, which holds all my other polish that doesn't fit in to the first box, such as MUA, Collection 2000, Saffron etc. This will eventually filled with any other polish I acquire over the next coming months until it too, is filled to the brim. Which I'm guessing will be sooner than I think once I get the 26 ELF polishes amongst the others I've ordered. I think I might have to set up PAA - Polish Addicts Anonymous I'm sure there's plenty of people that are in desperate need for one, I know I am.

Again, in the bottom of the box there's just some Hello Kitty cut outs I used in THIS POST and just some printed out designs from various websites I've come across. Pretty uninteresting really.

So, there you have it, how I store my polish. If you'd like me to do a full collection post with full views of the colours, then let me know in the comments below. I'll definitely try and get more swatch posts up now that the 31 day challenge was such a flop. You'll just have to excuse the poor lighting on most of them, as I said in my previous post grey overcast is all us Brits have to offer at the moment! Hope you've enjoyed reading this, I'd love to see how you store all of your polishes, leave a comment below to your blog post if you have one!

GOSH - Gasoline

Today's swatch I have for you is GOSH - Gasoline. I've seen this floating around the blogging community for quite a while and I always thought it looked amazing in the pictures. I instantly started to lust over it, but always held back on buying it. For some reason, I always seemed to be put off by the price, £5. They looked tiny on pictures and I couldn't justify spending that amount on a little bottle of polish, however, since splurging on Models Own polishes at £5 a piece I thought I'd take the plunge. Not to mention these were 3 for 2 in Superdrug - definitely worth the spend.
For some reason, in the bottle it looks like it's almost matte, which isn't the case when applied to the nails. This seems to be one of the hardest polishes to capture it's true colour, neither of the swatches below are able to capture it's life like colour. The photo below is 3 coats & you can still see my nail line.

As it's the end of November and I live in the UK, sunshine doesn't exist. The only 'natural' light we get outside is Grey overcast, urgh. But anyway, on to the colour....Gasoline is a jelly based shimmer, I say shimmer as the flecks inside aren't grit enough to be a glitter, in my opinion anyway. The base colour is a dark magenta with a blueish/purple shimmer, which I think gives it that lighter looking effect. On closer inspection I've also found it to have tiny flecks of holographic glitter. The application is a bit hit and miss, as it can be gloopy at times and the first coat does apply sheer too but overall I do like this colour, maybe not as much as I'd have liked to though.

Application: 7/10

Pigmentation: 6/10

Coats: 4/5

Nail Mail

Technically, this isn't nail mail as I went out and purchased these whilst I was away. But in all honesty, I'm not really a fan of the word 'haul'. It may seem like there's a lot, and I guess for being away 4 days, it is a bit of a collection. In my defense, my birthday is in 2 days AND Superdrug were having a 3 for 2 on all cosmetics, which sadly ended today, so I obviously couldn't pass that up!
The polishes I purchased from BarryM are; Red Black, Dusky Mauve, Mushroom & The 3 in 1 top & base coat. All of which I've been lusting over for ages now, so I finally got them. The Nails Inc polish is in the colour Basil Street and I got this free with Glamour Magazine. For the GOSH polishes (which are my first ever GOSH purchase as I always found them expensive) are Gasoline, Purple Haze & Ocean. The Collection 2000 polishes are in the shades Jitterbug (blue) and All That Jazz (brown/silver).
I then went to Boots in search for magnetic polish when I saw that 17 are also having 3 for 2 on their products, so I took this opportunity to get myself 3/4 colours available; Blue, Gun Metal & Lilac.

I'm very happy with my purchases, however the GOSH polishes have let me down a bit, as they're a bit gloopy and take atleast 3 coats for full opacity. As for the magnetic polishes, I definitely need some more practice with those!

Polish Count; November

My polish collection is vastly growing, and I thought what better way to keep track of my addiction with monthly postings of how much my collection has grown in that month. This will be accompanied by photographs of the polishes, possibly including swatches too (depending on the amount, and if I have time) giving you polish addicts a few samples to go by and to see if you'd like to purchase them yourself. Good idea or bad? Give me feed back in the comments below as to whether you think this is a good idea or not.

Please note; this isn't a form of bragging, it's just how my collection is growing every month and how I find the space to store my addiction. It's also a way to put a 'face' to the name of a polish. I'll still be posting Nail Mail as and when any arrive, this is just going to be a collective 'haul' every month, if you please.

POLISH COUNT (NOV 22ND) ; 99

So, I just got home...

Hey Guys, did you miss me?

First of all I'd like to thank Dara, Charlie, Sarah & Juliet for being my guests whilst I was away. I love the designs the girls did! And I hope you all did too ^.^ I really appreciate the time and effort they put in and it paid off 100%. If you haven't checked out their blogs yet, then just click their names to be taken to their pages!

Now, I was supposed to be doing a post for the 31 Day Challenge today, but seeing as it's now 2:51am, I don't really feel like painting my nails. So I will have to start up the challenge tomorrow, maybe I'll even post 2! I hope you can all forgive me 0:)

This was just a short post, to let you guys know I'm back and I will be back to my regular ways tomorrow. I also have a Nail Mail/Haul post for you tomorrow too! I just hope the suns out tomorrow, so you can see the sheer amazingness of one of the polishes.

Ciao for now, my lovelies
Rachel-Karina xoxo

Guest Blogger: My Top 5 Models Own Polishes

Hey, I'm Dara and my blog is Musings and Reviews :)

I'd like to thank Rachel for choosing me as one of her guest bloggers while she is away. Unfortunately I won't be continuing with the 31 day challenge, as I don't really do nail art, but Rachel will be posting her design for today in another post :)

So, on to my top 5 Models Own polishes.

1. Purple Poppy

This is my absolute favourite MO polish. It's the most amazing bright purple colour which is eye catching, but not too in your face. It applies amazingly and dries really quickly too :)

2. Smash-Up polish in gold

This is the most recent of the MO 'Smash-up' polishes. In this photo I have used it on top of purple poppy, which is my favourite combination. I think these colours look great together, and this polish has a really professional look to it, even tho it only takes a few seconds to do.

3. Champagne

This is such a beautiful colour! It's like gold, silver and copper all mixed together, maybe like a platinum colour? It has a gorgeous metallic finish and is extremely chip resistant. I think it looks very elegant :)

4. Magenta Pearl

I have a thing for dark pinky/burgundy nail colours and this one is just perfect. It has the most amazing metallic finish and there's something very grown-up about it. As much as I'm in love with this colour, I always seem to smudge my nails when I've used this. I don't know if thats just me or if this polish doesn't dry as quickly as the others?

5. Pinky Brown

This is pinky brown from the highly anticipated new Beetlejuice collection. This photo doesn't really show the colour properly, but you can see that is has a lovely sparkly finish. It's primarily pinky, but turns to more of a brown in certain lights. It's a lovely rustic colour, perfect for autumn :)

If you liked my post don't forget to visit my blog here.

Thanks again to Rachel! x